Breathe.

Sighs.

They have many different meanings. There are sighs of contentment; sighs after a hard day of work. You're instructed to breathe deeply during yoga or meditation. Breathing deeply and slowly is supposed to provide healing to our bodies. Summer Sunday afternoon sighs are some of the best. The moments after you've gone to church and just eaten; lying on the couch and listening to the gentle hum of the fan as you lull in and out of sleep.

Since July 10, it's felt like my life has been one big sigh, braided with gallons of tears and stabbing pains.

I don't know how to explain how January 1st, 2013 changed everything for me.
But somehow, it did.
It was like a switch was flipped.

This year was difficult, before we even found out we lost Carlie. Financial strain, moving back to Tennessee from Florida (after finding belonging for the first time in a long time), marital distance, early complications in the pregnancy, getting back into the swing of things at my job. It's felt like one hit after another. Despair is the best way to describe the perpetual feeling I've had, beckoned out of me through circumstance and a broken heart.

I've thought for the longest time that New Years resolutions and the general idea of a do-over for the following year is just ridiculous. You can't erase what happened in the year before, so how can you look at the first day of the next year as a fresh start?

But I've also never been through truly unexpected tragedy. I've never had one year completely blindside me with its pain and devastation. But 2012, you were both a blessing and a curse. And I'm thrilled to be passing you by for 2013.

I've searched for things to ease my pain, anger, depression for months now. I'm the first one to tell you emotional pain doesn't make me brave at all. I would take physical pain over an ounce of gut-wrenching emotional turmoil. But grief and its inability to be grasped has made this pain impossible to pass by. It reminds me of that song I wanted to sing with Carlie, titled We're Going On a Bear Hunt.  

Oh look (oh look)
Over there! (over there)
It's some woods (it's some woods)
It's some dark, dark woods (it's some dark, dark woods)

Can't go over it (can't go over it)
Can't go under it (can't go under it)
Can't go around it (can't go around it)
We'll have to go through it

There were times when I felt that I would never begin to see a small ray of light through the forest of my emptiness. Every time I tried to bypass the thickness of the trees, I'd get whacked in the face with another thorny branch.
Many times I cried out to God, but He was silent. I'm still working through all of that with Him. I'm relearning my relationship, and I feel that everything will be more real this time. After all, how can I sing the hymn It Is Well With My Soul the same way I sang it before all of this happened? It's not possible. This experience has touched every inch of my life. Nothing came out unscathed. From the way I hear certain songs, to the crippling ache I feel in my heart each time I hear another mother has lost her child. There's no way of escaping the change her death has brought me; even if I wanted to run away from it, I simply can't.

I'm starting to remember what it feels like to breathe again.