When I went through my divorce I read a book called Breaking and Mending: Divorce and God's Grace. It is a great book and I recommend it for both those going through a divorce and those going through a big break-up. This book was a big part of my recovery which later left me open to meet and eventually marry the man of my dreams.
One of the concepts I loved in this book was the "beach ball moment." Mary Lou Redding explains it in these terms (I'm paraphrasing) if you try to hold a beach ball under water it will work for a while but eventually it will pop back up when you aren't expecting it. She goes on to say this can happen with emotions too. If you keep them in and you keep them in they will eventually pop out when you don't expect them. An example of this is you're in the grocery store and something rings up wrong and instead of calmly explaining that it was marked differently you fly off the handle at the poor clerk. You aren't really mad at the clerk you are taking out other feelings that you haven't dealt with out on her.
I had a beach ball moment last night at work. We have a council meeting in the evening once a month and at the close of the meeting we do a closing prayer circle. I was doing good I'd talked about J being deployed earlier in the night no problems. But for some reason when I went to bring him up at the prayer time the tears came. And I'm not a pretty crier because my nose starts to go and I get sniffly. Then following the prayer I got lots of hugs and words of wisdom. One of which was tears are a necessary part of the process. So true. But I know it is because I was tired and it is still so new. I know we will survive and I hope grow from this experience but it is tough. I miss him horribly. Even our dogs miss them horribly.
And I know there will be other beach ball moments before it is all over.
So what are your beach ball moments?
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