Flipping through the radio channels on the tv tonight, because that's how I use the tv as a glorified radio.  The money is totally wasted on me, we have tv for Gary.  Anyway, flipping through the radio channels tonight, I perked up when an Avalon song was on that came out back when I was in highschool, about the time a friend, Kristi I think introduced me to Christian rock, pop?  Whatever you call it.  It was a song I liked alot back then, the idea of being willing to testify or speak or praise God throughout my life, just like everything we see in creation.  Of course I was also in 7th grade when it came out, and thought the song had great positive feeling music, with great harmony.  However, when I heard the song again, a different set of words just blew me away, "I'll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough."

I have hoped in some small way, to live to see that Abigail's life mattered, even if it was a very tiny and short one.  If in someway she brings glory to God, in the way that we handle her loss, then ... It's not that it makes it better or ok in someway, but I suppose it helps to see good come from the bad.  And while I have tried so hard to sort through everything and make sense of everything that I feel by writing, almost obsessively you might say, the words are not enough.  Oh, I blog, sometimes I share snippets of things on facebook, I journal daily in my planner, and I have Abigail's journal.  I have lots of words, I supposed if I could ever get what it is that needs to be said, said, then I could just put up the pen.  The problem is the words are not enough.  They are never enough.

Recently a sister in the Church passed away, a woman I've never met but who lives in vibrant detail in countless stories that I've heard.  Someone who was like a sister to Gary's grandmother, a woman who they all call Aunt.  As we have talked and made plans to go up for the funeral, I wondered what I could say.  It brought the very real panic and feelings of losing Abigail back to the forefront of my mind.  The utter worthlessness of words at that point, the rarity of anything that is said penetrating the fog, and sticking with you.  The despair of hearing "I'm so sorry" over and over and over and over.  And yet we feel that we have to say something.  I wondered during a long drive what I would say, I wondered what I would have said to myself.  Maybe that is all we are really grappling for in these situations, words for ourselves?  Somehow hoping that what we think we would need is what others need.  Maybe that's why we stink at speaking to others in their loss before we experience it.  We have no idea what it is and what we need.

I have thought that what I would say is "It's not ok, but it will be well.  There will always be a huge hole, but that is ok too.  You will be lonely, but He never leaves us alone.  I know, because I'm there."  And maybe, others can see that, maybe when others look in, those silences say volumes.  Maybe the silences will speak to what words cannot.