Gray days…
Some mornings arrive heavy and wordless. The sky hangs low, washed in gray, as if the world has paused to take a long breath…but it hasn’t. Time keeps moving in a way that seems indifferent, riverlike, without acknowledging the day before. Whether we’re ready or not, the river continues to flow, moving life forward….and somehow the forward motion can make our grief feel a bit sharper.
Loss has a way of slowing our inner world even though the outward world continues to forge forward as if nothing has happened. Cars still flow swiftly on the interstate, people still laugh at coffee shops, and deadlines still find their way on the calendar. And we stand there feeling cracked open wondering how everything can look so normal when we are not.
Gray skies amplify these contrasts. They strip distraction and leave us face to face with truth: life does not pause for our pain. The river moves, the days change, and the skies shift….and yet there seems to be something sacred in that realization.
Because grief is not about loss, it’s about how we live with it. The current of time can feel cruel but it can offer us the gentlest of invitations. Not to “move on”, not to forget, not to pretend we’re fine. But simply take the next step …. just one step forward.
Maybe that next step is getting out of bed to feed the cats (or dogs). Maybe it’s putting on that pot of coffee. Maybe it’s calling someone who knows the sound of your silence. Maybe it’s letting yourself cry on the way home from work. Maybe it’s sitting down and writing 3 things you are grateful for. Those steps matter.
Time will keep flowing. We don’t have to be healed by tomorrow. But we can choose to place one foot bravely forward into our own life’s river.
The sky won’t stay gray forever and neither will ‘one of those days.’ Change is one thing that will always be constant. We can always count on that. And when the light returns, even softly, even partially - we’ll see it wasn’t the river that moved us forward - it was our own quiet courage, one small step at a time.
Shelly
