Yesterday, some triggers made my eyes fill with tears – remembering and reliving the pain of my son’s death. It will be 7 years this September.

Is this you? A song, a smell, a taste, a feeling, or a sight, brings it all back? That’s what a trigger is.

For me, it comes like a wave washing upon the shore. Not a crashing wave since I’m numb and cannot feel it. And not a wave that knocks me off my feet because nothing surprises me anymore. It just advances and retreats back where it came from. But it leaves something, as waves often do. It leaves memories. And then I wonder. And then I miss him. And then I want to remove myself from the source of those triggers.

It’s amazing how God has made us to endure pain. The best way to describe it is we are hard wired that way. It’s just that it can be a lonely place sometimes. We live smile, we laugh, we work, we play, and always beneath the surface of our smile is sorrow. No one else is aware of it but us. We want others to be okay so we take even more upon ourselves to make that happen.

People who live this way are okay. Really. Something or someone is missing in our lives and we walk with a limp. We’ve come to accept it. Will you?