When my mom passed away last year, someone at the wake told me that the grieving was the easy part, that dealing with the legal and financial headaches was the hard part. Though I feared they spoke the truth, I didn't really believe them. After all, I loved my mother very much. She was my best friend and in every practical sense, the only family I had. I have since learned that they were right.

December was a blur of grief, of holidays I didn't want to celebrate. January was consumed with interminable hours-long phone calls, documents to be located, papers to be filled out and mailed. February is proving to be the month of waiting for promised letters, promised checks, promised phone calls.

I am not by nature a patient person, but I'm learning that when folder after folder in the rack on my table is labeled "Awaiting ... [this, that, and the other thing]", there is nothing you can do to hurry the universe along no matter how much you want to get through this and move on.

This summer I lost three kitties. Tipsy and Colleen were run over on different days near the 4th of July. I buried the kitten sisters next to each other between the lilac and the cardinal shrub. Pinocchio died of leukemia and feline AIDS. I buried him behind the garage in his favorite sunny place. Then my mom passed away. And just when I thought I had no tears left to cry, my 13-year-old kitty, sweet Sally May, died in the kitchen one night in January.

At the end of life for all creatures, we must release them to God, not that they weren't always His and in His hands, but that the time of our stewardship, our borrowing of them, has come to an end. And while we grieve here and bury their broken bodies, we know their little spirits are running free in the long grass of heaven.

It is the same also when we must let go of human friends and family members. "The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Even so, blessed be the name of the Lord." To paraphrase an affirmation from the Unity School of Christianity, "We release them to God's care and keeping, knowing they are being guided to their good."

Even though our hearts are breaking and our tears flow, we must remember that to God, death is just a coming home to Him, and that someday we will see our loved ones again.

These last seven months or so have been a dark period in my life. If you have never been here, you cannot know, but if you have, then you can understand only too well. I looked back this morning in my journal to another dark period and this is what I found written there:

"What happens when you let the anger loose? When you turn on everyone and God and self? When you deny God and religion and the Bible and prayer and anything else you can find? You choke on the Communion wine. You deliberately stop and wander off the trail into the fogs and black mists. What happens when you flirt with evil and play fast and loose with the dark forces? What happens when you stand alone and feel free? Free to do wrong because your faith is shaken. Does Jesus really come after the lost sheep? I'm about to find out. I hope so.

"Is this it? Is this a cry for help? For attention? For love? I meant it when I said, 'He is never there for me.' Oh, I've had the dreams and felt His touch of love. I have been truly blessed. I have. I have seen His sign in the sun. I still believed in Him even when I was angry with Him. This is the first time that I've ever doubted His existence. I said it and then I realized it was true. Is this the Valley of the Shadow?"

What had happened back then was a huge turning point in my life. I quit my job, moved back home, lived a life of retirement sans pension, and entered into the best years of my life. God had great things planned for me, but He had to shake me loose from where and what I was. And it wasn't easy. Afterward I remembered previously telling Him that if He wanted me out of there, He was going to have to push me out. He did! And it was very painful.

Now, I don't know where the road leads. I just have to trust that He is still leading me as He led me back then, and that what He has planned for me is in His hands. I don't like what I see so far, but life is a succession of such things--phases, my mother calls them.

With that "I hope so" the light shines in. Dimly, but it shines.

The Lord is my Shepherd. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

I have always envisioned the valley as a dark, barren place, with a bit of gray light--enough to see, but dim and threatening. The "valley of darkness" some translations call it, or the "valley of the shadow," the "valley of death," or "a difficult time."

It's difficult all right!

"I will fear no evil" the Psalmist says, so obviously evil is present in this valley of the shadow of death, or might be. But then he adds, "For Thou art with me!" The Lord is with us in this valley, on this journey?

But if God is there, then there is light--His light! And not just a dim grayness.

Maybe this shadow is just that: a shadow. From what? A tree? Probably a dead tree, casting a large creepy shadow. Or might it be the Cross? It could be from a huge rock, for probably no trees ever grew in that barren place.

But then again, King David speaks of green pastures and still waters. Lakes and ponds may rest on mountains in cirques or tarns, but those are still valleys of a sort. Lakes and ponds of still water are commonly found on valley floors. A stream forms a valley--rushing, tumbling, burbling streams come down the mountains and hills.

"Still waters" can, of course, refer to ice or snow, and may be found if one takes a pathway high on the mountainside. God doesn't say we have to stay on the main path on the valley floor. Green pastures can be found high on the mountains just as in low fields.

But "green" and "lakes." There is suddenly for me a vision of Light, if not sunlight. (St. John said no sun or moon was needed in God's presence, for He is the Light thereof.)

This valley isn't dark after all. But maybe it is Life itself, and we journey through it. We can't see the end, anymore than we can anytime we walk somewhere new with a friend, or a Friend.

And the Shadow is just that: a shadow. Dark, but insubstantial--not really there, but just a shadow, like a reflection. You can pass through it, and if you're busy talking to your friend, or praying to your Friend, you might do no more than notice coolness on a hot summer day.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."

I look at the valley differently now.