Please, Your Thoughts...

My method of learning is to ponder and sometimes my pondering takes a very long time. Such as what I've been pondering lately and need, please, your thoughts. How do you process information? Whom do you turn to for sage council? How do you plan your goals, achieve your steps and arrive at a satisfactory end?
Time has marched, inexorably, forward; soon, it will be a year since Dave, quite suddenly and very unexpectedly, died and my life, forever changed and suddenly stopped. At first, shock was my constant companion and while I've studied The Five Stages of Grief according to Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and others, my experience has been grief is totally personal. There's no right, nor wrong way, to grieve; there's only "your" way. No one can tell you, "it's time to move forward" or Don't you think it's time you got on with life" or "You're a prickly personality; I'm just trying to help."
Well, okay. They can tell you but you don't have to listen. I'm giving you permission, as nicely as you're able, to tell them to take a long walk off a short pier. Frankly, I don't care if such folks are "well-meaning", they are, in fact, rude and we don't have to allow such rudeness into our lives, especially during such a time as grieving.
Lately, I've been struggling with the idea of dreams...being dreamed, coming to fruition, dying, and new dreams being dreamed, thus the cycle begins anew. 
Thistle Cove Farm has been my dream since I was six years old. Oh, the farm didn't have a name but I knew I wanted to live on a farm, have animals, work hard. When Dave and I met, we spent six years dating before we decided to cast our lot together and started our search for home. My house was too small for us and all our emotional baggage; Dave's house was where he and Cathy had lived and dreamed and he couldn't imagine living there with another wife. That was okay with me; when I met Dave, he was an emotional and physical mess. He handled his grief with too much alcohol, too many cigarettes and burying himself alive with memories. Even so, I knew a man that had loved that deeply and well was a man worth waiting on, no matter how long it took. Dave looked at me and saw a broken woman, hanging on with a wavering yet tenacious grip to her faith, struggling with undiagnosed clinical depression and wanting to believe. Those first six years we spent learning each other's ways, building a foundation as I cleaned out Cathy's things from their home. It was a massive undertaking, second only to what needs to be done on the farm now.
When Dave and I started dancing around the idea of marriage, I told him, "I love you but I won't shack up. If you want another chance at life, you'll have to marry me." In typical Dave fashion, we began looking for a home and found this farm. Dave's house sold immediately and mine went into rental for six months...what is it with the number six???...and we bought the farm in May, 1995. He move here in June, in July I came and we were married on the front lawn at July end.
Dave grew into the notion of being a "mountain man" and, eventually, loved his self-imposed title. Our roots are Appalachian by way of Scotland, Wales and Ireland and, down the road, his kin settled land granted to them by King George, or so I've been told. At any rate, nine generations have called that house home and part of the house is the old cabin first built.
Dave and I spent a decade and half plus building this farm, this home, this life and just at the time it was all getting easier, the marriage stronger our love cemented, he went Home for the final time. I accept with a broken heart, "His ways are not our ways" but I'm still bereft.
As Jack (for I think of him as Jack, having ever so much in common) Lewis said in A Grief Observed, "It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean, "This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it meant to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next."
I will mourn the rest of my life for Dave but the grieving period is coming to an end. Does that make sense? Perhaps it does to some and to others, not so much. I gave myself permission to observe a year of grieving, to do whatever it took to get through still standing. 
God has been gracious, His mercy and love evident daily and in His own inexplicable way, He has guided me through treacherous and deep waters. Like a dumb animal, I have followed not even knowing if willing or unwilling, but I have followed.
He is to be trusted, this Jehovah I serve; He is faithful.

Blessings ~ Jehovah God ~ Dave ~ grief ~ prayer ~ Jack Lewis ~