The last two weeks have changed me forever and I know I’ll never be the same again.

I don’t mean that I will always grieve or that I will always be sad. I know that over time I will get used to the fact that my dear friend Tom O’Gorman is gone; and the ‘how’ of his death will become easier to bear.

I know this because I remember in 2002 when it was confirmed I would never have children, I thought I’d never get over it. I lost my ‘sparkle’ and thought I’d never get it back. But I did. It took many years and still at times it makes me sad. But it turned out that it’s true…
Time heals almost everything.

I remember at my lowest, God brought me to this verse, 1 Peter 5:10
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
I clung to that promise then and I do so again now; the promise that Christ himself, will restore me, will confirm me, will strengthen me and will establish me.

When I say I’ll never be the same again what I mean is, I’ll never look at the newspaper headlines the same again. I’ll never pass a shocking front page and wow for 20 seconds before returning to what I was doing without further thought. I’ll never see a leader without knowing that there are people who will be distressed by the giant printed words on a page. I will never trust the papers again. To my knowledge, nothing they reported was untrue. But they were not compassionate, they were not caring or kind. I wouldn’t have expected The Sun to be anyway – but I expected more and better from The Independent. And I will never look at their business in quite the same way.

So though I am sad now, I will not always be sad. But I will always remember that behind the dramatic headlines there are people hurting and grieving.
And I think that makes it a good thing, that I will never be the same again.

Added note (27th Jan 2014) I should add that my comments above re newspaper headlines, refer to the initial reports of Tom’s death. I acknowledge that there were some lovely tributes reported in the following days.