Meaning within the name

I just read Connor's blog a while ago and he explained the meaning behind his blog name and since my blog title isn't scriptural... and I would really like to explain what significance it carries for me. 


Good and tonic. 
There's this book, a really small book, by C.S. Lewis. It's called A Grief Observed and is pretty much his own record of thoughts after his wife passed away. His struggle with life without her and it all points to his relationship with God. Doesn't it always? He says some amazing things in that book that have resonated with my soul. And when I say resonated, I mean completely ingrained to the point of memorization because I have read it so many times. And I have read it so many times, because I am grieving. The story behind that is too long and personal for me to just express over a blog while eating a TJoes quiche, but it is a crucial and huge part of my testimony and my life today and I would love to share with you guys what God had shown me through this process soon enough. 
But the title of this blog is a direct quote from Lewis in this book. The first time I read A Grief Observed, I put an X next to every line that I related to. Every thought that he had thought that I had thought before.. and they were usually hard X's, pen marks deep in the pages and showing through the other side. I was angry with God. The next time I read the book, I put a dot when something connected with me. And the next time I underlined... and so on and so forth. 
But! Even though this sounds dismal and terribly depressing, God met me here. God met me in anger and confusion while reading this book. He changed my life in ways that I will never understand, but I fully see as the glory of God. 
As Lewis is writing this book, there are a few quotes that can explain better than I can: "And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. the least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than memory; an instantaneous, unanswerable impression... It was as if the lifting of the sorrow removed a barrier" and again he expresses it this way, "it is just in those moments when I feel least sorrow- getting into my morning bath is usually one of them- that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness. Not, as in my worst moments, all foreshortened and patheticized and solemnized by my miseries, but as she is in her own right. This is good and tonic." 
As painful as grieving is, God has shown me what release looks like. Carrying grief around your shoulders is suffocating and I don’t recommend doing it. I don’t know if there is a proper way to grieve, and if there is.. I’m sure not doing it. But nevertheless, it is good and tonic to step out of yourself. It is good when God works on your behalf and it is tonic when you know it. 
Right now, God is strengthening me by showing me the fruit of it all. And he takes the step beyond that, cuts it open, and shows me the details within these blessings and hands it to me: I can taste, it, see it, smell it, feel it. I know God’s hand is on my life in grieving and that it is all for his glory. Everything. 
So, this is why my blog is called Good and Tonic. Thanks for reading :)