Tag: Dying

Grief Ravine

Published on by God is in the Outcome1 Comment

February 13th, 2024

I’ve fallen, again, into a grief ravine.

This deep chasm is not unique, not in this place, this particular map of a city I’m passing through in my life.

This ones is not tourist trap.

Oh, I’m trapped here but no one would visit on purpose.

These un-unique, deep gaps

– too ugly and terror-inducing to be called “valleys” – that sounds magical and lush, and green…

”valley” sounds like it slopes down gently and back up again…no, this is no valley.

these deep, vertical gaps are everywhere.

It’s as if someone took a giant hair comb to the earth here,

creating deep, deep, deep slashes into the ground

and leaving very thin, very high peaks in between each one.

The walls of the ravine are steep and very hard to climb.

Sometimes it feels as if the walls are slippery – like there is no place at all to get a foothold.

Then it changes, morphs into a craggy, dirt-packed wall with tiny, broken seashells sticking out

so that when you climb and then lose your footing, the wall tears into your skin.

But your choices are to climb – to 𝘵𝘳𝘺 to climb – or to run along the bottom of the ravine

Endlessly – never gaining altitude to get out.

But the running along the bottom part…

That part just feels easier sometimes.

Or stop moving altogether, just sit here, stay in one place.

I hate it here.

It’s too deep for the sun to shine down here so it’s all shadows.

Like a treasure trove for Seasonal Affective Disorder to collect participants for its annual party, except here there is an annual pass.

You know how that goes: annual passes are never cheap.

This one is very expensive. Very.

The cost of being here is too high to pay. I didn’t choose to pay it.

Thieves.

…Somehow, some way, there is definitely a way to get to a nicer, more lovely city.

I’ve been on other terrain before. I’ve stayed in nice places for long periods of time and never wanted to leave.

So I know better views and cities exist on this voyage I call my life. I cannot seem to find the map.

Perhaps one of these days I will arrive at the peak and it won’t be between ravines that time

A long stretch of flat ground will be there and, beyond that,

No more jagged rocks and broken seashells

But lush greenery, flowers and springtime air with fresh-cut grass.

One day.

For now, if I sharpen my focus a little…or some days, a LOT,

If I remember that I can call out for help and that there is someone who always hears, even from wayyy down here,

I’ll suddenly see camouflaged ropes hanging from the top of the chasm.

I’m not much of a rope climber so it’s still a tough climb, but there are knots in it to help.

Sometimes, when I just don’t even have the strength to reach the first knot, He comes down and sits next to me in the pit.

He lets me rest and watches over me so that no other beast can overtake me down here while I’m unaware.

Then, when I’m ready, He gets on His hands and knees, even in the broken-shell ground, skin-tearing ground, and lets me climb on His back to take the first step toward reaching the rope

To try again, finding the way out which is only up.

There have been times when I have gotten to the top and He has laid down across the gap of the next chasm, letting me use Him as a bridge.

Other times I’m not paying attention and just fall into the next, somehow completely ignoring the sturdy bridge.

One day, I will find the top that extends into pretty scenery. I just don’t know how many more ravines are between here and there.

For today, I can’t decide whether to rest, or look again for the rope.

I’m going to cry out for help finding it because I want out again.

I’m not worried about whether or not He’ll come; He always does.

Rescue Me

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I’ve been pretty sick this week – cough that sounds like a garbage disposal with a fork stuck in it, voice that sounds like a 90-year-old who smoked filterless Marlboros for 80 of them, and a trash can full of used tissues – and yet still, somehow, I’ve been on a temporary upswing. Last week I had diverticulitis and every day of that I felt as if my head was being held underwater (emotionally) because it is hard being sick alone when your spouse was a dedicated caregiver. Mine was a nurse so, even when I said I was okay, he tended to anything I needed and was extremely compassionate. Now, although I’ve lived through being sick alone before I met him, I really, really miss him being with me when I feel bad.

After getting over the diverticulitis and almost immediately being struck down with some viral nonsense, this week of sickness I’ve somehow managed to be on an emotional upswing. I got it in my head that I needed to do some simplifying of my life, purging things from my house that we never used, tidying up, organizing. It was like “spring cleaning” came early and I was on a rampage to rid this house of extraneous things (none of them things that were specifically his.) And it felt good to be “putting my life back in order.”

If you read my previous chapter then you know that I already anticipated a downswing. I’m here to tell you that when the crash comes, it hits like a head-on Mack truck. This afternoon my brain is telling me that none of this cleaning up even matters. It would matter if he were here, but he is not. He would have appreciated all of this reorganizing and spiffing up of things. He would have enjoyed it just like I have been liking the new feel of it. But he can’t. And the fact that I am “enjoying” it on my own is the opposite of numbing. At times today it has felt like walking through my home when, instead of hard wood flooring and carpet, there is grass filled with sand spurs throughout the whole house. It makes you gasp and then fear taking another step.

There is more I want to do, in various rooms of the house and even outside, to feel like I have accomplished what I have set out to do. It takes little jobs here and there because I often tire or lose the will to finish. Before I sit down to work on my novel again, I feel like I need this in order to achieve clarity of thought, and yet I don’t know whether that is just a pipe dream…a way of working to force something that cannot be forced. I’m a problem solver, by nature, and I haven’t yet discovered an effective way to fix this. I’m doing all of the things I can think of and yet I still see no way “out.” I’m going to hate the way this ended for as long as I live. I’m going to know it never should have been this way. I think I’m always going to want to go back.

I’m thankful to know that both God and my husband are ahead of me and not just behind. God is still here, in the ethereal way that He exists in every breath that I breathe. My husband, well, in a way he is part of every breath, as well, because I can’t breathe without wishing he was standing beside me, laying next to me, holding my hand, touching my face. It’s strange how someone I knew as a physical presence in the world, someone I could touch and laugh with and fall in love with and go on adventures with, could be less present than the God who always stays. Scott’s memories are always with me, the memory of him…but I don’t feel him here. And yet God, whom I have never had the honor of laying eyes on or whose skin I have never touched, Him I can feel. There are still times I can almost feel God as a physical presence wrapped around me and His peace envelopes me like warm water.

Today, as I struggle with another deep dive off the face of the cliff that is grief, the one I climb over and over but inevitably fall from again and again, God is here. He never lets me hit the rocky crags of stone that are at the bottom of the cliff face. He never lets me drown in the tossing and churning waves at the bottom. I fall and I fear the crash. And the fear, the panic of the idea of falling so far, so deeply into the chasm that I cannot climb again, feels like a crash in itself. And it’s not only the fear of hitting the bottom, of drowning in the salty waves. It’s the fear of trying to find the energy to get back up. I dread the climb because it’s exhausting to get up every day, reaching for a higher point than I’ve ever reached in this journey, and knowing that, at any moment, I could slip again. Knowing that, at some point, I will fall again and have to start over yet again. I’m only eight months in and I’m weary of the workout…with forever to go.

I do find that, most days, I don’t seem to fall as far down as I used to fall. I also find that I don’t lay there at that landing for as long before I can stand up, determined to try again. I’m noticing that I’m developing some muscle memory for how to ascend and that some days I remember where the footholds are without having to look as hard for them. The times when it feels like I’m completely starting over are a bit farther between. Today, I’m choosing to be grateful for that.

When I go to bed tonight, I’m going to tell God, again, that I trust Him. I’m going to tell Him that I know that He sees the path I need to take and ask Him to keep directing my steps. I’ve often prayed that He not let me fall back down again but I’m learning that every time He catches me sooner, I trust Him more to do it the next time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make the fall less scary while I’m in the freefall…but it does make the idea of falling less frightening. I guess it’s like parachuting. There is trepidation but as you check your harness over and over, seeing that everything is safely as it should be, you learn each time you ready yourself to jump that you will be safe when you reach the ground, more and more so each jump that you do, indeed, land safely. And yet as you take that first step off the floor of the plane into open air and gravity, there must still be at least a few moments of terror and adrenaline before the chute actually opens. I’ve landed safely enough times to know I will survive this somehow, but that doesn’t stop the sudden panic when gravity pulls me down at breakneck speed.

Writing typically calms me and so, now, I am on level, if lower, ground. I don’t think I’ll try climbing tonight. I think I’ll go to bed resting, trusting Jesus to keep me safely in the hammock of His arms, and wake tomorrow to try again. I’ll wake, have coffee, and begin one of the projects I have planned for organizing my home and see if I can get a foothold again. Thank you, Father, for rescuing me…again.

For Auld Lang Syne

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I’m sitting here, expecting to hear fireworks any time now, and doing what people do on New Year’s Eve – thinking back over what the year has brought…and, more acutely, what it has taken away.

When the clock strikes midnight tonight, people will raise a glass, kiss, and then burst into the lyrics of the song “Auld Lang Syne” as they watch the ball drop in Times Square. Oh, what I’d give to have even one more chance, but better yet a lifetime, of this with my husband.

Roughly translated, the phrase means “old long since,” or, more understandably in English, “for old time’s sake.”

The U.S. Embassy in Italy maybe explained it best in a blog post: “The lyrics of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ pose the question: How do we best remember the memories, friends and experiences of this year and the years before? The answer, the songwriter tells us, is to ‘share a cup of kindness yet’ as we journey into the new year.”

“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And the days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

And surely you will buy your cup
And surely I’ll buy mine!
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For the sake of auld lang syne

We two have paddled in the stream
From morning sun till night
The seas between us Lord and swell
Since the days of auld lang syne”

From the original Scottish, it does not mean to question whether old acquaintances should be forgotten and never again brought to mind. My interpretation (or translation) of the intention of the song is to say “let’s drink a cup of kindness for the sake of those people we cherish, for old time’s sake.”

Because, for me, they are not and will never be forgotten, although I often fear the loss of the minutiae. I fight a daily battle to continue on, and yet to also hold onto every tiny detail I can possibly remember.

If you are making new memories with someone you love tonight, recognize in that moment that that’s exactly what you’re doing; you’re creating a memory to look back upon. Relish it. Cherish it. Protect it. More than anything, take a moment to be grateful for it.

I will not be making new memories tonight, but I will be cherishing and offering up gratitude for the ones I was able to make with Scott and with sweet Judah. Time is a thief and the devil is a liar. I will not let that steal my joy or my gratitude for the time I was able to love them. ♥️

The Power of the Shadow of Death

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In Genesis 13:15 God says to Abram (later called Abraham) “Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are.”

“After God told Abram to look from that place, the next thing He told him was, ‘Arise, walk in the land through its length and its width, for I give it to you’ (Genesis 13:17 NKJV).”

By Genesis 15, God formally established His covenant promise with Abram to give him and his descendants the land of Canaan.

God could be telling you right now to get up and get on with your dream or vision, your assignment, your life, because He is giving it to you. Your part is to walk it out.

But lately my rememory isn’t working as well as my forgetory. I keep getting up from this place of despair, deciding to move forward with God’s purpose written on my life, and then laying back down in defeat. I am not defeated. I just have not counted myself fully victorious yet.

Or maybe I have…I know who holds my future and that the final battle is already won before we even get there. Am I sitting here, waiting for that victory to come but unwilling to take part in the fight anymore?

“Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.”
― Fredrik Backman

This is the conundrum. God has not given me permission to stop living. I know, with all of my heart, that He shows compassion for my loss, my grief, my unending sadness. He bottles every tear and holds it with genuine empathy. I also know that He expects me to rise, using His strength when I have no more, His power, when there is not an ounce in me, to continue the race set before me. While I haven’t yet found or learned the ability yet to continue my own journey without my husband, I know that is what I must do.

There are things to which God has called me but I let the “what ifs” get in my way. One of them goes like this:

If I write these books, what if no one wants to read them? (You don’t write for the reader, you write for yourself and for Me…but still, I’m calling you to write for a reason.) What if no one even wants to publish them? (You can publish them yourself if that happens; that is made reasonably easy these days.) What if no one ever even buys one? (Prosperity may not be the reason for you writing them.) What if it is a waste of time? (How is it a waste of time if it is your calling?) How do I know whether it’s even really a calling or just something I think I’d like to do? (You don’t seem to want to do it, because you still haven’t finished, and yet it is continually on your mind that you must. People are often called to things they don’t feel like doing.)

I recently told a friend that, when I am confused about whether the Holy Spirit is prompting me to do something or if it is just something I’m telling myself, I usually know it’s the Holy Spirit when it’s really not something I want to do. He urges to do uncomfortable things because God knows those things will either help us or will further His plan (or both!)

And so thoughts like this ride on a merry-go-round within my head, on constant repeat. Because death’s greatest power is that it makes people not want to go on living. And yet the Bible says that death has been swallowed up in victory (Isaiah 25:8)

Three more truths in the Bible say this:

God is WITH us in our struggles. (Matthew 28:20)

God is FOR us when it seems all else is against us. (Romans 8:31)

God will carry us THROUGH our pain. (Isaiah 43:1-3)

I want to be here with my children and the rest of my family and friends. I just don’t have any desire to live while I’m doing it. I’m constantly here but I’m not here, a machine that keeps running because someone keeps pouring gasoline in the engine but which has no inclination on its own of what to do, no yearning of its own to complete its task.

I must begin with obedience. The puzzle is to determine how to begin when there is no energy and no ambition or predilection to complete tasks. My house is a mess (which seems to enhance the compulsion to do absolutely nothing.) My brain is a mess (which prompts the same lack of urgency.) My routine is the only thing tethering me to the here and now. Yet I must begin in obedience so that change can commence. The first step must be mine because He gives me the ability to choose. God is a gentleman. He will not force my hand but will continue to encourage me toward a path of eventual healing.

”Our God is merciful and tender. He will cause the bright dawn of salvation to rise on us and to shine from heaven on all those who live in the dark shadow of death, to guide our steps into the path of peace.”
‭‭Luke‬ ‭1‬:‭78‬-‭79‬ ‭GNT‬‬

I am definitely living in the dark shadow of death. I don’t know when I’ll step outside of the cold shadow and back into the sun. I do know that, in order to do that, I have to keep stepping toward the Son. So…here’s to trying to get up and walk.

The Power of Retreat

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You can’t always be “all in.” Sometimes you have to back off.

I wanted to be all in at Thanksgiving. I wanted to be able to do that for my family. I wanted to for my son’s high school graduation earlier this year. I wanted to for my son’s birthday. I wanted to for every day that I’ve kept my granddaughter while her parents were at work or in school.

But I couldn’t always. I can’t at all times. I try and I try but sometimes I have to retreat from the joy everyone else is feeling just to hang on to my sanity. And isn’t joy what we all want? I do. I do want to feel the ethereal lightness and boisterous festivity of joy, but I can’t seem to experience the wonder of it.

I am thankful for the bright, twinkling lights, dressed up as humans I know and love, that have poured over me in my darkness. Their job is not easy, their burden not light because of me, but they keep trying to show me the way out of this blindness as my white, red-tipped cane shows everyone around me how handicapped I am by grief – tapping, tapping, tapping against everything to see if it is safe to venture out. It doesn’t feel safe; it just feels as if thick strands of itchy wool are woven tightly around me, wrapped again and again, preventing my exit from this cocoon I live inside now. Pinpricks of light show through but they are like stars on a moonless night. They’re beautiful while not providing reliable vision.

These layers and layers of woven sadness make it difficult for others to understand me at times. My voice is muffled through the layers I struggle to fight my way out off. I can be difficult to reach some days when my head gets caught up in the headache-inducing strands when it feels as if my struggle to escape only tangles me up even more and buries me deeper. Some days it feels more like quicksand than fabric that I could cut my way out of, if only I had a proper tool.

Therefore, sometimes it feels safer to retreat. Safer for them and for me, as I succumb to the call of tears. Some days I have to take a step back. I have to take a step away from everyone else’s happiness and laughter just to breathe. As I curl in on myself, I wonder if retreat is the answer, why their joy cannot seep in through the dense fabric of my grief. Shouldn’t it loosen in the presence of liquid happiness that permeates every string with its exquisite, refreshing splash? But grief is like wool, uncomfortably scratchy while it swells at the touch of moisture then contracts as it dries, causing shrinking of the overall garment. It is swollen and tighter as their laughter seems so easy to come by, and then tighter still after everyone leaves and I was unable to fully experience the sunshine that is each of them.

Holidays bring gaiety and exultation. They also escort memories from the prison of dark recesses within the mind into the open ballrooms of regalement, dancing to entertain. Not everyone likes ballroom dancing. For me, it is an acquired taste. I find the dancers beautiful and am envious of their talent to captivate others, but know I am ill-fitted to participate, my steps too heavy and uncoordinated. Still, I do not hate watching them now; I am just overwhelmingly aware that they will continue to perform the same routines over and over again, times infinity, because no new acts will be introduced, at least not for the dance I am longing to join. They’ll do this same dance, replay these exact same memories again and again, because the choreographer of this one is no longer a part of this troupe. He has moved onto a dancer’s version of the philharmonic, a place from whence there is nowhere more prestigious to aspire to elevate. He is in Heaven and we are still here, trying to learn dances that will never be as enticing to perform.

I linger, like a wallflower, at the edges of the ballroom, smiling and nodding dutifully toward those who peek over to be sure I am pleased with the party-like atmosphere. I am pleased. I’m grateful that they do not feel the depth of pain that I seem to have succumbed to, at times. I enjoy their merriment even as I feel ill-equipped to join in.

We used to have a Christmas games celebration. Many photos and especially videos document the chaotic joy and laughter of these get togethers. We would attempt ridiculous tasks like blowing ping-pong balls from one water-filled cup to the next, the winner being able to make it to the last one without the ball plinking to the table and floor. We’d shake even more ping-pong balls from an empty Kleenex box strapped to the waist, with only the movement of one’s hips to rattle them free. Carryied oranges between our knees in a relay race to drop it into a small bathroom-sized trash can then return for the next person to do the same. And collected lifesavers from a paper plate with only a toothpick between our teeth. Those were days of joy and merriment. I don’t think I can host such a soiré this year because, while the memories are not painful, the fact that it will never be the same elicits indescribable despair. And yet I’m sure he would want us to continue our tradition.

Everyone keeps saying “He wouldn’t want you to be sad.” And I understand the sentiment behind it. They’re right; he wouldn’t want that for me. Yet I also know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if the situation were reversed, while I would never want him to be sad, he would anyway. It is the prescribed order of things. It is a destination preordained.

I’m trying to retreat less and less these days. I am attempting to learn to join in again. I know that this life is precious and I don’t want to miss any of the important parts. And it’s all important, isn’t it? Every day here is a day I should be bringing joy to someone else. Every day I should be creating opportunities for memories that they can hold dear one day, as I hold mine. It takes the strength of Samson some days. I feel as if I cannot break the pillars of the temple of my own doom, demolishing it entirely, as he did. Samson’s strength ultimately set him free to the hereafter. I just need mine to set me free here until it is my time to go there. I push mightily against the stone colonnade, some days feeling the complete sapping of my strength overtake my ability to bring the walls down.

Fortunately, my strength is not my own. It is replenished time and time again, each time I remember to ask. God’s favor still immerses my life in glory; I just need to have my blindness healed so I can keep seeing it. The ice cream has fallen from my cone, melting immediately in the gritty sand, and now I can’t stand the idea of its sweetness. But the beach is still sunny, the ocean still cool, the waves still a melody, the spring-fresh smell of fresh-cut grass still lingering.

Someday I will take a deep breath and enjoy the serenity of it all, even with no ice cream.

I Just Didn’t Know…but a few things I do know…

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As I closed my eyes to sleep the night before we woke up to leave for your common surgery, I didn’t know it was the last night I would sleep in bed beside you. I would lay in bed next to you…but only after you were gone.

As I opened my eyes that morning, I didn’t know it was the last time I would wake to roll over and touch your arm, see your face, hear you breathing beside me.

As we drove to the hospital that morning, I didn’t know it was the last time we would just chat and be relaxed in each other’s company. I didn’t know I was telling you not to worry, it was all going to be fine, we’d be driving home the next day together and you’d be feeling much better already…when we really wouldn’t. I didn’t even know I wasn’t telling the truth.

When we sat in the waiting room, awaiting someone to speak your name to call you to pre-op, I didn’t know it would be the last hours that would be somewhat “normal” together. I didn’t know we were living on desperately borrowed time. When your parents came to sit with us, to wait with me through your surgery, I didn’t know it would be the last time we were all together…until it was at the funeral home.

When they called from post-op to tell us that the surgery went splendidly well and you were doing well in recovery, I didn’t know…they didn’t know… that they were horribly wrong. As they kept me sitting in the waiting room because they were too busy for visitors in post-op and said I’d see you when you got to a room, I didn’t know that those hours that ticked by as I anxiously waited to see you were part of the last day of your life, save for but less than an hour of the next.

When I saw you smile at me as you came into your hospital room when they wheeled you in and said that you already had less pain, I had no idea how short-lived our relief would be…so very short. I didn’t know that the next hours would be filled with fear, then with the most devastating loss of my life.

When you stopped breathing, I didn’t know yet that they wouldn’t save you. I didn’t know that was the last time I would lay eyes on you…alive.

When they came to tell me you were gone. The absolute forever kind of gone, I knew instantly…every fiber of my being, every inch of my body contorted in pain, knew that life would never, ever be the same. I knew I hadn’t done enough. I knew I should have somehow done more. I knew I’d never forgive myself for failing you.

As I left the hospital, I knew where you were and yet I did not know how to leave your body there alone. I didn’t want to leave your body in that building because then it was real. It was real. It was real. And I could never turn back.

I can’t believe it’s real. I cannot believe it is real. How can it be real when I just didn’t know? I just want to go back to when I just didn’t know.

When I first met you, I didn’t know you would change how I felt about myself. I didn’t know you would make life so much better. I didn’t know you would make me a better person. I didn’t know that I would soon trust you with my whole heart. But I did already know, instantly somehow, that you owned my heart and that God alone had sent you to save me, even from myself. I already knew, in a crazy and unexpected way, that you were finally The One. You had finally come for me. I just didn’t know it would be for such an unbearably short time. I didn’t know.

As I sit here now, I don’t know how to navigate this life without you. It’s been six months and I still don’t know. I’m walking through minutes, hours, days, months, as if in a trance because even though I know you’re gone, I still don’t know. I really feel like I don’t know.

What I do know is that you are not in pain. I know that grief, the definition of grief for me, is the presence of all of the love I want to give to only you but cannot. It is love unrequited. It is love no longer reciprocated. It is painful, to my very core. But I know you are without pain. I know you are experiencing the greatest days imaginable. I know that you will greet me when I arrive and we will still share a love incomparable to all others.

What I do know is that our love has not dissolved. What I do know is that I am still holding onto it until I see you again. What I do know is that, although you are not here to share in it, I love you still. I always will. What I do know is that we were, and we are, soulmates. What I do know is that this is forever, not just for here. I know you are still mine and I will always be yours.

The Clockmaker

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Famine shows itself in many figurative forms. You can be starved of many things besides food.

And “fair” is just the place where you buy cotton candy.

Life is not fair and, because of that, I’m starving. I’m not hungry, no. But I am starving for the life I had with my husband. Call it metaphor or an analogy but I’m going to staunchly maintain that it fits. This feeling goes beyond “missing him;” it’s just bigger, broader, more all-encompassing, more saturating than just “missing him.” This condition is deadly without intervention, exactly like starving.

Let me put it another way.

I keep reading that grief is the price you pay for love. I guess someone feels like that makes it all better. Grief is also proportionate to intensity of love. My sister and I LOVED our Granny and our stepdad VERY much and were oh-so-sad when they left. But my sister’s grief over her son and my grief over my husband is bigger. Your husband and your children are essential pieces to every part of your life. They are an integral and necessary cog in the clockwork of everything you do or plan to do in life. Take one of those cogs away and, well, let’s just say duct tape won’t fix it. You have to rebuild the entire inside of the clock to work in a different fashion if it is ever to keep time again. You have to painstakingly find a new place for every single cog and figure out how to make it a part of the working timepiece, how to make all of them turn and work together. It’s exhausting and it takes forever.

My cogs, springs, screws, other random pieces are scattered about all around me. Every time I try to fit two of them together, the teeth on the cogs don’t match up. It feels as if I will never find a way to make all of the wheels turn properly again. Typically, if this happens to your clock, you return it to where you bought it. I don’t want to do that. I LOVED this clock when it was working properly, when all the pieces were as they should be. I don’t want to go back and trade this clock for a different one. I just want this one to work again. The problem is, they no longer make the missing piece. So now I have to find a way to put it back together without it. To do that I’m going to need an expert clockmaker.

Since God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, He knows everything there is to know about time and about how to keep clocks running. The thing is, I’m scared to turn it over to Him. My clock is already broken and seems to be beyond repair. What if I send it off and it just gets lost? What if I give it to Him and find out that it truly is broken beyond repair and there is nothing anyone can do about making it tick again? What if, just like my engagement ring that was too big when I got it, I just don’t want to let go of it long enough for it to be fixed for me? I want to hold on to all of my own pieces that I do have left because I don’t want anything to happen to the ones that are left.

But then I’ll still just be sitting here with a broken clock. What good is a clock that doesn’t keep time? It becomes just a bauble, a knock knack. It just sits there and never does anything ever again. That’s not really what I want for my clock. I want it to work again because I’ll feel better if it does.

And yet I feel guilty for even trying to get the clock working without that essential piece. Maybe it shouldn’t ever work again. Maybe it was meant to only be functional when that specific piece was in place. Maybe that one cog was so important that it will always keep the time wrong, too slow or too fast or in the wrong time zone, if it is ever repaired to work again.

The Clockmaker. I have to give it to the Clockmaker. I’ve got to make a decision to send it off to Him, give it up in order to get it back in working order.

Uggghhhh, but I still just can’t.

I’ll keep trying. I’ll get a box to send it in, pay the postage, and just keep trying to send it out.

One of these days, I’ll be able to step close enough to the mailbox to put it in. One of these days, it will work again.

Tick-tock…

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From time to time it hits me…how can it have been _______ (insert months, days and hours here) since I’ve seen his face? Touched him? Laughed with him? Watched him play with the dogs or love on our kids and granddaughter? How…? And how do I keep making it through all the rest of them? Every time it leaves me reeling for a little bit.

Today is November 6th. He’s been gone for five months and 27 days. All I can think of is that the 10th of November will mark SIX months and then I’ll be barreling toward the holidays after already surviving half of a YEAR without the other half of my heart.

I’m fortunate that the half I still have is filled with my boys, daughters-in-love, my granddaughter, and more family who love me. If it weren’t still filled with these people, there would be little to nothing left. But the half of my heart that was him is empty save for my beautiful in-laws. His half of my heart is composed of huge, empty holes that feel destitute and void of…well, anything, and very little to hold those holes together. The Scott is missing from it.

I used to watch a movie called Drop Dead Fred when I was younger. “Used to watch” means that I watched it quite a few times. It has some ugly words in it but I found the overall movie, however crass, incredibly funny. (“Used to watch” also isn’t entirely true because I recently re-watched it with my sister, you know, for old times sake.)

In the movie, the main character, Lizzie, had a mischievous imaginary friend (Fred) as a child who pops back into her life as she is going through a divorce. Fred was fun, goofy, exciting, and he loved Lizzie. She makes a comment in the movie about how she felt once her mother locked Fred up so he couldn’t come around anymore: “You just disappeared. And when you did, all the life and the spirit and the…Fred…it all just went out of me.” And that’s how I feel now about Scott. All of the Scott just went out of me.

So, how have I lived almost six months without him? It’s 5:30 a.m. and I’ve been up since 2:00 (another panic dream…some call them nightmares but I don’t even know how to quantify the way these feel.) So how do I do these extra long days knowing he won’t be here for any of it?

The peace that passes all understanding, a kind we can’t make sense of in the natural because it is supernatural, is the only thing that gets me from one minute to the next. Clearly I don’t have peace in my dream state but if I stay awake it eventually comes over me. Sometimes it takes longer than others, even with prayer when the panic was especially real, but it comes. I know it only comes from God because, yes, I’d be capable of eventually calming down, but this peace isn’t just “calm;” it’s…well, it’s peace.

I’m going to be okay eventually. The dreams will become less frequent (at least that’s what my therapist says) and my life will somehow find a new rhythm. I’ll always prefer the beat of Scott’s heart to any rhythm I live to now, but I’ll learn to dance to the one I’ve been given. For now, though, just walking without being out of cadence is overwhelmingly challenging.

I guess that’s because I’m only at the crawling stage.

My granddaughter just started crawling and pulling up on things. She desperately wants to walk…no, run…and she gets so frustrated at being stuck when she runs out of furniture to hold onto. I can relate. If I’m not holding onto something, I’m going down. Neither she nor I have the balance to maintain upright mobility alone right now.

Fortunately, my “furniture” (faith) doesn’t run out, but in my desire to move faster than I am, running from this grief rather than wanting to go through it, I let go and try to step sometimes. That provides failure after failure. You’d think I’d have learned by now but God knows He created me awfully hard-headed. Which is a good thing since I run into walls every time I let go.

Let my faith be bigger than my fear. This is a common prayer for me these days. I used to pray for God to give me faith until I remembered that the Bible says I have already been given a measure of faith; it’s my job to grow it. Seeds start out underground, where it is dark, until they grow enough to reach the light above them. I find that to be a fairly good analogy for where I am now but I have no idea how deep I’ve been planted, no idea how long it will take before I can see light.

When you’re growing in the dark, it’s difficult to discern how much growth has taken place because you can’t see it. I can’t look to see if my roots have grown deeper or my stem longer. All I do know is that, fertilized by the Word, growth is the only outcome because God is in it, the fertilizer.

Meanwhile, there is still a part of me that never wants to bloom when I reach the surface. I want to keep the bud squeezed tight where no petal sees the light of day. It doesn’t seem right to go on flowering when my husband isn’t here to encourage it and then see it happen. He’s always been the green thumb around here. I have no clue how my houseplants are still surviving…well, most of them anyway. And no clue how I am surviving, but by the grace of God.

Bloom where you are planted, the saying goes. Seeds don’t get to choose the terrain and neither was I given an option. The soil I’ve been covered with is especially nutrient-poor right now. Without fertilizer as nourishment, I couldn’t even bust through the casing. But here I am, breaking out and pushing toward a surface I know will eventually show up.

“In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will direct your path.” Proverbs 3:6.

Lead me, Lord. I will follow. Lead me, Lord. I will go. You have called me. I will answer. Lead me, Lord. I will go.

Coming Full Circle…One of These Days

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I recently found a blog post that was left in the draft folder on my blog website from many years ago, one which had never been posted.  It was from 2013.  There were only two paragraphs written and I guess I got distracted and never went back to finish it.  By the date it was saved to drafts and by the last paragraph, I can tell you that I had just met the man who would become my husband, Scott.  The last paragraph probably tells you all you need to know…I was already fully twitterpated and loving every second of it.  And before he died, only a too-short three years and two months after we were married, almost ten years since we’d met, he was the one who was constantly telling me to write a book.  He loved my writing and he felt like writing was one of my callings, that God would use it if I did finally write a book.

The first paragraph of the following saved draft (at the end of this post) is because of divorce.  Somehow my divorce, my re-marriage, and my becoming a widow all tied together to become the fodder for this very blog, at various stages in my life.  I began to blog when I was jaded and trying to navigate life as a single mom of three and still figure out who I was if I wasn’t a wife.  It had become an identity and once it was shed, I felt naked beneath.  I vowed never to let someone else “become my identity” again.  I was ME and I was perfectly happy being just that (most of the time.)

Enter Scott…who made part of my new identity “wife” again.  Once I met Scott, suddenly I didn’t mind a bit taking that identity on again.  If we were famous, someone would have invented some name for the two of us like ScoJen or Jenott because that was all we ever, ever wanted to do.  Be together.  A therapist may have called it co-dependent but, if it was, neither of us cared.  It sounds mooshy and gross probably, to some people, but we completed each other.  We were peas in a pod.  Peanut butter and jelly.  Insert any other combination where it just doesn’t seem right if the two parts aren’t together: that was us.  I loved it.  (He did, too, and he would have told you so; I’ve heard him say it many times.)

But it didn’t end up the way we planned and he was quite suddenly gone…without me.  I’m sure he’s managing just fine because he is walking streets of gold.  Me?  I’m down here feeling like I’m lost in an endless, foreboding forest with magically changing paths that continue leading me absolutely nowhere as I try to find out who I’m supposed to be again…as just me. Another new identity: widow. I hate this one more than any other I’ve had, ever.

So, I decided to hit the laptop (not literally, although at times I may have wanted to) and start doing what he had always wanted me to do.  I started writing. I’m writing a book, a novel actually.  Look at me, being an author.

A part of me will always feel guilty for not finishing it while he was here to see it and glow with pride as he bragged to people about me and my book.  He knew a lot of the overall premise of the book and I had started and restarted several times. He thought the prologue was a good hook. If I’d finished it while he were still here, he’d have gone on and on about it; I know he would. He wasn’t into bragging much unless it was about me or our boys, but then all bets were off…if you knew him, you were going to hear a LOT about us.

A month or two ago, I suddenly got the unction to write almost every day for a week.  I got to Chapter 10 so that equated to somewhere between 1 and 2 chapters a day.  Writing a chapter sounds like something you could do in an hour of one day but this comes along with outlining, character mapping, planning rising conflict, plot twists, crises, and resolutions before diving in and then having to go back and edit and then edit again.  I think I was making pretty decent progress.

Then one of those magically moving paths in the dark forest shoved me down, down, down into another deep pit with a quicksand called despair at the bottom. I didn’t write blog posts for quite some time and still haven’t written another word in the book. At first I started getting stressed about how I had just quit in the middle and I needed to keep going. Then I’d sit down at the laptop and just stare at the screen. I had nothing to say. I’ve now decided not to worry about it and also that when it’s time to write more of it, I’ll know.

Once I finally do finish it, I don’t know what happens next, when I finally get to the point where I’ve written the epilogue.  That’s something I’ve decided to wait until later to worry about, too, because right now the important part is that I do eventually write it, get it done, finish, accomplish completion.  Even if he is the only one who ever knows I did it, then I’ll know he would be proud.  For today, that is what matters to me the most.

But when I found this saved blog draft today, it brought a couple of things together for me.  I once live in The Before, the place I lived in prior to meeting Scott.  Mistakes, regrets, a lifetime of falters that led me to heartbreak and total opposition to romantic relationships.  That Before was also an After – after divorce.

Then, quite unexpectedly, another Before popped up; that’s the one that I lived in prior to Scott’s Homegoing.  That middle part was the best there ever was; that was where I lived knowing I had been given a wonderful gift, a real kind of love, a soulmate.  

And now…now I live in The After again.  I have to remind myself that, once, a long time ago I lived in a different kind of After.  After divorce.  And then one day another unexpected Before came along.  One day life was worth living so much that I often thought I must have dreamed it, dreamed him up. He was so perfect for me that he should have been a dream.

That means that sometimes The After is also a Before. I’m hoping you’re still following me here. (After divorce but also before finding the love of my life. After meeting my soulmate but Before losing him.)

I know that one day God will pour out some kind happiness over my life again.  One day I’ll feel like I’m in a new Before and not just the After. This time The After is devastating, but the Before will have hope and light and life. I doubt I’ll ever be involved in romance again because, without a doubt, Scott was my soulmate.  He was The One that people look for their entire lives and some never find. But other good things could be in the new Before. And Before what? I don’t have a clue.

The second thing this ten-year-old post (written just three months after meeting Scott) brought together for me was that I’m using all of this, parts of the life I lived in both of The Befores, to create something.  They say to write about what you know.  This is it.  (It is fiction, yes, but I am using pieces of my life to breathe life into the narrative.)

So, although there has been tremendous happiness and there has been devastating sadness, they will blend somehow in a medley that creates a new song altogether.  And I hope it’s one worth tapping your foot to the beat. I actually already know a lot about what the second book will be about but have to get through the first. It’s a process I am determined to complete.

The blog post draft saved from 2013 but never posted…until now:

Some people say they don’t regret any of the choices or mistakes they have made because each decision has taken it’s part in molding them into who they are now. I cannot comply with this way of thinking. I do regret mistakes I’ve made. I regret being stupid enough to have needed lessons such as the likes of some of my falters. I regret the changes that some of those trespasses made in me. I’m not even happy with parts of who I am because of the changes some of them made in me. I never wanted to be jaded. I didn’t want to be suspicious and fearful. I never intended to be someone who sometimes uses anger to walk through hurt. I do wish I could go back and not be who I have been at certain times, but I cannot…so I will be a better me now, today. And better tomorrow than I have been this day.

None of this is to say that I am not happy today.  I have actually been deliriously sparkling with newfound joy lately, so much to the probable annoyance of onlookers who don’t like to watch people being “mushy”.  I’m thankful to have found a soulmate who accepts me as I am and whose faults I accept, also, knowing that we all are imperfect.  It is being able to accept each other with our imperfections and not putting one another on pedestals that allows our relationship to be real and yet still adoring.  This is, surprisingly, where real love is found. I’ve really found it. This is definitely it.

The Countdown

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The holidays are bearing down on me like a freight train. I feel like I’ll go through this next few months saying “Six months gone…survived it – check. Veteran’s Day…survived it – check. My birthday – check. Thanksgiving – check. Christmas – check. Lillian’s First Birthday – check. Scott’s birthday – check.” And I wish there would be some kind of sigh of relief at the end of all of that but there cannot be. If only I did have to survive just one year of him being gone and then he’d be back, like a far-away military deployment, but it won’t be like that. It will never be like that.

I feel myself sinking deeper as we get closer. And I don’t even think it’s only that. Is it getting closer to these holidays that we celebrated and spent with our family? Or is it that every day closer to those days is a day farther from the last time I was with him? I can’t tell. I’m not focusing on the holidays with dread (although I do not feel ease going into them this year either.) I’m not specifically trying to focus on how long he’s been gone. But the tenth of the month just keeps on coming back around, for crying out loud.

The sinking seems to be a phenomenon all its own. A chaotic spiral over which I have no control to avoid the suction, much like the approach of a tornado toward your home. I still have faith that God will bring me out into the light but that doesn’t prevent the bleak and frightening outlook of the dark while I’m in it.

I went to the cemetery today…well, it’s yesterday now. I sat at his grave for nearly two hours. I played music on my phone. I picked all of the weeds and leaves off. I took implements to allow me to clean his grave marker. I added a flag honoring Veteran’s Day, honoring him. I have already purchased flags for Thanksgiving and Christmas to put there soon. The Christmas one has a photo of him, smiling and handsome, sitting on the lap of a fake Santa. I took that picture when we went to Savannah together.

Mostly, though, I cried. I ugly cried. I sobbed. I asked why (again.) I didn’t think I’d stay that long but I found it difficult to leave, despite the fact that I know that is not his place of residence. Mostly I feel closer to him at home than anywhere else. But that place is a home to my grief. It is the representation of the fact that even though his body is on this earth…in this earth…he is not. It is a quiet place of emptiness that mirrors the way my life feels without him here. I don’t talk to him much there (like I do more so at home) because the cemetery represents the fact that he is not here. But I also didn’t want to leave him there. Such a strange paradox.

I remember the night when my nephew died, when it came time for us to leave my sister’s home, still crawling with police officers and investigators, and go somewhere else to stay the night. My sister said “I can’t leave him here; I don’t want to leave him here.” As a parent, we would never leave our child alone in a houseful of strangers. You’d take him with you. But leaving nails the first level of finality right through your skin. I felt the same way leaving the hospital that night. I didn’t want to leave him there. I was supposed to stay the night with him. I was supposed to drive him home in the morning. Nail. Nail. Nail.

I don’t know how many nail holes you have in you when grief allows the curtain to part to begin letting light in again. I know it’s a lot. Pour water in and I’d leak like a sieve right now already. Need a sprinkler to water your lawn? I’m your huckleberry. And I guess I still have room for more holes because I didn’t want to leave again yesterday. I actually had an incredibly strong urge to lay down there, right on the dirt. Instead, I sat Indian-style with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands for most of the time. Thankfully, he’s way out in the country so no one else was at the cemetery to witness my profound grief.

Then I decided to push through more time in the day by stopping at the theater on the way home. I sat, completely alone in an empty Saturday-afternoon theater, and watch the After Death movie by Angel Studios. For today, I’m reserving my thoughts about it because I’m still processing what I saw. I did cry. I also felt comfort at some parts. I felt the choking feeling of being in the hospital room a few times. Now I’m mentally processing the scientific process with which they documented facts vs. potential hallucinatory effects. And there were irrefutable facts. I’m leveling that with what I know about life after death from a Biblical perspective and then how all of that relates to what my husband is now experiencing, what he experienced on that night. I do know that they reviewed hundreds of what they call NDEs (near death experiences) although those who experienced them were actually clinically dead for a period of time before being resuscitated. One particular line stuck with me over which I am still pondering the full significance: “Doctors resuscitate their patients; they don’t resurrect them.” And yet some of these people were clinically dead or without oxygen for up to 90 minutes.

The recurrent theme for me, throughout the entire documentary, was that I wished Scott were here, watching this movie with me, and telling me if that’s what it was really like. Because he had come back when they resuscitated him. I could almost hear him saying “that’s pretty much what it was like” or “I didn’t feel/see/experience that part.”

And then I think of the parts of the movie where people described being greeted or welcomed or even guided by others they had loved and who had already passed…

And so my countdown to someday is still on. Someday my prince will come…and he’ll take me to meet my King, face-to-face.

Savannah, GA. November 21, 2014