Tag: grief share

Chasing Peace

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This is from Joyce Meyer but I think it’s my primary problem right now:

You can’t just sit back and wish for peace, wish the devil would leave you alone, or wish that people would do what you want. The Bible tells us to actively pursue peace. You have to make up your mind to crave peace.

It actually feels as if a the opposite of peace is actively chasing 𝘮𝘦, every single day lately. And I know the author of peace but I know who dishes out the other, as well. And I absolutely do 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘦. But the Bible says we have to actively pursue peace: ”Turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace, and work to maintain it.“
‭‭Psalms‬ ‭34‬:‭14‬ ‭NLT‬‬.

The verse makes it sound as easy as a Nike commercial: Just Do It. But, holy cow, it is NOT easy to maintain sometimes. I’m reading my Bible. I’m doing four separate devotionals every day (because they’re all very helpful – while I’m reading them but then somehow I get off track walking away from them.) I’m praying. I’m seeking it. Still, it is elusive. It’s as if it found the ultimate hiding spot in a game of hide & seek while I’m getting hot and sweaty outside looking for it, ready to throw in the towel and just go get a glass of cold Kool Aid and plop down on the couch in front of the TV until it comes to say “why’d you quit lookin’?”

Trying to muffle the chaos inside my head does not work because that just wakes me at 2:00 a.m. when my mind figures it has nothing better to do. Raging at the tornado I’m constantly facing doesn’t help because, alas, I do not control the wind and waves. Crying over it doesn’t help because I just get a headache and stopped up nose…although sometimes it feels like it helps release the pressure in the moment. The only thing that does help is reading my Bible and I’m sure that’s what I’m being called to do even more than I have been but I’m kind of stubborn sometimes (no comments from the peanut gallery, please.) My childlike mind wants to say “I’ve already done my homework and I worked hard on it! Why are you assigning me more? I’m tired already!”

And so I pray to crave it as strongly as I crave peace since sometimes I can’t seem to remember that they’re the same thing. And I pray for my stubborn, childlike mind to maintain a stubborn, childlike faith but to do a better job growing out of the attitude I tend to get when I’m tired or hungry. The I Can’t attitude.

For now, I will try to sleep. When I wake up, I will try to start again, 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. ♥️

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.

The Waiting Room

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I read that someone calls it “decorating the waiting room.”

That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m sitting around wondering when I’ll be able to see him. Like pacing back and forth, hoping the doctor will come out any minute and say that someone you love is stable enough for you to go see them.

And, truth be told, the pacing is doing me no good at all but I somehow cannot stop myself from wearing a hole in the flooring. A long, straight path back and forth, back and forth with strides sometimes quick and short and others slow and long-paced, but just back and forth nonetheless. All I 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 to do is wait…wait until I get called to come on back to his room.

The last time they called me back to his room was agony, but I know the next time won’t be. I won’t harm your thoughts with the photographic memory that I have of the last time I saw him, alive and thereafter, but despite that constant visible reminder I am unable to believe that it was real, that it really happened, that he could possibly be truly gone. And so I wait, I pace dutifully back and forth waiting for the sign that it’s time to go see him.

The thing is, I could be waiting a really long time. I’m 50 so, theoretically, I could possibly only be halfway through my life. While I know most people don’t live to be 100, that’s the timeline I have to be prepared to live through. And I know my husband would absolutely hate it if I was just surviving it and not finding a way to live it.

So, sometime, I have to start decorating the waiting room. I have to start doing things that don’t even sound enjoyable to me at all right now, with the belief that it will be something that brings me joy someday. God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. For He knows the plans He has for me: plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me a hope and a future.

I can’t just pace back and forth in this waiting room I am living in and focus constantly on when we will be together again. It brings no good to the situation, has no benefit, and is actually harmful. If I were to decorate in here, maybe not only I could have joy but perhaps others here could, too.

The question is, what supplies will I need to decorate? Where and how, pray tell, do I get them?

The bigger problem than that is apathy.

Apathy:

  1. absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement.
  2. lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting.
  3. Also ap·a·thei·a, ap·a·thi·a [ap-uh-thee-uh]. /ˌæp əˈθi ə/. Stoicism.freedom from emotion of any kind.

I’m ashamed to confess to my current and constant state of apathy. I felt the same way as I faced a bout of major depressive disorder the last time. I know, trust me – I know – that I have a plethora of things to be thankful for. I have the most amazing kids and granddaughter in the world. I have an extended family (siblings, parents, aunts & uncles, in-laws) who care about me and check on me all the time. I have friends and family who haven’t forgotten my loss, do not try to diminish it, and who don’t expect me to hurry up and “get over it.” I still have a roof over my head and it is the same roof that Scott and I chose and bought together, which comforts me. I have a LOT to be grateful for, so much more than many people. And I got to experience the love of a lifetime – also something that many never will.

But somehow my brain functions, right now, in such a way as to tell me nothing matters, even as I try my hardest to remind myself many times every day how many things and people there are that do matter. I know that this means that my brain is sick.

I’m going to preface this next part with this: I am safe. I am not considering a spiritual change of address. I look forward to it but I am not planning it to be in my own time instead of His. I promise I am safe.

But I want to talk to you about how people look at severe depression and even suicide. This isn’t a choice. This isn’t something you can “try harder” to pull out of or “pray more” to successfully leave it behind. Trust me, please, when I tell you that I have tried hard and I have prayed and prayed. Mental health issues are real and just because you cannot see the wound, doesn’t mean it is not there.

When someone has cancer, we feel compassion for them. We encourage them to pursue treatment. We tell them we’re going to love them through it. And we understand that it’s not just “all in their head.” Just because a CT scan cannot show you evidence of depression doesn’t mean that the illness isn’t physically affecting the body and the mind.

The person with a major depressive disorder episode isn’t just “sad.” It also doesn’t mean that they don’t love you when they’re having thoughts of leaving their pain behind. When a cancer patient is told there is no further treatment doctors can do to help, we know how much we will miss them but we give our blessing if they choose hospice. We tell them it is okay to go. We understand and don’t want them to continue to be in pain. And I’m not saying that we should encourage people unaliving themselves over depression; I’m saying that we should try to understand that this is an illness. It changes the way life looks and feels. It’s painful. And on top of all of that, people tend to diminish it by thinking it’s able to be controlled with “happy thoughts.” I’ve been here twice. Rest assured, that’s hogwash.

When I say I’m having trouble finding enjoyment in life, it absolutely does not mean that I love my family any less. I am more grateful for my family than I could ever explain. And I still am unable to shake off the way I feel. I cannot just perk up. Oh, I can fake it for awhile (and it’s exhausting) but it doesn’t leave. I take medicine. I see a therapist. I’m praying and I’m in the Word. I’m doing all of the things I’m supposed to do to fight this. Still I feel a weighty despair that rarely lightens and never subsides.

It’s not been six months yet and I’ve been given instruction from several people on how to turn myself around. You’ve got to get out and do some things you enjoy. (I don’t enjoy them now; I’ve tried.) You need to spend some alone time with God. (I have spent so much alone time with God through the middle of the very long nights and every single weekend that I may have forgotten how to talk to people sometimes.) Don’t focus on it so much; take your thoughts captive. (It is almost impossible not to “focus” on something that literally changes every single moment of your life and your future. Every. Moment. And I’ve prayed that God would help me take the thoughts captive and redirect me. I speak His Word aloud against the constant barrage of nightmares and day thoughts that attack me. For everything there is a season; apparently this is my season of loss and it’s going to continue to be until it’s not anymore. I do not have control over it.)

I’m physically exhausted. I would sleep all day, every day, if I could yet when I do I’m plagued with nightmares sometimes and others I just cannot sleep at all, despite the fact that my body often feels as if I have no strength to stand. That’s not all in my head either.

But the point of this writing today is to decorate the waiting room. HOW do you decorate when you feel like you can barely lift your arms and don’t even want to look at pretty decorations?

Grief is debilitating. It stops your life at the exact same moment as they tell you that the person you loved more than life is gone. Your job is to stay alive until it feels like your heart has begun to beat again. And, apparently, that takes a very long time. I’ve come to decide that the depth of the loss determines the weight and length of the grief cycle. Mine is about five elephants, give or take. And my daddy once said to me “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” So I’m doing the best I can to chew at least one bite every day, more if I can manage it.

Perhaps when I’m down to only one elephant left, I’ll be able to decorate the waiting room.

One additional point for today: being a Christian doesn’t make life easy:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

If you’re wondering why I’m a Christian when it’s still this hard, or how I could really be a Christian if I’m not handling this better, understand this: you can be the Christianest Christian there is and still struggle to get through things. And if someone not being able to “get past” their grief confounds you, count yourself blessed to have never experienced such a loss. Or count yourself unlucky to have never known someone over whom you would grieve so deeply. So why don’t you find a way to help them decorate the waiting room?

And what I do know, as a Christian, is this: even when I can’t see Him, He is working on me and for me. I do not travel this dark road alone. And He will absolutely carry me to a way to get out.

Every Single Day is a Wake-Up Call

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I don’t want to cause hurt to anyone who may read this. Whether you’ve been through this before and you’re just further on in your journey than I (and I don’t know “how that works” as you get farther out from where I am now,) or whether you’re reading it going through the same now, or somewhere down the line, I’m farther out and you’re just beginning your journey, I don’t want to cause you pain so ask yourself now if you’re called to read more at this point.

I don’t know who to talk to about this because I do know that people who know me and love me, my kids, my family, my closest friends, they’ll all hurt for me as they watch me hurt. Sometimes I just feel trapped by the need to let all of this pour out but also by the need to hold it in, behind a Hoover Dam type of internal apparatus that keeps anyone else from experiencing it.

Today my daughter-in-love left with my granddaughter, who stays with me during the day while her parents are working or schooling, to go home. My youngest son, who still lives at home, came home from work but left again (like teenagers do) and I sat down, like I always do, trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do now, until bedtime.

Today it’s hitting me all over again that I’m alone today and that this is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life…just alone. I sat down to try to watch TV, just noise to fill my house and my mind, but this time it’s not filling anything, even partially. Today it just makes me feel even more empty.

My husband and I used to watch TV together. I mean, we didn’t watch a ton of TV but there are shows we always liked to sit down and watch together, discussing the events, the plots, what would happen next in the series. I still can’t watch any of those programs. But now, even trying to fill my mind with useless stories just feels fake, like even “reality TV” actually is.

It hurts so much to think that this is what I have to adapt to because there’s no going back…and he won’t be back. It’s been five months and my brain still cannot fathom the idea that this could possibly be forever. Even when he was away for work, he always came home. We always talked on the phone or FaceTime multiple times a day while he was gone. He’d have to be at work by 6:30 a.m. so I’d wake up just to talk to him as he got ready and was on his way to work. I haven’t had a day with any part of him except memories for over five months and I just still cannot make my mind accept the fact that he is gone from me until I see Heaven.

I’ve struggled through every 10th of the month since he transitioned to the other side. This month I made a conscious decision to try to be positive. To think of good memories, to honor who he was. I’m trying today to go back to that mindset but I just keep getting dragged back down into the muck. I MISS him terribly. I just miss who we were together and that feeling, that emotion of sadness and despair over never having that again refuses to be challenged.

I know that prayer should be my first decision during times like this but these times, the worst times, are when words to pray are least likely to surface. I do know that the Holy Spirit translates my agony into superfluous prayer, but it always takes time for the comfort to come. The amount of time varies but it is always agonizing until it arrives.

When it does come, I’m able to be grateful for the comfort and some level of peace so I do pray then, praising in the midst of the lighter rain of the storm. I guess I put it that way because it has rained for a lot more than forty days and forty nights here, but there are times now when it’s more like “sprinkling,” or at least less like a deluge.

I know God is here because, even in the sadness when I cannot stop myself from sobbing, I feel him here. He is here and yet the physical absence of my husband feels no less so I cannot resolve the coalescence of those two feelings. It is what feels like the tearing apart of the two that seem to undo me.

Often I feel like I’m not being “a good enough Christian” in how I’m handling this. Understand that, as I admit that, it is not anything I would ever judge anyone else of, only myself. I know fully-well that, if I were listening to someone else say the same, I would admonish anyone else for their overly harsh criticism of themselves. But I cannot escape the feeling that, if I were more faithful, I should just be trusting God to work it all out. Satan screams inside my head that I’m failing while God’s voice is always a calming whisper…if only I could fully interpret His words beyond the noise of the enemy. “You call yourself a Christian but you can’t even believe what you say you do! What a crock. Do you even believe what you keep telling everyone you do???”

Yes. I do. And I’m fortunate to be well-read on spiritual warfare and spiritual attacks. And yet, in the moment when it is I who am standing at the warfront of a barrage of enemy fire, still I fall victim, at times, to his relentless firepower. Even armed with the Word and speaking it aloud doesn’t immediately silence the battle cry.

I say this to you so that, if you, too, feel that you are being held captive, you will remember that Paul was arrested in Caesarea and imprisoned for two years, was shipwrecked, and then spent two more years imprisoned on house arrest in Rome. As a human, albeit a faithful one, he must have experienced spiritual attack because who would Satan have in his sights more than someone who would help write the New Testament. Paul had to have times when He felt alone, dejected, forgotten, and yet he still proclaimed his faith in the midst of it all. Remember that Paul was Saul, who persecuted Christians. Satan has to have screamed his unworthiness to him many times, but Paul persisted in faith.

Persistence is never easy. It means that, despite difficulty, one continues on their original path. Paul continued. While I have no inclination to be compared to Paul’s level of dedication and faithfulness, I am choosing to continue on a path of trust. A friend said to me this week, “faith is easy because it’s specific; trust is harder because it is in the dark.” That has been a resounding message for me this week. Faith, for me, is easy because I have seen evidence in my own life of what it has already done. Trusting that God still has a plan for my future when it feels interminably bleak is harder, but His faithfulness has been true to me in the past.

I’m clinging to that. The future will mimic God’s faithfulness of my past because He never changes. That’s what I’m counting on today.

Jesus, Help Me…

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I feel like I’m dying all over again tonight and I don’t know exactly why. For some reason, a tidal wave has rolled back over me and I feel like I’m back at the beginning, when he died. I can’t catch my breath. I can’t stop crying. I can’t stop pleading, wishing, arguing about why it shouldn’t be this way. I thought I was beginning to mend but I’m in millions and millions of pieces again tonight. Jesus, help me…I’m drowning.

There is a movie about a Tsunami called The Impossible with Naomi Watts. She is with her family on vacation and, when the storm hits, there is a graphic scene of what happens during the giant wave hitting she and her family, separating them and thrashing them about underwater. One thing I remember is that her breast was ripped open by something she was thrown against underwater, part of a tree branch, I think. I almost feel like I can understand that feeling but the ragged branch punctures all the way into the muscle of my heart. Vivid, yes, but I have no other words to describe the agony of this moment.

I knew when I started to feel stronger that this couldn’t last. I have four friends, three very close to my own age, who have lost their husbands, also suddenly and unexpectedly, within the last three years. I know from their experiences that this will come and go, but it catches me by surprise every single time I fall back into the pit, tumbling endlessly down, hitting sharp rocks, getting caught up in choking vines, and hitting my head, knees, jaggedly ripping open the skin of my breast, and all other body parts along the way. It is more painful than I have words to explain. I can literally feel the moment he stopped breathing, the moment they came to tell me he was gone, the moment I laid my head on his still, warm chest but with no heartbeat inside. And my heart screams WHY???

God is still here or my emotional shattering would most definitely become physical. It’s the only explanation for how my skin remains on my body, for why my body pumps blood through my vessels instead of spraying it, pulsing, from every open wound I feel ripped open. He is here holding me together and yet I am in pieces.

There is a song by Barlow Girl, an “old-school” Christian female rock band, that sings “I cry out with no reply and I can’t feel You by my side, so I hold tight to what I know: You’re here…and I’m never alone,” followed by a strong guitar rock solo. That is what I feel right now. All I can do is hold tight to what I know. God is here; I’m never alone.

Abba God, please show me Your presence wrapped around me in a tangible way right now. I don’t know how else to survive this. I still have a family who needs me and I need to land on my feet. I have to keep my head above this torrential flood of salty tears. Hear me. In the name of Jesus, I’m asking You, please, raise me to where I can stand again. Amen.

What is “Real?” Pain Surely is.

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I look at the picture of him that I put on his nightstand and I still can’t believe that he isn’t going to be here, that he’s not coming back. And I don’t mean that like “Oh, wow…I can’t believe it…”

I mean it like, I cannot fathom the idea. My brain still says it doesn’t make sense. I watched him not breathing as people poured into the room with the crash cart but I still literally (yes, I literally mean literally) cannot believe this is truly real.

I understand that, unless you have ever experienced a sudden, extremely traumatic loss in a devastatingly traumatic manner, this probably doesn’t make sense to anyone else. It doesn’t make sense to me that this whole thing doesn’t make sense.

It should because I was there. I watched it all play out while trying to find a way to make it stop, to change the outcome, to flip the script. I fully remember pacing and praying, begging, pleading that despite what was already happening, it would all be turned around and we’d go home together. I recall fully real but seemingly crazy details about being told he was gone.

So I don’t know how it is possible that I just cannot make myself believe it.

I keep thinking that, if I can come to terms with the fact that this whole thing isn’t some crazy comatose nightmare that I’m having, I will be able to start whatever healing is even possible after this. I feel like I have to wake up to know if it is really this way or if I was dreaming it.

No, I’ve never had a dream this long and this detailed before. That’s what I keep telling myself. So it must be real, right? But my mind refuses to accept that reality. Refuses. Utter refusal.

At the same time, I’m terrified of when that happens. I already feel like I’m clinging to the shreds that are left at the bottom of a very fine rope.

God’s the only thread left in our strand of three cords because I’m not even sure I’m really still here. What is this existence if I am living it alone? So I’m grasping desperately at His piece of the rope because it’s the only one dangling stretched taut by the weight of my pain here.

I always saw adventure in our future because our present (now our past) was filled with them. I can’t see adventure for the life of me now. I see terror.

The last month has been drastically different from the previous few because now I feel panic at the drop of a hat. I mean, I’ve had actual panic attacks since the beginning sometimes but now the panic focuses on the ones I have left. All of my kids, my granddaughter, my parents, my siblings, my nieces and nephews, my close friends.

It takes almost nothing to be terrified something is going to happen to one of them. I know who the author of fear is (and it is NOT God) and I know that I am instructed to take my thoughts captive but, for now, strategically ensuring their captivity eludes me when the intrusive thoughts begin to take over. My mind goes blank except for raw fear. Raw, with ragged claws ripping at the exposed meat of my body.

My heart feels as if it stands as still as his. It feels like as much weight lies upon my chest as the pounds and pounds of dirt that lie packed over him now. It becomes difficult to breathe, as if it takes effort to inhale or exhale, either one, even though my actual lungs still have the same capacity as before. And I hurt everywhere. It feels sometimes as if my bones ache within me and my head pounds with the strength of a jackhammer on concrete.

These days, I don’t want to move. I don’t want to get out of bed, but I do. I don’t want to rise from my chair, but sometimes I do. I don’t want to get groceries, but I do. I don’t want to talk to people, but I do. I sleep and sometimes I have nightmares with images of him in his last moments, but sometimes I don’t dream at all so I go to bed yearning for that sleep of absence and dreading the morning when I will wake to a photograph of him instead of his arm draped across me, moving it gently and quietly so that I can go make him coffee before he wakes up.

I’ve gotten pretty good, again, about wearing a face that looks like “okay-ness.” All signs point to gentle healing and a fictitious facade of blossoming hope. Or maybe I’m just imagining that it looks that way and everyone can see right through it; I can’t always tell.

In six days it will have been six months since he left me here, albeit not of his own choosing. How have I survived half of a year…a year…without him here? “You’re so strong,” people say. But I’m not strong; I’m surviving. Maybe I’m brave to keep trying it, day after day, but strong is not an adjective that I can feel within me. It’s a direct contrast to that, in reality. I feel so weak and incapable of living this life without him. I feel lost in so many situations. I feel like I’m drowning in my own incompetence often. There were things he did, things he provided to me, that I can never properly recreate. He was half of my life and, while I cherish the parts of my life that I still have without him (namely, my family,) I feel like I am trying to live without half of my body, like a stroke victim. Nothing works right without him here. I’m one half of a whole.

Let God complete you, not other people. That’s how it should be, I’m sure, but God gave me this gift of someone and said “the two shall become one.” And we did. A therapist might call it codependency but it’s not; it’s marriage. It is how God intended it to be. We were no longer two me’s; we were a we and my mind doesn’t know how to digest the discrepancy now.

So for today I’m going to try to remember the words of a song that means so much to my heart now:

“God is in this story. God is in the details. even in the broken parts, He holds my heart. He never fails. When I’m at my weakest, I will trust in Jesus. Always in the highs and lows, the One who goes before me; God is in this story.”

The Stuff of Nightmares

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I was thinking about how I’ve told you that I “haven’t dreamed about him yet.”

That’s not entirely true, and yet it is. I want desperately to have a dream where he is himself, normal, healthy, happy. What I have are nightmares about his last night on earth, and those two things are nothing alike.

Trauma is a difficult mountain to climb over and leave behind you. I know. I’ve forged my way over such mountains more than once. This one pretty much takes the cake, despite the immensity of past traumas. I’m really struggling to even get started. You know when you have so many things to do that you don’t even know which task to start just to begin…so maybe you procrastinate because it all just seems overwhelming? That’s where I’m standing: in the overwhelm.

I had started therapy the end of May but there were soooo many glitches. The therapist lost my intake visit notes and had to redo my intake (which meant having to dive back into telling/reliving the night of terrors all over again, out loud), then the next visit they had changed software and she had to do the intake and create a care plan yet again because their old system would not update the new one. Then they had problems getting me back in for another appointment for almost a month…and so I quit, feeling even more defeated.

Starting over with a new program was so daunting, to have to go through all of this over again and not know if I’d ever get to the point that something felt helpful. But I have started over. I really like my current therapist and, sadly, she lost her son last September, just one year ago now, so it feels like she really and truly “gets it”. Immense grief is not a stranger to her. She has tackled seemingly insurmountable grief and appears to be flourishing in the aftermath. This therapy program is also specifically faith-based, so it aligns with my methods of coping and healing.

The nightmares start my days off on very rocky footing. I can see the way he looked at me the very last time his eyes were open, panic-stricken with asphyxiation, and I can feel the powerlessness of that moment with surprising reality. And the guilt. The guilt of having been a nurse for almost thirty years and having worked many, many codes, but being unable to do anything to help him because I was on “someone else’s playing field” and also because it’s different when it is your person, your spouse, your soulmate. My mind was an especially chaotic brand of turmoil because part of my own life was slipping away right before my eyes. And I couldn’t stop it. I wish I had put my hands on his face one more time and said, “I’m here. I love you, baby.” I wish I could have said “We’ve got this” one more time…but we didn’t. We didn’t have this at all that night. And we had nothing else ever again.

There’s a finality that fails to settle into your brain when life ends suddenly. I still, almost five months later, cannot wrap my head around it. I cannot be a widow. Surely he’ll come home carrying his backpack and his camo, insulated lunchbox and wrap his arms around me. Surely.

Those thoughts just add to the panic as I tell myself, try to remind myself, that this is all real. I’m forced to technically believe that as I take over all of the responsibilities that Scott gladly maintained as my husband. Yet I struggle daily to accept it.

They tell me I’m suffering from C-PTSD (complicated post-traumatic stress disorder) and panic attacks, major depressive disorder, complicated traumatic grief, and generalized & social anxiety. Quite a mouthful of diagnoses for just one person. They are pieces that feel as if someone else mixed the garden flowers and the country roadside fruit stand puzzles together but is expecting me to figure out how to make them all one picture. As I try to sort the pieces, none of them make sense going together. This is not the puzzle I bought at the store but it’s non-refundable.

Still, being in therapy is a milestone on the journey. My therapist said that one of the reasons I’m still feeling like I am at Day One on my journey is because I am consumed with anger. She says getting the anger under control is the key to moving on to the next step, although they come in no particular order. If I ask God to help me tackle that stage then I will eventually move through coming to terms with the rest before finally truly reaching the acceptance phase. The thing is, anger isn’t living here alone. Three more of the grief stages are piled in here with it like clowns in a tiny car. Denial, bargaining and depression cohabitate with guilt and anxiety inside this damaged vessel and they are not playing nice. These aren’t your typical, happy circus clowns either; they all resemble the Stephen King or Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights versions.

So, anger…I have to tackle anger but without letting it OUT on anyone around me. Should be interesting. My daily devotionals, quiet time, and web-ex classes I take through the counseling portal all revolve around anger for the foreseeable future. God is capable of taking hold of it but only if I hand it over and, as much as I want to, I don’t know if I can get my current grip, which is so tight that it resembles a toddler holding onto a toy they need to share, to release. There’s another prayer to add to my exhaustive list.

I am determined to get better. I am determined to heal. I am determined to let God do His thing in me. May the path become smoother as I figure it all out. No matter how long it takes, God is in the outcome.

Transitioned

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It’s hard for me to say the “D word” about Scott. I have said it. I have written it. But I don’t like it.I don’t like it at all.

He isn’t dead. His body is; I know that and that’s the part I hate. He isn’t physically here anymore and that hurts every single day. But he isn’t dead because God is not dead. My husband is alive in Christ. He has just transitioned to a new way of being. His body died, yes. He died at the hands of others. I cannot alter that reality any more than I could stop the swells at sea. And I ache over these facts every day.

My God is a deliverer and a healer. He makes all things new. Because of this, my husband’s transition was a glorious moment for him, contrasting sharply with his last hours in his earthly body. For this I am grateful. But the moment he came into glory was the moment my own worst nightmare began. For that, I am bereft of happiness and I don’t know how long that part is going to last.

I experience joy, but joy and happiness are not the same thing. Joy is an inner sanctum, a place inside your heart where you can experience positivity even when your mind cannot feel happiness at all. Our children bring me joy. Our granddaughter brings me joy. Happiness is something that seems to get farther and farther away in my rear view and I wonder if I’ll recognize it when it returns. I suppose it’s like him, though. I’d recognize him anywhere and I’ll know him immediately when my time of glory comes. Maybe one day I’ll have the opportunity to experience happiness in that way while I’m still here and I’ll know it instantly, too. I feel like being happy will come as a surprise, like hearing an urban legend many times and then discovering that it was true all along.

People say “I’m so sorry for your loss.” And it has been an enormous loss for me. But my husband is not lost. He’s just in a place where I cannot reach him, like being on deployment in the desert of Iraq and not having the ability to call home. I only wish he could even write to me from where he lives now. And that I could write back.

I haven’t had any dreams of him yet. I actually rarely even remember my dreams from sleep. I had the most ridiculous dream last week. I very realistically dreamed (apparently) that I had received an Amazon package, something I had ordered in real life. I hunted all over the house for where I had put it. I distinctly remembered opening the box, pulling out the caffeinated, orange mint flavored breath mints I had purchased, separating them into smaller ziploc bags (I spilled some) so that I could give some to my daughter-in-love who is in nursing school, put some in my purse, and saving the rest to keep here at home.

So, as I said, I searched for them everywhere because grief brain makes you terribly absent-minded and I assumed I had set them down somewhere, tucked them into a drawer, or foolishly placed them in a spot that makes no sense (like when I found my lost toothbrush in the kitchen cabinet. But, alas, no mints. I never even thought about checking Amazon to see if they had been delivered yet because I distinctly remembered them arriving. A couple of days later, I got a box in the mail and was surprised to find caffeinated orange mint flavored breath mints inside. Well, they must have accidentally sent them twice, obviously. And yet when I opened the box, they were larger than I expected them to be. Did they send a different kind? That’s when I checked Amazon and found that these were the ones I had been expecting. It ever-so-slowly occurred to me that I had woken up thinking about those mints because it was a dream. Truly incredulous, all I could think was “If I had to have a dream that was that realistic, why couldn’t Scott have been in it?”

People talk about all of these signs you see of people who have moved on from this life. I haven’t witnessed any signs. I know that if there were a way for him to be here other than in my memories, he would do so. But he is in a new place, a new home, a new spiritual body. Maybe one day he’ll come to me in some way (I pray for that and ask him to do so all the time) but it just hasn’t happened yet. I still talk to him every day as if he were here. I still tell him I love him and that I miss him all the time. I still love him and miss him all the time.

Scott’s transition from this life to the next was infinitely harder for me than it was for him. I don’t begrudge him that because what he suffered prior to that moment of beauty for him was overwhelmingly traumatic. I don’t know that I’ll ever fully heal from the terror of those hours and minutes. I’m glad that he has and that he doesn’t have to remember a moment of them because there is no pain or fear where is now. in the same way, it will be infinitely harder for my children than it will be for me when my time comes to leave.

For Scott, transition was a thing of beauty. For me, the transition from wife to widow, from soulmate to loss, has been calamitous. So transition, you see, is a matter of perspective.

My perspective is this:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James‬ ‭1‬:‭2‬-‭4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

No, joy is not the same thing as happiness because we wouldn’t count it all happiness when we face trials of many kinds. But I am joyful in the fact that my husband no longer suffers the many trials he faced on this earth. There is no heartbreak. There is no anguish. There is no fear. There is no loss. Not for him. And yet the same event that brought him into that new reality forces me into the one I live now. And I will count it all joy, for one day I will also be mature and complete, not lacking anything, as well.

Barren Rose Bush

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What is the word for when a rose becomes all thorns and no petals? When it languishes in the heat and drops, petal by shrunken, desecrated, dehydrated and burnt petal to the dry earth…but the thorns remain sturdy? You can’t call it a rose at all because there is no flower, but people still call it a rose bush. Why do they still call it that when there are no flowers? What is the real word for a rose bush with no roses?

~ Barren Rose Bush