Tag: heartbroken

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.

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.

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 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.

Even If…

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Written December 3, 2023

You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people. Genesis 50:20

I’m trying to ascertain where this is going to fit into my life, my situation, and my grief.

The enemy was alive and well in that hospital when my husband died. He thwarted possibilities for recovery over and over by using the actions (and inaction) of people. He stopped every action that would have turned it around. I cannot count the number of times, the number of decisions, that could have turned this all around and let me drive home together with my husband. I know each and every one of them but they are many. A tidal wave of failures, one right after the other. An indefensible path to an outcome that we can never return from.

I remember praying in the room with him, when he was having trouble breathing, more and more so. Praying “God help him.” Praying with a security guard in the ICU waiting room while they were coding him. For this stranger, I will always be grateful because he spoke words that refused to be plucked from the whirling dervish of panicked thoughts inside my head. When he left to go back to his work post, I remember texting and asking my Daddy to pray and then saying “Jesus, please, help him. Please bring him back. I need him.” Something like those words over and over and over again. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

I do not believe that God chose this path for my husband. I believe He knew it would happen because He is omniscient. I believe He could have stopped it because He is omnipotent. I believe He was with me in that waiting room, with my husband in his hospital room for every terrifying second he was still within his earthly body, and with my mother-in-law as she traveled to be with me, because He is omnipresent.

So why didn’t we get our miracle?

Because God gave humans freedom of choice. He could have forced Adam & Eve to worship him. Made them bow to Him and serve Him. But humans would have then been slaves. If a man or woman tries to force you to love them and stay with them, how much more likely are you to try to get away, to end up hating them? No, He gave us free will.

Part of Joshua 24:15 says “Choose this day whom you will serve…” That day, some people chose wrong. I’m not calling anyone a Satanist. We all choose wrong sometimes. When you have an attitude or are being prideful, you’re choosing wrong. When you are arrogant. When you gossip. When you snap at someone because you’re hangry. We’re all guilty of choosing wrong. Some do more often than others.

For some, even kindness and compassion are difficult to display. And then, mixed in with bad decisions, there are probably just some plain accidents and some ignorance of what to do sometimes…and this time, with us, unfortunately an egregious amount of outright negligence when it came to people, trained and licensed, to whom we entrusted his safety.

There are myriad reasons why he’s not here anymore but it all comes down to the fact that sometimes the enemy wins a battle, already knowing he will never win the war. He (the enemy) knows what the Bible says. He believes in God because, to put it gently, they’ve met. Satan knows Him. He’s just always trying to see if he can sway more people to his side while he’s still got the chance.

For some people, loss does cause a sway. Some people cannot imagine how there could be a good God if people who don’t deserve to die, do. The thing is, God doesn’t cause those things. Satan made sickness, not God. And sometimes faithful people don’t get their healing this side of Heaven. I’m not going to pretend to know what God sees that He allows it to happen. But I do know that what we see is like looking through an old-fashioned keyhole. Our vision is so very limited, just what you can see by putting your eye up to that little keyhole. God can already see the whole world of things on the other side of the door. The full panoramic view. I trust that He loves me even when I don’t understand. I trust that He is for me when all else seems to be against me.

My granddaughter is going to the doctor for shots today; one of her parents will have to help hold her still while she receives them. When my children were young, I took them to the doctor for vaccinations, too. I remember the look on my sons’ faces when they were little. That “I thought you loved me; why did you help them do that to me? You didn’t protect me” look. But I was protecting them. From chicken pox and pertussis and polio. I knew something they didn’t. I knew it would be a moment of pain for a lifetime of protection. I could see what they couldn’t.

As for my husband, glory to God, he is enjoying himself now. There is no pain, no heartache, no loss, no weeping, no disappointment. He went through so much of that in his life and I’m so thankful that he’s free of it all now. That doesn’t change how much I selfishly wish he was here with me.

As for me and my house, we will still serve the Lord. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago (in the beginning chapters of the book of Daniel) were going to be thrown into the fiery furnace. They told the king that God would save them but then said even if He doesn’t, we won’t worship your idols. We’re still going to worship only God.

God not stopping the tidal wave of events that caused my husband’s demise does not make me hate him any more than my kids, knowing I loved them and cared for them, stayed angry at me after shots. They immediately held onto me afterwards because, even if I allowed something that hurt them, they still knew I was their best protector, biggest fan, and first love.

God still loves me just as he loved my sweet husband. I don’t know why He allowed him to be taken away so young and left me here. I don’t know what plans He still has for me or what purpose He wants me to fulfill but Here am I, Lord. Send me.

I’m always, always going to wish that things had turned out differently. I’m always going to dream about our plans to grow old together, travel, play with grandbabies, and all the things. But even still, I trust that one day I will be okay. I trust that one day He will bring joy and purpose back into my life.

By the time you’re reading this, it will have been a while since it was written. I write because I need you to know that, even when there was wrong done that caused the death of my husband, even though I run a race against anger every day, trying to head him off at the pass with forgiveness, I am still about my Father’s business.

Choose, this day, whom you will serve. I’m still choosing You, Abba God. I’m still choosing You.

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.”

Grief vs. Faith: A War One of Them Will Never Win

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“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
‭‭Daniel‬ ‭3‬:‭17‬-‭18‬ ‭NIV‬‬

And if not…He is still good.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednago were thrown into the fiery furnace, which was heated seven times hotter than usual. The fire was so hot that the men who tied them up and walked up to throw them inside died. There were four men seen walking around (unbound) in the furnace. The three of them, however, walked out not only unharmed, but not even smelling of smoke. Not a single hair on their heads or thread od their clothes was singed.

Miracles exist. I’ve seen some of them. Actual supernatural miracles.

So why didn’t I have the opportunity to pray for one? Why didn’t we receive one? Why didn’t my sister? Why didn’t my in-laws? Why didn’t my daughter-in-love or her Oma? Why has my family experienced tragedy after tragedy in such a short span of time?

Every single one of these deaths were sudden and unexpected. Each created cold shock and electrifying pain all at once.

My mother-in-law lost her oldest son (50 years old) just sixteen months before losing her only living son left, my 49 year old husband. Just the idea of the heartbreak of losing all of your children breaks my heart for her every day. We grieve together.

I was never able to meet Patrice’s mom and knew but wasn’t close with her Nanny, (who died six months apart, Patrice’s Oma, who raised her, losing both her daughter and mother inside half of a year,) but I am close with Patrice and her breaking broke me. We have grieved together.

My nephew took his own life at 14 years old while none of us saw even a hint of a clue this would ever happen. A seemingly happy, boisterous, smiling, fun-loving kid who was excited to be getting his learner’s permit soon, suddenly gone by his own hand. Barely over two weeks later, my husband would die. It’s really, really hard but we grieve together.

And the question about why is rhetorical. I don’t have an answer for why miracles happen for some people and not others.

Bad things happen to 𝘢𝘭𝘭 people. None of us leave this world unscathed. Our world has been broken for a very long time and I’ve said before that darkness reigns here unless we call down Light to vanquish it. Even still, some shadows exist when Light is present here on earth.

In any of these sudden, unexpected scenarios, would we have recognized a miracle if it had occurred? We were not expecting death as it stood on our doorsteps and violently pummeled it’s way in. Essentially another rhetorical question. Of course we would not know.

When everything is seemingly going as it should, life carries musical notes of glorious harmony even as a cacophonous chorus of discordance waits, hidden behind a curtain of happy blindness, for the perfect moment to jump in and steal the refrain. But how can you anticipate the song ending in a way you’ve never heard it happening before? You dance around singing the lyrics you know until you realize that the world is suddenly shouting something entirely different.

So, if none of these deaths had occurred, we would still be singing what we know. Without knowing what happens in this alternate reality, we would be blissfully unaware of the miracle that had allowed us to finish the musical.

Amy Grant sings a song called “Angels” that says “God only knows the times my life was threatened just today; a reckless car ran out of gas before it ran my way. Near misses all around me, accidents unknown, though I never see with human eyes the hands that lead me home.”

I am a Christian; I know that He is still good. I am also a human who has had difficulty untangling my grief from my faith at times.

As I struggle restlessly, my faith does not angrily leave me, exiting stage left and slamming the door to it’s dressing room, while I ponder the realities of what faith means. It remains on the stage, a courageous contender in the battle with grief, as a scene of bewilderment is acted out in the theater of my mind, a desperate struggle to decipher the apparent incongruity of how these two actors coexist simultaneously.

My days, and often nights, are still a never ending scrimmage (sometimes more of a blitzkrieg) between looking for happiness and wallowing in loss. Yes, I admit it; sometimes I’m wallowing. It’s such an ugly word, wallowing. Not something I enjoy but, rather, get sucked into by a very strong vacuum.

This morning I wrote a positive blog post about moving forward and finding beauty in the things and people I still have. This afternoon I once again misplaced my keys to unlock that door and found myself floundering in the depths of this grief process yet again.

The thing is, miracles do happen every single day on this earth. I will never know, this side of Heaven, the whys and hows of those processes, nor fully know what stops them from happening sometimes. I know the power behind each side of the fight but not the inner workings of the deployment strategies.

What I do know is this: God’s Word is true and infallible. It’s the only thing that is. That’s faith. That means my only strategy is to hold onto the playbook and keep learning, keep practicing the plays.

I also know that my analogies are all over the place in this writing: music, theatrical and sports references. In each of these, though, there are singers/characters/players we like and ones we don’t. I’m not going to spend my time interacting with the ones I have no interest in following. The same goes for the way life is right now for me. I’m already on the winning team. Bewailing the temporary success of my opponent comes as a direct result of human emotions but it won’t stop me from preparing to win the next time we meet up.