Tag: learning to live with grief

The Physical Nature of Grief

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This is not a pity party, I promise. Classify it as documentation of the worst year of my life and maybe something that will show others who have, are or will be grieving that these things that happen to your physical body are part of the process – you’re not crazy for thinking there are physical symptoms that fit into this journey that feels like it will end you.

Also, if you know someone who is grieving, I’m here to tell you today that they’re not making any of this up. Nor can they control it with positive thoughts, or by you saying to pray about it, or remember he’s still with you. If you want to be a helper, just listen when they need to pour it all out. Just believe them when they say this hurts in so many more ways than what you might think.

Immediately after the death of my husband, I stopped eating. This was no diet. This wasn’t me counting calories. I could not eat. I vomited at least a couple of times a day, sometimes more. At times it was from crying so hard that I started coughing then coughing so hard that I vomited. Sometimes it was a sudden “reminder” (everything is, at that point) that this was really real and there was no going back…I’d never be with him again on Earth. That caused unbelievable instant nausea and often barely, barely making it to a trash can, toilet, sink, and once a cup.

The house became filled with food, for which I am so grateful because my immediate and extended family was able to eat without cooking. I admit that it never dawned on me, not even a little, to ask someone who came to my house “Can I get you something to drink? Would you like something to eat? Let me fix you a plate.” Manners be damned because it literally never even crossed my mind. In fact, my mind felt like one of those rubber band balls, thoughts all tangled around each other and the ones inside so compressed that they may never escape. Those ones are still boxed in there somewhere.

Despite the plethora of options to eat and new choices arriving daily, I distinctly remember having one heaping table spoon worth of squash casserole every day that was brought by my daughter-in-love’s mama, and eating some very good potato salad and a few bites of smoked chicken from some family friends. That’s pretty much it for weeks one and two, I believe. Somehow i lost around 13 pounds in those two weeks (and barely drinking anything meant some of that was dehydration.). Weeks 3-6 I forced myself to eat a little bit more but forced is the operative word. The memorial service was coming up and I still didn’t want to eat at all. My husband and I were foodies, wanted to specifically do a road trip one day where we planned it only around Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives to enjoy trying the best ones. Now, I just didn’t want to eat at all without him here.

I’ve experienced major depressive disorder before and my normal response to emotional pain is to eat everything in sight and gain a bunch of weight. Don’t ask my why this has been different. The weight loss has slowed down but not because I want to eat now.

I’ve made some unhealthy decisions since all of this started. The first being that I stopped taking any and all medication. I was forgetting anyway. My husband used to remind me all the time but, without him here, there were no reminders. I’d go three days and suddenly realize that I had missed medication on all three. Then I’d take them that day and not remember for the next four. It seemed pointless so I just quit trying. I decided today that I at least need to restart my anti-depressants and my thyroid meds.

Then there’s sleep. Or lack thereof. I slept no more than (and usually less than) 3 hours a night for close to two weeks after he died. Then I remember somehow transitioning to where I would sleep for five. My body was tired but my mind wouldn’t let me escape the horror that was my life.

Now I’ve graduated into something much worse. If I never had to get out of my bed, I wouldn’t. I’m soooo exhausted, all the time. When I say “all the time,” I literally mean all. the. time. I drink coffee or Celsius drinks with a lot of caffeine and, for me normally, that could keep me awake for days. I’m usually very sensitive to caffeine, to the point that if I ever drink a caffeinated soda or sweet tea after 4:00 pm, I wouldn’t sleep until after midnight. Not anymore, though. Today I went to work for about three hours and came straight home to take a nap for two. If I am not awakened by sweat and panic-inducing nightmares (which is another issue altogether,) then I can sleep eight hours easily. I want to go to bed at 8:00 but force myself to stay up by doing laundry or some other menial task.

Along with this newer problem came something else. Not only am I exhausted but my body physically feels like I just ran a marathon – without training. My muscles ache, particularly my back but also knees, thighs, neck, shoulders…you get the picture. I hurt all of the time. I remember having some pain when I experienced depression before but this takes the cake. It makes me want to go anywhere or do anything even less than my mind wants me to go. I feel like I’m 90 when I still have a ways before then.

There was the itching period of time. I went through about a month of severe itching that only occurred when I went to bed. I searched my bed for fleas or bedbugs – gross, I know, (and there were none, for the record) but it only started as I tried to settle down to sleep and I would wake up, after finally falling asleep despite constant scratching, with marks and even open-skin areas where I’d been itching. It was only in two small areas and I hadn’t been using any new soaps, detergents, etc. To make a long story short, it was diagnosed as neuropathic dermatitis and my therapist had seen it before. It’s always only one or two small areas of the body and is caused by high levels of stress. I had been having nightmares almost every single night at that point (thanks to C-PTSD from the events that occurred the night he died) and my brain was afraid to let me sleep so it found a novel and very frustrating way of keeping me awake.

Heartburn is often an issue but I expect that’s related to poor eating habits. Headaches are now fairly common. Brain fog hasn’t eased up in the slightest. My blood pressure will be fine and then suddenly (I can feel it happen) jump up to where my diastolic is in the high 90’s but my systolic is still around 128. I already know that increased cortisol levels can cause isolated diastolic hypertension so I’m assuming that’s the culprit since the stress level is unreal. Oh, and let’s not forget the random bouts of sobbing uncontrollably that choose extremely inopportune times to occur. I’m dry as a bone one minute, feeling like I’ll never be able to produce a tear again in this lifetime, and in a sudden, salty deluge of emotion that appears to often have no specific trigger, I become a soggy and unintelligible mess.

This promotes something I never thought I would fall prey to: paralyzing social anxiety. I am not a crier. I think I’ve mentioned on the blog before that my husband asked me why I never cry – he may have seen my cry three times in ten years – and I told him I had a few theories but really didn’t know. Now, with the threat of loosed emotions barreling past my steady and sturdy exterior wall, the idea of that happening in front of perfect strangers in the grocery store or a restaurant? No, thanks. I’d rather stay home just in case.

There are probably things I’m forgetting to tell about here but suffice it to say that grief doesn’t only affect your mind and emotions. Everything is connected so it all goes haywire at once. I often feel like people are probably thinking “Good grief, when is she gonna pull it together; it’s almost been half a year…”. But, unfortunately, I don’t get to choose how or when or IF this ends.

I’m in therapy and I’m in prayer as often as I can be. Both are helpful. I believe with all of my heart that one day I’ll look back at the ravaging pain of these days and know that God carried me through it. I know that it could even be worse because I haven’t caved to other unhealthy coping mechanisms. I also spend time worrying that if I were a stronger Christian, then I would be handling this better. I’m supposed to just remember that He’s got me and trust in that, right?

What I came here to say is that, even if a time comes when no one else human will do so, I’m choosing to give myself grace. I am exactly the person God made me. My emotional turmoil will roll on for however long it takes because this grief isn’t just happening to me, it is a part of me. It always will be now. If I became blind, it would take me a long time to figure out how to navigate my life after all these years of seeing. My life has been completely rerouted in a different way. I’m giving myself grace and I’m trusting God to help me find the door that leads me out of this dark hallway. If you, too, are still in the dark, He’ll take your hand and show you, too, if you’ll just reach 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.”

My God is Bigger Than I Ever Seem to Realize…

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My favorite perfume, for many years, has been a discontinued fragrance called “Ananya” by The Body Shop. It was a perfume oil and I loved it because, since it was an oil and not a spray, it lasted forever (both the scent when you wore it and the bottle, since you only use a little dab.)

It’s been discontinued for a long time and has gotten more and more expensive to get it when you find it. The photo below shows what I’m talking about. Unreal when it used to cost about $20-$30. Scott even bought a little bottle on eBay once for me because he really liked it, too, but buying it is just not in my budget these days. I went to a makeup counter to smell some different ones but none were close to my favorite and the different ones I liked were pretty expensive, too.

SOOOOOO, I decided to work on making a new perfume on my own somehow. I wanted it to be an oil, like my old favorite, for the longevity. I decided to start off by taking some of my favorite oils that I use in my diffuser, scents I really love, and just playing around with them to get a concoction I was happy with. I bought some empty lip gloss roller bottles to put them in. The bottles arrived yesterday evening.

Do you know that today, literally the first day I tried this AND the very first bottle I made smells JUST LIKE Ananya! I guess it is no wonder that I like each of these diffuser fragrances because my favorites, in varying amounts, ended up creating exactly what I wished I had but couldn’t buy.

I haven’t even worn perfume now for months because, well, what’s the point? There’s no one here to say “Ooohhh, you smell so good!” But I’ve been wanting some recently because it reminds me of date nights with my husband and I have beautiful memories of those times we spent together. (His cologne gets spritzed on a pillow on my bed every time it wears off.)

I can’t even explain to you how 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 this is (in the natural world.) I had to write down what fragrance I was adding to the bottle and how much of each as I mixed it so that I would know how to make adjustments or to recall the “recipe” if I decided I had found something that I liked. Each scented oil has a different amount and there are multiple different scents mixed into it. Some a dropperful, a half dropperful, some in varying numbers of drops only. Having this be the outcome of the very first chemistry-experiment attempt I made is only possible supernaturally. I’m not gonna lie; it made me cry both to smell it and to slowly come to the realization what the odds were of this happening on my very first bottle. I don’t currently have a bottle of Ananya to test it against but I have worn this stuff since I was a teenager living in Germany – which was still separated into East & West Germany at the time – that should give you an idea of how well I know this stuff. If it’s not 𝘦𝘹𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘭𝘺 the same scent, it is so close that my well-acquainted nose is unable to sniff the difference. It’s mind-boggling. I wasn’t even trying to create 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 scent. I just expected I’d be able to find something I liked and have it not cost what the eBay sellers are charging for their products.

I 𝙣𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧 even considered the idea that this would be what I came up with. I’m still flabbergasted, honestly. But God…

See, we tend to think He only has time to care about the BIG things. That’s because our minds are so very finite. But God is infinite in His abilities to care for us. This may seem like such a small thing to some people but it is such a big thing to me. God knew that. He knew and He cared enough to show me how He works…on my very first attempt without having any inclination that I could ever “figure out” that particular scent. I was just being crafty (which I enjoy doing in many respects) and wanted to make something that smelled pretty. I would have been happy just to like how it ended up smelling and not have it smell like a trash dumpster due to mixing random smells together. I didn’t pray “Hey, God, could you help me make this perfume just right, please? I’d like one of these bottles to come out smelling exactly like my favorite perfume, if you don’t mind…” because it honestly didn’t dawn on me to do so. God knows my heart, though. He knows I’ve been hurting. What parent wouldn’t go out of their way to give a soothing gift to their hurting child? God decided to go bigger anyway, even though I didn’t ask, just for me, to show me that He can.

Y’all…HE CAN. I’m here to tell you that HE CAN go big, even when it seems little. ♥️

P.S. I just looked up what the word “Ananya” means; it means “unique.” Today, it is slightly less unique than it was before.

eBay listings for the discontinued fragrance

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.

Mysterious Gifts & Forward Motion

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Google photos pulled me into a wormhole today.

I probably should have backed out but I couldn’t. I laughed. I cried. There weren’t only pictures of Scott and all of our boys but also pictures all the way back to baby births. People I loved very much are gone. My Granny, my second dad (because we don’t say “step” or “half” in my family,) my beautiful nephew, my amazing husband. All gone in the last ten years. Three out of four in the last three years and two in the last five months. We have beautiful memories preserved in photos of all of them. Some made me smile. Others hurt my heart so much. There are so many moments I wish I could go back to.

My husband has sent me gifts, though, since he’s been gone. No, I don’t see dragonflies and white feathers everywhere. I do see cardinals because he and I put a bird feeder on the window to our side porch when we noticed a male and female cardinal always coming to that brick patio area and pecking around. After we bought the bird feeder and filled it up with bird seed especially for cardinals, they began to come to the feeder every day to eat and allowed us to watch them. We adopted them.

A couple of weeks ago, a tiny baby cardinal showed up. He’s brown right now but I still think he’s a boy because he has the little crown on top of his head like the daddy does. Mama flew up a minute later to join him. He’s such a cute little fella and Scott would have been so enamored of him, that we now also have a “grandbird.” That makes me smile. I’ve only seen the little guy twice, but I’m not as good about watching for them as my husband was.

I’ve blogged before about the necklace I got about a week after Scott was gone. He had ordered me a necklace with his thumbprint on one side and it says “We’ve got this.” on the other. We said that often. It started with Scott who would tell me all the time when I was worried or frustrated, “Baby, we’ve got this; we’ll get through it together.” Although that phrase is bittersweet to me now, and especially was on the day I received the necklace, it’s still a bold reminder of the fact that we could do anything together. I cherish that necklace, that unknowingly posthumous gift, but you won’t see me wearing it often. It’s small and fragile; I don’t want to ever risk losing or damaging it, but it’s always where I can pick it up and hold it for a few minutes in wonderment of the fact that, as he was the one struggling through the pain of a spinal injury, he thought to buy a gift to encourage me. That’s just who he was, all the time.

Another gift that I believe came from him may be a little more cryptic to others. My husband had a fantastic green thumb; he didn’t gift me with that, but I wish he had been able to. Early in our relationship he noticed a plant at my house that was almost dead. Well, it actually looked dead. My sweet Granny had died only six months before we met and this plant was from her funeral. I tried desperately but unskillfully to keep it alive and yet, even when I thought it was long gone, I hadn’t gotten rid of it. Scott said “I can save it; let me take it to my house for awhile.” I literally scoffed at him and said “Okay, go ahead; you’re welcome to try.” I think that I thought if he took it there and then had to get rid of it because it was unsalvageable, it might be easier that way. I also thought that I would feel like I really did everything I could. I did not believe he could save it. But I did not yet know of this particular talent of his.

I always over-water or under-water plants. I’ve killed everything from azaleas to cacti. I am seriously challenged in the plant-keeping department but I love them. I even bought a bouquet of tulips that looks and even feels like the real thing because that way I couldn’t help them die. But my husband, then my boyfriend, brought that plant back to life from the shadowy grips of death and it flourished. When he tried to bring it back to my house, I respectfully declined saying that I would kill it without meaning to. He said, “I’ll just check on it when I’m over here.” and I said “You don’t know the depth of my failure with plants; it would probably be dead before you got back.” So, he kept it until he moved to live in my house while we looked for a new house together. I don’t think a plant has died here since, although some are, sadly, quite close again now that he is gone.

I’ve been amazed, since we moved to our new house, how hard it is to kill a crepe myrtle. I love them because they are gorgeous when they flower. There were three different colors of crepe myrtles at our new home which we bought in January, 2020. One baby pink, one white, and one hot pink. When Scott cut them back, I got so upset. I said “They’re going to die now. There’s practically nothing left!” It seemed he had almost cut them back to half their size. Instead, they bloomed with even more flowers that spring.

Now, I know that crepe myrtles can self-propagate. We have two “babies” that appeared in our yard and have flourished quite naturally. They’re both the hot pink variety. But, within a month of Scott dying, a funny little plant began to pop up inside a square planter that stands just below our front porch steps. As it began to get larger, I thought “that does not look like anything that we picked out to put in those planters.” We had situated them more as giant dish gardens and spoke at length with the greenhouse about what would grow well together in that area of the house, with full morning sun and little shade.

One day I walked out the front door and suddenly realized what it was. It had bloomed with a gorgeous color of purple flowers I’ve never seen before but it was most definitely a crepe myrtle tree. I got in the car and drove up and down my street very slowly a couple of times. No purple crepe myrtles anywhere. I had thought that a seed from a nearby tree must have floated on the wind and somehow landed in that pot, right at my front door, but there were none to be found in that color. In fact, I haven’t yet seen another that color since this one arrived.

I researched on the internet. Hydrangeas can change color based on the acidity or alkalinity of the soil so maybe…nope; crepe myrtles don’t change colors. I don’t know how it showed up in my planter but it has grown to be over four feet tall. Today I decided to transplant it to an area in my front yard where it could continue to grow. That little tree had broken through the bottom of a heavy-duty plastic planter and was rooted into the soil beneath it. Solid boundaries could not contain it’s roots. I had to dig into the soil beneath the planter to free the roots and then break the planter to get it out, but I have re-planted it. There is a bit of browning on it and some of the roots broke but I’m trusting that resilient little guy is going to beat the odds…of having to live in my yard without Scott here.

My husband would know that keeping beautiful plants and trees alive would be one of my worries. I think He and God cooked up an unlikely surprise for me, something to make me smile but that I couldn’t inadvertently kill. (I’m still going to ask the guy who does my lawn to check on it and keep an eye on it for me, though, just to be safe.)

From memory photos, to baby birds, to jewelry, to blooming trees, and of course, to a beautiful granddaughter we eagerly anticipated together, I am learning to look for positive things in my grief. I can choose to belabor the fact that he isn’t here to enjoy all of these things, that the memories will only be just that, memories, forevermore because he’s not here to enjoy and make any new ones with me, but that is not going to help me step forward.

Side note: I have thought long and hard about this subject. This is semantics, perhaps, but I am not “moving on.” At least in my interpretation, moving on indicates leaving. “I’ve reached my top potential at this job; it’s time I moved on.”

I am moving forward. I will never leave my husband behind; he is such an enormous part of me. I am moving forward because sitting in my grief, as opposed to moving through it, is not serving me well. I think there may always be a part of me that doesn’t want to keep going without him, but I am still here and that is an indelible fact. I cannot remain my current age, refusing to move forward into the next year. I can no more choose to stay in the days when he was still beside me. If I must age then I must also adapt to these unwanted circumstances. To do that, I have to move forward, as there is no going back.

Today, I planted a beautiful tree, mysteriously gifted to me, in honor of the gifts that my husband has left with me. It’s just a “baby tree” right now but I’m going to do all that I can to grow it into a full, abundantly flowered, and delightful memorial of who my husband was to me and to the world. As it continues to grow, so will I. The tree isn’t blooming now, as we enter fall and then winter, but I expect extravagant purple blossoms in the spring. I will try my best to bloom into some version of happiness with it.

Bulbs Scott planted for me
My mysterious, purple-blossomed crepe myrtle, freshly planted
Brand new blooms from Scott’s carefully tended roses
I don’t remember what he planted here but I think it’s amaryllis, one bloom left this year.

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.

Why Must It Always Be War?

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Our love story was something indescribable. Trying to explain it…they don’t make the words for it. We had something that I know some people go their entire lives without being able to experience. When I’m feeling bitter and angry about losing our future together, I try to remember that.

These days my mind can be described as nothing short of mayhem. If you gave mental states a first, middle, and last name like we do people, I guess it would be Mayhem Chaos Ineptitude. That last name is inherited from the fact that, no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to control Mayhem and Chaos…erratic little devils that they are. Consuming.

This week holds big challenges for me. My mind, on the best of days of the worst of days, struggles to maintain focus or concentration. With challenges looming you’d think I’d rest my mind of weary thoughts but it has plans of its own. Sleep comes fitfully and in short supply. I doubt that this is a recipe for greater focus.

Strangely, despite anxiety, I have an odd sense of peace. How do anxiety and peace co-exist, you might ask? My answer is “in layers.”

Peace runs deep and settles my soul while I am fraught with anxious feelings on the surface. This is a paradox difficult to explain but it is something I have experienced before during another unwelcome intrusion on my life. I know, in the deep layer, that I will be okay. I know, in that place, that God has hidden me under the feathers of His wing.

For the record, God does not actually have feathers or wings; He is not an angel. That is but one example of Biblical allegory that I think embodies the feeling of protection He provides quite well.

So there is a knowing in my soul that I am wrapped in the protection of the Almighty. My soul is secure and my victory is sure.

At the same time, I experience considerate unrest. Fear is not of God but from the Father of Lies so it’s not surprising that he is still after me. I rebuke the anxiety and it flees temporarily, ever to return and sometimes tenfold. Especially with particular trials and tribulations imminent in both short and long distances ahead.

This means that my war between pandemonium and serenity is partially the cause for my lack of peace itself. Why does my brain choose anarchy when I know immediately which side I choose?

I choose to submit to the authority of the One who reigns on the side of quietude and contentment. I choose my side. And if you choose a side then you must become a warrior for that cause.

To battle for the faction of peace, instruments of defense must be held resolutely and those of offense must be utilized effectively. In this case, only spiritual armor will do.

The only offensive tool in a spiritual battle is the Word of God. The Voice of Truth. And the truth is, I am not enslaved by the enemy. I am a daughter of the King of Kings. Since the victory of my Father’s kingdom has already been accurately prophesied, in faith I have no fear.

Today, I am choosing to rest in that. I may have to choose it over and over as minutes pass, but I will fight as valiantly as I am able for the side to which I am loyal. And when I am unable, He still is.