Reaching out - again

UPDATE: I posted this a month ago and after thinking more about it and reading some very thought-provoking books, I want to make a seemingly small, but really important edit. See the second to last paragraph for the edit.

As believers I think so many of us act and talk as though when difficulty strikes all we need to do (or all someone else needs to do) is "reach out" to God and He will respond. We'll then be carried through the difficulty. We say things like, "just turn to God", "just pray", "read His Word", "have faith". I can tell you that to a person going through the most difficult thing they've ever faced, you might as well say "just move that mountain over there." How do you even begin to do those things? When you are at your lowest, how do you force yourself to turn to God? How do you pray to or read the Word of the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe who just allowed this tragedy in you life? How do you do anything, really?

But I think the glory is that we couldn't be more wrong when we start with the premise that WE must take the first step, or any step, that WE must be the one to reach out to God. He carries us and takes care of us despite our failures. Even when we can't reach out, can't trust, can't pray, can't read, He is bigger and can overcome my failures. He is bigger than me and my circumstances. When I woke up yesterday morning I was thinking about all of this and then I read Oswald Chambers for the day, and then today, a wonderful friend emailed me an encouragement along the same lines. God truly knows how to weave things together. Chambers says: "The reason some of us are such poor examples of Christianity is that we have failed to recognize that Christ is Almighty. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment or surrender to Jesus Christ. . . . We struggle to reach the bottom of our well, trying to get water for ourselves."

There's the trap, we think we must reach out to God to get to Him. It's impossible, we're the ones at the bottom of the well, we can't do it. To me that's where others' stories of faithfulness came in. If I couldn't read His Word, I could read the story of another person's loss and victory in that. If I couldn't pray, I could rest in the prayers of family and friends.

So, how do we "get to God" in these tough times (that we ALL face)? I think if you are a believer, the answer is "you're already there." God reaches out to all of His Children. I'm here to tell you that it might take two or three months to see it, to feel it, but it was always there.

Psalm 34:18
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in Spirt."

Grace and peace.

A Grief Observed

The seminal book ( or at least one of them) on grieving as a believer has to be A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis. Lewis writes the very intimate details of his grief following the loss of his wife; his thoughts on God and His place in that loss, his thoughts on faith and grief in general. While I do think it is true the each person grieves in a different way, there is a commonality in grief. Lewis lost a wife, I lost a son, another may have lost a parent, but Lewis' words resonate deeply. I'm going to quote from the book here:

"What sort of lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, 'Come back,' is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn't Lazarus the rawer deal?"

Of course the self-centered nature of grieving a loss is natural and, in my mind, right. I wouldn't be human if I was instantly happy for the gain of the one I've lost. Heaven has gained something, Joshua has gained everything, but as a mother, I've lost something very precious - is there anything more precious here on earth than a new life?

We went to visit Joshua's grave on Easter Sunday. It was the first time we have ever been there as a family - Jeff, Caroline, and me. Caroline is the consummate two year old. Every other minute, she's asking "what's that?" As we entered the gates of the cemetery, Caroline said, "what's dis?" I said, "we are at the cemetery, Caroline." She then pointed to the grave markers and said, "what's dat?" I said, "Those are graves Caroline." She pointed at others and asked the same question again. Jeff tried to explain a grave in as simple as possible of an explanation. The explanation satisfied her and as we stopped the car, she asked where we were going. I said, "we are going to visit Joshua's grave." She said, "He go to Baby Jesus." Not a question, a statement. I'm not sure where she got that from, but I know it wasn't from her parents. The more time I spend with this precious little person God has given us, I am keenly aware of the truth that comes with innocence.

We're trying to strike a delicate balance of acknowledging Joshua as part of our family, but not trying to expose Caroline too much to that which she cannot understand. I think that will be an on-going process in our lives for now, but I suppose our first family trip to his grave is a start. As Jeff and I put flowers out and cleaned his grave marker (and Caroline helped clean for a while) and then prayed, she commenced doing what she does best - playing. She collected a bunch of sticks and made a stack right next to his grave; her way of "doing something"? It was a beautiful day.

The Week that Changed the World

I read the following this morning, and I'm almost too ashamed to admit that the thought that we are now in Holy Week hadn't yet occurred to me. In the midst of all of my busyness and self-centered-ness, my own worries and tragedies and joys, this is a nice reminder to shift my focus this week and hopefully, each week that follows.

"This week, take the time to wonder about what we are doing, and what we are remembering.

For close to two thousand years, we have gathered like this, in places like this, to light candles and chant prayers and read again the ancient stories of our deliverance and redemption.

But are we aware of what we are doing? Do we understand what it means? Do we realize the price that was paid? A proper accounting is impossible. The ledger—His life, for our souls—seems woefully unbalanced.

So try this. This week, take a moment in each day that passes to wonder: What was He doing during this time of that one week all those centuries ago? What was crossing His mind on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday? What sort of anguish? What kind of dread?

Has anything we have ever worried about, or lost sleep over, or agonized about, even come close?

He was a man like us in all things but sin. He must have been terrified, His mind buzzing with questions. Long after the others had drifted off to sleep, did He stay awake and worry? Maybe He sat up alone, late at night, whittling a piece of wood, the way His father had taught Him, until a splinter sliced His skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. He might have flinched and thought: Well, this is nothing. And still it stings. How intense would the pain of death become? How long would it last? How much humiliation would He be forced to endure, stripped and bleeding? And: What about His mother? Is there anything He could do to spare her from this?

As you shop for Easter baskets and dye, think of this. Ponder this. Wonder about it. Make it a kind of prayer.And then, remember what we are doing, and why.

Because, of all the calendars in all of human history, this is the week that changed the world."

The Deacon's Bench (H/T: The Anchoress)

I've always (well, as long as I can remember) been torn between living in Grace so much that I don't pay enough attention to the price that was paid on the one hand, and being brought down by the immense nature of my own fallen-ness. That feeling is brought to the surface especially at Easter. There is the joy of resurrection just waiting to be celebrated, but in order for there to be resurrection, there has to be death. Living in that moment between the two is where I feel torn.

On a real tangible and personal level, that is the precise place that I've found myself lately. Living with the knowledge that Joshua is full and complete in Heaven, never knowing the pain that this broken world brings; but also living day in and day out with the knowledge that our family will never know him here on Earth. Although I couldn't have said this a month or two ago, I honestly can say that there is joy in believing that he is more whole than I, there is the sting of being left behind much too soon.

Grace and peace.

Here's another good read to start off the week: God Issues

Pressing in

I was reading one of the blogs I check from time to time. This particular blog is written by a young woman who lost her daughter at 31 weeks (I think that's right) due to a placental abruption. Once again, I don't know her, haven't ever spoken to her or emailed her, so I'm not going to post a link to her blog, but she said some things I thought very profound recently and I'll quote them here:

"i feel so very different, so very set apart from society right now, like i have special glasses on that see the world in a WHOLE new way, a clearer way, but a sadder and more realistic way than many others get to...that special "gift" those of us receive when our world is turned upside down and we "get" to see everything so painfully differently....i feel at times that i am not ready to re-enter the world with everyone like that yet, almost like i am waiting for everyone else to "wake up" and taste life the way i do, the way i have to..waiting for others to catch up..but it doesn't work that way. i know that. everyone is plugging along doing their own thing. their loud worlds are rocking along even if our quiet stillness is idling.....that's ok. this is our season to mourn. not theirs.

the man, whose wife died 6 weeks after her cancer diagnosis, he buried her last week, he has their kids to raise alone now. the woman who lost her only brother in iraq almost 3 years ago, she is still devastated when she talks about it. the young mom who has to sell her house this month, the one her kids grew up in and has to move into an apartment after her marriage fell apart, she has to start over on her own, she is hurting. the young woman in line at the grocery store with the dirty brown hair in a messy ponytail with a sassy 3yr old little boy in tow, she's wearing a fake half-smile and her tired eyes are hiding behind her own veil of sunglasses. she lost her daughter. she died."

Honestly, I feel pretty good most of the time now. Different, changed to my core, in the process of healing and being delivered, but all in all if you ask me how I am and I say "good", I'm probably not lying. Words like this woman's are refreshing reminders that we ALL face difficulty. If you haven't, you will. One of the things that this experience has brought home to me is the necessity of "pressing in" with others. The avoiding and awkward silence are no good. When we were in the midst of the heaviness of our loss, I would have much preferred someone to say something, anything, even if it felt so horribly weird to say it, than to say nothing at all. The people and conversations I remember the most in those days and weeks after we lost Joshua were the ones who asked questions, hard questions, uncomfortable questions, personal questions. Even before we lost Joshua, Jeff and I had been talking about how people don't "press in" to one another's lives enough. In the interest of not seeming pushy or nosy, we see someone in possible pain or heartache and we would offer something less than helpful. We don't ask questions, we might not even be sure if we would know what to say in response if we did ask questions. Of course that is understandable; it is comfortable to not push too much and to stay on the periphery of others' lives. Love is difficult though, it is hard and messy and uncomfortable.

I guess this reminds me that I need to use my life to do a better job of pressing in on those who are hurting around me. Ask the hard questions, make myslef uncomfortable, be a little too pushy, and then listen and love.

perspective

Death has a way of putting life in perspective. What is important? What is necessary? What is true? You see things in a new light. Things that once seemed important are suddenly non-essential. Things that you took for granted are now cherished. Things that you always accepted as truth are being held up to the light. I guess in that way, death and grief are equalizers; it doesn't matter how much money you have or don't have and your material possessions bring no comfort. I've never really understood the verse in I Corinthians 13, where Paul says, "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." It sounds like this sentence should come after some explanation of other things falling away or why other things are insufficient. Even though I've never understood its placement, I've always loved it and I would think it rings very true for most people. I feel like that "missing part" before verse 13 is where I've been, and maybe where you've been too. The place that when you look back on it you say, "All that is true is what has brought me through this; all that is essential is what remains. Faith, hope, and love."

Grace and peace.

Faithfulness

"I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I remember them well and my soul is downcast within me. yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:19-23

Reaching out

As believers I think so many of us act and talk as though when difficulty strikes all we need to do (or all someone else needs to do) is "reach out" to God and He will respond. We'll then be carried through the difficulty. We say things like, "just turn to God", "just pray", "read His Word", "have faith". I can tell you that to a person going through the most difficult thing they've ever faced, you might as well say "just move that mountain over there." How do you even begin to do those things? When you are at your lowest, how do you force yourself to turn to God? How do you pray to or read the Word of the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe who just allowed this tragedy in you life? How do you do anything, really?

But I think the glory is that we couldn't be more wrong when we start with the premise that WE must take the first step, or any step, that WE must be the one to reach out to God. He carries us and takes care of us despite our failures. Even when we can't reach out, can't trust, can't pray, can't read, He is bigger and can overcome my failures. He is bigger than me and my circumstances. When I woke up yesterday morning I was thinking about all of this and then I read Oswald Chambers for the day, and then today, a wonderful friend emailed me an encouragement along the same lines. God truly knows how to weave things together. Chambers says: "The reason some of us are such poor examples of Christianity is that we have failed to recognize that Christ is Almighty. We have Christian attributes and experiences, but there is no abandonment or surrender to Jesus Christ. . . . We struggle to reach the bottom of our well, trying to get water for ourselves."

There's the trap, we think we must reach out to God to get to Him. It's impossible, we're the ones at the bottom of the well, we can't do it. To me that's where others' stories of faithfulness came in. If I couldn't read His Word, I could read the story of another person's loss and victory in that. If I couldn't pray, I could rest in the prayers of family and friends.

So, how do we "get to God" in these tough times (that we ALL face)? I think if you are a believer, the answer is "you're already there." I'm here to tell you that it might take two or three months to see it, to feel it, but it was always there.

Psalm 34:18
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in Spirt."

Grace and peace.

the unknowns

I was walking around the lakes again on Sunday and I passed a little boy who must have been about 7 or 8 with his Dad. The little boy had red hair and was wearing a Germany soccer jersey; I caught myself staring at him. Is this what Joshua would have been like? No, I thought to myself, he would have had dirty blond hair like Caroline, but of course, I have no idea. What would he have been like? Would he have been a happy baby, a good sleeper, a good eater, a red head, a soccer player? I wish I could know. All of the unknowns make it hard to reconcile that reality with the fact that God allows things like this to happen. Every day. Why would God allow a mother to never experience all of the "firsts" with a child? Why would God allow a mother to experience those firsts and then lose a child before he goes to high school, or college? Why do children lose their parents? It doesn't make sense to me. Even though in my head, I know the "right" answer: we live in a badly broken world where the children of God (all of us) do horrible things to one another and where disease does horrible things to us.
I can't help but think of my own relationship with Caroline, it is literally painful for me to see her in distress or in pain. On our way to Lake Charles this past weekend we were getting off the interstate for a quick pit-stop and Caroline started crying hysterically (which, for those of you who don't know her, she is not prone to do). It was all I could do to not pull off my seat belt and get into the back seat with her to comfort her and find out what was wrong. I imagine that is how God feels when he sees his children in pain or distressed. Does it take all the power of Heaven to keep him from coming down here to comfort us? To be sure, he gives us friends and family who are here physically to offer comfort and love when we face difficulties. But we can only offer one another so much, it sounds so cliche, but we truly all grieve in different ways and what might look like comfort or help or love to me might look like intrusiveness or a bother to you. From where I sit now I can see, even if only to a small degree, that God carried us through losing Joshua. And he continues to do so, but so often when you are in the midst of it, it doesn't feel like it - it takes getting two or three or twenty steps back to see it.
I think it goes back to how suffering overflows to us and along with that we get the comfort of Christ so that we can offer it to others. Paul doesn't say that God brought us the suffering so that we could comfort others, he just says that we will get suffering and likewise we will get comfort so that we can give it. Maybe that is how God can even stand to not be down here with us giving us comfort, he entrusts those he loves to do it in his name and on his behalf until he can give it to us in full.

Suffering & Comfort

Before we lost Joshua I would hear Christians talk about suffering and they would say, "We suffer because Jesus suffered." That would always ring a little hollow for me, a middle class girl living in the United States (in the southern United States, even more so). What did suffering even look like? Maybe getting a weird look when you say a blessing out to eat at a restaurant? Having to put up with jokes about Christianity? People questioning you and your faith? Maybe feeling alone in many settings? While all those things might be difficult to endure in some ways; when I think of suffering in the big picture, those things are nothing. In fact even from where I stand today, I feel like I've only had a tiny peek into what suffering truly is.

Paul says "For as the sufferings of Christ flow into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." 2 Corinthians 1:5. There is a comfort that I've only experienced talking to others or reading the words of others who have been through similar situations. Almost nothing needs to be explained, you don’t feel so alone, you don’t have to make excuses or try to put words to what is truly unspeakable. The circumstances are different, but the thoughts and feelings run like a common thread through each loss. This must be a glimpse of what it is like to go through a traumatic experience with others who you don’t know, like hostages or a plane crash. None of us can know, and to try to relay it all with words is so insufficient, but they know what words cannot convey.

Maybe that’s how it is with Christ and His Church. When we experience suffering, to whatever degree, it gives us a kinship with Christ. Through that, the comfort of Christ then can overflow to others. I don’t believe for a second that God made Joshua die, but I do believe that he allowed Joshua to die. Why - I’ll never know on this earth. But I do know that what this world broken by sin and the evil one who prowls around like a roaring lion waiting for someone to devour brought to me, God will use for good; God’s story for his people is a story of redemption. In some small way, perhaps now the mind of Christ is a small but growing part of me. That doesn’t make it all better, but it does bring some comfort.

Grace and peace.

Mine is not a new story

I was walking around the LSU lakes a few days ago, it was a beautiful afternoon, perfectly clear sky, wind blowing, sun reflecting off of the water; but as right as everything in the world looked, something in me felt the ache of the broken world in which we live. Here I was, in the middle of February, 2008, two months from when I should be giving birth to my son, and no one would even know that. No one would know that two months go I lost him. Time is so mysterious; it is a healer in a lot of ways, but it is also a marker of the pain. I can’t help but go back in my mind to “where I would be” if Joshua hadn’t died. I would be seven months pregnant now, I would be getting his room ready, making sure everything was in order, so close to welcoming our little boy home. But all of these things are dreams that will never come to be for him and for me.

Losing Joshua has shaken my faith and made me question my faith, but I am far from losing my faith. Another young woman who has suffered a loss more agonizing than my own in many ways put a great visual on the process I feel like I’m going through: my faith is a house and I still have the house, but all of the "stuff" in my house, my set of beliefs that the structure-loving me wants to hold on to has been brought out on the lawn. I'm inspecting it all to decide whether I'll bring it back in or not. But, no matter how I feel at any given moment, something in me believes. Maybe it’s the years of “feeling it”, maybe it’s growing up in the church, in a Christian home, but most of all I think it’s God. Grace, hope, faith, and peace are gifts and I could not will myself to have them if I tried. People always say that faith helps you get through the difficult times; this experience has brought that home to me in a huge way. If I didn’t trust that God is good, if I didn’t believe that God loves me and my family, if I didn’t believe that I will see Joshua again someday, I don’t think I could get through it. If I didn’t believe these things to be true, I think I would either have become a drug addict or alcoholic, honestly. That sounds terrible, but I can't imagine not being able to find solace in the good that is God, in the love that is God. The meaninglessness of my pain and suffering would be too much to bear.

Right now, I question, I am angry, I am hurt, but despite my feelings and my circumstances, God is today the same as he was on December 2, 2007, when all still seemed right in my world. I have changed, my life has changed, and I’m still trying to figure out how to live in this changed life, but God has not changed; I know it even if I don’t feel it.

There is something about art that really gets to the painful places in a special way. Music, writing, paintings; they all speak to something in me in a way that my own words don’t quite adequately say. As I was walking around the lakes listening to my iPod, a few songs came on that I hadn’t ever really listened to the words of, or paid attention to the words of, but that afternoon they caught my ear and I was thinking to myself, “yes, that is exactly it!” In the song Bittersweet Symphony, there is line that goes something like, “tonight I’m on my knees, I’m looking for a sound that recognizes the pain in me . . .” That is exactly how I feel, I’m trying to hear something, find something that can puts words to and “recognize” the pain now. In the weeks just after we lost Joshua, tears and despair were the feelings I had and everyone around me could see that, but now, two months later, what does this look like, what are the words for it? Another song, The Drugs Don’t Work, also reaffirmed the feelings I wrote about earlier. The thought that without faith, I would be stuck exactly where the writer of the song was stuck; relying on something external to help make sense of the pain. Then, in a song by The Fray that I wasn’t really listening to consciously, came the line “Mine is not a new story, but it is for me.” That is the comfort and the agony. Others have walked this road and roads much more painful, and I get comfort from those who have do so, but I haven’t walked this road before and now I have no other choice. Mine is not a new story, I am well aware, but it is for me.

Grace and peace.

First Post

After reading some blogs from amazing young women suffering through the loss of children at all different stages (some through stillbirth, some just moments after birth, others within a few days or weeks after delivery), I've been inspired to create my own blog that will be a journal of sorts. I guess this will be me sharing with you my life and loss and (because I have faith) redemption. Feel free to read or share or comment.