One is the Loneliest Number

Some days I feel it more than others. It is so hard to measure, or know what brings it on, but I miss him. You don't spend 20 years with someone without some indelible impression being made on your psyche like a footprint that says "I was here". Every minute was not the toxic mixture our union had become toward the end.
Suddenly I feel more alone than ever. Even when I'm in the company of friends, that sense of being significant, the half of the whole that being pulled apart leaves the other diminished. Two are left where one used to be, both with broken hearts.
The anger of all that was stolen has carried me, but now it seems be giving way to grief. The joy of being "home" also lifted me above the heaviness for a time, but real life has to resume. All holidays present opportunities for grief to surface, even Independence Day. Family gatherings, cook-outs, barbecues - just sitting on the outer rim uninvited. And yet being invited is equally as painful. Seeing so many people - even the friends who you know have had similar marital struggles as your own - all basking in the contentment of their relationships is a gnawing feeling in the hollow pit of your stomach.
Tonight the kids want me to take them to see fireworks so they can meet up with a group of their friends. We might do that. We were also invited to a church picnic that today I just can't bring myself to do. Sometimes it is less lonely alone.
I'm wishing for an ordinary Saturday.

Bear It We Must

It is hard to be happy today when others are suffering. All I could think of this morning when I woke up was this line that Elisabeth Elliot opened her radio show with for years. You are loved with an everlasting love...and underneath are the everlasting arms. If anyone knew what it was to be held by everlasting arms, it was that amazing woman.
In the last week I have heard so many terrible things -
The loss of a child
The end of a marriage
A cancer diagnosis
It all seems to much to bear at times, and yet bear we must. Even when it is hard. Even when we feel we can't. We are witnesses and participants in pain. I have no answers.

Today is our 20th anniversary - Travis and I, which is nothing short of a miracle. It feels wrong to find anything worth rejoicing over when other are hurting so much.
Lord bear up under us with everlasting arms. Oh how we need You.

Sad Anniversary

Can I be a little controversial? I know how tragic the loss was on September 11th, 2001. It was a terrible day that none of us will soon forget - of unbelievable proportions. I know we should continue with reverence and love to remember those that are lost. For those who had loved ones that lost their lives on that day, how could they ever forget? What I wonder at is the tributes that seem to be turning into an annual funeral, and how healthy it is for people to have this event as an emotional axis for their lives. Instead of a memorial, it has become a yearly mass scab removal. I wonder how healing will ever take place for these families that make the pilgrimage to Ground Zero every year.
I have never had a loss quite as shocking as the loss of loved ones at the hands of terrorists. I am not sure if there is maybe a piece that I am missing experientially to be able to fully identify with what these who have been left behind need - perhaps an annual opportunity to gather together with others who experienced the same loss and grieve together is a very important part of that healing. I lost my grandparents 16 years ago when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter - both very suddenly and 3 days apart. I miss them. Sometimes it makes me cry and sometimes I want to talk about them and remember their lives, but I know that it would finish me off if we had to relive their funeral every year on the anniversary of their deaths. In my heart I memorialize them. They live on in me and I will never forget, but in order to continue to live, my life could not be engulfed by their deaths.
I am concerned that these families will get stuck where evil touched their lives, and that the lives of those who were lost that day will pale in comparison to how they died.

Into the Future

I heard this song yesterday that had a line in the chorus, "it's hard to say it, hard to say it, goodbye, goodbye". A few months ago, the sadness would've carried me on that chorus into another new wave of grief. It was different yesterday.
I also got an email from a friend telling me that she missed me and would do anything just to spend a day together again. I feel the same, but the feeling didn't make me sad, I just let myself feel it and it was okay.
I was telling a new friend who is also struggling with being new in this area that it seems that there were huge waves of grief not long ago that would come up to your neck and knock you over. Those same waves are now only waist high, and sometimes only lap at my ankles.
I had a 45 minute drive by myself to the Mom's Meeting at our new co-op, with my new Casting Crowns CD. The ladies at the co-op meeting prayed together over some pretty serious needs, but have a genuine respect and love for one another that is palpable in the room. I was overwhelmed with emotion as I realized how much I want to be friends with some of them. It is a place I thought my heart would never go again. On the way home, I felt so healed of so much, and worshipped there in my mini-van like I haven't in a while.

How Blue

Today was a day when I was really struggling with homesickness. It isn't anything I can explain, but I imagine it must be a lot like grief in that it is triggered by something usually unexplainable, and comes in waves, the ferocity of which you can't anticipate. I have been here for over a year now, and still feel that I do not have one really connected friendship. I am the kind of person who would die if banished to a deserted island. Remember John on the island of Patmos - my visions would have been even freakier!
This evening we were listening to the local Christian radio station and the DJ read these verses out of Matthew from the Message translation:

You are blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule. You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.
You're blessed when you're content with just who you are - no more, no less. That's the moment when you find yourselves the proud owner of everything that can't be bought.

These words were so healing - because for a short while today - I was at the end of my rope. These precious words helped me to focus on my Father. Losing the community of friends in WV was a traumatic loss. Some days I manage with the grief, the feeling of space that is always with me. Other days like today - you hear there is a Teddy Bear birthday party that you are missing - and you know the friend that is having it didn't tell you because they didn't want you to hurt, and yet you hurt anyway because there is no win in this situation - you know you are watching their lives from a distance now. When they call or email or send you a letter that says they miss you, you know that something in their day made you cross their mind - but what they don't understand is the hole, their absence in your life is palpable in almost every moment of every day.
We ate dinner out tonight at CiCi's Pizza and I was snippy with Travis through the whole thing and when we were leaving I started to cry. He was pretty patient with me. It was later that I heard those words from Matthew - and it was like a hand reaching down to lift me out of a hole. I am so thankful to have such a loving and compassionate Father that He would cause them to read just the words I needed to hear - I am blessed, even in grief I am blessed.

Ruth Bell Graham 1920-2007

Yesterday afternoon surrounded by her family and friends, one of the few women who could likely be called a saint in our day and time, left this earth bound for heaven. I was startled this morning when I read the news and heartbroken for her family who will certainly mourn her loss. When I watched the video on Fox News, a statement from her daughter was read, including several quotes that Mrs. Graham had made. It was so poignant, and being a lover of quotes - I will always remember fondly the woman who went counter-culture to model Christian womanhood:

Make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.
~ Ruth Bell Graham

Numb-skulls

It has come to my attention more and more what a society of "feelingless" people we are becoming. I don't mean to say that we don't care about one another, but that we are a society that continually rejects our feelings. Many people in my generation (late 30 somethings) grew up in a time where we were taught to stuff our feelings, ignore them, pretend that they do not exist. It caused a lot of emotionally unhealthy adults.
Currently, I think the trend may be reversed in some ways. Many in our culture are preoccupied with feelings, offended at the slightest suggestion of an insult, a discussion about a choice we have made, or maybe even going so far as to think that anyone who does not feel as we do - share our sentiments, thoughts or opinions is being critical of us. (Trust me, been caught in this trap myself!) I think therapists couches are full of people trying to analyze and over-analyze ever minute conversation, gesture, or look we have in our interactions with other people. It is making us sick. What does God's word say?

He who covers an offense promotes love. Proverbs 17:9

Another trap I think that we are finding more and more prevalent is the numbing of all feelings. My mother-in-law lost her husband of 51 years last July. She is grieving. However, more than one person has suggested to her that she needed anti-depressants. I think this is a mark of our culture. I don't mean to take issue with those people - I think they are making their suggestions in love, but I worry about the trend to suppress our feelings. There are normal stages of grief, and if you do not go through them, I believe they will come back around again. Numbness is not overcoming, it is denial and I think that as a society we are in big danger here.
I know that many people take medications such as these to function - I have myself. I went through a time of such severe anxiety that I was literally having to remind myself to breathe. I had so much on my plate that I would go to bed at night and think to myself, what is the absolute least amount of sleep I can get and still function? Not healthy thoughts. So I took medication for a while - and then got my life straight - and found I no longer needed the medication. Some of the most healing times in my life were when I absolutely came to the end of myself, and beat my fists, cried my eyes out and screamed to the Lord to help me. God's word tells us repeatedly to "cry out". I don't know about you, but I'm going to take Him at His word - He seems to know best! If I had been a zombie, I would not have been able to grow through the difficult times.
I worry that some will react negatively to what I have said here - but please know - I am not talking about a physiological need for medication - I am talking about the generation of elementary school children who are drugged up so they can conform to the standards of a classroom, adults who take medication by the handfuls so that they don't have to feel guilt or pressure or pain for infidelity, cheating on their taxes, walking out on a wife/husband and children, etc. Our feelings are a tool God uses to drive us to Him, the place where it all comes back together again.

Prayer Request - Our Pastor's Family

When we started visiting the church we are currently attending on the last day of 2006, the pastor shared with us that his mother had just been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. He is a self-professed “mama’s boy” and you could tell it to be true by how he spoke of her. Sometime this weekend – there was some confusion at church this morning about whether it was Friday or Saturday – his mother went to meet Jesus. Please pray for this hurting family.

I would like you to especially pray for this precious man that they call “Brother Randal”. He’s a big old guy with the dearest heart, and he loves the Lord so much. But as I have recently read A Grief Observed, I have come to know that even those whose faith is strong can be shaken while grieving. Pray for his strength.

This morning, the substitute pastor preached out of Habakkuk – chapter 3, verses 17-19 – which say this:

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.

We can rejoice in the Lord in spite of our circumstances. And yet saying this to someone who is grieving seems as if you have no understanding of their pain. Through the grief, it is the enemy’s battle plan to take us out. Please pray for this man of God that he would be able to stand, even through this greatest hurt of his life.

While this was on my heart today, I read this wonderful post about death at a blog I read frequently – and it says it all. Death has been swallowed up in victory! I Cor. 15:54

Lord, please comfort the hearts of Brother Randal and his family with this blessed assurance.

The Fellowship of Suffering

After my post yesterday about being an open person, and how freely I share, I have been sitting on a tremendous hurt since yesterday afternoon. I opened my email to an emotional bomb - with devastating consequences. In fact, it hurt so much that I could not even muster up words. My sweet husband knelt with me at the foot of our bed and prayed while I cried. I am grieving a loss - for about the millionth time, which you would think would make it easier, and yet for some reason, it seems to make it worse. However, the Lord and I have walked a long road of fellowship in this. He continues to remind me that He knows what rejection feels like and while it hurts deeper - I am more able to handle it than ever before. I know that there is a spiritual principle here somewhere that I cannot identify, other than maturity.
My thoughts are slightly clouded by grief - someone that I love - in fact one of my parents - has chosen to sever a relationship with me. There is nothing I can say or do - as I know from past history. I am thankful that while it continues to repeat itself, God shows no limit of pouring love and forgiveness through my heart to strengthen me for the roller coaster ride that this relationship mandates. I am innocent of blame. Their perceived injury is that of Satan's design, and he continually blinds their eyes and encapsulates their heart.
This morning I was so comforted by this verse - John 1:11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Jesus was familiar with the sting of rejection from those we would have expected to love Him the most. I know Christ better by sharing in the "fellowship of His sufferings". If walking this road is necessary to experience the power of His resurrection, fill my heart with courage Lord.
God spoke comfort to my heart this morning with this verse as well - (in italics)
Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
I know the answer to this question is YES.
Though she may forget, I will not forget you!
I know the Lord will not forget me. I know that He loves me. I know that all the things that have transpired in a lifetime Satan meant for evil, but my Lord intends to use them for His good.

And as I write this, I can hear my children down the hall singing from Matthew West's song, Only Grace, these words, "there's only grace, there's only love, there's only mercy and believe me, it's enough, your sins are gone without a trace, there's nothing left now, there's only grace". The Lord has freed first me, and then my children. I am so blessed. I am so very very blessed.

Three Widows - A Grief Observed

This post may make some people that I love cry. I won't mean to - but I did want to write about the understanding that I am gleaning from a book I am reading. At the library the other day, Kendra happened to find A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis in a "used books for sale" box. Knowing he is one of my favorite authors, she said "Look mom!" and 15 cents later I was it's proud new owner. It is not a very long book - but it is definitely like observing someone from the inside out who has lost someone that they loved. The book is C.S. Lewis' journal written after the death of his wife Joy - a wife given to him after many years as a bachelor and seemingly snatched away by cancer. This book has personal meaning in my life, as my husband's mother and both of her sisters have all three been widowed in the last year and a half. What you witness in their lives externally, now takes on new definition to me as there is a whole internal aspect you come to understand you cannot be a spectator to. It makes me love them more. It makes me want to go visit each of them and sit and listen to them tell me stories of memories that mean so much to them, or maybe tell me nothing but just to be comforted by the presence of another person. The truth is when someone is grieving, the rest of us don't know what to do. We make a meal, send a card, mere trifles to a person who feels they are dying inside. This excerpt gave me pause and I felt it so deep, beyond the place that makes you cry:

I have no photograph of her that's any good. I cannot even see her face distinctly in my imagination. Yet the odd face of some stranger seen in a crowd this morning may come before me in vivid perfection the moment I close my eyes tonight. No doubt, the explanation is simple enough. We have seen the faces of those we know best so variously, from so many angles, in so many lights, with so many expressions - waking, sleeping, laughing, crying, eating, talking, thinking - that all the impressions crowd into our memory together and cancel out into a mere blur. But her voice is still vivid. The remembered voice - that can turn me at any moment to a whimpering child.

I cannot imagine what such a loss feels like. While I have lost grandparents that I loved, I loved them as a child. My heart was broken for their loss, truly, but not in the same way as that separation, the tearing away Mr. Lewis' describes of one with whom you have become "one flesh", and yet he distinguishes the limit to that - in that you cannot truly share someone else's weakness, fear or pain, no matter how badly you want to. There truly must be a sense, and it helps me to understand the anger that some have in grief, that your spouse has gone somewhere without you, that you cannot go. All religious platitudes fall short, and there are no words. God alone is the comforter, and it must seem to those grieving that He is even absent for a time. C.S. Lewis was a great theologian, and his struggles bring comfort to me as he brings his anger, doubts and fears to pen and paper. It is only when we ask questions, that God begins to answer.

I Miss My Mom - CAUTION Revealing Post

This is indeed going to be a very revealing post about me. Perhaps because it's late, and I am feeling a bit vulnerable - but my heart is on my sleeve. Maybe I'll chicken out and never click the "add new entry" button, or even get up and delete it in the morning. If not, read with caution - there may be some things in here you just don't want to know, and if you comment, please comment gently, because my in this area, my heart is very delicate.
I grew up with a mentally ill mother. There it is - in black and white - I typed it. I have said it many times, but to put it down in black and white seems to make it more permanent somehow. I spent many years trying to cover up this simple fact, but the truth is that it really was never simple at all. As I have gotten older, and realized how abnormally she behaved, and how out of the ordinary our lives were, and refused any longer to live in the viscious cycle, things have gotten much more complicated.
A few years ago, right around this time - a few days after Christmas, my mom had a gastric bypass - but I didn't know about it because she wasn't speaking to me. (This is all a part of the cycle.) Within 48 hours of her surgery all of her major organs were failing, and a cousin called to tell me that my mother was in a coma. A girlfriend drove me the several hour trip to the hospital where she had the surgery, to see an unrecognizable form laying in a bed with every machine known to man hooked up to keep her alive. Early the next morning, I woke both my friend and myself up sobbing out loud in my sleep, crying over my mom.
For the next three months, every Sunday afternoon, my children and I took our little homeschool on the road. On Friday nights, when I would confirm that within a few hours my step-father would arrive to be by my mother's bedside, I would head home - to grocery shop, make 15 sandwiches for my husband (he eats 3 a day for 5 days!), and cook all our meals for the coming week - so my husband could also have a homecooked meal every night. I stayed by my mom's bedside, loving her the only way I knew how - bathing her, feeding her, putting her on a bedpan, learning to lift her out of bed, helping with her physical therapy, and just being a companion. I wish I could say that this made a difference in our relationship and in her heart - but, the same woman that had not spoken to me for a year or so preceding the surgery returned. It was just devastating.
So it has been for most of my adult life. I just celebrated the second Christmas in a row without her speaking to me. There are never any reasons that make sense to anyone else, so I will spare you, kind readers, the details. Fortunately, I am no longer a captive in the torture that befalls one living with a mentally ill person. There were times when I thought I was going crazy because the person in my life I most trusted would be so out of alignment with everything that seemed right and true. When I became a believer ten years ago, I really gave my heart, even the broken, confused and sick parts to the Lord and He alone has done a tremendous work there. But deep down inside, is a little girl who still needs a mom, and I am sad because I know she needs me too. I have tried to call her several times recently to no avail. I am reminded that the Lord says He will be a "Father to the fatherless", and I cling to that when I am hurting. But if you talk to Him, could you put in a word for me and tell Him, I miss my mom?

Don't Make Bean Soup!

Yesterday, I made a big pot of Navy Bean with Ham soup. It was a recipe my mother shared with me that she learned from my Memaw and Grandy - my dad's parents. I hadn't made it in years, and I forgot how much I like it. It is really rich, and hearty, with navy beans, ham, carrots, celery, onions and potatoes. The smell of it cooking in the house was wonderful.
While I was cooking, I was overwhelmed with thoughts of my grandparents, and how much I miss them. They died four days apart, Memaw first, followed by Grandy in 1991 when I was pregnant with my first child. Their deaths so close together were very traumatic for our whole family. Grandy had battled lung cancer and emphysema for many years and was hospitalized for several weeks preceding his death. My Memaw's death was a little more unexpected, being up one night sick and rushed to the hospital. But what was significant about their lives was not their deaths, as eternally etched in my memory are the phone calls from my dad long distance breaking the news and the sight of a funeral home overflowing with people and flowers where two caskets sat at the far end of a long room. What is significant is the lives that they lived and how they impacted the people who loved them.
My Grandy owned a barber shop, perhaps a contributing factor the emphysema that he struggled with later in life from inhaling small hair particles all those years. His barber shop was the men's club of the small town Damascus, Maryland that they lived in. He knew everybody, young and old in that little town, and they all knew him.
My Memaw was the mother to two sons, born ten years apart, my dad being the younger of the two. She was a twin, and her mother died shortly after giving birth to her and her sister. The girls were raised by their father, who I understand remained single, and their oldest sister, my great Aunt Lib. Memaw went to work as a nanny at a young age, before meeting and marrying my grandfather. I think that she must have missed out on the gentle, loving touches a mother brings to a child's life, because she was never very affectionate - yet you always knew she loved you.
My grandparents were anchors for me in a very tumultuous childhood and adolescence. I wish I had spent more time with them when they were alive, but being young I knew very little of what a precious opportunity I was letting slip away. As I grew up I bounced back and forth between my divorced parents, but my grandparents never gave up on me, never stopped loving me, and even when they would get discouraged with some of my instability, I never felt diminished in their eyes. My one regret is that they never had a chance meet my children or to see the woman I have grown into.
So here is a little warning - one day you decide to make soup, and the next thing you know you are crying. As you watch your hands use the knife on the cutting board, in your minds' eye you see your grandfather at the kitchen counter chopping onions, and then your heart is aching for missing two people that were very precious to you. Don't buy ham, don't buy navy beans, and don't make soup! It'll make you way too sad.