Tag: loss

Inevitable Grief

The last time I wrote I had a euphoric Monday and I felt joy bubbling through me and I wanted to share that in my post. But as I went to post my blog, I had a superstition-driven thought that if I post about how happy I am, then bad things are going to happen to make me not happy. And while I don’t believe in superstition, I also know that life is hard, things happen. So I wasn’t overly surprised when the very next day I took my elderly dog to the vet and found out that he has advanced stages of cancer. 

And then, when I said goodbye to my two daughters who moved out of state these past two weeks, I discovered that while I am happy for them, excited about their futures, when I hugged them goodbye and watched them walk out the door, my heart did take a blow. 

I look around me, the world is still a beautiful place. Even as I write at this moment I can see the setting sun lighting up the trees, making them glow, showing off all their oranges and reds and leftover tinges of green. And I know that Jesus and his creation is beautiful. I can hear my two little boys playing a game with their twenty-two year old brother, and I am thankful for my older children and their patience and love and care for their younger siblings. I am aware of how over-abundantly I am cared for. A warm, cozy home. A husband who loves me and takes care of his family. A church where I can experience God’s presence and hear his word taught. 

Joy is still present, hovering on the edges of my life, waiting to be noticed. But I realized today that I am holding a lot of tension in my body. 

When I found out about my dog, the vet said we have a maximum of six months left, but could be a lot less. She gave me some pain medicine to give him (which has really helped) and told me what to look for to know if he’s in pain. We don’t want him to suffer and plan to take him back to the vet before he reaches that point. But how do I know when it’s the right time? Right now, he’s happy to see the kids and sleeps most of the day, but he’s a really low-maintenance dog and doesn’t complain so I’m worried that I will miss out on some clue and might inadvertently let him suffer when he doesn’t need to. And I find myself tensing up. Stiffen that backbone. Don’t relax. Be on alert. Must keep the dog from suffering. Must prepare for the grief of the kids who have grown up with this dog and love him dearly. Brace myself. 

My daughters officially packed up and left. I stiffened my backbone. This is a normal part of parenthood, letting go. Must be there for them as they make this transition. Must help the kids deal with their grief as their sisters are no longer easily accessible. Must keep a positive face on it, the girls don’t need to feel any guilt about leaving, I must not show sadness or it might make them feel sad. Brace myself. 

We have an election this week. I stiffen my backbone. Don’t watch the news. Scroll past all the political posts on social media. Don’t engage. Try not to think about the months to come as the potential for drama is high as one side has to concede to the other. Brace myself. 

And I think all this tension has to do with my poor handling of emotions. I have a history of not doing hard emotions. I ignore them. Suppress them. Distract myself from them. Rush over them. And I am at a place in life where I now realize that repressing the hard emotions means also repressing the good emotions. And these hard emotions don’t go away, they just hide and wait, disguising themselves as anger and depression. So, I know that my method of dealing with hard emotions is not right, not healthy. But it’s a really hard habit to break. 

Frankly, I think what I need is a good cry. Release. Take a pause for sadness. When I think of grief I think of the biggest losses I can think of: death of a child, a parent, a spouse. Pain that is so deep we don’t even want to imagine it. But grief is also for the inevitable losses. The ones we know have to happen, there is no surprise or shock, but they are still heavy.  Saying goodbye to your children’s dog who has loved your family faithfully for twelve years. Saying goodbye to your beautiful wonderful daughters who have grown into amazing young women, ready to take on the world. Recognizing how unhealthy our political environment is in our country and just acknowledging how sad that is. 

“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” Matthew 5:4

So, I go into this next week with an odd prayer. Lord, let me be sad, let me feel. Let me un-stiffen my back bone and instead embrace the pain, trusting that it’s ok to feel these emotions, that truly, this is the only way forward. Knowing that joy still hovers on the edges, waiting for it’s time. 

It’s Been a While

Hello Everyone. It’s been a while. I hope you all are well. I know I’ve not been consistently writing since January. I needed a break, and now I’m excited to have a place to share again. 

It’s summer here and school is out for a couple months. I purposefully did not make a lot of plans for the summer, but despite that, our schedule has still filled up so that my monthly calendar on the kitchen wall is filled with writing. 

This is the first summer in four years that it’s just our family. No foster kids. No other people staying with us. Just us. My oldest daughter came home for the summer which is an added bonus. My son who is in the army is now in Washington State and my seventeen year old is about to launch from the house for a summer of outreach all over the world. But, everyone else is close. It feels decadent. Rich. Luxurious. Just me and my family. It’s not a place I want to stay. I want to be someone who has a heart for people and is always helping in some way. But right now, this feels like a very necessary and very wonderful step in healing and recovering to just have a summer to breathe deeply, move slowly, and enjoy my family. 

This past year was kind of a double whammy for me. My youngest child entered school for the first time, and then after three years, at Christmas, my foster daughter returned to her own home. Two of the big things that identified me, stay-at-home mom of young children, and foster mom, were suddenly gone. Looking back, I can say that I have been mourning the loss of those roles. But, while I was in the middle of it, I wasn’t able to think clearly enough to say, YOU ARE MOURNING, and it’s normal, and you’ll be ok. Instead I just felt a bewildering combination of anger, sadness, depression, and numbness. Lost. 

I hope I can write more about that journey in the future. Right now I still feel like I’m in a discovery phase where I’ve got to figure out what this next stage of life looks like. Still a stay-at-home mom, but the kids need different things now. Not a foster mom any more, but still in contact with my foster daughter. My family still needs me, but I now have bigger chunks of time where I could do other things too. I’m praying for direction. But also feeling that right now I’m still in the resting stage. I’ve signed up to teach piano lessons one day a week at my church’s homeschooling Co-op and that will start in the fall. I’m excited about that. Something to look forward to. But I’m glad I’ve still got summer to enjoy before that begins. 

So, consider this the catch-up blog. I tell you why I’ve been gone and that I plan to start writing again. And then next time, I can just jump back into all the things I’ve thought about sharing with you all over the past months. I’ve read some good books I’d love to rant about. God has been gracious and merciful in so many ways. My kids have been up to the normal funny kid antics. I can’t wait to share! See you again soon. 

In Memory of Peter

When I was four or five years old my family was living in Northern Haiti on the OMS missionary compound. Our maid, who lived in the neighboring village, told my mom about a newborn baby in her village whose mother had just died of AIDS. The grandmother was caring for the baby now, but it was not doing well. My mom went into the village and found the baby: tiny, severely dehydrated and dying, the grandmother trying to keep him alive with sugared tea water. My mom brought the baby home. We had a nurse who lived on the compound. She tried to start an IV but the baby was too dehydrated. She instructed my mom to give the baby a dropperful of rehydration fluid every five minutes. My mom worked around the clock with the help of a volunteer missionary who was staying at our house. On the third day, exhausted, my mom asked the nurse if she could take a night shift with the baby. That night, under the nurse’s care, the baby opened his eyes, smiled, lifted his arms and then died. They had a funeral, people from the village came and this death ended up being the birth of my parents’ relationships and ministry in this village. 

I don’t really remember all of that. I had to ask my mom to get those details. 

What I remember is a blue blanket. A little dark head peeking through. I remember my mom made a baby bed in the living room out of a dresser drawer. I remember having to be quiet. And I remember the delight of having a baby in the house. The hope. Could this be my new baby brother? Do we get to keep him?

And then I remember the solemn conversation. Standing next to my big brother as the adults shared some important news. No images of the adults, no memory of their words, just information that was imparted. The baby had died. 

Peter had died. 

No one had bothered to name him, so our family named him Peter. 

It’s a wispy memory. A memory of What If. What if he had lived? What if my parents had decided to adopt him? What if I could have had a baby brother? 

I remember as a bit older child, moving to a different place, telling the new kids I met that I used to have a baby brother, but he died. 

As I was sitting here thinking about all this, it brought to mind another Peter who died. I had an early miscarriage in between my 9th and 10th child. I have no idea if the baby was a boy or a girl, but my heart said, this was a boy, and his name was Peter Elisha. Another wispy memory. What If? What if he had lived? A thought I shy away from. If he had lived, we would not have our last little boy who has brought so much joy to our lives. What ifs are too convoluted, confusing. A rabbit trail not worth pursuing. 

But, it is good to remember for a moment. Peter. Both Peters. You were loved for the few moments we knew you. 

Tears in Honor of You

It’s Tuesday evening. Time to write my blog for Wednesday. All afternoon I’ve been wondering what to write about. My mind circles around the thought and then instantly turns to something else. I think I’m going to read a bit more of my book. I think I’m going to practice piano a bit. I think I’m going to wash the dishes. And of course, the children are a constant presence of distraction, look at this mom, watch me mom, Mom he hit me, Mom I’m hungry. I allow myself to be distracted all day. And then, this evening I think, I need to go write my blog. And the thought comes to me, in order to write a blog, you have to think about something. Ah yes. There is the problem. I don’t want to think. Thinking is painful right now. A very good friend of mine’s grandbaby died this weekend. She was just a baby. A sweet wonderful baby. I didn’t know her, but I had heard all about her from her proud grandparents. I’d seen the occasional pictures scattered across Facebook. And I still feel paralyzed by the thought that such a loss has touched people that I know and love.

I don’t want to think because every time I let my mind focus on something, it comes back to this pain. Feeling pain and mourning are not things that I am good at. I am a missionary kid. I spent my entire childhood moving from one extreme place to another. Studies have been done on missionary kids and it seems to be a universal experience that we all struggle with mourning. We uproot so many times, have so many goodbyes to say to all that is familiar, and we rarely take the time to properly mourn all that we have lost. Mourning is painful. I think we naturally try to avoid pain. I know that for myself, my coping mechanism is to suppress it. Ignore it, push the thoughts down until they stop resurfacing. Drown it. Except that the pain doesn’t go away, it just lingers below the surface, waiting for a chance to reappear. And then it shows up in strange, unexpected places. Like the time I had my first miscarriage.

It happened while we were out of town, camping in another state. I was staying at a campsite in our camper with our children while my husband was working nearby, 14-16 hour days, working on a construction project. It was a couple weeks long project and the kids and I had gone with my husband so we wouldn’t be separated for so long. I was in a campground trying to take care of six children on my own and I miscarried. It was early on in the pregnancy. There wasn’t anything I could do. And I didn’t have time to mourn. I cried a little, but I was in shock and overwhelmed and trying to put a brave face on for my kids and my husband. And then, a month later, we were back home in Tennessee and I was sitting in church, the service had just ended and something snapped and I started sobbing. For a long time. And I am so relieved that this particular grief rose to the surface so I could properly mourn.

My friend who lost her grandbaby, she is special to me because many years ago she started me on a long journey of healing. I don’t know how to describe her relationship to me except as a co-therapist. We listen to each other. We provide a safe place for each other and other women as we dig down and resurface these stories that haven’t been properly mourned. And it seems that the only way I can honor my friend and her grief is to not let myself run away from the pain, as peripheral to my life as it is. To let myself feel it, mourn alongside her. Not suppress, let myself be sad. Give myself permission to grieve.

So, My dear friend, this is how I honor you and your ministry, your family, your devastating loss. I will allow myself to grieve with you.