Monthly Archives: August 2015

I had absolutely no intention of blogging tonight, I have been working on candles for about 4 hours, and was working on the tedious task of cleaning up wax drips and putting away the various paraphernalia I use and was really looking forward to going to bed.  Until I realized it was 12:23 am, August 16.

When I realized the day had turned over my eyes immediately filled with tears, catching me completely by surprise and my heart just filled with that incredible heaviness, that physical hurt.  It hurts to hurt.  My eyes burn, my throat is tight, I can hardly breathe.  My chest is like lead.

I have been avoiding going to this place so much lately.  Trying so hard to avoid that hurt.  Feeling like I had to try really hard to distract myself lest I get sucked down into the mire of grief.

It has not been hard to stay busy and distracted.  Guatemala, of course- getting ready to go, being there, reflecting on the week, thinking about my goals going forward.  Working on making the Live Like Lucas foundation happen.  Trying to figure out what to do about the race. It just isn’t going to be able to happen this fall, sadly but instead next summer.  It is an extremely involved process and every duck has to be in a row.

Oh and of course my four other children.  My 24/7 job.  Well almost.  I do get a night off now and then…

I guess what I am getting at is I feel another tidal wave coming on.  The mind will only let you tuck away those thoughts for so long before they coming flooding out again and what better day than 7 months to the day that my son went to heaven.

The feeling that I have in the pit of my stomach of that of total fear.  I have lost him.  I have lost him until heaven and that just seems so far away.  I have thousands of hours, millions of minutes to survive until I can finally join him in heaven -although no one knows how much time they have.

I wish so badly, that I could take him to drivers training. To go get school supplies. I ache to have him with us at the pool with us. To sit next to him on the couch watching Big Bang Theory. To take him and his friends bowling.   I see his friends and classmates on my Facebook news feed every day, their lives continuing on at a rapid exciting pace and my son’s has stopped.

It is beyond comprehension.

I could have written 10,000 plans for my life and not one of them would have included losing a child.

Like a million carat diamond ring slipping into the bottom of the ocean.  Only worse. Much much worse.

I have been avoiding that pain of loss.  The one that goes all the way into the marrow of your bones.  I carry the heaviness every day, that will never stop. Never.  But that deep grief, there is a time.  God knows when that time is.  He is holding me in the palm of his hand, just like before, just like today, just like tomorrow.  He will not let me drown in my suffering.

I felt compelled to write about the medical “investigation” component of my trip today after my daughter was complaining excessively about her plantar wart.  I promptly showed her this picture of Elena:

We had gotten to know her pretty well during the week, her house was one of the first ones built and she was very sweet.  We came back the last day that we were working in the village and she had a scarf wrapped around her neck.  We asked her why and she promptly showed us her swollen mouth.  She had a cavity in one of her front teeth that had gotten so bad that the tooth had cracked and now her entire mouth was infected.  You can only imagine the pain- I have never had a tooth nearly that bad but have had needed root canals and I thought the pain before that was unbearable.  I never saw Elena shed a tear.  These people are used to pain and hardship. I am not sure what would have happened if we had not had a solution through GRACE ministries.  The grandson of the manager of the mission house was a volunteer paramedic.  Due to the frequent needs for tooth extractions he had learned how to take out teeth, at least non-molars, to relieve the pain for the poor people. He would drive the 1 1/2 hrs to her village to extract the tooth. I am sure her family would not have been able to afford a dentist.

There was another woman in line for the food distribution who I noticed had a scarf around her mouth and I knew immediately she also had a tooth problem.  Mauricio the translator asked her to see what the problem was and could immediately see it was a molar.  Unfortunately that is something too complicated for a paramedic to handle.  It was an awful sight when she pulled the scarf down- her face was hugely swollen and the smell from infection was putrid.

This is just a small glimpse inside the world of these people.  There are no free dental clinics other than the ones provided by missionaries and with the hundreds and hundreds of villages the chances of them getting one is very slim.  This village had never even had a food/clothing distribution or a team of doctors visit their village.

The Live Like Lucas medical van would be used for people with similar urgent painful situations.  Because of the enormous need of these people it would be used in many contexts to try to improve the quality of life and reduce suffering for these people.  Please help.  You can donate through the Go Fund Me

http://www.gofundme.com/q7g7as

or if you would like a tax receipt you can write a check to  GRACE Ministries  P.O. Box 756  Grand Bay, AL 36541 make sure it says medical van in the notes.

Through the Go Fund and money sent directly to Grace we are at just over $10,000!  Share with everyone you know who has a heart for the hurting and might light to donate.  Lets do this.