Monthly Archives: November 2015

struggle

What do you do when you can’t sleep because the sobs keep wracking your body and your pillow is soaked with tears…

I just don’t know how to do this.

This Christmas thing.

There is a tree in my living room with ornaments from every year of his life, from little baby shoes to shiny dinosaurs to workbenches to baseball players to, last year- a weightlifter.  My children and husband put the tree up while I was in bed, too despondent to even think about laying eyes on those ornaments, hanging up the stockings, putting up the decorations…

I finally got up later and went downstairs to see that the girls had only put up four stockings.  I was irate.  “Put his up! Put his up!” I exclaimed a combination of impatience and irritability and pure sorrow.  “He will always be part of our family.” I said with a crack in my voice.

I just don’t know how to do this. It’s too hard.

As I was lying in bed a song began playing in my head captures exactly how I feel.

“Held” by Natalie Grant

(Fifteen years) is too little, they let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We’re asking why this happens to us

Who have died to live, it’s unfair
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell

W’ed be held

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait for one hour
Watching for our Savior

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
W’ed be held

It’s appalling.  It’s unfair.  It’s bitter- when the sacred is torn from your life-

And you survive. I will survive.  I may not make it more than a few hours without the salty tears falling into my coffee.  The lump in my throat may not go away.  My heart may swell with agony until I have reached my breaking point but somehow I know…

I will be Held.

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait for one hour
Watching for our Savior

I do believe that hope is born of suffering.  I believe that suffering is more than it implies; that in many ways it is also a gift.  The harder it is to hold on, the more intense the pain, the tighter we must hold on.  The harder the suffering the more we grow.  The more we change.  The more we are molded- if we let it.

Psalm 34: 17-18

The righteous cry, and the LORD hears And delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.…

grief-n-holidays-3_dvd.original

All the Hard Things

I wrote this ten days ago and never finished…

I dreamt about him last night…

for the first time that i can recall.  I wish I could say that something amazing happened in the dream or that there was some kind of message.

It was just that he was there.  He didn’t say anything, he didn’t do anything, he was just there.  In my dream I looked at him and knew that he was, you know, NOT supposed to be, but yet he was and it was like a reverse dream.  Like in my dream I thought I had woken up from a dream and he was really still with us.

Waking up from something like that is devastating.  Like losing him all over again. As I woke up the tears started flowing and the nausea started.  So much nausea in the last 9 months.  I feel it more often than not.

So many things lately…I cry out to God “HOW MUCH CAN I TAKE!!!!!! HOW MUCH! HOW MUCH!”

I was talking to a friend last night who works at a hospital and I was telling her how I didn’t think I could ever step foot in Spectrum again.  Ever. I think about the day of the accident almost every day.  I have constant flashbacks of things no parent should ever see.  Over and over I see myself walking out of the ER into the waiting room.  When I had gone in, my son was hanging on to life.  When I walked out, he was gone.  I lost a part of me in that two hours or so…a piece was ripped right out and I was left broken and bleeding.

I feel like it starts to heal…then gets ripped right open again.

The horrible unspeakable images that will not leave my mind. Of that day. What I would not do to erase them.

Having to pick out a marker for my son.  Going to Lowell Granite and walking amongst rows and rows of slabs of stone meant for people who are dead.  This cannot, cannot cannot possibly be for MY baby.  Then having to open email after email of designs to approve.  Every time I open the email…rip. Gush. Bleed.

I think about…………………

The Holidays.  Oh Jesus help me.  The slightest thought sends me into a complete and utter panic.

If you would have asked me a year ago what would happen if I lost one of my children…I am sure, absolutely sure that I would have said I would be in Pine Rest.  My mental status then was not exactly healthy.  My depression was getting the better of me.  It was survival mode.

I would never have thought that I could lose Lucas and not be catatonic in a mental ward.

Why am I not?

I think- I know- because the day that Lucas died a pastor came to our house and told us, this is going to to one of two ways.  You can become bitter and angry and hardened, or you can just let everything go and let Jesus hold you.  Up to that point in my life and I had not known how to do that.  I guess I wasn’t willing to let go.  It’s very very difficult because we want more than anything to be in control.

I knew that I wasn’t in control.  I realized right then and there that I had control over NOTHING.  I was a stripped down, broken, shell of a person but there was a God that loved me enough to sacrifice his OWN son.  A God who loved me enough to make me whole again.  In whose eyes I was a beautiful impeccable creation.

Again we are reminded that we are not in control.  Coldhearted, inhuman, vicious attacks on the people in Paris.  Innocents.  The tears, the rivers and rivers of tears that are flowing down the streets in France.

Darkness continues to pervade our world.

Every day I remind myself: this lifetime is just a blink.  This is not our home.  This is not the final destination. We are in a battle with Satan and he may win over some people but he will not WIN.

I try desperately for him not to win in my heart by filling it with hopelessness.  Hopelessness that the pain will never stop, that I will have to suffer forever in this valley of the shadow of death.  That I will never stop crying myself to sleep.  That I will never again be able to look at a picture of my son’s face with out tremendous, tremendous agony.

This is my mantra, the song that keeps my soul alive:

Your Not Alone

Some days I barely hold on
When life drags me down
I wanna let go
But when my spirit is weak
You come to my aid
And strengthen my soul

I’m lost without You
I’ll never doubt You
Your grace is beyond compare
And though when it rains, it pours
You know all I have is Yours
You smile when you hear my prayer

You rescued me and I believe
That God is love and He is all I need
From this day forth for all eternity
I’ll never wander on my own
For I am Yours until you call me home
I close my eyes and I can hear You say
You’re not alone.
You’re not alone.

-Owl City

valleyof hope

peanut butter

Today I stared at a peanut butter jar and wept.

I wept because that same peanut butter jar has been in my cupboard for weeks now.  I mean, its a big jar, but we used to go through those like nothing.  I would be buying a twin pack of the even bigger jars at Sam’s at least once a month.  I was at the store getting four gallons of milk once a week.  Now the milk just…sits.  The only one left who really likes milk is Brady.  He’s only three.  He drinks maybe 12 ounces a day.  So the milk just sits.

Oh my Lord, there was a person who who used to go through our food like GANGBUSTERS.  No wonder he was so big.

What I wouldn’t give to have that huge grocery bill again.

What I wouldn’t give to have him pester me to get more almonds or hummus or guacamole for Pete’s sake.  OH WHAT I WOULD NOT GIVE.

He always wanted to go to the store for something and it pretty much annoyed me.  Well that and the gym, and I was like DUDE! I cannot handle any more running around right now!!

I would drive him around for the rest of my life if I could.

Sometimes when I am lying awake at night and it hurts so bad, so bad, so BAD I play bargaining with myself.  I don’t know why, it doesn’t makes things better its just something I do.  I say to myself, I would give up every. single. thing. I own, every penny I have, I would walk on hot coals every day just to spend one more day with him.  Even just a day.  I try to imagine the most extreme pain and misery and deprivation I would go through just to have him back.  I have thought, what about jail? Would I go to jail? Yes, yes I would.  The strange and bizarre games my head plays.

The reminders of him are everywhere I look and everything I live.  Halloween.  Every costume he wore flashes through my head.  Who he trick or treated with.  Last year at his orchestra concert he was supposed to dress up, so as the on- top- of- it Mom I am, I went and got him an old man mask and dorky cardigan sweater that day.  He was less than thrilled but he wore it.  At least while he walked out on stage and then took  it off (so he could see his music).  He later went to a Halloween party with friends.  He was here a year ago.  He lived and thrived and ate lots of peanut butter and went to parties.  I could give him a hug and rumple his hair and hear his voice.

We have a bathroom downstairs that no one uses to get ready in.  Anymore.  He used to.  I opened the drawer for the first time a few days ago and saw his deodorant, his toothpaste, his cologne.  The cologne he had gotten for christmas that year.  Untouched since he last used them on his last day on earth.

What is the moral of the story today? I don’t know. I just have these moments, times, hours of sheer unadulterated misery and I don’t know what to do but sit down at my computer.  I usually cry silently but today miracle of miracles there is no one here.  I can scream at the top of my lungs and wail and moan.  Yup scary I know but it helps.  It helps that people cry with me.  That others miss him too.  That people actually click the link and read this because they want to know how I am doing today…even though its incredibly sad.  Then if they see me later I most likely have a smile on my face.  Not that it is a fake smile neccessarily.  It’s that I grieve, and I grieve hard and then I have to get with my day.  Not that I won’t see 20 things in the grocery store that stab at my heart but I have to keep going.  You just keep going.

You just keep going.  I am sure that many many people who read this, maybe all, have something heavy that lies on their heart.  I have a friend who is having breast cancer surgery today.  I am praying for her, right now this moment.  That is scary as hell.  Life is scary and hard and heartbreaking.  You just keep going.  Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming.

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