Author Archives: melissaconner2015

Today was so hard.  Every day is so hard.  I am hoping someday, maybe ten years from now I will say, “I was happy ALL day today.”

We went to my Mom’s for dinner.  We frequently go there on Sundays and this was the first time without Lucas.  It felt otherworldly, like in a dream…how are we all just here doing our thing and our precious Lucas is gone? It didn’t feel right.  Not at all.

When we would go there for dinner one thing that always brought me pride was the way he treated my parents, with such love and respect and reverence.  My Dad, God love him, is one of the greatest men I have ever known.  He does however have a penchant for sometimes telling long rambling stories.  Lucas would always sit there next to him, in rapt attention, never once acting like it wasn’t the most exciting thing he had ever heard.  Family was EVERYTHING to Lucas.  He would have gone to visit Papa and Grandma every day if he could have.

He wasn’t there today.  I didn’t think it was possible for my heart to hurt so much.  Something sacred has been torn apart.  A communion of family has been forever changed.

When I got home, somehow out of the blue Lucas’ belt appeared on the floor.  It was the one that I had bought him to wear to homecoming.  How is got there I don’t know, but I sunk to the floor and sobbed and immediately thought to go light candles.  Something to radiate in the pitch black night.  I don’t do it every night but it always comforts me.

So I went to buy new candles and I thought- how many?

Part of me wants to buy a thousand.  There isn’t enough flame in the world to represent my Lucas. He was ablaze with life.

Then it came to me.

Seven. Seven is the number of completeness and perfection in the Bible (both physical and spiritual). It is used 860 times.

I lit seven candles for him because he is complete and whole and perfect in heaven.

He was my everything on earth- but he is everything to God.

“But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

Titus 3:4-7

How much of our life to we spend wanting things?

Me: A new kitchen. A new car.  A new couch. More friends.  More date nights.  Less fat.  Cuter hair.

We want and we want and we want…

Until one day the thing we want most is not there.  We can never get it again.  We can argue and beg and cajole and save our money for the rest of eternity and we cannot have it.

So we bargain with God, not because we know it will work but it somehow makes us feel a bit better.  “Lord I would die a thousand deaths just to see him for one more day.  Just to hold him one more time.  One. More. Time. Anything God…please….”

There is nothing I can do.

Why did I spend so much time wanting? Stupid. Stupid. Stupid things.

All I want is my Lucas.

“ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS, AND ALL ITS GLORY LIKE THE FLOWER OF GRASS. THE GRASS WITHERS, AND THE FLOWER FALLS OFF, BUT THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER.

I Peter 1: 24-25

Lord, I don’t understand how you thought I could handle this.  I am an empty shell, shuffling around pretending to be alive.  There are tears constantly on the brim of my lids that I am willing to stay there…don’t fall…don’t fall…

When I wake up in the morning I feel like a truck has hit me, like the most virulent strain of ebola has taken over my body. Except its ebola of the mind.  My body feels like a limp noodle too, and my stomach is in a constant state of severe nausea. Just swallow it down. Swallow it down.

“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” psalm 34:17-20

I am waiting to be delivered Lord.  I am waiting for the day when the pain doesn’t not encompass every single cell of my being, when my constant cry is not for you to take me to heaven.  To take me to see him.  When I want to live on earth and fulfill whatever mission you would have me do.

I want to understand, God, please tell me why? Why would you give me such a beautiful son that I loved more than my own life and then have him struck down like a branch chopped off a tree.  I loved him so much God.  Other than your love there is no greater love.  No greater love.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”  John 3: 16-17

I am feeble and weak, and I do not understand.  I do not know that I can stand on my own two feet again.  Yet Jesus you know everything because you knew me before I was even created, even an inkling of a thought.

For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well.

psalm 139:13-14

Today I really needed him. Lucas, that is.

It was one of those nights where I was alone with the kids and nothing was right in the world.  They all wanted me, they all needed me, I had nothing left to give.  Dinner needed to be cleaned up. Toys needed to be picked up. Subtraction problems were supposed to be worked on.  Brady didn’t want to eat anything for dinner and was crying.  Bryleigh was balancing precariously on top of the table trying to rehang valentine decorations.  This was all before the whole teethbrush/pj’s/prayers drama.  It wasn’t even bath night.  I didn’t even cook for Pete’s sake.

It was one of those nights Lucas would have stepped up, because that’s what he did. First he would have tried to hug me and I will embarrassingly admit I would resist at times, I was too pissed off at my chaotic world.  I would jokingly pummel him and our standing joke was he would stand right in front of me, his really tallness over my tallness and tell me I was short.  I would then touch his chin and tell him his chin hairs were getting too long.  They were blonde. White blonde.

He would remove Bry kicking and screaming from the table and try to find something Brady would eat.  He would promise to do the dishes after his homework.  Most of all he was just there.  There to understand. To help as much as he could without failing his biology test.

Sometimes its just about being there.

Its about showing up.

I am exhausted. To the bone, mentally, physically, emotionally.

I wonder how many days it has been since he walked through my door…30? 31? Time doesn’t seem to be measured in days any more, but moments without him.  Seconds that tick by that he is no longer here.

I wonder how it is possible that is hurts more every day.  Today for the first time I was really angry.  Not at God, strangely, but at Lucas. How he didn’t see that car.  Then I remembered something that I have not said to anyone, something that we had just found out about.  Lucas did not have stereo vision.  His eyes did not always work in sync meaning he had trouble with depth perception.  He had been diagnosed with it only recently and there was nothing that could be done about it.  We didn’t even know how long he’d had it.

It gave me a tiny bit of comfort, if you can call it that at all, that he had not realized how close the car was.  We will never know.

It doesn’t matter though- his hair products are still sitting by the bathroom sink, his coat hanging in the mudroom.  Just waiting.  Forever waiting.

How can it hurt so much? How can so much agony be even possible to feel?

The world is not right without him in it.  Nothing is right anymore. Nothing.  I don’t  know how the earth keeps spinning, how the sun rises and sets, how people can go about their day just like they always did.  They scurry around like ants on the vast landscape of Earth, and yes I know life must go on and people have to be fed and cared for and money made and empires built.

Yet my Lucas…everything stopped for him.

He’s in heaven! I shout to myself, He is in glory! He feels no pain or sorrow or sadness!

Why don’t I feel better.

Psalm 22:1-2

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
    Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?
² O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,
    and by night, but I find no rest.

Ultimately though I know that God has not forsaken me.  I just don’t understand his answer. I don’t understand anything about this.  Death is a mystery, this unbearable pain is a mystery- nothing about this is fathomable.  I only know three things:

1. Lucas is with Jesus his savior

2. His savior is also my savior and I have to trust him.

3. I want Jesus to come back SOON.  Come Lord Jesus, Come.

Lanterns burning with ferocity floating up, up, up towards the blackened sky.

Fire and Ice.

Celebration and Pain.

Laughter and tears.

How to save such a beautiful event in my heart without it breaking? How to mingle such beauty with such pain?

A celebration of a life so full and so vibrant, such happiness that a life was lived and enjoyed and shared with others.

A life that should have been longer.

To see a community come out in the bitter cold to show solidarity, to lend warmth to hearts that are cold with grief and pain.

What a paradox.

Yet there is one thing I know, and I know for sure, that Lucas’ light did not end on January 16.  It really only began. Each person who takes their candle and lights it from his will keep it burning. It will not go out.  We will not let it go out.  We will never forget.

Matthew 5:14-16

“You are the LIGHT of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.  Instead they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

God is there in suffering.

Maybe more evident than anywhere else.  Dare I say it? He is not just the God of glimmering rainbows and dew covered leaves or sweet soft little newborn babies.  He shouts his glory through those things.  He proclaims himself as the creator of all.

Yet he whispers in our suffering. Sometimes it is the still small voice that is more persistent and convincing than a shout. When we are weak and crumbling on the floor and cannot go on, it is that gentle whisper. “I am here.”

When I cannot get out of bed because the nausea of grief is too great, and all I can do it wrap myself in blankets, the still small voice says, “the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”

“God,” I cry, “I cannot go on.  I cannot function. The weight is too great. The pain is too great.”

He says,

“we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Romans 3:3-5

Being a Christ follower means embracing struggle.  Yet we have this promise: