Live Like Lucas

It’s a big week.  In two days, the 16th,  I leave for a mission trip to Guatemala- the exact one that Lucas went on last year.

In two days it will also be the 6 month anniversary of the day Lucas went to heaven.

As the tears fill my eyes and my brain still wants to push the idea aside and scream NOOOOOOOOOOO! I realize I must accept this.  It is so hard to see in print.  So. So. hard.

I came to the website to blog not because I was particularly sad and wanted to pour my heart out, but because I want Lucas to be remembered for his LIFE. I want that life and everything it meant to be celebrated on July 16th.

I want Thursday to be a where GOD WINS.  What would Lucas want? For us to cry for him and mourn his death?

I don’t think so.

Its a LIVE LIKE LUCAS DAY.

So what are you gonna do about it? First of all if you have an LLL shirt- wear that puppy.  With your bracelet of course.

This Thursday is a day of MISSIONS.  Yes you can go to Guatemala to do that-  I am finally after 36 years going on a real live mission trip and I am pumped.  You know who inspired me to do that? Lucas.

Sometimes you just need a little push.  Let your little push be LLL day.  Here’s a place to start:

http://www.hellowestmichigan.com/Why-West-Michigan/Grand-Rapids/Community-Involvement.aspx

http://grkids.com/places-you-can-volunteer-with-kids-in-grand-rapids/

http://www.volunteermatch.org

A mission can be in your backyard or across the world.  It might even be in your own house.

I heard the greatest song yesterday:

With every act of Love- We bring the kingdom come.

Its Friday again.  I always wake up on Fridays with that pit in my stomach, that fluttering of anxiety in my heart…why can’t we just skip Fridays?

Everyone else celebrates them. TGIF.  Yippee.

I was doing OK.  Until I looked at facebook (yes that again) and saw a picture of a huge group of FHC freshman at a pool party.

Oh God.  Oh God why.

I’ve described pain so many times in the 70 or so times that I have blogged.  I have talked about it in so many ways, tried to describe it in every possible light.  Drowning in an ocean.  Being cut from the inside with glass.  Having your heart ripped out of your chest and replaced with rocks.

All I can think right now is- gut-wrenching.  An often used phrased.  Probably to the point where it doesn’t even get the proper response- it doesn’t even mean anything anymore.

Think of your guts.  Your insides.  Your core.  The very center of your existance.  Twisted. crushed, squeezed until they no longer resemble anything whole and healthy.  Just beaten.

The thing though, is after you cry and cry and cry and cry eventually you just stop and you have to go on.  You just…have to.

I’m supposed to be making candles.  My friend took my littles so I could make candles.  I sell them, you see, to raise money for Guatemala.  For a van to help people who are hurting in Guatemala.

The candle money is going to do a bit of traveling, though you see.  First the money will help to  hire a lawyer so that the Live Like Lucas Foundation is created.  A non-profit.  So that when the LLL 5k happens in October, there will be a non-profit for corporate, or individual sponsors to contribute to.  Then we will have a successful race.  It is going to be an incredible race.  That, ladies and gentlemen, is how we are going to make some big money for Guatemala.

Big things are happening.  Race planning, non-profit planning, LLL is going to grow and grow and grow.  Cuz guess what.

Yup. God wins.

God is going to win through this gut-wrenching tragedy.

Facebook. Blessed, cursed, facebook.

I so often open it to find encouragement, hope, a little support for the day.

Today I made the mistake of opening it right before I went to pick up my daughter from camp- an hr and 10 minute drive, all by myself.

I have never had facebook do a “timehop” for me although I have seen others posting theirs.  I opened it to a picture of a smiling glowing 11 year old Lucas.  It was the one year anniversary of him recovering from MRSA.  I had written something to the effect of, “one year ago today was the darkest scariest day of our lives, when Lucas’ life hung in the balance.  We didn’t know if he would survive.  Today he is healthy, happy, and thriving. Praise God.”  It was June 20 2011.

Oh God.  I cried out. Oh God the pain.  Why did you save him only to have us bury him five months ago.  The agony, the utter raw ocean of pain that washed over me.  It was something I hadn’t felt so raw, sharp and deep in the recent months.  As the reality sunk in deeper and deeper I was already on the road, late as usual, needing to get my Brenna.  I needed to pick her up so she wasn’t scared and wondering.  Where’s Mom.

I think today was the hardest I have grieved in a one hour period.  The hardest times are by myself, often driving, anyways.  I often moan and shriek and wail in the car.  No one can hear me.  I can let out the ugliest cries I want.

I called my husband and he told me to pull over.  He told me stop thinking about him.  To stop thinking about him, stop aching over him, stop grieving him is like telling me to stop breathing.

I kept driving.  For one hour and ten minutes I cried out to God, “how could you do this to me.  Don’t you know I love him? Don’t you know I can’t live without him? Why didn’t you stop this? How could you let him die? How could you let him be hurt? How could you take this amazing and intricate creation of yours, this loving, caring, gentle, intelligent, compassionate boy and allowed him to be crushed? How could you leave a mother with constant flash backs of  her boy crumpled by the side of the road, fatally injured??”

I don’t hear an answer.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know if God has this amazing ultimate plan that involved a horrific accident killing my child or if this was just a result of the planet earth that God set to spin thousands of years ago and the human race just plods along its path- whatever happens happens. Or maybe…something in between.  Theology doesn’t really matter when all you have to deal with is the reality of death.  I have to fight so hard to fight bitterness and anger because I don’t know and I don’t understand.  I have to fight it because all I have to cling to is His love and the way I have seen him work since the day my son went to heaven.

I know there is a God.  Do you know why? Because I can get out of bed. Because I have a mission.  Because I want to have a non-profit, and I want to help people, and I want to inspire people the way Lucas inspires me.  Every single day.  If there was no God I would have died right along with him.  There have been 1,000 things, to make a low estimate, that he has sent to comfort me, to help me, to guide me, to inspire me and to show me His Face.

I see it every day.  Every single day.

But I still hurt.  So. So. So. So. Bad.

I wanted to go to an open house of a former piano student, one that I LOVED so much.  I was planning to go.  Then at the last minute I crumpled.  I am not sure if I will ever go to a graduation open house again.  My precious boy will not graduate.  He will not get a drivers license.  He will not go to prom, he will not play on the high school baseball team.  He will not get married or have children.  He will not graduate from college and become a doctor.

I have to live with that every single day.  Every day.  I may not be able to share in others joys because of my pain.  Every day I have to get up because of four little faces.  I look at them, stare deep into each of their eyes, and tell myself, I will not leave you.  I will NOT leave you and make you endure the pain of losing a brother and a Mother.

I have to be here.  I simply have to be.  I am not going to just be I want to be a do-er.  I have to push past the pain and be a do-er.  I am going to Guatemala in less than a month.  I am going to hammer and saw and sand the living you-know-what out of those houses and I may be bawling like a baby the entire time.

I saw a quote the other day somewhere, “people will remember you when you die by what you love.”

I remember Lucas because he loved God and his family and people.  He just loved everyone.  He showed them respect.  He showed them kindness.

I want to be known the same way.  If I can accomplish anything in this life it would be for people to remember me the same way.

2 Corinthians 9:8 – “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.”

I don’t know how I am going to get through tomorrow.  I didn’t even realize it until about two hours ago, when my daughter asked me if she could take a friend to get ice cream after school tomorrow.

Then it hit me- like a boulder. Like a semi.  A tidal wave of pain and sadness.  Our ritual of getting ice cream after the last day of school.  We have only done it a few years but the kids have it now ingrained in their memories.

Last year I think Lucas had an exam that day that the girls had their last day of school.  We went to pick them up and he saw all the elementary teachers standing in a row, waving to the busses as they drove circles around the circle drive, honking.  He immediately wanted to go say Hi to them.  My boy.  Always loving his teachers, wanting to see them again and reconnect with them.  He walked up and hugged them- Mrs. Schanski, Mrs. Beatty, Mrs. Deegan.  All amazing, inspiring, caring teachers who helped shape him.  They laughed as he towered over them.  After chatting for a minute we left to get ice cream.  We decided instead to get sandwiches at Schnitz’s and ice cream later, I think mostly because Lucas was hungry and convinced us all that was the best idea.  We sat outside in the sun and ate, reveling in another successful year.

I am so proud of all my kids.   So stinking proud.  Yet I remember that day so clearly, like crystal thinking how proud I was of my Lucas- so tall and handsome, so respectful and polite, graduating already from eighth grade.  Middle school had been tough.  He had lost a lot of confidence mid- eighth grade when suddenly his grades started to slip and he just seemed kind of lost.  He wasn’t himself.  We didn’t know what was wrong.  Yet he fought to bring them back up and was getting his footing again.  He was not a quitter, in fact that was the last thing Lucas was.  He was a fighter.  He was his own worst enemy- every time he got a grade that was not up to his standards he beat himself up.  He had ended the year on a really good note and he was so happy to be out of middle school.

It felt so good to sit there with my beautiful children.  All of them.  From towering to tiny.  It was gorgeous sunny day.  The flowers were blooming and the birds were singing.  Life could not have been better.

I realized two hours ago that he would be missing from our “schools out” party tomorrow.

Lately I have been fighting the memories so hard.  Working like crazy to distract myself because I don’t feel like I can go there.  It will break me.  They say it’s a spiral, you feel like your coming around and then you end up back at the beginning.  I feel anxious.  Thinking about him makes my stomach churn and my knees buckle.

I keep telling myself, one day at a time.  One day at a time.  Just don’t think.  Keep busy and keep moving and don’t think.  Then it will be the next day, and the next and someday it will be over.

Tomorrow is a day I don’t want to live through.

I miss him.

So much.

I am absolutely, entirely alone.  There is not a child in my house.  None.

I have no idea what to do with myself.

There are clothes to fold and wash, I want to plant some of my plants, my house is a disorganized pile of things everywhere that makes me want to cry when I look at it. My to do list is currently 11 things long but it is really only the things I can REMEMBER I have to do….

Somehow none of it seems the least bit important right now.  When my kids are around I feel like I need to get this done and I need to get that done and no mommy can’t play right now she needs to make a phone call…yet when I am sitting by myself here it just doesn’t matter.

Maybe because I just had to change the autofill on my computer and take my son’s email out and replace it with mine.  Whoever is emailing snipescoop@gmail.com is not getting an answer.  No one is checking Lucas Van Sprange’s facebook page.  Maybe that is why nothing matters right now.  Because it just doesn’t.

The hurt changes, they say, the pain changes.  I was listening to a song last night that said there is no sorrow on earth that heaven can’t heal.  David Crowder.

I’m sorry David but I don’t know how I feel about that.  This does not feel healable to me. This moment- to -moment- survival- because -I’m -in -so- much -agony feels like what happens when you lose your child.  When you lose your gem, your gift, your blessing, your hope for the future.  When the unthinkable happens. the nightmare comes true. Everything is shattered.

God brings healing.  For many, many, many people.  I think you can heal from a divorce or a parent dying or alcoholism or so many different things.  I should not be speculating on these things that I have no experience with.  I just think, and maybe I’m wrong, that there are a lot of terrible things to which God can bring complete healing.  No one should ever put limits on God and I realize now I am doing just that.  I just don’t think my heart will ever stop bleeding. I am weak. I am a sinner.  I feel bitter and angry sometimes.  I want to know how it could be Lucas.  Of all people, him.

I don’t KNOW how God can allow suffering to such an extent that they pray every day for the heavens to open up and swallow them up.  I will know I guess someday.

Some things are not for us to know.

That’s why he is God.

The God we can cry out to, “I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND!!!!”

And through my sobs he says, “I know you don’t.  But look around at all the beauty.  Look at all the amazing friends I have given you.  Looks at all HIS friends you have met that are just genuinely amazing kids with big hearts.  Look how many people have learned even just a little bit of how to live like Lucas.  Look how much closer you have come to me even through your pain.  Look how much bigger your heart has gotten and how much perspective you have gained. You will make it. I am holding you. Minute by minute, second by second, you will make it.”

I never have time to do this anymore. Blogging.  I am not even sure how I did before-I just had more help, more people around more burdens taken off me.  That cannot last forever.  I do not have to get children to school tomorrow so I am despite all odds I am typing.

As we speak my three year old is outside sweeping the driveway and refuses to come in.  I tried a dozen times and now Rich is attempting to cajole him in without a temper tantrum.

The 5 year old is ever presently near me, she is half sitting on my lap telling me I still haven’t looked at her end of the year preschool goodies.  Give Mommy a minute, I say, please?

The 9 year old is sulking because…well that is what she does these days.  Pouts.  Groans. Cries. Nothing is right in the world hardly ever.

11 year old- gone.  She is easy though. Usually.

I feel that stinging in my heart that makes me want to write.  That sharpness that says, just let it out.  I just read something for the second time on facebook about death that people think is…comforting? helpful? It makes me bawl.  It makes me sting. I genuinely do not want to hurt the feelings of the people that shared it.  Who would know?

This paragraph… is like hieroglyphics to me.  It makes utterly not sense, not at all, not ever.  All I feel is absence.  Heart wrenching, hollowed out anguishing absence. Death IS something at all.  It DOES count.  He has NOT slipped away into the next room.  Something HAS happened.  NOTHING is the same.  I am not the same, YOU are not the same, and life will NEVER be the same.  What we were to each other will never be again.  I don’t know how to speak to a dead son.  Yes I will speak of him in the happiest of ways because he was AWESOME.  I don’t know how to laugh at the jokes we shared because he is not here to share them.

The one true statement, “why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?” He will never be out of mind. Never ever ever.

All is not well.

There is a beautiful, amazing video about Lucas that was made by a student at Forest Hills Northern that was just posted on my facebook page.  I could not watch it all.  I had to turn it off.  Yes I will watch it.  Maybe tomorrow.

If anyone would like to know, what it is like to lose a child, it is not in that paragraph.  It is the worst pain you can possibly imagine times a million.  You cannot pretend that they are in the next room and you are just talking to them and joking with them.  THEY ARE NOT THERE. There is emptiness in your house, in your heart, in your mind, in your life.

I do what I do, whatever that is, purely by the grace of God.   I think that he is literally pulling me out of bed in morning and carrying me downstairs and holding me up while I make coffee and breakfast and laundry and change diapers and run errands and dinner and baths and…then I crash.  All day I look forward to the moment when I can take my Ambien and not be in pain for 7 or 8 hours.

It is ALL I have to hold on to in the tumultuous waves of pain.  Grace.  I hold on to the legacy of my son and cling to the fact that it can still do great things in the world.  Even if he is not here.

A kind friend sent me a mothers day card with this verse:

“You are precious to Me and honored and I love you.” Isaiah 43:4

I have been repeating that verse over and over to myself.  Through the sting and the ache.  He loves me. He loves me.

It hurts too much to write.  I hurt so bad right now I can’t see the computer screen.  I just read what someone wrote to me after the mother’s day blog- that I have no choice.  I have to keep on keepin’ on.  That is exactly it.  I have no choice.  I feel like that is just the hardest part of all- to keep doing the normal stuff.  When I do laundry I think of his laundry missing.  When I make dinner which is really never, more like buy pizza or pick up chicken it is a noticeably smaller amount.  When I play with my with my kids outside it is ALL I think about.  What he was like when he was 3.  How he looked shooting hoops.  How he looked pushing Brady on the swing.

When is he going to walk in the door again.  I just can’t believe it.  How did I lose my baby boy.

Once upon a time I didn’t know how I was ever going to be a mother.  I was 20 years old, just finishing my sophomore year at Calvin College.  I was pregnant.  No one at Calvin was ever pregnant.  I almost switched schools but at the last minute decided I didn’t care if people stared at me.  It was some of the hardest months of my life.  I felt quite strongly I wasn’t ready to be a single Mom.  So I went to Bethany Christian Services and they talked me through everything and were very understanding.  They didn’t try to sway me either way but instead helped me see that it was possible to raise my baby.

Lucas Elliot Van Sprange was born January 6, 2000.  My beautiful boy. An incredible blessing from God.

I don’t understand why I couldn’t have had my blessing longer.

I loved him so much.  I still love him so much.  He was an amazing person.

That is why I cannot let a 16th go by without honoring him in some way. By doing some good in the world like he would be doing if he was here.

I would like to Give Back this month to a place that helped me-  Bethany Christian Services -by counseling me as a  terrified pregnant college student.

They also have a branch where they relocate refugees.  People who have gone through pain and hardship and are strangers moved to a new place.  They often have nothing.

Bethany has asked for donations of things like diapers, wipes, laundry detergent, toilet paper, toiletries, bedding and pillows.  I have donation tables set up at Forest Hills Central, Eastern, and Northern High schools May 15 through 22.  You can also leave things on my front porch.  If you would like to donate and are not near to the Forest Hills area, please message me and we can figure out a way to pick it up.

Thank you with all my heart for helping me remember Lucas in a meaningful way.

I got through today by denial.  I went to bed last night and thought of what today was, and who wouldn’t be there when I woke up.  I sobbed harder last night than I can ever remember.  I couldn’t stop.  It was just coming out like a volcano, hot molten tears than ran and ran and ran.

Then I woke up and it was like I hadn’t slept.  I was so tired I felt like I had run an emotional marathon.  I finally got up at noon in an attempt to go to lunch with my family.  My sweet babies gave me their presents and I gushed over them. I hugged and kissed them and loved on them, in my mind it was just a robot.  I couldn’t think.  I couldn’t cry in front of them. It started in the shower again.  I tried to get ready and couldn’t stop the tears.  I felt physically ill.

I spent my day watching Downton abbey and putting labels on candles.  The Live Like Lucas candles are gorgeous.  So much work but I find it relaxing and somewhat addicting.  Okay very addicting.  I found a few more wine bottles all polished and wicked and ready to go at 12 am and I couldn’t help myself.  I had to heat up more wax.  It’s my way of coping.  They are unique and beautiful each in their own way and they have a message.  His message.  That is what gets me through the day.  His message. God’s message.

“Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children ² and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Eph 5:1,2

Days like today I hardly even think I have a handle on what’s happened and yet it rocks me to the core.  I’m not even sure I comprehend it and yet I cry for hours on end.  I wonder how many years it will take to really sink in.

I just know that I get it now.

I. Get. It. Now.

There is not a second to waste, not a minute to spare, to do what we are supposed to do here.  We are here to be God’s people, his chosen ones.  To live in his image.  To be in the world but not of the world. To heal the broken.  Even if we are the broken.

You see, there must be a reason I am the broken.  There must be a reason.  If I am to go through this life hurting it will not be for nothing.  Why? Because I am his.  He counts the tears that drop from my eyes and knows how many hairs on my head.  It will not be for nothing.

This is all I need to know.  He is in control. He’s got this.

Amen.

Psalm 46:10

“Be still and know that I am God.”

It’s Mothers Day weekend.  One week from today it will have been four months since he said, “how was your day Mom?”

Lucas always made sure I got something for mother’s day.  It was so important to him.  He would pick out flowers from the farmers marker usually- such an incredibly beautiful gesture from a boy.  Just a boy.  With a giving heart.  One time he was going to be gone and I remember he ordered flowers for me to be delivered. Completely on his own.  He was only 9 or 10 years old.  He used my credit card, but of course I could have cared less.  He was thinking about me.  He loved me.  He was the best son a mother could ever ask for. Ever.

I’m angry I have to be alive this mothers day.  Its too much.  I’m angry I have to live through this incredible tortuous pain and longing and aching and arms that are empty of a tall strong boy that loved me SO MUCH. And I him.

I just want to go to heaven and be with him.

So many mixed emotions. It was a sparkling, beautiful day today, the kind the makes you want to climb to a hilltop and have a picnic.  The kind of day where you feel guilty if you stay inside instead of every possible minute soaking in sunshine and listening to the birds.

Days like this give me a pit in my stomach.  I want to enjoy them so much but just can’t.

At our house we have been watching the geese in the pond behind our house.  There are four Canadian geese that have decided to make our small piece of wilderness their home and they are very entertaining to watch.  In addition to our lovely nameless little Peking duck.  I keep watching carefully to make sure they don’t start picking on her.  I have become very fond of our little ducky and it they went after her I would be the first one running outside to grab those Canadian geese by the neck.  Little ducky is part of the Lucas era, you see.  She came with the first batch of chickens he raised from chicks.  They all succumbed to other predators but this one is a fighter.  She has outlived the rest by years and survived bitterly cold winters.  She reminds me of Lucas- a fighter. Fighting off a near fatal brain infection. If only he had outlived us all…

My little boy is so enamored by nature and animals and at 3 years old reminds me so much of Lucas…so so much.  The way he entertains himself by trying to unscrew everything with a screwdriver, how he is always, always trying to help me. Everything I do.  He follows after, picking up clothes.  Insisting he fill the dishwasher with soap, sweeping the floor, cleaning up anything that spills, picking up his puzzles without anyone him to.  He is sweet as sugar and just a happy and agreeable as can be.

Today he asked me three times in the car about Lucas.

“Where does Lucas sleep?”

“Where’s Lucas?”

“When is Lucas coming?”

You don’t know heartbreak until you have to try to explain to a tiny boy that his big brother died.  I don’t know what else to say.  He died. I say over and over.  If I say he is in heaven then Brady thinks he is just away on a trip.  To heaven.  \

The three month mark is about the time when your brain stops trying to subliminally tell you “he’s on a trip.”  Its the point where your brain says “oh sh*t, he’s really not coming back.” Three months is too long for a trip.

Three months is when a mother really starts cracking and everyone else starts forgetting.  Other people die, there are tragedies, world scale ones, people get cancer, there are accidents, the world keeps spinning on.

It doesn’t stop for one 15 year old boy who was someone’s whole world.

I start to hear comments like, “I think its time to take down those pictures.” “The kids need to move on and not think about sad things anymore.” “The Live Like Lucas days might be too much, its just really in everyone’s face.”

I’m trying to celebrate his life.  I’m celebrating the gift that was given to me and share it with others, use it to uplift and encourage.  I’m trying to do good for the community, for the world. That will always have to do with Lucas. His name will be on everything – its not Live Like Melissa.  He is my inspiration, my model, the whisper in my ear. The only way I can cope- the only way I can get through these long agonizing days is by filling that giant hole of his loss into a giant pool of hope.

I’m not sure how that has an expiration date.

Galatians 6:9

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”