Grieving

My cell phone rang as we drove down the road. Looking back on it now, the familiar ringtone separated three of my daughters' lives into yet another Before and After.

As the details of the phone call ripped through me, I waved at Steve to pull the van over on the side of the highway so I could talk without our children hearing. I wrenched open the door and jumped into the long grass next to us. "I'm so sorry," I repeated over and over again as I cried with the woman who I have come to love like a sister. "I'm so sorry."

The parallel of my life and the life of my girls' birthparents, in that moment, came crashing together.

Because at two or three o'clock in the morning, as we slept soundly in our beds, my daughters' birthfather climbed out of his bed in the camper he was staying in. Unable to sleep, he turned to drugs for comfort.

At around five o'clock in the morning, as the sun peeked over the horizon and I began to stir, my daughters' birthmother woke to the gentle sound of her husband's snoring. Comforted that he was okay, she drifted off again.

At around seven or eight o'clock in the morning, as we began racing around the house to get ready and out the door to church, my daughters' birthfather stopped breathing and left this world.

At eleven o'clock in the morning, as we left church and chatted with friends, my daughters' birthmother went to wake her husband and discovered that though he still lay next to her, he was no longer there.

Husband. Son. Grandson. Friend. Uncle. Cousin. Nephew. Son-in-Law. Brother. Father.

Heart-wrenching grief.

We drove in shock to a friend's house and then home. Wrestling with how and when to tell the girls, wishing beyond anything that we could protect them from the hurt they would feel.

Steve and I went and sat with the girls' birthmother for two hours and helped her cry. It was a rocky relationship they had, but its foundation was a deep love and loyalty for each other.

Hours later as we sat our girls down and cried with our children, I reflected on this verse:

"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.' Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." (James 4:13-14)

His death left a lot of regrets in a lot of people, including myself. We can't go back and change the past, but we can change the choices we make in the future. That letter I meant to write him five months ago when I thought I had forever to write it? That opportunity is gone. But I can take that hurt and weave it into the peace and resolution that will come from future words that I will make sure get written or said when they need to be.

The pain and regret left in those closest to him will help heal broken relationships. People are coming together that haven't spoken in years. Because Charlie's death has reminded us how fragile life here can be. And no matter how deep the anger, how searing the bitterness, how broken the bridges...nothing is worth living the rest of our lives with the knowledge that we can never go back and make things right.

I pray that as so many of Charlie's family and friends work on just putting one foot in front of the other today, that you may have friendships and relationships that will heal because of our experiences. Ephesians 4:26b says, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." As we reflect on the good times in his life, as we celebrate who he really was, I pray that you will be reaching out to someone in your life who needs forgiveness, or whom you need to ask forgiveness from. The healing of reconciliation is so much better than the weight of regret.

Thank you for your prayers for my girls and for Charlie's family.

As Dandelions

"Mommy, look what I got you!"

Wide, blue eyes twinkling beneath a tangle of long, blond hair. Dirt caked on fingers wrapped lovingly, carefully, around three beautiful dandelions.

"I picked them just for you! Here, Mommy, take them..."

She's gone in a flash, my sweet, five year old Aimee. Off to the gorgeous green fields where the dandelion harvest seems limitless.

I tuck the gift in my pocket, sparing a second for a mental notation of water and vases and the perfect spot on the counter.

Time passes, as it does. "Don't climb too high; don't run too fast; be careful, your brother is swinging there; say sorry." The moments that seem to last forever until we look back on them and wonder how they passed so quickly.

Hours later, my hand reaches into my pocket. It's a quiet moment, the stillness reminding me of my treasure.

Pulling them out, I feel a tug of disappointment. I waited too long...the vibrant yellows and greens blending and fading; the flowers' faces curled inward. It isn't the first time I hide dandelions in trash bags.

So many lessons that could be twisted and turned and made to seem like a pretty version of what dandelions taught me today. The truth is ugly to me.

I haven't been plugging in like I need to. I haven't been turning to His Word like I know I should. Like crossing the desert and "not having time" to open the canteen; I'm so thirsty I feel like a shadow of myself. The world just has that funny way of making itself too important. Or maybe I have a funny way of making the world too important.

We need to be connected to the vine. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5)

He is as necessary to us as water and sunlight are to that field of flowers. He doesn't want to be our 911 operator, or the one we turn to when there isn't any one left. He wants to be our First. He wants to be our Father. And that means our relationship has to be more than good intentions.

It's too late for those dandelions... but thank you, God, for your grace that means it's not too late for me.

Hydrate

When my leg buckled beneath me, it should have been a sign.

When my brain was screaming, "Enough! Enough! Enough!" I should have listened.

Instead, I kept going. It was my first run of the year, and it felt SO good. What was supposed to be a nice and easy mile quickly turned into three. Finally, at the top of my street, I slowed to a walk.

I almost didn't make it any further.

Buzzing zipped through my head, clouding my vision. My legs felt like rubber and my lips and tongue vibrated eerily. My first thought was, "I'm not going to make it home."

My second was, "God, please help me make it home."

By God's grace, putting one foot in front of another, I made it to my house. I'd tried in vain to call my husband for help, but I couldn't get the phone to work. Nothing made sense in my head.

Steve ushered me inside quickly and gave me water and a stern look. (Not in that order.) Though I started to feel better, dizziness and nausea soon crashed over me. As Steve ushered me into the van to drive to the Emergency Room, I knew I was in trouble.

By the time I reached the ER, my heart rate was 133. My legs were cramped into knots, my body was shaking violently, and I couldn't open my eyes without the room swimming.

"We're going to start an IV, this looks like a pretty bad case of dehydration," the nurse murmured as he connected electrodes to my chest. "That heart rate needs to come down."

So I did the only thing I knew I could do to calm my heart: I prayed. The words came to me effortlessly, "Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 4:6-7)

Over and over again I prayed that verse. As I prayed, my heart slowed down...130, 122, 118, 109...

"Excuse me," another nurse interrupted, preparing me for the IV fluids.

Immediately my heart raced again.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, through prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.

133, 127, 115, 108...

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything...

114, 107, 101...

Be anxious for nothing...

105, 98, 93...

And the peace of God...

96, 92, 85...

I fell asleep in that hospital bed praying that verse. God's peace, the peace He promises us even though it surpasses any understanding, washed over me. When I woke up, I felt so much better.

Apparently, we shouldn't run long distances when we are dehydrated. I learned that lesson the hard way.

We also shouldn't run the roads of life without being hydrated with God's Word. I didn't have time to grab my Bible on the way to the hospital. Even if I'd had it, I couldn't open my eyes to read it. But I didn't need to; I had His Word hidden in my heart.

We need to read it, meditate on it, memorize it. We don't know when something might happen where we need His promises planted within us.

When we hydrate with the Living Water, our thirst will truly be quenched.

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4:10-14)

Belonging

I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't want to belong.

A person, a family, a club, a sport...if I wasn't welcome, if it didn't exist or it wasn't compatible with my interests, I created it myself.

I didn't have a lot of grace or finesse as a child, so that pretty much left me to my own devices.

The very first record I have of this desire is an autograph book scrawled in my seven-year-old handwriting: "Gretchen - no onions. Vikki - none. Emily - blueberries." (Because apparently, in the course of creating a club of first graders, it is important to know about allergies.) The club never materialized, becoming the first of many failed attempts to have something I could call my own.

After Stephen King's book "IT" came out, I gathered neighborhood children to search the sewers of our development for the creature from the book. I remember so clearly standing on my front porch as a twelve year old girl, a notebook of "plans" in my hand, wishing with every fiber of my being that we would find something...not because of the adventure of it, but because if it was real then the kids would all bind together in the pursuit of conquering evil. I just wanted to belong.

As I became an adolescent, it got crazier. As a junior in high school I formed a team of boys and told them all about the dreams I had: dreams where we populated the planet Kraz and ruled nations together. Except I convinced them (or tried to) that it was real. Maybe they went along with me because they wanted to belong to something as much as I did. Maybe they saw a girl who hurt so badly she couldn't even exist without an alternate reality and didn't have the heart to leave her alone. Whatever the reasons, I will always remember what it felt like to sit at the table in the library and draw maps and make plans for that night's journey.

In addition to my inane fantasies, I tried typical methods: sports, choir, boys. Like flashes of light I would be satisfied for momentary periods and then plunge into darkness when they ended.

I know that the only thing that kept me from ending my life was the thought of my future husband and children. To me, that was permanent. Someday I would never be alone.

I thank God that He brought Steve to me when I was 17. I don't know that I would have made it much longer, my depression and self-loathing at that point being almost unbearable. Steve came in as a rock. He was impressed by my fantasy-world, of stories of spirit guardians and other lives, but his reality stayed strong. He taught me that being in this world could be a good thing; that I could be a good thing in this world. I opened my heart to him, knowing that I was exposing the vulnerable side of me that I had manufactured everything to protect. And he still loved me. And I belonged with him.

We married, and I accepted Christ a year later. The thought that God loved me despite my failures; that He wanted to forgive me for all the things I had done that crushed me with guilt...it was this realization that made me give my life to Him. You would think that it would have struck me then that I belonged to God; the ultimate relationship that would never, ever fail me. But it didn't.

Having the security of my marriage with Steve, having begun the terrifying process of being the real me in the real world, I reached out again. Longing to share my life with friends, I launched myself into best friend after best friend. When I love, I love passionately; when I feel deeply rejected, I plummet just as extremely. And so friendship after friendship blossomed and exploded; a roller coaster of flying and falling. Looking back, I know exactly why: I was wrapping the very essence of my self-worth around how much people wanted to love me.

In 2000 I did it again: feeling hurt over something that was so small in hindsight, I walked away from a good friend and also a group of friends that I had started a book club with. Wounded by the rejection I had fabricated for myself, I withdrew. I spent years without deep friendships, taking that time to explore who I was in Christ and with Steve. When I came out of my "hibernation," I was more grounded. I no longer felt desperate for companionship; I knew that I could stand on my own. I began developing friendships that were meaningful again, experiencing for the first time what healthy friendships felt like.

Last month, I went to a baby shower for the one friend from the 2000 book club I had kept contact with. I knew that the other members had stayed together, and I had followed from afar the close knit group they had become. I was so nervous as I entered the house that I literally shook from it. I prayed, "Dear Lord, help me to remember that I am not the person they last saw anymore. Help them to see that I am no longer as they remember me." And He gave me peace, and I was fine.

Talking to my friend Rebecca later that day, I realized something that I should have understood years before. "I just miss being part of that group," I told her. "I miss the discussion, I miss the in-depth conversations, I miss sharing our lives together."

"But you have all of that," she said. "I thought that I would miss the intellectual conversations and fellowship I used to have in college, but after becoming a Christian I realized that now I have all that and more. Not only do I have fellowship, not only do I have awesome intellectual conversations, but they center around the most important thing in my life: our God. I might not be able to have some big literature conversation with you," she laughed, "but the heart of what you are yearning for is something you already have."

And she was totally right. I wanted friendships? I have sisters. Women who would drop everything to help me if I needed them. Women who tell me what I need to hear even when I don't want to. Women who pray with me when I'm in their presence and for me when I'm not. Women who love me for who I am.

As I stood in an amazing group of friends last night after we had watched a movie together, I soaked in the "belonging" feeling. But now, I put the credit where it is due.

It isn't that I finally took all the right steps to create the perfect "club". Some people who aren't Christians might think that's what it is. But I've tried every human way to manufacture this feeling, and it has never worked. I know it isn't me.

God longs for us to want to belong to Him. And when we throw ourselves at His feet and offer our life to Him, there's a family waiting for us. Brothers and sisters who belong to each other because we share the most important thing there is to share: eternity with a Father who gives us the ultimate belonging.

"He will never leave you nor forsake you." (Deut. 31:6b)


"The Lord Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you." (Deut. 31:8a)


"I will never leave you nor forsake you." (Joshua 1:5b)


"God has said, 'Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." (Hebrews 13:5b)