This past January, I started homeschooling AJ. Since I only have one child in my class, it only takes a fraction of the time that first grade would normally take. So, while Gracie is in morning kindergarten at Prairie View Elementary from 9 to noon, AJ and I do school.
AJ and I are loving our mornings together. It is such a blessing. I feel as if the Lord has given us back our lives.
Homeschooling has definitely slowed down the revision process of my book, but I still progress with the book slowly but surely. I have to trust the Lord with His timing, and am convinced that if I maintain His priorities for my life, I can trust Him to take care of the timing of whatever He calls me to.
Some people imagine as a single mom that homeschooling will add an impossible amount of work on my plate. I was nervous about that myself, but I have found it to be quite the opposite. When you have your children in school full-time, you still have the same responsibility of training your children as those who homeschool, you simply have less time to train them and at a time of day when both you and your children have already spent the bulk of your energy.
I should stop to say I'm not one who thinks everyone has to homeschool. I am extremely grateful for the schools my children have attended. I believe the schools my children attended last year saved my life and was a wonderful blessing to us. Additionally, it's not my business to criticize people's school choices. After all, there is a very good reason why Jesus commands, "Do not judge lest you too be judged." There may be caveats to that passage in regards to being a discerning person and encouraging others in ways they need to honor the Lord, but I think people love to come up with far more caveats to that verse than they ever adhere to that command at all. I think the profuse caveats are often an excuse for arrogance and self-righteousness. It's amazing that in our arrogance, we can simultaneously disobey that very command while telling others everything they are doing wrong. So you won't be hearing in this post about me telling everyone to homeschool. Most of the people I know are dying to themselves every single day as they seek to honor the Lord in their parenting, regardless of what type of schooling they have chosen. As an older woman at my church has wisely said in an attempt to explain why one should live their lives before the face of God, regardless of what others think of them: "I have invested my whole life into my life. So, who is another person to walk in, see only a snapshot of my life that I've invested my whole life into and think she has anything to say." And so this post has nothing to do with others' schooling choices. It is simply an update about what I've chosen to do this year in the unique situation of being a young widow and single mom.
Back to homeschooling. As a single mother the past few years, I have learned my limitations and how to manage them. I am on all the time. Their dad doesn't come home at 5pm. Not ever. So there is no tag-team parenting. There is no parenting together. There is no consulting one another about how we should handle a certain parenting issue. No phone calls to him. No emails. No texts. It's just me. And it's always just me, at least humanly speaking. I may get sitters, but I'm still the only parent. I'm still the only one who has to stand before God for them. And I'm still the only one who loves them to the degree a parent loves a child. And since 4pm has always been my lowest energy time of the day, when AJ was returning home from school at 4pm, I had nothing left to give him. And so in my particular situation, I find it more restful to have parented and trained children, who feel that they have had enough of their mother's time and energy and thus feel loved. For me personally, I didn't feel I could do a sufficient job of parenting AJ after 4pm by myself. It may sound like having my son in school 7 hours a day would be a break, but it was not restful for me to be away from my son the whole day, only to feel incredibly frustrated that he was not happy and not getting the energy and parenting he needed from me.
At the same time, don't worry, I do get breaks. I still have Lydia, the college student who lives with us. She babysits 10 hours a week. And if I need more, I have another babysitter that I hire.
Our family has obviously been through a lot. And now that I have been doing better this year, I began to desire to homeschool. This is the first time since AJ was 15 months old that he gets me to himself this much. This is the first time since Gracie was 9 months old (she's 6 years old now) that my parenting has not been incredibly distracted by cancer or grief. So I am incredibly grateful that I get to be a mama - a real mama, who is so much more mentally present for my kids than I have been in a long time. I am so grateful that my children seem relatively happy and content. That's not to say that I don't still encounter grief or sadness or difficulty or frustration to distract me from them. I live with the consequences of my children's fatherlessness every single day. I experience the consequences anew of our loss every single day. But I am more here, more present, than I have been in as long as I can remember.
While AJ had a wonderful school experience in half-day kindergarten last year, being at school 7 hours/day this year was just too much for the both of us. Now that AJ feels he has what he needs from me, he is so much more happy and content than he was this past fall. And he is flourishing! I praise the Lord for His Spirit's leading and His faithfulness to our family. I think His leading in this way and how he has caused this decision in our lives to bear much fruit intellectually, relationally, and many other ways, is another example of how He has been a father to the fatherless and a Husband to the husbandless.
I get to be a mama again. A present mama. The kind of mama I had longed to be, but had always been distracted from due to the horrors and turmoil of the past several years. And for that reason, I feel as if the Lord has given us back our lives.
Never Met Anyone Homeschooled?
For some of you, homeschooling may sound completely alien. But when we lived in Washington state for 3.5 years, all of my friends homeschooled. And so from early on in my pregnancy with AJ, the desire to homeschool was already being planted and began to seem very normal.
I love homeschooling for a few reasons. One is that I've always had a passion for my children's education and instilling in them a love of learning from their first breath. And so homeschooling is really what I've been doing since their birth. This is just the first grade version now.
But I also love homeschooling because I love books. Books have always been a refuge for me. Going to a book store and being surrounded by books is refreshing to me like sitting beside the ocean.
And so we use Carol Joy Seid's curriculum, which is made up of reading real literature to teach not only reading, but science, history etc. Teaching AJ from real literature, stimulates and refreshes me, rather than wears me out. It makes me so excited!
For math, Carol Joy Seid's curriculum recommends Math-U-See, which uses manipulatives to teach math concepts. Definitely a different way than I learned math as a child, but I think it is so much more effective. It also comes with DVDs that we can watch, if I prefer to use those rather than the teacher's manual.
I have to say, homeschooling has been one of my most favorite things in my life. It is up there with writing and dancing. My children are my passion. Learning and books are my passion. Teaching my children about the Lord is my passion. And homeschooling combines them all.
I'm not sure what we'll do next year yet. I get nervous that homeschooling two children will be a world of difference from homeschooling one child. It may not be simultaneously exhilarating and restful like it is right now. In which case, I have to evaluate whether such demands may exceed the limitations the Lord has given me as a human being, so that I can be a sane mama for my kids. But right now, both children are telling me they want to be homeschooled next year. We'll see how the Lord continues to lead. Please pray for wisdom for me as I seek to parent my children.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Three Years Since He Left
Feb. 7, 2012 marked the 3 year anniversary of Andrew's death. I bet many of you, like me, can hardly believe so much time has passed.
Grief is a funny thing. It is unpredictable and whenever you think it's been gone so long, maybe it'll forget to return, it shows up. Then, instead of a few minutes, it stays several weeks. And just when you've come to expect this unwanted guest is never leaving, you wake up one morning, and it has taken off in the middle of the night. The air is clear again and the suffocating fog it brought with it has lifted. You look out the window and you say, "Oh! that's what the sun looks like. I almost forgot."
Now that I am feeling better after a difficult month (the weeks before and after the anniversary of Andrew's death), I'm finally posting the blog I wrote about it last month:
People ask me if the holidays are difficult for me. The holidays aren't particularly difficult. But,
- weddings (for some reason I still go to all of them, though inevitably they remind me of my hopeful day and how all those hopes were dashed to pieces)
- the weeks surrounding Andrew's birthday/September 11th
- my birthday/Mother's day,
- and Andrew's death day
are the difficult parts of the year for me.
The weeks leading up to the anniversary of Andrew's death were difficult and emotional for me. My Pastor Warren said that I should expect it to still be difficult for me, because anniversaries like this tug on the scar tissue. He said he always compares emotional injuries to physical injuries. So if I had been in a severe car accident three years ago and had suffered a spinal injury, I might still be in a wheelchair, still making my recovery.
Most of the time, nowadays, I know 3 years has passed. I know all the events that have passed throughout these 3 years and all that we've made it through. I know how much I've changed in the last three years.
The distance that three years has provided means all the memories I blocked out, that I couldn't face remembering the first few years, I am now able to remember. Because I've processed a lot of my grief and memories, I am now able to access the beautiful memories - I am able to be honest with myself about the profundity of my loss. I no longer have to minimize it to myself in order to cope. Strangely, the more time and distance that has passed between now and Andrew's death, the sharper the pain is when it does come. The sharper the realization is of the profundity of my loss.
And so sometimes, a beautiful memory of Andrew will fly at me all of a sudden, and my heart longs to be near him desperately, more than it ever could the first year of his death. In that moment, suddenly, I remember what it's like to be in love - though I had blocked out that remembrance the first year. Being in love almost does feel like magic - the way you feel like you belong together. A connection that goes beyond a list of things that you like about each other. It's just like you're two puzzle pieces that are made for each other. And in that moment, I remember that "I can't live without you," is not just a sentimental line from a movie. And in those moments, suddenly, three years have disappeared. I feel the knife stabbing my heart relentlessly and I cry out, "God, I can't do this! I'll never survive this!"
And then, it will come to mind, "Wait a second, Grace. You have survived this. He didn't die two weeks ago. It's been three years. You and you're children are still alive. And you are all moving on with your lives. The kids are doing well and so are you. You made it through the worst part. Obviously, you can manage as a single mother. You have survived this. Just keep doing what you're doing. Keep going."
Now that I am here at the 3 year marker, it is interesting to see the differences between where I am now and where I spent the first 2 years after Andrew's death.
In retrospect, that first 2 years, I lived every single day with pain. I felt like I daily was managing my pain. I had to "manage" my pain, because if I didn't control it and didn't pace myself, the pain was too excruciating to confront all at once. This was my way of coping. Honestly, I have only sobbed about three times since Andrew died. Yes, I did cry every single day the first year, but not uncontrollably. More like a faucet. Not a fire hose. Whatever didn't come out in tears, stayed in all my muscles. So then, I returned to my old love of dance and found some dance classes, in order to deal with the grief that was stuck in my muscles. I had heard physical activity was an important aspect of dealing with grief. In fact, until I finished the first draft of my manuscript in August, if you pressed on my shoulders, it would have literally felt like putting your finger on a hard rock.
My muscles did not release until I had laid down the burden of my memories and my story into the first draft of my book and looked the beautiful memories of our love story in the face. My muscles did not relax until I had reached the point in my grief process where I could look those memories in the face and finally grapple with them.
The way I dealt with my grief, I suppose it would be like if you were giving birth, would you want to have contractions over a few hours or over 15 minutes? Many of you might say the latter. But as someone who had a normal birth with my first-born, AJ, and an unexpected 15-minute labor with Gracie, it is a terrifying thing to make all that progress in labor in only 2 major contractions. The two contractions feel like you're a bomb exploding over the course of a few minutes and you expect you are going to be splattered all over the wall in the explosion. So in my grief process, I didn't explode in a short period of time like a bomb. I had to leak the nuclear waste (my sadness) over time, so I could maintain my sanity and keep my hands moving and making sandwiches for my children at lunch time. It would have been too unbearably painful to sob uncontrollably on a normal basis. My chest would have exploded and my children would have starved.
I always imagined that I could last as a single mom on my own for 1.5 years. Then, I figured God would just have to provide some unexpected means of grace once my strength ran out. Just as my strength ran out, AJ came out of his grief. And the Lord provided Lydia, a college student from our church, to move in with us. The kids were happy - no longer grieving, which I wanted them to get through before I could check out - I had help, and I finally checked out for a year.
I am a testimony that God's grace is sufficient. I saw a movie this summer where this woman has a nervous breakdown. I had to turn it off half-way through, because her behavior in the days leading up to her breakdown reminded me too much of myself. It caused me to realize that before the Lord provided Grace Lindeman last fall and then Lydia (as I talked about in my entry, "I Grace Have Risen from the Dead"), I was probably 2 inches away from a nervous breakdown. I had no experience with such things, so I didn't know what a nervous breakdown looked like until I saw that movie. Between trying to manage the pain, not accepting I was a single mother and so still living like my husband was just on a business trip but just hadn't returned yet, I had worn myself out. Having help move in was an acceptance that Andrew was never returning. Having help move in was a realization that I had to change my life and I couldn't keep living like I only had to hold down the fort until my husband returned any day now. So I am incredibly grateful that The Lord certainly did provide the grace I needed and faithfully protected me from going over the edge into a nervous breakdown.
Every year, on the anniversary of Andrew's death, I have someone take my kids for the weekend. I did this the first anniversary, because I suddenly found that there was no way I could "manage" my pain at the anniversary. I did it again the second year because since my Fall 2010 meltdown, I thought things were only getting worse, so I feared the 2 year anniversary would be even more unmanageable than the 1 year anniversary. But when I had the 2 year anniversary weekend by myself, I was able to realize the progress I had made since the 1 year anniversary. The Lord used that anniversary to show me that hitting rock bottom in the fall had been my getting worse before I got better. And I was getting better. At the 2 year anniversary, the Lord showed me He had freed me. I felt resurrected. And that was the turning point. And thus began my upward recovery.
So last winter, spring, and summer, I continued to recover. I put both the kids into school 25 hours/week. I had Lydia's help two nights a week and one Friday-Saturday a month. And I hired a babysitter an additional night of the week. I did have every morning with my kids at least for an hour or two, read the Bible to them, and did chores with them. They enjoyed our morning routine, as usual, and found security in that, as usual. They also still had time with me whenever they were home and there was no sitter. While physically I was still present, and went through the motions when the kids were around, for the most part, I completely checked out. And then, over the summer, finishing the first draft of my book was a significant part of that recovery.
And so, this fall, I returned to my body, so that it was no longer a moving shell, but actually contained Grace in it.
"Moving on" with my life has been such a difficult thing to do, because I didn't really know what it meant to live without my life entirely in reference to Andrew. We still lived in the same house we had lived in with him. I was still surrounded by all the furniture I had chosen and/or put together with him. Everything reminded me of him. But Andrew had said to stay in our house, rather than move, after he died. Nothing changed in my life, except that he was gone. "Nothing" changed in my life, except that everything changed in my life. I had no idea what "moving on" looked like. I may have thought it was going back to how life was before Andrew. But before Andrew I was in college and had no children. This Grace is a totally different Grace than the one whose face turned red as she spoke to Andrew for the first time in that large auditorium at Rolfe 1200 after Bible study in the Fall of 2001 (His first memory of me was "red." I said that makes sense, because I was wearing a burgundy shirt and my face probably was bright red). That Grace was in the past.
I can't reference the pre-grief/pre-cancer-trial-Grace in order to recognize that Grace has returned to her body. I was 26 when cancer first descended upon our household, January of 2007. I'm 31 now. Too much has happened since then. The Grace I am today is a completely different Grace even than the one that stood over Andrew's casket as he was lowered into the ground. That Grace entered the casket with him. So what would the post-Andrew me be?
My personality is still the same. I still find all the same things funny, come off as shy when in a new situation, but am always dancing around while talking incessantly when I'm comfortable. My personality is still me, but the person that I am is not the same.
I used to say that I was the right leg and Andrew was the left leg of the relationship. We were such extreme people, we wondered how we ever survived before we met each other. We thought we couldn't survive without each other. Andrew had said in one of his letters, "Any time you don't know what to do in a situation, just think 'what would Andrew do?'" I did that a lot the first year. And now after 3 years of having to survive without my other half, I would say I am a full person. But it is because of Andrew. Really, I am Grace/(Andrew). He is a part of me and always will be. I learned so much from him. He was the practical one, anchoring me, as I always had my head in the clouds. He was the steady one, while I was the roller coaster (which he got a kick out of). I focused on the details to the point of myopia and slow-motionness, while he loved the bigger picture and was super-efficient - he taught me to run from the car to the supermarket, instead of walking like a snail (hey, I was preoccupied with figuring out how to turn the walk into a story. The sun glinting through the trees made the leaves look like dangling coins. The beauty was distracting) as one time-saving tip. He taught me when I got to the dwindling hours of the afternoon, to consolidate the last few things on the to-do list to somehow get them all done at once, instead of leaving them to the next day(s) to finish. Like, instead of running errands at 3 different stores 15 minutes away when you only had 30 minutes left, just do the next best thing and pay $2 extra to get everything all at Walgreen's on the corner (He said, "Time is money").
But more than all those practicalities, Andrew embodied the gospel more than anyone I have ever met. I think many of you who knew him would agree with me. He grasped better than anyone what a wicked sinner he was and how gracious God was to save someone like him. We all are wicked sinners; he just grasped it better. Most of us don't want to admit just how bad we are, how we judge others, but don't see we do the same things. Even if we are moral on the outside, we won't admit to ourselves how capable we are of wickedness, the stuff that's in our hearts, even if we successfully don't show it on the outside. That humility is what gave Andrew the ability to love me so constantly, so persistently, in spite of my continual sinfulness.
I would not have been able to survive as a single mom had he not taught me and demonstrated the multitude of those things first. It was the 5 year apprenticeship I had with Andrew that prepared me to live without him. He gave me my left leg.
The Lord's Faithfulness at The 3 Year Anniversary
Just after Andrew and I left our UCLA fellowship group to move to Washington state, we heard a new woman had joined the fellowship group's staff. When a friend visited us in Washington and told us about this new woman, I heard she was a young widow in her late-twenties. I remember as a newlywed trying for one second to imagine what that would be like. And after that one second, I shook the idea out of my mind and said, "How horrifically unimaginable" - meaning it was too painful for me even to think for one second about it. So I didn't.
After Andrew's death, as I visited friends in Los Angeles, I heard after 8 years this young widow - I'll call her "C" - had re-married. It turned out when she got re-married, C had moved to Minnesota shortly after Andrew and I had moved here (Fall of '07). I lived 35 minutes away from C, but I never met her.
Finally, last spring, I emailed C. I wanted to learn from someone who had been a long-term young widow and survived. Though she had never had children with her first husband, I thought she might still be a resource. I feared she might not want to meet, since I might trigger too many hurtful memories for her. But instead, even though she was sleep-deprived, having just given birth to a second baby a couple weeks earlier, she was eager to meet right away. Since then, we've continued to get together.
During our times together, I loved that rather than fearing memories of her old hurts, she had a heart for young widows. I loved that I could ask her all kinds of questions that I had always wondered. I loved how honest and open she was. I loved that I could tell her anything and rather than be surprised or judge me, she completely understood. I loved how when she spoke Biblical truths about God's faithfulness to me, she wasn't preaching to me. She wasn't being glib. She was testifying to what she had experienced first-hand. I loved how when she spoke those truths to me, it was in a non-condemning, non-judgmental tone. It was a gentleness that could only be the fruit of having experienced profound hurt over a long period of time.
When C came to visit me a few weeks ago when I was struggling, I didn't know what I was feeling. At least if you know you're sad, you can just have a good cry and feel better. But often, I don't know what I'm feeling. And so I just feel like my insides are about to burst. Like each of my cells are a bomb. I'm unable to cry, because I'm still not convinced it's because I'm sad. Since very early on after Andrew's death, I've always been hard on myself - "You're not still sad about this are you?" I'd tell myself. But then if I'm able to talk about it with someone who has already lost a spouse, then they can validate my feelings and then I don't feel crazy.
C said to me, "People often don't realize that sometimes you still feel like you've been torn in half."
And I felt like, "You mean it's normal to feel that way sometimes still?" By her expressing my feelings in a sadder way than I thought I was allowed to feel - and that was if I admitted to myself that I was even sad - took off the pressure for still feeling that way. I felt relieved.
And she said, "And that on those 'torn-in-half' days, you feel like you are walking through wet cement."
"Yes! That's exactly it!" I said. The craziness I was feeling began to subside.
The first two years after Andrew died, basic tasks were difficult. Andrew said in his letters to put one foot in front of the other. Putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, was like crossing an Indiana Jones rickety bridge over a vast chasm. I couldn't look down. I couldn't think about what was lost. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I couldn't panic. I couldn't give up and fall off the bridge. I had to stay alive for the sake of the kids.
But now that I have crossed the bridge, putting one foot in front of the other is simple. Walking is a basic task. Walking across a rickety bridge over a vast chasm is not. Rather, it is the greatest challenge of your life. When you are crossing a rickety bridge that is so long you can't see the end of it and is so long, you've forgotten that real ground exists, basic tasks like getting out of bed, making breakfast for my kids, eating a meal myself - what huge tasks they were! (Food was difficult in particular, because Andrew had not been able to eat the last 11 months of his life - and if anyone loved eating, it was Andrew. Not to mention Andrew and I got to know each other over apartment dinners with all our friends. I associated loss and stress with food).
Yet day after day the Lord helped me to accomplish my tasks. But how there was no room left in my brain for other things! And how incredibly exhausting it was. While neighbors were planting gardens and having friends over for dinner, those tasks seemed like monumental impossibilities to adding to the one-foot-in-front-of the other task of now-it's-time to-make-lunch. I remembered how Andrew and I always used to have people over for dinner, not only when we were married, but before we were together. And I wondered how I ever had done such monumental impossibilities.
Wondering such things, while not realizing I was not doing regular walking but one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-rickety-bridging, I added guilt to the weight of crossing the bridge.
And, on top of grief making basic tasks difficult, it was so hard being a single mom, particularly of little children who had just gotten out of diapers. Pastor Warren told me that he is always telling everyone that being a single mom is the hardest job in all the world.
When C arrived at my house, my cell phone rang. While I was distracted, Lydia told her which coffee shops were nearby. Normally, I never remember Dunn Brothers Coffee. While I used to like Dunn Brothers, I stopped going when Andrew died. It was down the street from the cemetery. And while I occasionally found comfort visiting Andrew's grave, I also associated the cemetery with death and sadness. And so, due to its proximity, I now associated Dunn Brothers with death and sadness. When I went to coffee with friends, I wanted to relax, not be haunted by the idea of the cemetery down the street. When I got off the phone, C said Dunn Brothers was her favorite. So we went. And as I drove, I mentioned that Andrew's grave was down the street.
She said, "Maybe if we finish coffee early, we could visit Andrew's grave?"
Nobody, other than family, had ever asked me that before. It had never occurred to me that that would be something I would even want. But when she said it, it sounded like it might just hit the spot. So I said, "Okay."
At his grave, having her to stand beside me, and just understand, I found myself beginning to feel better.
On the actual weekend before the anniversary of Andrew's death, the one in which I always send my kids to someone else's house, I usually like to be alone. I don't want the anniversary to pass me by unacknowledged without having to take the time to remember Andrew. Ignoring my grief doesn't make it go away. If anything, it makes it linger. And it makes it attack me at inopportune times. At least if I take the time to deal with it, I can have some say in the timing. I don't want the anniversary to pass me by, while I find myself distracted talking about pancakes or something with friends. But it kept coming to mind that this year, I should not be alone. I found myself only wanting to be with people who knew West Los Angeles, where Andrew and I had fallen in love.
And so C came to see me again. In spite of having two small children and living 35 minutes away, C came to see me a lot during those difficult weeks. She understood what a difficult time I was having.
The second person I wanted to spend time with the anniversary weekend was someone who had just moved to Minnesota - I'll call her "J." J was a freshman at our fellowship group when I was a senior at UCLA, so I did not know her very well back then. But since I was the only person she knew in Minnesota when she moved here in the Fall and her husband's job kept him away most of the time, we got together regularly.
Her husband - I'll call him "K" - had just gotten a job with the Timberwolves. So on the weekend of the anniversary, after spending the afternoon together, J took me to a game. Afterwards, I finally met J's husband (he had been so busy with work, I had never met him before). They invited me out to eat with them after the game.
As we sat at the restaurant, when I mentioned in passing that it was the anniversary of Andrew's death, J's husband mentioned that his mom died of cancer. J had told me this a few months before, but I had forgotten. J was very close to K's mom, even before they were married, so both J and K grieved the death of K's mother. Realizing his mom had died of cancer and at such a vulnerably young age for him (college), I sensed that it was safe to talk about Andrew, rather than needing to hold in all that I was thinking. I could be myself and uninhibited, and they would not cut me off to judge or correct me.
J and K had been married for three years. Andrew and I had been married for three years before his first cancer diagnosis. I found things J and K said kept reminding me of stories of Andrew before cancer, and I found myself sharing those stories with them, as well as stories about grief and loss. It was obvious that talking about such things did not scare them, nor stories about the good 'ole days with Andrew. As I told them all about Andrew, most of the stories made me laugh and smile - something that I could not do in earlier years of grief.
At the end of our conversation J said, "God answered my prayer from earlier today." She said, "I prayed that memories of Andrew, rather than make you feel sad, would cause you to smile." And those memories did make me smile.
How Am I in General?
At three years, I do feel a lot better. In fact, there are many times where I will say this is the happiest I've ever been in my life. I feel God has freed me so much from so many things. I'm grateful for all the ways the Lord has stretched and grown me through profound pain and all the accompanying challenges. I'm grateful that I can testify firsthand that God is and has been a Husband to the husband-less. I love the closeness with which the Lord walks with me. Honestly, I wouldn't change what I've been through for anything, because the fruit of it is worth it.
So I've experienced profound pain. Even if I had experienced all of human suffering in all of history put together all in one (and obviously I haven't), compared to the glory of God, it's depth is just a pin prick.
Life is short. Before we know it, we'll blink, and people will be at our funerals. Ask any 70 year old. They'll tell you they were 25 years old a second ago. In light of eternity, whether you die at 27 or 99, there's not much difference. The only thing that matters is God's glory. And in some people's lives, God gets more glory when that person dies young. David Brainerd was 27 when he died. I am eternally grateful that Jesus died at 33. So, in light of that, well, this pain, now that I'm out on the other side of it, I am able to say it was worth it. I'm grateful.
I will probably always miss Andrew. And I will probably continue to write about missing him and the accompanying trials. At times, I still live with weeks-long periods of pain, such as these recent ones. During such weeks, I just know that pain is a regular part of my life and I co-exist with it, as I go about my day and my responsibilities, even if it does make basic things, like cleaning up after dinner or (not so basic things) like wrestling my manuscript into revision - like walking through wet cement. I get less done and what I do get done, I get done slower, but I get done the important things that God both calls me to and gives me the grace to do.
During the first year of my grief process, at times the periods between pain was a few seconds. Sometimes, they stretched to a few minutes or a few hours, then a few days. Now, more and more time stretches between the episodes of pain. This year, there are several weeks between periods of pain. Even months between periods of deep pain, though there is always more mild intermittent pain and missing of Andrew. The fact that the time between pain is longer than the weeks of pain, means that pain is no longer the dominating emotion of my life.
I wrestle with these simultaneous feelings - gratitude and relief that the Lord has rescued me in numerous ways from myself through my trials, while at the same time I still experience profound hurt. How does one feel grateful for pain (due to the fruit it has produced), while at the same time still cry over the pain? How does one feel one wouldn't change the past because of its fruit, while at the same time it is still so painful that all I have to offer my children is me and not me-and-Andrew. While there are times I miss him so much it could kill me?
I wrestle back and forth between these two profound feelings. Gratefulness for the fruit of the pain. And longing for the past before the pain. Both legitimate. Both valid. Both real.
My Pastor Warren says that Psalm 139 says, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." He says he takes that to mean how incredibly and wonderfully complex the human being is. He said human beings are capable of feeling completely opposite feelings at the same time. Knowing that has helped me, as it takes so much of the pressure off. It means I don't have to wrestle between those opposing feelings. I can simply embrace them.
I am excited for whatever the Lord has in store for me and my children in this next year. I am excited to see what God will have done at the 4 year anniversary. Andrew wrote in his letters, "Smile at the future. The best is yet to come." I smile a lot now. I love my life. I love my kids. And for the first time in years, because I'm finally happy and secure, I am excited for whatever unknown future the Lord has in store.
Grief is a funny thing. It is unpredictable and whenever you think it's been gone so long, maybe it'll forget to return, it shows up. Then, instead of a few minutes, it stays several weeks. And just when you've come to expect this unwanted guest is never leaving, you wake up one morning, and it has taken off in the middle of the night. The air is clear again and the suffocating fog it brought with it has lifted. You look out the window and you say, "Oh! that's what the sun looks like. I almost forgot."
Now that I am feeling better after a difficult month (the weeks before and after the anniversary of Andrew's death), I'm finally posting the blog I wrote about it last month:
People ask me if the holidays are difficult for me. The holidays aren't particularly difficult. But,
- weddings (for some reason I still go to all of them, though inevitably they remind me of my hopeful day and how all those hopes were dashed to pieces)
- the weeks surrounding Andrew's birthday/September 11th
- my birthday/Mother's day,
- and Andrew's death day
are the difficult parts of the year for me.
The weeks leading up to the anniversary of Andrew's death were difficult and emotional for me. My Pastor Warren said that I should expect it to still be difficult for me, because anniversaries like this tug on the scar tissue. He said he always compares emotional injuries to physical injuries. So if I had been in a severe car accident three years ago and had suffered a spinal injury, I might still be in a wheelchair, still making my recovery.
Most of the time, nowadays, I know 3 years has passed. I know all the events that have passed throughout these 3 years and all that we've made it through. I know how much I've changed in the last three years.
The distance that three years has provided means all the memories I blocked out, that I couldn't face remembering the first few years, I am now able to remember. Because I've processed a lot of my grief and memories, I am now able to access the beautiful memories - I am able to be honest with myself about the profundity of my loss. I no longer have to minimize it to myself in order to cope. Strangely, the more time and distance that has passed between now and Andrew's death, the sharper the pain is when it does come. The sharper the realization is of the profundity of my loss.
And so sometimes, a beautiful memory of Andrew will fly at me all of a sudden, and my heart longs to be near him desperately, more than it ever could the first year of his death. In that moment, suddenly, I remember what it's like to be in love - though I had blocked out that remembrance the first year. Being in love almost does feel like magic - the way you feel like you belong together. A connection that goes beyond a list of things that you like about each other. It's just like you're two puzzle pieces that are made for each other. And in that moment, I remember that "I can't live without you," is not just a sentimental line from a movie. And in those moments, suddenly, three years have disappeared. I feel the knife stabbing my heart relentlessly and I cry out, "God, I can't do this! I'll never survive this!"
And then, it will come to mind, "Wait a second, Grace. You have survived this. He didn't die two weeks ago. It's been three years. You and you're children are still alive. And you are all moving on with your lives. The kids are doing well and so are you. You made it through the worst part. Obviously, you can manage as a single mother. You have survived this. Just keep doing what you're doing. Keep going."
Now that I am here at the 3 year marker, it is interesting to see the differences between where I am now and where I spent the first 2 years after Andrew's death.
In retrospect, that first 2 years, I lived every single day with pain. I felt like I daily was managing my pain. I had to "manage" my pain, because if I didn't control it and didn't pace myself, the pain was too excruciating to confront all at once. This was my way of coping. Honestly, I have only sobbed about three times since Andrew died. Yes, I did cry every single day the first year, but not uncontrollably. More like a faucet. Not a fire hose. Whatever didn't come out in tears, stayed in all my muscles. So then, I returned to my old love of dance and found some dance classes, in order to deal with the grief that was stuck in my muscles. I had heard physical activity was an important aspect of dealing with grief. In fact, until I finished the first draft of my manuscript in August, if you pressed on my shoulders, it would have literally felt like putting your finger on a hard rock.
My muscles did not release until I had laid down the burden of my memories and my story into the first draft of my book and looked the beautiful memories of our love story in the face. My muscles did not relax until I had reached the point in my grief process where I could look those memories in the face and finally grapple with them.
The way I dealt with my grief, I suppose it would be like if you were giving birth, would you want to have contractions over a few hours or over 15 minutes? Many of you might say the latter. But as someone who had a normal birth with my first-born, AJ, and an unexpected 15-minute labor with Gracie, it is a terrifying thing to make all that progress in labor in only 2 major contractions. The two contractions feel like you're a bomb exploding over the course of a few minutes and you expect you are going to be splattered all over the wall in the explosion. So in my grief process, I didn't explode in a short period of time like a bomb. I had to leak the nuclear waste (my sadness) over time, so I could maintain my sanity and keep my hands moving and making sandwiches for my children at lunch time. It would have been too unbearably painful to sob uncontrollably on a normal basis. My chest would have exploded and my children would have starved.
I always imagined that I could last as a single mom on my own for 1.5 years. Then, I figured God would just have to provide some unexpected means of grace once my strength ran out. Just as my strength ran out, AJ came out of his grief. And the Lord provided Lydia, a college student from our church, to move in with us. The kids were happy - no longer grieving, which I wanted them to get through before I could check out - I had help, and I finally checked out for a year.
I am a testimony that God's grace is sufficient. I saw a movie this summer where this woman has a nervous breakdown. I had to turn it off half-way through, because her behavior in the days leading up to her breakdown reminded me too much of myself. It caused me to realize that before the Lord provided Grace Lindeman last fall and then Lydia (as I talked about in my entry, "I Grace Have Risen from the Dead"), I was probably 2 inches away from a nervous breakdown. I had no experience with such things, so I didn't know what a nervous breakdown looked like until I saw that movie. Between trying to manage the pain, not accepting I was a single mother and so still living like my husband was just on a business trip but just hadn't returned yet, I had worn myself out. Having help move in was an acceptance that Andrew was never returning. Having help move in was a realization that I had to change my life and I couldn't keep living like I only had to hold down the fort until my husband returned any day now. So I am incredibly grateful that The Lord certainly did provide the grace I needed and faithfully protected me from going over the edge into a nervous breakdown.
Every year, on the anniversary of Andrew's death, I have someone take my kids for the weekend. I did this the first anniversary, because I suddenly found that there was no way I could "manage" my pain at the anniversary. I did it again the second year because since my Fall 2010 meltdown, I thought things were only getting worse, so I feared the 2 year anniversary would be even more unmanageable than the 1 year anniversary. But when I had the 2 year anniversary weekend by myself, I was able to realize the progress I had made since the 1 year anniversary. The Lord used that anniversary to show me that hitting rock bottom in the fall had been my getting worse before I got better. And I was getting better. At the 2 year anniversary, the Lord showed me He had freed me. I felt resurrected. And that was the turning point. And thus began my upward recovery.
So last winter, spring, and summer, I continued to recover. I put both the kids into school 25 hours/week. I had Lydia's help two nights a week and one Friday-Saturday a month. And I hired a babysitter an additional night of the week. I did have every morning with my kids at least for an hour or two, read the Bible to them, and did chores with them. They enjoyed our morning routine, as usual, and found security in that, as usual. They also still had time with me whenever they were home and there was no sitter. While physically I was still present, and went through the motions when the kids were around, for the most part, I completely checked out. And then, over the summer, finishing the first draft of my book was a significant part of that recovery.
And so, this fall, I returned to my body, so that it was no longer a moving shell, but actually contained Grace in it.
"Moving on" with my life has been such a difficult thing to do, because I didn't really know what it meant to live without my life entirely in reference to Andrew. We still lived in the same house we had lived in with him. I was still surrounded by all the furniture I had chosen and/or put together with him. Everything reminded me of him. But Andrew had said to stay in our house, rather than move, after he died. Nothing changed in my life, except that he was gone. "Nothing" changed in my life, except that everything changed in my life. I had no idea what "moving on" looked like. I may have thought it was going back to how life was before Andrew. But before Andrew I was in college and had no children. This Grace is a totally different Grace than the one whose face turned red as she spoke to Andrew for the first time in that large auditorium at Rolfe 1200 after Bible study in the Fall of 2001 (His first memory of me was "red." I said that makes sense, because I was wearing a burgundy shirt and my face probably was bright red). That Grace was in the past.
I can't reference the pre-grief/pre-cancer-trial-Grace in order to recognize that Grace has returned to her body. I was 26 when cancer first descended upon our household, January of 2007. I'm 31 now. Too much has happened since then. The Grace I am today is a completely different Grace even than the one that stood over Andrew's casket as he was lowered into the ground. That Grace entered the casket with him. So what would the post-Andrew me be?
My personality is still the same. I still find all the same things funny, come off as shy when in a new situation, but am always dancing around while talking incessantly when I'm comfortable. My personality is still me, but the person that I am is not the same.
I used to say that I was the right leg and Andrew was the left leg of the relationship. We were such extreme people, we wondered how we ever survived before we met each other. We thought we couldn't survive without each other. Andrew had said in one of his letters, "Any time you don't know what to do in a situation, just think 'what would Andrew do?'" I did that a lot the first year. And now after 3 years of having to survive without my other half, I would say I am a full person. But it is because of Andrew. Really, I am Grace/(Andrew). He is a part of me and always will be. I learned so much from him. He was the practical one, anchoring me, as I always had my head in the clouds. He was the steady one, while I was the roller coaster (which he got a kick out of). I focused on the details to the point of myopia and slow-motionness, while he loved the bigger picture and was super-efficient - he taught me to run from the car to the supermarket, instead of walking like a snail (hey, I was preoccupied with figuring out how to turn the walk into a story. The sun glinting through the trees made the leaves look like dangling coins. The beauty was distracting) as one time-saving tip. He taught me when I got to the dwindling hours of the afternoon, to consolidate the last few things on the to-do list to somehow get them all done at once, instead of leaving them to the next day(s) to finish. Like, instead of running errands at 3 different stores 15 minutes away when you only had 30 minutes left, just do the next best thing and pay $2 extra to get everything all at Walgreen's on the corner (He said, "Time is money").
But more than all those practicalities, Andrew embodied the gospel more than anyone I have ever met. I think many of you who knew him would agree with me. He grasped better than anyone what a wicked sinner he was and how gracious God was to save someone like him. We all are wicked sinners; he just grasped it better. Most of us don't want to admit just how bad we are, how we judge others, but don't see we do the same things. Even if we are moral on the outside, we won't admit to ourselves how capable we are of wickedness, the stuff that's in our hearts, even if we successfully don't show it on the outside. That humility is what gave Andrew the ability to love me so constantly, so persistently, in spite of my continual sinfulness.
I would not have been able to survive as a single mom had he not taught me and demonstrated the multitude of those things first. It was the 5 year apprenticeship I had with Andrew that prepared me to live without him. He gave me my left leg.
The Lord's Faithfulness at The 3 Year Anniversary
Just after Andrew and I left our UCLA fellowship group to move to Washington state, we heard a new woman had joined the fellowship group's staff. When a friend visited us in Washington and told us about this new woman, I heard she was a young widow in her late-twenties. I remember as a newlywed trying for one second to imagine what that would be like. And after that one second, I shook the idea out of my mind and said, "How horrifically unimaginable" - meaning it was too painful for me even to think for one second about it. So I didn't.
After Andrew's death, as I visited friends in Los Angeles, I heard after 8 years this young widow - I'll call her "C" - had re-married. It turned out when she got re-married, C had moved to Minnesota shortly after Andrew and I had moved here (Fall of '07). I lived 35 minutes away from C, but I never met her.
Finally, last spring, I emailed C. I wanted to learn from someone who had been a long-term young widow and survived. Though she had never had children with her first husband, I thought she might still be a resource. I feared she might not want to meet, since I might trigger too many hurtful memories for her. But instead, even though she was sleep-deprived, having just given birth to a second baby a couple weeks earlier, she was eager to meet right away. Since then, we've continued to get together.
During our times together, I loved that rather than fearing memories of her old hurts, she had a heart for young widows. I loved that I could ask her all kinds of questions that I had always wondered. I loved how honest and open she was. I loved that I could tell her anything and rather than be surprised or judge me, she completely understood. I loved how when she spoke Biblical truths about God's faithfulness to me, she wasn't preaching to me. She wasn't being glib. She was testifying to what she had experienced first-hand. I loved how when she spoke those truths to me, it was in a non-condemning, non-judgmental tone. It was a gentleness that could only be the fruit of having experienced profound hurt over a long period of time.
When C came to visit me a few weeks ago when I was struggling, I didn't know what I was feeling. At least if you know you're sad, you can just have a good cry and feel better. But often, I don't know what I'm feeling. And so I just feel like my insides are about to burst. Like each of my cells are a bomb. I'm unable to cry, because I'm still not convinced it's because I'm sad. Since very early on after Andrew's death, I've always been hard on myself - "You're not still sad about this are you?" I'd tell myself. But then if I'm able to talk about it with someone who has already lost a spouse, then they can validate my feelings and then I don't feel crazy.
C said to me, "People often don't realize that sometimes you still feel like you've been torn in half."
And I felt like, "You mean it's normal to feel that way sometimes still?" By her expressing my feelings in a sadder way than I thought I was allowed to feel - and that was if I admitted to myself that I was even sad - took off the pressure for still feeling that way. I felt relieved.
And she said, "And that on those 'torn-in-half' days, you feel like you are walking through wet cement."
"Yes! That's exactly it!" I said. The craziness I was feeling began to subside.
The first two years after Andrew died, basic tasks were difficult. Andrew said in his letters to put one foot in front of the other. Putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, was like crossing an Indiana Jones rickety bridge over a vast chasm. I couldn't look down. I couldn't think about what was lost. I just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I couldn't panic. I couldn't give up and fall off the bridge. I had to stay alive for the sake of the kids.
But now that I have crossed the bridge, putting one foot in front of the other is simple. Walking is a basic task. Walking across a rickety bridge over a vast chasm is not. Rather, it is the greatest challenge of your life. When you are crossing a rickety bridge that is so long you can't see the end of it and is so long, you've forgotten that real ground exists, basic tasks like getting out of bed, making breakfast for my kids, eating a meal myself - what huge tasks they were! (Food was difficult in particular, because Andrew had not been able to eat the last 11 months of his life - and if anyone loved eating, it was Andrew. Not to mention Andrew and I got to know each other over apartment dinners with all our friends. I associated loss and stress with food).
Yet day after day the Lord helped me to accomplish my tasks. But how there was no room left in my brain for other things! And how incredibly exhausting it was. While neighbors were planting gardens and having friends over for dinner, those tasks seemed like monumental impossibilities to adding to the one-foot-in-front-of the other task of now-it's-time to-make-lunch. I remembered how Andrew and I always used to have people over for dinner, not only when we were married, but before we were together. And I wondered how I ever had done such monumental impossibilities.
Wondering such things, while not realizing I was not doing regular walking but one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-rickety-bridging, I added guilt to the weight of crossing the bridge.
And, on top of grief making basic tasks difficult, it was so hard being a single mom, particularly of little children who had just gotten out of diapers. Pastor Warren told me that he is always telling everyone that being a single mom is the hardest job in all the world.
When C arrived at my house, my cell phone rang. While I was distracted, Lydia told her which coffee shops were nearby. Normally, I never remember Dunn Brothers Coffee. While I used to like Dunn Brothers, I stopped going when Andrew died. It was down the street from the cemetery. And while I occasionally found comfort visiting Andrew's grave, I also associated the cemetery with death and sadness. And so, due to its proximity, I now associated Dunn Brothers with death and sadness. When I went to coffee with friends, I wanted to relax, not be haunted by the idea of the cemetery down the street. When I got off the phone, C said Dunn Brothers was her favorite. So we went. And as I drove, I mentioned that Andrew's grave was down the street.
She said, "Maybe if we finish coffee early, we could visit Andrew's grave?"
Nobody, other than family, had ever asked me that before. It had never occurred to me that that would be something I would even want. But when she said it, it sounded like it might just hit the spot. So I said, "Okay."
At his grave, having her to stand beside me, and just understand, I found myself beginning to feel better.
On the actual weekend before the anniversary of Andrew's death, the one in which I always send my kids to someone else's house, I usually like to be alone. I don't want the anniversary to pass me by unacknowledged without having to take the time to remember Andrew. Ignoring my grief doesn't make it go away. If anything, it makes it linger. And it makes it attack me at inopportune times. At least if I take the time to deal with it, I can have some say in the timing. I don't want the anniversary to pass me by, while I find myself distracted talking about pancakes or something with friends. But it kept coming to mind that this year, I should not be alone. I found myself only wanting to be with people who knew West Los Angeles, where Andrew and I had fallen in love.
And so C came to see me again. In spite of having two small children and living 35 minutes away, C came to see me a lot during those difficult weeks. She understood what a difficult time I was having.
The second person I wanted to spend time with the anniversary weekend was someone who had just moved to Minnesota - I'll call her "J." J was a freshman at our fellowship group when I was a senior at UCLA, so I did not know her very well back then. But since I was the only person she knew in Minnesota when she moved here in the Fall and her husband's job kept him away most of the time, we got together regularly.
Her husband - I'll call him "K" - had just gotten a job with the Timberwolves. So on the weekend of the anniversary, after spending the afternoon together, J took me to a game. Afterwards, I finally met J's husband (he had been so busy with work, I had never met him before). They invited me out to eat with them after the game.
As we sat at the restaurant, when I mentioned in passing that it was the anniversary of Andrew's death, J's husband mentioned that his mom died of cancer. J had told me this a few months before, but I had forgotten. J was very close to K's mom, even before they were married, so both J and K grieved the death of K's mother. Realizing his mom had died of cancer and at such a vulnerably young age for him (college), I sensed that it was safe to talk about Andrew, rather than needing to hold in all that I was thinking. I could be myself and uninhibited, and they would not cut me off to judge or correct me.
J and K had been married for three years. Andrew and I had been married for three years before his first cancer diagnosis. I found things J and K said kept reminding me of stories of Andrew before cancer, and I found myself sharing those stories with them, as well as stories about grief and loss. It was obvious that talking about such things did not scare them, nor stories about the good 'ole days with Andrew. As I told them all about Andrew, most of the stories made me laugh and smile - something that I could not do in earlier years of grief.
At the end of our conversation J said, "God answered my prayer from earlier today." She said, "I prayed that memories of Andrew, rather than make you feel sad, would cause you to smile." And those memories did make me smile.
How Am I in General?
At three years, I do feel a lot better. In fact, there are many times where I will say this is the happiest I've ever been in my life. I feel God has freed me so much from so many things. I'm grateful for all the ways the Lord has stretched and grown me through profound pain and all the accompanying challenges. I'm grateful that I can testify firsthand that God is and has been a Husband to the husband-less. I love the closeness with which the Lord walks with me. Honestly, I wouldn't change what I've been through for anything, because the fruit of it is worth it.
So I've experienced profound pain. Even if I had experienced all of human suffering in all of history put together all in one (and obviously I haven't), compared to the glory of God, it's depth is just a pin prick.
Life is short. Before we know it, we'll blink, and people will be at our funerals. Ask any 70 year old. They'll tell you they were 25 years old a second ago. In light of eternity, whether you die at 27 or 99, there's not much difference. The only thing that matters is God's glory. And in some people's lives, God gets more glory when that person dies young. David Brainerd was 27 when he died. I am eternally grateful that Jesus died at 33. So, in light of that, well, this pain, now that I'm out on the other side of it, I am able to say it was worth it. I'm grateful.
I will probably always miss Andrew. And I will probably continue to write about missing him and the accompanying trials. At times, I still live with weeks-long periods of pain, such as these recent ones. During such weeks, I just know that pain is a regular part of my life and I co-exist with it, as I go about my day and my responsibilities, even if it does make basic things, like cleaning up after dinner or (not so basic things) like wrestling my manuscript into revision - like walking through wet cement. I get less done and what I do get done, I get done slower, but I get done the important things that God both calls me to and gives me the grace to do.
During the first year of my grief process, at times the periods between pain was a few seconds. Sometimes, they stretched to a few minutes or a few hours, then a few days. Now, more and more time stretches between the episodes of pain. This year, there are several weeks between periods of pain. Even months between periods of deep pain, though there is always more mild intermittent pain and missing of Andrew. The fact that the time between pain is longer than the weeks of pain, means that pain is no longer the dominating emotion of my life.
I wrestle with these simultaneous feelings - gratitude and relief that the Lord has rescued me in numerous ways from myself through my trials, while at the same time I still experience profound hurt. How does one feel grateful for pain (due to the fruit it has produced), while at the same time still cry over the pain? How does one feel one wouldn't change the past because of its fruit, while at the same time it is still so painful that all I have to offer my children is me and not me-and-Andrew. While there are times I miss him so much it could kill me?
I wrestle back and forth between these two profound feelings. Gratefulness for the fruit of the pain. And longing for the past before the pain. Both legitimate. Both valid. Both real.
My Pastor Warren says that Psalm 139 says, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." He says he takes that to mean how incredibly and wonderfully complex the human being is. He said human beings are capable of feeling completely opposite feelings at the same time. Knowing that has helped me, as it takes so much of the pressure off. It means I don't have to wrestle between those opposing feelings. I can simply embrace them.
I am excited for whatever the Lord has in store for me and my children in this next year. I am excited to see what God will have done at the 4 year anniversary. Andrew wrote in his letters, "Smile at the future. The best is yet to come." I smile a lot now. I love my life. I love my kids. And for the first time in years, because I'm finally happy and secure, I am excited for whatever unknown future the Lord has in store.
Monday, January 09, 2012
The Pursuit of Publication
"A Writer?"
I've wanted to be a writer for most of my life.
When my 2nd grade teacher entered something I had written into a regional writing contest, I won. So when a friend of my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I admitted for the first time, "A writer!"
He laughed at me. Like I had said something as unlikely and as impractical as declaring I wanted to be a movie star. After that, I forgot such dreams, though I continued to worship at the altar of Madeleine L'Engle, reading every one of her numerous novels I could get my hands on. On top of that, my three siblings were 15 to 7 years older than me. Their libraries became my feeding ground. In fourth grade, I read J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and proceeded to read about a book a night. Over the years, the fact that I filled journal after journal with my own scribbles meant little to me, just as I took for granted the wallpaper in the background or the armchair in the corner.
When I was 17, I had the opportunity to work privately with a successful novelist, the writer-in-residence at my high school. During our weekly meetings, he would encourage me: "Perhaps this is what you should do with your life - write professionally." Just as I thought nothing of the books I consumed or notebooks I filled, I ignored what he said. He might as well have been speaking another language. I thought authors had to have two initials for a first name, or at least have a sophisticated British accent like his and that every other sentence an author spoke would unconsciously be sprinkled with metaphors to the sun setting or the moon rising. I did not think writing had anything to do with a mere mortal and a name like "Grace Uriarte."
Nonetheless, all his words - though they were riddles to me - continued to echo through my mind. "A writer has nothing to do with whether or not you choose to make the door red or blue," (imagine in an eloquent, British accent), "it has to do with the processes of the mind." I had no idea what he was talking about. How were my processes any different than any one else's? Still, all his words from my apprenticeship with him pursued me. Over the years, I found myself watching each person, trying to understand their "processes," trying to understand what a "processes" was, and what made me different than them - why had he decided that I was "a writer?" I began to see some differences - for one, the very fact that I was watching them. I realized he had been trying to tell me that a writer is born an observer, a watcher of people, settings, details, culture - that's what provides the content, the words that overflow onto paper.
My fiction teacher had said his mind was like a double-screen. One on which he saw what was happening before him, and the other on which he saw all of that translated into scenes for a novel. I realized a double-screen was happening for me as well. One on which I saw what was before my eyes and the other on which I translated it into the different parts of the narrative. Only, it wasn't fiction. Real people seemed like the most intriguing characters. I found literary things happened every day. It was just a matter of highlighting the significant, editing out the insignificant that would distract from the true meaning of the event, and knowing where it landed on the timeline of the narrative, whether it was foreshadowing, the story's complication, or the climax. Sometimes, even the real-life setting and the weather seemed to conveniently reflect the event's meaning. If something terribly sad was happening, it was raining outside, and the storm would escalate according to the sorrow. I didn't need to change the setting or weather for the sake of the story. It really happened that way in real life.
Finally, Christmas break my sophomore year in college, when I was 19, I read a novel by Elizabeth Prentiss, author of the 19th century hymn "More Love to Thee." The book was called Stepping Heavenward, a fictional journal of a young woman. As a teenager, she is self-absorbed, shallow, and you are not convinced she is a Christian. Many readers at this point stop reading, as she is kind of annoying. Yet as her entries progress through the years, you see God continuing to grow her more and more into His image. The godly people she describes that are in her life, such as her mother and pastor, disciple you through their example and their letters she copies into her journal. Wow! I thought. One can glorify God through fiction! I could not put the book down until I finished it, barely sleeping those three days. That book changed my life. And after that, when another one of my fiction teacher's lines echoed through my mind, I cried out, "All right already! I'll be a writer!" And then, all of a sudden, his words stopped echoing.
In college, call it idealistic, but rather than a stepping stone to a high-paying job, I saw my education as an end in itself. I loved learning. I saw my education as a gift from God. A limited period in my life when not only was it allowed to be my top priority, but my parents expected it to be my top priority. More than that, my calling at the time was to be a student. And if I wanted to glorify God, I needed to work at it with all my heart. I fell in love with my history and political theory classes. Exhilarated by seeing God's sovereign hand as He wrote His Story of the world. My old fiction teacher had always said that one did not have to major in English in order to be a writer. So I majored in history and minored in political theory.
After I graduated from UCLA, I was accepted into a graduate writing program at the University of Southern California (USC), but I deferred a year. During that year, so much changed - most of all, I began dating Andrew. And so when I finally did start the writing program, two weeks into my first semester at USC, Andrew asked me to marry him. At the end of my first semester in graduate school, Andrew completed his last semester at UCLA, we got married, and Motorola moved us to Washington.
How Will I Ever Write Again?
We spent the first three months of our marriage travelling and living out of a suitcase - I loved it! And instead of writing, Andrew's ear became my notebook. Then, two weeks after we settled into Washington, I found out I was pregnant. I was so sick during that pregnancy, I could barely walk down the hall. For the first time in my life, I could not write a thing in my notebooks. For the first time in my life, I had writer's block. I wondered at that time what the Lord had in store with writing. Andrew and I hoped to have many children. Yet, even if the writer's block ever ended, how would I write if I was constantly sick with pregnancy and caring for children?
During that pregnancy, I volunteered at the local art gallery in town. One day, I was assigned to watch the desk with a local artist. As we sat, she showed me beautiful black and white childhood photographs of the six children she had just finished raising. She told me she was a Christian and told me about her 21 year old son that had died in a car accident the year before. I don't remember the details of what she said, but I remembered how she smiled through tears and the peace that emanated from her when she spoke of him. She told me that while she homeschooled and raised her children, she did not have the time to work on her art, but that how important children were to Jesus. So she trusted Him and prioritized her children above her career.
She said maybe once a year, when she could not take not doing art anymore, she might work through the middle of the night and complete a painting then. Then she said, "But you know what? At the end of 20 years, I had 20 paintings. And my friend who left her family to do art, never completed anything, because her circumstances were never 'ideal' enough to do her art. And now that my children are grown, I can paint all day long. As much as I want to."
As I observed her art in the gallery and displayed at various local businesses and homes, I saw how she had used many of those beautiful photographs she had taken of her children growing up and enjoying each other as the inspiration for much of her art. Though she painted timeless pictures of children in 19th century settings and clothing, she had copied her children's faces and expressions from their photographs as she painted.
I was too sick to volunteer many more times at the art gallery. And that was the only time I ever saw that woman. I don't remember her name, and I probably would not even recognize her if I saw her again. But, as my children were born, and I was exhausted with two little ones in diapers and no minutes to write for months at a time, I thought often of how that woman trusted the Lord throughout those many years of raising her children. I thought of how her one painting a year accumulated into 20 paintings. And some months, I did write 45 minutes a day three times a week. And when Andrew did radiation 30 minutes a day his first time through cancer, while I sat in the waiting room, I wrote fiction during those 30 minute periods. I believe the Lord used those little moments as one of the means to sustain me at that time.
During my marriage to Andrew, I never completed the novel I began my first and only semester in graduate school. Even while we were dating, Andrew would often talk to me about my writing. And I would always say, "Well, what if it's not the Lord's will that I ever publish a book?" I knew at the back of my mind, though, that unless I committed to finishing and publishing a book, I never would. All the writing books that caught my eye at the library or book stores that I skimmed always said the difference between someone published and someone not published is merely persistence. Throughout the years, I always read how various classics had been rejected by 45 or 60 or 90 publishers before they were ever published. And that is why I always responded with doubt when Andrew talked to me about publishing. I knew that even if I accumulated pages while raising my children, I could not commit to pursuing literary agents or publishing companies, especially not through countless rejections. I knew that committing to the goal of completing a book and publishing it meant committing to rejection with never the promise of publication. When I see actors on TV who played bit roles for 20 years and only now have a regular paying job as an actor, I wonder how they knew to persevere.
My high school fiction teacher, as well as all those books on writing, told me that self-doubt is a reality of a writer's life. A writer cannot help but write, and thus cannot help but persist through the self-doubt. Even though I often doubted I would ever get around to finishing writing a book, Andrew kept insisting I one day would have to publish. After he died, I read throughout his journals again of this insistence. And a few months after that, I discovered a letter in our file cabinet that I've shared on this blog before, where he mentioned one last time to "publish our book." When he wrote that letter, "our book" wasn't written yet. "Our book" was up to me to define. But those words that he wrote - typed in black on that crisp, white paper - give me the resolve to one day publish. He's not here for me to say, "What if I can't?" That black type stands immovable on that white paper. I cannot argue with it. And so, I simply say, "I must."
The Process of Writing "Our Book"
This summer, the children and I spent in New Jersey. We stayed with Andrew's parents, because his mom does not work outside the home and she could help me with the kids. Because of that, for the first time in my life, I wrote full-time. I was desperate to write and finish "our book," knowing it would be the only opportunity I would have this much help with the kids. I was desperate to take all my memories out of my purse and put them into a book, so that it could rest on a shelf. So that I wouldn't have to carry all those memories everywhere, weighing heavily on my shoulder, but could still access them anytime I wanted. I felt I needed to do this in order to be freed from the burden of my past, to move on with my life, and to give myself more fully to my children.
So this summer, I wrote up to seven days a week, 10-12 hours most days. I had never written an entire book before. If I wasn't actually writing, then I was trying to learn, trying to figure out how one even crafts a book in the first place. Some days I was trying to learn, Where does one go when one hits a brick wall? I read an extremely helpful book, Your Book Starts Here, by Mary Carol Moore. I read other memoirs and novels, looking for examples of how they handled certain techniques.
I didn't care about the number of words - except that it was tight enough to be less than 250 pages. Obviously I can write endless words (as evidenced by the seven years of verbosity on this blog), but crafting a narrative, making all the big picture decisions was a whole new level. It was irrelevant if I hit 250 pages, but had not created the experience that I envisioned. Regardless of how many pages I did or didn't write, I only cared that I accomplished a particular journey.
This book was completely new. It was not the blog. It was our love story and the untold details of our cancer trial.
There were many times I wanted to give up. But committing to writing a book is like committing to marriage. Some days aren't good, but a marriage won't work without full commitment. What if I'm wasting my time? What if I never finish the book? Yet the Lord continued to lead me through it. He continued to allow me to persevere. And by my deadline, after seven weeks of summer full-time writing, I finished the first draft!
With the first draft out of my mind and onto paper, when I awoke the next morning, I felt as if I had emerged from a fog, even though I had been in this fog for so many years - ever since the endless days of losing Andrew little by little during the endless months and years of cancer - that I didn't even know I had been in a fog until I emerged from it. My memories no longer weighed on my shoulders. They were crafted into a narrative on paper.
I've wanted to be a writer for most of my life.
When my 2nd grade teacher entered something I had written into a regional writing contest, I won. So when a friend of my parents asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I admitted for the first time, "A writer!"
He laughed at me. Like I had said something as unlikely and as impractical as declaring I wanted to be a movie star. After that, I forgot such dreams, though I continued to worship at the altar of Madeleine L'Engle, reading every one of her numerous novels I could get my hands on. On top of that, my three siblings were 15 to 7 years older than me. Their libraries became my feeding ground. In fourth grade, I read J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and proceeded to read about a book a night. Over the years, the fact that I filled journal after journal with my own scribbles meant little to me, just as I took for granted the wallpaper in the background or the armchair in the corner.
When I was 17, I had the opportunity to work privately with a successful novelist, the writer-in-residence at my high school. During our weekly meetings, he would encourage me: "Perhaps this is what you should do with your life - write professionally." Just as I thought nothing of the books I consumed or notebooks I filled, I ignored what he said. He might as well have been speaking another language. I thought authors had to have two initials for a first name, or at least have a sophisticated British accent like his and that every other sentence an author spoke would unconsciously be sprinkled with metaphors to the sun setting or the moon rising. I did not think writing had anything to do with a mere mortal and a name like "Grace Uriarte."
Nonetheless, all his words - though they were riddles to me - continued to echo through my mind. "A writer has nothing to do with whether or not you choose to make the door red or blue," (imagine in an eloquent, British accent), "it has to do with the processes of the mind." I had no idea what he was talking about. How were my processes any different than any one else's? Still, all his words from my apprenticeship with him pursued me. Over the years, I found myself watching each person, trying to understand their "processes," trying to understand what a "processes" was, and what made me different than them - why had he decided that I was "a writer?" I began to see some differences - for one, the very fact that I was watching them. I realized he had been trying to tell me that a writer is born an observer, a watcher of people, settings, details, culture - that's what provides the content, the words that overflow onto paper.
My fiction teacher had said his mind was like a double-screen. One on which he saw what was happening before him, and the other on which he saw all of that translated into scenes for a novel. I realized a double-screen was happening for me as well. One on which I saw what was before my eyes and the other on which I translated it into the different parts of the narrative. Only, it wasn't fiction. Real people seemed like the most intriguing characters. I found literary things happened every day. It was just a matter of highlighting the significant, editing out the insignificant that would distract from the true meaning of the event, and knowing where it landed on the timeline of the narrative, whether it was foreshadowing, the story's complication, or the climax. Sometimes, even the real-life setting and the weather seemed to conveniently reflect the event's meaning. If something terribly sad was happening, it was raining outside, and the storm would escalate according to the sorrow. I didn't need to change the setting or weather for the sake of the story. It really happened that way in real life.
Finally, Christmas break my sophomore year in college, when I was 19, I read a novel by Elizabeth Prentiss, author of the 19th century hymn "More Love to Thee." The book was called Stepping Heavenward, a fictional journal of a young woman. As a teenager, she is self-absorbed, shallow, and you are not convinced she is a Christian. Many readers at this point stop reading, as she is kind of annoying. Yet as her entries progress through the years, you see God continuing to grow her more and more into His image. The godly people she describes that are in her life, such as her mother and pastor, disciple you through their example and their letters she copies into her journal. Wow! I thought. One can glorify God through fiction! I could not put the book down until I finished it, barely sleeping those three days. That book changed my life. And after that, when another one of my fiction teacher's lines echoed through my mind, I cried out, "All right already! I'll be a writer!" And then, all of a sudden, his words stopped echoing.
In college, call it idealistic, but rather than a stepping stone to a high-paying job, I saw my education as an end in itself. I loved learning. I saw my education as a gift from God. A limited period in my life when not only was it allowed to be my top priority, but my parents expected it to be my top priority. More than that, my calling at the time was to be a student. And if I wanted to glorify God, I needed to work at it with all my heart. I fell in love with my history and political theory classes. Exhilarated by seeing God's sovereign hand as He wrote His Story of the world. My old fiction teacher had always said that one did not have to major in English in order to be a writer. So I majored in history and minored in political theory.
After I graduated from UCLA, I was accepted into a graduate writing program at the University of Southern California (USC), but I deferred a year. During that year, so much changed - most of all, I began dating Andrew. And so when I finally did start the writing program, two weeks into my first semester at USC, Andrew asked me to marry him. At the end of my first semester in graduate school, Andrew completed his last semester at UCLA, we got married, and Motorola moved us to Washington.
How Will I Ever Write Again?
We spent the first three months of our marriage travelling and living out of a suitcase - I loved it! And instead of writing, Andrew's ear became my notebook. Then, two weeks after we settled into Washington, I found out I was pregnant. I was so sick during that pregnancy, I could barely walk down the hall. For the first time in my life, I could not write a thing in my notebooks. For the first time in my life, I had writer's block. I wondered at that time what the Lord had in store with writing. Andrew and I hoped to have many children. Yet, even if the writer's block ever ended, how would I write if I was constantly sick with pregnancy and caring for children?
During that pregnancy, I volunteered at the local art gallery in town. One day, I was assigned to watch the desk with a local artist. As we sat, she showed me beautiful black and white childhood photographs of the six children she had just finished raising. She told me she was a Christian and told me about her 21 year old son that had died in a car accident the year before. I don't remember the details of what she said, but I remembered how she smiled through tears and the peace that emanated from her when she spoke of him. She told me that while she homeschooled and raised her children, she did not have the time to work on her art, but that how important children were to Jesus. So she trusted Him and prioritized her children above her career.
She said maybe once a year, when she could not take not doing art anymore, she might work through the middle of the night and complete a painting then. Then she said, "But you know what? At the end of 20 years, I had 20 paintings. And my friend who left her family to do art, never completed anything, because her circumstances were never 'ideal' enough to do her art. And now that my children are grown, I can paint all day long. As much as I want to."
As I observed her art in the gallery and displayed at various local businesses and homes, I saw how she had used many of those beautiful photographs she had taken of her children growing up and enjoying each other as the inspiration for much of her art. Though she painted timeless pictures of children in 19th century settings and clothing, she had copied her children's faces and expressions from their photographs as she painted.
I was too sick to volunteer many more times at the art gallery. And that was the only time I ever saw that woman. I don't remember her name, and I probably would not even recognize her if I saw her again. But, as my children were born, and I was exhausted with two little ones in diapers and no minutes to write for months at a time, I thought often of how that woman trusted the Lord throughout those many years of raising her children. I thought of how her one painting a year accumulated into 20 paintings. And some months, I did write 45 minutes a day three times a week. And when Andrew did radiation 30 minutes a day his first time through cancer, while I sat in the waiting room, I wrote fiction during those 30 minute periods. I believe the Lord used those little moments as one of the means to sustain me at that time.
During my marriage to Andrew, I never completed the novel I began my first and only semester in graduate school. Even while we were dating, Andrew would often talk to me about my writing. And I would always say, "Well, what if it's not the Lord's will that I ever publish a book?" I knew at the back of my mind, though, that unless I committed to finishing and publishing a book, I never would. All the writing books that caught my eye at the library or book stores that I skimmed always said the difference between someone published and someone not published is merely persistence. Throughout the years, I always read how various classics had been rejected by 45 or 60 or 90 publishers before they were ever published. And that is why I always responded with doubt when Andrew talked to me about publishing. I knew that even if I accumulated pages while raising my children, I could not commit to pursuing literary agents or publishing companies, especially not through countless rejections. I knew that committing to the goal of completing a book and publishing it meant committing to rejection with never the promise of publication. When I see actors on TV who played bit roles for 20 years and only now have a regular paying job as an actor, I wonder how they knew to persevere.
My high school fiction teacher, as well as all those books on writing, told me that self-doubt is a reality of a writer's life. A writer cannot help but write, and thus cannot help but persist through the self-doubt. Even though I often doubted I would ever get around to finishing writing a book, Andrew kept insisting I one day would have to publish. After he died, I read throughout his journals again of this insistence. And a few months after that, I discovered a letter in our file cabinet that I've shared on this blog before, where he mentioned one last time to "publish our book." When he wrote that letter, "our book" wasn't written yet. "Our book" was up to me to define. But those words that he wrote - typed in black on that crisp, white paper - give me the resolve to one day publish. He's not here for me to say, "What if I can't?" That black type stands immovable on that white paper. I cannot argue with it. And so, I simply say, "I must."
The Process of Writing "Our Book"
This summer, the children and I spent in New Jersey. We stayed with Andrew's parents, because his mom does not work outside the home and she could help me with the kids. Because of that, for the first time in my life, I wrote full-time. I was desperate to write and finish "our book," knowing it would be the only opportunity I would have this much help with the kids. I was desperate to take all my memories out of my purse and put them into a book, so that it could rest on a shelf. So that I wouldn't have to carry all those memories everywhere, weighing heavily on my shoulder, but could still access them anytime I wanted. I felt I needed to do this in order to be freed from the burden of my past, to move on with my life, and to give myself more fully to my children.
So this summer, I wrote up to seven days a week, 10-12 hours most days. I had never written an entire book before. If I wasn't actually writing, then I was trying to learn, trying to figure out how one even crafts a book in the first place. Some days I was trying to learn, Where does one go when one hits a brick wall? I read an extremely helpful book, Your Book Starts Here, by Mary Carol Moore. I read other memoirs and novels, looking for examples of how they handled certain techniques.
I didn't care about the number of words - except that it was tight enough to be less than 250 pages. Obviously I can write endless words (as evidenced by the seven years of verbosity on this blog), but crafting a narrative, making all the big picture decisions was a whole new level. It was irrelevant if I hit 250 pages, but had not created the experience that I envisioned. Regardless of how many pages I did or didn't write, I only cared that I accomplished a particular journey.
This book was completely new. It was not the blog. It was our love story and the untold details of our cancer trial.
There were many times I wanted to give up. But committing to writing a book is like committing to marriage. Some days aren't good, but a marriage won't work without full commitment. What if I'm wasting my time? What if I never finish the book? Yet the Lord continued to lead me through it. He continued to allow me to persevere. And by my deadline, after seven weeks of summer full-time writing, I finished the first draft!
With the first draft out of my mind and onto paper, when I awoke the next morning, I felt as if I had emerged from a fog, even though I had been in this fog for so many years - ever since the endless days of losing Andrew little by little during the endless months and years of cancer - that I didn't even know I had been in a fog until I emerged from it. My memories no longer weighed on my shoulders. They were crafted into a narrative on paper.
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Mirth of Christmas
Great post by R.W. Glenn (my brother-in-law/pastor):
- http://www.solidfoodmedia.com/blog/the_mirth_of_christmas
Christmas is supposed to be a time of mirth.
And this needs to be said for two reasons:
First, our non-Christian friends think we're the most mirthless people on earth. We're so serious and worried about breaking the rules and coloring within the lines that there's little room for mirth. By our demeanor, we've take the "Merry" out of "Merry Christmas."
Second, Christians themselves have a hard time embracing the merriness of Christmas. We feel guilty and like we have to apologize for it, as if the fun of Christmas gets in the way of the meaning of Christmas. But the reality is that Christmas without fun is what distorts the meaning of Christmas.
Did you know that the heavenly father feels compelled to celebrate? But we had to celebrate and rejoice, for this brother of yours was dead and has begun to live, and was lost and has been found (Luke 15:32).
Is this how you see God - as a father compelled to celebrate? This verse from Jesus' Parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates that our father has a Christmas feeling about us. He's a father full of mirth toward his children.
But the irony is you only get to experience it when you see what a sinner you are - when you see your sin for what it is and return to your heavenly father.
Jesus helps us to see ourselves by depicting three kinds of sinners in this parable:
1. The younger brother before he leaves his father: "Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me." And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and...squandered his estate with loose living (Luke 15:12-13).
This is the sinner that's most familiar: the kind who breaks all the rules in defiance of his father.
2. The older brother: For so many years I have been serving you and I have never neglected a command of yours; and yet you have never given me a young goat, so that I might celebrate with my friends (Luke 15:29-30).
This depicts our struggle with sin in a way that isn't so familiar: keeping all the rules to get leverage over God. It's the sin of obedience - of obeying God not because you love God, but because you want God to give you whatever goodies you value more than him and think he owes you.
3. The younger brother before he returns to his father: But when he came to his senses, he said, "I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me as one of your hired men' (Luke 15:17-19).
Amazing! The younger brother has come to his senses, realizes where his rule-breaking has led him, and no longer wants to live this way, but instead of running back to his father as his son, he resolves to live as his father's slave! In essence, he's saying, "I'll make up for what I've done. I'll do more and be better and try harder." The problem here is that the younger brother is not yet convinced that his father is full of mercy and mirth. He still has a wrong view of his father. He feels the need to earn a place at the father's table...which is the opposite of the truth.
For even as the younger brother returns, his father shamelessly runs to embrace him and to cut off his son in the middle of his speech about being the father's slave rather than his father's son: But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion for him, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son." But the father said to his slaves, "Give this boy some work to do! He can come home, but only as one of you!" Is that what his father says? Absolutely not! He says to his slaves, "Quickly bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet; and bring the fattened calf, kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found." And they began to celebrate (Luke 15:20-24).
So knowing you're a sinner is essential to your repentance, but it's not enough. You also need to know the mirth of your heavenly father - that he's not at all reluctant to receive you as a son, but is eager to do it! He feels compelled to celebrate your return, even your many, many returns.
What will convince you that this really is your heavenly father's disposition toward you? Look to the son who's conspicuously missing from the parable - the one who is telling it! It's only when you see that the heavenly father gave his only son for older and younger brothers like you that you'll be convinced that he loves you. God's lavish grace revealed at the cross proves that he is the father of mirth.
So this Christmas, I plead with you to repent and return to the father of mirth. Then celebrate. Enjoy every minute of your Christmas as an echo of the true party that your heavenly father is throwing in heaven every time you repent.
- http://www.solidfoodmedia.com/blog/the_mirth_of_christmas
Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Do You Need Someone to Give You Your Worth?
I suppose since I’m single again, I'm friends with a lot of single women. Sometimes they have always been single, sometimes they are like me, single again. But one thing I have learned through all my trials and talking to people throughout them is that the human experience is just that - human. Universal. Both men and women long to be loved, as well as respected. The funny thing is, is that treating someone with respect is loving. And treating someone with love, is respectful.
I think as women and men we long for those things in their particular expression - whether respect or love. The Lord made women particularly long to be loved, and He graciously commands husbands to meet that need. The Lord made men in their natures particularly long to be respected, and He graciously wants that need to be met, as well, by commanding women to respect their husbands.
A friend told me recently that she read somewhere that the more in love a widow(er) was in their marriage, the more they long to be remarried. Once you've tasted what it's like to be treasured, you long to be treasured again.
The last time I was single, I had never tasted of what it is like to be gospel-treasured. So I didn't know what I was missing. It's like if you have never tasted bubble tea before. You don't need bubble tea, because you don't know what you are missing. But once we introduced bubble tea to our friends, they would drive 45 minutes on a regular basis just to get some bubble tea (that's right. Most of you have never tried bubble tea. You need to – get the “black pearl milk tea” - But you can't go back afterwards. It's worth it though). See, I've gotten distracted by bubble tea. The point is this, a single woman said to me once, "You've already been married. You've already had children. So if you don't again, at least you've already accomplished it once in your life." And I say, it's just the opposite. Once you've tasted and seen, you realize all the more sharply what you are missing. So single ladies, I get where you are at. In fact, I get what it is to long to be loved more than I ever did the last time I was single.
One morning recently, I was feeling overwhelmed and didn't want to face some parenting struggles I was having. I felt so angry that Andrew wasn’t there with me. But I didn’t understand why I felt angry. I thought, "Even if Andrew was here, he would not be in our house all day. I would still be dealing with these parenting issues without his help. So what is it that I wish I could have from him?” Then my Bible reading schedule was about Elijah being taken up to heaven. I thought, "How did Elisha feel when Elijah left him? It doesn't say anything about that. I would feel like, 'No, I'm not ready. It's not been enough time. It would never be enough time.'" And then I burst into tears. Those were the thoughts I had when Andrew left me for heaven – “No, I'm not ready. It's not been enough time. It would never be enough time.” The Holy Spirit used His Word to hit upon what had been upsetting me.
I simply missed Andrew.
I thought, "It's not Andrew's help with the kids I long for. It’s not anything he could do for me. I didn’t want anything from him. It's that I didn't think I could face parenting without his love. His love was my Premium fuel. I could do all things through Andrew whose love gave me strength."
Love gives amazing strength and brings out the best in us, the dormant beauties that neither you nor anyone ever dreamed were there and were never cultivated by anyone else. But the language I heard in my head "through Andrew I could do all things..." exposed to me how I was exalting the love of a man to idolatrous proportions. I realized the lies I was believing. Andrew could never satisfy me in that way. And any time I looked to him to take the place of Christ in my life, I only ended up terribly frustrated and disappointed. Because Christ is jealous for His rightful place in our lives, and He will only thwart our efforts to look to anything less than Him for our satisfaction.
How does the gospel answer the question of longing to be treasured when it seems there was only one person in the world that had such a grasp of the gospel that he could love even me? What do I do when that person is no longer present in this world to love me?
Someone in my small group recently said he found that the worse his wife might act (yes, she was sitting right there. And was fine with him sharing this), the more love the Lord gave him for her. I laughed when I heard him say that, because I knew exactly what he meant. That was how Andrew loved me. The more Andrew knew me, the more he understood my sinfulness, the more he loved me. That was the gospel! I think this type of love - gospel love - feels so much richer than human love. Because the more your spouse loves you - even in the midst of your sin - the more you feel your unworthiness of his love. When you sin, rather than return it with shouting in anger at you - he returns it with affection and gentleness. It's shocking and can only be supernatural. And as a result, it can only be a picture of Jesus. After all, it is His kindness that leads us to repentance.
This type of supernatural, gospel love is so rich. Once you've tasted of it, how can you live without it? And yet, that is what Jesus does for us. He knows everything about us. All the dark things that we don't want anybody to know. All the dark things about us that even we ourselves don't want to face or admit to ourselves. He loves us not because we are worthy or attractive in ourselves. He loves us, even though we so often shake our fists in His face, saying (though perhaps not out loud, but in our grumbling or bad attitudes or taking our anger out on others), "No, God, that's not how I envisioned my life. No God, that's not my will. And Your will doesn't look good to me." He loves us in defiance of our daily sin. He loves us in our neediness for Him. In fact, the more we need Him, the greater His grace.
As I was thinking these thoughts, I wasn’t sure they were enough to cause me to face the day. A moment later, my friend called. And though it was thoughts of Andrew that had spurred these contemplations, and her situation was different, I found myself having to rehearse to her the very truths the Holy Spirit had just comforted me with (just as 2Cor. 1:4 says He will do).
She expressed her fears about opening up to someone interested in her, because what if he rejected her once he knew her? And I said, "You will just have to rest in the gospel. That's what we all need to do. It is a battle to rest in the gospel. That is what I am trying to do this morning." I said, "Jesus loves and accepts you, because He's loving. Because His love is so vast, His love overflows out of Himself onto you. He loves you, because He made you and He loves the work of His own hands. He loves You because you bear His image, and He loves His own image. He loves you so much that He shed His own blood for you. The God-Man shed His blood for you! Blood worth more than gold - infinitely. No one else could come close to loving you like that. No one else has anything worth that much to make such a sacrifice for you."
Jesus loves me infinitely more than any human ever could. Than Andrew ever could love me.
Now, I don't want any of you to misunderstand me. I'm not saying anything here about having self-esteem. In ourselves, we are worth nothing. But in Jesus, Jesus is our worthiness.
I said, "He rejoices over you like a groom shouts with exultation over his bride." What more do we need? Jesus is enough. And all our worth is in Him. We do not need a man to tell us we are worthy or to give us worth. Jesus is worthy in our place.
I said to my friend, "So it doesn't matter whether a man values you or not, because Jesus does. You are loved and accepted in Him. And when He looks at you, He no longer sees all your filth and unworthiness. He sees the perfection of His Son. He sees you as if you always obeyed Him perfectly."
My friend asked, “How do you know that?”
I said, “Because it says it in His Word.”
Yes, this woman was a Christian. So why did she ask that, when she knows the Bible? Well, if we're honest, don’t we question what God says repeatedly in the Bible all the time? Don’t we say, “Jesus loves me? I don’t feel like You do. I don’t believe You. Because if You loved me, I would get my way. And my way looks wise to me.” Or, "All I want is what everyone else gets," or "All I want is to be normal." Or, "What I want is a totally legitimate and not sinful desire, so why aren't you giving it to me?" So maybe, we’re actually not all that different from my friend. Maybe my friend was just honest.
When I got off the phone with my friend, I found I was ready to face the day. The Holy Spirit had ministered to my heart that morning. He showed me through reading about Elijah - of all things - I wasn’t really angry, just sad. He let me have a good cry. And then He let my friend call me, because He knew that rehearsing those truths would help me to believe this child-like, yet difficult truth - Jesus loves me.
So, actually, do you need a Man to give you Your worth? Yes, we all do. But thank God that we don't have to achieve our worth, because Jesus already has - Jesus gives us His Worth. So we can rest. We don't need our worth from anyone but Him. As my pastor often says, "Who cares what the serfs think, when we're already loved by the King?"
Christian, let us battle to believe, let us battle to rest in the truth that Jesus loves us. Let us continually confess and repent of our unbelief and pray, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" Let us pray, "Lord, help me to taste and see that Your love is better than life.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
- Zephaniah 3:17
I think as women and men we long for those things in their particular expression - whether respect or love. The Lord made women particularly long to be loved, and He graciously commands husbands to meet that need. The Lord made men in their natures particularly long to be respected, and He graciously wants that need to be met, as well, by commanding women to respect their husbands.
A friend told me recently that she read somewhere that the more in love a widow(er) was in their marriage, the more they long to be remarried. Once you've tasted what it's like to be treasured, you long to be treasured again.
The last time I was single, I had never tasted of what it is like to be gospel-treasured. So I didn't know what I was missing. It's like if you have never tasted bubble tea before. You don't need bubble tea, because you don't know what you are missing. But once we introduced bubble tea to our friends, they would drive 45 minutes on a regular basis just to get some bubble tea (that's right. Most of you have never tried bubble tea. You need to – get the “black pearl milk tea” - But you can't go back afterwards. It's worth it though). See, I've gotten distracted by bubble tea. The point is this, a single woman said to me once, "You've already been married. You've already had children. So if you don't again, at least you've already accomplished it once in your life." And I say, it's just the opposite. Once you've tasted and seen, you realize all the more sharply what you are missing. So single ladies, I get where you are at. In fact, I get what it is to long to be loved more than I ever did the last time I was single.
One morning recently, I was feeling overwhelmed and didn't want to face some parenting struggles I was having. I felt so angry that Andrew wasn’t there with me. But I didn’t understand why I felt angry. I thought, "Even if Andrew was here, he would not be in our house all day. I would still be dealing with these parenting issues without his help. So what is it that I wish I could have from him?” Then my Bible reading schedule was about Elijah being taken up to heaven. I thought, "How did Elisha feel when Elijah left him? It doesn't say anything about that. I would feel like, 'No, I'm not ready. It's not been enough time. It would never be enough time.'" And then I burst into tears. Those were the thoughts I had when Andrew left me for heaven – “No, I'm not ready. It's not been enough time. It would never be enough time.” The Holy Spirit used His Word to hit upon what had been upsetting me.
I simply missed Andrew.
I thought, "It's not Andrew's help with the kids I long for. It’s not anything he could do for me. I didn’t want anything from him. It's that I didn't think I could face parenting without his love. His love was my Premium fuel. I could do all things through Andrew whose love gave me strength."
Love gives amazing strength and brings out the best in us, the dormant beauties that neither you nor anyone ever dreamed were there and were never cultivated by anyone else. But the language I heard in my head "through Andrew I could do all things..." exposed to me how I was exalting the love of a man to idolatrous proportions. I realized the lies I was believing. Andrew could never satisfy me in that way. And any time I looked to him to take the place of Christ in my life, I only ended up terribly frustrated and disappointed. Because Christ is jealous for His rightful place in our lives, and He will only thwart our efforts to look to anything less than Him for our satisfaction.
How does the gospel answer the question of longing to be treasured when it seems there was only one person in the world that had such a grasp of the gospel that he could love even me? What do I do when that person is no longer present in this world to love me?
Someone in my small group recently said he found that the worse his wife might act (yes, she was sitting right there. And was fine with him sharing this), the more love the Lord gave him for her. I laughed when I heard him say that, because I knew exactly what he meant. That was how Andrew loved me. The more Andrew knew me, the more he understood my sinfulness, the more he loved me. That was the gospel! I think this type of love - gospel love - feels so much richer than human love. Because the more your spouse loves you - even in the midst of your sin - the more you feel your unworthiness of his love. When you sin, rather than return it with shouting in anger at you - he returns it with affection and gentleness. It's shocking and can only be supernatural. And as a result, it can only be a picture of Jesus. After all, it is His kindness that leads us to repentance.
This type of supernatural, gospel love is so rich. Once you've tasted of it, how can you live without it? And yet, that is what Jesus does for us. He knows everything about us. All the dark things that we don't want anybody to know. All the dark things about us that even we ourselves don't want to face or admit to ourselves. He loves us not because we are worthy or attractive in ourselves. He loves us, even though we so often shake our fists in His face, saying (though perhaps not out loud, but in our grumbling or bad attitudes or taking our anger out on others), "No, God, that's not how I envisioned my life. No God, that's not my will. And Your will doesn't look good to me." He loves us in defiance of our daily sin. He loves us in our neediness for Him. In fact, the more we need Him, the greater His grace.
As I was thinking these thoughts, I wasn’t sure they were enough to cause me to face the day. A moment later, my friend called. And though it was thoughts of Andrew that had spurred these contemplations, and her situation was different, I found myself having to rehearse to her the very truths the Holy Spirit had just comforted me with (just as 2Cor. 1:4 says He will do).
She expressed her fears about opening up to someone interested in her, because what if he rejected her once he knew her? And I said, "You will just have to rest in the gospel. That's what we all need to do. It is a battle to rest in the gospel. That is what I am trying to do this morning." I said, "Jesus loves and accepts you, because He's loving. Because His love is so vast, His love overflows out of Himself onto you. He loves you, because He made you and He loves the work of His own hands. He loves You because you bear His image, and He loves His own image. He loves you so much that He shed His own blood for you. The God-Man shed His blood for you! Blood worth more than gold - infinitely. No one else could come close to loving you like that. No one else has anything worth that much to make such a sacrifice for you."
Jesus loves me infinitely more than any human ever could. Than Andrew ever could love me.
Now, I don't want any of you to misunderstand me. I'm not saying anything here about having self-esteem. In ourselves, we are worth nothing. But in Jesus, Jesus is our worthiness.
I said, "He rejoices over you like a groom shouts with exultation over his bride." What more do we need? Jesus is enough. And all our worth is in Him. We do not need a man to tell us we are worthy or to give us worth. Jesus is worthy in our place.
I said to my friend, "So it doesn't matter whether a man values you or not, because Jesus does. You are loved and accepted in Him. And when He looks at you, He no longer sees all your filth and unworthiness. He sees the perfection of His Son. He sees you as if you always obeyed Him perfectly."
My friend asked, “How do you know that?”
I said, “Because it says it in His Word.”
Yes, this woman was a Christian. So why did she ask that, when she knows the Bible? Well, if we're honest, don’t we question what God says repeatedly in the Bible all the time? Don’t we say, “Jesus loves me? I don’t feel like You do. I don’t believe You. Because if You loved me, I would get my way. And my way looks wise to me.” Or, "All I want is what everyone else gets," or "All I want is to be normal." Or, "What I want is a totally legitimate and not sinful desire, so why aren't you giving it to me?" So maybe, we’re actually not all that different from my friend. Maybe my friend was just honest.
When I got off the phone with my friend, I found I was ready to face the day. The Holy Spirit had ministered to my heart that morning. He showed me through reading about Elijah - of all things - I wasn’t really angry, just sad. He let me have a good cry. And then He let my friend call me, because He knew that rehearsing those truths would help me to believe this child-like, yet difficult truth - Jesus loves me.
So, actually, do you need a Man to give you Your worth? Yes, we all do. But thank God that we don't have to achieve our worth, because Jesus already has - Jesus gives us His Worth. So we can rest. We don't need our worth from anyone but Him. As my pastor often says, "Who cares what the serfs think, when we're already loved by the King?"
Christian, let us battle to believe, let us battle to rest in the truth that Jesus loves us. Let us continually confess and repent of our unbelief and pray, "Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!" Let us pray, "Lord, help me to taste and see that Your love is better than life.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
- Zephaniah 3:17
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
John Piper's Bloodlines
If you've followed this blog for a long time, you may have picked up that I'm a big John Piper fan. From his Don't Waste Your Cancer blog post to his Job sermons that we repeatedly listened to during cancer to his books and other sermons that convinced us in our early 20's that the supremacy of God in all things must drive our every thought, desire, and decision, his influence largely sustained Andrew and I through cancer. I've finally gotten around to watching his video about his new book, Bloodlines, and I loved it. If you are wondering, it is completely unrelated to cancer. Rather, it has to do with growing up in the South in the 50s and 60s as a racist and the profound reversal that took place since. Take a look:
Bloodlines Documentary with John Piper from Crossway on Vimeo.
Bloodlines Documentary with John Piper from Crossway on Vimeo.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Exposed by the Cross
I know in March I said I was ending this blog, but I didn't know a smooth way to direct you to a new website, so I'm back to blogging here! Our blog started off being about Andrew and I and our growing family, then it was about cancer, then grief. Now, I hope this blog will be about my life as a single mama to two amazing children. I hope also to share things here that might encourage and challenge you. Today I wanted to share this wonderful quotation from The Gospel Primer, by Milton Vincent:
"The Cross also exposes me before the eyes of other people, informing them of the depth of my depravity. If I wanted others to think highly of me, I would conceal the fact that a shameful slaughter of the perfect Son of God was required that I might be saved. But when I stand at the foot of the Cross and am seen by others under the light of that Cross, I am left uncomfortably exposed before their eyes. Indeed, the most humiliating gossip that could ever be whispered about me is blared from Golgotha's hill; and my self-righteous reputation is left in ruins in the wake of its revelations. With the worst facts about me thus exposed to the view of others, I find myself feeling that I truly have nothing left to hide.
"Thankfully, the more exposed I see that I am by the Cross, the more I find myself opening up to others about ongoing issues of sin in my life. (Why would anyone be shocked to hear of my struggles with past and present sin when the Cross already told them I am a desperately sinful person?) And the more open I am in confessing my sins to fellow-Christians, the more I enjoy the healing of the Lord in response to their grace-filled counsel and prayers. Experiencing richer levels of Christ's love in companionship with such saints, I give thanks for the gospel's role in forcing my hand toward self-disclosure and freedom that follows."
- The Gospel Primer: “Exposed by the Cross Part 2”.
"The Cross also exposes me before the eyes of other people, informing them of the depth of my depravity. If I wanted others to think highly of me, I would conceal the fact that a shameful slaughter of the perfect Son of God was required that I might be saved. But when I stand at the foot of the Cross and am seen by others under the light of that Cross, I am left uncomfortably exposed before their eyes. Indeed, the most humiliating gossip that could ever be whispered about me is blared from Golgotha's hill; and my self-righteous reputation is left in ruins in the wake of its revelations. With the worst facts about me thus exposed to the view of others, I find myself feeling that I truly have nothing left to hide.
"Thankfully, the more exposed I see that I am by the Cross, the more I find myself opening up to others about ongoing issues of sin in my life. (Why would anyone be shocked to hear of my struggles with past and present sin when the Cross already told them I am a desperately sinful person?) And the more open I am in confessing my sins to fellow-Christians, the more I enjoy the healing of the Lord in response to their grace-filled counsel and prayers. Experiencing richer levels of Christ's love in companionship with such saints, I give thanks for the gospel's role in forcing my hand toward self-disclosure and freedom that follows."
- The Gospel Primer: “Exposed by the Cross Part 2”.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Epilogue: I, Grace, Have Risen from the Dead
This past fall the Lord had me hit complete and utter rock bottom. But in the following months, He has done a miraculous work of healing and RESURRECTION.
Love, Look at the Two of Us
It was the summer of 2003, and Andrew and I were dating. I said I wanted to learn how to change my own oil. So, I parked in his apartment's vast garage, he pumped my 1994 black Honda Accord up with a jack, and we slid underneath the car. There was something cozy about the cold of the concrete floor, the gravel beneath our backs, and the tight, dark quarters. But as I scanned the grey underbelly of the car a few inches from my nose, the car's heaviness seemed only a breath away from collapsing on us with its tonnage. I whispered, "I'm scared."
He reached for the oil pan above him to his left and said, "I guess it is kind of scary." He unscrewed and removed the bolt of the oil pan. "Well, at least if we die, we die together." Black oil poured out. "What if in our lives one of us dies first?" he asked.
I could hear the oil's hollow sound as it hit the container Andrew had brought to catch it. It was too horrible to imagine. I inhaled the oil's thick, earthy stench.
Andrew broke the silence. "It would be much better to die together."
I quickly agreed. We shimmied out from underneath the dark shadow of the car back into the bright fluorescent lighting of his apartment's garage, and I shook the awful question out of my mind.
That winter, during our engagement, we were up late one night. We typed away on our computers in Andrew’s dad’s office. We were writing a booklet of our love story to give as our wedding favors. The printer’s deadline was the next morning, but I couldn’t concentrate anymore. I spotted some of Andrew’s dad’s old records and dropped one onto the black, rotating turntable of the record player, while Andrew sat on the couch across from me. Karen Carpenter's rich alto sang out.
I snapped my fingers in the exaggerated 1970s way to the jingle and sang with Karen to Andrew:
“Love, look at the two of us,"
I danced as if I was wearing giant, over-sized bell-bottoms and a flowy shirt with flowers, pointing my feet side to side.
"Strangers in many ways."
I turned my head left to right then left to the beat like I was on A Chorus Line, as I walked towards Andrew.
"Let’s take a lifetime to say
I knew you well"
Andrew looked up from the laptop and looked at me with his giant, wide eyes and laughed. He expected new silly dances from me, like all my friends were accustomed to.
"For only time will
Tell us so
And love may grow
For all we know.”
I had reached Andrew. I threw my arms around his neck and said, “We’ve got a lifetime to get to know each other better! Isn’t that amazing? I get to explore the depths of you for the rest of our lives!”
He laughed while he clicked away on his mouse tweaking the graphics of our book. As for my job, my tired brain was done with editing, and the writing was as good as it was going to get. I was onto dancing. I kept playing the song over and over again until I got all the lyrics down and danced and danced and danced.
We were married that January. A few months later, in March, I couldn't sleep. Rick Holland, our old college pastor, always used to say, "Have you ever considered when you can't sleep, maybe it's because the Lord wants to meet with you?" So that night I said, "Lord, what is it that you want to tell me?" And it was as if the Lord shouted in my mind, "TIME IS SHORT." I hoped that was just my own mind thinking about a general Biblical truth about how quickly life passes by.
Nonetheless, I was terrified that I would shortly be taken away from Andrew. During our marriage, I constantly considered that if I died, I would have wanted Andrew and my kids to always know I loved them with all my heart. When AJ was still an infant, I recorded us on our camcorder, as I told AJ I loved him with all my heart. Many parents probably have recordings of them doing that, but my reason wasn’t inadvertent. It was so that AJ could look at it if anything ever happened to me. I wanted to spend every moment possible with my family looking them in the eye when they spoke, undistracted, and as affectionate and as expressive of my love as possible. And after reading in a book that 80% of what Americans own they didn't use once in a year (or something like that), I wanted to get rid of the majority of our stuff. I didn't want to waste the precious little time I had left shuffling around clutter. If AJ asked me a question and I was in the middle of dishes, I would turn off the water immediately and give AJ my full attention. I thought, “If I die soon, I’m not going to care if my house was always perfect or not." And so, compared to others, I was not a model house keeper. But my husband was happy with the job I did, my family was taken care of, and they knew they were very loved.
The reality is, I did die at the age of 28. I slowly faded away as my love's body broke down. I died the day he died. The car had fallen on us.
The One of Us
With Andrew’s death, the fear and foreboding instantly stopped and was replaced with constant distractedness by the various demands of my life. After Andrew’s death, I was present and feeding my children meal after meal. I kept my house clean, paid all the bills, and took care of all the paper work, medical bills, de-cluttering of Andrew's things, selling of cars, I had a new will written up, all the things that needed to be done as a result of Andrew's death. Most of all, I needed to provide stability for the kids. Demonstrate for them that though their dad was gone, mama wasn't going anywhere. And so, ever since Andrew died, I did not have the liberty to check out. But this past fall, it seemed the kids were through their grief for the most part and were stable. With that little inch of flexibility, I began to break apart.
Andrew's death was like the airplanes that flew into the Towers of the World Trade Center, while I was the Towers. But I knew my children were in the building, so I could not collapse until they got out of the building. So I collapsed one floor at a time, one day at a time. I was purposeful to cry each day, make sure to diligently drain that grief lest it overcome me all at once. And then, this fall, I saw that my kids had made it out of the building. They were doing well. AJ no longer got that very sad look on his face for a few moments every few days. They still talked about their dad and said they missed him, but they knew that I hadn't disappeared like he had, and everything else had generally stayed the same in their lives. We had kept the same general routine each day. Each day they went to bed in the same room they had always gone to bed in and each morning they went to the kitchen and I fed them all their meals at all the same times in the day that I always had. Each day we read the Bible and talked about each of the situations we encountered and filtered them through how the Lord saw them. We were still in the same house, went to the same church, saw all the same wonderful people that they loved and saw around as they saw before Andrew died. They were stable. And so this fall, the last several floors left of the Towers came crashing to the ground. The Lord had graciously delayed the devastation, but it had to come at some time.
One of my pastors in my church, Pastor Warren, is a full-time, professional counselor, a therapist. As I could feel the rumbles of the last few floors about to give, I asked him if we could start meeting. I could sense there were 3rd degree burns that were far deeper than I had ever had the guts to imagine. At first, Pastor Warren said, "I don't see your life as one mangled by grief. I think you've been handling your grief really well." Still, as the Lord revealed to me and shocked me with areas of undealt with grief, such as what I mentioned in my September blog, "The School Bus and Blood," I feared perhaps I had never dealt with my grief. Increasingly, I spiraled into a hole. What if I was only just beginning to deal with my grief? And Pastor Warren would encourage me, "No, Grace. I think you're doing well. I think you may be at the last obstacles of your grief." This encouraged me, but I also feared that maybe he was just an optimist.
At the same time as being confronted with the areas of undealt with grief, Andrew's birthday arrived on Sept. 11th. Memories of Andrew became more vivid than ever. I walked past the tailor store in the mall and an image burst before my eyes. We had brought Andrew's black leather jacket with its "ANDREW MARC, NEW YORK" label embroidered in yellow block letters on the inside tag to that store to get altered. I couldn't get the vivid image of his leather arm out of my mind's eye. Longing for the feeling of his leather arm behind my neck was like a knife stabbing me in my heart, and I couldn't pull it out of my chest. I had often tried to think of the bigger picture, but saying to myself that Christ, or even Andrew, awaited me in some indeterminate time in the future when I reached eternity was of no comfort. It would be like if you had your leg pinned under the tire of a car and you were in excruciating pain. Saying, "Don't worry, maybe someone will eventually come for you and get your leg out," would not make you stop screaming for the pain to stop.
I wrote in my journal:
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Met with Pastor Warren today. He said he can sense from me the profundity of my loss…but that he doesn’t think he, nor anyone, can say they can even begin to realize the true profundity of my loss. He says he’s not one of those Christians who thinks things can’t get “all that bad” and then it’s done with. He says he’s not prepared to be able to draw a line between legitimate grief and sinful grief. He says I feel the consequences of my loss everyday in my life. And that my suffering continues and there is no end in sight of that suffering.
Also, Pastor Warren mentioned to me my desire to move past my grief. I asked him what that meant. I knew I didn't want to be miserable and that I couldn’t continue as a way of life living at my breaking point for much longer, but I didn't understand exactly what "moving past my grief" meant. He said you know when you have moved through your grief when your life is not completely centered around and in reference to Andrew any longer.
I cried and cried and cried when he said that. I said, "I don't want to live with my life not in reference to Andrew. My tears were hot and poured out far more than I knew was in me. Pastor Warren's gentle validations caused all the stuff that I was stuffing down so that I could function and appear normal, and convince myself I was normal, to pour out of me.
The Depths that Lead to Heights
I had taken care of the kids for more than 1.5 years by myself, and on top of that, our house that Andrew wanted me to stay in, suddenly had urgent demands all at once - after a heavy windstorm a large tree branch fell onto the fence into our neighbor's yard, the freezer stopped working and all the food was melting, something cracked in the toilet so that water was leaking onto the floor, someone brought to my attention the windows were rotting and needed to be replaced before winter, AJ got scarlet fever - all within the same six weeks. This was all happening as I was dealing with the worst stage of my grief process. I was already worn out, but now I was fully saturated with physical as well as emotional exhaustion.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
For so long through his trial, the concept that God is good has gripped me, kept me sane. Somehow, I was convinced of it. Now, the misery has been so long, so relentless, so persistent, I have a hard time believing it. Yet there is a seed of this thought persisting: The only life worth living is one spent for Christ. For a moment, a picture of a piece of shredded meat flashed through my mind. That's my life. Perhaps little relief, little happiness; however, no matter my ideals, there is a limit to my strength, to my persistence. There will be a point where I may break, go crazy, die, etc. If God delivers before then, then it will prove His promises. Perhaps that is my life. A laboratory for all to see if God's claims hold up.
I waited patiently for the Lord
And He inclined to me and heard my cry...
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of
praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the Lord
-- Psalm 40:1-3
Perhaps that shall happen. If the Lord delivers, perhaps many will see and fear, and will trust in the Lord.
There was no more willpower in me left to say, "No, for the sake of my kids, I will survive!" No. There was nothing left. I had been a full-time caregiver to a husband that wasted before my eyes for 2 years while raising two toddlers under 2 and then a single mom for nearly 2 years, while a grieving widow, and I was several years beyond fried. There was nowhere left to turn but to cry out to God in utter desperation and fear.
I remember one night at the end of October, I had a babysitter because I was supposed to go to ballet. But I was so worn out, I just stayed in my bedroom while she took care of the kids. The grief was so horrific, it began manifesting physically, my chest hurting and so heavy, it was hard to breathe. And I began to see myself floating above myself. And I thought, "Is this what it's like to become unhinged? Is this what it's like to go crazy?" The next day, I spent the few hours that my kids were in preschool and kindergarten crying out to God that Grace Lindeman, the Canadian teenager who had helped us twice when Andrew was sick, I prayed that her dad would get reinstated at Air Canada that day so that she could fly and help us, since the tickets were too expensive without his discount. The Lord answered, and for the first time in nearly 2 years, he was reinstated that very day! Grace Lindeman flew from Canada to Minnesota and helped me for a month.
While it was a massive relief to have Grace Lindeman helping with the kids, the misery continued to persist. I kept thinking about what Corrie Ten Boom said in The Hiding Place. When she had reached a particularly desperate time in the concentration camp and all her sister and she had was the Bible, her sister said the Lord has provided a solution: Give thanks in everything! (1Thess. 5:18). I felt backed against a wall and had no choice but to do it God's way. I had to "consider it all joy when I faced various trials" (James 1:2). I had to give thanks about all the things I was upset about. I had to give thanks in everything.
Friday, Dec. 12, 2010
Giving thanks whenever I'm about to complain and grumble and scream in my heart feels as if it is regenerating cut off heart in an instant. Last night, as I was decluttering, I looked at a list of things you can play with kids on summer break. My heart reaction was to remember all the wonderful things we used to do as a family when Andrew was here, but now I'm so bombarded and burnt out by the pressures of every aspect of our lives relentlessly depending on me that I hardly play with or enjoy the kids. I'm so frustrated and preoccupied, most of the time when I am with them.
Again, I was reminded to give thanks. "Ugh...Thank You, God, for all the wonderful time the kids did have with Andrew...Thank You, Lord, that they no longer have their father...Thank You, Lord, that they no longer have their father." And to my surprise, it was right as if in that instant I could see the third degree burns that had disintegrated most of my heart suddenly regenerate, resurrect, like my heart, though barely any of it was left, was instantly re-growing, as if my heart were a starfish, even though it wasn't merely an arm that needed to re-grow; it was as if only one or two edges were left of that starfish and the 85% of the starfish needed to be resurrected.”
At my December meeting with Pastor Warren, he said that everyone that knows him knows that he always says that the hardest job in the world is to be a single mom. And he said, but on top of that, my children have no dad that they can ever see, and further on top of that, I am dealing with my grief.
Grace Lindeman stayed until the day the kids and I left in December to spend a month in California with my brothers, who live there with their families, and my parents, who flew out from New Jersey for the holidays.
During mine and the kids' month in California, I worked again on the book Andrew had said in his letters to publish. I printed out our entire blog, put it into a binder, and began to edit all 400 or so single-spaced pages with a pencil. The act of being forced to go through the blogs we had written during the worst time of our lives, when Andrew was going through radiation and chemotherapy for a second time, helped me to finally process areas of grief I had never been ready to deal with before. I wrote in the margins what it was making me feel. And to my surprise, I felt rage. And once I acknowledged I was angry, the Lord began to take it away. I awoke the next day and the depression and hopelessness I had fallen into that fall was suddenly lifted. I think often depression is just unacknowledged anger.
At the end of December, after the kids were in bed at my brother's house, I also spent an hour three nights in a row walking the streets in the rain or cold, crying out to God to show me what to do. I didn't feel I could handle it anymore. When I had first begun to collapse earlier in the fall, my close friend, Melissa, down the street from me had offered to take my kids for a few months, but I hadn't taken her up on her offer. Friends from church had offered to take my kids when I returned from California. But I felt so paralyzed. How could I have gone from visions of spending all day with my children, like my early Washington mentors, to the opposite end of the spectrum? Sure, I loved the schools in Eden Prairie. I was fine with not homeschooling them, but letting other people care for them for a few months? I'm sure plenty of people would have done the whole spectrum of anything for us, including if I came up with middle-of-the-road options, but I just felt paralyzed. There was an infinite amount of possible life changes I could make, but none of them seemed ideal.
The previous fall months, I had felt so paralyzed, I did not know what to change. Everything I had done since Andrew died, I had modeled after the past. All the paperwork, all the changes that needed to be made that related to Andrew's death, I just did what Andrew would have done. The routines with the kids, I did my best to base it on past routines. Even most of the travelling we had done, whether to California, New Jersey, or the Philippines, those were all things I had also done before Andrew's death. Even sending for Grace Lindeman. She was one of our helpers when Andrew was sick. I didn't want to find anyone local, because I was afraid training someone new would come with a whole new set of unpredictabilities. But I finally reached the point where I could not put off change any longer.
I loved my children so much. What would be best for our family? I kept crying out to God to show me what His will was.
And then it came to mind to my surprise, "Put the kids into school full time." Andrew had said to do this in his letters, but I wasn't sure if he meant to do that when Gracie was in first grade, which wasn't for another two years, as opposed to homeschooling them, or sooner. But as I prayed about it, the Lord seemed to be saying, "Now is the time." Also, a few days earlier a college student, Lydia, from my church emailed me that she heard I was looking for live-in help with my kids. During my night wanderings what came to mind was, have Lydia move in with you. Then you can have on-call help and babysitting any time. Don't live on the edge of your strength with no margins. Build lots of margins into your life.
Seeds of Resurrection
Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011
Last weekend I went to the Hyatt to be by myself for the two year anniversary of Andrew’s death, the way I had for the one year anniversary of his death. There, I discovered I am not in the same place I was a year ago. Last year, I wondered why I was drawn to the Hyatt when it should remind me of when Andrew and I went there weekly during radiation and chemotherapy, the worst time of our lives. I realized that I had gone there because I hadn’t processed that time of my life a year ago, but this year I had already processed that worst time of my life while I was in California editing our book. I realized I had gone to the Hyatt during cancer because it was the only escape from the pressures of the relentless cancer. Last year, again, I needed the escape. This year, I realized, I no longer need to escape! Lydia lives with us, the kids are in school, and I’m not overwhelmed anymore.
At church the next day, I cried through singing “Majesty,” feeling so
profoundly the depth of Christ’s love for me and His deliverance in my life, even recently. He allowed me to deal with my grief head on, cry, and scream, and write, and put my kids in school. And then providing Lydia. I felt as if I had finally come out on the other side of depression, and loneliness, and paralysis. And it was not through my circumstances God saved me. He saved me through Himself. And He provided the grace and strength for me to make the changes I needed to.
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
-- Isaiah 41:10
And so, now I am just focusing on keeping stress as low as possible in my life, and physically, mentally, emotionally resting and recovering from the past four years (two as a grieving widow/single mom and the 2 years prior of full-time caregiving and grieving as I lost Andrew little by little).
When I told Pastor Warren that I am focusing on resting, he agreed that this was a wise course of action. He said I should consider what I've been through emotionally, as being similar to a physical injury. He compared it to how he had injured his shoulder, and that even though he can do almost everything he used to be able to do, and he is at 95%, it will still take awhile for him until he is at 100%. When I said I had some opportunities to do some more things, but I turned them down, because I felt like I needed to continue keeping the pressure low in my life, he agreed that my instincts were right. He said that especially in our American culture, where we find our value in being productive and busy, the temptation would be to get really busy with something new, but then never to deal with what's actually going on.
New Life
The Lord has resurrected me. And I am alive! I am a new creation free and filled up and overflowing with the love of God. I died but the Lord resurrected me. I feel as if the Holy Spirit has given me new insights into certain Scriptures. For instance, Romans 5:3-5 says:
"...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and 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."
I thought I understood verses 3-4, but frankly, verse 5 was perplexing to me. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit"? Sounds abstract...how does that make me rejoice, or in other translations, exult, or glory in my sufferings? How does "God's love poured into my heart," if it's some abstract concept that I don't see with my eyes or feel with my hands, make a knife carving out my heart make me respond opposite to the natural response of screeching in agony, kicking the One holding the knife's Hands away? Well, literally, in the past months of resurrection I experience often on a daily basis what it feels like - unmistakably, nothing subtle or abstract about it - to have the LOVE OF GOD POURED out into my heart through His Holy Spirit.
I have never felt more convinced of God's love for me or His goodness ever in my life than I do now. I feel so incredibly FREE! I have never felt more free in my entire life.
The 2 year anniversary of Andrew's death was when I realized how incredibly free I was. A few days later I looked at andersonsashes.blogspot.com, a blog of another young widow, and reviewed her most recent blog at the time. It was about how incredibly freed she felt. And then I remembered that when I had first read it, a week before the 2 year anniversary of Andrew's death, I had said, "Lord, I don't know what she's talking about. I don't have a clue how it's possible to feel freed like a bird escaping captivity after losing your husband. I want to know that freedom. Please show me." I had forgotten all about that prayer, but the Lord had answered it. We can have all these things we long for - peace, joy, freedom if we just ask Jesus, no matter what we're going through. He is the Source of all of that, and He longs to give that to us. He only requires that we ask. So I encourage you to please ask, and keep asking! Ask Jesus to know Him more. Or if you don't already know Jesus, I implore you to please ask Him to know Him in the first place.
I can't describe this love poured out into my heart that I feel without it sounding cheesy. I don't know. Maybe like the warmth of an embrace, but times INFINITY because it's given by the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE.
I can say, though, another verse that Christ has given me insight into is "For God so loved the world..." John 3:16. Let's be honest. Isn't there something child-like sounding about that verse? Like in first grade when all my classmates would raise their hand during prayer time to ask for prayer for "the world." If not child-like, then abstract.
Well, now, I feel I have a new insight into it. I feel as if God's love is so much for me that it is literally overflowing out of my little heart, pouring over, and I just feel like I love THE WHOLE WORLD.
When you are in excruciating pain over a prolonged, seemingly endless amount of years, you start to question how this could be loving. There is no question anymore. Not only does God have enough love for me to get me through the day; He has so much love for me, I can't contain it! I love everyone! And I will tell you so if I see you. I love you! I really do.
As I walk closer with the Lord, I am more convinced than ever that as wonderful as Andrew was, he couldn't even come close to the satisfaction that only Christ, Himself, can bring. Andrew was wonderful because of the ways he reflected some facets of Christ. No matter what a brat I was, how difficult, stubborn, or selfish on a day-to-day basis I was, Andrew relentlessly showered me with affection and love, and continued to daily pursue me with that love even after we were married. Through that, Andrew taught me about Christ's relentless, pursuit and love for me, in defiance of how unworthy I am of His love. Through Andrew's love, he gave me a reference, an insight into how not only has Christ taken away my condemnation from hell, but day-to-day, He has taken away my condemnation. I don't have to approach Christ cowering, guilty because I know there are endless sins I've committed just in the last minute that I didn’t even realize. Christ knows me better than Andrew did, and He still loves me! He still is excited about me the way a husband rejoices over his bride. Isn't that incredible? Crazy? THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE loves me? Andrew was wonderful, because like the moon reflects the sun, Andrew reflected the Son. But the moon has no light without the sun, and all of the light that Andrew's love was cannot compare to that of the Ultimate Source, of the Son. I asked the Lord to show me that His love was better than that of a man and within days, I experienced what I've just described.
I am more convinced than ever, and experience the reality of the fact that Jesus is enough. HE IS THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN SATISFY.
How I Miss Andrew
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Today I miss Andrew completely in just the person he was. Not who we were together, not the relationship we had, or the time we spent together. Just who he was and all that made up the person of Andrew.
And so the way I miss Andrew is different. For so long, I missed my relationship with Andrew. I missed our life together. I missed what he was to the children. But if God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and thus this life right now is His good for us, then I really don't know if life would be better if Andrew were with us right now, because I would be less sanctified. Life gets better the closer we are to Christ, regardless of circumstances. In fact, the Bible says it's suffering that makes us more like Christ. So it's not despite suffering life gets better, it is through the means of suffering life gets better, because suffering draws us closer to Christ and makes us more like Christ. And the closer we are to Christ, the sweeter everything is. For the believer, life everlasting has already begun!
And, I do have a Father for my children. I do have a Husband. Jesus in a very real way is that to us. And He has not forsaken us. He has taken very good care of us. When there are things I do not know how to do in the house and there isn’t time to call anyone, and the Lord wants me to learn how to do it for myself, I just keep praying as I'm fixing something in the house or on the computer, and it is as if the Lord instructs my mind and guides my hands what to do. When one of my children is completely out of hand and I'm terrified for what they will be like 10 years from now, I cry out to God that I do not have the strength to be on top of all their training in the same way as I used to, and I don't have Andrew to back me up and lead us like he used to, and I cry out for rescue. And the Lord rescues. He begins to do a work of change in that child's heart, though I haven't changed anything. He changes them to the point that people notice and comment on the change they recognize.
But I still miss Andrew. I miss the person of Andrew. I do miss a world with Andrew in it. But that is different than pining away after a life that I used to have with him.
I used to think that being past my grief was that the memories faded to the point that they could no longer hurt me. Now, I realize, it's not that. The first year after Andrew's death, I could not remember anything pre-cancer. Or rather, I could not allow myself to remember. I could not look at pictures of the sweet time of falling in love. I realize now that being able to move past my grief doesn't mean I won't miss Andrew anymore or cry. In fact, the memories are more vivid than ever. It means that I accept that he is gone. I accept that I am a single mom. For the past two years, I think I have been living like a stay-at-home mom, whose husband just hadn't returned home yet, and eventually, my strength ran out. But now, I accept I am a single mom and my life is no longer going to look how I had envisioned it. My house will not be overflowing with children with Andrew beside me to enjoy them. My life is not going to look the way it did four years ago before cancer struck our household, or like the lives of those who mentored me in mothering when AJ and Gracie were born in Washington. My life isn't going to look like friends' lives, which I identified with, and are stay-at-home moms, who homeschool their children. Before Andrew entered my life, my future appeared a fuzzy haze. When Andrew arrived, I thought, at least there is one thing I know about my life. It'll have Andrew beside me until the end. But there is no certainty in this world, except for Christ. I'm not sure what my life will look like. But for now, my kids are in school full-time, Lydia is living with us, and I am recovering, resting, writing, and revising our book.
When I told this to Pastor Warren, he said that in all the models of grief, "acceptance" was always the last stage. And he said he couldn't even count how many times he heard me use the words, "I accept."
I said, "I feel like God has risen me from the dead. And I am like a child learning to walk, and the Lord is clapping, cheering me on like an excited parent."
Pastor Warren said that the words I was using was really almost literal, rather than a metaphor. He said he was sitting in his chair and getting front row seats to witness God's miraculous work in a person before his very eyes. He said after all I had been through the past several years, it was literally like from the dead, I had risen.
Please pray for us:
- That the Lord would display His glory and mercy and forgiveness in the book that Andrew asked me to write and that if it is His will that He would make it publishable.
- And please pray for my children, that they would know and experience and feel the reality that God is a Father to the fatherless; and that they would love the Lord with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength from an early age for all of their lives.
- And that the Lord would make me raise them in a godly way with strength to consistently shepherd them.
A few days before Andrew was told that the cancer had travelled into his spine and it was 100% terminal in October of '08, and though I still could not accept that he was going to die, I had a dream that I was driving on a busy rode, and suddenly turned into an unexpected, narrow pathway. It led up to a cemetery. There was a small cabin at the top of the gentle hill, and inside was a crowd of people, most of whom I had never met before. And they were all comforting me.
And that is what happened. I had never been to the Eden Prairie Cemetery until after Andrew died. I may not have ever driven past it before. But it is off a busy road, exactly like the one in my dream, and unless you're trying really hard to find it, you will not see the unexpected narrow pathway that leads up to a gentle, grassy hill, again, exactly as it appeared in my dream. It is a small cemetery set back with a small, wood sign, so unless you're looking, you might not even notice there's a cemetery there.
And while perhaps not in person, all of you came around us and comforted me, many of you we know personally, but many of you we did not. Thank you so much to all of you for laughing and crying and praying and supporting Andrew, the kids, and me, and carrying us to Jesus, and for the sake of Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I cannot express my gratitude to all of you for loving us and listening to us and bearing with us and being there for us. It has meant and been everything. The Lord has literally used you to have carried us through this trial. I truly mean that. While countless ones of you have contributed to helping us in person, or sent us things, even if you didn’t physically do anything, you prayed for us. And that is the greatest thing you could have done. Thank you for being Christ's body to us. I cannot express my gratitude, but for all that you have done for us, you have done to Jesus. And He will reward you. I love you!
Love, Look at the Two of Us
It was the summer of 2003, and Andrew and I were dating. I said I wanted to learn how to change my own oil. So, I parked in his apartment's vast garage, he pumped my 1994 black Honda Accord up with a jack, and we slid underneath the car. There was something cozy about the cold of the concrete floor, the gravel beneath our backs, and the tight, dark quarters. But as I scanned the grey underbelly of the car a few inches from my nose, the car's heaviness seemed only a breath away from collapsing on us with its tonnage. I whispered, "I'm scared."
He reached for the oil pan above him to his left and said, "I guess it is kind of scary." He unscrewed and removed the bolt of the oil pan. "Well, at least if we die, we die together." Black oil poured out. "What if in our lives one of us dies first?" he asked.
I could hear the oil's hollow sound as it hit the container Andrew had brought to catch it. It was too horrible to imagine. I inhaled the oil's thick, earthy stench.
Andrew broke the silence. "It would be much better to die together."
I quickly agreed. We shimmied out from underneath the dark shadow of the car back into the bright fluorescent lighting of his apartment's garage, and I shook the awful question out of my mind.
That winter, during our engagement, we were up late one night. We typed away on our computers in Andrew’s dad’s office. We were writing a booklet of our love story to give as our wedding favors. The printer’s deadline was the next morning, but I couldn’t concentrate anymore. I spotted some of Andrew’s dad’s old records and dropped one onto the black, rotating turntable of the record player, while Andrew sat on the couch across from me. Karen Carpenter's rich alto sang out.
I snapped my fingers in the exaggerated 1970s way to the jingle and sang with Karen to Andrew:
“Love, look at the two of us,"
I danced as if I was wearing giant, over-sized bell-bottoms and a flowy shirt with flowers, pointing my feet side to side.
"Strangers in many ways."
I turned my head left to right then left to the beat like I was on A Chorus Line, as I walked towards Andrew.
"Let’s take a lifetime to say
I knew you well"
Andrew looked up from the laptop and looked at me with his giant, wide eyes and laughed. He expected new silly dances from me, like all my friends were accustomed to.
"For only time will
Tell us so
And love may grow
For all we know.”
I had reached Andrew. I threw my arms around his neck and said, “We’ve got a lifetime to get to know each other better! Isn’t that amazing? I get to explore the depths of you for the rest of our lives!”
He laughed while he clicked away on his mouse tweaking the graphics of our book. As for my job, my tired brain was done with editing, and the writing was as good as it was going to get. I was onto dancing. I kept playing the song over and over again until I got all the lyrics down and danced and danced and danced.
We were married that January. A few months later, in March, I couldn't sleep. Rick Holland, our old college pastor, always used to say, "Have you ever considered when you can't sleep, maybe it's because the Lord wants to meet with you?" So that night I said, "Lord, what is it that you want to tell me?" And it was as if the Lord shouted in my mind, "TIME IS SHORT." I hoped that was just my own mind thinking about a general Biblical truth about how quickly life passes by.
Nonetheless, I was terrified that I would shortly be taken away from Andrew. During our marriage, I constantly considered that if I died, I would have wanted Andrew and my kids to always know I loved them with all my heart. When AJ was still an infant, I recorded us on our camcorder, as I told AJ I loved him with all my heart. Many parents probably have recordings of them doing that, but my reason wasn’t inadvertent. It was so that AJ could look at it if anything ever happened to me. I wanted to spend every moment possible with my family looking them in the eye when they spoke, undistracted, and as affectionate and as expressive of my love as possible. And after reading in a book that 80% of what Americans own they didn't use once in a year (or something like that), I wanted to get rid of the majority of our stuff. I didn't want to waste the precious little time I had left shuffling around clutter. If AJ asked me a question and I was in the middle of dishes, I would turn off the water immediately and give AJ my full attention. I thought, “If I die soon, I’m not going to care if my house was always perfect or not." And so, compared to others, I was not a model house keeper. But my husband was happy with the job I did, my family was taken care of, and they knew they were very loved.
The reality is, I did die at the age of 28. I slowly faded away as my love's body broke down. I died the day he died. The car had fallen on us.
The One of Us
With Andrew’s death, the fear and foreboding instantly stopped and was replaced with constant distractedness by the various demands of my life. After Andrew’s death, I was present and feeding my children meal after meal. I kept my house clean, paid all the bills, and took care of all the paper work, medical bills, de-cluttering of Andrew's things, selling of cars, I had a new will written up, all the things that needed to be done as a result of Andrew's death. Most of all, I needed to provide stability for the kids. Demonstrate for them that though their dad was gone, mama wasn't going anywhere. And so, ever since Andrew died, I did not have the liberty to check out. But this past fall, it seemed the kids were through their grief for the most part and were stable. With that little inch of flexibility, I began to break apart.
Andrew's death was like the airplanes that flew into the Towers of the World Trade Center, while I was the Towers. But I knew my children were in the building, so I could not collapse until they got out of the building. So I collapsed one floor at a time, one day at a time. I was purposeful to cry each day, make sure to diligently drain that grief lest it overcome me all at once. And then, this fall, I saw that my kids had made it out of the building. They were doing well. AJ no longer got that very sad look on his face for a few moments every few days. They still talked about their dad and said they missed him, but they knew that I hadn't disappeared like he had, and everything else had generally stayed the same in their lives. We had kept the same general routine each day. Each day they went to bed in the same room they had always gone to bed in and each morning they went to the kitchen and I fed them all their meals at all the same times in the day that I always had. Each day we read the Bible and talked about each of the situations we encountered and filtered them through how the Lord saw them. We were still in the same house, went to the same church, saw all the same wonderful people that they loved and saw around as they saw before Andrew died. They were stable. And so this fall, the last several floors left of the Towers came crashing to the ground. The Lord had graciously delayed the devastation, but it had to come at some time.
One of my pastors in my church, Pastor Warren, is a full-time, professional counselor, a therapist. As I could feel the rumbles of the last few floors about to give, I asked him if we could start meeting. I could sense there were 3rd degree burns that were far deeper than I had ever had the guts to imagine. At first, Pastor Warren said, "I don't see your life as one mangled by grief. I think you've been handling your grief really well." Still, as the Lord revealed to me and shocked me with areas of undealt with grief, such as what I mentioned in my September blog, "The School Bus and Blood," I feared perhaps I had never dealt with my grief. Increasingly, I spiraled into a hole. What if I was only just beginning to deal with my grief? And Pastor Warren would encourage me, "No, Grace. I think you're doing well. I think you may be at the last obstacles of your grief." This encouraged me, but I also feared that maybe he was just an optimist.
At the same time as being confronted with the areas of undealt with grief, Andrew's birthday arrived on Sept. 11th. Memories of Andrew became more vivid than ever. I walked past the tailor store in the mall and an image burst before my eyes. We had brought Andrew's black leather jacket with its "ANDREW MARC, NEW YORK" label embroidered in yellow block letters on the inside tag to that store to get altered. I couldn't get the vivid image of his leather arm out of my mind's eye. Longing for the feeling of his leather arm behind my neck was like a knife stabbing me in my heart, and I couldn't pull it out of my chest. I had often tried to think of the bigger picture, but saying to myself that Christ, or even Andrew, awaited me in some indeterminate time in the future when I reached eternity was of no comfort. It would be like if you had your leg pinned under the tire of a car and you were in excruciating pain. Saying, "Don't worry, maybe someone will eventually come for you and get your leg out," would not make you stop screaming for the pain to stop.
I wrote in my journal:
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Met with Pastor Warren today. He said he can sense from me the profundity of my loss…but that he doesn’t think he, nor anyone, can say they can even begin to realize the true profundity of my loss. He says he’s not one of those Christians who thinks things can’t get “all that bad” and then it’s done with. He says he’s not prepared to be able to draw a line between legitimate grief and sinful grief. He says I feel the consequences of my loss everyday in my life. And that my suffering continues and there is no end in sight of that suffering.
Also, Pastor Warren mentioned to me my desire to move past my grief. I asked him what that meant. I knew I didn't want to be miserable and that I couldn’t continue as a way of life living at my breaking point for much longer, but I didn't understand exactly what "moving past my grief" meant. He said you know when you have moved through your grief when your life is not completely centered around and in reference to Andrew any longer.
I cried and cried and cried when he said that. I said, "I don't want to live with my life not in reference to Andrew. My tears were hot and poured out far more than I knew was in me. Pastor Warren's gentle validations caused all the stuff that I was stuffing down so that I could function and appear normal, and convince myself I was normal, to pour out of me.
The Depths that Lead to Heights
I had taken care of the kids for more than 1.5 years by myself, and on top of that, our house that Andrew wanted me to stay in, suddenly had urgent demands all at once - after a heavy windstorm a large tree branch fell onto the fence into our neighbor's yard, the freezer stopped working and all the food was melting, something cracked in the toilet so that water was leaking onto the floor, someone brought to my attention the windows were rotting and needed to be replaced before winter, AJ got scarlet fever - all within the same six weeks. This was all happening as I was dealing with the worst stage of my grief process. I was already worn out, but now I was fully saturated with physical as well as emotional exhaustion.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
For so long through his trial, the concept that God is good has gripped me, kept me sane. Somehow, I was convinced of it. Now, the misery has been so long, so relentless, so persistent, I have a hard time believing it. Yet there is a seed of this thought persisting: The only life worth living is one spent for Christ. For a moment, a picture of a piece of shredded meat flashed through my mind. That's my life. Perhaps little relief, little happiness; however, no matter my ideals, there is a limit to my strength, to my persistence. There will be a point where I may break, go crazy, die, etc. If God delivers before then, then it will prove His promises. Perhaps that is my life. A laboratory for all to see if God's claims hold up.
I waited patiently for the Lord
And He inclined to me and heard my cry...
He put a new song in my mouth,
a song of
praise to our God;
Many will see and fear
And will trust in the Lord
-- Psalm 40:1-3
Perhaps that shall happen. If the Lord delivers, perhaps many will see and fear, and will trust in the Lord.
There was no more willpower in me left to say, "No, for the sake of my kids, I will survive!" No. There was nothing left. I had been a full-time caregiver to a husband that wasted before my eyes for 2 years while raising two toddlers under 2 and then a single mom for nearly 2 years, while a grieving widow, and I was several years beyond fried. There was nowhere left to turn but to cry out to God in utter desperation and fear.
I remember one night at the end of October, I had a babysitter because I was supposed to go to ballet. But I was so worn out, I just stayed in my bedroom while she took care of the kids. The grief was so horrific, it began manifesting physically, my chest hurting and so heavy, it was hard to breathe. And I began to see myself floating above myself. And I thought, "Is this what it's like to become unhinged? Is this what it's like to go crazy?" The next day, I spent the few hours that my kids were in preschool and kindergarten crying out to God that Grace Lindeman, the Canadian teenager who had helped us twice when Andrew was sick, I prayed that her dad would get reinstated at Air Canada that day so that she could fly and help us, since the tickets were too expensive without his discount. The Lord answered, and for the first time in nearly 2 years, he was reinstated that very day! Grace Lindeman flew from Canada to Minnesota and helped me for a month.
While it was a massive relief to have Grace Lindeman helping with the kids, the misery continued to persist. I kept thinking about what Corrie Ten Boom said in The Hiding Place. When she had reached a particularly desperate time in the concentration camp and all her sister and she had was the Bible, her sister said the Lord has provided a solution: Give thanks in everything! (1Thess. 5:18). I felt backed against a wall and had no choice but to do it God's way. I had to "consider it all joy when I faced various trials" (James 1:2). I had to give thanks about all the things I was upset about. I had to give thanks in everything.
Friday, Dec. 12, 2010
Giving thanks whenever I'm about to complain and grumble and scream in my heart feels as if it is regenerating cut off heart in an instant. Last night, as I was decluttering, I looked at a list of things you can play with kids on summer break. My heart reaction was to remember all the wonderful things we used to do as a family when Andrew was here, but now I'm so bombarded and burnt out by the pressures of every aspect of our lives relentlessly depending on me that I hardly play with or enjoy the kids. I'm so frustrated and preoccupied, most of the time when I am with them.
Again, I was reminded to give thanks. "Ugh...Thank You, God, for all the wonderful time the kids did have with Andrew...Thank You, Lord, that they no longer have their father...Thank You, Lord, that they no longer have their father." And to my surprise, it was right as if in that instant I could see the third degree burns that had disintegrated most of my heart suddenly regenerate, resurrect, like my heart, though barely any of it was left, was instantly re-growing, as if my heart were a starfish, even though it wasn't merely an arm that needed to re-grow; it was as if only one or two edges were left of that starfish and the 85% of the starfish needed to be resurrected.”
At my December meeting with Pastor Warren, he said that everyone that knows him knows that he always says that the hardest job in the world is to be a single mom. And he said, but on top of that, my children have no dad that they can ever see, and further on top of that, I am dealing with my grief.
Grace Lindeman stayed until the day the kids and I left in December to spend a month in California with my brothers, who live there with their families, and my parents, who flew out from New Jersey for the holidays.
During mine and the kids' month in California, I worked again on the book Andrew had said in his letters to publish. I printed out our entire blog, put it into a binder, and began to edit all 400 or so single-spaced pages with a pencil. The act of being forced to go through the blogs we had written during the worst time of our lives, when Andrew was going through radiation and chemotherapy for a second time, helped me to finally process areas of grief I had never been ready to deal with before. I wrote in the margins what it was making me feel. And to my surprise, I felt rage. And once I acknowledged I was angry, the Lord began to take it away. I awoke the next day and the depression and hopelessness I had fallen into that fall was suddenly lifted. I think often depression is just unacknowledged anger.
At the end of December, after the kids were in bed at my brother's house, I also spent an hour three nights in a row walking the streets in the rain or cold, crying out to God to show me what to do. I didn't feel I could handle it anymore. When I had first begun to collapse earlier in the fall, my close friend, Melissa, down the street from me had offered to take my kids for a few months, but I hadn't taken her up on her offer. Friends from church had offered to take my kids when I returned from California. But I felt so paralyzed. How could I have gone from visions of spending all day with my children, like my early Washington mentors, to the opposite end of the spectrum? Sure, I loved the schools in Eden Prairie. I was fine with not homeschooling them, but letting other people care for them for a few months? I'm sure plenty of people would have done the whole spectrum of anything for us, including if I came up with middle-of-the-road options, but I just felt paralyzed. There was an infinite amount of possible life changes I could make, but none of them seemed ideal.
The previous fall months, I had felt so paralyzed, I did not know what to change. Everything I had done since Andrew died, I had modeled after the past. All the paperwork, all the changes that needed to be made that related to Andrew's death, I just did what Andrew would have done. The routines with the kids, I did my best to base it on past routines. Even most of the travelling we had done, whether to California, New Jersey, or the Philippines, those were all things I had also done before Andrew's death. Even sending for Grace Lindeman. She was one of our helpers when Andrew was sick. I didn't want to find anyone local, because I was afraid training someone new would come with a whole new set of unpredictabilities. But I finally reached the point where I could not put off change any longer.
I loved my children so much. What would be best for our family? I kept crying out to God to show me what His will was.
And then it came to mind to my surprise, "Put the kids into school full time." Andrew had said to do this in his letters, but I wasn't sure if he meant to do that when Gracie was in first grade, which wasn't for another two years, as opposed to homeschooling them, or sooner. But as I prayed about it, the Lord seemed to be saying, "Now is the time." Also, a few days earlier a college student, Lydia, from my church emailed me that she heard I was looking for live-in help with my kids. During my night wanderings what came to mind was, have Lydia move in with you. Then you can have on-call help and babysitting any time. Don't live on the edge of your strength with no margins. Build lots of margins into your life.
Seeds of Resurrection
Sunday, Feb. 13, 2011
Last weekend I went to the Hyatt to be by myself for the two year anniversary of Andrew’s death, the way I had for the one year anniversary of his death. There, I discovered I am not in the same place I was a year ago. Last year, I wondered why I was drawn to the Hyatt when it should remind me of when Andrew and I went there weekly during radiation and chemotherapy, the worst time of our lives. I realized that I had gone there because I hadn’t processed that time of my life a year ago, but this year I had already processed that worst time of my life while I was in California editing our book. I realized I had gone to the Hyatt during cancer because it was the only escape from the pressures of the relentless cancer. Last year, again, I needed the escape. This year, I realized, I no longer need to escape! Lydia lives with us, the kids are in school, and I’m not overwhelmed anymore.
At church the next day, I cried through singing “Majesty,” feeling so
profoundly the depth of Christ’s love for me and His deliverance in my life, even recently. He allowed me to deal with my grief head on, cry, and scream, and write, and put my kids in school. And then providing Lydia. I felt as if I had finally come out on the other side of depression, and loneliness, and paralysis. And it was not through my circumstances God saved me. He saved me through Himself. And He provided the grace and strength for me to make the changes I needed to.
"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."
-- Isaiah 41:10
And so, now I am just focusing on keeping stress as low as possible in my life, and physically, mentally, emotionally resting and recovering from the past four years (two as a grieving widow/single mom and the 2 years prior of full-time caregiving and grieving as I lost Andrew little by little).
When I told Pastor Warren that I am focusing on resting, he agreed that this was a wise course of action. He said I should consider what I've been through emotionally, as being similar to a physical injury. He compared it to how he had injured his shoulder, and that even though he can do almost everything he used to be able to do, and he is at 95%, it will still take awhile for him until he is at 100%. When I said I had some opportunities to do some more things, but I turned them down, because I felt like I needed to continue keeping the pressure low in my life, he agreed that my instincts were right. He said that especially in our American culture, where we find our value in being productive and busy, the temptation would be to get really busy with something new, but then never to deal with what's actually going on.
New Life
The Lord has resurrected me. And I am alive! I am a new creation free and filled up and overflowing with the love of God. I died but the Lord resurrected me. I feel as if the Holy Spirit has given me new insights into certain Scriptures. For instance, Romans 5:3-5 says:
"...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5and 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."
I thought I understood verses 3-4, but frankly, verse 5 was perplexing to me. "God's love has been poured into our hearts through His Holy Spirit"? Sounds abstract...how does that make me rejoice, or in other translations, exult, or glory in my sufferings? How does "God's love poured into my heart," if it's some abstract concept that I don't see with my eyes or feel with my hands, make a knife carving out my heart make me respond opposite to the natural response of screeching in agony, kicking the One holding the knife's Hands away? Well, literally, in the past months of resurrection I experience often on a daily basis what it feels like - unmistakably, nothing subtle or abstract about it - to have the LOVE OF GOD POURED out into my heart through His Holy Spirit.
I have never felt more convinced of God's love for me or His goodness ever in my life than I do now. I feel so incredibly FREE! I have never felt more free in my entire life.
The 2 year anniversary of Andrew's death was when I realized how incredibly free I was. A few days later I looked at andersonsashes.blogspot.com, a blog of another young widow, and reviewed her most recent blog at the time. It was about how incredibly freed she felt. And then I remembered that when I had first read it, a week before the 2 year anniversary of Andrew's death, I had said, "Lord, I don't know what she's talking about. I don't have a clue how it's possible to feel freed like a bird escaping captivity after losing your husband. I want to know that freedom. Please show me." I had forgotten all about that prayer, but the Lord had answered it. We can have all these things we long for - peace, joy, freedom if we just ask Jesus, no matter what we're going through. He is the Source of all of that, and He longs to give that to us. He only requires that we ask. So I encourage you to please ask, and keep asking! Ask Jesus to know Him more. Or if you don't already know Jesus, I implore you to please ask Him to know Him in the first place.
I can't describe this love poured out into my heart that I feel without it sounding cheesy. I don't know. Maybe like the warmth of an embrace, but times INFINITY because it's given by the GOD OF THE UNIVERSE.
I can say, though, another verse that Christ has given me insight into is "For God so loved the world..." John 3:16. Let's be honest. Isn't there something child-like sounding about that verse? Like in first grade when all my classmates would raise their hand during prayer time to ask for prayer for "the world." If not child-like, then abstract.
Well, now, I feel I have a new insight into it. I feel as if God's love is so much for me that it is literally overflowing out of my little heart, pouring over, and I just feel like I love THE WHOLE WORLD.
When you are in excruciating pain over a prolonged, seemingly endless amount of years, you start to question how this could be loving. There is no question anymore. Not only does God have enough love for me to get me through the day; He has so much love for me, I can't contain it! I love everyone! And I will tell you so if I see you. I love you! I really do.
As I walk closer with the Lord, I am more convinced than ever that as wonderful as Andrew was, he couldn't even come close to the satisfaction that only Christ, Himself, can bring. Andrew was wonderful because of the ways he reflected some facets of Christ. No matter what a brat I was, how difficult, stubborn, or selfish on a day-to-day basis I was, Andrew relentlessly showered me with affection and love, and continued to daily pursue me with that love even after we were married. Through that, Andrew taught me about Christ's relentless, pursuit and love for me, in defiance of how unworthy I am of His love. Through Andrew's love, he gave me a reference, an insight into how not only has Christ taken away my condemnation from hell, but day-to-day, He has taken away my condemnation. I don't have to approach Christ cowering, guilty because I know there are endless sins I've committed just in the last minute that I didn’t even realize. Christ knows me better than Andrew did, and He still loves me! He still is excited about me the way a husband rejoices over his bride. Isn't that incredible? Crazy? THE GOD OF THE UNIVERSE loves me? Andrew was wonderful, because like the moon reflects the sun, Andrew reflected the Son. But the moon has no light without the sun, and all of the light that Andrew's love was cannot compare to that of the Ultimate Source, of the Son. I asked the Lord to show me that His love was better than that of a man and within days, I experienced what I've just described.
I am more convinced than ever, and experience the reality of the fact that Jesus is enough. HE IS THE ONLY ONE THAT CAN SATISFY.
How I Miss Andrew
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Today I miss Andrew completely in just the person he was. Not who we were together, not the relationship we had, or the time we spent together. Just who he was and all that made up the person of Andrew.
And so the way I miss Andrew is different. For so long, I missed my relationship with Andrew. I missed our life together. I missed what he was to the children. But if God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, and thus this life right now is His good for us, then I really don't know if life would be better if Andrew were with us right now, because I would be less sanctified. Life gets better the closer we are to Christ, regardless of circumstances. In fact, the Bible says it's suffering that makes us more like Christ. So it's not despite suffering life gets better, it is through the means of suffering life gets better, because suffering draws us closer to Christ and makes us more like Christ. And the closer we are to Christ, the sweeter everything is. For the believer, life everlasting has already begun!
And, I do have a Father for my children. I do have a Husband. Jesus in a very real way is that to us. And He has not forsaken us. He has taken very good care of us. When there are things I do not know how to do in the house and there isn’t time to call anyone, and the Lord wants me to learn how to do it for myself, I just keep praying as I'm fixing something in the house or on the computer, and it is as if the Lord instructs my mind and guides my hands what to do. When one of my children is completely out of hand and I'm terrified for what they will be like 10 years from now, I cry out to God that I do not have the strength to be on top of all their training in the same way as I used to, and I don't have Andrew to back me up and lead us like he used to, and I cry out for rescue. And the Lord rescues. He begins to do a work of change in that child's heart, though I haven't changed anything. He changes them to the point that people notice and comment on the change they recognize.
But I still miss Andrew. I miss the person of Andrew. I do miss a world with Andrew in it. But that is different than pining away after a life that I used to have with him.
I used to think that being past my grief was that the memories faded to the point that they could no longer hurt me. Now, I realize, it's not that. The first year after Andrew's death, I could not remember anything pre-cancer. Or rather, I could not allow myself to remember. I could not look at pictures of the sweet time of falling in love. I realize now that being able to move past my grief doesn't mean I won't miss Andrew anymore or cry. In fact, the memories are more vivid than ever. It means that I accept that he is gone. I accept that I am a single mom. For the past two years, I think I have been living like a stay-at-home mom, whose husband just hadn't returned home yet, and eventually, my strength ran out. But now, I accept I am a single mom and my life is no longer going to look how I had envisioned it. My house will not be overflowing with children with Andrew beside me to enjoy them. My life is not going to look the way it did four years ago before cancer struck our household, or like the lives of those who mentored me in mothering when AJ and Gracie were born in Washington. My life isn't going to look like friends' lives, which I identified with, and are stay-at-home moms, who homeschool their children. Before Andrew entered my life, my future appeared a fuzzy haze. When Andrew arrived, I thought, at least there is one thing I know about my life. It'll have Andrew beside me until the end. But there is no certainty in this world, except for Christ. I'm not sure what my life will look like. But for now, my kids are in school full-time, Lydia is living with us, and I am recovering, resting, writing, and revising our book.
When I told this to Pastor Warren, he said that in all the models of grief, "acceptance" was always the last stage. And he said he couldn't even count how many times he heard me use the words, "I accept."
I said, "I feel like God has risen me from the dead. And I am like a child learning to walk, and the Lord is clapping, cheering me on like an excited parent."
Pastor Warren said that the words I was using was really almost literal, rather than a metaphor. He said he was sitting in his chair and getting front row seats to witness God's miraculous work in a person before his very eyes. He said after all I had been through the past several years, it was literally like from the dead, I had risen.
Please pray for us:
- That the Lord would display His glory and mercy and forgiveness in the book that Andrew asked me to write and that if it is His will that He would make it publishable.
- And please pray for my children, that they would know and experience and feel the reality that God is a Father to the fatherless; and that they would love the Lord with all of their heart, mind, soul, and strength from an early age for all of their lives.
- And that the Lord would make me raise them in a godly way with strength to consistently shepherd them.
A few days before Andrew was told that the cancer had travelled into his spine and it was 100% terminal in October of '08, and though I still could not accept that he was going to die, I had a dream that I was driving on a busy rode, and suddenly turned into an unexpected, narrow pathway. It led up to a cemetery. There was a small cabin at the top of the gentle hill, and inside was a crowd of people, most of whom I had never met before. And they were all comforting me.
And that is what happened. I had never been to the Eden Prairie Cemetery until after Andrew died. I may not have ever driven past it before. But it is off a busy road, exactly like the one in my dream, and unless you're trying really hard to find it, you will not see the unexpected narrow pathway that leads up to a gentle, grassy hill, again, exactly as it appeared in my dream. It is a small cemetery set back with a small, wood sign, so unless you're looking, you might not even notice there's a cemetery there.
And while perhaps not in person, all of you came around us and comforted me, many of you we know personally, but many of you we did not. Thank you so much to all of you for laughing and crying and praying and supporting Andrew, the kids, and me, and carrying us to Jesus, and for the sake of Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I cannot express my gratitude to all of you for loving us and listening to us and bearing with us and being there for us. It has meant and been everything. The Lord has literally used you to have carried us through this trial. I truly mean that. While countless ones of you have contributed to helping us in person, or sent us things, even if you didn’t physically do anything, you prayed for us. And that is the greatest thing you could have done. Thank you for being Christ's body to us. I cannot express my gratitude, but for all that you have done for us, you have done to Jesus. And He will reward you. I love you!
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