Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hope. Show all posts

Thursday, September 1, 2011

PS I Love You & Paul

The other night I found myself in an exhausted heap on the couch watching PS I Love You.  Nothing in my life has every worn me out like being the primary care-giver for a 2 year old and an 8 month old.  I am tired to the bone every night and I often find my rest in books, movies, ice cream and the occasional generous glass of wine.  Last night I popped in PS I Love You for the 874th time because I love it and it called to me from my DVD collection. 






I have had a love for Kathy Bates since I was about ten, and this movie is no exception.  If you haven't seen the movie it centers around Holly, a very young widow who is searching for healing and wholeness after losing her husband to brain cancer.  Her mother is a hard-knocks bar owner and has been doing the single parent thing for years since her own husband left her.  She isn't cuddly or soft in any way and when she talks it's always to give advice or speak her mind.  She loves her daughter, but as you watch the movie you get the feeling that years of fighting life have made her tough and taken away any softness she started with.

Around every corner of the film I found myself enthralled with her character and totally jealous.  For one Kathy Bates looks a lot like my Mom to me, and for two I would have given anything to have a hard knocks, wise mom spurring me on and speaking her mind.  For my entire twenties my Mom was so far gone to depression we didn't really have any conversations of substance.  I ached to be able to speak to the woman I knew that she was behind her illness and pain.  She was the star of the school play and a cheerleader, they all tell me she was so bright and fun, but I never got to see it.


I long for something very simple in my life, to have my parents back.  To have a dad coming over to fix the sink or a Mom giving me more advice that I care for on trivial stuff like cooking or kids.  I hate the big Mom and Dad shaped holes in my life.  And sometimes the sheer size of them sucker punches me to the ground.  And I curl up in a ball, and it sucks so bad.  A lot of days I find contentment with it, but some days I just can't.  


Check out Philippians 4:11 - 14


11 I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.13 I can do all this through him who gives me strength. 14 Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles

So this is written by a guy named Paul, a rock star of a man who traversed the known world and told a million or so people about Jesus.  He did all this while being starved, imprisoned, shipwrecked, and flogged within an inch of his life.  And yet he was content.  


Think about the very legitimate things we struggle with and ask for prayer on.  Broken relationships, loss, abuse, neglect, divorce and illness.  For me, I struggle with death.  I miss my parents for who they were and who they could have been.  I am in the process of finding contentment with my life but I still have moments of sharp jealously.  I get lumps in my throat, I cry big fat tears.  When I see grandparents holding brand new babies:  jealous.  When I get a call from a friend and her dad is there fixing her sink: jealous.  Honestly, anytime I hear a friend use the words "Mom and Dad" in reference to their parents it seems strange to me.  I don't use those words much anymore.  It's weird I know, but it is where I live.  And I am learning to find contentment in it, even though it sucks and it doesn't seem fair.  


What are the things you are praying and longing to have?  Like me, your prayers and longings may seem normal and natural.  So why do we have to be content with gaping holes in our lives?


I don't know why we have our specific holes and gaps, but we do.  And if you look around you'll find many people with gaping holes.  Maybe not the same ones as you, but so many of us have them.  


I am jealous of parents and I want my Dad back and I want to go on a walk and get unsolicited advice from a mom like Kathy Bates.  


I don't know where you are in your journey today.  But I can tell you that I know what its like to hear about the idea of contentment in the midst of immense pain and to scoff and get pissed.  How dare God call me to be okay with this crap?    I've been there, asking Paul where he gets off even suggesting such a concept. I can't make it all better for you, but I can tell you contentment comes with time and I can assure you that it is so normal to long for something natural you are missing out on.


I can also promise you that God fills the gaps in time.  Through beautiful people and lovely moments of healing.  His healing is a miracle every time.  So just take one step toward contentment today, that's all you have to do.  Don't hold on to your anger for dear life.  It's okay to have it for now, but you don't want to buy it a collar and turn it into your pet.  It'll just bite people who ring your doorbell and pee all over everything, metaphorically speaking.  


Paul didn't have food, a wife, kids, a home or a functioning body.  And tons of people spent their lives trying to kill him.  So he has room to talk.  Just saying.  


Contentment is a battle worth fighting.  To be honest, your life depends on it.  Please contact me if I can help you on your battle.


Those are my thoughts, a penny for yours?  

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

I didn't order this

When you are going through a deep and painful grieving process, it's a very mixed bag when it comes to what emotion will rise to the surface next. I am sure that you are familiar with the five stages of grieving, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I like these stages in theory but if you try to tell me which one I am currently experiencing, you will likely just irritate me. I am aware of the stages and if I feel the need to label where I am, I will.

Through all these stages both Kel and I have felt this overwhelming sense of confusion and surprise. Just days before mom took her life I was straightening my hair in the bathroom while listening to the song beautiful things by Gungor. Our family likes music while getting ready in the morning, and we have iPod docking options in both the kitchen and the bathroom to accommodate this. On this particular morning I was listening to a song, which I love, called Beautiful Things by Gungor. The first few lines of this song deal with pain and a longing for something good to grow in the soil of your life. I remember thinking to myself, for this first time in a very long time I am not feeling an overarching sense of pain in my life. I do have an intense longing to be a fertile ground for God's work in my life, but I am content with my life, happy with where we are. Dads’ death took me a long time to get over, but on that morning I felt contentment.

Flip ahead two days, when I got another, completely different, earth shattering phone call. It just flat out doesn't seem fair that just when I was content, not proud, not boastful, but content that I should draw the "Go back to square one" card in the game of grieving a parent.

The best way I know how to describe how it feels right now is that I am sitting at a huge long table. The kind you would see in a castle where the two diners sit at opposite ends so ridiculously far apart that it makes conversation impossible. As I take my seat the waiter brings the traditional silver platter covered with a silver domed lid and sets it in front of me. The lid comes off to reveal something so incredibly terrible and awful that my entire body is repulsed by it. This isn't what I ordered. I don't want this. You have to take it away. But as much as my entire being is opposed to the contents of the tray I am steeped in the knowledge that this tray is my only option. And I have to sit in this chair for a long time and deal with what has been placed in front of me, and not only me my entire family.

This was supposed to be a season of joyful anticipation for the birth of our son, Noelle's brother. This is fall, and soon thanksgiving and then Christmas. This is my favorite part of the calendar year, the part I look forward to and savor. How could it be so suddenly defined by the arrival of this terrible thing?

I can say with honest sincerity that I don't point a blaming finger at anyone because this tragedy is now part of my story. In the future someday, I might, but today as I sit on our couch wrapped up in my favorite sage green blanket I am not angry at anyone, not my Mother and not God. I am just in shock that this is the now. I am in total despair at the length of time this will take to heal from, to process. I am keenly aware that there is good in the now, and that there is life still continuously moving inside and around me. I feel hope even though I know it will only truly come to bloom in the days ahead of me. And if I check the guidebook for my personal life I find myself without instructions on how to cope with this exactly. But I know that my God is pouring love into my life in the form of friends, family, and everything I eat that is made from apples. I love and live for apples in the fall, and that is one part of me that seems to remain unchanged. I feel that our family is being lifted up by prayer in an almost tangible way. All of that makes each painful day more possible.

And so I can be here, and feel the exhaustion, the hurt, the shock, the numbness and the pain. I can do this because he does make beautiful things out of the painful parts of our life even when he doesn’t cause them. I can live through this because while this death seems to define today it won’t define who I am. I can get up tomorrow and keep eating and breathing because I believe that even when something incredibly painful arrives and demands to become a large chapter in our story, I know it isn’t the entire story. That a beautiful theme will sing louder than the pain when the book of my own life draws to a close.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Pieces of a Funeral

Not really ready to write about much but I do want to share a few things for those of you who were too far away to experience the comfort that was my Moms funeral this past Monday.

My Aunt had heard this song and really resonated with it and brought it to us to share at the funeral. It's incredibly powerful, painful, but fitting.


Here is the picture tribute put together to remember her life in photos.

And these two scripture verses came to the surface

Revelation 21:4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

James 1:12 Blessed are those who persevere under trial, because when they have stood the test, they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

It was an incredibly painful hour for me, but I am so thankful that all these pieces and more came together to honor my Mom, attempt to make sense of all of this, and bring comfort to those in attendance.


Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Grieving is a Ninja

Grieving is a ninja, for me it is, well nowadays anyway. It hasn't always been a ninja, for a long time it was more like one of those Italian mob lackeys who stays in the room with you while you're tied to a chair and taunts you constantly. Then a couple times a day the lackey just comes over and beats the living tar out of you. Yep, for a long time I was in the mob lackey stage of grieving. But now i am in ninja stage where grief sometimes comes in stealthily and roundhouse kicks me in the face. The chances of getting ninja-ed increase steadily the closer I get to march every year. And would you look at that, today is Feb 9, getting awful close to March. Five years ago on March 19, 2005 my Dad died very suddenly. And so every March I feel that in a deep way. When I hear a song that he loved or that we played at a funeral I get the grief ninja kicking me in my head.

Today I got doubly kicked as I attended a funeral, a friend of mine lost his Mom last week and today they said goodbye to her. This was my first good friend to lose a parent since I lost my Dad. Five years and no one in my circle of friends lost a parent. Thank God for sparing them that pain. And I don't want to talk about it much because I want to support my friends as the grieve this loss and not have any of their support taken away. But here in this space I can't deny that helping them through this has put me back in the grieving mindset. Remembering all the things I went through five years ago next month. Five years, it's such a neat even number, but it is bigger than all the other numbers I have faced in March. It's one of the milestone numbers. Something in me scream that there is no way that five years can have passed since the last time I talked to my Dad, or hugged him, or saw his face on this earth. And grief unlike anything else is so steadfastly permanent. I don't get him back because I went five years without him. If I grieve extra well I don't get a prize. The years march on and Noelle won't meet her grandpa, not on this earth anyway. And you have to understand that so many days this is completely okay. And that if you were to ask me about my Dad about 80% of the time I can tell you about what happened and not have a tear well up.

I don't know how I am going to do this March, maybe the rawness that has resurfaced will subside, calm down and go back to whatever box I keep it in. I have thought about making a soundtrack of these last five years, of my journey away from Dad. This was so much easier when I still lived around the people who held me up as it happened, how do I re-explain it to new friends, trust them with this part of me?

Maybe I don't. I don't know. For now I Am going to get in the tub and just let my mind do what it needs to do, let God into the mess of grief instead of keeping him out of it as I am more prone to do.