Where I choose to live

Well, this is week of big milestones for our family.  Milestones we wish were not part of our history.  The day after Christmas two years ago, during our family Christmas party, it was very obvious that something was wrong with Tom so we left our party and headed to the ER and our world came crashing in.  Then last year Tom and I spent our Christmas in the City of Hope hospital in California, alone as alomost every other patient had been released for the hoilday weekend - but, my husband was still alive so I was not complaining.  This year my family will face our first Christmas without him.  Do we do the same things we have always done or do we switch it up?  No way are we going to forget, so we have opted to do what we always do.  I dread the day and look forward to getting past this milestone.  Tom's Christmases as a kid were very different than my family Christmases.  I think Christmas was a difficult burden for a single mother who could barely make ends meet let alone pull together something magical.  When we got married Tom's stocking was stuffed with the tissue paper it came with and had never been filled, ever.  At our house, stockings are half the fun and the bigger the stocking the better.  When he spent his first Christmas at my parents farm he was blown away by the relaxed and joyful atmosphere.  We always had spare kids from East Hill filling our house and tons of food and fun. My mothers love language is gifts so she just loved to bless people and the more the merrier.  That is how Tom and I chose to spend our Christmases.  Because we have so often shared our home with the broken it was not uncommon to see an extra stocking or two.  Even as I write I have our stocking plus Elisa's and Jason's.  A home filled with kids is a joyful home although often chaotic.
      Last week I was at a Christmas party and a woman who has been unhappily married for a long time came up to say hi and began to whine.  Really!?  Do you really want to whine to me this year?  I think my last two years pretty much trumps hers and I have plenty of reason to whine but I choose not to.  I still have much to be thankful for.  I walk around with a broken heart every day but somehow that broken heart has enabled me to see how precious life is.  How short life is and how much there is here to appreciate.  I would love to be in a position to whine about my marriage right now.  I would love to be mad that his clothes did not make it into the hamper or he forgot to put the trash out.  It;s all about perspective.  Pain teaches us things, if we let it.  "If" is the relative word here.  I could choose to wallow.  In fact, I have every right to wallow.  Instead I choose to look to the hills from where my help comes.  I choose to suck all I can from this pain.  I choose to believe that somehow God will take our pain and make something good come of it.  Nope, it's not fair and my kids and I did not deserve this but we have felt God's presence in ways we never imagined.  We hurt but now we have deep compassion. 
So, when you feel like complaining because he did not get you the right thing for Christmas, be thankful he is here to screw it up.  When you feel like complaining because you have done all this work to make this day magical and he just sits and enjoys, be thankful you can give your family this gift.  It is all about where we choose to live.  I choose to live in thankfulness.

Hmmm

Well, no sooner than I posted my last blog and I had another panic attack.  Right after Thanksgiving dinner.  Should have expected as much.  The pattern seems to be that I handle everything pretty well then the feelings of missing him build up and bam - panic and grief.  His presence was definitely missing that day.  Tom loved Thanksgiving food and family.  He would have had us all laughing.  Not as much laughter in our house without him although Jordan is a close clone of his dad in that way.  Same macabre sense of humor, but Tom would find the humor in everything.  Miss that.

Yesterday I decorated our tree alone.  For as long as I have lived I have an ornament for each year of my life.  Tom and I carried on that tradition with each other and our kids so decorating the tree is like opening a picture book that you can only see once a year.  Our first Christmas ornaments, vacation ornaments, new business ornaments, anniversary ornaments, and my last years ornament from him - a nurse ornament to thank me for taking care of him.  In many ways it feels like my history died with him. No one will ever know those years with me.  Oh sure, I can explain to someone but Tom knew.  No explanation necessary.  I'm having a hard time figuring out how to do this.  Who is this odd family of 5?  I don't want to be a matriarch.  We were supposed to do this together.  All those years of work, layering, building.  Where do I fit in?  Who am I without this history anymore?  What is God's plan here.  Sometimes it is just really hard and painful.

Yes, I have much to be thankful for but much to grieve as well. Sometimes this is just really hard.

Thanksgiving 2011

I have much to be thankful for.  That may sound odd coming from a woman whose whole life has been turned upside down and inside out.

Much to be thankful for.  Nope, this is not some cheesy cliche to impress people with how incredibly spiritual and God focused I am.  It is true.  This may sound odd, and at the expense of being criticized, but in some ways I am happier than I can ever remember being.

Not one bit happy about not having Tom here.  Not one bit.  I would give anything for one more day.  One more hour.  One more conversation, but that will have to wait.  However,  this process has brought a freedom in my life that I have never known.  Not a freedom from the life I felt enslaved to.  I loved that life and I desperately want it back.  The freedom is from the fear that has dogged my life for as long as I have memory.

As I have said before, when my brother and I were born we were born to very young parents who were trying to make their way in the world.  My mom worked full time to put our dad through medical school.  I really only have one memory of my dad in the first 6 years of my life and it is of him passed out on the carpet with a severe hangover and the dog having puppies by his head.  My brother and I were both surprise babies and were born into a difficult situation.  I don't remember ever being truly happy or free from fear.  Fear of abandonment.  Pain from loss.  Anxiety  about wondering who would be there for us.  I will say in my parents defense that they did the best they could with what they had and as my mother got older she did a much better job of providing security but at my early age the wheels were set in motion for a life of anxiety.

It is this fear that seems to have died with Tom.  Oh sure, I still have moments where fear of tomorrow grips me and won't let go, but it is not my constant companion.  I faced my dragon and he may have won the battle of death but we won the war over fear.  That was a much bigger win and a road I think Tom would have willingly walked to set me free.

Don't get me wrong.  I will reiterate that in no way do I think God's decided to make us walk this road and take my husbands so I could be free.  God doesn't work that way.  But He does use what looks like a horrible thing in our life to teach us and grow us.  CS Lewis says "Experience is a brutal teacher, but we learn.  God do we learn."

I feared losing my husband - more fearful of a heart attack because Tom's drug of choice was food.  I feared losing one of my kids.  I feared never being free of fear.  I feared having a brain tumor myself because I have been plagued with migraines since I was a teenager.  I feared not being taken care of.  I feared being alone.  I feared....

I lost my husband and I lived through it.   My kids are safe for now and even if something happened to one of them somehow God would find a way to help me get through it.  I did not get the brain tumor as I feared, He did and in reality I am doing better with the loss than I know Tom would have done.  He was not able to take care of me but God still has and much of that has been through you.  I am alone but do not feel alone.  I am relatively free of the panic but am not naive enough to believe that it will not rear it's ugly head from time to time, but I do not live in fear.

If I died today I would be content because I would get to be with Tom and my grandma.  If I live another 50 years I get to be with my kids and my precious grand-kids and look forward to our reunion when I finally go home.

This is a hard road.  Lonely at times.  Heartache most of the time.  Longing all of the time, but I am full.  I have been taken care of and I am finally free.  My only wish is that Tom could be here to see and experience this.  My anxiety has altered our lives in so many ways and he willingly sacrificed many things to ensure my feeling of security.

So, as you sit at your Thanksgiving table today I know that many of your thought will turn to my family and we will be remembered in prayer, I want you to know that we will be ok.  My kids are dreading today and Christmas so we covet your prayers but I also want you to know that we feel those prayers in a very tangible way today.

I have much to be thankful for and if even I can stand and thank God on this Thanksgiving day then surely you can thank God in the midst of your own personal chaos.  He takes what the enemy uses for your harm and makes it into something beautiful in your life...if you let him.

Something beautiful
Something good,
All my confusion, He understood.
All I had to offer Him
Was brokenness and strife
And He made something beautiful out of my life

Couldn't have said it better myself

When You Desperately Want God to Hear Your Prayers by Ann Voskamp @ aholyexperience.com

When we buy her two pygmy goats for her birthday, who knew how big faith could get?

We bring them home in June in a mini-van with no air-conditioning.

Two miniature goats neighing back and forth —  on the laps of two boys making jokes about something warm running down their legs.

“We do need to name them,” the birthday girl announces.

She strokes one goat’s speckled stretch of neck, flakes of whiteness falling down a throat of silky night….

“Nanny is the whiter one.” She grips Nanny’s inverted skunk neck, ridge of black running down her spine. “And you… “ she turns to the smaller goat in Joshua’s lap, “You are Ninny —- the darker one.”

Ninny — shadow of Nanny…

We aren’t the owners of 2 pygmy goats for 24 hours when Shalom flies in the backdoor, flings herself on the couch.

The kitchen sink’s a mama’s watchtower and I dry off my hands. “Shalom? You okay.” I dry off my hands.

“Mama,” she sits up on, brushes her mess of curls from her face.

“Mama –“ her chin’s quivering “—do you think goats make good dinners for coyotes?”

My eyebrows arch.

Her dam breaks. “Because Nanny’s gone, Mama — Nanny ran away.”

She’s a heap again on the couch, shoulders shuddering.

Kai throws open the back door, “Shalom?”

He says her name like Shome, all the letters running together, the way you can make peace out of whatever you run into.

“Shome? Caleb’s looked all through the field. And back through the bush. And he can’t find Nanny anywhere.” He’s standing in the kitchen with his hands on his hips, telling me how it is.

“Mr. Shannon, he’s had all those sheep, and he told Caleb to leave Ninny at the back door of the barn and she’ll cry for Nanny — ” he looks around to find Shalom ” — and then Nanny will come home, Shome.” He makes her name sound like home, and Peace is always our Home — because Peace is a Person, not a place, and He always says come dwell in me.

Shalom can’t hear him for her weeping.

He goes to the couch, kneels down beside her, tries to find her under that mopsy mess of blonde.

“Remember Nanny’s wearing a collar, Shome? And the collar’s got our telephone number on it.” He whispers it close to her, rubs her back. “Someone will call us, okay?”

“Only if coyotes read phone numbers before they just dive into a little goat dinner,” Levi mumbles it from the kitchen.

Before I can say anything, he pushes himself, all the hurt in his chest, right out the back door.

After dinner, after the stories about searching through the woods three miles to the east and three miles to the west—  after recalling again how skittish and scared Nanny is, after the glaring down of a son who suddenly needs to discuss the current state of coyote populations, after wiping cheeks again, all still hopeful, after the lights are out, Shalom, she prays.

“God, you say that you hear us before we cry and I’ve cried a lot today, and I just know you are catching all our tears in that bottle of Yours and maybe that bottle sometimes sound like rain? God — please don’t let the coyotes hear our Nanny crying. And please — bring my Nanny home.”

Standing in the dark, looking out to the light, the hallway light, I don’t know how God answers all the begging prayers.

The begging prayers of mothers who’d like to wring death’s thin neck and make that child well.

I don’t know how God hears the wail of the woman howling raw for that one man to come love her right. The ache of the daughter rejected by the icy parent. The choking breath of the man crushed hard by a weight of debt.

There is this thrumming everywhere –  the tears falling, a hard rain into His bottle and He has to hear. Shalom holds me tight, our hearts beating harder against each other in the dark.

She whispers it, “God does loves us, doesn’t He, Mama?”

And I nod and this is always the question and maybe this is all our faith really is — Faith is this unwavering trust in the heart of God in the hurt of here. Unwavering trust all the time though I don’t understand all the time.

God is always good and we are always loved.

Loved enough to be shaped into goodness of Christ Himself.

Shalom buries her head into my shoulder and I run my hands through her hair, this slow untangling of everything, and I can hear His thrum.

Nanny isn’t at the barn in the morning.

Breakfast is quiet, heads bent over bowls.

“Think she’s somewhere in Martin’s woods still, Dad?” Shalom wiggles her chair closer to the table.

The Farmer reaches over, squeezes her hand, murmurs it hardly, “Let’s read, okay?”

He turns to the only place we can turn and he opens his Bible onto the table and Peace is a Person and we enter in the place of His Person. We listen to Him, Presence everywhere, and He can be our walls and our roof and the peace that makes us breathe relief and deep.

I do remember to breathe. The Farmer runs his hand across the thin Scripture page, this making ink of truth into the skin of his life. How do we walk our six breaking heart kids into faith in the Unseen Heart?

How can we give them what we are only slowly coming to hold: God’s purposes are not for me to understand His plans: His plan is for me to understand Who He is.

Shalom prays hard that night. We don’t know where Nanny is under the stars. Maybe the hardest praying are the prayers that let go. We all exhale into sleep. The Farmer tells me in the dark of morning that the chances of that 8 week old goat surviving two nights in woods….

The third night I stand at the window and say nothing, only looking out into the unknown that is known. I can hear the baying howls of the packs, bleating hearts turned towards the moon.

Joshua says it behind me in the shadows at the top of the stairs and says what no one is saying anymore.

“I know God is going to bring Nanny home.”

And now I am terrified.

God is no genie and when He took the nails He said He was no puppet on a string and I don’t turn from the window, but say it to the night, to Joshua somewhere behind me –

“And what if He doesn’t?”

What if He doesn’t — what if He doesn’t do what we plea, what we pray, what we believe He can and will do and should do?

And the three men before fire, they whisper the startling answer in Daniel, the answer of all of holy writ and writhing humanity: “And even if He doesn’t” –

Even if He doesn’t do what we beg, we are still His beloved.

Even if He doesn’t, He still is.

Even if He doesn’t do what we will, His will is still right and His heart is still good and the people of God will not waver.

Real prayer has eyes on Christ, not the crisis.

Even if He doesn’t – He does give enough — Himself.

Even if He doesn’t – He does still love us.

“If He doesn’t — I will still believe. Still believe — in Him.” In the dark, Joshua finds words to a life creed.

I put my forehead to the window, Nanny out there somewhere – or not.  Maybe Joshua who is the one coming Home?  And I half smile: That which we fear might happen to us — might be the thing to produce deep faith in us. Why be afraid of anything — when He’s using everything?

God is answering all our prayers: No one enters into the real joy of the Lord in spite of the hard times —- but squarely through the door of the hard times.

When I turn to brave Joshua’s eyes, he’s already opened up the door to of his room — gone and stepped in….

It’s the fourth night without Nanny when the Farmer drives a pickup full of kids home through the countryside all slow. They all look off into fields and they all talk of crops but it’s Nanny they’re all looking for and not speaking of.

The sky grows green, sickened and grey, just to the north, and then rips open black.

When they walk in the back door, it’s raining hard just across the highway. “It’s crazy close,” the Farmer says it at the sink. “Pouring hard in the next mile and quarter – but the laneway’s dry here.”

The phone rings.

“Listen!” Malakai stops everyone with his holler, hands up, waiting for the voice to leave a message on the machine.

“Who is it?” Shalom whispers too loud, patting the Farmer’s arm.

“Mr. Wideman?…. “ He steps towards the study and the voice of the Mennonite farmer from 3 miles north of us crackling on the machine… Everyone listens…

“Did you hear him?” Shalom spins around.

The Farmer shakes his head, confused, reaches for the phone, “Mr. Wideman?”

“No… no, it’s not raining here — but we can see it’s dark back your way.”

Kai rubs his hands giddy and Shalom keeps looking up at the Farmer, waiting for more, and Joshua, he’s still and ready in the doorframe. The Farmer turns on speaker phone so Mr. Wideman speaks to the whole bated breath room.

“No rain there? Well, it’s sheeting hard here – and it looks like, from the number on the collar here, we’ve got your goat. ” Shalom’s all white lightning, that smile.

Levi cocks his head, grinning — “Did the coyotes have takeout this week?” Kai laughs.

“Yes – we did lose a goat the beginning of the week. But—“ the Farmer puts his hand on Shalom’s head and the Father touches the daughter and she flashes all joy. “But — how did you catch the goat to get our phone number off her collar?”

“Looks like the rain drove her up under the eave – “ Mr. Wideman speaks in a slow thick Mennonite accent. “And she jumped right up here on the kitchen windowsill to keep from getting wet.” Kai’s eyes grow big, catching all light.

“We just had to look out the window. And there was your phone number — right there on her collar.”

Shalom’s happiest thunder clapping.

Joshua stuffs his hands down into his pocket, but nothing can stuff that smile, and God allows a goat to run away and He lets the coyotes howl outside the back door and He drives in a storm three miles to the north of us to drive one Nanny goat up to a kitchen windowsill up under an eave, so a Mennonite neighbor can read our phone number right there off her collar so he can call us, and God uses everything to call us out of apathy.

It might have looked different.

It was supposed to, it could have, and it may next time — yet even if He doesn’t.

When Ninny and Nanny are home and together, ruminating under the pines, Joshua, he’s the one who points it out to me.

How right there, when she bends, you can see it, etched into Nanny’s one pygmy dark forehead—

Big and blooming, this one white heart.

Pure Love branded right into the prayers and the prodigals led back home…

Maryellen -   There are many days when I feel slain.  Many days when the why's consume my life and the longing to go back steals my hope. Many nights when the desire to return to what was sounds so much better than the will to move toward what could be, yet, even if He slay me I will still serve Him, because I choose to believe that one day a full life will be restored.  For now I wait and look to the hills from which my help comes from.