The Turning of the Leaves

I wish I could write more happy posts.  I wish I could paint a nice rosy picture of how God came through and all is well on the western front.  I wish being a christian with strong beliefs about who God is fixed it, but we all know it doesn't.  He is not a genie in a bottle who pops out to save the day when we need it.  It doesn't work like that.  Life is hard and it often sucks.  There are many unanswered questions and many, many more to come.  Suffering is part of this world and Christians suffer just as much.  If it were true that Christianity somehow bypassed the hard parts of life then everyone would have signed up by now.  But, life is life and as long as we are on this earth suffering is part of the equation.
I feel like my emotional reserves are spent.  Tears are just below the surface at all times.  Life is moving on, the seasons are changing, the holidays are coming, changes are being made to OUR house that make it more MY house than ours and everything in me aches to go backward.  To save the remnants of him here.  To smell him.  Obviously smell is a biggy for me because I crave his smell.  I have one piece of clothing that smells like him and I keep it sealed in a ziploc bag and inhale deeply regularly.
I have so many exciting things happen this past month but it has also been one of my more difficult parenting months.  With adult kids you have a very unique set of problems.  They tell you about issues that a kiss and hug don't fix.  They tell you things you have done that have hurt them.  They hurt and you can't fix it.  They make choices that are not God's best and you can't make them do the right thing.  No more sending them to their room to think about what they have done.  No more groundings or no tv nights  as discipline, and no more dad for back up.  Yep, I am in this alone from here on out.  Tom was the voice of reason in my parenting insecurity.  The steady.  I was the emotional one.  My whole being has been wrapped up in being a mom and doing it right and in those times when I wondered if I was good enough he was reassurance for me.  Now it is just me and my insecurity.  Me and the pain of knowing that I have done things that hurt them.  Me and the pain of them doing things that hurt me as a parent.  Sigh!  This road is hard.  Arizona and a one bedroom house sounds pretty good today.
These are the thoughts going through my mind these days.  What do we do about Thanksgiving and Christmas?  We are a family steeped in traditions and now it is all different.  I have no motivation to do it at all.  What do I do with his stocking?  Who will do my stocking on Christmas morning or buy me a present?  What will that day look like and how do I keep from having a meltdown or panic attack?  I need someone to just tell me what to do here.  Tom would have told me what to do.  Oh the many ways I miss him.  I know, I am borrowing trouble as my mom used to say.  This much I do know is true.  There is a grace ticket waiting for me when Thanksgiving rolls around.  And Christmas, and time to hang the stockings.  The ticket will be there to get me from point A to point B but I don't have that ticket today so no use going there yet.  I may panic but I will survive.  I will probably feels sad but I won't always feel sad and yes, this year will be very, very different but not necessarily all bad and that is our new reality.

A Holy Sorrow

This past week has been a whirlwind of emotion for me.  Actually more like a hurricane.  Often great joy is followed by great sorrow these days.  I think the full force of grief is finally here and it is exhausting.  My birthday, a joyous occasion with great family and friends, found me sobbing on the bed at the absence of one.  The excitement of seeing our dream house and meeting this delightful woman was very bittersweet.  Tom does not get to share in this joy and died never crossing this off of his bucket list.  Yesterday I happened upon a picture of us on our first Christmas after we were married.  I was sitting on his lap and we looked blissfully happy.  So much life ahead of us.  So much to look forward to and experience together.  I spent the evening sobbing, wishing I could turn back time.  Wishing my children were all children and we were all at the dinner table together.  This grief knocks you off your feet some days.  I have a wonderful worship CD by Brian Johnson from Bethel.  This CD sang Tom home and now it is ruined for me.  Every song takes me back to those last few days and the grief is just too much.  BTW, if any of you ever meet Brian would you tell him that he sang my husband home and for that I am eternally grateful.  I have Tom's shirt sealed in a ziploc bag and I open it regularly and just inhale the smell of him.  I let the kids each small it and they all said it smells like dad.  I dread the day when I can no longer smell him.
     There are things about this journey that just make me mad.  It really makes me mad that where he is he can't miss me.  I want him to miss me.  It makes me mad that I must give up the person I cherished the most in this world. It makes me mad that there is no marriage in heaven, (a thought I rejoiced in many a time).  It makes me mad that we won't be Opa and Oma's house, just Oma's.  It makes me mad that he left me a very messy workbench to clean up.  Lot's of mad, all grief, some joy, little vision.  I wonder a lot why it has to be this way?  What is the reason or purpose of such pain and such definitive loss?  I have no answers and that makes me mad too.  The only conclusion that I have drawn is that I have a deep desire to be there.  To finally be home.  It gives me a hunger for eternity that I never had before when my life was so here.  I long for my real home.  To see Tom and to be with my grandma.  This is not my home and I don't yet understand why I must stay here or what my purpose here is but I return to the fact that God is not done writing my story.  So, I will wait patiently, or not so, for the next chapter.  I will feel!  That is a challenge sometimes because feeling right now is usually not good.  I think when you have experienced this kind of sorrow it sits on your shoulder to some degree until the grave and I must somehow learn to live with it.  It is a holy sorrow.  A holy thing to have loved someone so much and be loved in return.  For you who are suffering, God is not done writing your story.  Look for it.  Anticipate it and know that somehow it will be better than we can imagine but sorrow will forever be part of that story and we can do this.  He WILL do this.

When God writes the story

Turning 50 without Tom was hard.  I had a very blessed day and sobbed and sobbed that evening because another major milestone had passed that he has missed.  So far he missed our first Grandchild's first birthday and Kaleb will never know the Opa Tom hoped to be.  He missed our 30th wedding anniversary and my 50th birthday.  He always made a big deal about my birthday and anniversary as well as mothers day.  I find that as the weeks tick by the pain becomes more intense.  Perhaps the shock is wearing off and the reality of my life without him is settling in.  I had some work done on the house and it really bothered me.  I don't want this to become my house.  You have no idea how hard some of those small changes can be because they are constant reminders that time goes by.  Life goes on and God is still writing my story, without Tom.
     I have shared many times about my dream house and I will briefly re-cap for those who have not followed from the beginning.  Probably 20 years ago my girlfriend Teri and I stumbled upon this most amazing home.  A 5000 sq. foot Dutch Colonial in a very secluded location.  At the time someone was living there.  Over the years I would take Tom in there and we would dream of the possibilities of owning such a home.  Most of it was a pipe dream because we could never afford such a home and the upkeep alone would be a mortgage in itself.  But we dreamed.  The location was a little retreat for us just to visit.  For about 10 years no one has lived in the home but the owners possessions have still been in the home and it has been immaculately maintained as if they had merely gone to the beach for the weekend.  For 10 years I have left little notes for the owner on the door asking if I could meet them and hear the story of their home and perhaps see the inside.  For 10 years, nothing.  But, my dream would not die.  I dreamt at night about the house.  I visited the house often and watched as the owners installed new furnaces, yes plural, it takes one to heat the main floor and one to heat the upstairs it is so large.  They installed sprinklers on the entire acre and a 1/2, they re-roofed, they stripped it down to bare wood and re-painted it, they have a gardener yet no one lives there.  Ten years of nothing but a dream.  I found out 8 years ago by sheer coincidence, (or divine appointment) that we have a mutual acquaintance.  This alone was such a bizarre coincidence that it seemed un-mistakable that God was not at work.  However, for 8 more years, nothing but our dream would not die. When Tom died I begged God to take the dream away because it was just too painful to imagine without him although I found her property to be a great refuge for me in times of grief.  Remember, when I was flying home from the hospital in California and we knew this was not a battle we were going to win I distinctly heard God say, as if it were an audible voice, "Your future is going to better than you can imagine."  When life really sucks it doesn't take much for it to be better than you could imagine.  At that point the plane going down and Tom and I going home together would have been better than I could imagine.  However, God had a different story to write for me.
     Last week, the day before my 50th birthday, our mutual friend called and said this woman wants to meet me and could I be in his office Wednesday at noon.  My head was spinning.  Could I really be meeting this woman after so many years?  Could I really get to see the inside of this beautiful home after so long?  So amazing!  I wish I could begin to tell you the events of this past week.  My mind is literally spinning and because I want to protect her privacy I don't want to share too much but I will say that the woman has no family, very few friends and no one to share her passion for her family home.  It has been in her home for 100 years and they are the original owners.  She is at a point in her life where life she has experienced so much brokenness and at 80 wonders what is left but God is not done writing her story either.  It was love at first sight between us.  She is the sweetest woman and welcomed me into her home with open arms.  She is thrilled to share her stories with me and I am thrilled to hear them.  On Friday I called in a few favors and several friends showed up and we cleaned until dusk and moved boxes and organized and cleared away ten years of papers so she had a place she felt like she could retreat and not have to look at all that needs to be done.  It was an honor to serve her and her response was "Who are you people?".  I feel like I am in the midst of a glory storm and I actually have to go home and let my mind rest because it is just too much to take in.  If I died today I would die a blessed woman because I have seen what I have dreamed of seeing for so long.  I know this much though, God is not done writing either of our stories and she has much to share with me and I am soaking it all in.  All I can say is WOW!  God writes a much better story than I do.  Why have I struggled so hard to control this because His way is so much better than I could imagine.  WOW!

50

Today is my birthday.  I turn 50 years old today.  I feel so old inside.  I have aged 10 years in the last 2.  I have done what I never thought I would survive doing yet in many ways it has set me free.  I don't feel as afraid.  For so much of my life fear has been my constant companion.  My childhood was full of losses and I learned to be hyper-vigilant.  I learned to look behind every corner so I could be ahead of the next catastrophe.  That seldom works by the way.  What I have learned in the last 2 years is that control is a misnomer.  It is not real, we are just more comfortable pretending it is real.  In the last year I have lost the one person nearest and dearest to my heart.  The one person who knew me better than anyone else in the world and loved me anyway.  And, I survived.  I didn't just survive, I am doing ok.  Don't get me wrong, I miss him like crazy.  I am mad that he left me a messy work bench that I now have to sort and clean but I miss that messy man.  Last night I woke up crying.  Don't remember the dream but I was crying.  It was a rare day for me to not hear how beautiful, smart or talented I was.  It has been so long since I heard him say those word.  But I have survived.  I am not as afraid.  I do have to remind myself that God is still in control, even in this.  That are days are numbered and God knew when Tom's last day would be and perhaps if it had not been cancer it would have been something else. That God had a plan all along and it included what to do with me after Tom was gone.  Right now I would still rather have the old.  The predictable.  The safe, (or was it safe).  Mostly that is because I can't see the new yet.  On the one occasion when we moved with kids it was very hard for the kids to be excited about moving until they saw the new house.  Until they could picture their new room.  A new back yard.  Then they were excited because they had a picture of the new and it looked good.  I am not there yet.  No real picture of tomorrow or what my life will look like 5 years down the road.  For now I live to see my babies.  They are the sunshine in my life.  And I wait expectantly.  I look to the hills.  I wonder.  How can this pain turn into something good?  What will good look like?  What will the new norm be?  I am reminded of a song we sang back at East Hill,
Something beautiful
Something Good
All my confusion, He understood
All I had to offer Him
Was brokenness and strife
But He made something beautiful
Out of my life