Tethered

For the first three months of his life, Eddie was always attached to something.  For what seemed endless weeks at the beginning and then too many times to count after that, it was a respirator, making it impossible to hold him and cradle him the way that I longed to.  Even when he was breathing well on his own, however, he was still hooked up to something.  He always had a tube coming out of somewhere, the ever-present IV nutrition, an antibiotic here, a painkiller there.  He lived in a ward with seven other babies, a dozen or so nurses, and whichever parents came and went.  The nearest thing we had to privacy was a thin screen that could be opened around our crib but we rarely used it.  Once, right before we were transferred from the NICU to Children's Dallas, the nurses gave me the gift of allowing us to go to an adjacent, empty ward together.  They put some physical therapy mats on the floor and for the first time I could put Eddie on the floor next to me, play with him like most mothers were accustomed to playing with their infants.  It was wonderful, but I still had to be very cautious.  Even mobile, he was attached to a pole, monitored, fed through IV.

The transfer to Dallas was a crazy rush.  While we'd signed up for the move, we never knew when a bed would be available, when he would be next in line.  The transfer team loaded him onto an incubator, I grabbed a couple of bags, said hasty goodbyes to the nursing staff I had come to love as family, and we boarded a small plane for Dallas.  The transfer team was funny and friendly, Eddie was comfortable, and as we rose above the clouds of a gloomy January morning into the bright, blue light of day I felt a rising hope, a sense of excitement and adventure I hadn't felt in a long, long time.  A short flight, a short ambulance ride and we were out on the GI floor of a new hospital.  After a quick assessment, the medical team all left and Eddie and I were... alone.

Not only was it an eerie feeling to finally be truly alone in a private room with my baby, but even more shocking was the fact that he was not attached to anything.  Nothing.  No leads to a monitor, no IV tubing... nothing.  There was my tiny little man, laying free and loose in what seemed a ridiculously large bed.  Tentatively, I picked him up.  I crossed the room and sat down with him on the small, plastic covered couch.  It felt so foreign, so strangely frightening, for him to be free.  No wires or tubes to be cautious of, nothing between me and my baby.

It is hard to describe the anxiety I felt in a moment that should have been pure joy.  I felt like at any moment someone would come in and scold me for taking him out of bed.  That any second there would be a mad rush of activity and this moment would be taken from me.  I tried to just breathe and soak it in, sure it would be over sooner than I could imagine.  Minutes ticked by and still no one came.  I realized I wasn't doing anything wrong.  There was no mistake.  Soon there would be a monitor and his nutrition but there was not a great rush.  He was not in crisis and everyone was perfectly happy for me to hold him until it was time to hook him up.  In fact, no one there realized that this was out of the ordinary for me.

When I think back on that moment, on the strange mixture of fear and elation, the almost out-of-body detachment I felt at the mere privilege of being able to freely hold my three month old son, I can't help but get misty-eyed.  I was so traumatized, so fragile.  We both were.  We had survived so long in a state of emergency that peace felt foreign and wrong.  A thing to be feared.  Living the way life was meant to be lived, untethered and free, was downright terrifying.

God wants us to live untethered lives.  His Word is full of calls toward freedom but almost all of us are too frightened, too uncomfortable to free ourselves.  What are we hooked to?  There are, of course, the usual addictions, but what else?  The lure of material possessions, of prestige, of physical comfort.  The need to live the status quo because it is all we've ever known and we can't stand the idea of the disapproval we would face if we changed.  Sometimes we are hooked to anxiety, to worrying about the future, to trying to plan it.  We do our best to monitor every moment of our lives, trying our best to have control over the next moment and the next.  If we take the time to be honest with ourselves, our tethers don't make us happy.  They don't make us healthy.  But to live a life free of the need for money and material possessions?  It's a nice concept but shrugged off as an ideal.  To live a life free of anxiety?  We snort.  That is impossible... isn't it?

Through Christ all things are possible and, I would add, especially those things which are explicitly mentioned in the Bible are possible.  God doesn't give impossible commands and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are free from the tether of sin, the only one that can hold us back.  Christ said, "do not worry" so we don't have to.  He said to scorn material possessions, to trust God to provide for our daily needs, to focus on nothing more and nothing less than following Him.  When this call starts to move from concept to action, however, we get really, really uncomfortable.  Sometimes we are downright terrified.  But it is not a call to a life of hardship and struggle; it is a call to a life of freedom.

So today I am praying to be untethered.  For God to examine my heart and show me where I'm still connected to the ideals of this world and to help me to get unhooked.  Because in the light of eternity, none of that stuff matters.  Because through the birth and death of my son, God showed me a radical example of His love, made perfect by the birth and death of His Son.  I want to remember that and cling to it.  I want to move freely through this big wide world that God has gifted to me, to all of us, in love.  Some of us live paralyzed, stuck to what we believe, falsely, is "life" support.  Others of us have evolved enough to get a little more mobile, but we're still dragging a whole bunch of junk behind us, careful else we take a wrong step and rip out something that we think we need.  I want to be brave enough to invite God to rip it all out.  To let the only source of sustenance be the One that dwells within me.  To hold this life in my hands and allow God to hold me in His, untethered.

Slow Learner

One of my favorite movie moments comes from an unlikely source.  For the most part, "Evan Almighty" is a cute but forgettable comedy and certainly not the stuff of legacy.  But there is a moment in it that lives with me.  God (played brilliantly by Morgan Freeman) tells Evan that, like Noah, He wants him to build an ark in preparation for a flood.  Evan, who is in the midst of running for political office, tells God as nicely as he can, "that's not really in my plans."  God chuckles in a soft, kind way, then says, still laughing, "I'm sorry.  'Your plans.'"

As I said, I don't remember much of anything else from this movie but this moment rang so true to me that it reverberates.  I see God as benevolently looking down on us making our plans, big or small, and lovingly shaking his head.  Fully aware of the incalculable discrepancies between the perfect, solid blueprint He has drawn out for our lives, since before we were even conceived, and the strange, haphazard Tinker-Toy structure that we keep trying to plot out for ourselves.

I know this.  I know the best place to be is in a flexible, loose space with God, waiting to see what He has next for me.  I know it's best to keep my plans penciled in, ready at any moment to replace them with the plan God has for me, for that day, week, life stage, whatever.  I've lived in that space.  But it takes work.  A LOT of work and discipline.  The moment I forget to start each day grateful, prayerful, and open to God's plan for that day, I begin a slippery descent into old habits.  Into pulling out the legal pads and binders to plot and plan the future to a degree of precision that gives me a solid (entirely false) sense of security.  To setting those goals and then doggedly pursuing them with laser-like intensity.  Until God throws a monkey wrench in the whole darn thing.

My plans were not bad in and of themselves.  They involved lots of running, a handful of races including a full marathon in December, and continued increase in my overall physical fitness.  Beyond that, there were thoughts of what life would look like a year or two from now, when my little ones started public school.  There was a change of location thrown in there as well, a move to a more desirable zip code.  They looked like pretty good plans to me.

Then God threw the curve ball.  He shook my snow globe, as He is apt to do, and I discovered that I was, very unexpectedly, pregnant with another child.  The next part of this I am not proud of, but in the interest of transparency, I'm going to be honest about it.  I was less than thrilled with this news.  A bit tearful in fact.  I looked at that plus sign on my home pregnancy test and cried.  Not because I don't think children are gifts from God; I know they are.  Not because it was the end of the world; I knew it wasn't.  But because it was the end of my plans.

It's embarrassing, really, because I know better.  I know God's plans are always the best plans.  I know so many friends who would rejoice at the sight of that plus sign with shouting of hosannas and hallelujahs to a God who had blessed them.  I knew I was being an ingrate.  But even in that knowledge, I didn't stop.  I felt like I was doing "better" than I did with the news of Baby Girl's pregnancy, which took me a week or so and a missing heartbeat to get out of my selfish moping and into gratitude.  I was mostly happy about it, after all.  I was putting on a good face, shifting my plans accordingly.  But I was also grumbling.  Just a little bit and mostly in fun, but grumbling nonetheless.  Zipping up my size 4 skirt with a sigh, mourning the impending loss of my skinny body.  Cursing the fatigue that made my daily tasks in raising my children just that much more difficult.  There were plenty of moments of smiling and daydreaming as well, thinking of names and nursery themes.  But these were all peppered with an underlying complaint:  This was not a part of my plan.

God doesn't ever let me get away with anything for long.  For that I am grateful and I believe it is a direct result of my own desperate, sincere wish to live in harmony with Him and His will no matter what.  He doesn't let me go along on cruise control, getting steadily off track as I do so, for even so much as a month.  First I begin to feel the side effects of separation... the grumpiness, the irritability, the general blah-ness that can ultimately lead to depression if I allow.  Then, finally, He has enough and He hits me with the big guns.

Last Thursday night I began to have abdominal cramping.  On Friday it was worse and other symptoms of miscarriage joined in.  It is amazing how quickly I went from not really wanting this pregnancy to praying that I would not lose it.  From mourning the fact that I could not run to willingly lying down for hours with my feet elevated.  From hoping I didn't get too fat to praying that I could just get this baby to term.  Sometimes your perspective changes so quickly it gives you whiplash.

The scare seems to be over.  I am hopeful that this was an "attention getter" and nothing else.  A way for God to get me to set aside my selfish grumbling and enter into the joy of the blessings He is offering to me.  But beyond that it is an overall reminder that I am not in charge of this vessel.  I'm not charting the course, I'm not in control of the wind, the waves, the setting of the sails, none of it.  I am hopeful that this will be a happy, healthy pregnancy that results in a happy, healthy baby but I need to be surrendered to the fact that I am a passenger on this journey.  I need to place my trust in a perfect, all-knowing, all-powerful Captain, relax and enjoy the ride, whether it takes me into peaceful waters or a tsunami.  I know all of this so I need to start putting it into practice again, grateful for a God who perpetually teaches and is infinitely patient with this slow learner.

The Awkward Evangelist

This may come as a surprise to many of you who read this blog regularly...I am a terrible, terrible evangelist. There are those people who can't talk for longer than five minutes without their enthusiasm for Christ and the gospels bursting out of them.  Those who do this well do so in a way that makes you smile and feel their enthusiasm, even if you are not a believer.  Remember, please, that I have not always been a Christian.  I know what I'm talking about here.  Even when I was my angriest and at my most doubtful about the existence of a kind, loving God of any kind, much less the divinity of Jesus Christ, I encountered people whose belief and love for Jesus was loud and infectious.  Those people have a gift.

Unfortunately the kind of "evangelist" I normally come across is a different breed.  We'll call him The Awkward Evangelist.  You've all met him in one form or another.  The one who comes to your door and refuses to leave no matter how politely you try to encourage him to move to the next house.  I had one of these evangelical encounters recently at the train station in downtown Dallas.  My husband and I had struck up a conversation with the gentlemen waiting next to us.  He was carrying an instrument case and we started talking music.  He showed us his tenor saxophone, a beautiful instrument, black inlaid with gold, mother of pearl accents on the keys.  He pointed out the golden cross gracing one of those pearl keys, letting us know by that simple act that he was a Christian.  A few moments later, we were approached by a man holding water bottles out to my children and asking if they would like a drink.  After checking to make sure the tamper-proof lids were still intact, I thanked him.  He then asked if we would accept the religious flyers he was passing out.  We agreed happily and thanked him again.  He walked away.

At this point, I am fine.  The tracts had a simple breakdown of the gospel citing Scripture, an invitation to become a Christian, and information about his church.  My husband and I glanced over it, chatted a bit about the church's location, then put them away in our pockets and purse.  We continued to chat with our musical neighbor.  A few minutes later, our evangelizing friend was back, asking us if we'd had time to look over the information he'd given us and what we thought.  We said it looked great to us (or something to that effect) and told him we were already Christians.  There was an awkward silence.  He then turned to the man with the saxophone and said, terribly, awkwardly, "So!"

Let me pause right there.  If you ever, ever, ever have to preface your conversational direction with a loud and falsely enthusiastic "So!," just shut your mouth, walk away, and try again later.  It comes across strange, awkward, and not genuine.  I would never approach a jury in final arguments and say, "So!  What'd you think about that case?  I was pretty persuasive, don't you think?"  No, no, no, no, no!

Anyway, he asked our neighbor a few questions about the tract then he went in for what, clearly, he had been trained was the kill-shot.  "So,"  (AGAIN WITH THE "SO!") he said, "if you died today, do you think you'd go to heaven or hell?"  The saxophone player answered calmly, "Oh, I think I'd go to heaven."  The next word out of the evangelist's mouth was a dubious, "Really?"  I don't know what he planned to say next because I couldn't take it anymore.  I piped in, "Dude," (yes, I say "dude" a lot; I still say it's better than "so!"),  "that guy has a gold cross on his saxophone!  I'm sure Jesus can't wait to hear what he has to play on that thing."

I have the feeling some people are reading this and saying to the screen, "but, but, but!"  I know.  We, as Christians, are all under Jesus' directive to make disciples of all men.  I think how we go about this, however, is a varied process.  If I were a non-believer, the musician's simple act of showing me the cross on his instrument would have touched me.  Because he was a groovy guy, laid back and peaceful with an easy manner and attractive style.  My conversation with him, coupled with the receiving of a religious tract, might have made me check out a church, probably even the church the evangelist was working for.  But what happened next would have pushed me far, far away.  Back to thinking Christians were judgmental, creepy, and wrong.

Matthew 5:17 teaches that we are supposed to let our lights shine before men so that they would see our good deeds and follow God.  People should see our joy and our peace and wonder what we have that makes us that way.  To put it a different way, we should be about attraction rather than promotion.  Because God is calling everyone to himself; everyone, regardless of their background, their past or their present.  Everyone has a seed of longing for a relationship with the loving God who made them and we, as Christians, can either nurture that seed by our actions or add another layer of distrust, anger or misunderstanding.  And walking around telling people that they are going to hell, either because they aren't Christians at all or they aren't Christian "enough," doesn't really help our cause.

When our train arrived, I told our evangelical friend, "God bless you" and I meant it.  He is trying, God love him, and I am sure God will bless him for it.  I hope that someone he hands a tract to goes to church and finds out that God is real and God is love.  I hope some of his conversion conversations went a little better than the one I witnessed.  But he did not spread the gospel to me that day.  I did not see Christ reflected in him.  I saw Christ reflected in the kind eyes and easy smile of the saxophone player with a cross emblazoned on the instrument he loved.  God can use us, all of us, to reach people.  We need to trust Him to have us at the right place at the right time, using words the Spirit tells us to use in a spirit of genuine concern, interest, and love for our fellow man.  So let your little light shine (please note the proper use of the word "so") and, as much as it lies within you, live at peace with all men.  Let's set aside the awkward side-hug of a judgment-based evangelism.  There is no better way to spread the good news of Christ's love than to be loving, no better way to show His peace than to be peaceful yourself.  I pray God's blessings over every single person who reads this blog post and I hope it reads as it is meant:  to make you smile, to make you laugh, to make you think, and to let you know that you are loved, completely and with a warm embrace.      

Promises, Promises

I make promises to my kids.  Not just the regular kind of promises borne from constraints on time and/or budget ("We can't go to Chuck E Cheese today but I promise we'll go Friday") but big, important promises too.  Like, "I promise that I will always love you no matter what" and "I promise I will always be proud of you."

My promising habit started with Eddie.  It started even before he was born.  I was tremendously overcome with the awesomeness of being the incubator to a brand new life and I started straight away promising him and myself all kinds of things.  I wrote them down.  I promised to remember that he was a privilege and a blessing.  That he was here to teach me just as much as I was here to teach him.  I promised to listen to him, to respect his spirit, to love him enough to allow him to follow his own path and not try to force my ideas of what it should look like onto him.  I promised to remember that God made him just the way he was and not to try to change him.

Those promises ended up being harder to keep than I had anticipated in those giddy days of pregnancy.  Because he was born sick and wanted him healed.  It was hard to remember that God made him just the way that he was, that his body was flawed for a purpose.  Instead I wanted to just to freak out, pray and fight to fix it.  But I reflected on those promises I'd made and I changed my mind and waited for my heart to catch up.  I respected him just as he was, I praised God for him just as he was, and I celebrated him.  I told him I would fight with him as long as he wanted to fight but, if he ever wanted to let go, that this was going to be okay too.  It wouldn't change anything, not how much I loved him, not how indescribably proud I was to be his mother, nothing.  And I kept making promises.

I promised if he would fight through those first crazy weeks and months, those days of hardship, surgeries, chest tubes and IVs, poking, prodding, and heart-wrenching pain, that I would make it worth his while.  I told him about the beautiful world God had made, outside of the NICU walls.  I showed him videos of the sun and the sky, of grass and trees, animals and bicycles and I promised him we would see all of it.  That if he would just stick it out, keep fighting even when it was all too much, when it hurt too badly, when he was just exhausted, that I would do everything in my power to make the rest of his life beautiful.  I whispered this promise to him on the days I was able to hold him and even more fervently on the days that I was not, when he was forced to be motionless, hooked to what seemed a million machines, swollen and sick with infection.  I would rub the tiny stress lines that appeared between his eyes, kiss his knees and toes, and tell him I would do it all for him if I could but that, since I couldn't, I would make up for it later, anyway that I could.  I told him that he was Superman.  And he was.

Eddie made it out of NICU and I did my best to make good on my promise to him.  I showed him God's beautiful world and worked to make sure he saw me laugh much more than he ever saw me cry.  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I did it.  Not perfectly.  There were bad moments and hard days.  But he had fun.  He saw grass, trees and bicycles.  He went to the zoo and the circus.  He smiled and laughed.  We picked out fruit from the farmer's market together, played on the playground, danced in the kitchen, and celebrated silly everyday moments, everyday.  He ate chicken nuggets, popsicles, and crayons.  He lived his life and he saw that it was beautiful.

I was making plans for his second birthday celebration when he died.  The assumption people make that I was in some way prepared for his death isn't entirely true.  In the few days before the day of death itself, I felt it.  Felt a finality in my spirit, an urging toward seeking God's peace.  I don't know if that makes any sense to those reading this, but I can think of no other way to describe it.  But on this day, five years ago, I did not know that my little superman had only a week left to live.  That he was exhausted after the long, hard fight and ready to go home and rest.  That I would be called upon to fulfill my promise, respect the path that God had laid out for him, and let him go.

I did it, somehow, impossibly, and by the grace of God.  That chapter of my life drew to a close.  Life didn't stop though.  There were still promises to be made and kept, no less important.  I didn't get to bury my son, crawl in a hole and stop living, literally or figuratively.  Because there was another brilliant, beautiful Baby Boy on the way and, soon on his heels, a magical pixie-like Baby Girl.  And they deserve no less than their big brother.  I have promised to show them this beautiful world that God has made and I'm going to do it even when it feels like it is going to kill me.  Sometimes, especially around this time of year, it would be so much easier to turn on the television and parent in cruise control, wallowing in loss and self-pity.  I choose differently, because I promised them better; they deserve better.

So these days are filled with sprinklers and roly-polies, paint and petting zoos.  Trips to the Asian market to buy fish served whole, silver and shiny, watching with wonder as the man slices off heads and opens bellies.  With life:  mushy, messy, smelly, sticky and wonderful.  Because life is no less beautiful without Eddie in it; it is more beautiful for his having been here.  And I am going to experience and enjoy every single moment of it.  I promise.
 

Silence

For those of you who follow the blog regularly, let me begin by apologizing for my lack of posting.  It's not that I don't think about the blog or that I don't have enough time in a day to stop and write (though sometimes this feels as if it is true).  I have pulled it up several times, chosen to start a new post and then stared at the blank page... mentally hearing crickets chirp.  Nothing.  I've had nothing.  Nothing to say, nothing to offer... nothing.

If you know me personally, you know that me having nothing to say is a rare and strange life event.  I ALWAYS have something to say and I am more than happy to shout you down in order to say it.  I'm downright annoying (it's okay, you can agree; I live by the motto "know thyself").  I have literally had friends hold up their hands, classroom style, in order to get a word in.  I live to talk.

That being said, I know that there is much to be gained by silence.  By listening.  I don't have all the answers and the longer I live the more I realize the less I know (wow...that's a sentence to be reckoned with...).  The only way to learn more is to listen more.  I know that in order to "Be still and know that I am God,"  I need to shut up.  I agree with the theory that we should all spend a portion of our day in complete silence, mental and physical, if we are going to draw near to God, if we are going to be spiritually open to all that we have to be taught that day.  I just don't do it.

For one thing, I get bored.  Really bored.  I am envious of those people who can spark up some incense and hum softly to themselves for an hour.  They seem to be so refreshed and, well, deep.  I have tried on more occasions than I could possibly name to meditate in this way.  I've been successful... twice, maybe?  I keep cracking my eyes open to see how much time has passed and usually it is somewhere in the range of 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  I'd make a terrible Buddhist.

Some people get their quiet time in while exercising and, you would think, that as a runner I would fall into this category.  I never, never, never, never, never go on a run longer than ten minutes, however, without my iPod and earbuds.  My running mix is several hours long and filled with up-tempo, pounding beats intended to keep my feet moving and my mind off the pain.  I end long runs feeling proud, exhilarated, even euphoric but not exactly spiritually grounded.

It is not only a poor attention span that accounts for my lack of quality quiet time, however.  To be honest, silence scares me.  Distractions keep it interesting, keep it all moving and keep me from having to think about things I don't want to think about.  Not that those things go away; they are always lurking, ready to pounce on me at the most inopportune time possible.  But I still operate under the mistaken impression that if I can just keep busy, maybe I will never have to go there again.  Never have to walk down the dark corridors, never feel the lurking pain of sorrow, of loss.  It doesn't work, but as an addict I am particularly fond of doing the same things over again and expecting different results.

So it was with great horror that one day, in the middle of a six mile run, my trusty iPod ran out of battery.  One second I had Eminem blaring his encouragement, the next moment... nothing.  Just me, the sound of my feet striking pavement, and my thoughts.  There was no way around it.  I was three miles from my car any which way I looked at it.  I was going to have to face my fear and be quiet.

An amazing thing happened.  Nothing.  No sudden deluge of thought and feeling that I could not control.  No three miles of embarrassing ugly-crying.  I thanked God for the run, for the beauty of His creation that surrounded me, for the health of my body, and prayed for the health of my mind and spirit.  Then I stopped praying and focused my mind on being still.  On being quiet.  Any errant thought that drifted in, I gently excused and cleared it away.  

At the end of my run, I felt different.  Stronger.  Surer of myself.  I still don't know that I would want to extend it to a two hour run or even an hour, but I think I would do well to incorporate at least one quiet run into my training schedule.  It does very little good to have a fit body and a sick soul.  If I'm going to do this life thing right, I need to start with the foundation and build up, not keep ignoring the cracks and hoping they aren't as bad as they look.  I'm going to try to wake up earlier than my kids (this is a very ambitious goal) so that I can spend even ten minutes in the morning practicing silence.  Until I get good at it.  Until it comes naturally.  Because I know I don't need to fear it any longer.  And, strangely enough, I think the more time I spend in silence, the more I'll find that I have something to say.  Something of quality, something pure and true, to share with you. 

Good Grief

This is a difficult post to write.  It's one I've started countless times and abandoned.  It involves a truth that I strongly believe in but I know that I'm going to step on some toes.  Quite frankly I've been approaching this whole blog thing with a "first do no harm" attitude, but I need to get this out there so, with all apologies, here goes.

The five stages of grieving is a crock of doo doo.  There I said it.  Whew.  I'm really, really tired of myself and anyone else being given permission to wallow around and misbehave because we have suffered a loss, no matter how great or how small.  Do I think the science/psychology/sociology behind the grieving "stages" is faulty?  Nope.  Do I think it gives a fair representation of how most people deal with death and loss?  Sure.  Do I think it should apply to followers of Jesus Christ?  That would be a firm and emphatic no.

I'm not out on a limb here scripturally.  1 Thessalonians 4:13 says, "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those that fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope."  That is pretty straightforward to me.  There are Christians and then the "rest of men."  We are allowed to grieve but not like those without hope.  Those five stages and such are for the other fellers.

Even with that scripture hanging out there for all to see, I've found that this is actually a revolutionary idea, even in Christian circles.  I attended a secular support group for parents who have lost children for a while.  I loved the people there, loved the shared laughter and tears, and loved being able to share with people my message of joy despite, of hope even though.  After a while, I decided to try the Christ-based grief support group at church.  I only went three times.

On the third (and probably final) time I went to this particular group, the topic was whether or not it was okay to be angry at God.  The bottom line of the video and of the discussion was that it is okay, expected, and acceptable to shake your fist heavenward when you suffer a loss.  I listened, praying that I was not supposed to speak up, as person after person talked about how unfair it was that their loved one had died, how it wasn't how it was supposed to be that way, and other variations thereof.  It quickly became obvious that God was not going to let me hold my tongue and, prayerfully, I said what I believe.

I think it is natural to feel anger at God when a loved one dies.  But what comes naturally to us as human beings is not necessarily, or even usually, right or the truth.  We are not to be ruled by our feelings.  And by giving into them and raging at our Lord, at our Creator, at the One who gave us the loved one who has gone on in the first place, we are separating ourselves from the very Source of peace, comfort, and joy.  In other words, of course you can be mad at God.  It won't affect His love for you or your salvation.  But you will finally only be hurting yourself.  You will be separating yourself from His side when He most wants to draw you near.  You might be interfering with the plan He has laid out before you, denying yourself the blessings that He so freely wants to give.

I used to be quite the existentialist.  I read a lot of Sartre and was nauseatingly self-important and struggled with Prufrock's "overwhelming question."  What was my purpose or anyone else's?  Why were we here?  What was the meaning of life?  The Bible actually answers these questions very succinctly.  The purpose of our lives on earth is sanctification.  To try and be as much like Christ, who was fully man and fully God and therefore the perfect example to mankind, as we possibly can be.  To do this we have to do two things:  Love the Lord Our God with all our hearts, souls and minds and love our neighbors as ourselves.  If you are raging at God, you are epically failing at #1.

I don't like to glorify suffering.  I'm not a Christian who lets out heavy sighs and says things like "this is just a cross I have to bear."  But there is great value in suffering if we allow God to work through it.  It is a short-cut to sanctification.  It strips us down and teaches us, if we are willing to be taught.  Just like strenuous, painful exercise tones and strengthens our bodies, suffering strengthens our souls, if we will let it.  That is why we are supposed to rejoice in our sufferings, whether we feel like it or not.  Because if we will, we will have peace that passes understanding and unshakeable joy no matter what.

So, I said most of that in shorter form to the grief group.  One woman was cheering me on the whole way with "Hallelujahs!"  and "Amens."  Some were looking at me and nodding, others were unreadable.  I ended by quoting the scripture from Thessalonians cited above and saying that the world tells me that I have to be sad for the rest of my life because my baby died, but God says differently.  He says I get to have peace, joy, and hope.  The moderator jumped in immediately and said, "Or not!"  She then proceeded to assure everyone that it was perfectly fine to be angry with God, citing Job as an example, and saying in what really was a pretty snarky tone that everyone couldn't be an "enlightened" as me.  I held my tongue, as I felt was appropriate.  At the end of the session, I spoke up again only to say that I was not enlightened or special in any way.  I was just a Christian and did my best to live surrendered to God.

Several people came up to me before I dashed out the door, including a woman who was newly widowed, to tell me that they had appreciated what I said and found encouragement in it.  I was glad.  Because I don't want to be judgmental or preachy and that is why it has taken me this long to share this story.  I don't want to say people are doing something wrong.  But I do want people to stop believing that just because something bad happens to you, be it the death of a child, a divorce, infertility, whatever, that it's really never going to be okay.  I'm tired of watching people feel sorry for themselves, act poorly toward God and their neighbor, fail to rise to the calling God has placed on their lives, and use grief as an excuse.

You cannot love someone more than I loved Eddie.  You cannot miss someone more.  He was and is my heart, just like his little brother and sister.  It's never going to be the same.  That's true.  But that is no excuse for me to be disobedient to God.  To have the audacity to rail against the One who made me and who gifted me a beautiful, wonderful child to be mine for twenty two months on this earth and an eternity in the next.  To fail to love my neighbor because I'm too busy focusing on my self.  Life will never be the same, but it is still going to be awesome if I will continue to let God take charge by surrendering it all to Him and giving thanksgiving.

As I mentioned, Jesus came to earth in part to be our example.  He experienced grief and suffering in gigantic measures.  His cousin, John the Baptist, was cruelly imprisoned, beheaded, and his head served to a dancing girl on a platter.  When Jesus is told this news, He withdraws to grieve.  The crowd follows Him, not allowing Him the dignity of solitude to mourn the loss of one He loved.  It would be natural to send them away.  I tell them He needed some time, that He would get back to them later.  Remember, He was fully man.  But instead he "looked upon them with compassion and healed their sick."  Then he fed them, all five thousand of them, with two loaves of bread and three fish.  That evening He sent His disciples ahead of Him and dismissed the crowd before He again withdrew... and prayed.  Then He walked on water.  It was a busy day.

Okay, granted.  He's God.  But at the same time, we are assured that we can be like Him, through Him, if we devote our hearts and lives to it.  So here it is.  We need to grieve.  We need to withdraw, weep, and pray.  We can even ask "why?"  We just have to accept that He may not answer or that we may not like it.  At the end of the day, we have jobs to do.  Miracles to perform in God's name, even if it is just showing a kindness to someone in need.  And we've got to be close to God to do it.  We've got to have the heart to say "thy will be done," even if His will involves pain, suffering and death, if we want to live free.  If we want to have hope. 

I'm not suggesting you stuff your feelings and pretend they aren't there.  I'm suggesting you take them to God in love.  Force your lips to say "thank you" and then pour your heart out to Him and ask Him to get your head in line.  Ask Him to help you to be grateful for what you had and what you have, not angry at what you lost.  You can't be grateful and angry at the same time and gratitude, thanksgiving, is the key to peace.  It is the key to a life lived in joy and contentment.  It is the key to hope.  

  

The Reluctant Gardener

I'm not a gardener.  This is one of the many things that make me something of a black sheep in my family.  My mother is blessed with a green thumb.  One of my sisters is a pro with tomatoes and any number of vegetable and herb gardens.  The other sister... I swear, as she walks along, little green shoots spring up from the earth from the path upon which she has passed.  And they aren't weeds.  Those ladies can grow a garden.

I, on the other hand, can kill a cactus.  Or a chia pet.  These two things are proven facts.  Honestly, I think I could kill Astroturf.  When I moved into our house, I was gifted a thriving, beautiful garden in our backyard and an impeccable lawn out front.  It terrified me.  For the past two years, I have watered but done precious little else.  No planting, no weeding, no pruning.  I gave the plants a drink, dollar weed and trumpet vine alike, and hoped for the best.

Bad things have happened.  The front lawn has strange dead patches.  I have no idea how that happened.  The back yard has thriving vines and a beautiful rose bush, but a fair crop of Johnson grass and various other weeds as well.  This fall I decided enough was enough.  I was going to conquer my fear and become a gardener.

Because it was fear, more than laziness, that kept me from donning a pair of nubbly gloves and attacking Mother Nature.  I have always been terrified of making mistakes.  And when you are new to something, it is virtually guaranteed that you are going to screw up.  I was afraid I would pull up the crape myrtles mistaking them for a weed or a "trash tree."  Afraid that in my ignorance I would kill all the good and nurture all the bad.

This fall, however, I decided to be brave.  I looked at my front lawn, wished it was pretty, and realized it wasn't going to get there without me.  Collaborating with my husband, we planted some winter rye and I dug up some weeds.  It improved.  I was inspired.  We went to a nursery where I purchased several flats of winter-friendly bedding plants.  Some shriveled up and died.  But others made it.  And looked pretty.  Nothing like the arboretum-esque gardens I drool over in magazines and that my family can replicate, but nice.  Intentional.  Like somebody loved that little flower bed.

So now that spring is waning and summer quickly approaching, I turned my attention to the wild, overgrown garden that surrounds our pool.  Most of it is the vines that were planted there intentionally and look gorgeous.  But they are intermingled with undesirables: baby trees far too close to the fence line, unsightly knee-high weeds, fantastically healthy dandelions.  With a deep breath, I grabbed the clippers and went for it.  With my limited horticultural knowledge I was fairly sure I would destroy something nice.

And I did.  While my children splashed happily in the pool, I stared with no small amount of dismay at an area of Virgina Creeper that was drooping dangerously.  By this evening, I have had to admit... that part's dead.  In my zeal to clear the debris, I over-pruned and destroyed.

But I'm not going to despair.  I'm going to take the advice I give my own children:  you have to fail sometimes if you are ever going to learn.  It's a tough pill to swallow and, no, my kids do not believe me on this one yet.  It doesn't make it any less right.  My garden still looks intentional, like somebody loves it.  It's just somebody who got a little clipper happy.

The Virginia Creeper is going to be fine, I think.  It is still thick and healthy further down the fence and it should do its job and creep along, covering up my mistake by summer's end.  In the meantime, I moved my husband's gas grill in front of the bald spot so it looks like maybe I meant to do that for fire safety reasons or something.  Maybe I'll hang a bird feeder.  It'll be alright.  And the important thing is, I'm trying.  I'm not letting it fall to the slow decay of neglect out of fear that I might be less than perfect.  I'm failing and I'm learning and remembering that, really, that's what life is all about.