abundance

Day 30

The sorrow that I dreaded has made its home in my heart, where it will forever languish.

I am so sad, forever.

Perplexing thoughts cross my mind and the minds as many as people try to make sense of this situation, but it is truly senseless. My mom’s death highlights mental illness — mentally sound people do not and cannot end their own lives. There is no reason, there is no “why,” there is nothing to blame or to conclude about this situation other than the advancement of mental illness. My mother hid it extremely well. She knew well what mental illness is, and perhaps she did not realize the depth of her own struggles until her mind was too impaired.

She didn’t do this to us, she didn’t do this at us, she didn’t do this in spite of us.

There is much we don’t know and won’t understand and to a point, it doesn’t really matter: nothing will bring her back.

My Mom’s death doesn’t forfeit her love, it doesn’t forfeit what she believed, and it doesn’t forfeit all she strived to do and who she wanted to be.

In her right mind and in her fullest, she loved life. Her laughter filled the room and bellowed from every conversation. Her smile beamed brightest around her family and with her friends. She loved getting to discover the depth of others by asking provocative questions and teasing the answers out of one another. She loved Jesus and she wanted to experience the fullness of life that God promises here on earth (John 10:10). She was passionate about mental health and desperately wanted to see others healed on this side of eternity, and I think she believed that wholly for herself, too.

Mom fought a horrific battle that she could not share with us, and while that hurts us more than anything, these facts detail a torment she kept in the shadows. If only, if only she applied her studies and reached out in the way she encouraged others to do. Maybe she spent so much time encouraging others in the hopes that she, too, would find the courage to reach out.

She wanted to make a difference, she wanted to heal. She wanted so much from this life that gave her so much. Her life was beautiful and full of laughter and love, and, in her best moments, she felt that wholly.

My mom did not die because of any one thing: she died fighting an unspeakable battle, one we’ll never know how long she fought. This painful reality scorches my heart and sometimes it feels impossible to believe that my life is good and beautiful and kind, when all feels so dark and cruel.

But I know — I know, somehow, there is grace in this. My family and I have so much life left to live, and our lives will be filled with laughter and love and goodness and opportunity that we cannot begin to imagine right now. We are blessed. We are blessed with each other, we are blessed with our outstanding community who supports and mourns with us, and we were blessed with my Mom.

My Mom was a light and a gift that I will never have again, and her absence brings tumultuous tears to my eyes each day. While this is so dark, my Mom was not all of the light in the world.

I will carry this grief with me forever, but this sadness and this grief does not dismiss the many years of joy and abundance still to come.

Grief gifts us with a new understanding of God and life and the universe. It strips us bare of any preconceived ideas rooted in anything but truth, and the fire of affliction will bring about unimaginable glory.

Right now, it’s physically impossible for us to imagine or even desire a good life when my Mom was what made our old lives so good, but we will experience blessing and healing and a new good life.

Day 9

Our second church service since Mom left us filled me with encouragement once more. A healthy amount of tears dripped from my sore eyes onto my pallid cheeks as we sang of God’s good plans, his faithfulness, and his constance. All of which I believe, and I mean really believe.

However, I mentioned the dissonance between faith and desperate circumstances during Mom’s Celebration of Life, and I want to share more of what exactly that looks like. Suffering forces people to confront their inmost beliefs, and that is completely healthy and can become beautiful. My Mom loved Jesus with her entire being: the cacophony of confusion left in her wake prompts intense introspection and deconstruction.

Our Father in heaven,

your name be honored as holy.

Your kingdom come,

Your will be done

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread.

And forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And do not bring us into temptation,

but deliver us from the evil one.

Matthew 6:9-13, CSB

Now, please understand, I’m not looking for answers and I do not plan to provide any at this time, but I do want to share the questions clamoring in my mind. Thoughts that, perhaps, cloud your mind as well. Maybe sharing my thoughts will help those echoing the same to feel less alone and less afraid, because two thoughts can be true at the same time: one can trust God and be utterly confused and skeptical at the same time. Thus, my questions:

• Good fathers are supposed to protect their family. Why don’t you [God] protect mine?

• If Jesus is the abundant life, how could my mom die? She loved him.

• If he [God] knew what Mom needed, why weren’t her needs met?

I’ve said this so many times — I believe that God can do all things, but I fear what he will allow to happen. This is precisely why: I have not experienced twice how despair and hopelessness kill those whom I love, and those who legitimately love Jesus.

Today, I was incredibly overwhelmed by the generosity and the care from mine and Scott’s small group. They ensured our current needs were met and provided provisions for our future needs. My family has experienced such incredible and support from people being the hands and feet of Jesus, and, because of them, right now my faith remains strong. I wrestle through these complex questions, but it is abundantly clear that we have our daily bread, that God is providing and caring for us, and that we will get through this. I cannot thank our community enough for all they have done. You have eclipsed this horribly dark and tragic time with light and love and I am amazed and humbled at all of this. Thank you.

Tips for Communicating with Someone in Mourning

Acknowledging the situation is better than avoiding the topic altogether. It may be awkward to speak up, but a simple “I see you,” goes a long way 💙

Light-Hearted

Fact: I am insecure about my writing when it’s not demanded from an overflow of desolate emotion[s].

Maybe that’s why pain beguiles me.  I don’t like pain, but, somehow, it seems to be the only thing that provides me with enough bravery to inscribe my thoughts.  Sorrow composes beauty—I’ve witnessed it create masterpieces in the lives around me, but perhaps I need to gain a similar perspective on lighter emotions.

Today, I do not write from emotions drenched in disappointment, but, rather, from an abundance of joy.

The joy of the LORD is your strength.

God carved this verse in my mind at the beginning of 2017: page after page in various notebooks were etched with the simple eight words.  I often scribbled the verse at some of my happiest moments, and thus it seemed peculiar when God reminded me of this verse.  It came in moments when I didn’t feel like I needed strength–moments when I was strong.  I was so happy, so why would God remind me of a verse that seemed more appropriate for perilous days?  

I was such a fool to think I didn’t need those words because I didn’t understand the weight of them at that time.

God allowed those joyous moments, each one meriting my trust and my strength in Him, and He reminded me at those specific times so that I would know exactly where strength proliferates when those perilous days would finally come.   

Truthfully, I couldn’t remember where those words came from… Thus, I googled the verse a couple weeks ago, and that’s when I gained a new understanding.

Then he [Nehemiah] said to them, “Go, eat of the fat, drink of the sweet, and send portions to him who has nothing prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord.  Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Nehemiah 8:10

I was unaware of the beginning of the verse’s final sentence each time I journaled it. 

Do not be grieved,

for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

My eyes opened.  Inhale, exhale.

God engraved that verse in my mind when I was strengthened in Him to show me that He was the same God when I was crushed in spirit; He gave me that verse amidst joyous occasions so that I would know where to acquire strength when I felt despairingly weak.  He was there with me in those joyous moments, showing me His loving kindness in ways I would not comprehend until nothing else made sense. 

The timing that confused me was the exact time that God was pre-preparing to strengthen me again.  He knew how events would unfold in my life, and He knew I would need to remember His kindness when I felt that I could no longer bear my circumstances.  It’s one of the greatest paradoxes that beautifully played out in my own life: “Therefore I am well content with weakness, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong,” II Corinthians 12:10 (emphasis added).

In joy I write, remembering the sovereignty of a God who continued to remind me of His goodness when life was “good” simply to re-remind me of His goodness when life didn’t feel good. 

God reveals His strength gloriously through the depths of my humility.  I despaired, but He did not allow me to linger in anguish.   He reminds me that He is good, that yesterday and today are temporary, and that I can trust Him with tomorrow.

I received this notebook for Christmas from Victoria Romano, with the verse displayed on its back cover. Tori didn’t know what this verse had meant to me, she was just a dear friend giving a sweet gift. Behind the scenes, Christ was strengthening me through my weakness in the remembrance of this verse and those moments.  I felt unbearably weak for so long, but He renews me each day:  I feel strong again because that verse permeates my every breath.

Thank you, Lord, for doing in me what I wished would not be done, and for reviving the life I had not known was dead.