goodness

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.

In Loving Memory

Life is too precious.

 

My Grossi met Jesus March 11, 2019.  She listened to Him release the words, “Well done, Thy good and faithful servant.”  I wonder if He had tears in His eyes as He said it.  God watched Mary Ellen endure her deepest joys and most anguished sorrows.  She made it—she fought the good fight, and she finished the race with joy.  I wonder if it brought tears to His eyes.  

He had comforted her when she mourned, as He comforts we who mourn.  

 

I think that the hardest part about grief is knowing that you will never be able to make memories with that person again.  Death prompts you to remember all the little things that you didn’t realize you would miss.

 

Her smile, her laughter, her lipstick, her spunk.  Her resolution.  She was stubborn, as many of you know, and she was strong.  I admired her tenacity.  

 

It’s in those little moments that you grow to love someone—it’s the collection of those small moments that builds our trust and our admiration.  Those small, insignificant moments.  

And it’s often not until death that we realize the magnificence of all those moments.  

 

Mary Ellen Schraner built her life from a collection of moments that highlighted the importance of faith, family, and friends.  This church and these people made those moments.  You, here today, were everything to her.  She found her foundation in Christ and her blessings and joys in you.  

 

Nine years ago, my mother gave her a notebook entitled Grandmother, Tell Me Your Story.  Within it poses the question, “What are some of the things you hope your children and grandchildren have learned from you?”

 

Her answer: “Faith—the belief in God, Cooking—Hospitality,” which I know many of you inherited, and “peace in the family.”  Mary Ellen taught me those three things, and she taught me to have fun and to celebrate when life calls for celebration.  She prayed for her family more than anyone I know, she welcomed me to her home many times, and she filled my heart with joy and abundance.  

 

It’s strange that she’s not here with us.  It doesn’t resonate well.  My mother once said, “We are eternal beings.  We were never meant to say goodbye.”  I suppose that is why it is so devastatingly painful to miss someone who deposited memories into our own life that made us have a life worth living.

 

So, as we hold our breath, and as we will the world to stop spinning, let’s take the quietness of grief and utilize it as a reminder to cling to the mundane moments.  Let’s hold one another a little closer, for a little longer.  Life is far too precious and far too short to cling to anything but those who love us.  

 

I John 2:17 reads, “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”  This became one of my favorite verses the first time I endured grief from a separation that feels so very permanent, but the reality is that permanence fades when you recall Christ’s three words: “It is finished.”  

 

Mary Ellen was ready to meet the Savior of the world, the God that held her tears in a leger.  The God that gave her breath, and the God that took her breath away.  The God who allowed tragedy, the God who prepared and encouraged her through devastation.  The God who blessed her with so many people and things.  The God who allowed her to live a full life—she was not afraid to meet the God she knew so well and loved so dear.

 

I wonder if she brought tears to her Savior’s eyes—happy tears.  Christ knew that He brought her home.  The heartache and the pain of this world has left her, and she has been made alive in the fullness of Christ.  

 

While we cry because we miss her, I think that Christ may shed a tear in welcoming her home.

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.