I answered most of my messages sometime between 3 and 5 AM, messages so sweet and so thoughtful, and then I fell asleep once more and woke drenched in tears.
There’s a difference in seeing support and experiencing it: meal after meal delivered, my home cleaned by sweet friends, people hugging us through tears.
We went to church today, twice actually, and it was so sweet and healing.
My mom devoted herself to her family and to so many — we’re benefiting from all the lives she touched. She loved them well, and now they’re loving us well.
People brought us meals immediately, but to be held by so many filled me with thanksgiving and sorrow.
I’ve always loved alone time, but right now it’s too hard — I took a bath today, thinking it would be relaxing, but I rushed out of it because the quiet was too overwhelming. Did she know I loved her? Was I a bad daughter? Too many thoughts haunt me, and my tears seemed to drown me in the tub.
“My Momma, my Momma, my Momma,” I can’t stop mumbling.
It’s excruciatingly painful. Incommunicably hard.
We feel so supported and we feel so loved. We’re all saturated in tears.
I’m always amazed how much pain people can endure when faced with suffering.
I woke to notes of encouragement, sorrow, and prayer. My breathing fails, my eyes swarm with tears, and my body heaves with the weight of my mind.
“My Momma. My Momma. My Momma. I loved my Momma,” I chant in a voice choked by emotions and tears — words barely able to escape my mind and reach the outside world.
My Momma is gone, and she’s not coming back. My Daddy, my Daddy. My Daddy☹️ I can barely move. I don’t know how to function, “My Momma. My Momma. My Momma,” I mumble.
how do I reconcile this? It doesn’t make any sense. I know I’ll be angry with God for that sometime later, but today I’m just trying to survive. All I want to do is be with my Daddy and my brothers.
I can’t walk 20 steps without sobbing: “My momma, my Momma, my Momma.”
Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Hebrews 11:6, CSB
I lost faith when I went through a few years of loss and turmoil. My mind and thoughts were tormented by the harsh reality that my friend was gone, and my brother Patrick gave up his life to shame and depression. Unable to make sense of life anymore, my faith faltered. I was broken and in a state that felt impossible to recover from. My reality was horror. How can one have faith when his or her circumstances seem to contradict that which one believes?
We each respond differently to grief and suffering; while I struggled to believe, my mother remained steadfast. Her trust in God did not waiver despite the reality that her baby was gone, and I could not understand it. Thus, with water-brimmed eyes in 2019, I asked her how she could remain confident, and she provided aged wisdom:
“You are so young. I cannot imagine having to face the things that you have had to your whole life. I have faith because I have seen the faithfulness of God over the years. You spent the past 15 years watching destruction without redemption. You have been so strong.”
Her words made sense – It’s challenging to maintain faith when one’s life has been painted with suffering since its beginning. My life has been beautiful and even amidst intense suffering has been filled with mercy and blessing, but, like many, I began viewing life through lenses of sorrow as a young girl.
We are so very attached to outcomes. We have faith that God is good, that He is the God that delivers redemption and provides healing. Broken endings aren’t good, and they don’t look like redemption.
It’s been four years since my brother took his life from me and I assure you, death is not good. Mourning never ceases. My faith was unfathomably wounded back then. My heart turned to dust, my mind to ashes, but dust is what God used to breathe life into man.
We died that day, each of us who loved Patrick. Our hopes for earthly restoration disintegrated with his demise. We were broken beyond repair, we needed entirely new perspectives and new hopes. We had to relearn how to think, how to communicate, how to be still.
In the years following his death, I began to seek and experience the redemption my mom told me I had not yet experienced. I felt restoration in my own life and in my own mind. It has been beautiful because it feels like entering Spring after a harsh Winter. It was warm and safe and filled with healing and new life.
I have the faith I lacked those four years ago, and now I know that I can be the one to encourage fellow sufferers to hold on: you may not have had the chance to experience redemption and restoration, but you will. You will.
God is with us. He is our reward. He is our comfort, our strength, and our healing. Even when our faith falters, He brings life from loss and healing from grief.
God is good, even when life is not, and He is good when our nightmares become reality.
Have faith, my friends. Your story is not over, and your life does not have to be without redemption. Your heart can be healed. You can have abundant life after tragedy. Hold on, have faith, redemption is coming.
Love bears all things, hopes all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.
I Corinthians 13:7-8
I wrote in a letter to my deceased friend’s parents three years ago (2020).
You hear the verses in weddings, but are they not just as applicable at funerals?
Grief is love that endures – beyond life and beyond loss. It endures. It remains. It loves against all things, against hope, and against the belief for its object of adoration to return.
In the end, it’s love that goes on.
It can make us bitter or it can make us springs of life and of hope and of beauty once more.
Where there were once caverns of bitterness, may there be fields of tenderness.
Where there were once deserts of anger, may there be harbors of forgiveness
Where there were once rivers of sorrow, may there be streams of mercy.
Love transforms us in unfathomable ways. Lost love breaks us with the bleakest measures, but our response to love and love lost distinguishes us entirely.
Some respond out of anger, some shut down in sorrow, and some pretend through avoidance. Each response is unique, with each respondent clinging to the response that feels the most emotionally safe.
Friends and strangers hold their breath and peer at grievers in hopes of a response that will provide them with an image of the grievers’ hearts.
How quick we are to observe the unfathomable, but how slow we are to communicate the tragedy. We look with bravery but cower in speechlessness. All the while, the griever, the sufferer, sits in isolation and trapped in love’s loss.
With fortitude, the sufferer remembers his or her enduring love and allows that mercy to shape the day. Love and truth tear away the temptation bitterness invites: these tools patch up lost love’s damage.
Patched, but not healed. Bandaged, but not mended. The sufferer must reach out beyond the frailty of his or her understanding and leap towards something more. The promise of more – the promise of the fullness of life.
Choosing to trust God beyond all belief, the griever leaps into freedom and the chance for redemption. The chance to experience the beauty of life and the beauty of love restored. The chance to overcome bitterness with a happiness long forgotten. The chance to live abundantly despite every odd being against the individual.
This, this is love enduring. This is love unending. This is love restoring, healing, and beginning.
Shame cloaks one in fear. Fear keeps one in isolation. Isolation repeats the cycle.
It’s the tragic irony that prohibits us from knowing how to reach out to others when we need them most, and it’s often that same irony that keeps others from reaching out to us.
The concealment of shame safely shields one from oneself and from others – at times I have been afraid to voice my concerns and share my story simply because the story itself frightened me. Sharing makes life’s nightmares more real. Other times, the fear of another’s someone misunderstanding has kept my fingers from typing and my mouth from speaking.
But where does one turn when he or she internalizes those matters that are too dangerous to share with others?
I look to words – to books and to music, to poems and to plays – but what happens when there are no words?
The prevalence of centuries of literature whispers God’s mercy: one looks to the Psalms for comfort and contrition, the Old Testament stories and New Testament parables for history and application, and the prophecy books for detailed truth of who God has always been. These precious words preserve timeless truth. It is God who bestows light and life into man, and man who reflects the image of God (Genesis 1, John 1).
Mankind mirrors fractures of God’s mercy, not because God’s mercy is broken, but because we are broken and fallen creatures. Mercy cracks through the brokenness of man, reflecting the glory of God, through the gift of man’s words.
Words meant to heal, words crafted to explain, words written to comfort. Words to bring the shamed out of isolation and into compassion: words powerful enough to help the confused and broken feel understood and validated.
I didn’t get those words. I couldn’t find them.
When my world fell apart, I fell with it, and there were so few resources to explain. No one writes about the loss of a sibling, though most of the deceased are survived by siblings. It’s rare for young people to experience and detail loss.
And grieving a “complicated death” (ie: suicide, murder)? Some psychologists write to attempt to explain, but few first-hand accounts exist. These deaths are shrouded in the shame of the survived, leaving the survived isolated, tabooed, and unreached.
I intend to share the depths of a griever’s experience as a sibling, as a friend, as a woman, as a youth, and as a survivor. In weeks to come, I will share excerpts from my journals to convey the intensities of loss and the miracles of mercy. Some excerpts may be incredibly intense and seem hopeless, but these are the details of redemption and lament.
In the end, we’re each the griever and the friend.
So, let’s break the cycle. Truth is not powerless. Isolation, shame, and fear are powerless.
In the busyness of life, I nearly forgot my own. I nearly forgot my past – who I was, where I was, what life was like while I was there.
I nearly forgot the tears, the heartache, and the traumas. I nearly forgot that I was such a young girl dealing with such developed problems. I was such a child, scared, and hiding, yet mandated to make mature decisions.
I was 14 the first time I witnessed someone lose his mind to the brink of insanity.
Summer 2012
What a child.
I was so young, enduring too much beyond my own comprehension.
Even now, colleagues marvel at what I went through, and yet I expect myself to be normal – to act like a person unacquainted with loss and torment.
Torment. Absolute torment. It was hell and I didn’t even know it, because hell had become normal.
Normal was hiding, wrapping clothes around me as a shelter to cry in peace. So much hiding. So much crying.
And I never could have imagined how much worse it could get. Oh, so much worse.
I can’t believe that was my normal. I can’t believe how much I hid from the world. Hide and hide and hide.
No wonder I have such difficulty grasping out of hiding.
I lived in Sheol. Abaddon was my home. I can’t believe I lived through it.
In some ways, I think I always knew someone would die. Maybe I knew, somehow, that something else would destroy me. Maybe. Maybe I knew that I needed to be destroyed. Maybe it was always there in the back of my mind, hiding safely behind the clothes of denial.
I loved. That is the crime that caused me so much pain. That’s the face I saw in the grave. A man so wounded, he forced gravity to take the life out of him. I was 21 years old when my brother stole his life from my arms, and I’m still trying to come to terms with that reality.
Apprehension gathers around my temples and sends shakes into my hands.
I feel calm: I smile to myself as I peer into my rear-view mirror, fighting the duplicity of my inner turmoil. We’re nearing the end of the year, the end of the decade. So many endings. 2020 looms menacingly behind a two-week’s notice, and its emanate arrival bubbles conflict within me.
I don’t feel calm: tears kiss my quivering lip, fear desires to relinquish the skirmish in my mind.
Am I going to believe what I know to be true?
I know God is good. I know 2020 will hold good things. I know I’ve had a lot of joyous moments in 2019. I know the progression of time is natural. I know ending the year numerically/measurably separates me from pretty terrible experiences from 2019.
This year feels like finishing a chapter of a Stephen King novel; the horror is over, but the adrenaline from terrors pulsates through one’s veins and makes him aware that the books is not finished and that more trepidation awaits. With apprehension, the reader begins the next chapter.
I know I’m not living-out a horror novel, however, Jesus literally promised “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). I know that, and that’s easy [for me] to believe. He also declared, “I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance” (John 10:10) and compared, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11). Somehow, those two facts are a bit harder for me to believe.
These truths I know, but I battle each day to believe them. I echo a millennia-old cry: “I believe! Help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
I exhale, imagining the year altogether. An overwhelming year amplified by increased stressors from the past few weeks. I’m tired of fighting. I reminisce on the past year in color: grays, blues, and splatters of red.
Gray. The color of endings—colors fade into a vortex of grays. From dust we came and to dust we return (Genesis 3:10). It’s the color of loss, of hopelessness, of abandonment, of absence. A sky convulsing with beating rains.
Blue. The color of sadness—shades of somberness in waves of emotion. As deep as the ocean, as expansive as the sky.
Red. The color of passion—drops from the hands, the feet, and the head of Christ. It indicates hurt. Likewise, it’s the color of life, of love, of anger, of danger, and of longing.
Apprehension gnawing at my soul and shivering in my hands, I petition myself again: Am I going to believe what I know to be true?
I know James was earnest when writing “the testing of your faith produces endurance,” (James 1:4). I know that God works all things together for good (Romans 8:28). I know that it is God who works within me (Philippians 2:13).
But oh, how hard it is for me to believe that my pain will not be wasted. How easy it is for me to believe that all of this is for nothing. That my pain is meaningless, that my words are meaningless, that I am a failure because I do not always believe the truth that I know, and that my pain will be wasted because it’s not easy for me to believe in goodness.
It’s hard to see the world around you when you’re filtered through gray, blue, and red. I am of little faith. I cling to the truths I know—I see God’s mercy, provision, and grace all around me—even while I shudder at thoughts of the future.
Yes, I’m happy to leave 2019. But 2020 will be the first year of my life without Patrick, and that’s never something I wanted to write. I will no longer live in the year of his death. The closer we get to the date, the more apprehensive I become.
It’s not that I don’t trust God with the future. I do. It’s simply hard to look forward to an unknown that currently holds little tangible hope–yet, my hope is in Christ and I know that my hope will not be put to shame (Romans 5:5).
Hebrews 11, a chapter exemplifying people of great faith, begins with “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen,” Hebrews 11:1. I have faith that God will bring good things from the dark year I’ve endured, but I also know the reality of their lives: “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (verse 13).
“Remember the promises of God,” many tell me. I remember them, I acknowledge them, and I cling to them, but I know that I might not live to see his promises fulfilled.
I—we, my friends—may never witness one drop of goodness to come from the tragedies in our lives, but we will experience God’s faithfulness. While not tangibly measurable, if we surrender ourselves to Christ, we are guaranteed to see some promises fulfilled. We will experience sanctification. We will experience knowledge and growth. My broken perspective doesn’t make God’s workmanship any less true.
We might not see the goodness amidst the darkness of today, but we can see God’s faithfulness. We can see God’s mercy, and we can trust God even when we cannot seem to believe.
Just when I think I’m going to be
okay, the Pain materializes, reeling me backwards. He grips me by the waist and drags me back,
viciously ripping through the cavern between my lungs. I attempt to remain calm, strong, and
steady, but the horror engulfs my helpless body, robbing my mind of the ability
to fight; so I let Pain do what he must until
I’m numb and lifeless. Sometimes there
are tears, more often it’s a silent defeat.
The ambush renders me vulnerable and knocked down: my fears and my
weakness keep me pinned to the floor. He
hijacks me of all breath, and I halt: If I process
enough now, maybe he won’t attack me for a little while longer.
If
I stay here long enough, maybe I’ll learn how to get up again.
With new crevices carved into the cavern between my lungs, I’m weak, I’m
alone, and it it’s dark. Oh so very dark.
I’m weary. My eyes year to rest and the gloom tempts me
to surrender. Alone, this Pain attacked
me. Pain contends to conquer as tears
swallow my widening pupils, and, for a moment, he does win.
He comes haphazardly, begging for
me to release him—Pain reminds me to feel.
He reminds me to heal. He reminds
me to rest. He humiliates me.
When I’m hapless in his grasp and
I think that all is lost, Pain flees. My
pupils dilate to a soothing light—the Father.
As suddenly as Pain assaulted, Christ enters, picking me up and tenderly
drawing me into him. He pierces through
my shame, in my sorrow, and amidst my pain and becomes my strength. While I am oh so weak, he carries my burden
in exchange for his own. He liberates me
from my despair, calming all my fears, and restores me in his presence and with
his community. He reminds me of his
faithfulness amidst a world prone to abandonment.
While I lie bruised and bleeding,
he cleanses me of the wounds and addresses each trauma as it arises, assault after
assault, revealing the the stripes he paid for my ransom.
I crumble before him, grateful, humble,
and in awe of this loving Father. He
dresses my wounds and sends me back to my safe community—his church, his
nurses—who see my lacerations and come along my side to help me heal.
No, they weren’t assaulted by Pain
this time, but their pasts preserve the stories of their own scars. This time, they’re stronger and they’re
waiting to help change my wounds. They
don’t have my PTSD, they don’t live with my the memories, and they don’t know my
horrors, but they see the manifestations of my fresh injuies.
With God guiding us all, they
come along my side and teach me how to walk again. I’m nimble and uncoordinated, requiring
tenderness and patience. I’m more
sensitive than before. I’m afraid, but I
don’t want to be paralyzed forever, so I continue learning to walk by pressing
into God and into his church.
I’m a survivor. I survived the initial assault. I live in the aftershock. The horror has ceased, but its affects linger
on.
— — —
I am healing—slowly, messily,
gracefully, and dutifully—healing.
The days fluctuate: some are
easier than others, some I cannot seem to concentrate and conceal the
tears. Others follow the pattern detailed
above; sometimes the emotions surprise me and I feel like I should be “over it”
by now, holding myself to a nearly impossible standard that, in turn, prompts
me to feel failure, inadequacy, and guilt.
Grief is love that has lost its object of affection, and one cannot
simply terminate one’s love, even if that love has been stripped from him or her.
So, I take “one step forward, and
five steps behind,” and my healing progresses.
In the first three months after
Patrick died, absolutely nothing made sense anymore. All of my hopes and dreams and understandings
collapsed within those months, and I was terribly afraid to live and to breathe
and to know and to be known by others. I
was angry with God and angry with myself.
Disillusioned and then disappointed, I thwarted any intrusive thoughts
of hope and of goodness. Life couldn’t be
good, I
thought. But, realistically, I was [am?]
afraid to hope that life could be good again.
My hopes had been so violently stolen from me that I dreaded the thought
of hoping again. How can one continue to
hope when someone else continuously takes everything she’s hoped for? No, I won’t reduce myself to hoping again, I bitterly resolved.
Hope is a terrifying thing. While alive, she helps us receive joy and
cherish moments of mundanity, but if she perishes, we’re left behind with the
trauma and disappointment of “hope deferred” (Proverbs 13:12).
Nothing made sense anymore, and I did not want
to make sense of anything my family and I were left behind with. I harbored so much pain that I became too
terrified to face it alone. Most people
I live near hardly knew Patrick—I cannot emphasize how isolated that can make
one feel—and yet those nearest to me continue to graciously love, support, and
encourage me despite my inability to pour myself out at this time. God’s kindness and mercy broke through my
“shelter” of self-preservation and He’s teaching me how to breathe in this new
rhythm of life.
Perhaps we search for depth in
others because it helps us process the depth of ourselves; we need one another
and speaking helps more than I can explain.
At first, I was so afraid to voice my pain. I was afraid that those around me would not
be able to “handle” the truth of where my heart resides and would invalidate my
feelings and my questionings, but, nonetheless, those in my life persisted to
investigate my heart despite my protests.
God has opened my eyes and continuously opens them to see his mercy, and
my dear friends continuously pursue me to show me how much they care about
me.
In this season, I don’t have much
to give. I’m overflowing with questions
and slowly coming to a new understanding of life itself. I am inquisitive and I am learning.
I have to remind myself that the
worst has already passed, and now I can enjoy a season of disciplined healing:
one cannot heal if he or she lacks the willingness to do so. Every day is new, every moment is precious. I
see and feel new growth and new life all around me as I rest in God and I
pursue healing in the shelter of his love. God has been so kind to remove my fears and to
reveal new truths to me.
I am hurting, and this will always hurt, but I am happy and I am abiding in peace.
I now empathize with the notorious Edna Pontelier when she filled her pockets with rocks, walked into the sea, and submitted her life to its waves: experiencing my best friend’s death, losing my great-grandmother, reminiscing of past losses, and struggling each day to know whether or not my brother has made it through the night. The past 365 days have taught me that the waves flow calmer than they appear, that life berates me more than it seems, and that escapism plagues a nation of plummeting addicts.
The waves tranquilize when you’re beneath them; they rage when you’re surfacing and tumbling through them, but they gently rock you when you dive below them. It’s a gentle sway, almost like a cradle. Perhaps that’s why we enjoy the water. Its beats return us to the calming rhythms of childhood: before the loss, before the heartache, before the destitution.
In literature, the ocean symbolizes innocence, danger, sexuality, and complexity—numerous in its expressive nature. Innocence in that its tranquility brings peace. Dangerous in that its murky waves captivate. Sexually in a matter of mystery and addiction: complexity in its many forms.
We see it in our own lives—the ocean that took my beloved friend’s breath away is the same ocean that I cling to when my own thoughts become tumultuous. It surmises me. How can I look upon the waves that robbed me with such joy and solitude? How can I trust them not to carry me down as well?
It’s the resiliency of the human spirit, gifted through God’s mercy. He allows us to endure and strengthens us to persist despite the weight of the world looming at our shoulders and under our feet.
I’m so weary, I’d love to submit to the waves. To give up the fight is to be truly free, isn’t it? That’s the lie Edna Pontelier, a pioneering feminist icon, perpetuates in her iconic death.
But death and escape aren’t freedom. Death finitely robs us of all possibility of freedom, and escape imprisons us from experiencing freedom; attractive as their appeals appear, its their lies that rush us to ultimate despair. Once we begin listening to the lie that to die is to escape and to be free, we begin to give up on the hope that things can change.
Things do change, everyday, and that is why we must remember it is truth that sets us free, not death. Christ said, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” to Jewish believers in John 8:35.
That is exactly why I started my blog—to share with others with little truths that God revealed to me. I began my blog based on Ephesians 5:13-14: “But when anything is exposed to the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, / and arise from the dead, / and Christ will shine on you.’”
Death and escape are not freedom. Truth is freedom. “Who the Son sets free is free indeed,” John 8:36. This life is horrifically hard, but that was promised: “I have said these things to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation,” John 16:33a. Christ does not conclude on a sorrowful word; instead, He adds, “But take heart, because I have overcome the world,” reminding us of the steadfastness of truth and of God’s faithfulness.
We do many things when we operate out of fear instead of love: we kick and we scream, we beg and we plead, we ache and we cry, and we break and we bleed, until we shatter into tiny pieces and crumble gently to the cold and unforgiving floor.
“This is tragedy,” we internalize as we attempt to grasp our broken pieces scattered about us. We trace the ceiling with our eyes as the chill from the floor sends ice down our backs.
But how can we feel that which is no longer connected to us? In shambles, we attempt to hold ourselves together. In truth, we’ve already fallen quite apart entirely.
No, our dust cannot be pieced back together.
— — —
On of my favorite quotes looms in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, awaiting an eager reader’s interpretation.
“I could tell you my adventures–beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly: “But it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then”
Too often “yesterday” prompts me to silently fear the plights of tomorrow and disregard the joys of today. It’s astounding how much a single day can alter one’s perception for the remainder of his or her life.
May 11, 2019: 3 Days before Patrick’s Funeral
Broken is a scary place to be–it’s vulnerable and alone, exposing and frightening–but, perhaps it’s the safest place to be. In David Platt’s Radical, Platt ponders: “What if the center of God’s will is in reality the most unsafe place for us to be?” Platt proposes that following God often leads us into perilous and/or painful circumstances that strengthen our faith and build the kingdom of God beyond the pain that we can see.
In Faith in the Fog, Jeff Lucas’s exploration of the interaction between Christ and Peter when Christ inquires, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” Lucas describes the dangerous draw to complacent avoidance:
Sometimes I’m lured by the thought of a safe, predictable, even dull existence. I don’t want a purpose-driven life. I don’t want purpose, and I certainly don’t want driven–I just want life.
Longing for consistency, we can foolishly allow fear to ransack our thoughts and carry us to places we know we shouldn’t go and prompt us to do things we regret–we’ll run from the goodness we fear into the clutches of a deceptive “safe place,” where we find comfort in the familiar. Unfortunately, familiarity does not equate to safety.
Tranquility is monotony’s gift. It’s the security one feels in the comfortability of a changeless season, but it can be precariously complacent. Succumbing to temptation to live a life dedicated to ease causes us to miss the opportunity to indulge with those who suffer and to build one another up from places of deep depravity and heartache.
Believe me, I crave “normal,” “easy,” and “safe,” now more than ever, but surrendering to “I don’t care” and embracing a simple life dedicated to fear steals any opportunity to glorify God with my gift of suffering.
Numbing one’s pain never helps–instead numbness creates a welcoming environment for sin to manifest through disbelief. When we choose to numb ourselves to the desires of God–desires for life and abundance and suffering–we reject the of goodness in His plan.
I don’t want to care anymore–life is easier when we don’t care about what’s happening around us, right?? That’s the illusion of denial. Denial deceives us into believing that all is well when the world is on fire, and, in the end, we burn along with the rest of the world because we weren’t discerning enough to escape the flames.
— — —
When I dreamed of the future, I never imagined that my brother would not be in it.
That day and the following two months changed [and continue to change] me more than I was willing to admit to myself and to others; I fear my emotional response to his death, I fear my past, and I fear healing from the events that mar me. Healing seems like letting go of someone who was supposed to be with me forever.
I’ve been reduced to dust, as Lysa TerKeurst defines these kinds of seasons in her book, It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way. Dust moments–they’re the moments that forever change your existence and shatter who you once were. I liked what my life was like back then. I liked how my family looked back then. I liked who I was back then. But, like Alice, I am not who I was yesterday, my circumstances today are not like they were, and I will never return to the woman that I was at that time.
-- -- --
Do I love God more than I love what I had hoped for Patrick?
I spent months in fear of that question–I spent months in fear of how his death will affect my perception of life itself. Months.
This time, I was broken beyond repair. My family was broken beyond repair. It feels like I died on that day, but I kept living. I kept breathing. I kept moving. But I was reduced to dust, and life mollified me.
I have so much to fear, but I also have so much to live.
I have changed. I’ve changed so much since May 7, 2019. My entire outlook on life and death is dramatically different than what it once was, and I am so incredibly thankful for that.
— — —
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17
My sweet friend, Jocelyn, came to visit me this past weekend. Jocelyn’s been an endearing blessing for my entire life–she’s safe, she’s welcoming, and she’s encouraging. She loves Jesus and she loves me and my family, and she came along my side and gladly stayed in the messy room I’ve neglected since May. She told me it’s okay, and she told me I was strong. She went on a crazy adventure with me and smiled and laughed the whole time.
Virginia Beach, August 2019
Jocelyn helped me get back on my feet–it’s truly amazing how life-giving a lifelong friend can be. It’s so sweet how Jesus uses those around us to build us up.
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Yes, I have changed, and yes, I have broken entirely. I have been reduced to unrecognizable dust. God brings life from the dust, and He’s given me another chance at life. He rejuvenated my perspective and has lifted my spirit. I am not who I was, and I am okay with that. I am healing, I am being made new, and I am living.
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When love compels us, any fear we have becomes worth the risk. Love emboldens and strengthens. Love is what picks us up from the floor:
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
II Corinthians 5:14-15
It’s the warmth of a loving Father, welcoming his cold and tired prodigal home with open arms. Our refuge and our rock–our God and our redeemer. He takes the dust that we are and renews us entirely.
Exposed 