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 💙
Funeral preparations cease but a few friends and family members from out of town remain close. Reality slowly creeps in as the whispers of finding a “new normal” lingers just around the corner. In a matter of days, most of the world will return to work while we begin to reorganize our lives.
My Daddy, of course, will have the most significant adjustment for his day-to-day life. Already, he sleeps without my Mom, but he has not had to experience a “typical” day without her. They were partners, they were friends, and they were lovers. I always thought they really would be that couple from The Notebook: I never thought this could happen.
Their relationship was an anchor in my life. They endured and overcame agonizing trauma together again and again and again, and they were the best of friends. Growing up, I always wanted a marriage like theirs. Since getting married, I still wanted a relationship like theirs! My marvelous husband and I watched their love for one another with reverence and admiration. They were such an amazing team. They loved being together and they loved each other well. It’s difficult not to be really angry with my mom when I think of their truly inspirational marriage… and then it’s really, really, really sad.
As my brother Luke reminded, my siblings and I had never known a world without Mom until eight days ago.
Rehabilitation — that’s the word that keeps bustling through my mind. Learning to live without Mom feels like rehabilitating back into normal society: walking, driving, talking, biking, writing, smiling, and so much more, feels so foreign and unnatural. I feel as though I can barely hold a thought or concept in my mind.
Denial persists more than anything right now, a dull ache thumps within me at all times, but most of the time I can’t believe my Mom’s gone and I can’t believe my mom left me feels like a distant thought and not an annihilating reality. My Momma, I still mumble in shock. Moments of mayhem pierce me to the core, preparing me for when the shock wears off and when I’ll have to truly face this menacing reality.
My Mom grounded and anchored my life, creating stability and safety. What now?
Daily Tip for Communicating with Someone in Mourning
I have provided many things not to say — all of which from comments multiple people have made, not just one-off comments as to not single anyone out — but there are so many good things people say as well.
“I’m sorry” feels like such a weak thing to say, but it encompasses a tremendous amount of emotion and care. The short phrase empathizes with the mourners and often creates an understanding between two hurting people.
Future Ways to Help
Small tasks are incredibly helpful — doing a load of laundry, wiping down a counter, calling to set up a dental appointment. Sometimes it’s hard for me to even remember to put a pair of shoes on – it’s invaluable to notice those little things that may be neglected and to help one another out.
This surreal week will haunt me for the rest of my life, and yet I’ll remember your kindness vividly in the days to come.
Love permeates everything and its warmth reaches my deep wounds. Tonight, I remember that the New Testament word “Salvation” is the same Greek/Hebrew word for “Healing”. Jehova-Rapha: The God who Heals, written throughout the Old Testament. The God who heals broken hearts and broken minds. The God who binds our wounds and holds us up. El Roi: The God who Sees. The God who sees me — who sees us in our pain.
I live amongst a community of mourners: I know you’re hurting too. I know you loved her, and I know it’s so hard to fathom life without her. She was such a light, such a joy, and so… “sparkly” as my Grandpa, my mom’s dad, described. I love it – she was so sparkly.
Life is so confusing right now. It still doesn’t feel real, until it hits and it hurts excruciatingly. I don’t want it to feel real, I don’t want it to be real. None of us do.
Thank you for being here, for watching, for reading. For holding my hand, playing with my hair, and hugging me. Thank you for loving my mom.
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.
The rugged tapestry once concealed all that’s real,
But Time tore the Romantic landscape
And began to reveal the mysteries hidden behind.
Through holes, I glimpse the world that inspired its painter.
— — —
A few months ago, I scoffed as I read “I was twenty-seven when I learned that my days were numbered… I had been given the opportunity not many twenty-seven-year-olds could claim: the opportunity to count each of my days as precious.” Anger and jealousy panged my heart: anger, because I never wanted this “opportunity”, and jealousy because I was younger when I was granted this “opportunity.” I’m incredibly stubborn sometimes, and, in that moment, I did not want to think about the loss of my brother as an “opportunity.” In that moment, I just wanted my brother back. Jen Wilkin, author of None Like Him, continues, writing: “Any illusions I might have had that this life would last forever were effectively removed. I learned a perspective that many don’t grasp until the aging process begins its faithful instruction in universal human frailty.” [1]
I mulled over those statements for weeks before I could finally adopt the author’s same sense of calm appreciation for having to face harsh realities at a young age. Reflecting on the new perspective growing within me, I described it to a dear friend who lost his brother years before I lost mine:
Growing up, it’s like you’ve been painting a picture for your entire life. Each joy or heartache you experience as a child adds light and darkness to your canvas, and, through the canvas, you see the world. It’s beautiful but imperfect—it is not without its own sadness and glory. The painting’s our framework—we create it and we focus so intensely that we forget it’s a mere painting. Then, one day, Death happens, and he severs our paintings. Our canvases cracks, our mind quivers and retreats in confusion. It’s torn us, and it’s painful to be torn. When we get past the hurt we feel at the breaking, we finally see it—there appears to be a light from behind the gashes. Peaking in, there it is—the real world. Our minds only painted them with what we thought we knew, but now, after the tear, we see it. It’s beautiful and it’s sunny. Of course, there are dark shadows and tumultuous areas, just like the ones in our paintings, but there exists a clarity and a depth that our paintings could never capture. We finally see what’s real, and our pieces seem suddenly insignificant; our painting cannot be mended—the damage cannot be undone—but we see the Truth beyond our created canvases.
My friend listened and calmly smiled at me, “It’s not just death, but I think that’s just a part of growing up,” reminding me of the universality of the human condition.
He’s right—we all have moments where everything that made our frameworks shatters and we’re left feeling vulnerable and shattered. At first, it’s hard to see anything, but, in time, we begin to realize how our perspectives have altered. We learn truths about God, about the world, and about ourselves that we never would have known.
Like Wilkin, I have been blessed to learn life’s brevity before my parents even appear old and frail. Sometimes I envy those who get to enjoy their twenties free of the intense emotional toll that bereavement promises, but God is faithful to give me reminders that he’s redeeming the times. He’s gently taking me by the hand and walking me down a path He knows I didn’t want to be on—a path He didn’t want me and my family to have to walk; “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promises as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” II Peter 3:9. Christ did not wish Patrick’s death upon us. Knowing that doesn’t make this any less painful, but it does remind me that God is trustworthy even in the darkest circumstances.
— — —
So, I press on—uncovering more mysteries beyond the canvas I created. Pursuing God as he bestows me with “a crown of beauty instead of ashes” (Isaiah 61:3).
For now, life is calm. It’s been a much-needed respite. I continue to wrestle spiritually and emotionally with Patrick’s death. Psalm 126:5 sings, “Those who sow in tears shall weep with shouts of joy.” I’m still very much in the first stage of that verse, but I am able to experience joy as well. I’m not quite shouting about it, but there’s a calm gratefulness and happiness that permeates everything these days.
I realized about two-weeks ago that life had calmed. The storms have ceased for a time. Now I’m living in the recovery—still afraid of aftershocks, still hesitant and cautious, still mourning deep losses—now, God helps me pick up my broken pieces and carries me beyond the waves into still waters (Isaiah 43, Psalm 23). He’s my refuge and my hiding place when I’m too afraid of the world around me (Psalm 119:114). He renews my strength. In Him I trust, and I will not be shaken (Psalm 62:6).
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.
“You never give up on me”, the amazement flowed from the tears in Patrick’s eyes.
But, I thought, the truth is that I gave up on you years ago.
Yet I’m still here.
Maybe I tricked myself into believing that I gave up on you. Maybe it’s because I was well acquainted with the pain you cause[d], but I’m thankful that you realized I hadn’t given up on you even when I thought I had.
No, I never gave up on you. I believed in every single breath you gave.
— — —
I spent the last two months two months pretending that the most horrific events of my past did not happen. I went on eight different trips and visited 13 different cities; it’s funny how you can trick your mind into believing false narratives simply because you long for something greater. I want to believe that earnestness exists, that redemption persists, and that goodness triumphs.
But I don’t.
Or, at least, I didn’t.
Eight trips filled with laughter and memories, yet the plane rides or car drives confronted me with the realities I so desperately wished to ignore. On the plane and in the car–that’s where I fell apart.
You can only smile for so long before tears force their way out, leaving you exposed to an onlooking world. And on airplanes?? Lord bless those sitting next to me… they didn’t ask for this mess. Though, neither did I.
Thoughts on my final plane ride brutally scorned me: “If I love God, how could I _____?” “If you love someone, why do you purposefully act malignant?” “If I had done _____ would he still be here?”
One’s mind and heart quickly betray him in times of immense tragedy, rendering him confused and pained. Mine convinced me to ignore reality again and again and again, until reality assaulted my mind into submission. You cannot outrun the truth, no matter how bleak it is.
— — —
It’s was Tuesday night, three months and one day since we found out about my Patrick’s demise.
I’m in church and it’s dark. Unable to hold anything back, I release emotions I do not deserve to have–no one should endure circumstances like this.
My roommate Lauren reaches over:
“I’m proud of you, Hope. You’re finally grieving.”
Aaaaand I’ve cried everyday since. Moments so full of anguish that I stop breathing and have to literally remind myself how to function. WELCOME TO GRIEF, HOPE. It’s about time…
— — —
April 24, 2019
“I feel like we are a team specifically you and me to beat this. It means alot,” Patrick texts me.
“That’s right we are. You are going to beat this. Absolutely.”
“Every time I see you, you say we got this and i actually believe it for once”
I believed it too, Patrick. I believed it too. I still cannot believe that you are gone.
— — —
When you lose someone you love, it is as though all light has departed. Reality dims. Hope fades. Confusion suffocates.
Recklessness ensues when you stop believing in redemption: Satan tempts you to believe that actions are meaningless. You grew weary in doing good works. Look where they got you? I questioned as the tears soaked my sweatshirt.
The truth is, there are some things we will never let go of; we must live through the emptiness and press on because of Christ’s mercy. Sometimes the most disheartening circumstances are the manifolds of God’s mercy. While it’s laborious to perceive, there is much glory in earth’s eternal despondency.
I tried to stop hoping. I attempted to “give up” on those that I love dearly as a coping mechanism, but I cannot.
Even after the tragedies I’ve witnessed first-hand–no matter how “safe” disassociation and pessimism may make me feel–I cannot stop believing in redemption.
I don’t recognize much “light” these days. Engulfed in darkness, wrestling through disappointment and heartache: nonetheless, I still believe in redemption.
I see hurting people all around me, the heartbroken who respond by attempting to break themselves and to break those around them, but somehow I still believe in redemption. Side note: Please, seek help and guidance when you need it, friends. No one is past redemption’s threshold–if he would only focus on what he knows to be true. Not all is lost.
In The Fellowship of the Rings, Tolkien exemplifies the relationship between hope and heartache: “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”
I cannot see the goodness in this situation, and I feel far more broken than I can express, but I trust and I hope in what I know is True.
2019 came with vicissitudes for every aspect of my life, from a new apartment to a new job to a new haircut to a new community, and it’s been wonderful. I’m incredibly thankful for where I am, however, a pessimistic demeanor copiously subverts everything around me.
Discomposing: the days swarm past me as life becomes a conundrum. I am weary from the weight of life’s general plights, heightened through unanticipated catastrophes that stifle me as I attempt to keep going. I’ve woken up every day this week pleading: “just get up. Just make it into work. You can make it another day,” and by 10 o’clock I’m convincing myself: “just make it to lunch. If you make it to lunch, you can make it through the rest of today.”
You can make it through.
We weren’t meant to “just make it through.” Christ said, “I came that they may have life
and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).
Lately, it’s been “one thing after another,” mounting each day and piercing each night. I should be sleeping right now. I should be. I wonder if life will always be like this? After all, it has been for so long.
“It’s not supposed to be like this,” I know. But it is like this. “What did I do to deserve this?” I ponder restlessly.
Where is the abundance of
life? Nothing lasts forever, I know
that, but this season feels unending and I am growing wearier and wearier. Yet He is strong, and He is strong when my
strength dissipates.
Everything aches. My mind, my back, my heart.
Father, please restore to me the
joy of my salvation (Psalm 51:12). I
believe, help my unbelief (Mark 9:24).
Exposed 