Tag: grief

The Grief Invitation

When we were in the hospital, shortly after learning that our daughter would likely never come home, I remember having a conversation. My husband and I stood in the muted colors of the Ronald McDonald asking each other.

 Should we let them in?

Neither of us wanted to. Letting in our small group from church felt too raw, too personal. Not because we didn’t love them or know they loved us, but because it was absolutely terrifying. They’d never seen us this way. We had never seen ourselves this way: utterly broken, completely stripped to the barest most vulnerable version of ourselves.

The past week in the hospital, we couldn’t eat, barely slept. My entire body buzzed with adrenaline and yet felt hollow with fatigue. I was weak with heartache and physical pain from surgery. Our eyes were bloodshot from constant crying. Our bodies physically shrunk; our strength paper thin.

In this place it felt (feels) easiest to hide. Yet despite all this, a thought came clearly into the fog of my mind: to invite them in—literally, putting their names on that front desk list—and of course, figuratively, was the only way we wouldn’t walk alone.

These are the people who are going to walk with us…after.

That night some of our friends came to meet our daughter for the first and last time. They saw her covered in tubes and connected to machines and somehow still beautiful. They came and wrapped themselves around us and saw our tears and cried their own. They filled the hospital chapel and prayed. They touched her sweet face. I wish I could say it was wonderful, but it was also terrible. It probably would’ve been easier to hide, to be alone, to stay concealed in our own bubble of fear and pain. And yet now we had a small army of people who could fathom a slice of our grief.

We left the hospital a few days later without our daughter. She was gone from this earth. We will never be the same.

I don’t know what would’ve happened if we’d decided to do it all alone. Yet, I believe that somehow letting them in became essential to keep on living. These friends knew they were on the metaphorical list. So after, they wouldn’t let us walk alone; and they didn’t let us walk alone.

I tell this story today with the sky white with clouds and the ground wet with rain. It’s cold and quiet. It’s a day for remembering. I tell this story because I think I needed to and because I sincerely believe we are not meant to hide in our deepest pain.

Even in the darkest, most confusing moments, when truly no one can truly grasp what is happening inside us, we can invite someone in. Not only to see the vulnerable and hurt parts, but to allow them a chance to comfort us, to be Jesus to us—”to be near to the brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit.” They will not do it perfectly, but if they are true and loving, they will accept the call to walk with us in the years of grieving and healing to come.

Bee Breath

An excerpt from my *hopeful* book

It’s summer. Hot and sticky, and I am lying in the yard because both the kiddos are napping, and I want the sun to touch some of the less-loved parts of my body. But, as it turns out, bees love all the parts of my body. And this time of year, while August drones on into September, they spend extra time collecting their booty and bothering us while we sun ours.

I am lying here feeling myself grow less comfortable and more anxious, when I think of Rudy.

Rudy is our Brittany spaniel. A copper and white, middle-aged and mid-sized creature. Our fuzz baby. Rudy exists assuming all his passions are purposeful. A hunting dog, a squirrel patrol, a crumb-cleaner, a deer chaser, a car announcer. He lives life completely comfortable with in his own skin, like all dogs do.

When Rudy is hot, he takes a swim in the pond; when he’s tired, he lies with his muzzle to the ground, feet splayed to one side as he snoozes. When Rudy’s hungry he’s especially present, gobbling up his food in less than three minutes. All day he runs and swims and hunts any living, fur-clothed thing until he’s tired or hungry or needs to go. He laps at water wherever he finds it, lies in the sun if he wants to be warm or pants in the shade to cool off. He forces unsuspecting souls into endless hours of fetch and comes to receive a scratch on the back whenever he has an itch.

Also, Rudy eats bees.

Bees really bother me. Maybe because they’re an insect, and most humans don’t like most insects, but more likely because of their pointy butts and the unsuspecting way I’ve been stung several times in my life. It’s not like I’m swatting at them or drop-kicking their hive when they get me, so, naturally, I think they’re all little b-words.

But when they’re buzzing around my pup, he turns his head like one might lazily shoo a fly, and then, he chomps the air. If he can catch it, he eats the bee. I don’t know if it buzzes in his mouth or stings him while he swallows or if his acrid breath kills the thing on impact, but he survives, and the bee does not. Sometimes, he even seems to hunt them, standing up from a nap to scan the air and chomp, chomp, jitter. He got one. It’s really, really weird.

One year, there was a terrible tribe of yellow jackets humming around in the yard, and I suspected they had a hive somewhere close by. I looked up the specific coloring, and discovered it was the type that is especially cruel and will actually chase humans down (Lord help us) and attack, stinging over and over. Instructing my people to avoid that portion of the yard, I started wondering how we were going to eradicate this problem.

The next morning, I cautiously walked to the area I’d seen them occupying to discover a large, deep hole. A Rudy-hole. He’d completely dug up their underground tunnels, exposing them to the hot summer sun, and I never saw another yellow jacket in our yard again.

Today, lying in the sun. I think of Rudy.  I try to be Rudy. He wouldn’t get up or move because of some tiny stinger buzzing by his ears. He would stay lying in the sun, occasionally chomping the air. Maybe he’d change position to get a better angle to eat them, but he certainly wouldn’t stop resting unless he wanted to.

And even though he rolls in feces and occasionally eats something long-rotted, he’s not just an idiot, he’s brave too. Yes, his bravery stems from stupidity, but I think most bravery looks a little stupid at first.

I think this isn’t such a bad way to live. Brave enough to keep existing in a world full of bees and viruses and even death. Brave enough to laugh and cry when both feel ridiculous.

Today, I will keep lying in the prickly grass, with the sun burning the crepe-y-looking skin on my stomach and not care who sees. I will show my kids that amidst a world of strangers, stingers, sickness, even death, I can still sleep in the heat of the day, bees all around me, this upside-down world still spinning.

Fear & Hope: United by Both

Fear & Hope: United by Both

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Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

As many of you know, our youngest daughter recently passed away not quite two months ago. Her brief life and death marred us, messed with us, is still not a puzzle solved or mountain climbed. Considering this monstrous life event and alllll that is happening globally with coronavirus, I’ve been thinking about many of the things that happen behind the scenes of grief and as a result of awful life events. One such thing is fear.

How is fear first conceived? What makes it grow? How does fear develop into a fully formed, living thing with fists that can grip us, rip us to and fro, nearly control us?

I’m not talking about the fight/flight response we need when there is imminent danger like a fire or car coming toward us. I’m talking about the fear that lingers there long after any imminent danger is present. The anxious, constantly-present fear. The dormant yet- strong-as-ever fear.

I think these types of fears are founded on something true or partially true. Some piece of scientific or historical (even personally historical) information. A few facts or events that we can point to. Then, to become a fear and not just a factoid or two, our emotion comes into play. Our own sadness, anger, regret, confusion, shame. The fear grows.

But as I thought about this, I realized that beneath it, or maybe if we follow it to its end, most fears are not really that different. We may fear the rising sea levels, the pollution, the natural disasters, but the base layer of this fear is existential: the ending of life as we know it. We may fear different people groups with very different, sometimes backwards ideals coming into our cities, but the base of this fear is once again, the ending of life as we know it. We may fear our loved ones or ourselves getting hurt, sick, even dying and, once again, following that fear to its end is also the end of life as we know it. We may fear what we are taught to fear by our parents, politicians, teachers, media-outlet-of-choice, but I challenge you to follow that fear and it will most-likely end in the place the rest of these fears do.

I don’t know if thinking this way brings you any sort of comfort, but for me it’s kind of refreshing. Maybe we are not really that different after all. We all are united by our deepest fear. Perhaps that’s a bit unpleasant for you. Fear is not something we want to own. We’d rather own logic, wisdom, morality, knowledge. We’d rather think an emotion like fear has nothing to do with us. Maybe you think you just care. You don’t fear. But if this ‘care’ leads you on to the same destination, this end to life as you know it,  it may still hold a pinch or even gallon of unseen fear.

One of my greatest, most unlikely fears came true. One of those dormant-swirling fears. The kind you have automatically and must always always fight. Death. My daughter died. My physical flesh and blood, my ethereal hope and love was in this person, and she died.

The worst happened. Fear became reality.

But I don’t want to live in fear that the worst will happen again and again just because it did. Because we can probably all agree, that fearing all the time is a horrible way to live.

My fear came true. There is an end to life as I knew it. But there is something else there too: hope.

Hope that THIS isn’t it for us. This death, this imperfection, this virus, this iffy science we worship, this messy morality we cling to, this failing humanity and flailing earth. There IS something greater, more perfect, more lovely, more kind, more lasting than THIS. Or why and how can we know it deeply–feel it in the unseen places of our soul? We are built for it, and I have hope it’s still coming.

Hope. Hope can unite us too.

Lord I pray that during this tumultuous time, we are united by the hope. That fearing sickness and death is not our calling and brings no change to our lives. Take our fears that we grip on to and those that grip onto us. Replace them with hope. 

 

Romans 8:24
For in this hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see?


2 Corinthians 4:18
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.


2 Corinthians 5:7
For we walk by faith, not by sight.