Do you want to know something unfair? Something I have truly come to detest these days? How easy it is to hurt the ones you love when you are forced down the road of grief… unwillingly… by life… kicking and screaming (and probably with some gnashing of teeth).
All in Hurt & Pain
Your life looks completely different now. Who knew that one person could change the entire world with their absence – but it has. For you. And I am so incredibly sorry for your pain.
After a few months (sometimes even a few weeks or days) the texts and phone calls stop. Friends and coworkers continue with conversations as “business as usual”, because they don’t know how to help or what to say. The gift of normalcy is offered so quickly but it offers no relief. Because nothing is normal anymore. They try, people genuinely care and want to “fix” it but there is no “fixing” this because they didn’t break you to begin with. Life did. Death did. And although everything changed in the blink of an eye, it will take months and years to navigate back to something resembling life before this dreadful news.
On Monday, May 20th while staying with my brother for the one night that he was awake and able to speak, he didn’t ask a million questions, in fact he didn’t want to talk hardly at all. (He should have been sleeping but he didn’t do that either.) Instead, John asked to listen to music. Not that I blamed him. My family never left his side, which meant that he had been talked to for hours upon hours on end with no relief.
I needed the break from talking too so I smiled and obliged.
Conversations are tricky these days. Not that the words are tricky or that people are tricky… ok, maybe sometimes people are tricky… but emotions, those are the trickiest. At any given moment death is at the forefront of my mind. The loss of every moment that passes that my brother will never get to hear about. Every birthday that he will never know me “this old” as. Every funny story that he will never have the chance to laugh at. It is perpetually in front of me and while I can go whole days without crying (I have had a handful of those), more times than not those tricky tears leak out at the most inopportune time.
To anyone who has a loved one that has lost someone, I want to share a few ways that you can help… even though when you ask they will say “nothing”… because they either are overwhelmed with how much there is to do and can’t pin point one thing, or they don’t want to feel like an inconvenience. Either way, I have asked some friends whom have recently lost family members and we have come up with a short list of thirteen great ways that you can prove that love is an action word!
When is the last time you bought a car? My husband recently purchased one for me that was a beauty and the oddest thing happened (and no it wasn’t that it may or may not have been totaled within the first month - I’m okay, I’m okay, everything is okay): I saw that same car everywhere. It is like all of a sudden the Toyota Corollas were all waving back to me in solidarity like I had just joined a club that I never knew existed until I was knee deep in it.
I understand that this title seems contradictory... possibly phony... or maybe coming from someone who is not processing their actual feelings about death... but I beg of you to give me a chance to explain.
Because I have a story to share with you. Actually a few stories. They are painful and intense, so if you are at all squeamish you may want to pass on this one (although I am pleading that you don't).
It happened one evening while driving along the coastline late at night that I, as I often do, pointed to the vast expanse of water and instructed my boys to "look at the ocean"! I want them to look at it as often as possible to both be grateful for the incredible place that God has allowed us to live in, and be reminded of how big our God really is. To see the beauty of what He merely spoke into existence and let the breathtaking views wash over whatever small anxieties we may be facing.
Except this time... this time it was the middle of the night and there was no telling the end of the ocean from the beginning of the sky. Everything was dark.
What Are You Looking For?
As I headed to the back of my garage to get change for a woman buying some clothes for her son, I turned around just in time to see grandma take a nasty fall. The wet cement had gotten the better of her and I rushed over to offer my help and tell her how sorry I was for her slipping. I kept talking nervously until I realized she wasn’t understanding a lick of what I was saying. And then it happened.
Give Me A Minute
My youth pastor would always say that "delayed obedience is still disobedience" and while I agreed that it was true, I never truly grasped just how much procrastinating could harm us until now.
We have come to the age of bargaining with our youngest son. Honestly we have been here awhile now, but in the past few weeks it has escalated quite a bit. Let me just start off by saying… I am not a fan.
Rest in Him
For a great majority of my life I have struggled with anxiety. If you've ever experienced it or struggled with it yourself, you know how crippling it can be. Panic attacks grip you physically and emotionally and are all consuming.
Anxiety looks different for everyone but for me, I picture it as this tsunami like force that is rushing around inside of me. When I'm riding the wave of anxiety it becomes hard to breathe, to stand, and its almost impossible to form words sometimes. For years my anxiety made me feel weak, and I was ashamed of it. I hated the fact that I had no control over it and that nothing I did could make it better. I didn't talk about it to anyone, and I tried to ignore panic attacks to make them go away.