Spiral

And the spiral continues to descend. C.S. Lewis commented on the circular nature of his grief… to enter, exit and reenter the same seasons over and over. He said that his hope was that at least he was in a spiral, rather than a circle and maybe just maybe he could hope he was spiraling upward rather than down. I have no such hope. Maybe I am spiraling upward. Maybe I am climbing. If so I certainly can’t feel it. The climb might explain the sheer exhaustion though… I don’t know.

People are excited about the Olympics… I can’t gather the energy to care. What does it matter who wins a volleyball game? Great, you can throw yourself into the air and do crazy twisty things. Awesome, how nice for you.

People are gearing up for ‘back to school.’ There are pencils and notebooks and lunchboxes everywhere. Bright colors and signs assault my senses. My stomach turns with the realization: time marches on.

I was somewhat prepared for this. I knew somewhere in the foggy recesses of my mind that this was coming. Isaiah will be a 1^st grader soon. This should be exciting and fun. I should have one child entering is first ‘real’ grade and one entering his ‘terrible’ twos… I hate the normalcy. I’ve even thought about this year’s holidays. I already dread them. My stomach turns and churns with the impending pain. Hobby Lobby (the clerks here probably wonder why that crazy, lost looking lady comes in all the time, hardly ever buys anything then wonders out the doors as if she sees nothing) has their CHRISTMAS stuff out. Thanks HL. I really needed the reminder, already, in JULY.

But I hadn’t prepared myself for Halloween. Yesterday, after a particularly gut wrenching, stuck in one spot staring at a decorative panel emblazoned with a ‘D’ moment I wondered into BigLots. No, I don’t know why. I was running… I needed to move, to not be at my house surrounded by the agony so I just kept walking… meandering, seeing almost nothing. I turned a corner and there they were, the Halloween decorations. A sharp stab took my breath away. Halloween, O God, I hadn’t thought about Halloween. Pictures of Damon in his little cow costume flashed in front of my eyes. Carnivals and candy and laughter clawed at my mind. I stumbled out of the store, barely putting one foot in front of the other. This. Can’t. Be. Real.

The pain has evolved in the last few weeks. It’s hard for me to cry now. The tears still come, but they usually come in short shallow spurts before something inside me dams the gate. I thought that the days when the sobs never stopped, when screams involuntarily ripped themselves from my throat and I could barely move from my bed… I thought those days were the worst. Maybe they were… maybe this place of steady agony only seems worse because I’m in the middle of it but I don’t think so.

I can function now, through the constant pain, through the images of my son that play on my internal movie screen. I can smile and converse and accomplish things, most days, but the loss is so much worse. The pain is so much more. The missing… oh the missing. The confusion swallows me, the questions assault me and I live in agony.

I read somewhere that Lions are known to lick the skin off of their prey before eating them. I don’t know if this is true. As a biologist I should probably check my facts… don’t really give a filp because this is how I feel. I’m being devoured and I have to live through every single barbed swipe of the cats tongue. I was not lucky enough to die upon my fall into the lion’s den, or to be ripped to shreds by the hungry cats… no they are taking their time with me. Death would have been so much better.

Damon, how I miss you.    

Platitudes?

This is real. So what am I going to do about it? I don’t know yet… but living in utter despair and defeat isn’t an option.

Will and I were talking this morning about the likely perception that we are “getting better” or “getting over it” which is completely untrue. Neither of us hurt any less, neither of us are any more “ok” or any less devastated but it’s like we’re learning to carry the pain and function within it, or around it, or inside it. I’m not sure which, maybe all three.

I remember reading about this. Sittser discusses the phenomenon in “A Grace Disguised.” He describes it as the expanding of the soul. I think of it as developing new muscles to carry in gargantuan weight. The weight is no less present, we’re just getting stronger. Ugh… did I just say that? Did I just say that what didn’t kill us is making us stronger… please tell me I didn’t. I may have to slap myself. Bleh… or as my friend says blerg… I think I like that one better.

I’ve been thinking about something my sweet sister said several weeks ago. It was something like “there’s no prescription in the bible for grief because we each have to do it our own way.” I’ve been searching the Word for a prescription, for a “how to” of surviving/understanding/not-losing-your-minding. There isn’t one… not like I was hoping for anyway.

Proverbs 14:10 says “Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.”

It occurs to me that the reason I can’t find the manual is because there isn’t one. How many parents have joked that it would be nice if our children came with an owner’s manual? Each child of God is deeply and completely unique. The only way for me to know how to do this is to consult my Creator.

No two of us experience anything the same way, let alone the most devastating experience of our lives. Will and I are certainly evidence of that. We have not “done” a single second of this the same or even similarly if we’re being honest.

That’s not to say that God leaves me with no direction, though I feel that way, often. When I am willing to listen (and I admittedly often am not) He is willing to direct. I’m amazed by how His Word is alive and active. How He spoke powerfully to me today out of both the Old Testament book of Daniel and the New Testament book of Revelation.

For me, at least at this point, the great struggle is whether or not I want Him near. Not whether or not He is willing to be near.   

Is Yellow Square or Round?

Apparently this is a writing weekend.

I went to Yoga today and got my rear handed to me. Yes, I’m one of those weirdos who likes that. I almost always feel better after a hard workout, though often the feel better only comes after the post workout blubber. Still, better.

I was driving to my house, all sweaty and sticky and smelly and it occurred to me that you amazing, beautiful, supportive people don’t ever get to see this moment. I’m compelled to write when my heart is screaming in pain, not so much in the brief interludes between.

So, I thought I’d share something that made me laugh. It made my mind twist a bit but it also made me laugh, mostly at myself.

As I mentioned in a previous post I recently read “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis. It was generally mind blowing and you’re-not-a-wacko confirming but I think my favorite quote was this.

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All non-sense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask – half our great theological and metaphysical problems – are like that.”

Is yellow square or round?! When I read this I pictured God looking at the asker with the look I so often give Will when he is trying to explain why a joke is funny, head cocked slightly to the side, a look of intense concentration, utter bafflement… then a small sigh and “Child, you don’t understand.” Of course this is my silly anthropromorphization of God. But can’t you kind of picture it?

Well? Is yellow square… or round?  

The 23rd

Tomorrow is the 23^rd… July 23^rd. That date is killing me and it’s only the ‘one month till you’re birthday’ date, not even his actual birthday.

I woke this morning and felt ok. God and I have made some inroads in recent days and I felt a little lighter. I spend time with Him today, quiet and alone. I wasn’t able to calm the storm completely. My mind still swirled and screamed but I was able to sit in His presence and feel Him there. It’s rare these days that I can do that. So, the day started out well enough, considering well enough means I hadn’t collapsed into sobs, yet.

I cleaned the kitchen, too. Yeah, I did the dishes, cleaned the counter tops, swept the floor and cleaned the stove (why does it need to be cleaned when it never gets used, btw?). I haven’t done that in nearly four months. Will and I have each intermittently put out the necessary fires, sort of on autopilot, but not a thorough cleaning all at once.

As I drug the broom across the floor I thought, “Well, I’m doing it and it isn’t killing me. Maybe in the coming months I’ll even be able to cook again.” Then I remembered.

Thoughts of cooking always bring powerful memories of my little hip ornament. I used to love to cook. Not because cooking is particularly pleasurable but for me it was a love language for my guys. I tried to cook most every night. I wanted them to have a home cooked meal, no matter how busy I was. We almost invariably ate all together gathered around the table. Dinner time was so cherished and special and Damon did it all with me.

I didn’t even realize that he had become as much a part of this cherished ritual as turning on the stove or selecting the ingredients. After he died I couldn’t do it. I could barely even be in the kitchen. Thinking of cooking made everything in me turn and twist and scream. No, it’s just wrong without him. I can’t.

Today I stood in that kitchen that was a gathering place for my happy little family and felt the hammer fall, again… No.

I remembered that tomorrow is the 23^rd. How is it that I never know what day of the week it is but I can’t ever seem to escape the date?

I thought of what it would have been like. I would have been planning a 2^nd birthday party. Tomorrow morning I would have swung him from his crib and exclaimed “in exactly a month you will be two!” I would have marveled at how fast the years had passed and laughed at how small his birthday shirt from last year seems now. But it will never be…

Oh baby boy, mommy misses you so much, so so much. Every minute I miss you.  

Idiocy

*This one was really hard to publish but here it is, being real with ya'll!*

I’ve been studying the book of Daniel and reading and reading and reading and learning to recognize the ‘babalyonian’ mentality of the prosperous west. The babaloynian mentality being characterized by the attitude of “I am and there is no other.” The tendency toward unapologetic materialism and superficial and physical focus have been the primary idols discussed. In this context something came together that has been forming in my mind for quite some time.  Where did I get the idea that I deserve or have some sort of right to and easy and prosperous life?

This world is so indescribably hard and I would venture to say this is likely the best its ever been. Even the poor of our society have access to their most basic needs. The world I live in is not the norm. Not the norm for history and not the norm for a large portion of the earth’s present inhabitants.

How many women over the course of human history did not lose a beloved child to death? Certainly far fewer than those that did. The nasty, brutal, dirty living conditions of our ancestors is simply not acknowledged by our culture. We ‘westernize’ history.

Rome in the day of the early Christian church was a place so packed with people that it far outstripped the per capita of even our most crowded cities. There was no sewage system. There were virtually no doctors, and even those often did more harm than good. Women were not even allowed in the front rooms of their homes and were almost invariably mothers by the age of 13-14, with absolutely no say in who they married. People died, usually before they left infancy.

This is just one historical society but most weren’t much better. And here I’m told ‘Because you’re worth it!’

I ‘deserve’ to have a vacation on the ocean, certainly not in a tent in the woods (how appalling)! I deserve a large, air conditioned house with a flat screen TV and my car should certainly not be more than a few years old! After all, I deserve better.

I most certainly deserve to live happily, to avoid catastrophic suffering and to die peacefully in my sleep. I certainly deserve to raise my babies to adulthood and watch them become parents!!! I think the roughly 70 million Christian martyrs to date would most staunchly disagree.

How many times does God tell me that I will suffer? It’s not as if I had no warning. He certainly was honest about it. Jesus said it, Paul said it, Peter said it… this is one of the most consistent themes in the New Testament, second only perhaps to LOVE! Yet, I tucked it behind the nearest Hobby Lobby accessory and assumed it didn’t apply to me. It applies. It sucks and it applies.

I am suffering… deeply, desperately. I am suffering. And it pisses me off, what the crap? This can’t be real!

I’m not entirely sure what this means to me but it means something. It doesn’t make me hurt any less, just as I am certain that a mother who lost her baby in a culture where it was more common than uncommon hurt no less because it wasn’t unexpected. She sobbed and mourned and screamed. I’m sure she did, just as I do. I don’t miss Damon any less because I know he joins countless children in heaven.

However, I do think that my mindset needs serious adjustment.

I used to think that to “be a living sacrifice” referred to the sacrifice of living as a Christian, the whole don’t drink, don’t sleep around, love your neighbor, forgive, then forgive then forgive some more stuff. I absolutely do not believe that today. Living as God calls me to live is not a sacrifice… it is fulfillment. When I tried to buckle down and be a good Christian and follow the rules it was a sacrifice, and it sucked but that’s not how it’s meant to be.

When I followed my own path, when I insisted on my “freedom” from those “archaic and restrictive rules” I drove myself into the ground, well, the pit to be more specific. When I tried to check off all of the boxes and “get it right” I exhausted myself and lived under the weight of constant self-condemnation. When I finally let go, submitted and let God teach me to live by His love everything changed and He wooed me into freedom.

Now I wonder if this is what it means to be a living sacrifice. To live in the tension between a desperation to go home and the inability to do so. To wade through chest deep waters of icy pain only when not being battered by tidal waves of screaming agony. To know my Father in my soul but to so often be unwilling to reach Him with my heart. To know truth but be unable to understand it. Is it haughty to feel like a living sacrifice? Is this not a claim I should make for myself? Will I one day look back on this as I do now at my previous understanding of the condition and think “Oh, how little I understood of God then! He is so much more!” I hope so.

Today I read “A Grief Observed” by C.S. Lewis. Wow, like, wow. It was one of those “dude, get out of my head” experiences. I’m so indebted to those individuals who have had the courage to publish their grief journeys. So many things that he wrote were exactly how I feel. I kept thinking “I’m not crazy! He thought this, too!” I was most encouraged by the fact that he faced his most ‘heretical’ and painful questions full on and came out still believing God.

Lewis discussed how God is the shatterer of idols, even idols of Himself. Sounds weird but a false image build of God is still a false image. I’ve had to confront that I clearly did not know God as I thought I did and clearly my faith was not what I thought it to be. God destroyed my house of cards because it’s the only way I would see it for what it was (yeah, that one hurt).

This sucks. I miss my baby. I miss my life before the crushing pain. I miss the bubble of happy I lived in. I miss not seeing the world for what it is. I want to be plugged back into the Matrix. I miss Damon. I miss Damon. I miss Damon.

I don’t understand and I love my Father. Yet another dimension of the ever present duality. I think I may be moving out of a place of hopeless desperation to a place of hopeful waiting; believing, in time, He will answer my questions and prove worthy of my trust again. Not because He has to but because He does and because I want Him to. Not even because He is currently unworthy of my trust but because I perceive Him to be. He’s faithful that way, even when I’m being a complete idiot. So, I get to be an idiot and as long as I am idiotically in search of Him He’ll make sure I find Him.    

Walk

The Tsunami is coming. I can almost hear the roar of the wave screaming in my ears but I’m just too exhausted to care. I stand on the shore watching the water recede toward the ominous horizon. I’m not even paralyzed here, I’m just done. I don’t have the energy to fear the oncoming black, the swirling sweeping suffocating memories. I know they are coming. Maybe I’ve just finally realized that there is nothing I can do about it.

When I was a teenager I spent part of several summers building church buildings in Mexico. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. We literally mixed cement on the ground with shovels. We hauled and stacked cinderblocks, we laid mortar and it was HOT. We did it all under the scorching Mexican sun. In the evenings we would gather for devotions and to hang out. I only vaguely remember these times. Not because I didn’t want to be involved but because my brain just couldn’t grasp ahold of anything through the sheer exhaustion. This is a little like that.

My counselor mentioned something the other day that lodged itself in my brain, sort of like a long lost memory that you know you know but just can't grab from the back of your mind. When she said it it struck a chord. I’ve been chewing on it ever since and I have a feeling it will evolve so as my grief evolves. As always with the Word, there’s a lot of truth to find. 

  

She said that it strikes her that when Jesus healed he said “get up and walk.” Well, yeah, you’ve been paralyzed so now that you are healed you should get up and walk, duh. But it’s really not that simple. Many of the ‘paralytics’ Jesus healed had never walked, or at minimum hadn’t walked in a long long time. He told them to do something that seconds before had been impossible.

Put one foot in front of the other. Walk.

She pointed out that Jesus has already healed. He’s omnipresent, it’s preordained. I was chosen before the foundation of the world. As far as He is concerned it is DONE. Now, He’s walking me to it.

Just keep walking baby girl. One foot in front of the other, that’s all I ask. Just keep walking.

After all, at minimum my faith is a walk. In full throttle abundance it’s a full tilt run. Just keep walking.

So this week, I shuffle along the shore clinging my mustard seed to my chest. In the dim light the tiny seed is nearly impossible to see, what with my crappy vision, but I can feel its hardness, its roundness, its texture. To my surprise all these characteristics are deeply familiar to me… and until now I didn’t even realize I carried this little thing, clasped tightly in my hand.

If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. – Matt 17:20

This is love

Today I had lunch with two of ‘my girls.’ We talked about serious stuff and silly stuff and spent no small number of words bragging on our men. I came home slightly lighter and even a slight lift is monumental when what you are carrying weighs forty million pounds. This is love.

Yesterday I sat in a room full of people who had gathered for no other purpose than to help us carry this burden. Our small group met (for the second time) to help plan the August fundraiser for Damon’s Dance. I say they met to help… they really met to plan, prepare and carry out. Will and I are nearly useless in this process. I’m not being self-condemning; we just can’t. We’re far to broken to call area businesses and ask for silent auction donations, or to ask the police and fire men to come so hoards of kids can play with their cool stuff, or to organize a petting zoo, or get a bouncy house donated. Our family is doing this… all of it.

Tears sting my eyes as I write. Not the usual tears of pain and longing but tears of overwhelming gratitude. Children will come home because of this. This is love.

This afternoon a friend knocked on our door with a handful of restaurant gift certificates. He had spent his day, in and out of the heat, choosing to forgo a million pressing responsibilities to ask manager after manager ‘would you please donate to our cause?’ because it has become their cause. This is love.

Something struck me recently about a familiar scripture. In Ephesians 3 Paul says:

I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I want to shout AMEN!!

As always, God’s Word is so multidimensional. Most single verses could teach a million different things. His Word is alive and active (Heb 4). But what keeps jumping out at me about this one (that He puts in front of me almost daily) is a phrase I had most often barely noticed: together with all the Lord’s holy people.

Jesus told us bluntly that we’re all about the love. Love God, love people… that’s what it’s all about (Matt 22:37-39).

Paul told us that without love nothing else matters (1 Cor 13).

But here’s what I think… we can’t do it or experience it without each other. In Ephesians Paul is hammering the power of God and in the middle of his breathless description of God’s power he prays that we may have the power together… to grasp the love of Christ.

It’s not something we do alone. This is love.

I love you guys.  

laughter in dreams

I had a dream last night. It wasn’t one of those dreams I sometimes have where I wake, heart pounding, breathless, certain that something significant just happened. I’d been up for a few hours, read, prayed… cried. Then I remembered.

Damon was there, sitting on my left hip. He was dressed in baby blue footie pajamas. He looked exactly like Damon, except that he didn’t quite. He was brighter. His skin was perfect, gone were the circles that often rimmed his sweet little baby eyes. His halo of golden curls sprung around his head as always, except they all seemed to do it in beautiful order, curling wildly and beautifully. And he laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed. He would kick his sweet little legs straight, throw his beautiful head back and giggle. He laughed constantly causing me to struggle to balance him on my hip. It was beautiful.

And there was more to the dream. Something was wrong, someone was scared. To my surprise there was a tiny little girl on my right hip. She was scared. There was something bad happening. I can’t for the life of me recall the details but I know I was scared too. I had to run. I had to rescue her, the tiny baby on my hip. There were bad people chasing; I remember that.

The thing that struck me as I explored this dream was that I was not afraid for Damon. He sat on my left, perfectly content, smiling, peaceful and I did not feel like I need to rescue him, only the huddled child on my right…

I hesitate to make too much of my wild subconscious trying to make sense of my shattered heart but something about this rings so true in me. I’m not entirely sure what… but something.

And above all it was so good to see him, to see him perfect and laughing!! I had to write it down, for fear I would forget what that picture looked like. I was so good to see my baby. I miss him more every day.  

Torn

 It’s a tsunami day. I suspected I saw the tell-tale signs, the way I shut down… hear and see things even less than usual… feel so much more exhausted… feel wound tight, ready to snap. And snap I did, cuz I always do, because I have to. The missing, the pain cannot be repressed. They can only be released, and released, and released.

My stomach churns and my throat closes when I think about what unleashed the oncoming torrent of tears and moans.

A little girl in a store, excitedly plopping herself down to put on her new anklet that had yet to be purchased. A scolding and berating mother, broken jewelry, yelling and an adult hitting a child out of anger. I don’t care what you call it. I don’t care if the blows landed on the bottom. When it’s done in anger it’s not discipline. It’s wrong.

My hands started shaking. I had to steady myself on the shelf of trinkets in front of me. I felt the wave of panic wash over me along with fury, fear, pain and longing. I desperately longed to rescue that sweet child. I more desperately longed to take my own into my arms.

I fought my way out of the store, barely seeing, choking back sobs until I burst into the open air. I practically ran to my car, climbed in and bawled, screamed and slammed my fist into the steering wheel over and over.

I vaguely remember guiding the car to my house and collapsing onto my bed. My man came, took me in his arms and said one thing “I don’t know why.” Of course he knew what I was thinking. Why does she get to keep her child?! I don’t understand.

For the millionth time I think “I can’t do this.” I CAN’T DO THIS!!!!

The tears are unlikely to stop today. My ravaged heart just continues to be torn… more every day. Every time I see the way a toddler puts his sweet little hand on the back of his mommy’s shoulder. Every time I pass my baby’s empty room. With every agonizing breath… torn.  

Sunshine and pain

Life is so pain filled now. Good moments hurt… they just hurt different. Isaiah has started to get the hang of riding his bike without training wheels and today for the first time we went on a walk, ‘all’ of us. Isaiah rode so well, and Will and I grinned at each other and shouted encouragement to our budding dare devil. We were the picture of an ideal American family… the daddy pushing the little boy a few steps then launching him to peddle peddle peddle off on his own, mom cheering and looking on.

But there was a stroller missing. Even in the middle of the genuine smiles I was so painfully aware that everything was horribly incomplete. My son was missing… my son is missing.

People going about their lives stopped to watch us walk by, grinning. The picture was so beautiful… they couldn’t see the gaping holes or the ever-present black. It seemed so ironic to me.

I hesitated to walk in the house when we got back. As incomplete as the moment had been, at least it held shades of something beautiful… hints of the woman I thought I would always be, mommy. As always, respite ends and the crushing pain is that much more severe for the absence of the dulling effects of a brief happy moment.

What did it feel like, to feel complete, to be whole, to be happy?

I don’t remember.     

Orange

Recently I spent a week in pretty intense physical pain. Recovery from my ‘minor’ surgery was considerably rougher than I expected and required regular doses of heafty pain killers. After four days of drug induced sleep and hazy consciousness I got stubborn (read: stupid) and refused to take my meds. In my defense I had some good(ish) reasons. I’m absolutely terrified of finding some form of relief by artificial means. I can’t explain how much this scares me. The pain is so absolute; if I found even a slight lift through some substance would I be able to let it go? I couldn’t feel anything through the haze and in scared me, bad.

So, I completely stopped, way too early. I spent the entire day in pain, a lot of pain. Finally, that evening I gave in. I took my meds, twenty minutes later muscles I hadn’t realized were tensed relaxed into the couch underneath me. I certainly hadn’t grasped that every muscle in my body was coiled until the pain reliever took effect and everything began to release. I almost cried with relief.

Today has been like that, an uncoiling of emotions I hadn’t realized were even tensed. I’ve been so overcome with pain, so steeped in the black depths of the tar that I didn’t even realize how much I truly hurt. I couldn’t even comprehend its height and width. I just lay curled in a ball barely breathing.

A friend sent me a message yesterday… just to tell me she loves me and she never forgets. I stared at my phone completely astonished. Not that she wrote me but that I had forgotten that I have friends. I’ve felt so wholly enclosed by the black the past few days I literally forgot that I am not alone. I felt a small crack in the darkness. Then my man took our little family out to eat and we laughed… another crack. I cuddled my little boy and he told me all about everything in his world. It’s a very exciting place you know. A friend invited us to eat dinner with her family, more laughter, less black… more cracks. Then my man and I curled together on the couch and talked, and talked, and talked.

In the past three months, since a Damon sized hole was rent from our hearts, we haven’t spoken much. Our language has primarily been touch. There just aren’t words, so we say very little. There have been days when the only sentences uttered in the walls of this house were “I miss him” and “I love you.” Nothing else really mattered.

But last night we talked, words poured out of us. I cried and cried, talked and listened. Something remarkable happened. Instead of my mind fracturing and falling to pieces as I had felt it was doing only hours before I watched as with each word, each affirmation, each tender touch cracks in the black exploded like fireworks across a fourth of July sky. Such. Indescribable. Relief.

Today has been orange.

A friend I haven’t seen in ten years held a memorial for my baby. I don’t know what all went into the planning but I know it was no small feat. More friends attended and likely helped plan and pay for the tree that was planted and the stone that now bears Damon’s name. That’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal. I’m not alone.

I just might survive. Today has been orange.

My little family lay on my bed most of the afternoon playing with toy dinosaurs and making up silly names. I didn’t want to run away. I didn’t have to fake it. It was good. Today has been orange.

I’ll take it.  

Well Done

Today brought more tears, more helpless aloneness, more suffocating black. I cried and cried. I couldn’t stop the flow of tears. I couldn’t crawl out from underneath the crushing onslaught of deafening pain. I was crippled… again.

There were few thoughts with these tears, just pain, just longing.

I cried and cried. Hopelessness choked me. I genuinely thought my mind was beginning to fracture. How much can one person take? I’m going to crack… shatter… I thought I was spiraling toward insanity. Maybe I am. I don’t know.

My husband, my strong, tender, broken man crawled in bed with me and kissed my forehead. “I talked to God this morning” he whispered. Something stirred inside me. Something that was not despair. “What did you say?” I asked. Will told me that he didn’t say much… just “why?” The question that is ever on my heart.

My beloved explained that God told him that Damon had done his job and then he got to come home. Well done good and faithful servant, echoed in my heart. Our son never suffered. He never got his heart broken. He never felt temptation. He healed his parents, then he went home.

Could it really be this simple? I don’t know but I know that my tears slowed and my heart lifted… ever so slightly.

Did Damon want to go home? I do… he who had the faith Jesus called us all toward, a child. It only makes sense.

Does this make me miss him less? Nope. Not even a little bit but it does lessen the pain, right now, in this moment. Tomorrow I will likely lie beneath the waves. I’ve learned that like no time in my life, now I need fresh words from my Father every day… every hour, really. I need Him to tell me the same things over and over and over. What spoke so boldly to my heart yesterday is snatched from my memory today. Maybe what I really need is just Him. Him.  

wanna go home

It was nearly 5pm when I forced myself from the covers today. I’d lain there and cried all day. Literally, all day, I cried. I cried angry. I cried torn. I moaned and wailed. Broken pieces of half a conversation penetrated the air like pieces flying glass, my half, a never ending whirlwind of questions. Why? Why? Why?

I miss him with an aching agony I cannot describe. I want him back!

I worked up the courage to look at a picture today, after I had dragged myself from bed. Will ordered several pictures of Damon, at my request, some time ago. The envelope sat on the counter for a week. My heart clenched every time I passed it. The images that I knew were inside swam in my mind. I literally see Damon everywhere but pictures, pictures rend new holes in my soul. I remember that, I think. He’s alive in my memory. He’s in my arms in my memory. A few seconds after I took this I scooped him and kissed him… no more. The pain is unbearable. Will it ever stop getting worse?

The picture is one of my favorites. Isaiah is blowing a dandelion and Damon is running toward him, aglow, giggling, happy… alive. I want to die.

Will I ever not want to die?

I had to have surgery this week. It was ‘minor’ but I had to be fully sedated and cut open… so not so minor. Will and I approached the day with marked sobriety. Nothing is minor. We knew I could die. Granted, I could die anytime but that reality is strikingly more apparent under sedation with your belly cut open.

My husband was scared and I was scared for him. I thought about how I would feel… I sat on my front porch at 4am the morning of my surgery and asked God not to take me home that day. That was painful but the idea of the pain my passing would inflict on my man and my son was more than I could bear.

I thought that moment marked some sort of turn in my heart. I realized I needed to live and actually asked God to preserve my earthly life. I thought the desperate desire for death would be behind me. I was wrong. Today, I just want to die.

The black just keeps getting blacker. I see everything through a veil of excruciating pain. I lay in my bed today staring at the window, unable to comprehend the sunlight. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s a mockery. It doesn’t warm me or brighten the choking darkness. It lights everyone else’s lives… just not mine. 

Damon, I miss you. What are you doing my baby? Does Jesus cart you around on His regal hip? Who cuddles you if your mommy is not there? I don’t know how to live without you… will I ever figure it out? I’m so anxious to be home with you. I miss you, my love. I miss you.

I wanna go home.