Marriage

I don’t acknowledge how incredible my man is nearly enough. I love him. I miss him. I adore him.

I remember somewhere through the haze realizing or being told that the divorce rate for parents who lose a child positively sky rockets. At the time, some months ago, I thought ‘That’s insane! How could anyone ever let go of the one person who understands? The one person who hurts as much as they do? The one person who knows?’

Since then I’ve slowly started to get it. No, Will and I are not separating or divorcing or not speaking or anything like that, No! But I sooooo get it. There are so many things I get now that I wish I didn’t… the list keeps getting longer. I ask God often ‘will you not leave any wound with which I cannot deeply empathize?’

There are so many layers to this one and more are mined every day.

The thing is it’s painful to be together, truly together, hearts open and bonded to each other. It’s painful because the throbbing in my heart multiplies his and vice versa. It’s nearly impossible to breathe most days and then to see your beloved in debilitating agony… unbearable doesn’t begin to describe it.

Navigating that chasm is beyond human ability. We have each long been each other’s comforter, back rubber, soothing word speaker, sounding board, secret keeper and lover. Now, the constant undercurrent of pain breeds exhaustion which leads to impatience and the negativity snowballs. Each hurting too much to be of any comfort we do a dance of relearning how to communicate. It’s a battle fought with weary limbs.

I can see how this could go to a very bad place, fast. I get why marriages don’t survive this. I get why mothers and fathers don’t survive, let alone have the strength to hold on to each other amid the riptides and tsunamis.

And I’ve realized that he doesn’t know, neither do I. As close as we are as much as we each love Damon I don’t get his loss and he doesn’t get mine. That was a sickening revelation. I started to notice that many of the places that cause me great suffering and many of the daily moments that send me hurling down the black chasm of pain pass him unnoticed. Because his routine and mine were wholly different. The life I lived with Damon was full of everyday routine, breakfasts, school drop offs and pickups, grocery stores, parks, and cooking. Most days Will wasn’t present for these things… his ache, his triggers, his missing is completely different and no less awful.

This produces further isolation, ‘you don’t get it!’ Ugh, and there is no denying that fact.

There is no recipe. There is no ‘right’ answer. I’m becoming painfully aware that those simple explanations and formulas in which I took comfort just aren’t real. Real pain, real life, real grief is not simple.

The other day on the radio I heard “life is complicated, God is not.” I almost screamed. I have to disagree. God is very very complicated as is my relationship with Him.

At present He and I are in a place of ‘betweeness’ I think my concept of Him is undergoing a complete overhaul. I’m picking up every splinter of my shattered faith one at a time, examining it and determining if it should stay or go. If it should stay it gets tucked back into my heart, though into a disheveled pile, if it should go it gets cast away. This is a long and painful process wrought with stops and starts, fury, confusion and gut wrenching realizations.

One of the things I have recognized with certainty is my need for Him. Some days that just pisses me off. Some days He is the last ‘person’ in the world I want to need. I’m down right irate. ‘WHO ARE YOU?’ But I do need Him and much to my confusion even when I don’t want to need Him if I go to Him He fulfills that need.

 Confusing, I know!

I think I’m starting to ‘get’ “Be still and know that I am God.” I don’t think the “knowing” is even remotely intellectual, at least not in my case. I’ve never been more confused about who or what or where God is. I am learning the inexpendable value of stillness in His presence. I quiet my mind and I slip into a place that is wholly other. Here He fills me. I don’t understand it. I don’t have to. I don’t think I can but only here do I gain the ability to be the woman, the wife, I want to be even when my heart is torn to pieces.  

How could there ever be anything else?

I sat in the parking lot of Isaiah’s school and cried this morning. He was late, again. I just can’t get it together. I just can’t make myself give a crap about tardys and the pledge of allegiance. It’s just so hard to remember what to do in the morning. What do you need for school kid? Ugh, let me think… It’s like slogging through mud while being whined at by a very grumpy mini-me.

After another whirlwind morning where I came away feeling like I need the ‘suckiest mom of the year’ award I stumbled to the car, plopped my rear in the seat and bawled. I sat there staring at the school where just a few months ago I would sit in my car with my baby waiting for my happy kindergartener to emerge. Now everything has changed.

Smiles are painful work for me now and my happy kindergartener is a morose first grader, my baby is gone forever. Depression wraps its cloak around me and I wonder, “How could there ever be anything else?” 

Emptiness returns

Sadness hangs like a shroud around my shoulders, draping over my back and puddling on the floor at my feet. The hood of this cloak hangs low veiling my face and when I try to walk the fabric tangles in my feet. It is the heaviest material I’ve ever known to exist. It resists every movement, draining precious energy from my exhausted limbs.

Saturday, God poured something into me as I lay beneath His display of majesty and my shoulders lifted under the cloak. Whether they knew it or not, hundreds of people ducked under this shroud of darkness and helped me lift it enough to raise my sagging head. And I danced… for Damon.

Today, that miraculous strength is waning and the shroud is resettling itself around my body. It’s hard to breathe, hard to think, nearly impossibly painful to remember what it felt like to hold him in my arms. Emptiness returns.

But I got a breath…

You're living proof

Today was amazing…

The world tells us that we can’t make a difference, that there’s no point in doing good. The world is wrong.

Today you proved that.

We raised over fivethousand dollars!!!! FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS! Add that to the nearly three thousand you’ve already donated and eight families will soon attest to the fact that we MADE A DIFFERENCE. They will be able to say we helped bring their child home. Can you fathom that?

Tonight one family already can attest to the difference you make.

Today has been nothing short of miraculous. Starting with the majesty God let me witness this morning followed by an entire day with no panic attacks, no sobbing melt downs and no emotional lock downs. I wish I could make it clear how impossible such a thing seemed yesterday. I had fun today. I am in awe of you today. I am honored and blessed by you today.

Don’t tell me God’s children can’t make a difference. You’re living proof.

Majesty

God woke me this morning at 5am. He woke me with a dream about Damon. These always shake me wide awake, breathless, heart pounding, adrenaline pumping. I got to hold my baby in my dream. He was laughing. The warmth that spreads through me when I write those words is simply indescribable. So, I’ll just leave it at that. I said to him over and over and over “I love you. I love you.” He said it back in his sweet toddler language. These are not words he ever spoke in life. Before last night I had never heard my son tell me he loves me.

When I woke I lay there, stone still not wanting the vision to fade. I kept saying it “I love you. I love you.” I felt the tug outside. When God wakes me He almost invariably calls me outside. I’m not sure why but I can hear Him so much better out there. I resisted, afraid if I moved I would lose my hold on Damon. Finally, His call became too much and I made my way to the porch.

I sat there bathing in the memory and the feeling of peace that it brought still intoning “I love you. I love you.” endlessly under my breath. I love you, I love you!

Damon Ray, I love you.

I kept feeling a tug, further, deeper. Don’t stop at the porch child, keep coming. I felt the urge to go lay in the middle of my front lawn. There were lighting flashes streaking through the still darkened sky and there was only one star I could see. I knew if I went and laid in the lawn ‘my star’ would dip beneath the trees and be lost to me. So, I resisted.

Finally I gathered my quilt around me and stepped out of the shelter of my porch. The sight that greeted me is… inexpressible. The sky was as I have never seen before, never. I tried to describe it to Will this morning and the words sounded flat and empty as they tumbled one after another over my tongue. It cannot be described. It cannot. It was magnificent and terrifying and beautiful. I laid there feeling very small and infinitely loved huddled in my blanket against the chill. I don’t think the sky has ever looked like that before and I don’t think it ever will again. I witnessed majesty and I am in awe.  

8-24-12

Yesterday sucked… sucked, sucked, sucked, sucked. It sucked.

I remember getting in trouble for that word. There are probably quite a few who still find it offensive but there is no other word. It sucked.

I had spent the better part of the month in the sick black waste of dread. Like a prisoner sitting in a cell, locked in fetters waiting for the upcoming date of execution. Only I don’t get to die. I just have to do it all over again… in October, in November, oh God… in December. You get the picture.

We released balloons in the morning before Isaiah went to school. As I watched them catch the swirling upper air and weave around each other the tears started. They washed hot down my face most of the walk to Isaiah’s school but they were nothing compared to what was to come.

I haven’t sobbed for that many hours in a row in months. I haven’t screamed and clawed and choked on my own spit in a long time. Tears puddled on my lap as Will and I sat huddled on the couch watching Damon dance on the computer screen, watching him coo and smile as an infant. Watching all that we have left of my precious child.

I scrawled his name, as big as I could write it, on or front sidewalk. Next to it I wrote his birthdate. We looked at the few pages of his scrapbook I’ve managed to complete. I didn’t even make it past the hospital before I got to damn busy. We saw me standing there in my gown, big as a house. We read the letters we wrote to him. Letters meant for him to read as he grew, to know the story of his birth, to know how much he was treasured. We saw the pictures of our newborn son…  I am sick with pain.

A friend sent us a package just after Damon’s death. I don’t remember exactly when it arrived… days are still a muddle and that time is just an ocean of nothing and everything. Inside the package was an acorn, a pot, soil and directions for planting the little seed that will one day become an oak. We planted it. I don’t remember the planting but I remember the feeling. It has grown since then, sitting next to the kitchen sink by a little window. According to the instructions about this time it should be planted in the ground. We rent our house. We are not leaving that tree.

So yesterday we went and bought an enormous barrel style pot and bags and bags of potting soil. I actually read the directions for planting a tree printed on the bags. Anyone who knows me well knows that is unusual. I never have the patience to read directions… are you serious? That’s what the pictures are for. I read the directions.

We reverently repotted our little tree. It now stands a little sprig of green in an ocean of brown soil, next to our dining room table. I love that little tree. We put Damon’s orange pinwheel in the soil next to the tree. He used to run back and forth between us beckoning us to blow so the wheel would spin. Often one of us didn’t get it spinning fast enough for his liking so he was off to the other parent with impatience. I miss him.

We ate his favorite foods for dinner. Hamburger helper lasagna, oreos, pretzels, popcorn, and cheetos. Will carved a ‘birthday cake’ out of watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe topped with grapes (the first solid food Damon would eat). “It’s an unconventional cake because it’s an unconventional birthday” Will said, “there has to be a cake.”

Isaiah wanted to sing happy birthday and couldn’t understand why all our friends weren’t over to celebrate. He wanted a party and this tearful, somber meal was not up to his expectations. It’s hard to be a parent when you’ve got nothing inside… or maybe nothing would be better.

  

We did it all… what else is there to do on a day that should have been a celebration. Nothing is right, nothing is good but you can’t do nothing. So, we did something. The something was painful and empty but we couldn’t do nothing.

We survived but it doesn’t feel like a good thing.

I thought maybe today would be better. We passed the first ginormous hurdle… It’s not better. Maybe at some point I will stop setting my hopes on some moment or event to bring relief. Relief never comes. As my sister in loss said this morning “We just keep lamenting… it’s all … all we have.”

Sorry

I feel like I need to apologize. No, I don’t feel like I need to. I do, constantly.

Isaiah, I’m sorry baby. I’m sorry I can’t play. I’m sorry I have no patience. I’m sorry we can’t go to the park or the Wondertorium. What you don’t understand is that just to say these words is taking everything I have. I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I’m sorry.

Every regret I have about Damon is currently being lived out in my relationship with Isaiah.

Why didn’t I play with him more? Laugh with him more? Slow down… tickle more… hold him more?

Now I can barely interact with my precious living child. I want to but I can’t.

Will, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I can’t cook dinner and fill our house with home. I’m sorry I can’t laugh and smile and debate with you. I’m sorry I can’t get out of bed. I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I want to but I can’t. I’m sorry I’m not the woman you married. I love you so much. I’m sorry.

Damon, I’m sorry I didn’t protect you. I’m sorry I didn’t hold you enough. I’m sorry I gave a crap about my education or the state of the damn floor. I miss you. I love you so much. I’m sorry.

World, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I can’t converse. I’m sorry I can’t join. I’m sorry I can’t care…

I fail. What will I lose now? Everything it seems because I died with my child and I can’t seem to figure out how to live again.

Empty. 

What if?

One of if not the central complaint the vast majority of those who ‘lose their faith’ (whatever that actually means) is the suffering in the world. Its horrible, intense and very very real. I’m so guilty of just shutting it out. Starving children? Well, there’s not really anything I can do about it and my world is perfectly happy so… I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear that, or see that. Genocide? Torture? Oppression? Well, not here in the great United States… except yeah, just not on my block.

Damon’s death shook me awake and for the life of me I can’t go back under the anesthesia. I see. I recently read about a teacher killed in a Compton school by a stray bullet while teaching in his classroom, students on lock down because of violence in nearby neighborhoods and children leaving a house where a mother hanged herself in despair.

There are children in some nations who travel miles from their parents and villages to sleep in town squares where they can be safe from militants who would slaughter their families before their eyes to take them as child soldiers.

W-R-O-N-G

Many point to these atrocities as evidence of a world with no God, or at least not one who gives a crap. I wrestle with this. If You are good, how can you let these horrors happen? Its so wrong.

A thought occurred to me. What if those of us to claim to follow the example of Christ were more about doing than believing? What if we defined ourselves by the fact that we love, not as in the noun but as in the verb? Rather than defining that we do or don’t ‘believe’ in instrumental music or one cup? The more than TWO BILLION of us?

What if instead of defending the status quo we attacked it? What if we took seriously Jesus’ teachings about caring for the poor, for the widows and orphans? What if we vehemently refused to allow inhumane acts to go unchallenged? What if every single one of us two billion ‘little Christs’ found even one person to help, personally, intimately? How would the world be changed?

No, not all suffering would cease, obviously. My son died because he got sick. He was not denied medical care, he did not have to drink contaminated water, he always had enough to eat. We are suffering, powerfully, deeply and often debilitatingly. Even if we all did our part suffering would continue. But not all suffering, not most suffering I’d contend.

I’m greatly challenged by this. For most of my life I’ve walked around in my insulated world much more afraid of ‘outsiders’ than desiring to do true good, to make a real change, to work hard to make this world better. Do I have the courage to do something about it?        

Permission

I went to the counselor today. Its always kind of astonishing to me how much crap pours out of me in that room, how much stuff is there boiling and churning right under the relatively placid surface. Its not that I don’t know there is pain and rage and denial and confusion all swirling inside of me I’m just amazed by how much is in here and by the forms it takes. Call me feminine but there is so much I just can’t figure out until it comes out of my mouth, or occasionally, off of my fingertips.

Just saying things outloud has a healing affect, like purging something rancid from my soul. But instead of being able to avoid the spoiled food and, therefore, its harmful effects my soul makes it, churning it out by the gallon. The need to vomit never ends.  

Today, while the ridding myself of poison was important and healing the thing that had the most profound impact was something that came in my ears, not out my mouth.

I told my counselor how isolated I feel, how crippled and paralytic, how every single every day activity is excruciating and how I feel like the world just spins and I can’t seem to get on. I don’t even want to. How I want so much to be able to do things and feel something other than blinding pain and remember my beautiful amazing son without collapsing to the floor. How there is no moment or area of my life that is even remotely similar to my life before Damon died. There is no place where the memory of him does not dance across my eyes. How I still have anxiety attacks and fits of uncontrollable rage and I watch everyone around me plan trips and get togethers and life. I am an outsider. I am utterly isolated.

She told me that she would be surprised and even a little suspicious if I had moved beyond these feelings. She said that she would be surprised if I moved to a season of ‘acceptance’ in the first year at all.

You might think that this would be discouraging or devastating news. Maybe tomorrow it will be but today it is such a relief. I guess I felt like I was supposed to be ‘getting’ somewhere I wasn’t ‘getting’ to. ‘When will you feel better?’ ‘When will you be normal?’ ‘When will you do….?’ Not now, not for a long long time from now.

I feel like I was given permission to grieve.  

a lie

I’ve been thinking (wipe that exaggerated ‘oh, I’m so shocked’ look off of your face. I can feel the sarcasm from here). The bible is pretty brutal, brutally truthful. From the faults and failures of the patriarchs (and let me just say, wow!) to the denial of Peter there are no pulled punches.

It seems to me that first, no human outside of Holy Spirit inspiration would be that honest. I would think there would be strong temptation to ‘pretty up’ the story. Do you think the gospel writers stomachs turned as they penned the details of Peter’s denial? Peter… a focal point and leader of the New Testament church. Or perhaps less condemningly but incredibly embarrassing the continual cluelessness of the apostles throughout Jesus’ ministry. “Who will be the greatest?” That kind of honesty took serious humility and that kind of humility is inhuman… at least I think so.

What if they had done what we do? What if they had put on their “church clothes” and plastic smiles and answered every question with “fine, how are you?” Where on earth would we be today? How many believers have been comforted or saved by the truth of these stories? By the embarrassing truth.

Paul tells us blatantly that we are told the Old Testament stories so that we will not be lead into the same temptations. We are told so we can learn from their mistakes.

When did we stop doing this? When did we stop being transparent?

In Judges it seems that one generation would turn to God then the next would be horrifyingly unfaithful. Did they fail to tell their children the horrors they had experienced? Were they too embarrassed or too proud to be honest? Are we? Am I?

How on earth can I hope to help anyone, to help anyone learn from my (many) mistakes if I refuse to be embarrassingly honest?

“Fine, how are you” Gag…

Then it hit me. Not only does this damage those around me and isolate me it is a lie. Is that a ‘whoa’ moment for anyone else? It’s a lie…  

A socially acceptable lie. Really a socially expected and almost required lie but a lie. 

Whoa.  

Paralytic

I’ve become a paralytic. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me but I have. I don’t function. Nothing works. I used to be the mommy. I did it all. I never realized how much I did or how defined I was by being the central whirlwind of this home.

I rose early and fed a baby, dressed him and chased him all over the house. I packed a little boy’s lunch and found library books and poured cereal. I filled sippy cups and kissed booboos and chased bare bottoms through the house with diapers. I was exhausted and often not nearly grateful enough for my beautiful life… all before 8 a.m.

I dropped a curly headed baby off at school, reluctant to leave, watching him every second until the door closed. He would sit there, fruit loops clasped in both of his dimpled baby hands, content. He very rarely cried when I left… no, that was me. I hated leaving him. Then back in the car and off to another school, gathering back packs and lunch boxes, hand holding across the parking lot, forehead kisses and ‘I love you, mom!’

Back to the house because I had forgotten ten things I needed for school. A day of teaching and learning and researching. Pushing and stretching and working.

Pick up two little boys, banana snacks in sweet baby hands, strollers and bikes and a walk to the park, giggles and chasing and a million ‘to-do’s’ running through my mind. Back to the house, a dinner to cook, “daddy’s home!” A trio of my guys running through the house, tickling and wrestling and getting in the way. A baby at my feet crying to be held, cooking, straining and chopping one handed, precious cargo on my left hip.

Dinner then clean up then off to the bath, footie pajama’s and lotion and sweet baby smells, stories and songs then do it again but bigger and older the second time around. Then quiet and breathing and homework to do… late into the night. Tomrrow it will start all over again….

Until it didn’t.

Now I am a paralytic. I search for a mat to lay down on. Will someone lower me through a hole in the roof? Where is the roof? Where is the healer? I don’t know… I am a paralytic.  

Snap

Judges… ugh and blerg and vomit. Is this really the God that I serve? Judges is vile, positively vile. I’m disgusted. I wonder how many Christians have read this book through. Not many I think.

I’ve gotten into the habit of stopping my reading when I come up against something that makes me want to throw this whole “God thing” out the window. I stop and I give God space to answer my objections. I often wonder if it’s Him or me doing the answering. Am I just finding a way to make this all work in my head? Maybe… I don’t know but I tend to think I’m not nearly so bright as to come up with many of the answers I receive.

I’ve been mulling over how in Judges the Israelites have such a superficial relationship with God. “Hey, we need your help! Everyone, get rid of your idols and turn to Yahweh!” God delivers… return to idol worship… “Hey, we need your help! Everyone, get rid of your idols and turn to Yahweh” … rinse, wash, repeat.

Really guys? Really? Is it that hard to not bow down to the Baals? Apparently it was because they did it constantly.

Superficial faith… how often has this been me? “God, I’m in trouble! I need You!” Relief comes and I forget.

I’ve also been thinking about the vile, disgusting, horrible things the Israelites did in this book and how my immediate response was to assess God based on the behavior of His people. But much of the horror in Judges was NOT commanded by God (though some was) and much was expressly forbidden in Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. Isn’t this still the tendency today? I find that the vast majority of complaints about God aren’t about God at all but are about abuses and misrepresentations by His children. Sickening truth.

So, reading along being sickened by the behavior of the Israelites then God would discipline them, often resulting in war, death and oppression. I would think “that’s horrible! What kind of God does that to His people?!”

Um… Jodie, you can’t have it both ways. Are you horrified by their behavior? Then a righteous God must act to correct that behavior. Are you horrified by God’s judgment? Then the vile behavior must be allowed to continue. Which is it?

Snap… I’m glad I’m not God. I suck at this job.   

Simplifications

After months of voracious reading and many bible studies I’m just so done with what other people have to say about God. Particularly the ‘hard’ questions. The ‘what the crap?!’ questions… We don’t say that do we? Well, I’m saying it: WHAT THE CRAP??!

I’m tired of what others have to say about who God is. So, I started back at the beginning, literally. I started at Genesis and I’m reading the bible through, without commentary. Who are You, Lord? This is my question. Only He can answer.

I’m in Numbers presently… it’s painful. It seems like God wipes out a few thousand people every few months for some form of disobedience. Its been driving me crazy. What is up with that? Merciful… loving… ?

In all honesty previously I just chalked scriptural events like this up to ‘well, it was a different time.’ Yeah, but HE is not a different God. Yahweh is still Yahweh, yesterday, today and tomorrow so Yahweh who killed 17,000 people before Aaron interceded is still reigning supreme. Ignoring that with which I am uncomfortable does not make it less true.

So, I’ve been asking Him, almost constantly. Who are you, Lord?

He is a God who kills. I don’t like to talk about that do I? I like to talk about the love, the mercy, the patience… and I try to fit the Almighty into the tiny. Then when He puts on His boots and kicks the walls down I’m blown away.

I think today He put it to me in a context I can grasp. When I taught Jr. High (and quite honestly when I taught college) the first weeks of a new year were rough. Really really rough. They were rough on me and rough on my students because they were the ‘lay down the law’ weeks. This month set the tone of my classroom for an entire year and I absolutely could not afford to let anything but anything slide. If a student stepped a millimeter over the line I had to enforce consistent consequences or chaos would reign. Such consistent discipline created a classroom environment that allowed me to teach in the “butts in the air” style that is most suited to my personality and subject. In the end it gave everybody a lot more freedom, allowed us all to enjoy each other a great deal more and I got to regularly show my kids how much I cared.

Numbers describes the establishment of Israel as God’s chosen nation. I think, in a super super simplified way, that maybe God had to get it through to them that He is the great I AM or they would have just kept suffering and never would have come into a place where they could enjoy their favored status. I’m not saying God patterns himself after teachers but maybe that good teachers pattern themselves after the Creator of teaching? – Just a thought   

Then, all of this thinking about teaching brought me back to when I was coaching Jr. High basketball. I had a precious, and I do mean precious, group of girls who I adored. They were fast approaching womanhood with integrity and I was fiercely protective. One morning after an away game I discovered that my girls, my girls, had left the bus absolutely trashed. I don’t mean it was a little messy I mean it was trashed. I was so mad I probably turned purple. Those girls ran lines that afternoon until they puked. I was beyond furious… at the same time I took absolutely NO pleasure in watching them suffer. I hated it. I hated every second and fought the temptation to let up after each set of ‘suicides.’ I asked myself why I was so mad and it was simple; I knew these girls, I loved these girls, and such behavior was way beneath them. I honestly don’t think their punishment would have been as severe if I didn’t know and love them so well. Seems contradictory but if you think about it I think it makes sense.

God tells us He disciplines those He loves. Discipline sucks and I’m soo not blowing off the death of thousands of people. It sickens me. I’m just thinking it sickens Him too.