Mileposts...and tragic mannequins

Well, we've made it through a couple of big ones.

Michael's 27th birthday was last week, and today was the first Thanksgiving without him.

I wasn't sure how to approach his birthday; not knowing what would be the best and most meaningful way for me, for us to mark the day.

I know families who faithfully celebrate the birthday of their loved one every single year, with cake, with balloons. I think that's really lovely. Is that they right way for us? I wasn't sure.

Talking with my husband about it, we both just ended up shrugging our shoulders. We'd never walked through the death of a child before; never passed a child's birthday like this. We just really did not know what would make it work for us.

In the end, we did...not really anything. Which was maybe the right thing for us, this year. At any rate, it's the way it happened.

I changed my Facebook pictures to images of Michael, the morning of his birthday, and wrote a short post about it. As I clicked the "publish" button, my heart sort of quivered. I felt...fragile. I suddenly knew that I could not sit there for even one more moment. I could not absorb the kind and loving responses that would follow. I decided in that moment to not look at my computer for the rest of the day. It was the right choice for me. My heart could not do it.

I knew that we had some practical things to take care of that day, but had imagined that we would still do something special...like maybe go for a hike with our other son, who lives here. But that didn't happen. He ended up having a really busy day. So did we.

We are in the throes of preparing for the next big transition in our lives. We needed to take a big load of our things a day's drive away over mountain roads, to store them. This needed to be done before the snow came. It just happened that the day we needed to pick up the U-haul truck and get it loaded was Michael's birthday.

So...that's how his birthday passed. We worked hard all day, loading the truck with everything we had ready to go into long-term storage. Our son Josh came over during a brief window of free time and helped with the heaviest things.

After we were done loading, we scrounged something easy for dinner, and the day was over. My husband went to bed early, as is his habit. I checked in on Facebook, and some tears fell as I read and responded to the very loving words people had posted on my page, and on Michael's.

I guess that, for this first birthday-without, this was the right way for the day to go. Maybe it would have been too much for my fragile heart to put too much emotional weight into the day, trying to mark it in some deeply special way.

Today was Thanksgiving Day...all about gratitude and family. I thought, this morning, about the gaping hole left by Michael's death, and decided to just focus on having a good day. Nothing big, just a simple, good day. Our two youngest kids were here. I'm exhausted and battling allergies, so dinner was slow and late. But that was fine. We just had a low-key, relaxed day. Everyone pitched in to make dinner. We watched part of a movie and worked on a jigsaw puzzle. It felt right.

With everything going on, my emotional resources are fairly compromised. I don't think I could have handled marking Michael's absence on these important days in any meaningful way.

I had not realized the tentative state of my emotional equilibrium until a few days ago. I had gone to the "shopping town" a couple of hours away, to run some errands. This is a normal part of rural life. We drive a hundred miles for basics. I was at my last stop of the day, walking through a Fred Meyer store, and as I passed by the menswear section, I suddenly felt like I'd been punched in the chest. I glanced up at the mannequins, and I suddenly saw our beautiful Michael. Why did mannequins have to get big and muscular now, of all times?! The shoulders and arms of those display models broke my heart, looking so much like his, and I fought tears as I walked away. Who would have thought that headless, gray plastic men could make me cry? Fragile.

The bottom line is this: there is no right way to do this.

Every single person walking the harsh road of grief is just doing their best to survive the impossible. Death is horrible. Having a piece of your living heart torn away is an unspeakable pain.

To keep getting up each morning, keep eating and breathing and tending to the details of life, is a very courageous act. Those who can make it through this dark night of the soul without turning to destructive things for ease are profoundly brave. For those who can't, I have fresh compassion.

I am so proud of our family.

We are making it, one hard, jagged step at a time. We are loving each other and giving each other room to walk this road in the way that works for each of us.

We are making it...and for that, I am deeply grateful.

When you wobble, widen your stance

My dad is an interesting man, full of ideas and theories and a wealth of knowledge. Our family has some wonderful memories of hiking and backpacking trips in wild and lovely places. Something I have been thinking of recently is one of his bits of outdoor wisdom. It applies to my current journey in a way I'd never considered before.

Some of our hikes to our favorite wilderness areas were conducted after dark. This may have something to do with lack of time management, or with Dad's boundless optimism over just how much he could accomplish before leaving town, but sometimes it was simply due to a pileup of delays. One time, our late departure was caused by Dad having five flat tires in the space of just one day! Yes, five! All four tires and the spare, one after another! He would just get one fixed and get back on task, and another tire would go. On that trip, we reached the trailhead at 9 pm, loaded up and started the hike down into the river canyon. We reached our campsite at midnight. Memorable. :)

On those after-dark treks, Dad would use the opportunity to teach us new skills. He is all about teaching in the moment! He showed us that even without a flashlight, once our eyes adjusted we could usually pick out the trail. We did have flashlights; he just wanted to show us that we could survive without them if necessary. He also showed us how, when it really was too dark to see the trail, we could still follow it by feeling it with our feet. Most mountain trails are slightly cupped, with the edges rising up a little. He showed us how, if we would widen our stance and set our feet further apart, we could feel the upward curve of the trail edges. This enabled us to follow the trail, even when we were blinded by the dark. It was slow going, but not impossible.

Lately, I have been thinking of this philosophy in broader terms. Often, if a person feels a little unsteady on their feet, just widening their stance will help. I have seen Dad do this as he has aged. Instead of a quick narrow stride, he walks a slower, more careful, wider-set pace. It gives him better stability. Any time you feel a little unsteady, a little wobbly on your feet, setting your feet into a wider stance can help. Even in the shower, with your eyes closed while washing your hair, widening your stance can keep you steady.

I have thought a number of times about how Dad's approach can apply to daily life...but then I took the idea even farther. In the past four months, under the heaving load of terrible grief and tremendous change, I have wobbled severely. I am usually a pretty independent person, tackling tasks on my own rather than letting others help. This journey has changed that.

I have needed the help of those around me, to help me keep going, to keep me from toppling over.

I have accepted offers of help with cleaning and packing, with errands, with just washing dishes so I could move forward. I said yes when a friend offered to launder Michael's clothes before they went into storage.

In a way, this is just like what Dad taught me on those trails through the night woods, decades ago. This path was too rough and too dark for me to walk it alone. My load was too heavy, and it threatened to knock me off my feet. So, I widened my stance. I took hold of the hands reaching out to help me. I accepted the support of my friends and community. I let them help me carry the load.

I also widened my stance in spiritual terms. I reached out for the support that was offered in my relationship with God, and in the promises of His Word. I grabbed onto God and leaned into Him, hard. I looked avidly for the evidence of His love and mercy in those first, very dark days, and I saw it so clearly. I fixed my thoughts on words like Psalm 34:18- "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." This helped so much.

So I encourage you, when you wobble, to plant your feet on firm ground and widen your stance. Take the hands of those who offer you support and let them help you to stay on your feet. Lean into the deep comfort of those spiritual resources, of our loving God and all His promises; hold onto them tightly.

It really does help.

A couple of unexpected things

In addition to the general feelings of exhaustion that accompany grief- the very limited reserves of emotional and physical stamina- I have noticed a couple of other effects.

In general, people see me as pretty outgoing and friendly. When I did the Myers-Briggs personality test online, though, I was surprised that my results showed me as being more than two-thirds introvert. Once I thought it over, it really made sense and helped me to build some better boundaries into my life. Through that, I learned that I really do need time completely by myself in order to recharge, so that I can have the energy for happy-fun people time.

I realized recently that in this grief journey, I am operating as if my Introvert percentage is much higher, more like seventy-five or eighty percent. I get drained much more quickly by human interaction and need much more time to recharge.

The other thing that I've noticed (and so have our girls) is thinner hair. Stress has varied, far-reaching effects within the body. In me, it heavily impacts my adrenal system and thyroid function. Thyroid function has a direct relation with the health of skin, nails and hair. The girls and I have all noticed that our hair is definitely thinner the past few months.

Not earth-shaking, but some effects of intense grief that I had not thought to expect.

Words that kept me from drowning...

I could also have called this, "My wooden box in the frozen ocean."

Usually, I have a terrible time memorizing things, especially (ironically) Bible verses. If I do manage to commit a Bible verse to memory, I can rarely remember the address (where to find it in the Bible).

Then, June 25th happened. In the week that followed, one verse became branded on my mind. I think this was a grace-gift from God, giving me words that I sorely needed, and imprinting them on my mind so I would have them at all times.

Psalm 34:18
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Those words, and the truth within them, were the things I clung to that kept me from going under. In the wild, seething chaos of agonizing loss, I held onto those words as fiercely as if they were my only hope for survival.

That recognition of the depth of my devastation, and the reassurance of the loving, attentive presence of God in the midst of it, kept me sane.

I had not known this verse before that week. It came to me, possibly through the devotional book I have been using, and the words blazed in the darkness.

The comfort and hope of them helped me to breathe. I felt myself gathered up and held, cradled close to the heart of my loving Father.

Other words that helped greatly, in those first weeks:

Isaiah 43:2a (the first half of the verse)- When you go through deep waters and great trouble, I will be with you. When you go through rivers of difficulty, you will not drown!

You will not drown. Those words spoke directly to how I felt, for a long time. Not long before, I had watched documentaries on the earthquake in the Indian Ocean in 2004, and on the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883, and the widespread destruction caused by both events. The image of floodwaters that I had, after Michael's death, was not of a swollen stream, but more like what I'd seen of those catastrophes: nightmare chaos, being overwhelmed by churning water spiked with debris and full of horrors.

You will not drown.

In the midst of shattering loss and paralyzing shock...you will not drown.

I thought through the reasonable options for response to our devastating loss. In the past, we had sometimes said to one another, "How do people make it through life without Jesus?" Now, I looked with calculating eyes at the ways some people cope without that hope and help- turning on one another and tearing one another to pieces, turning to alcohol or other means to dull the sharp edges of the pain, losing my grip on sanity, and suicide. No, I was not feeling suicidal, but I did suddenly understand, from the inside, how it could look like a welcome escape from terrible pain.

Those would all be quite reasonable responses to the depth of our suffering...but each would come at a dreadful cost to myself, and to the people I love best. After looking at the options with curiously detached calm, I turned away, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, I will do this by clinging to Jesus." He was, quite literally, the only way I saw through this dark valley that would leave me (all of us) whole, together, and sane.

I have sometimes thought of Jesus, and the world condition, this way: the entire earth is consumed by a devastating flood. Jesus is the one guy with a life boat, going everywhere, to every person, leaning over the side, reaching out and saying, "Come, I will take you to safety. Grab my hand!"

When I was a little girl, I accepted His offer. I prayed the little prayer, asking Jesus to be my Savior. At the time, I didn't really understand what that meant. It was very real to me, but I had a shallow understanding of the decision I'd made. Being a Christian, belonging to Jesus, was a part of my identity from then on, and I grew in understanding what that meant, but I had trust issues. Some things in my life had given me a skewed and faulty view of who God is, of what His character really is. How can you love someone you don't trust? And how can you trust someone whom you don't really know? Over the decades, through various means, my understanding of who God really is deepened and grew. It became more clear and true.

All that time, I had been fighting God. I pictured myself like a toddler, sitting on the floor and clinging to a post, with my arms and legs wrapped tightly around it. God was tugging on my waist, urging me to let go, but I thrashed and fought and whined and screamed...afraid of where He wanted to take me...when all the time, He was just trying to hold me close and take me someplace wonderful. Disneyland. The Pacific Ocean. Monument Valley. Hawaii. Paris. Because I didn't really know Him, I did not trust that His plans and ideas for me were good. About ten years ago, I finally let go of the post. I finally stepped out in trembling trust, letting God have every part of my life, and cautiously willing to go where He wanted to take me in life.

What a wonderful surprise it was, to learn that God is not distant, calculating or impossible to please. He does not use my life as some sort of objectively interesting experiment. He does not have some secret, unattainable standard that I will forever fail to meet. (That's the whole point- we can't meet the standard of His holiness, so He gave us Jesus, who does it for us! What a relief!)

He does not sit back in condescending disapproval, watching me struggle and fall.
No. He loves me. Loves me!!!
He loves me with wild affection, boundless wisdom, and infinite patience.

Zephaniah 3:17 has become one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible:

"The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you; He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing."

That is how He loves me!

And in the weeks following Michael's death, I felt the reality of His love like never before.

Picture a tall, burly, bearded man, gentle in his power and strength. He sees a wounded little baby bunny, crouches down and gathers it into his large, callused hands. He cradles the bunny close to his heart, warming it and keeping it safe, murmuring reassurances in his deep, soft, rumbling voice.

That is how I felt, in the searing chaos of our horrible loss.
Cradled. Held. Protected. Carried. Loved.

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Yes.

My heart was shattered, trampled and destroyed. My spirit was mangled and crushed.

But God, my infinitely wise, powerful, tender, compassionate Father, gently gathered up my broken, bleeding pieces. He held me close, and spoke quiet words of love over me. He soothed me and comforted me. He protected me, shielding me with His love. He infused me with strength far beyond my own. He grounded my mind with gentle sanity, quietly sure. He held me while I cried like I never have before. When my grief and loss pressed so heavily, suffocating me with their intensity, He lifted the weight from my chest and freed me to breathe. Every deep breath felt like a merciful gift.

He held me so close (The Lord is close to the brokenhearted).
He gave me strength and sanity and helped me to breathe (He saves those who are crushed in spirit).

In the agony of this terrible loss, I flung myself into His arms, and He caught me. I clung to Him, and He held me close, loving me in the midst of my pain.

I learned to understand, more deeply than ever before, that God is to be trusted.

When He is the only hope you have, you find that He truly is enough.

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18

...words that kept me from drowning.