The Gift of Remembering

Yesterday was a regular day around here; Dr. appointment, kids playing, chores, and school work. I'm trying desperately to wrap my brain around computery things and discovering that most how-to's and tutorials assume a level of prior knowledge that I do not have, so I spent hours studying/working and have very little show for it.

At some point I logged on to the breastfeeding support group that I help run and found that one of our mamas had experienced the unimaginable, the loss of her 10 month old baby. That kept me preoccupied for much of the rest of the day. Not actually doing anything, but thinking about it extensively, considered ways to reach out, and yes, crying for this dear mama.

Josie often climbs into our "remembering spot" and looks through photo albums of Mom, but yesterday it just caught me in the gut. I'm getting to that grief stage where it is not constant, but when it occurs it is very forceful. And so, I sat with her, held my child, and remembered.

So between the frustration of hitting brick walls in my studying, having a grief day in our home, and the loss of this baby being on the forefront of my mind, it was a rather topsy-turvy day, emotionally speaking. Last night after a grocery run and picking up the kids from VBS, I sat down again to quickly check in on FB before bed. There was the little red flag notice that I had a message and it said a friend had sent a photo. I opened it and saw the beautiful photo I've shared here. 

Back story - after mom passed away, I was struggling with how to talk to the kids about the fact that her body was not going to be interred in a casket the way they may have seen in movies or shows. I spoke about this with a friend who I just think the world of. He has a way with words and a way of viewing things that I often haven't considered. He did help me out by talking through this and giving me some ideas. A few days later, he wrote to tell me that as they worked in their yard this spring, his family had planted a sunflower in honor of my mother. Yesterday it bloomed and he sent me this photo.

As I sat and cried, cried for this mama who is just crushed with grief, cried for myself and our family as we experience this very different kind of grief and trying to figure out our new normal, I also cried over this gift of love and friendship. This gift of their family remembering and honoring someone they've never met.

At the end of the day, we want to know that our loved one mattered, that their life meant something, that someone else in this world is holding space for them. We need to know that our loved one's life had meaning, and of course by extension, that our lives have meaning. Let me be clear, I believe in eternity and heaven, but for now, I'm a temporal being in a temporal world and the here and now is what really resonates with me.

We each need to know that we matter, that someone would miss us if we were gone. Struggling hearts often express, “no one would miss me if I weren't here, so what is there to live for?” And on some level we all wonder that. Will there even be a hole when I am gone?  We recognize that we are but a speck in the vast universe, but we have this immense need to know that our speck matters. That the speck of those whom we loved, matters.

One of the greatest gifts you can give to a person who is grieving is the gift of remembering their loved one-and letting them know that you do. So every February, I think of Ellen and remember her loss. Every July, I reach out to Belinda as she grieves her husband. Every time I see a giraffe, I think of Ruth's mom.

Tim has passed this gift to me. That sunflower is going to complete its bloom, the seeds will feed birds and some will drop (or be collected) and re-grow next year. And thus, in a yard, 3,000 miles away, my mother's memory is nurtured. Her speck is enlarged. My heart is healed.

Redemption: Reversal or Restoration?

Her face was pretty, and so young that I wondered at the age of the man beside her. A couple, new to the area, attending our church for the first time. When I introduced myself after the service, I saw that her face and her eyes did not match. Expressionless eyes, numb, windows to a soul that was absolutely shattered. She fumbled for a silver key chain frame that was attached to her purse. “This is my baby boy. He is gone.” The “older” man was her husband, his visage and bearing bore the ravages of the loss of his son and the burden of worrying for his wife.
As time went by I learned the story, and realized that both of them were still in their 20's. That she, a happy and hopeful girl, had been changed into a broken woman. A year and a half of uncertainty, a year and a half of mother-love and determination to sustain her medically fragile child, ended in crushing grief. That his demeanor was from the shell-shock he was trying to function through.
Grief, anxiety, depression, these loads rode heavy on this couple. Still reeling from their grief, came the pain of secondary infertility. Then pregnancy loss. Outwardly I hugged and comforted them; inside I screamed, “Lord, how much can someone bear? “

Fast forward and there are two other beautiful children now. He grows younger as the years go by, humor and wit in his eyes, a grin on his face, a spring in his step that befits a young man. And yet, a depth, a wisdom that comes only from having spent so very long in such a very dark place. She can laugh again; there is life again in her, adoration in her eyes as she holds her treasures close.

Still, there are days when the waves of anxiety come. I may get a text or a call. I tell her I love her and to hold her breath, to come up for air on the other side, this wave will pass.
There is no “fix” for this. No miracle that will turn her back to that young woman who assumed that life and family was neatly laid out, full of dreams, confident in the future. That girl died when her child did.
But I have been privileged to see over the past 7 years this broken woman turn into something else, something deeper, richer. A woman who can see pain, whose heart can break with others. I have seen her grief go full circle, and where I have held her in her brokenness, she has, in turn, held me in mine. She has a capacity for compassion that can only be born of being crushed.
She has not been “delivered” from the grief, from the emotional trauma; but has allowed (and is still learning to allow) that trauma to be the very place from which her redemption comes.

-----

“God, I've given you this over and over.”
“God, why haven't you delivered me yet?”
“God what am I missing? Am I supposed to be learning something?”
“God, did I do something wrong? This still isn't fixed.”

What if the answer isn't ever going to be what we want or wish for, or even what we have been taught to expect?

What if the miracle is not rescue, but it is redemption?

We so enjoy a good rescue story. We thrill to a testimony where God changed a person and then returned all that was lost. We term that situation, “success.” We seek that, strive for it, and when it doesn't happen, wonder why God did not move. But striving for this version of healing tends to make us focus backwards, trying to get back to where we were, who we were, instead of forward to where we are going.

My friend lives with anxiety and depression. She suffered a significant loss that changed her.
A false understanding of redemption could lead us to believe that without a “full” reversal - no more anxiety or depression- that this woman is not a success story, that she has not been restored.

We are shaped, sometimes irreversibly , by what happens to us, but that does not make us unusable. Redemption is not reversal, but it is restoration.
You might say, “but my pain was self-inflicted, my damage is from sin, from bad choices.” To that I say that the redemption is there for you too. Scarred, misshapen, it does not matter. Forgiveness and restoration does not always reverse consequences or negate the law of reaping what is sown. Reaping and sowing is a universal principle, both natural and spiritual, but redemption is far more powerful. Redemption is the idea that all of this can be used for good.

There are amazing stories and testimonies that can happen, and sometimes do. They should be honored, but they should not be elevated as the expectation. Because not every baby is healed, not every straying spouse comes home, not every bankrupt family finds a check in the mailbox, not every addict is instantly delivered. We rejoice in those stories, absolutely. But I suggest that the healing of a shattered mother is also a miracle; that the divorcee who remains faithful to God though their world has been rocked is also cause for praising the Lord; that the family who continues on, day after day, in the midst of financial crisis is also worthy of noting; that the addict who gets up, and gets up, and gets up, is reason for celebration.

God may, sometimes, write our story as a reversal, but he always, always writes it as restoration and redemption. Let us live and prosper where we are, instead of feeling like we have not yet arrived. Embrace the redemption that God has for you, focus not on the scars that remain, but the healing that they represent.

Redemption

“If God is so powerful, why doesn't he ….?” I would  guess that each of us has either heard this, said this, or felt this, at some point in our life. The context is usually some sad or terrible circumstance that left the one asking feeling broken and hurt.

I would like to share a story of redemption. I do not pretend that my one story universally proves a point--although I do believe that God's redemptive power is indeed universally possible. When he doesn't remove the circumstance, he can redeem the pain.

My mother died. She lived with us for 7 years. Health up and down, but mostly down and declining. Usually the decline was slow, but she would occasionally have a big drop and then that would become the new normal until the next drop. The last six months she was quite ill, the last four months, on hospice.

5 weeks to the day after mom left, the mother of my dear friend and neighbor went to heaven as well. I was honored to be a part of those final days and hours.
________________________

I have a disturbing fluency in skills no one wants to know.
Rolling, turning, changing, adjusting pillows, crushing pills, filling syringes.
Taking minutes to dispense just a few drops, carefully, so as not to choke the throat of one who can no longer swallow.
Swabbing the dry mouth, relieving the cracked lips.
Setting the mood of the room, flowers, music, light levels, even scents.
Tone of voice, gentle touch, stroking the hair. Enough to let you know I'm here, but not enough to disturb or overwhelm.

The relationship with death. It is our enemy, but it is inevitable.
Can I come to a truce?
I cannot control the fact that it comes, but I can comfort how it takes you.
I will not let you feel fear, or pain, or loneliness, although, we all know that the last step you must indeed take alone.
At least alone from my perspective. I pray not from yours.
Loved ones, angels, God himself? Surely someone is there to take your hand in the moment I must let go. Anything else would be too cruel.

But now what? When life has revolved around care for so long, what does one do with these accumulated proficiencies, this unwanted expertise?

I have my family, they need me, but a different part of me. This part, with its particular set of skills, feels useless now, vestigial.

But then comes a call, “I need help, I cannot.”
It is ok dear friend, because I can.
I step up and say, “wait, I know this one!”
I will hold her, touch her, love her like my own. Stroke her brow, whisper endearments.
With practiced ease, I perform the tasks so you are free to hold her hand.

And in this way, I find redemption.
My pain becomes a blessing.
My grief is assuaged.

I have a lifetime's worth of skill, but only one mother to spend it on.
God in his wisdom, in his grace, mercifully gave me another.

time

At the end, time moves backwards.
 Years turn to months, then months to weeks. At some point we begin to measure by days, then hours... minutes, moments, breaths, and that final measure of time, heartbeats.

An entire life distilled down to the last heart beats.
At this point, words are useless; there is only touch, feelings, yearnings, groanings.

Did I say enough?
Did I do enough?
Did they know?


As if it knows it is about to be cast off, time bends in the space around this soul readying for departure, normal bounds do not apply. In those days, time stretches out, each hour lasts forever.
Nothing makes a minute last longer than counting breaths.
 20,
12,
7,
5.
Each minute an eon, yet not long enough.

In the space between one heartbeat and the next, the light goes out. The next heartbeat doesn't come. The bird has flown, thrown off the surly bonds of time and space, now a part of eternity.


For those left behind the warp continues, for a short while at least. Hours and entire days, lost. But then, as if to make up for being slowed, time speeds up, unimaginably! What do you mean it has been 3 weeks? 6 weeks? 2 months? Where has the time gone? How dare the rest of the world keep moving... hurtling, along?

I held my breath as hers slipped away. And I'm still gasping.