This morning I picked up the ashes of my dad who passed away on Christmas Eve. It was an odd sensation since my mom had just passed away six months earlier on June 25, 2021. To say things are strange in my world would be an understatement, but today I just need to take a little time and share some things weighing on my heart so I can make a little room for a breath in the midst of this storm. I hope you don’t mind.
To know where I’m coming from, you need to know where I’ve been. Shortly after the time of mom’s passing, I really wanted to write a tribute post to her, but the words just wouldn’t come. My mom and I were inexpressibly close. After her memorial service, I tried again to write my post, but again the words wouldn’t come. So, as we were approaching Christmas day (the six-month anniversary of her passing), I decided it was time to finally put my thoughts together. I almost had my post finalized, but on the evening of the 23rd, I got a call I did not expect. The memory center, where my dad had been residing for the past 2.5 years, called to say he had taken a sudden turn for the worse.
We took off for Dad’s home and sat with him for 26 hours without so much as even a nap until he passed at 6:50 pm on Christmas Eve. So now the things I had started to write in tribute to my mom got very complicated and layered with the passing of my dad. Now I write this post as an orphan, and it just feels odd. Every post I’ve ever done for my blog, I’ve read aloud to my mom. It was something we shared, something she enjoyed, and now, once again, words aren’t coming easily. There are too many of them and yet not enough. It’s complicated, but then so was the journey the last four to five years.
Not only was I close to my mom and dad, but they were also our “couple friends” for me and Michael. They’re the ones with who we went to dinner multiple times a week or on excursions together. They’re the ones with who we spent weekends hanging out or watching sporting events. For several years, the four of us golfed together six days a week! Whatever we did really didn’t matter as long as we enjoyed the time together.
When Dad first started showing signs of dementia, my entire world felt like it shifted. I immediately wanted to know everything there was or everything I could get my hands on about his condition. I wanted to know what to expect and how to navigate it as best we could. I was obsessed with learning so I could help care for my dad in a way that preserved his dignity and allowed us to keep him in his own home as long as possible.
By the summer of 2017, my world started to become very small. I would go to work, often talking with Dad several times a day to help him through issues or confusion with which he was dealing. I’d come home after work and spend about 30 minutes with my husband, try to eat something and then head to my parents’ house, where I routinely did not return home until 11:00-12:00 at night. Then I would do it all again the next day. It became my purpose. It became an internal identity even more than an external one.
My dad moved into memory care in June of 2019 due to the deterioration of his condition, and us having exhausted every technique, effort, and ability to care for him at home. It was a gut-wrenching time for all of us, but mostly for my mom being separated from the love of her life. They met when Dad was twelve years old, and he told her that day he was going to marry her. They never dated anyone else and were married in 1963. It was a blessing to have Mom move in with us after Dad moved into that wonderful memory care facility with a staff that is beyond incredible.
Life had changed drastically for our family that had already seen so much. At the time of all these changes, Mom was 23 years post-heart transplant and had definitely beat the odds, since they told us her surgery would be a GREAT success if she made it to five years. What a gift we were given to have her for so many more, but because of the large number of transplant medications she had to take every day, she developed interstitial lung disease. Eventually she needed supplemental oxygen and continued to slowly go downhill, but everything that made her who she is never faltered. Her humor and joy, her kindness and generosity, her faith, hope, and love were all just as strong as they’d ever been. She was the most amazing example of what it means to never give up and to trust fully in the Lord.
In late spring 2021, Mom started having trouble with a loss of strength in her legs, but nowhere else. She eventually agreed to go to the ER to see if it might be some kind of infection, since the doctors hadn’t been able to pinpoint a reason for two months. We went to the hospital on a Friday night, and by Tuesday, all the doctors determined it was just a very sudden progression of her lung disease. Mom came back home late that night with hospice and passed away a few days later on Friday afternoon at 4:05 pm, just ten days after she and Dad celebrated their 58th wedding anniversary when the three of us had lunch together.
In the vacuum of the loss of my mom, I struggled greatly, but I also still needed to be there for my dad. I spent great amounts of time with him, sometimes just visiting and singing with him, but other times being there to calm him down from being stressed, and even eventually assisting with his most basic daily needs/tasks. There was still a lot to do. Mom wasn’t there, but Dad still needed things; he still needed me. I still had a purpose.
Losing Dad one day before the six-month anniversary of losing Mom was a blow. It was a stunning blow. Although I tried to just pick up and keep going like I always have, something wasn’t right. On Sunday, January 2nd, I went down to my office to take down all the decorations that had been put up for Christmas. In the six hours I was by myself, I realized something is broken in me. I don’t know if it’s my heart, mind or spirit, but something is definitely broken.
Grief is a fluid pain. It is like a river that overflows its banks and suddenly has no predictable borders. There is no way to map the path and no time frame as to when it will recede again. My parents both had such a deep, abiding faith and trust in God, and so do I. I’ve written so often about a higher perspective in looking at things in life or in ways to keep holding on when storms come along. I KNOW how to walk through difficult times and losses, but this one has dropped me into a place where almost nothing feels familiar anymore. On top of the normal grief that comes with losses like these, I have lost a huge purpose and part of my internal identity. Honestly, I feel lost. The world is different now; I am different.
Faith does not prevent us from having struggles, nor does it always quell our fears. It doesn’t suddenly take away our pain or cause us to just skip on down the road, but we can still have faith while the tears are flooding our pillows. We can still have faith and trust, even when pains are so great that we don’t know where we will get our next breath. Faith, hope, love…these three things remain and abide, but not without the noise of the troubles in this life. They remain and abide despite the storms swirling around them.
We make choices every day about how we will live our lives. Emotions come along with our circumstances, but we can still choose to believe while in the midst of those emotions. There is a song I used to sing that said, “I choose to believe that You are faithful, and my life is in Your hands, and this mystery I face today is part of bigger plan. I choose not to be discouraged when the sun will not break through. I have a choice in trusting You, so Lord this is what I choose.” I don’t know that I could sing that song at this exact moment, but I believe I will get there. I believe it because I know God understands where I am and what I need. I’m thankful for that because even I don’t know what I need at this point.
The shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35, and it’s found in the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It says simply, “Jesus wept,” but the verse right before it tells us why. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He was deeply moved in His spirit and was troubled…” Just let that sink in for a moment. Jesus loved Lazarus and knew he was dead. He also knew He was about to raise him back to life, but when He saw the sisters and friends of Lazarus in such deep grief and distress, it bothered Him and moved Him to tears! He knew the joy that was about to come, but it didn’t keep Him from literally crying with sadness to see those He loved experiencing such heartache and pain. That thought brings me comfort. God knows that it was time for Mom and Dad to go home to be with Him (and each other). God knew it was going to be a grand reunion and the joy and celebration it would bring in Heaven, but He also knew it was going to devastate me and bring a heartache like I’ve never known. God knew that Heaven’s gain would leave me feeling lost and without a purpose. He knows, but more than that, He cares! When I am grieving and the tears won’t stop, His heart feels that pain and sees those tears, and it moves Him to tears right along with me.
When we are walking through the valleys of life, no matter how deep, we are not alone. God is still there right in the middle of the darkness. We may not always be able to see Him clearly because of the blackness, but He sees us as if we were in the middle of the light, because we ARE in the middle of the light. If God is with us, there is light even if we can’t see it. My favorite passage includes a verse that says, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.” Regardless of how you or I feel, there is still light. There is still hope and there is still love.
If, like me, you are trudging through one of life’s valleys and trying to find your way, you are not alone. The One who sees the beginning from the end is still working things out for our ultimate good. He can see all the joy and every great experience that is to come in our lives even though we can’t see past today. He knows it is going to be ok because He has promised to never leave us and to walk us through everything we face. He sees the you and me that are laughing and engaging with life again. He sees the you and me that are stronger because of what we are walking through right now. He sees it all, but most importantly He sees YOU. I’m not saying the road is easy, but I pray we can remember there is a path forward and God, Himself is walking with us and clearing the way with each step.
Take care of you and of those around you. Love each other; pray for each other because you never know through what valley the person next to you is walking.
Blessings.
I realize we are quickly approaching Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but this year I’ve been unable to stop thinking about Palm Sunday. Believe me, I love the reminder of the resurrection and what Jesus did so that I can be saved, but I’ve not paid a whole lot of attention to Palm Sunday until this year. Maybe it’s because I’m in a strange season of life, trying to determine where or what God is tugging me toward, or maybe it’s because I just needed to see something to shift my perspective a little bit.
There may be a good reason why he did things differently, but all I see is my unmet expectations. In my original conversation, all he said was that he was going to take care of the yard. He did not reveal other details of what he planned to do, and I created additional expectations based on the way I would do things. My expectation that the yard work would be done rests on believing what he told me. My expectation of HOW it would be done rests in everything else I assumed from his statement. Our expectations are colored by our past experiences, and they deeply affect our emotions. When we expect something bad to happen and it doesn’t, we get excited and happy. When we expect something good to happen and it doesn’t, we become upset, sad, depressed or even angry. We’ve all experienced the reality of that roller coaster when we interpreted something differently, and suddenly our world is turned upside-down because something unexpected took place.
How many times in our lives have we lived out our own personal “Holy Week?” I have been in difficult situations where I was depending on the many promises of God. I believe He knows and cares about what I’m going through, has the power to deliver me, and is working things out for my good. I have shouted “Hosanna” in my expectations and perceptions of what He has said, but then He starts working things out differently than what I expected. He starts doing or allowing things that I just don’t understand. If we aren’t careful, we watch what’s happening and start to think that maybe He isn’t who we thought He was. We look around and start getting angry that He isn’t doing more “smiting” of our enemies or my circumstances and is instead leaving you or me alone to fight for ourselves. It doesn’t take long for us to think on these things before we end up angry because it seems He doesn’t care enough to take care of us. In our own way, we go from shouting “Hosanna,” to shouting, “Crucify!” We start letting our doubts, or even anger, that arises from unmet expectations to drive our perspective, and we can end up choosing to set free the worst of ourselves rather than to trust God knows what He is doing.
Unmet expectations can cause us to doubt what we know to be true. When we hold so tightly to our version of what our deliverance should look like, or how it should come, we end up spending our lives looking for the next best solution. We waste our energy trying to resolve it ourselves and end up sacrificing our peace and joy in the process. Sometimes our deliverance comes through waiting. Sometimes it comes through struggles. And sometimes we are yelling “Crucify” at the very One who is delivering us – all because He isn’t doing it as we expected.
Happy New Year’s Eve! Every new year brings with it the hope for positive changes and experiences ahead for us. We reflect on the past year and consider what didn’t go as we expected or how we didn’t do the things we originally planned. Maybe your year has been filled with more successes and joy than you even imagined, or maybe it was filled with changes that brought loss and pain to your heart. Either way, we still seem to have this innate sense of reflection when a new year is about to begin, but why? There is something so refreshing about newness in life. It is why so many people love the season of spring so much, there is new life blooming all around us. New life is exciting and reminds us that even when the ground is dark and cold, there is life beneath it just waiting to explode into view. I guess it’s much the same sensation as we approach a new year. Winter is raging, but it feels as though a newness of life is growing, waiting to burst forth into view. New life represents a replenishment of hope. It’s a burst of energy. It’s a new focus or new commitment. But mostly it is a new perspective or a new vision of what lies ahead.
Sometimes God replenishes us and refreshes us through the difficult processes of letting go. I recently took several months off from my official responsibilities at church, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I prayed about it over and over, as it is not my nature to take a break of any kind. I always scheduled vacations and business trips around being able to be in my place of service, so to know God was leading me to take a break from what I’ve felt I needed to do really rattled my brain! The key phrase to that last sentence is “what I’ve felt.” When we insist on operating under what we feel instead of what God is asking of us, it creates the most challenging disjoints. For one thing, we are called to walk by faith, not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7). If God wants us to walk by faith and not in what we can see with our own eyes, I’m certain He doesn’t want us walking by what we feel either! Our emotions can wreak havoc on the direction God is leading us in any situation, because we want to feel like what we are doing makes sense. I’ll speak for myself here: I don’t want to feel like what I’m doing is stupid or that others may see me as making decisions that appear to be rash or thoughtless. I don’t want to appear irresponsible or flaky. I don’t want to follow God’s leading only to have others judging me to be things I am not. Since it is the holiday season, it reminds me of how Joseph probably had many of those same thoughts when he realized that none of his friends or family were going to believe (or be privy to) all the details of his pregnant fiancee or why he didn’t “put her away.” He knew how people would look at him or talk about him, but he walked the path God laid out for him and let God take care of the details.
We really need to remember that each new year doesn’t just begin on January 1st. Every breath is the beginning of a new year. Every heartbeat is the beginning of what our lives will become. Living with that kind of refreshed perspective brings hope for a better future, but whether or not anything changes depends on how we view ourselves in comparison to our Savior. Do I really think I’m smarter than Him or have more resources? Do I really think I’m more enlightened or understand more? He knows and sees what I am unable to, and He has already planned ways around or through the maze of my life. I need to remember He is working things for my ultimate good. I need to stop trying to cut openings in the dead ends just because I think I’m smart enough to see a better way and strong enough to create it. I need to remember that I am replenished when I step back, breathe, and follow wherever He leads no matter how it appears to others. I need to remember the depth of my Father’s love for me, and that everything He does or allows is is bathed in that pure and perfect love.
If you are like me, we need to let go of what we think is best for us, or the worry and fear that comes with what others might think of us, and trust what our Father says to us in His word: “For I know the plans I have for you,”says the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11) His plans for our successes far exceed our ability to create our own, and His replenishment trumps our “resolutions.” Every. Single. Time.
When God delivered Israel out of their bondage in Egypt, He intended for them to inhabit the Promised Land. The journey from where they were to where they were going was an 11-day journey (Deuteronomy 1:2), and yet it took them FORTY years to make it (Numbers chpt. 14). They wandered around in the desert for 40 years because they did nothing but murmur and complain at almost every turn. In Numbers chapter 14, God even said, “How long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in Me, in spite of all the signs I have performed among them? How long will this wicked community grumble against me?” God goes on to say He was going to destroy them, but Moses interceded and asked Him to spare them. God agreed to spare them, but then said not one of those who murmured and complained against Him would see the Promised Land. The consequences these people experienced as a result of their complaining cost them far more than they would have ever expected, and an 11-day journey became one of 40 years. God still took care of them during their 40 years of wandering, but it could have all been over much sooner, if only for a change of perspective.
God tells us over and over to be grateful, but He also tells us to stop complaining! Philippians 2:14 says to do all things without grumbling or arguing. Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” There are many other verses that tell us to speak words that lift up and encourage, not tear down and destroy, and even with all of this knowledge of what God expects from us, we just don’t seem to be able to stop the grumbling. We can’t seem to let go of criticizing others around us for not responding to things like we think they should. We walk around thinking our way is the best way, and eventually it diminishes our ability to actually listen to the people around us. You’ve probably heard the saying, “God gave you two ears and only one mouth, because you should listen twice as much as you speak.” We are losing the ability to listen for the purpose of truly hearing, and it is harming us and our society.
We all have situations in life that are extremely difficult at times. We deal with all kinds of problems and challenges, some that are gut-wrenching or heartbreaking, and it’s easy to see why we might fall into a perpetual state of complaining. When we are hit with trouble from every side, it’s hard to keep pressing forward or even to hold to our faith while standing still. Romans 4:8-9 reminds us, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” That sounds encouraging, but the truth is, in the heat of our troubles, we don’t believe those words are true. Not only that, it feels good to complain! It really is true that misery loves company. We’ve elevated complaining to an art in our society. We’ve become a people who actually tries to “one-up” each other in the difficulty of our circumstances. It’s like we wear our troubles as a badge of honor! We’ve all known people who seem to only have words of negativity about themselves or others around them. They are the ones always looking to gossip or share negative things about someone else, often in an attempt to make themselves look better or seem more important. We’ve known people who complain or grumble in order to look more like a martyr for doing something. We’ve known people who also live like Eeyore with a “poor, pitiful me” mentality. As people of faith, when are we going to wake up?! When are we going to admit that our complaining comes not just from a place of feeling slighted by others, but by believing we have been slighted by God (though we probably wouldn’t admit that out loud)?
This world is in need of joy; WE are in need of joy. That means we also need each other! We need to focus on loving each other and helping each other, rather than “wallerin’ around in our troubles” (and yes, I just used the word “wallerin’”). When we complain, we end up cutting off support we would otherwise have, because people don’t usually want to be around a complainer. More importantly, it grieves God to hear us continually complaining about our lives. He loves us and has promised He is working everything out for our good. He just wants us to trust Him because He sees a much bigger picture than what you or I can see. So often, we are just like the Israelites wandering in the desert, complaining about where or how God is leading us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to risk wandering around in my own personal wilderness for 40 years, when I could have walked through it in 11 days by trusting God, focusing on the good, and simply biting my tongue. Lord, instruct my tongue with a word to sustain the weary, and waken my ear to listen like one being taught!
The Cadence of My Soul 