Winter is a very difficult time for me. Long before I experienced grief I struggled with this long, cold, dark time of year. Seasonal depression and I go way back and for me, winter is an annual anniversary of The Dark Night of the Soul.
I'm not sure when I get to leave my winter season. It feels like I see Spring peeking through the chilly days now and then with pops of brilliant sunlight and green shoots but just when I begin to feel the warmth seeping deeper through the layers of grief something will take me several steps back into the cold. I'm in a constant tug of war wanting to move into the sunshine but feeling chained to the darkness. The seasons move as they will without regard to my clock and they are not even. Winter and Spring are not the same length. If I were in charge of the world every day would feel like April and May. I think January through March might be the longest 90 days of the year. Every year.
So my counselor challenged me the other day to make a list of things that God has done since losing Jaxson. I'm following her instructions and making myself blog this list as an act of obedience as I have no desire to count blessings today but I know I will feel better if I do. Makes me think of Ann Voskamp in 1,000 Gifts. Even she didn't feel like counting some days...
“Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency.”
“Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.”
“That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave.”
“It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us...”
“When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. How can this not be the best thing for the world? For us?”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
In no particular order:
1. God has awakened a love for gardening in me that I didn't have before. He meets me in my yard. We talk about Jaxson as I work my hands in the dirt. Being outside in my yard and garden with my plants is the single most therapeutic thing I've discovered since losing him and it's one of the only places I am nearly guaranteed to feel the presence of God.
2. God has spared me an endless list of insensitive comments others have experienced but that I, thankfully, have not. I can count on one hand the number of truly insensitive things that have popped thoughtlessly from someone's lips. I know I have been blessed to have much kindness or quiet gentleness heaped on me in the face of loss.
3. God has rearranged my thinking about the afterlife. As a Christian I believe in heaven and hell but rarely consider them in my day to day life. I have an much bigger awareness now of the reality of eternity and how it will be spent by both myself and those I love.
4. God created a sort of inside-joke with me. I won't share what it is. It's a private sort of "wink" he sends that only I understand.
5. God is endlessly patient with me. I keep going around the same tree over and over and over and over and while I am harsh with myself he always sticks around long enough for me to calm down and ask if we are good and I am answered with peace.
6. God has kept Jaxson's memory alive in other people. It's been over 2.5 years since he left us and people STILL post pictures of birds on my Facebook wall, send me cards or notes, share bird tracks in the snow or sand that they see, make me pillows (!!!), buy me bird gifts, send me quotes or book recommendations or articles that they think I will like.
7. God has kept my marriage together. I have not added a crumbling relationship to the burdens in my heart.
8. God has given me a steady stream of happy things to look forward to over the years. Trips with family, shopping days to Wenatchee or Spokane, girl's nights, Bunko, Bachelor TV nights, Bible Studies, coffee dates to catch up over good conversation, holidays, road trips, date nights, and on it goes. Small things, big things. He knows I need stuff to look forward to and he provides.
9. God sends me worship songs at very opportune times. I'm generally spoken to better through music than through just about any other medium so to discover a song that speaks to where I am always feel like a gift from God for me directly.
10. God reminds me that he hasn't forgotten about me just about the time that I'm about to give up. This is a difficult thing to write about because it's wrought with my own feelings of failure. It is SO HARD to trust God when you are grieving. When I have a bad day I get overwhelmed by emotion and tend to spiral into angry tears fighting my way through jumbled, messy words repeating themselves in my head. I want to speak words of life but I'm fighting not to be taken under by words of death. God seems silent and far away. Then just when I'm wrung out something always happens. A whisper in my spirit. A lyric. A quote. Scripture. Or just a thought that I'm not alone. That God is nearby. That this season will eventually change and my grief won't last forever. Something will remind me that God is still writing my story and he isn't finished yet. Hope. It takes much longer than I want it to and I feel like I should be faster at opening up to this whisper. But at least it happens. At least He isn't silent forever.
11. God gives me extra grace with certain relationships when they are pregnant. Namely my sister but there have been a couple of others. Every single announcement is hard and takes some adjustment. There have been some baby showers I simply have not been able to attend. But not every pregnancy has been painful the whole way through. I was able to rejoice in the birth of my nephew and I love him dearly.
12. God has opened my eyes to thankfulness on a level I didn't prioritize before. I know that I am a very blessed person. I live in a free country, have all my physical needs met, am married to a wonderful man and have wonderful relationships. It's pretty easy to be grateful for all the big things. But in grief there is power in counting small miracles. I completed 100 Thankful Days on Facebook late last year and it taught me to identify all the myriad of things I have to be thankful for every single day. Even on the very worst days there was something to be counted.
13. God enabled me to go on the trip of a lifetime through the generosity of a dear friend. I never would have been able to afford it but I needed that break from my life. I needed an adventure and something amazing to look forward to. I still think about how healing that time was with such a Kindred Spirit.
14. God has brought me a lot of prayer warriors...people who say they are praying for me; for us. Even people I didn't know prayed have told me they pray for me. What a selfless thing to do...to remember someone's sadness when you appeal to God in your prayers. It humbles me that we are thought of.
15. God helps me handle more than I think I can handle. It always feels like it's too much. But I'm still here. I still have good days. Against all the darkness I haven't given up hope that we will parent little people someday.
1 comment:
Love this. Love you. Thanks for your honesty.
Post a Comment