Years ago, when Randy and I were waiting to adopt our older daughter, I wrote a book about infertility.
The book’s introduction is titled “My Pile of Stones.” Here’s how it begins:
My mom died in April last year—on Good Friday, to be exact—and my father passed away five weeks later.
Twelve months earlier, we never would have predicted any of this. My mom had Alzheimer’s disease and lived in a nursing home not too far from me. My dad lived in the nearby town where I grew up and visited her every day—rain or shine.
My mom had mobility issues but still knew us and seemed quite healthy. My somewhat frail dad was doing OK on his own, but his health deteriorated dramatically last fall. He was hospitalized with congestive heart failure in late November, got worse in rehab and joined his wife of 60 years in long-term care right around Christmas.
While it was touch-and-go with him, nobody expected my mom to start declining. It’s almost as if she snuck past him into heaven when none of us were looking.
The days and weeks following their deaths were a blur of mourning, questioning, processing, sorting and transitioning. While I still miss them both terribly, the grief has “softened” somewhat, as the leader of my GriefShare group suggested it would eventually.
For the last six months or so, though, thoughts of “this time last year” have crossed my mind frequently. Not just the events, as hard as they were to witness at times, but also my responses and feelings.
I’ve cycled through many what-ifs and found great comfort in the truth of Psalm 139:16, that all the days God ordains for us are written His book before one of them ever comes to be.
Still, each month brings the possibility of an unknown slew of emotions. And while it may seem a bit silly to be afraid of future feelings, I find that I often am.
As someone who almost always reads the end of the book first, I want to know what’s coming. I wish I could just go to the library, check out The Logical Girl’s Guide to Grief, make a chart of what to expect and start checking off boxes one by one.
But of course, there is no such book.
I especially dreaded December—the month my dad declined so steeply and in such heartbreaking ways. Now, in the days leading up to Easter—and the first anniversary of my mom’s death—I can’t help but wonder what it’s going to feel like.
I’m inclined to be a bit anxious about it, until a familiar scripture crosses my mind one morning.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)
Some translations use the word “danger” instead of “evil,” and I think that fits here. Feelings aren’t normally dangerous, but they certainly can feel dangerous.
As such, we might want to take steps to squash or bury them—to do anything in our power to keep from experiencing the hurt, grief or anger even more acutely than we already do.
Lately, though, I’m discovering that there is another way.
As we revisit the valley of the shadow—approaching milestone dates after the death of a loved one or when seeking counseling to help us heal from any kind of loss—we’re going to feel what we’re going to feel. Sadness, exhaustion, anxiety, pain, thankfulness, regret, joy, anger, peace—any or all of the above, at any given time.
There’s nothing enjoyable or pleasant about most of it.
We don’t have to fear any of these feelings, though, because God is with us.
The feelings come and go, sometimes like a flood or a hurricane, but He remains.
His rod and staff—representing His divine protection and guidance—are there to comfort us. The Holy Spirit and the truths of scripture point us back on the right path when our intense emotions cloud our perception of reality.
And when it all gets to be too much, the good Shepherd—our good Father—will tighten His loving arms around us and carry us until we are able to set our own feet on firm ground once again.
♥ Lois
NOTE: This post is part of a collection called Help for Parent Loss. To read more, please click here.
Each month brings the possibility of an unknown slew of emotions. And while it may seem silly to be afraid of future feelings, I find that I often am. Share on X The feelings come and go, sometimes like a flood or a hurricane, but He remains. Share on XPhoto by Thanti Nguyen on Unsplash.
Easter is going to be different this year.
I’m writing this in early March (before Covid-19 effectively shut down much of our lives), and already I sense this.
I’ve walked past the billowy dresses in the girls’ clothing department and felt the pang of knowing that my girls who used to love such attire have different styles now. I’ve passed the “Easter” aisles at Wal-Mart and felt another twinge as I realize this may be the last year that both girls will be at home on Easter morning to open the baskets that Randy always prepares for us.
I’ve seen the blog posts, viewed the Instagram stories and even heard the sermon references to this season of sacred preparation. There’s so much good information out there about how to focus on the real meaning of Easter and teach your family to do the same.
But I haven’t given anything up for Lent. I’m not delving into an Easter devotional. I don’t even know if we’ll break out the Resurrection Eggs this year.
What I am doing, instead, is actively mourning the loss of my mom in a way that I wasn’t able to do last year because I was so focused on my dad and his swift decline after she died.
(That’s pretty heavy for a one-sentence paragraph, isn’t it? My word for 2020 is “full,” but it also applies to 2019, when my parents died within five weeks of each other.)
My mom loved food, so a big part of this mourning process includes intentionally making recipes she was known for—her famous spaghetti sauce, chicken cacciatore (passed down from her Italian mother), biscotti (flavored with my dad’s favorite, anise), Lazy Man’s Chicken (covered in foil “shiny side down,” as she always instructed), her Italian meatballs.
I’m not weeping into my sauce pot, necessarily, but I am thinking of her. As I do, I’m feeling both sad and incredibly grateful.
It seems like kind of a gentle grieving, if that makes any sense at all. And somehow during this season, that seems very appropriate and natural.
As the calendar moves toward Resurrection Day, it comforts me to remember that our suffering Savior is a “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” (Isaiah 53:3). He knows the joy my parents are experiencing in heaven, but He also understands how much we miss them.
He knits our families together, after all. And when some of those stitches unravel, even after a long and useful life, it still hurts.
I wonder how the next couple of months are going to go. Will I reflect on my mom’s passing more on Good Friday, the day she died last year, or on April 19, the actual date she died?
Will Easter Sunday feel joyous or sorrowful or some mixture of both?
I guess I’m about to find out.
Writing about grief and grieving is always a bit tricky. I don’t want to give the impression that because I haven’t written about this topic much lately, I’m all put back together—better than I was before my mom died in April and my dad in May.
I don’t want to put readers off with all the grief talk, but I also know that reading about someone else’s experiences before it happens to you—or perhaps while it is happening to you—can be helpful.
Maybe sharing what it looks like for me right now will give others a little bit of courage to fight their own good fight, whatever the loss.
Grief ebbs and flows, this I know for sure. And at this point in my own journey, I’m inclined to think that this movement is good.
If water just sits there, it gets stagnant; it needs to be stirred up every now and again. I’m finding that the natural process of grieving fosters this kind of turmoil too.
It’s OK to mourn, even when it prevents you from getting into the Easter spirit.
It’s OK to wish something bad hadn’t happened, and also to be relieved that it’s over.
It’s OK to feel conflicted, to not know why we feel the way we do, to wonder what convoluted stew of emotions the next days or months are going to bring.
It’s all OK, even when it doesn’t feel OK, because of Psalm 23:4.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
♥ Lois
This post is part of a collection called Help for Parent Loss. To read more, please click here.
God knits our families together. And when some of those stitches unravel, even after a long and useful life, it still hurts. Share on X It’s OK to feel conflicted, to wonder what convoluted stew of emotions the next days or months are going to bring. Share on XI like my routines. And like everyone else, my routines have been completely disrupted.
Here’s a very minor example. The other day, Lilly was running on the treadmill in the basement right when I wanted to do my morning devotions, also in the basement. It would have been sorta hypocritical for me to get upset at her for disturbing my Bible-reading/prayer-journaling time, so I brought my materials upstairs to the dining-room table and popped open my tablet.
Last week, when the cancellations started snowballing, the grocery aisles started emptying and the emails about how all the banks, libraries and churches are responding to Covid-19 started multiplying, I started thinking about what I might share here today.
It’s impossible to ignore the situation, and yet, what is there to say about it that hasn’t already been said a thousand different ways?
Not too long ago, on an anxious-feeling Monday morning, I scratched out a little message about hope and the fear of the unknown.
I wrote it in the second person, but if you happened to read it when I posted it here the next day, you probably guessed that I wasn’t just writing to “you”—I was also writing to myself.
The previous week, I had been stressing about a mammogram I hadn’t even had yet. I had skipped this annual test the previous year for a variety of reasons, and I continued to put it off even after life settled down some.
In January, I had a sinus infection that caused a lot of coughing, which led to some worrisome (at least to me) aches in my chest. As it was getting close to the time of year when I usually have a mammogram anyway, I finally decided to go ahead and get it done so I could set my mind at ease about those pesky aches.
Even before the appointment, the what-ifs started assailing me. It wasn’t just, “What if they find something?” It was, “What if they find something now that they would have found last year if I had only had the test when I was supposed to have had it?”
(Please tell me I’m not the only one who does this.)
I’ve had to go back for follow-up ultrasounds a few times in the past, and everything has always been OK. There are no guarantees, of course, but the logical and reasonable response would have been to take one thing at a time.
I was having difficulty with that, though—almost to the point of ridiculousness.
I know the Bible verse by heart—the one about being anxious for nothing. Nothing! That pretty much covers everything, doesn’t it?
I’ve struggled mightily with worry in the past, but life experiences and the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit have broken many of those chains. Not all of them, though.
I had the mammogram on a Friday, wrote the aforementioned blog post the following Monday, and got the “all-clear” letter from the imaging center a few days later.
All that worrying for nothing, right?
A friend later suggested that my battle with the fear of the unknown may have been connected to grief—turns out, her own anxiety was exacerbated and life just felt more unsettled when she was going through the grieving process.
It made sense and was even somewhat of a relief. Being aware of this connection might not eliminate future anxiety, but at least I can be on the lookout and perhaps recognize that this is what’s going on next time I’m overly anxious about something.
Not all fear of the unknown is rooted in grief, of course. These days, uncertainty swirls around us like a funnel cloud, threatening to pull us under with the most recent headlines about the coronavirus, the upcoming presidential election or the latest natural disaster.
Closer to home, perhaps the unsettling unknowns have to do with a child heading to college for the first time, aging parents with declining health, where our careers are going or how a serious illness is going to play out for us.
It’s enough to keep even the most stalwart believer up at night, worrying about all the what-ifs.
Philippians 4:6-7 assures us that when we come to our heavenly Father with our concerns—turning everything over to Him through “prayer and supplication”—the “peace of God that that surpasses all understanding will guard [our] hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
This kind of peace is for real. I’ve experienced it; you probably have too.
But God also “knows how we are formed and remembers that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:14) As finite human beings, sometimes we get anxious. And sometimes that anxiety is compounded because we can’t stop feeling anxious.
I don’t have any permanent solutions for this problem. But I can share a daytime promise and a nighttime prayer that might help, at least during the next 24 hours.
When the fear of the unknown assails you during the day, mediate on the powerful truths spelled out in a verse that has been stuck on my refrigerator door for as long as I can remember.
“The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.” (Deuteronomy 31:8)
And when your worries wake or keep you up at night, offer up a plea that author Jan Karon (of Mitford fame) calls the “prayer that never fails.”
“Thy will be done.”
Hang in there, friends. God is with us, and we can find rest in Him.
♥ Lois
The 'peace of God that that surpasses all understanding' is for real. Share on X Hang in there, friends. God is with us, and we can find rest in Him. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee and Grace & Truth.