April 4, 2006

On March 23 it was five years since Levi was diagnosed... I love this time of year because it's the beginning of new life. The tulips come up from their winter hiding place. The grass gradually turns green. Hope seems to be coming back to life. But then again I hate this time of year too. Everything that is coming to life somehow reminds me of the losing of life that we watched with Levi. There's another thing that I've noticed about my heart this time of year... Fear! I feel afraid that something is just around the corner... something terrible and tragic. Somtimes I think I'm past this (or should be), that I 've grown enough spiritually and mentally to see this fear thing for what it is. But then out of the blue I'm a child. I see a "boogie man" behind every shadow. I hate this feeling... kinda like a sittin' duck. I'm trying to trust the LORD... but at times feel like a spiritual whimp... a sissy of sorts. My "anchor" seems to be so shallow right now. I would feel so much safer, more stable if it were deep in the water rather than tossing about with the waves at the surface.

I guess it all comes down to Love. Everything usually comes to this... I mean if I really believed that God loved me completely and purely I would also believe that He would meet all my needs even in the midst of great tragedy and funny thing is , I've already been there. I've seen Him in action, felt His presence, walked through the valley with His hand in mine. So, what's the deal? Why can't I trust Him now? Why can't I believe He really loves me? I just don't know. It's an ugly thing I see in me...

At the beginning of this school year Graci would cry every night before school... it wasn't that she didn't like school, quite the contrary, she loved it. So, why did she cry? Because she was afraid I would forget to pick her up from school... when she told me this I was shocked to say the least. I asked her, "have I ever forgotten you before?" She said, "no mam." " Well then, why do you think I would forget you now?" I asked. She didn't know. She was just afraid of the possibility of it. Do you know how I felt when she said this? Shockinly, not sad. I was mad!! I was greatly offended that she didn't trust me. I mean how could she think such a thing? I orchestrate my whole day around picking her up... so I told her... (sounds harsh) but I told her that it was like she was calling me a liar. I told her I would pick her up and she doesn't believe me. Tears me up!!!!! Then, as I was telling her this the LORD said, very, very clearly to my heart. "Now you know how I feel about your lack of trust" His words were so loud and clear in my heart I stopped mid sentence in my "sermonette." HE was showing me myself... and man was I u-g-l-y. Graci and I hugged and talked about our struggle... turned out to be a great time for us to talk together about the deep things of our hearts... but after that night she was still afraid the next night... so was I. We weren't instantly "cured" of our trustlessness. It has taken time (Graci is completely over it now) I still struggle... but am learning to trust again, slowly but surely.

Ya know I've heard people say that losing a child (or anyone we love so deeply) is like having an arm or leg amputated. We never get over it, we just learn to live without it. But I think it's more like being completely comatose and coming back having to relearn everything. Learn how to walk again, talk again, eat again and hardest of all trust again...

How true I have learned Psalm 40:4 to be---"Happy the man who puts his trust in YAHWEH" But it sounds so easy...

Brennan Manning said, in his book Ruthless Trust:
"The basic premise of biblical trust is the conviction that God wants us to grow, to unfold, and to experience fullness of life. However, this kind of trust is acquired only gradually and most often through a series of crises and trials. Through the indescribable anguish on Mount Moriah with his son Isaac, Abraham learned that the God who had called him to hope against hope was eminently reliable and that the only thing expected of him was unconditional trust = to be convinced of the reliability of God. " Later, he says, "trust must be purified in the crucible of trial."

So, I guess I'm in process...in the crucible... still...

After my "Graci without trust experience" I learned that it was actually more pleasing to my heart to hear her say to me, "Mommy, I trust you" than it was to hear her say "I love you." I realize that "I trust you" is a deeper "I love you." So, I'm learning to trust again... love again... because I'm learning again, that I am loved...
Lord, I trust You, help my lack of trust.....

jami

May 26, 2006

It's early morning... the kids are still asleep...school is out for summer and I have a sense of hope for new things... Usually, I get up and start making lunches, cleaning an then rushing off to my day. I try to have a quiet time but honestly, usually it only lasts a few minutes and those minutes are half-hearted. And then I wonder why I feel empty during the day... I have a feeling of being full and yet so empty... overfed and undernourished. It's the busy-ness that fills me. But none of it seems to matter in spiritual terms. I plead the blood of Jesus over the kids every morning as they're walking into school, we pray together but they've turned into mere words... they all run together... familiar words that have lost thier crispness because we hear them with our ears and not our hearts. Shame on me! I've let the extraordinary become ordinary.

I sat on the front porch this morning. It was quiet and still. The sun was coming up. It was brilliant. It happens every day but I just stopped taking the time to notice. Today the sun was so bright I couldn't look at it... I just closed my eyes with my face toward it... I talked to God and said, Lord, so often I don't see you... I won't see you... I can't even look at you but today I change. I'm turning my face to you... I know you see me... I feel you on my face... and it was so good...

Today I feel sad for children... my own, as well as every other child in the world but especially the American child. As I enjoy the stillness of the morning I wonder if my children know how to. I wonder what awaits the children of America when our culture won't let them be still. We rush from place to place, game to game. Their only "still" time is when they're sitting in front of the TV or riding in the car and even then we feel the need to entertain them, keeping their minds and hearts at a perpetually busy state. They couldn't possibly know how to listen to God, how to hear his "still small voice." God whispers but we are shouting over Him. What have we done to our children? What are we doing to them even as I write this? We have deprived them of silence and the tender voice of God hidden in it. Today I will begin to teach Caleb, Jonah and Graci how to be quiet before God again (they used to know). They already have "quiet time" places in the woods. I'm going to send them out with the question, "What pleases the Father most?" After all, isn't that the question we should all be asking all day long? I think I know the answer and I hope they will hear God tell them on their own... "Come away with me and I will teach you great and unspeakable things..." "... be still and know that I am GOD..."

This past week I saw something that I thought was unjust. I wrote a letter to the person that had done this thing and let her know how I felt. I did not go to the Lord before I wrote her. I prayed about it as I was writing the letter but I think I was too angry to hear His voice. It was drowned out by my own self righteous scream. Ugliness.. I felt so proud and good after writing, what I thought was a very constructive letter, then I heard back from the person I wrote. She was clearly hurt and shocked. I can't tell you how crestfallen I was. I was so ashamed. I felt like Peter. He was so zealeous to do the right thing in the name of righteousness. But it wasn't what God wanted. He didn't ask and neither did I. He cut the soldiers ear off and I did the same thing to this person. So, Jesus had to go back and "fix" the soldiers ear. And so it is with this person. I think I caused more damage than good and now He'll have to go back and pick up the pieces. And why did I do this thing? Because I had forgotten how to get still and hear God. If I'm totally honest with myself, I really didn't want to hear what HE had to say because I was going to "do the right thing" no matter what HE said. Messed up, I know...

My goal this summer is to get still again. To go away with HIM. There is such peace there. Such hope. There is a "plan" with Him and I need so desperately to see some sort of organization in this life of mine... to know that I'm not just randomly walking through... I need to have an anchor... a home... a Father... and He is here if I will only listen...

jami

August 19, 2006

... read a book recently that was really thought provoking. It's called "Under The Overpass" by Mike Yankoski. Mike and his friend felt led by God to live as homeless on the streets of America for five months. The book is basically a journal of all that God taught them while they lived as the "unlovely." It's a great book and I highly recommend it. I read it a few months back but still think about it all the time. I compare the feelings in my heart to the feelings of the outcasts in our society. I know our pains are different and I can't even imagine the kind of rejection and pain that a street person endures on a daily basis. I am treated with respect and they are treated like animals. I am treated with love and they are given hatred. I have the hope of three meals a day while they have to beg and steal just to get one meal a day. I go to sleep in a safe and warm bed, and they are cold or hot at night and never know where their "bed" will be for the night. So, there are so many things about the homeless that I know nothing of. But there is one thing that I know and am coming to know more and more as time goes by: The lonely feeling of being ignored. Let me explain. Now that I've met and continue to meet new people that never met Levi. They never knew the me that lived before the "night" fell on me. My very closest new friends are the ones who dare go there, to my past with me. They can't go all the way but they let their hearts hurt for me, see Levi, love him, hurt for my kids and Jeff...they let themselves imagine what it would be like to be reduced to a graveyard visitor... I love my new friends because they love me in spite of me and all the baggage that comes with a friendship with me... I don't like to share my Levi with just anyone anymore. I used to want to say his name to every person I met... to tell his story... our story... but now I try not to share him (which is really hard because I feel like a liar if I don't). But I've learned that people ignore him. When I say something like, " I have a son who died 4 years ago..." they say nothing. They don't say "I'm sorry," they don't even acknowledge that I said anything. So, I guess they don't ignore me but they ignore my pain. They ignore my "secret." The secret that I have put out there to see what they will do with it. When I put it in front of them I long for them to ask me what happened. I want so desperately to say his name and tell them what a beautiful and amazing man he was and is. I want them to know that there is something missing in me. I want someone to ask me about his eyes and how blue they were. I want someone to ask me what his hair felt like when he laid his head in my lap and I ran my fingers through it. I want someone to ask me if his belly button was an "inny" or an "outy". I want someone to ask me what his favorite flavor of popsicle was.... I want someone to ask me what Caleb, Jonah and Graci were like with him...I want someone to make me see him in my mind again with their questions... I want someone – anyone to not be afraid of the me that is at the bottom of that hole inside of my heart. I don't know why. I guess I just don't want him to be as gone as he is when his name isn't spoken. I want to shout at rude people that don't care about anything but their own agenda... my brokeness is screaming from inside—"You arent' worthy to have known him anyway," "Go ahead and ignore him and the hole in my heart, only the special deserve to hear his name and know the uncalculable worth of him."Who needs your heartless 'I'm sorry's' anyway????"

I know I sound like a spoiled brat... I guess I am. It's just that I miss him so bad... O GOD I miss him. I still have need of him but that need will not be met for such a long time.

I'm at the end of my "grief rope." This happens to me about every three months or so. I know that I need to go to my closet and curl up in a ball and cry. I know that I need to let the pain seep. But I don't. I let it build up and build up until I can't hold it any longer. Then I can't control how it comes out. Sadness and anger trickles out when I least expect it. I cry all the time... just little tears here and there. Signs that the dam is about to break. I don't know why I put it off. I guess I'm afraid that if I let it out I will spin out of control like an untied balloon. Even now, as I write this I take breaks to drop my head and sob... so afraid to let it all out at one time. So afraid to be out of control... again...

I should be used to being out of control. I've been "there" ever since Levi was diagnosed (actually I was out of control before but became painfully aware of it when Levi was diagnosed.) This is the hardest part of the Christian life... letting go of my perceived ability to control things...the dying to self part. I mean look at me, it's been four years and I'm still trying to control how people respond to Levi's death! I'm learning (again) that everything would be so much easier if I would just die to it all. Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over." John 12:24. It used to sound so easy before. It was. But this is a "deeper death." Carol Kent, the author of "When I Lay My Isaac Down" wrote this: " A seed has to give up its familiar form as a seed, allow itself to be buried in the dark earth, and trust that God will bring new life – even lush life – when the seed sprouts. In the same way we need to be willing to give up whatever is most familiar, comfortable, and precious to us, allow ourselves to sink into the darkness, and trust God to bring life out of what feels like death. This is the mystery of fruitfulness."

jami

Latest Update