Brave, Anyway

Tag: healing

  • Not Final

    Not Final

    Dear friends went to Horton’s today and sent me a picture of my Dad’s headstone. It was just installed and I hadn’t even had a chance to get out there yet.

    It. Hit. Me. Hard.

    So final.

    Final because it was the last task for me to double check.

    Final because his name is in writing on a stone.

    And then I remembered.

    Not. Final.

    It’s not final.

    It’s a body with soil and stone – what’s left when the soul is gone.

    What’s actually final is his destination; where his spirit went.

    Today is the part of Holy Week when we typically focus on the fact that Jesus was crucified. But it’s also the day that we can choose to remember some of the last words He spoke, sharing with a criminal the final destination He was looking forward to. Today you will be with me in paradise.

    Dear Dad, I’m guessing Paradise rocks. Now that I’ve recalled the word paradise, I can’t get those old David Lee Roth lyrics out of my head. I have a renewed love for 80s metal since you’ve been gone. You’d be horrified, and your scrunched up horrified face always made me laugh. The process of living and grieving, trying to set the example you talked about, means tears one minute and animated talks of Easter baskets filled with goodies the next. I ate a lot of the girls’ chocolate before Easter this year. A lot A LOT. But Amazon saved the day and delivered more just in time. I’m not getting all the things done each day, but I am getting the important ones done and done well – so I think you’d be proud. It’s springtime and everything is blooming. Remember that time you pulled over on 64 and picked the wildflowers I thought were so pretty? The ones that we later discovered are protected by law and there’s even a giant sign saying so?! Fun times. Miss you, Dad. I’m OK and I know it. Hope you know it, too.

  • Good Grief

    Good Grief

    There’s no right way to grieve people say. To people who are grieving I say There’s no one right way to grieve.

    I am unsure if people mean it when they say it or if they are just offering encouragement. What I am sure of is that after seeing countless family and friends grieve people and situations and lives they’d hoped to have, I mean it when I say it to them. What I am equally sure of is that I do not think that it applies to me, because often it feels like I’m grieving all wrong.

    Losing my Dad and my bonus Dad five weeks apart has me asking myself each night if I did the right things that day, if how I am feeling is too much or too little, if they would agree with what I said or did, if I’m setting the right example for my girls, if God is rolling His eyes at me or pleased. And every day I fall asleep still having no idea, really.

    My father-in-law lived with us for almost 15 years. Ella does not remember a time when her Papa Ted wasn’t downstairs. I’m thankful for his consistent and loving presence in their lives, and his support on all their hard days. I’m thankful that he got his wish to spend all his days at home, not in a hospital or in a “place old people go to die.” And I’m thankful that he embraced the unconventional, and that together we showed the girls what family is truly about.

    Grief is so many things throughout each day. It’s sadness when you want to tell that person something. It’s frustration that you suddenly have to figure out a bunch of stuff. It’s happiness that your loved ones are no longer held back by old bodies. It’s anxious idleness during the times of day you previously had tasks with or for them.

    Navigating grief is like driving through the streets in Grand Theft Auto or The Transporter. Sometimes you’re looking for something, sometimes you’re racing, sometimes you make a quick turn to avoid something, sometimes you accomplish something and feel great and celebrate, sometimes something unexpected hits you hard, sometimes great music comes on and makes you smile, sometimes you screech to a halt and don’t know what to do next.

    My current stage of grief is the one with no sappy or slow music of any kind. The Beastie Boys, Eminem and DMX are all safe. Even on the way to church: The Humpty Dance. It’s also the one where I limit the number of people I talk to in a day, where I fall asleep at 8 pm and wake up at 1 with a dozen thoughts all vying for attention, and where I am so secretly enraged at Audrey’s teacher for giving homework that I consider all the steps it would take to find her address and print 100 copies of the work we did and attach them to real estate signs that could then be placed all over her yard. How’s that for showing my work?!

    It’s also the stage where I really want hugs but wonder in the middle of them if I am really doing it right, or at least OK.

    The house is different. The world is different. Maybe I’m different – I’m not sure yet. But a new season is ahead, one where God is going to do a new thing. Whatever that new thing is, today it seems far away. Today’s job is to drive carefully, no tickets and no tricks on just two tires.

  • Freedom Thoughts

    Freedom Thoughts

    Today began before the sun fully came up, with loud noises and flashing lights. An ambulance at a neighbor’s house immediately had me praying, and also immediately transported me to the night my Dad died and how the world looked as I arrived at my parents’ house.

    Red flashes. Red is the color of stop. Red is the color of danger. My eyes filled with tears as my heart filled with heaviness.

    And just as quickly as the heaviness came, the urge to choose a direction filled my mind. A deeply ingrained habit, a gift my Dad gave me, to be mindful of the direction of my thoughts and emotions.

    My Dad’s gift came in the form of a book – for me, a life-changing book. I first read Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Meyer as a young adult, when I desperately needed freedom from fear. And although its pages have countless lessons, the most important one for me is this: I am in control of all my thoughts and I choose which thoughts to dwell on and which ones to discard.

    This morning I had a choice to focus on praying for someone else or on sadness, grief, and fear. I chose praying for someone else. But as I’m human and all up in my feelings right now, an hour later and for the rest of the day I was focused on and looking back over my scribblings about fear and progress and the year of freedom.

    When I think back on all the times in my life where fear had the most power, I had at some point made a choice to walk with or in forces that did not embrace light in the same way I did or needed to. For me, freedom is in the light. I am the strongest when I use my free will, my freedom, to choose light. I am the strongest when I surround myself with other people who choose light.

    Are light and love interchangeable here? As in Light and Love? That brings me full circle to Mat Kearney’s Closer to Love, a song that can transport me back to the smells and sounds of CHKD halls just as fast as those lights this morning transported me back to 3 weeks ago.

    She got the call today
    One out of the gray
    And when the smoke cleared
    It took her breath away
    She said she didn’t believe
    It could happen to me
    I guess we’re all one phone call
    From our knees

    But that song and those memories all have a happy ending now. A light associated with them. A love associated with them. A freedom associated with them.

    I’ve been looking for my eagle, a symbol of freedom, and still haven’t seen her since my Dad went to heaven. I think she holds some sort of secret I am supposed to unlock. A behavior I am supposed to learn from. But until I see her, I’m stuck with Google and bird websites to try and figure it out. What I know with certainty so far is this: in order to fly, birds or planes must have a balance of forces. NASA has really complicated ways of explaining this but Toni Morrison says it so simply: You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

  • June in Pictures

    June in Pictures

    June: in like a lion and out like a lamb, just like the weather in March.

    Ella is at Appalachia Service Project, serving in Dickenson County. Teams like the one she’s with travel to Central Appalachia from around the U.S. to repair homes in some of the most beautiful country in our land.

    She will never be the same – because of the opportunity to serve, because of the worship, because of the people and their stories, and because she’s never gone this long with limited cell service. I am so ridiculously proud of her.

    Ella and teammates working on flooring.

    Today, Audrey has been cancer-free for an entire decade. A decade. It was and is just an unbelievable glorious gigantic miraculous miracle.

    My favorite Facebook Memories moment.

    About a week ago, one of Ella’s pals shared a moment she captured on Ring Dance night that she forgot to send, and it’s just *the* most adorable thing. It was a really windy evening and this picture captures that, along with the looks of happiness that young people have on their first big night as kind-of adults.

    I love these smiles.

    At the trampoline park, Audrey encouraged a room full of kids to line up boys against girls for dodgeball – and then talked serious 5th/6th grade trash. I loved every minute of it. Girls won.

    That look!

    I had my mammogram this month, in the month I hate to have doctor appointments. There’s no picture of this. The follow-up letter informed me my breasts were dense but fine. I’m not sure how I feel about them being called dense, but I’m considering it a win that I didn’t get something in writing that called them saggy.

    June sky on one of those nights I was anxiously waiting for test results.

    My parents had their 50th wedding anniversary and we all celebrated under the big tree in my sister’s yard. I love that tree, and it’s lesson that deeply planted roots result in abundant life and growth.

    Two seconds later he gave her rabbit ears and she rolled her eyes.

    Pancakes played Fortnite from the pink gaming chair that is Audrey’s throne. She loves when the girls are home to play all day, but she gets far fewer treats now that Audrey is here all day monitoring my every move. Cute cuddly things need treats!

    Princess Pancakes Sassypants

    Even the cats got along this month. While Henry Fonda always loves Katherine Hepburn, Kate rarely loves Henry and generally delights in bullying him.

    A rare moment when Kate tolerates Henry’s affections.

    June was good. The angsty minefield month is finished, and it was really, really good. I am ridiculously blessed, and thankful to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that I ask or think.

  • Keeping Myself Honest

    My journal entry from January 19, 2014, was called Keeping Myself Honest. I wrote it and then shared it because I really wanted to not wimp out and I thought I might.

    I have been thinking about going back to church.

    Since Audrey was born, I’ve only been a couple of times – early on to show everyone we were OK, then once a year later to have her baptized.

    Some people know I haven’t been attending and some people don’t. I’m ashamed of it, so I’m pretty good at hiding it. Truthfully, I think I am closer to God now than I have ever been. I pray about everything, all the time. I just don’t go to church right now.

    Why did I have Audrey baptized in a church I haven’t been attending? Tradition?

    Because I still believe in God. And because I want to cover her with some sort of protection shield – she’s God’s child, so with that protection she can’t be sick or overtaken by illness.

    But God’s children sometimes do get sick. I, of course, know that. I’ve seen people much more faithful than I who had a much sicker child than mine was. People much more faithful that lost their child. People with n    o faith at all, or who have the “wrong” God,  whose children got a horrible diagnosis but were healed – or who never even were sick! So who did something right and who did something wrong? Why were some people’s children healed and some not? Was it luck of the draw? Is it something the parents did or did not do? What is the secret? And why haven’t I under covered it yet?

    I was a pretty good pregnant person – I didn’t eat junk all day, didn’t smoke, etc. Yet people who treated their bodies horribly were having healthy children while Audrey was in the NICU. People who didn’t want children were having healthy children. I’ll admit I wasn’t a happy pregnant person. I didn’t feel well and I was grumpy to say the least. Was that it? But then why Audrey – I was the same way with Ella and she’s fine.

    Was it the oats I sowed in my younger years? Perhaps I was being punished for those. Was it the cheese I ate, the painting we did in her room, the water I drank from the tap, the chemicals in my lawn, or the fact that I laid more on my left side than my right?

    Was I not really as good of a Christian as I thought? Was God disappointed in me? And if so, seriously, was THIS the punishment?

    No, of course not. I *think* I have finally resolved that the answer is pretty simple. We live in an imperfect world, and sometimes really crappy things happen. It just is. Some people lose their children and some people don’t. Some people have children with medical issues and some don’t.

    So why not go back to church after this epiphany? Because of intense emotions. Shame. Anger. Thankfulness. Sadness. Love. The desire for anonymity.

    Shame: I have spent a lot of time wondering what I did to bring on the cancer diagnosis for my child. Other people have to wonder the same thing. How horrible must they think I have been at some point in my life?

    Anger: I have been a Christian my entire life. Not that anyone deserves a cancer diagnosis, but seriously this is what I get? Aren’t I owed something a little better than that?

    Thankfulness: I am so grateful, every moment of every day, that Audrey is healthy. When I walk into the building that we call church, sometimes I am so overwhelmed with gratitude that my eyes fill with tears. Just as I don’t know what I did to deserve the diagnosis, I also don’t know what I did to deserve the miracle of healing. It is humbling, to say the least.

    Sadness and Love: These two are uniquely tied. There are people at church that truly care about me, that I have known my entire life. They sent me cards/texts/messages that conveyed their love and hope and faith, and I cherish each one. But what I can’t get out of my memory is the looks on their faces during those early     days. They would see me and immediately their countenance would change. I could see their pity, and I still hate that. I could see their sadness and concern, and I am still overwhelmed by it.

    Anonymity: Sometimes I think it would be great to just meet all new people who didn’t know and who wouldn’t make me feel all these emotions. Do people know I will never be the same again and would the people I grew up with be disappointed by that? Is that a failure, not getting back to your old self? Does everyone see us through the lens of the cancer Audrey had? Of that time in our lives. Do I? I think maybe I do and that frustrates me.

    Did you notice that I didn’t say “Audrey’s cancer?” That was purposeful. I don’t want to speak anything negative or even slightly acknowledge in my speech that the cancer is Audrey’s. It most definitely is not. Call it superstitious. Or call it the southern Pentecostal belief that words have power and can work for good or bad. Call it neurotic or silly or sad. I believe it’s a bit of all of it, and frankly if I read somewhere that a daily ritual of hopping on one leg while singing Mary Had A Little Lamb had worked to keep someone else’s child cancer-free I would probably do that, too, just in case.

    I am thinking about going back to church, because I need to be fed. I am thinking about going back to church because Ella and Audrey are missing out on something that is an important and fun part of childhood. I am thinking about going back to church because Ella is asking more and more questions I need help answering. I am thinking about going back to church because I think this range of emotions may never go away, or at the very least will not get better without exposure over time. I am thinking about going back to church because I can now give support and not just take support. I am thinking about going back to church simply because I miss it. I am thinking about going back to church because I’ve realized that there’s not a point at which I will be my old self again, and that that’s not a weakness.

    I am sharing this simply to keep myself honest. I am going back to church and am not going to wimp out.

    Thankful I did not wimp out – I am stronger and better and happier because of it. Thankful that God did not – and will never – give up on me. Thankful that Audrey is a cancer survivor. Thankful for all the people who supported us and loved on us during those early years – many of whom I still get to hug on Sundays (they must be tired of waiting for me to get to real adulthood). Thankful that my girls both love Jesus, and for all the people in their village who teach them and guide them and pray for them. Thankful for the beautiful historical building that is my church and for the beautiful group of people who are my church – whether we are gathered together in person or online, the words of Matthew always come to mind: “where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them.”