If You are Grieving, I Understand

It has been a long time since I wrote about grief. I think that is because I have finally moved beyond the feeling that my heart has been ripped out of my chest and breathing feels excruciating, and frankly, I don't want to remember that. I don't want to remember what it felt like to think of listening to my mom gurgling in her last breaths before she died from lung cancer or seeing my husband's body on a table in the ER as I tried to figure out how I was going to tell my kids or his parents that he had died. I don't want to remember looking at the empty chairs at my table as we tried to have Christmas dinner for my brother, kids, and myself when all I could see is where my husband, mom, dad, and stepdad weren't. I don't want to remember the times I picked up the phone to call Mom to ask a question or times I started to call Rob because something had happened only he would understand the impact of. And I really don't want to remember the nights where I woke up and could swear I saw his silhouette in the darkness but knew if I reached over, he wouldn't be there, so I lay there, letting myself believe a lie because it was less heartcrushing than the truth.

 

I don't want to remember the heartcrushing pain of grief or loss or emptiness. I don't want to remember how little things can slam you like a freight train and suck the air right out of your lungs.

 

But I do remember.

 

I also remember what it was like when someone made some thoughtless, packaged, "get back to normal so I can feel better around you" answer. I remember the pain that inflicted, too.

 

Thoughtless, judgmental statements like:

"God needed another angel", which a crazy number of my friends who have lost babies and children have heard. Seriously? What kind of person says something like that?!

 

"You shouldnt' be sad for that person. They are in a better place. You should be happy." I'll be honest. My first thought is always, "Let me put a bullet in your loved one's brain, and THEN you say that." This who statement and its derivatives infuriate me. They may be in a better place, but there is someone who loved them HERE, missing them, wishing they could share all kinds of things with them but can't. That is reason ot be sad, and that is not selfish.

 

"Well, at least you never held your baby." When a woman who has miscarried tells me someone has said this, my heart breaks for that woman. Love is carried in the heart, not the hands. How dare anyone minimalize the hope, joy, and excited that comes with the news of a baby on the way.

 

There are so many others that totally dismiss the broken heartedness of grief. They make the person grieving sound selfish and wrong. They brush over the depth of the loss as though it were nothing because, after all, we know Jesus has this, so who are we to do anything but rejoice that these people are in a better place?

 

Who we are are the ones left behind with the empty cradles and the empty chairs and the empty beds and the phones with no one to call and the babies on the way that will never know their dad/grandparents/aunts/uncles. We are the ones who thank God for a better place but still have to walk through the pain of adjusting to the void.

 

And if you are one of those people learning to walk through the void, I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry. I can tell you honestly, God and time do wonders. I can also tell you honestly it is a hard road, and it takes time to learn to breathe again without it aching more than you think you can bear. And, honestly, there is no magic time limit when you wake up and suddenly you are fine. I have come to realize the idea that it all gets better in a year is only a partial truth, so it's okay to ache on holidays, birthday, anniversaries, and death days as long as you do. Some folks won't get it, but a lot of us do.

 

And I'm sorry for the things people say because they either dont' know what to say, don't think about what they are saying, or have never experienced the loss you have. Do yourself a favor and forgive them. You've got enough going on that your heart is trying to carry without adding unforgivness, too.

 

If I could, I would sit with you, hand you kleenex when you need them or hold the box when you didn't, listen to the stories you need to tell or sit in silence when you have nothing to say, give you a long hug or just be present. I would let you grieve in earnest and let you feel what you feel and say what you need to say and be honored that you trusted me with that honest part of you.

 

I am so sorry for your loss. I'm praying for you. Please feel free to comment if I can pray specifically because I will.

May God comfort you, lead your as you move forward, give you peace in Him, and be your ever present help.

 

Love and prayers,

Jerri

 

www.jerrikelley.com

The Original Black Friday

I've heard it said the pertinence of Jesus being in the grave for three days is that some believed a soul could return to the body the first day or two, but three days meant the soul wasn't just hanging around taking a break only to decide it wasn't ready to truly depart, that maybe it wanted or needed more time.

You know the pertinence of Jesus being the grave for three days to me? He was dead.

Really. That is the pertinent issue to me.

Jesus was dead, and there was no miracle worker to call His name and bring Him back. There was no one with the power to lie on Him and breathe Him back to life. There was no one to speak to the dry bones. There was no one to do anything really cool or just weird to make life return. He was dead, and there was no hope He was coming back.

This morning I woke up around 0300, and I lay in my bed staring into the dark, and I tried to get into the profundity of this weekend. I want it to be more than just a fun day with good food and candy. I lay there in the dark and asked the Lord, "Talk to me about this. What do you want me to get out of this?"

Very clearly, I heard one word:

"HOPE."

When you are sitting in the dark, staring at the dead, it's easy to lose hope. It's easy to chastise yourself for being stupid enough to believe something way too good to be true. It's easy to be crushed mentally and emotionally because you trusted. It's easy to feel disillusioned because you had grandiose ideas...that someone else had the power to kill.

It's easy to stare in shock as what you just knew was our life's destiny is stolen by someone else, battered beyond recognition, and killed before your very eyes. It's easy to look at what is dead and give up hope of the life you thought you were going to have.

I'm quite sure the disciples felt that way.

And they were right.

The easy lives they thought they would have as nobility under the reign of a King who was going to restore Israel and overthrow her oppressors died with the humiliation of a criminal, not the honor of a king. All they had hoped for was put in a tomb and sealed in darkness.

Think about that for a moment.

The hope lay in the darkness.

What they thought God was going to do was dead.

What God had always planned to do was safe and sound...

in the darkness.

Darkness isn't hopelessness. Darkness is the place hope resides because it is the place God speaks into to create life no one ever dreamed of before.

In Genesis 1, He spoke into the darkness and created an entire physical world that the hosts of heaven had never known. In the Gospels, He spoke into the darkness of the tomb to create an undefeatable King who reigns over sin and death. The hope of salvation didn't live in the human body of Christ. It was born in the resurrected body of Christ. The hope wasn't in His never dying.

The hope was in the darkness where everything was dead...except for the plan of God. 

Hope isn't knowing what God is doing.

Hope is trusting God is doing something.

 

I know a lot of people who are looking into darkness in a lot of places in their lives right now. I figure a lot of you are, too.

 

I pray this is a weekend that reminds you of what Jesus did for you

...and what God is still doing for you.

 

I pray that it is a time of hope...not in what you see...

but in the heart and faithfulness of the God who is doing things you can't see.

 

Blessed resurrection celebration to you all!

Jerri

The Peace of Mercy

I pulled out of my driveway at 7:15 this morning to make the nearly two hour drive to my vet's clinic. My dog spent a second night there last night. SuperWonderFred is sick, sick enough to die.

My Favorite Big Dog is having liver problems, and he's too sick for a biopsy which would give a more definitive diagnosis, so Dr. Margaret is trying to get the symptoms under control so she can get to the problem. The ultimate problem is not matter what she does, he may die.

I've cried a lot over that dog the last two days. I toss and turn at night because he's not lying on the floor beside my bed, his snoring soothing me to sleep. I walk in the door, and he's not there to meet me with a tail wag and a shove of his muzzle into my hand. His deep throaty bark doesn't fill the backyard. It's different, and it's not a good different. It's a hard different, and yet, it's a peaceful different.


 I've spent a lot of time praying over Fred, not just in the last few days but over the last few years. Fred has hip problems. He has had them since he was a year old. Some days it is hard for my big dog to pull himself up off the floor, and there are days when it is impossible for him to get on the large ottoman that gives his stiff joints a reprieve from the cold cement floor. Several months ago, Dr. Larry tried some meds to help with the pain. Thankfully, I didn't get the prescription refilled yet because, you guessed it, those meds are hard on the liver. Even before that, I worried, though, what happened when the meds didn't really help anymore or the joints just got too stiff? How would I know when the pain of being Fred was too great, and how would I know exactly what to do? How would I know the merciful thing?

In the last four years I've learned a lot about mercy. I've learned mercy does not give us what we deserve. I've also learned mercy delivers us from how bad it could be. Mercy isn't always the answer we want, but it is always the answer we need.

Mercy knows what is coming and delivers a person--or a Fred--before the worst hits. Mercy is big picture kindness.

On the way to the clinic this morning, I expected the phone to ring and Dr. Margaret to be on the other line to break the news that Fred had died in the night. He really was that sick yesterday. Even if the phone call didn't come, I knew today could be a day of hard decisions that really weren't decisions at all  but acknowledgment of the undeniable. I took the blanket Fred and I lie on when his joints hurt too much to move much, and I tried to prepare myself to lie down with my Big Dog one more time and simply let him go to sleep. This morning wasn't that morning, but we are far from being out of the woods, and eventually that time will come. Without an act of God, liver disease will kill My Favorite Big Dog.

So I pray for an act of God. The act of mercy.

I ask for God to do what is best because there are no good solutions, not any any of us want anyway. We want the pain free, fear free, death free, and there is no such thing on this earth, and we hate the truth, but the truth is this: there is always a best solution. We don't have to like it. Sometimes it rips our hearts out, but it is still the best solution.

The only solution that can make anything any better is love poured out in mercy.

So I pray for mercy knowing it may mean I will never hear SuperWonderFred snore by my bed, I may never walk into my house and feel his muzzle in my hand, his throaty bark may never fill my backyard again. I pray for mercy knowing this morning was good, and tomorrow I may get a call he's gone.

As I write that my eyes burn with tears, and my chest tightens because this is the companion who has let tears fall on his fur, laid with his head in my lap while I mindlessly rubbed my hand down his side and stared blankly into the world of can't-believe-how-much-has-gone-wrong, and moved from room to room just to be near me. He is love in a furry package with big brown eyes and a tail that can clear a coffee table in one motion. He's my Fred, and I can't imagine the silence of his not being here.

And even as the tears fall, the peace holds.

The peace that the Almighty God who gave me the gift of Fred knows how to give the gift of mercy to Fred.

I don't know what that mercy looks like. All I know is I've seen enough of God's mercy to know it may not be the answer I like, but it is the answer that is good. And in that goodness, my heart finds peace.

Life Moving On--Part 1

When my dad passed on, I got through his last hospital stay, his last day with us, his death, and the funeral relatively unscathed. Amazing what the human mind and body can do when one sets her mind to a task. People who watched from the outside were amazed at how well I did, how strong I was.

One friend, though, had the courage to pull me aside and ask, "So you are taking care of everyone else, and you are doing a great job. When are you going to crash?" In three weeks, I told him. He said he would be there. I don't know if he was prepared for how bad the crash was, but I wasn't.

I expected to cry, to miss my dad. I knew I'd pick up the phone to dial his number only to remember he wouldn't pick up. I knew I'd go home and his chair would be empty, and I knew I would choke and my heart would miss a beat or two.

I also expected when the funeral was done and all the activitiy was finished, I'd go home, have a long sleep, and jumpr right back into life where normal had left off. That was one of the greatest delusions of my whole life. I knew "normal life" no longer existed, but I didn't realize the "normal me" didn't either. I couldn't make it exist. I couldn't make me exist, not like I had been, and the harder I tried to do so, the worse things became.

Last week we buried my mom after a wild two months of doctor's visits, hospital stays, and emergency issues. The flurry of activity is over, but life won't go back to normal. It can't. I'm not "normal" either, not the normal I was. I never will be that person again, and instead of fighting that, I'm working with it, not letting it control, but letting it lead some. And I am giving myself grace and time.

These posts are my journey into the adjustment of my mom being gone and life moving on. Hope it encourages you to embrace life moving on, too.

Can you help me?

This is not a test. I'm just wondering where I missed it, so I'm asking for someone to show me.

Where in the Bible does God say healing and death are the same thing? Where does it say, "And Jesus healed them by letting them die?"

I keep hearing folks say of people who died of different things, "God healed them, just not the way you wanted." No. The body dies on its own. It is the natural process of the human body to die. Healing indicates a different course of action--that the sickness has been removed and health restored. Otherwise, how do we know when Jesus healed those crowds of people it wasn't a mass killing/healing experience?

I'm not trying to split hairs. I'm not trying to judge. I haven't found where dying and healing go together, but I don't have the Bible memorized, so someone help me out. Where did I miss God's promise of healing by letting folks die?