Thinking about Friday

This is a post I wrote a year ago exactly. I don’t think I could say it any better now, so I am reposting. Today, the verse at the end from Isaiah is very much on my mind. Today I am deeply burdened with the sin and sadness all around me. And then I realized–Jason isn’t dealing with these burdens anymore! Praise Jesus! Our hope is in heaven, not in this weary, weary world. Come Lord Jesus…

I woke up this morning with my stomach in tied in knots. Friday morning one year ago exactly, I had no idea that my life was going to unalterably change course before the day’s end. Instead of my eyes being focused on Jesus, they were focused on me that day. Poor me. I have three little ones in diapers and they are sick and I can’t keep up with the laundry. I don’t feel good myself. Why don’t I ever get a sick day? I just can’t do this by myself. But it’s okay, it’s Friday. Jason will be home to help all weekend. I’ll finally get a break…

The furnace wasn’t working right that day. So in between diapers and cleaning up vomit and running down to the basement to switch the loads of laundry, I was stressing about the furnace and the cold. But I didn’t want to bother Jason about it while he was at work. Then about lunchtime, I discovered that my not-quite-three-month-old baby Zoe’s eyeball was bleeding. Being the third-time, experienced mom that I was, I did the most logical thing I could do: I called Jason at work completely freaking out and asked him to rush home right away. Now of course any experienced mom would probably guess what happened next. By the time he made it home and rushed in to save the day, Zoe was fine. And the furnace decided to start working again and the house was warm.

I have a vague memory of being held while I simultaneously laughed and cried over the mornings events. Then, lunch. Then Jason decided to work the rest of the day from home, as he was feeling the onset of the stomach flu that had invaded our house for the week. Poor, poor me. I can’t believe Jason’s getting sick, too. Now I won’t get a break after all. And Jason was going to take us all to Pittsburgh the next day if we were feeling better. I really, really wanted to go to Ikea. There was so much we needed. And the cabin fever is almost as bad as the stomach bug. I can’t believe he’s getting sick. This really just stinks for me.

I spent the last afternoon and evening we had together frustrated that things were just not going my way. Jason spent the last half of the last day of his life in a seemingly different way. He listened to a sermon online. He watched an old Capra movie called “You Can’t Take it With You”. He let the kids climb all over him and “take care” of him. And he had two very coherent thoughts right before God called him home. He apologized to me for the way that he had been selfish towards me in our marriage and not loved me with a love that demonstrated Christ’s love. And he marveled with joy at the gift our three children were to us. “Aren’t they just wonderful?”

In the midst of my self-centered, self-focused day last February 26th, it is hard for me to look back and see God’s grace over the whole day. There have been glimpses of grace God has shown me over the past year: moments where He has taken my eyes off myself and focused them on Him and His goodness and His glory. Moments when I’ve seen clearly grace over Jason’s last thoughts and words. Grace that Jason didn’t suffer. Grace that all medical reports confirmed that there was nothing I could have done sooner to cause a different outcome. Grace that I had no difficult medical decisions to agonize over. I’ve seen glimpses of grace and I know that they are true.

But, grace over the whole day? Grace in the midst of my discontent? Grace in the midst of sickness? Grace in the midst of our last conversations together? Grace even in the midst of death? Could it even be true?

Can I look back on the Friday that changed my life and see grace over the entire day, not just over the pieces? Can I stare death in the face and declare God is good? Can I thank Him for His goodness?

I prayed for healing that day. He didn’t heal. Yet He asks us to thank Him for everything. “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 Thes. 5:18) In everything, even February 26^th 2010. We don’t have the ability to do this on our own strength apart from God. We need His grace to even return to say thank you for His grace. To see His grace. To see the death of His children the way He sees it and to thank Him. He is good.

“The righteous perish,
and no one takes it to heart;
the devout are taken away,
and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil.
Those who walk uprightly
enter into peace;
they find rest as they lie in death.”

(Isaiah 57:1,2)

Afraid

This morning I am afraid. I am finally ready to voice that fear. It has been a faint yet growing feeling in the back of my mind for some months now. I am afraid, yet not of what I feared last year at this time. This February I am not afraid of the memories. I have spoken truth to those fears. I no longer fear the horror that was. The 26th of February is only a very sad date for me, not an unfaceable reality.
This fear that is so hard to see and grasp and pin down on a page of words seems almost a shallow thing in comparison. Perhaps no one reading here will even understand. It feels vulnerable to voice, but voice it I must. I am not paralyzed by fear of February 26th, but of February 27th and 28th and 29th and all the days to come. Quite simply, I am afraid to end this second year of grief.
Perhaps that sounds strange. I have noticed something nearly universal in all of my widowed circles and widowed blogs and widowed forums that I read. Something happens after the end of the second year. Cultural expectations seem to suddenly change. People stop weeping with you. The voice of support changes to the voice questioning “Why aren’t you over that yet?” Not being okay isn’t really okay anymore. I sense this weight of expectation, and it is a heavy one. What if I don’t bear up under it? What if, on February 27th, I am still grieving? Or on March 18th? Or June 12th? Yet, even more terrifying a thought, what if I’m not? I am terrified to cross over from mourning death to embracing life to the fullest.
So you see, it is this chapter–this undesired, unwanted but familiar life stage that I am afraid to finish. Grief is what I have known for the past 24 months. It has been an identity, a way of connecting, a lens through which I have viewed the world. It has been a framework to piece together my view of my God, myself, my community. I don’t remember the me of before. I don’t know what my non-grieving personality is. A friend remarked recently that “Life isn’t always deep and it isn’t always serious”. Really? That is out of my current paradigm. The grief lens views all as life or death. I cannot remember any other lens.
I am yet more terrified to let the pages close on the chapters called Jason, the part of my story where his life and mine intersected. As time passes, the pages seem to fall close of their own accord. I suddenly feel like I need to cling to the ones that remain still accessible to me. I close my eyes and I can still picture him. If I concentrate hard I can recall the sound of his voice. But the sound of his ready laughter eludes me. It is treasured up on pages that have already fallen closed. So the inescapable question for me is “What will happen when I turn the page? What comes after this chapter called grief?” The fear creeps in.
But can I fully live in the present if I don’t allow that grief chapter to close? I don’t know what this is supposed to look like in the life of a believer. I don’t want trite answers, either. I don’t want more “Jason lives on through me”, no “In the shelter of each other we live” sort of trite meaningless comfort. I have seen far too much of this in the blog world. It simply isn’t true. I am not keeping Jason alive by continuing to grieve.
What I want is to speak truth once again to my fears. But what is a true perspective on the third year and the forth year and the fifth year? Is it acceptable to continue my writing? At what point does it become not acceptable? What does it look like to let the pages fall gently to a close? What does it look like to remember those whom we love who have gone on before us? And how? Because right now I am afraid to forget.

My very own version of “Not Okayness”

What two-year-anniversary-of-loss-not-okayness looks like for me:
1.) Putting a load of laundry in the washer and forgetting to turn the washer on
2.) Changing Babygirl’s diaper and forgetting to put a new diaper back on
3.) Sleeping poorly again
4.) Remembering to put the diaper on and forgetting to put the clothes back on over the diaper
5.) Making piles of laundry, piles of dishes, piles of papers, and anything else that can be piled instead of actually dealt with
6.) Wanting desperately to look at pictures of Jason but being afraid to
7.) Feeding my family lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
8.) Taking time to sit and sip a cup of tea instead of dealing with the piles
9.) Bribing the kids to stay in bed all night long with chocolate breakfast cereals again
10.) Longing to take walks in the cemetery again but being afraid to
11.) Dressing my kids in orange for going out in public again because I feel like I am thinking through a heavy fog
12.) Noticing that my house plants are shriveling up from neglect
13.) Getting my hair cut in a rather bold impulsive style (for me) because I am craving the change
14.) Blogging again, because I feel a renewed need to process the crazy thoughts in my head
15.) Contemplating such issues as whether or not to take the Babygirl along with her older siblings when we put flowers on the grave
16.) Reliving the night of the 26th over and over and over again in my mind
17.) Wavering between wishing I could think more clearly and wishing I could check out
18.) Trying to remember what Jason’s laugh sounded like and failing to
19.) Wishing Elise didn’t smile exactly like her Daddy when I want to just forget all the heartache somedays
20.) Struggling with guilt over bringing all of this grief into a new marriage

Not okay

February 19th, 2012. The days are counting down, rapidly accelerating toward at point in time I wish would never come. It is a train that I cannot jump off. One week left– one week from this coming Sunday marks the anniversary of that awful evening. The rest of the world seems to be moving on without me. Is everyone fine but me? I am not. I am not okay. I realized something else: it is okay to not be okay.
My husband is the one helping me realize that. It is just simple things, really. A change of plans, pizza for lunch, holding me in the middle of the night while I weep into the darkness. He says it is okay. Okay that I cannot fulfill social obligations. Okay that I cannot get it together to cook today. Okay that I am weeping. He says it okay that I don’t yet know exactly how I want to spend next weekend. Okay to get away. Okay to stay here. Okay to want people. Okay to want solitude.
Permission to be “not okay”. I would not have known how freeing unless it had been granted to me. I could not have granted it to myself. Everyone said to grant it to myself; no one knew that I couldn’t. Letting myself feel fully all of the emotion and heartache would have been paralyzing. The idea is contrary to every maternal instinct that I have. I had children, therefore I was okay.
It is a slow process unlearning my own survival methods and allowing myself to feel once again. But… I am unlearning. I can cry. My children will be okay if I cry. And, like last night, even if the memories are triggered and the nightmares come again to my little ones, we can talk. We can talk about how, sometimes, it is okay to cry. To say out loud in the darkness that we are not okay.

Two Years Ago and Today

Two years ago today.

This picture is nearly too heartbreaking to post. It was the picture I snapped for Zoe’s birth announcement. Yes, it is a Valentine’s day picture and Zho-Zho is a December baby. The almost never-ending sickness and snow of that winter kept interfering with all of my attempts to have professional portraits taken. Finally, I tried my hand at capturing a moment in time myself. I had waited so long for sisters to dress in coordinating outfits. I had picked out the sweet little heart hat and matching tights months and months before, and had packed them away for just such a photo. Such a moment in time it was–less than two weeks before our world turned upside down. All is sweetness and joy here in this moment. My little family was complete, my joy uncontainable. I made adorable little red cards that read “The Ibrahim Family welcomes our newest member: Zoe Katherine Ibrahim * 12/03/09 * 7lbs 3oz * 19 1/2 inches long. “I have come that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10) They were set to be mailed out on February 27th. That moment never came.

Valentines Day, 2012

Another picture nearly too heartbreaking to absorb. It is my snapshot from this year. Today. Zoe is now wearing the heart tights that Elise wore in the other picture. She is already three months older than Noah was in the first picture. I don’t know if it more heartbreaking that my babies were so very, very young the day their Daddy went to be with Jesus, or that they are so very big now. We have lived so much life without their Daddy. Milestones have come and gone. Birthdays have been celebrated, clothing outgrown and given away.
Somedays it still feels as though all time stopped on February 26th, 2010. Somedays time seems to be standing still. Every moment of that day is so vivid.
Other days it seems as though it were an age ago. I don’t remember the sweet infant or the beautiful toddler or the ernest three-year old with the deep eyes. I lost that part of their childhood to grief. Time did not stand still for me.
And yet I wonder if time is a merciful gift from our heavenly Father. Did he create time because of our weakness in our flesh? Because we are frail?  As I try to wrap my mind around all that was and has been and is, I realize it is not 2010 anymore. It is not 2011 anymore. What a gift–it is 2012! Look at again at these three smiling faces. Look at how far we have come.

Forgetfulness

I’m always a bit surprised to meet someone who reads my blog. Usually a friend of a friend, they tell, through stumbling words and teary eyes, how God has encouraged them through my life. Because, I am told, I am living their biggest fear and yet God is proving Himself faithful. Yesterday held another such encounter for me.
Today I wondered why. What are they reading here, anyway? What do they see that I’m missing?” So I went back through all my old posts today and reread them. Oh. No wonder she cried. This is heavy stuff.
I had forgotten. By nature, I think, we are forgetters. I had forgotten about my anger. I had forgotten about my jealousy. I had forgotten about the months of sickness. I had forgotten about my questions.
But I recorded it here as a written testimony of how God was working in my tender, broken heart. I wrote it with my own hands in my own words and yet I had forgotten so soon.
There has been much news of death and sickness this month, some of it hitting extremely close to home: a college friend was killed in car accident, an uncle passed away, a close family member diagnosed with cancer. How do I respond? As someone who has forgotten, I respond with anger, with jealousy, with fear. How could I so easily forget what God has already done? Today, I’m thankful for my own stones of remembrance, recorded in the pages of this journal and put up to been seen and read. God has been faithful. He will continue to be faithful. His very name is Faithful and True.

10 Ways to help

10 Practical ways to help a newly grieving family:

1.)    Be there.  Seriously, just be present.  Go and sit with the family at their home or at the viewing.  It does not matter if you are best friends or not, you can still be there.

2.)    Don’t be afraid to cry bawl your eyes out. I was in complete shock after Jason died.  It did not feel real, and so it was hard to cry.  Seeing others weep helped it to sink in for me and even provided relief for me.  I believe it is why Jesus tells us to weep with those who weep.  It is a real and tangible comfort.

3.)    Send a card.  I kept every single one of mine, and when I am grieving again I still go back through and read them.  I loved that I received cards from my best friends who were with me 24/7 at first, and from complete strangers all over the world. 

4.)    Send food in disposable containers.  And try not to send very highly perishable items like salads or breads that need to be eaten immediately.  I had a wall of bread as high as my refrigerator that took up all my counter space. Literally.

4 ½.) Don’t force-feed your grieving friend— especially foods that they never liked in the first  place.  (Well, okay, unless that person is a young mom nursing a newborn baby.  Maybe it was a good thing after all. But boy do I ever HATE yellow mustard now or what!!!)

5.)    Call a contact person regarding meals, etc.  Try not to call the family directly about trivial matters, find someone else who can answer your questions.  Offer to be that contact person if they need one.

6.)    Shovel snow, rake leaves, or mow the grass.  Just show up and quietly do what needs to be done.

7.)    Offer to help with practical details before the days of the viewing/funeral.  Does the family’s car need to be washed for the processional? Do their children own appropriate clothing for a funeral?  Could you go shopping for them? Could you offer out-of-town guests a restful place to stay?

8.)    Send flowers unexpectedly in the months to come.  Let the family know you haven’t forgotten.

9.)    Offer to watch children so a grieving parent can slip away for some time alone.

10.)  Pray consistently for God’s outpouring of peace and grace over the whole family.

10 1/2.) Don’t hold me responsible for these ideas.  Maybe other people are comforted by a Great Wall of Bread when they are mourning.  I couldn’t say…

When Blogging isn’t Enough…

 My heart is so heavy today.  I just heard of another young mom  who lost her husband yesterday.  She is the second one from our community in a month.  Both times a phone call: “What can we do to help her?  I thought you might know…” If only I knew how to answer that question. Truth is, I am afraid of saying or doing the “wrong thing” as anyone else. What if I give bad advice? Maybe what was comforting to me would just be too painful for another. Really, what do I know about someone else’s circumstance, except the pain of it all?

I guess it is true I have been told my writing is comforting.  That has to be a God thing, since I only ever write for my own processing.  I guess God can work through even that, in spite of it even, perhaps.  But today, blogging isn’t enough.  Oh, your husband just died? Here, I wrote a blog post or two on that subject. Want the link?  The thought is almost laughable in its awful absurdity, as if it is all about me.

So what can I for these broken young women–women from churches and fellowships in my very hometown? Not a month has gone by since I lost Jason that I don’t hear of more heartache and loss.  Frankly, it is overwhelming.  I could turn off the comments here, and close down my email and facebook accounts.  I could shut it all out. I could stop answering the telephone.  Of course, that wouldn’t change reality.  And the overwhelming heaviness is because there is nothing I can do in and of myself to lessen the pain.  Sometimes I feel completely helpless. 

Why then do I even get out of bed in the morning? Why  do I continue to read my emails and comments, only to hear of more and more and more grief? Simply this: I cannot do anything, but I know the One who can.  I can pray.  You can pray, too.  We serve a living God who overcame death, a God who sent His beloved Son to bring “light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.” (Luke 1:79) I can’t, but God can.  And so today, when the shadow of death threatens to overwhelm, I pray.

What if?

What if?

What if there really is a God?  What if this God knew all of His children, choosing them to be His very own from the moment they came into being? What if this God was so loving and so gracious and so just that He actually wrote a book recording each day of each child’s life before that child was even born? What if such a book existed about me?

Would there be any pages in my book that surprised God?  Woah, how did THAT page get in here? I don’t remember writing that day… Or would He suddenly stop writing and leave me in a cliffhanger? Would He not instead carefully craft the plot, building a story from beginning to the very end? What would my story look like if God wrote it?

We cannot know the end of the story, but we can know the Author.  Psalm 139 tells us that He has written about each day before we were born.  I am not claiming to understand the sovereignty of God—far from it actually.  I do not understand why He allowed Jason to die.  Why he did not just heal.  Why He seemingly did not act that day.  Why bad things happen.  But I believe that He did not simply stop writing that wintery day nearly two years ago.

So what if God has been the author, holding the pen, crafting the plot all along?  What if He was preparing the way for today?

It has been hard to believe that lately.  Life has been hard.  I am a newlywed all over again.  You know, just when it had been getting “easy” with Jason.  We had our roles figured out.  I knew how to be Mrs. Ibrahim.  I don’t know how to be Mrs. Campbell.

Unknown to me, Derek had been asking some why questions of God the past few months, too.  “Why did You lead me to your people in Brockway and have me love them deeply as their pastor just to take them away from me? It was just getting easy to be their pastor.  I was just figuring out my role.  I knew how to be Pastor Campbell.  I don’t know how to be Papa.”

And, really, how does one communicate such thoughts with a brand new spouse?  “Hey, you aren’t anything like my first husband.  I suddenly realized that just now and consequently don’t have the faintest idea what to do or say next or how to be your wife at all really.”   I couldn’t say “Hey, you aren’t like Jason.”  I chose instead to say “Hey, I am so frustrated with you. You. Make. No. Sense.”  Not helpful.  In fact, it was a really good conversation killer.  We did not know how to relate to each other. We were two separate people—a pastor mourning the loss of his congregation and a wife unexpectedly mourning her first husband all over again.  The story my life was becoming a pretty confusing read.

Somehow, God broke through this confusing mess.  “Wait, you are asking why, too??? You feel as confused in your new role as I do? You get this?” Suddenly, we had a way to relate to one another, a way to talk about change and loss in a way that was not threatening.  I found words to describe my second-husband culture shock, as Derek was experiencing many of the same emotions as he processed leaving a church and people he loved and being involved in full-time ministry in a new setting. And then, a light bulb went off somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind.  What if? What if the God who is lovingly writing my story is the same God who is lovingly writing Derek’s story?  What if all God has brought us both through thus far has been preparation for the next chapter in the story?  What if HE has been writing all along?  Suddenly all of the why questions turned into exclamations of amazement at the Author’s story.  He has made us. He has known us. He has prepared us.  He loves us deeper than I ever knew was possible.

An overdue update

It has been a long time since I have allowed myself the luxury of time to think and to write.  Far too long. I have missed it.  I have longed for time to process all that has changed.  And, well, it is almost February again.  The first deep snow brought with it for me a flood of emotion. February 2010 was the snowiest on record here.  So many, many memories are tied to the snow.  I cannot stop February 26^th from coming again, even if I could trick myself into thinking I want that.

So I write.  Hello, blog, I’ve missed you.  It has been quite the whirlwind year.  Let’s see.  I fell in love again.  I planned a huge celebratory wedding.  And then…I crashed.

I rather expected it to happen, actually.  I had been living on some sort of odd adrenaline trip for so very long.  I was stuck in survival mode.  There is no way for me to describe it, but I am sure you will recognize it if you have ever experienced it for yourself.  I was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted.   Yet I was afraid to stop.  The adrenaline rush of survival and grief and trauma and nightmares had become my norm.  What would happen if I dared to rest?

Enter Prince Charming.  It was so very clear that I could not continue as I had been.  My new husband was not about to let me.  “But I can’t slow down. I have to do this. I am responsible for holding everything together.  Don’t you understand what would happen if I stop?”   The pressures of being a single mom had taken their toll.  The pressures of trauma  had taken their toll.  I was afraid of rest.

Ever-so-gently these lies were exposed.  Ever-so-gently, my battle-weary arms were supported. Ever-so-gently, the crushing weight lessened.  I went from fight-or-flight mode to a crashing plane. 

The first month of marriage was spent grieving, sleeping, packing to move, sleeping, refinishing hardwood floors, sleeping, and getting to know the stranger who had moved into my house.  He was NOT Jason and how could I ever express my confusion without hurting him?  No one prepared me for second-husband shock—my own little culture shock bubble of my mind.  Every one said not to compare.  No one said my mind would play tricks.  “Someone just walked in the back door; I guess Jason is home from work—I mean, no, I mean, wow, I cannot believe I just thought that…”  “Go ask your Daddy—I mean, Derek, I mean Papa…Yes, I know Daddy died.  I know Papa is not Daddy.  I know.”

 Perhaps I should not have done everything so backwards. Grieve first.  Then remarry.  Right? The truth is, I don’t know if I would have faced it fully otherwise.  I don’t know when survival mode would have stopped.  I don’t know when I would have had the luxury to think again.  Time alone has been the most sacrificial wedding gift my husband could have given to me.  He has allowed me the freedom to feel again.  To mourn.

And in this completely backward, upside down sort of way, I have found my footing again.  Still rooted deeply and firmly in Christ, just as it was a year ago.  As I sit and think and write tonight, I have realized something for the first time.  I am still grieving, but for the first time I feel whole.  The One who was sent to bind up the broken hearted has been at work even when all I could see of it was my own brokenness. And this is becoming the theme verse for my life:

“He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted…to comfort , and all who mourn and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning and a garment of praise instead of despair.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.” (Is. 61: 1-3)

A crown of beauty… I like that.