On the Outside

There are times when I recognize that I am watching myself as though I am someone else. Some might call this a psychological disorder. I call it processing, coping, or even sometimes vacation. See, there are times when it can be a bit wearisome being me. A friend said once that she had not met someone quite so intense as I. Early in our marriage, my husband told me I just wore him out with all my talking.  And as I have gotten older, I think I can understand why, as I weary myself with all my thinking. So, I have learned ways to live with myself. And one of these ways is to step back and observe and, from that perspective offered by a bit of distance, I am more able to make choices for what comes next. So, here I am on the outside, looking in.

It has been almost 2 months since my father died. The books and articles say on average it takes someone about 4 months before the weight of grief begins to lessen. But, every journey I have taken through grief is as different as the relationship from which I have been severed. Each loss is unique. Each time the space in and around me is altered and therefore, I too, am changed. And each time I mourn uniquely. 

Not surprisingly, the loss of my father's presence in my life has affected all of me ... mind, body, and spirit. But, I it seems that I feel it the most in my body. Many days have been marked by a sense of being immobilized, heavy with fatigue that has been akin to moving through the thick humid air on a hot summer day in North Carolina. I'm slowed down. I don't sleep consistently. I wake tossing and turning and often climb out of bed when it is still dark and sit on the porch until the sun rises. There is no spontaneous movement into activity... no "get up and go". Everything seems to require a conscious choice. From this vantage point from without, I know this is normal. My soul and body are on the way. I know I won't feel this way forever. With a little distance, I can treat myself with kindness and grace.

“There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.” Arnold Bennett (1867-1931)
"No amount of knowledge can prepare us for bereavement. Grief is the most intense and enduring emotion we can experience. No quick fix. No short-cut. An ancient African saying is “There is no way out of the desert except through it.” Knowledge of the grief process gives us a very generalized map of the terrain we have to cover. Each of us will take a different route. Each will choose his own landmarks. He will travel at his own unique speed and will navigate using the tools provided by his culture, experience, and faith. In the end, he will be forever changed by his journey." Click here to read all of this article offered by hospicenet.org.

And since life all about me keeps moving, each day I stir myself, clothed in my lethargy, and move into the mainstream. I move with the current. If you fall out of your boat when paddling a white water river you need to put your head back and your feet up and let the river take you feet first to where the energy dissipates and the water calms. I think I'm doing alright. I see that my feet are up. I'm moving. I know that there is an end to this. The waters will carry me to a new place. I know change has been and is being forced upon me.

I sat in the dentist chair this morning, having several 40+ year old fillings replaced. It was necessary. It was time. They were "leaking", the dentist said. Eventually, there would be decay if the work was not allowed. I had put it off in spite of the ugly stains and the sensitivity to hot and cold. I didn't want to endure the process. That hour left me feeling spacey and tired and emotionally raw. But, there is a new smile on this side of the process. So it goes with grief. It is necessary. It must be endured. Even though I know it will strip, empty, and exhaust me, grief must be allowed to do it's work of transformation. Looking in from the outside, I have just enough space to allow for the right choice. Grief will have it's way and when the work is done, my mourning will be turned into dancing.

Fragments

Sometimes the pieces tell the story better than the whole. I have kept a journal since my years at the University of North Carolina. Sometimes I go back through one of these and look at what has been highlighted to see if there is a pattern or if there is something I have forgotten that needs to be remembered. This morning as I sat on the porch, trying to wake from my grogginess, I needed words but could not write anything new. So, I flipped back through the pages and the last 4 months. Here are the fragments from along the way.

Daddy's cancer is on the move
Saying goodbye
Grief
Tired, numb
Is there anything I can do
I know grief is the evidence that death is the result of something gone horribly wrong..it was not part of        the original plan
Truth in the midst of life, death, and resurrection
Shout with joy to God. You brought us into prison...you brought us to a place of abundance
Come and listen.
I cry out for you hand of mercy to heal me. Craig Musseau
http://www.worship.co.za/ww/ww-0108.asp
I am wrung out...feeling a little anxious
In the course of time..
It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's
In that day...
If the Lord is God, follow Him
It is He who has made us and not we ourselves
For the Lord is good and His steadfast love endures forever
Listen. Be careful
He brought you out in order to bring you in
Lay Back the Darkness. Kate Campbell
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/k/kate_campbell/lay_back_the_darkness.html
At that time..you will sorrow no more
Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down and overthrow, destroy and bring disaster
So will I watch over them to build and to plant
Rise up Lazarus
Continue letting go
Hold onto courage and hope
Do not harden your heart
"This task before me may seem unclear But it, my Maker holds". Bebo Norman
http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/bebo_norman/the_hammer_holds.html
He is able to sympathize with my weaknesses
Diligence .. go on .. New
He sets aside the first to establish the second
You need to persevere
Trust...acknowledge...fix your gaze...do not swerve
Practice forgiveness
There is Hope. Stuart Townend
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyMWBx6vvJo
It is finished..nothing else to do..Harmony and Peace promised.
Practice gratitude
Lord of the Living Come Live Here. Michael Kelly Blanchard 
Trust. Do good. Delight. Commit. Be still. Wait. Refrain from anger.
Forgetting what lies behind, straining toward. Eagerly await. He will transform.
Praise. Worship. Rid yourself of .. Repent.
Forgive us
Live in harmony
He himself is our peace
Follow Me
Come Holy Spirit
May your blessing be on your people
A shoot will come up
Come down my pride, stand back my passions .. I wait for God to bless me
Loss reveals
Daddy died
Do not let your heart be troubled .. Trust
Aslan is on the move
Love Lives On. Michael Kelly Blanchard
We Shall All Be Reunited. Patty Griffin
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pattygriffin/weshallallbereunite.html

Redeemed

Redeemed

hymn by Fanny J. Crosby
tune by William J. Kirkpatrick

 Redeemed, how I love to proclaim it!
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb:
Redeemed through His infinite mercy,
His child, and forever, I am.

REFRAIN:
Redeemed,
Redeemed,
Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb;
Redeemed,
Redeemed,
His child, and forever, I am.


 I know there’s a crown that is waiting
In yonder bright mansion for me;
And soon with the spirits-made-perfect,
At home with the Lord I shall be.

A few years back a friend returned from a marriage enrichment seminar and I had to ask her what was the main focus. I expected a list of “do rights” that would help make our marriages better, producing the fruits of contentment, soulfulness, and meaning.  But, I was surprised to hear her say that the theme was redemption. How does redemption define the purpose of marriage? How does the reality of Christ paying the price to buy us back from captivity to sin work in our marriages and in our lives with one another in the world?

To redeem means to deliver from evil by payment of a price…to ransom.  It is through redemption that freedom is secured for the condemned. We are the condemned. Our sins imprison us and our lives are marked for death. Our only hope is that someone come and set us free.

Spiritual redemption is costly and achieved by a great act of love and at a great cost to the one who redeems. This freedom is gained through the substitution and complete atoning sacrifice of self to death.  The goal is freedom and life.

Redemption begins with Christ, not us.  For, we find ourselves bound up tightly, in the small place that sin creates. We experience the shackles of selfishness clamped tightly around our hearts.  We struggle to set ourselves free from our infirmities.  We bang our heads against the wall of our own limitations and the limitations of others that create fears, unbelief, inability, meaninglessness, and lack of understanding. When we sing the words of the hymns we know that something is not right.  We know we are not yet to the Promised Land.  We long for the “crown that is waiting”.

In a time when the walls seemed hard and cold and the darkness threatened to smother my life, I would lay on the platform in our backyard and cry.  “Lord, I cannot save myself.  I cannot heal myself.  I cannot redeem myself from this prison.  Please allow me to experience the redemption for which you died.  Allow Your Spirit to penetrate the hard shell of my being and convince me that this is not the end, that I am not yet the one you intended me to be.”  What I wanted was a miraculous transformation of self that would have me jump down from that backyard altar and walk into the house a brand new being.  Instead, He began to open my eyes to see the planned journey to the promise that he purchased before my life began. He did not promise me a journey that would be easy or without suffering.

His instructions were clear. I was to ‘Let the past be the past’.  I was to ‘Forgive’.  I was to ‘Love without expectation’.  It seemed reasonable at the time….straight-forward. I thought, “I can do this.”  No, I couldn’t.  At least not in my own strength.  “He led me out to bring me in”.  I needed a Redeemer…One who would redeem me from my past…One Who would forgive my anger, bitterness, and hatred so I might forgive the one who betrayed me.  I needed the Lover of my soul to penetrate all of me and deliver me from the deep chasm in which I hid. I  needed to understand His love that sacrificed selflessly and without expectation so that I might be able to make room for that love to flow through me. Though it seemed forever that I was there, He did not leave me in the grave.  Through His forgiveness, by the price He paid for this sinner, I descended and ascended.  Redemption is real.

The children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, trapped in a life that allowed no freedom. They were enslaved by a cruel taskmaster, forced into meaningless and monotonous labor.  God heard their cries and sent a deliverer.  It was not instantaneous.  In fact they had cried for years.  He could have spoken and it would have been enough to bring them out.  Instead, He showed Himself.  He stretched out His strong arm over and over again.  Yes, the goal was freedom, but also His intent was to create something new and to create a relationship with these people called His children.  That’s the part they really didn’t understand.  I wouldn’t have either.  He had waited a long time to come…so long they had nearly forgotten Him.

Over and over, this God of deliverance said, “Let my people go!”  It wasn’t that He wasn’t able to instantly deliver them from Pharaoh.  For reasons we cannot fully understand, He chose to work through a process of deliverance.  We can see the probability that He had "faith through revelation" in mind. We can speculate that He wanted His children to understand His ways, His character, His purpose. We can guess that in using the repetitious lessons of His intervention through the plagues, that the long-imprisoned minds and hearts of His people might begin to break free from their  dispirited cells.  He wanted more for them than just freedom.  He wanted them to experience life through understanding and He was willing to pay the price.  He created opportunity after opportunity for them to see Him and respond in relationship with Him.

So often I am like these imprisoned children.  The pain and suffering in the face of the imperfect is so great in this life that  I fail to see God’s presence.  At times, I am so disheartened by my own misery that I care nothing about the development of faith or relationship.  I just want to feel better.  I want to be saved for self’s sake.  But, my God does not allow me to live such a shallow life.  He has brought me out of Egypt.  He has paid the price of my ransom.  He has atoned for my sin.  I am free…but, not just for myself…not just to feel better…not just to be happy…not just to be at peace.  He brought me out to bring me in…to try me and test me and to see what is in my heart.  He wants me to understand Him and His ways.  He wants me to be one with Him.  Redemption is the only means to experience Him.  Participating in the process is the only path that leads to fellowship with the One who made us and then onward into relationships.

Each autumn, I watch the leaves fall from the trees in the backyard.  I look up at the changing colors as the cycle of life-death-life speak to me of the process of redemption.  Colors are released in varying array as death readies these trees for winter.  I know it is not the end. I know that in six months these same trees will experience the sap rising and the formation of new, yet the same leaves.  There is a time for everything under the sun. A time to live and a time to die.

Henri Nouwen says that prayer is God’s means to..

‘unite us with Jesus and lift the whole world through Him to God in a cry for forgiveness, reconciliation, healing in mercy. Prayer is leading every sorrow to the source of all healing; it is letting the warmth of Jesus’ love melt the cold anger of resentment; it is opening space where joy replaces sadness, mercy supplants bitterness, love dispels fear, gentleness and care overcome hatred and indifference. But, most of all, prayer is the way to become and remain part of Jesus’ mission to draw all people to the intimacy of God’s love.’

From—“Prayer Embraces the World”

We must allow the Spirit to speak to us. We must pray for the redemptive work of Christ on the cross to penetrate the walls of our busyness and unconscious self- righteous efforts to “do it right”.  Can we admit that in our own “freedom” we might really be imprisoned?  Underneath our deep layer of goodness, of wholesome living, of strong and sincere efforts to live well, flows the blood of Christ. We must somehow allow our experience to start there, beneath all the layers.  It is the blood of Christ that redeems and fuels the reconstruction of our lives. We must allow God, through the process, to peel back our façade and expose our true selves in all their rawness, to convince and convict us of the work of Christ.  It is in the dying off of our self-driven efforts at life that the brilliance of our lives bought by His death is revealed. Then relationship in truth and spirit becomes possible.  Then the Truth and Spirit will be present in our marriages, our friendships, our work relationships. But, this is not without a cost to ourselves.

Though the price of redemption is paid by another, to experience this we must come out of our cells when the door opens.  We must identify with the One whose keys unlocked the door.  We must walk with Him through His death/our death.  It is messy, painful, even gruesome.  We trust Him in the midst of this death because we know as He rose we too shall be raised. Redemption…the act of setting free the prisoner by another through a strong and forceful act….the Resurrection.

Why? He wants us to move out from that union He bought for us and live out His gift with one another. He gives us Himself, His love, His gifts, His work.  We are to be His body, bearing His creative and redeeming love to one another.

How do we do this?  How do we LET the Spirit of Christ dwell in us richly, bringing to us His gift of redemption?  How do we receive this gift in light of the strong truth that we are not worthy?  How do we give?  We can’t ...at least not apart from being tried and tested to make room for Him.  When the Israelites were delivered from Pharaoh and escaped through the miraculous parting of the Red Sea, they couldn’t truly understand.  God took them directly to the edge of the Promised Land.  Upon spying it out they could see how wonderful it was, but fear of loss and the death of their families, lack of understanding, and lack of faith kept them from entering in. So God turned them back and they circled for forty years.  God could have taken them in and driven out the enemies they feared, but He didn’t. He wanted more for them than just to have the Promised Land.  Instead of simply doing it all,  He went before them with a pillar of fire and the cloud of unknowing and led them through the wilderness.  He taught them, He disciplined them, He fed them, He gave them water. He formed them into a people, into a community.  As the former died, the new was born. They were meant  to dwell in the Promised Land as a people, as God’s people.

When they came around again and looked across the Jordan to the Promised Land they knew the One that led them. This time they trusted and obeyed.  They consecrated themselves and followed the ark of the Covenant into the water.  Though they likely were still afraid, they now knew the One who bought them, paid the price, and brought them out of Egypt.  Unbelief had died. Now there was meaning and purpose outside their own wants and needs.  They had been redeemed.  Their hearts and minds, their families, their community had grown in the process of being taken out to enter in.

So, how do we do it?  We cry out, “Redeem us!”  We wait for what already is ours. When the Spirit leads us into the wilderness, we look and listen and submit to what the Lord wants to teach us, to how He wants to refine us, how He wants to love us.  When we feel our hearts full of the love of Christ for another, we give it and watch for the work of creation to make something new.  When the love of Christ comes into our small places, we lay aside our pride and allow His courier to give to us.  In these ways we will know redemption…in our marriages, our friendships, in the communities in which we live. It begins with Jesus.

It will require a price.  A price Christ paid for us, yes, but also a price Christ wants us to understand and participate in.  He paid the price, set up the Kingdom, delivered us, led us out, to lead us in…to something brand new.  Redemption brings us in to a place where we can experience His life in us, in our marriages, in our friendships, in our communities. The evidence of the work of redemption becomes evident in our lives. We begin to look and behave more like Jesus.

                           We participate in His sacrifice as we give our lives to others as He did.

We grieve over the lost of “Jerusalem”.

We feel the agony of Gethsemene as we suffer through the death of our former selves.

We reach out our hands to touch the sick and injured.

We lay down our lives for our friends.

We love our neighbors as ourselves.

We respect and honor our husbands.

We love our wives as our own bodies.

We rejoice over the return of the prodigal.

We restore the one who betrayed us.

We accept.

We let the past be the past.

We forgive.

We love.

All because He paid the price for us to enter in.

I know there's a crown that is waiting
In yonder bright mansion for me;
And soon with the spirits-made-perfect,
At home with the Lord I shall be.

Protecting the New Growth

One of the things that I have found therapeutic in the last few weeks has been work in the backyard. My backyard is and always will be a work in progress. My first post on this blog was about digging up and moving rocks in my backyard to make borders. I like to create space. I see myself more as a landscape novice than as a gardener. My sister and step-mother are the gardeners in the family. Check out my sister's blog if you are interested in flowers and plants and such. http://ginnysgarden.blogspot.com/

Unfortunately, for the last few years, my oasis has been ruled by 2 big young dogs. Anything I did, they seemed to undo. If it was not enough to pick up after nature, I had to continually remove items brought onto the porch through the doggie door or deposited in the middle of a foot path. And I had to be very diligent to not leave anything of value on the porch, patio, or deck or I'd be sure to find it in many pieces spread over many square feet.

This spring, I felt the need to recapture my space. I finished a stone border around one planting bed that had been in a state of incompleteness for too long. I had planted a Crepe Myrtle there that a friend had given to me as gift of encouragement several years ago. I thought I had lost it for good when I came home one day to find the dogs had chewed it down to a small stump. But, to my delight and with the addition of an electric fence it has rebounded this spring. I was encouraged to try again.

Then, I restacked the woodpile that the dogs had totally dismantled in their hunting of small wildlife that lived beneath. I raked and raked. I cleaned the porch. I wacked the weeds and oak tree saplings.And then I got brave.

I had wanted to create a new planting area .. a rock garden of sorts. But, the space was not protected by the electric fence. It is, in fact, right in the middle of Boomer's and Rufus's domain. I moved rocks. I brought in new soil. And I plant several shade plants. The dogs watched the invasion. And my confidence in them waned. I knew it would just be a matter of time before they would have to do what dogs do when they smell something new in the ground...dig it up and or roll in it.

So, in order to give this new life a chance, I had to protect it until well established. This all seems like a physical metaphor of my life right now.

Here are a few more pictures of the backyard here in the first stages of a new season. There are a few more on the slide show on the sidebar. IF, things in my mind become reality in my yard, then I will share more pictures.

The Back Room

W.H. Auden ended a stanza in his poem Stop all the Clocks, 
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/auden.stop.html, with this line:

Meghan O'Rourke said in a series on bereavement that she wrote for The Slate:

"Loss doesn't feel redeemable. But for me one consoling aspect is the recognition that, in this at least, none of us is different from anyone else: We all lose loved ones; we all face our own death. And loss, strangely, can attune you to what is beautiful about existence even as it wounds you with what is awful. You live with a new sense of what the Victorian critic Walter Pater once called "the splendour of our experience and … its awful brevity," too. http://www.slate.com/id/2211257/entry/2211256/

Michael Kelly Blanchard wrote a song entitled Love Lives On from an album by the same name. The message he sings to us is a strong counter to the despair that grows out of any loss that feels like a part of our very self has been amputated. "Hope set adrift...faith, a faded wreath..history seems a myth only mocking our belief...bracing for goodbye, praying for relief, suffering and sighs...yet, to our surprise Love Lives On."
I have a room within where I have stored loss over the years. The door is open now...most of the time... and the light is on, but, I think I have neglected this space and need to be intentional about going through what is there. For years it was more a chasm buried deep and the contents sealed off from my conscience. As a child, I was unable to process the grief I felt as a result of the periodic bouts of depression and hospitalization that took my mother from me. Then when she died before I had a chance to start to understand her life's battle, I slammed the door shut and sealed it with all the anger of my 17 years. 

When the time was right, through the power of forgiveness, grace, and mercy, the seal was broken and the hot lava of that ancient grief was released. The story of how that happened awaits another time. The results of the release from and redemption and transformation of that room within is what I write of today.

Here, after my father's death, I have entered my grief room. It is familiar. I have been here before. Knowing, understanding in part, and therefore, not being caught by surprise by the strong affects of grief, has made it increasingly possible to allow grief to be a part of my living. Though I know that grief will not kill me, it is nonetheless messy and sticky and weighty to work with. My instinct is to fight back and so I have to tell myself to not be afraid.

I cannot say I have ever welcomed grief. I confess that my response to the "gut wrenching" demands of grief usually has been cause for concern to those who have had to watch, but, I have learned that I cannot deny it its rightful place. There is an ongoing metamorphosis of my soul that is and has been taking place and so, I try to keep the door open to that room so that the cleansing breath of life can flow through and remind me that love lives on.

Just recently, I spent a day with a close friend. We walked and browsed antique shops and talked about our lives and our losses. As we continued the discussion over lunch, the tears came to her eyes quickly when she shared the story of sitting with her father through the night as she waited for death to take him. Later, she turned in the middle of a store and asked if I thought she was different now. I understood what she was asking, as I too, know I am different. I said she was freer now. There was an understanding between us that grief had in some mysterious way set us free.  The conversation reminded me afresh that grief is unique to each of us yet at the very same time it is universal. My room of grief is really not that much different than hers.

Grief in its various expressions is experienced as I ride the waves to a place where my father's presence in my everyday life is no longer normal. Fortunately, the ride is not complicated. We had a wonderful relationship rooted in simplicity and acceptance. He lived 89 years. All who knew him say it was a good life. There was nothing for me to work out or get right before he died. But, the loss I feel is not diminished by that fact. I am now an orphan without a mother or father. My life has been altered. It will never be the same.

And to make things a bit more intense, this loss has taken me into that backroom where I also remember the times when grief seemed like a cruel taskmaster. I remember losses that seemed to own me and made me wonder if I would ever feel "normal" again. The overwhelming crash of despair seemed at times to be endless. And even now the variegated tastes of regret are triggered and the pain I felt is more than a memory. All of the grief I have known has become a part of me. It has marked me, colored me, molded me, taught me, transformed me, and it has set me free. By grace and through faith, I can say love lives on and therefore so do I.

So, what has grief taught me?

That I have loved fiercely. One does not grieve if one does not love.

Even though I let the past be the past and things have changed drastically through each loss it does not mean that love and grief do not remain. Together, side by side, love and grief, joy and sorrow blend to make real the whole picture of humanity.

My grief helps me remember what was worth preserving while slowly moving me forward to what comes next.

Grief is the means by which I am able to experience new birth after a profound and shattering loss.
Grief turns me, and forces me to confront the reality that this is not heaven. This is an in between place. But, in the end, love lives on.
Grief is the vehicle through the valley of the shadow of death. The valley is to be traversed. It is not our dwelling place.

The Valley of the Shadow

At a time when words seem to not line up for me, my husband Dave writes:

The Valley of the Shadow, and the Song of Angels

For the first time in my adult life, a family member has died: my sweet father-in-law died as he had lived, gently, on March 24.  He viewed all of life in the same way that all of his family viewed him, as a gift from God to be treasured and held joyfully and lightly.  His faith became deeper and richer as he aged, and even more so as cancer moved through his body.  The family had hung the nickname “El Supremo” on him years earlier, a completely incongruous title for one so humble, and yet it stuck.  He signed his emails to me “E.S.”, and I could see his grin as he typed.

There are many in our congregation with first-hand experience of what the psalmist vividly called “the valley of the shadow of death.”  There is no escaping the hurt, even though we have been promised an eternity with Christ, in His Father’s house, in new bodies, knowing fully even as we have been fully known, seeing face to face. 

My father-in-law died as the choir was in final preparations to sing the glorious “Requiem” by John Rutter.  In fact, we were singing the musical setting of the words from Revelation 14 – “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labors.”  The singing continues in Latin, “Lux aeterna luceat eis”, “May light eternal shine upon them.”  The music at that point is ethereal and weightless, as if the gravitational force of care and suffering has been removed.  “Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine” – grant them eternal rest, Lord.

And then the angels came to our home, and sang a song of life.

Nope, they were not as described in the Gospels – they wore jeans and glamorous hats and carried rubber gloves and dusters and mops.  A team of sweet friends came and gave my wife (and me, since I’m fortunate enough to be married to Ann) a great gift: they cleaned out our dirty home.  As surely as Lazarus’ tomb smelled better after the stone was rolled away, our house gave up its dirt and grime and dog-smell.  Dirty clothes were washed and folded, floors mopped, the refrigerator cleaned.  Those angels were singing the very song of life into our shadowy valley, at a time that we were simply unable to remember the tune.  It wasn’t a jubilant song of triumph – it was the song of a servant’s heart, of laying down self for another. 

This is what my brother has called a “tantalizing taste of the Kingdom.”  It is the song of the Risen Lord sung into us, the song of the inbreaking Kingdom.  It is like the card I received from one of the LCs, written with shaky hand, reminding me that she is praying for me – “Tell all your family that Jesus loves ‘em, a whole lot.”

Be reminded – and remind one another – of the Lord’s love, tender and fierce, of His companionship and presence, here and now, of the hope that is ours in His resurrection.  We have the privilege to be angels for one another, to minister in Christ’s name.  Speak Scripture into the lives and hurts of those around you: the Lord rejoices over you with song, now; even in the valley of the shadow of death, He is with you now, rod and staff at the ready; when Elijah said, “It is enough, let me die,” God said, “Have something to eat and drink now, then lie down and take a nap;” in the midst of his small, lonely world, Zacchaeus learned that Jesus wanted to have lunch with him, now; when your friend cries at the death of a loved one, stand close, and remind them that Jesus also wept at the tomb of Lazarus.  “Come to me,” Jesus said, “and I will give you rest” – now, though not nearly in the way it will be then. 

The memorial service (appropriately, the day before Easter) concluded with another angel (disguised as Tim Pennigar) singing “Give Me Jesus” – “In the morning when I rise,…and when I am alone,…and when I come to die, give me Jesus.”

The songs of the angels – sung through cards we have received, phone calls, hugs, cleaning solvent, and a loaf of banana bread – remind us of the tangible presence of Christ, seen, felt, experienced through His body at Blacknall.  We need not fear; His rod and His staff, His body and His song, are with us.  He has overcome the grave, and because of that we have hope.  My father-in-law’s faith is now sight.  And our valley is lighter, and smells sweeter.

Thanks for singing –

Dave

You Don't Just Get Over It

I woke around 1:30 in the morning, confused as to where I was. I found my way to the bathroom and then back to bed where I fell back into the dream where I had left off. Even in my dream I felt disoriented. I woke again around three, tossing and turning until I stirred enough to find release from the circuitous dream that seemed to be going on forever. The dream details slipped away but the residue of what I felt seemed to lay as thick as the spring pollen on the glass tables on my porch. I am realizing that I am just beginning the process. The loss of someone you love is not something you "get over".

My father died quietly, quickly, almost peacefully the evening of March 24th after 15 months of living with cancer. Hospice had just that day brought a hospital bed and set it up in the living room of the small ranch house that he shared with my step-mother for 36 years. For months he had found great comfort and ease to his pain whenever he rested in his butterfly chair. But it had become obvious that getting in and out of that resting place was becoming too difficult. So, they brought in the bed and hooked up an oxygen tank and even rolled in a wheel chair. All of these were to make things easier. My brother emailed a picture of Daddy sitting up in that bed and smiling as usual, making the best of what was given to him. I looked at the picture and cried as I knew we had all turned the corner.

My sister came that night to spend the night, giving my brother a chance to go home to his family. My other sister was to come the next day and I was scheduled to drive over on the weekend. That evening they fixed grits and livermush for supper. Daddy planned to have a cookie with whipped cream for dessert but felt too tired to sit at the table and thought he would rest in the fancy bed for a while. While my sister stepped out of the room to talk to her daughter on the phone, Daddy tried to adjust the bed to a comfortable position. Comfort came soon, but not as any of us expected. He cried out as he struggled to breathe and my sister and step-mother sat with him. They held his hands, told him they loved him, and then he was gone. They said it was so obvious he was no longer in his body.

Within hours we were all together, filling their small house past a fire marshal's comfort zone. For the next 10 days there was a constant ebb and flow of grown children and step-children and their spouses, grandchildren and greatgrands, my step-mother's sister and brother and their families, business partners, and friends. Food and flowers appeared daily and we all felt the rhythm of love gently sustaining us.

We moved through the days slowly, having decided to wait until the following Saturday to have the memorial service. We needed time together, time to think, time to remember, time to let things settle a bit in our hearts, and time to turn. Also we needed time to get the more than 40 family members to town. We spaced out the tasks at hand and moved like a flock of birds from place to place. Interspersed amongst the "must dos" we tried to maintain a familiar rhythm complete with saying Daddy's mealtime blessing 3 times a day and watching Carolina basketball, complete with the "pom-pom dance".

The week before our father's memorial service was also Holy Week. And as though that was not enough to buoy us, spring came too. We watched the foliage of the trees begin to unfold from their buds and the  Bradford pear, dogwoods and redbud trees splashed the neighborhood with color. The day we went to the cemetery to pick out a plot we were led to a resting place under a fully blossomed cherry tree. Joy and sorrow mingled. Life and death gave birth to life again. What was would be no more but the promise of life eased us onward.

The day we gathered to celebrate my father's life was indeed that...a celebration. We filled up half of one side of the church with family. The mystery of the sweet root of life was experienced as we participated in the service honoring this wonderful man we called Husband, Daddy, Bonus-Dad, Grandaddy, Great Grandaddy, Uncle, Brother-in-law, and friend. Then in true Witherington fashion, we went to our lake house and celebrated some more. We sat on the porch and we enjoyed one another's company. We ate barbeque. We drank beer and red wine. We chased the children across the lawn. we sat on the pier. We looked across the lake at the view that has changed little since the year my Daddy bought that lot 45 years ago.

                               Now, we begin to live on...though differently. You don't get over it.