Last night when I couldn’t sleep, I heard on the radio, “We were never meant to be enough. That is for God.” Isn’t that a wonderful, freeing thought? I don’t need to be enough- – for my hubby, my children, even myself. If I was, they/I wouldn’t need God. But I need to be humble enough to be willing to realize that- and there is the rub- if I’m not enough, then I’m not in control. Am I willing to live with my hands, my heart open? To allow them to struggle through life, allowing them to learn God is enough. What does it look like to allow them to struggle? Am I willing walk with them in the struggle, in their pain? How do I love them well? Can I be okay when they choose something different than I would have? Do I have compassion instead of a judgmental spirit for their brokenness, their hurt, and their issues? Do I believe God is enough for them, that He will take care of them?
There’s the other side of this too. If I’m not enough, then neither is my hubby, my children, you- – are not enough for me. They/you don’t have to be enough for me. God is enough. Do I believe that? Maybe a better question is, Do I live like I believe that God is enough? I struggled with writing that letter to my family. At times it’s so easy to hide, to make it look like we’re mostly okay. Looks can be so deceiving. But it was good for me to put words to what we/I live with. Yet it’s humbling, embarrassing to admit, to show my brokenness, my deficits, my issues. But if I keep it all behind the mask, how can you love me? How can you walk with me? How can I know God if I’m not willing to be honest, if I’m not willing to live with an open heart? And when you get to the place and you realize- God is all you have, you do find out and believe “GOD IS ENOUGH”. But in the middle of the battle it is so hard to remember, the war has already been won. It is hard to rest, to just be with God our Father. I want to fight. I want to win the battle. I want to be in control. And so I doubt that God is enough. I doubt that He can work this for my good. I doubt that He can make beauty out of ashes. That He can heal broken shattered dreams. That He can dance in the storm with me. But it was in my brokenness, in the middle of the night when there was no one there, God was there and God was enough. God heard my heart’s cry and He came in that quiet way gently wrapping His arms around me and holding me close. He was okay with me not being enough, with my brokenness because HE was enough.
Two years ago today I came home from the hospital. When I look back over those two years, they have been the hardest two years of my life so far. I’m beginning to think, to realize when you brush against death’s door but don’t quite go through; it does something to you. It changes you forever. Life and its problems doesn’t look like it used too. I think of heaven A LOT more than I used to. I don’t hang onto stuff as much as I used to, stuff is to be used, people are to be enjoyed. I have a longing for God I didn’t know was possible. I have come to a much different view of God as my Father through all this struggle, pain and difficulty. I also see people differently than I used to; everyone has a battle they’re fighting in. So would I want to re-live those two years? Not in a million years! But in learning to dance in the storm, I have chosen to believe, to trust that God is taking this terrible, ugly, horrible, painful thing and making a beautiful. breath-taking, gorgeous something. And I can’t wait to go to heaven and see it with my family.
We have since 2004 every four years made look-alike dresses for Mother’s day. And this would again be our year for look-alikes, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Yes, part of me did, I love to sew and of course, who wouldn’t want a new dress. But there was one young girl who was always so excited about new dresses and taking our pictures and she isn’t here this year. I struggled with it: to do it, does that mean we’re moving on and leaving you behind, forgetting about you. To not do it, does that mean we haven’t accepted your death, our losses. This year it is different. It is again another first for us to live through. We talked about it and we decided to go ahead but we did add a twist to it. Our dresses aren’t exactly the same. Similar but not the same and it seemed to us that doing it this way this year was how we could honor Jennie. And of course I wore your angel pin in memory of you, Jennie dear. I think you’re having a great Mother’s Day in heaven with grandma.
Mother’s Day 2004
Mother’s Day 2008
Mother’s Day 2012
Mother’s Day 2016
And on other news, after a two week break from eye therapy and exercises, the eye doctor is very pleased with how Jana’s brain and eyes kept the info they learned through the therapy and exercises Jana had done. Now for the next several weeks she is to read at least one hour a day and then we go for a four week round of therapy and the doctor is thinking by then her eyes and brain will be working together again. But he does want to keep checking on her eyes every couple months. And her Occupational therapy is over for now too. This week she will learn some exercises to do at home. Her physical therapist is to have a baby in June so we will be taking a break from therapy while she is on maternity leave. The therapists want Jana to do exercises here at home while she is on a break. We are looking forward to a more restful summer. And I have a doctor appointment this week. I have really been struggling with some physical issues that past several months and please pray that the doctor will be willing to work with us on it. I am so ready for some answers. I’ve been doing a lot of researching and reading and have an idea as to what is going on, so I really hope the doc truly listens to what I’m trying to say.
“If you don’t feel close to God, guess who moved?” this has been said to me several times in my life and yes, since our accident as well (thankfully it was a stranger) and it always irritated me a bit because it seemed to me all my life I was searching for God and couldn’t find Him. It felt like He had moved or hidden or something. Then I found this verse: 2 Chronicles 32:31b “God withdrew from Hezekiah in order to test him and to see what was really in his heart.” So God moves away from people? And yet Psalms 139:7-8 says, “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there.” So how in the world does that work? We can’t get away from God but He can withdraw from us? Or is it more about where my heart is and what I am aware of? Could it be that when I don’t feel close to God that I am not aware of His presence? That I have not awakened my heart to Him, to His love? Or maybe I purposely or intentionally closed my heart in my pain and hurt. When I’m in pain and/or grieving, I tend to withdraw from people, to close my heart. And at times it feels like the pain is too overwhelming that God is far away. And maybe too, I’m angry at God for allowing this pain, this shattered dream. And God doesn’t feel like a safe God to be open with and to be pursuing Him. So why would I want to draw close to Him? Maybe I need a new or better picture of Who God is.
One way I’ve learned to dance in the storm is that I need to choose to open my heart, to awaken myself to God’s presence. He is present and He makes His presence known to me in unique, personal ways if only I am willing to be aware of Him. But how do I open my heart when God doesn’t feel safe? How do I “see” God in my situation? I have chosen to believe that God is good not necessarily safe. If I as a human, as a mother, love my children deeply and hurt when they do or when bad things happen to them and want the best for them, how much more would God feel the same towards me? He is the perfect Father. He knows what I need. He has my best interest at heart. And I think too we blame God for a lot of things that He isn’t guilty for. A lot of our shattered dreams are a result of this broken world we live in. We are living in a world God never intended for us. Also I have asked God to help my heart be sensitive to His presence, to see Him in the storm. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.” All those years I thought I was searching for God, I wonder what it was I was searching for. I wonder if it wasn’t more about what I could get from Him than how I could bring glory to Him. If I do and say all the right things and obey all the right rules I’ll be a pretty good Christian and maybe, just maybe, my mansion in heaven will be nicer than most. And maybe God will really bless me and life will be relatively easy. So maybe I had a wrong perception of seeking God, of seeing God. Maybe I didn’t really truly want to find God because my idea of Him was He wasn’t a safe God much less a good one.
So where is God? I believe He’s right here beside me, actually He is inside of me because I ask Him to live in my heart. So if I am willing to look under all that pain and other junk in my heart and allow God to heal my heart, I will find Him. He is a good, good Father and He loves me, as Chris Tomlin’s song says.
Yeah, I know that seems all wrong. It’s supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year”, with all the decorations, gift giving, parties, things to do, all the music and lights, etc. And I’m not too sure we as Christians didn’t fall into the commercialization of Christmas in a “Christian” kind of way. And yet for some of us at times, well let’s be real honest, most of the time it feels like, “the most awful time of the year” instead. We have that shattered dream we’re trying to learn to live without. There’s an empty chair at the table, a bed that has no one to sleep in, or well _______________ you fill in the blank.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes,
“The celebration of Advent is possible only to those troubled in soul,
who know themselves to be poor and imperfect,
and who look foreword to something greater to come.”
And I also give credit to Grief Share for starting me to think differently, in some ways, about Christmas. That Christmas is for those who are hurting and experiencing pain. What is Christmas really about? Why do we have Christmas anyway? And I’m not going to get all theological about it or say it’s at the wrong time of the year or the many other things out there about Christmas. There’s plenty written along those lines. When I think about Christmas as I used to know it, I wonder, “Why do I have to do Christmas when my heart is hurting and I don’t want to hear the music and laughter? When my world has shattered and I don’t know how to put it together again. What do I do with Christmas and how in the world do I survive it, when ‘all things christmas’ feels so shallow, so frivolous, so empty? And so when I stopped to think about Christmas and the real reason we celebrate that day, I began to think I need to change how I do Christmas, how I see Christmas. Christmas is the day we honor the birth of Jesus, the day God came to live among us. Yes, I’ve known that all my life but it’s been since Jennie’s death that it’s really got me to thinking about Jesus’ birth and why He came to earth. Why did He live here 30+ years and die? If Jesus’ only purpose was to die to save us from sin, why didn’t God have His death happen sooner? Like when Jesus was two years old, instead of having Joseph and Mary take Him to Egypt or one of the many other times people were angry enough to kill Him. What if Jesus also came to show us how to live life? To show us He understands how much our hearts can hurt? To show us what love, grace, mercy and justice, etc. looks like? To show us a Father’s love? To show us who God really is? If you look in the Old Testament at the different times God’s presence was shown to people, their hearts were filled with fear. And God knew that so He came as a baby- who’s afraid of a baby? Listen to this song by Jason Gray. I identify so well with it in many places.
Listen to it again. Let the words of the song sink into your heart.
I’m wondering if a lot of the stuff I do at Christmas is to ease that deep down ache in my heart, the longing to make life here look a little more like the life I was created for, life in the garden. But this isn’t heaven and I shouldn’t try to make heaven on earth. The pictures I see of Christmas or at least what is trying to be portrayed as “Christmas”: people sitting by the fireplace, smiling and singing, good food, gifts, etc; leave me feeling like I’m on the outside looking in. Is there any room for some one who feels like crying instead of laughing? Someone who lost the music to the songs? Someone who wonders, “Where is God in the middle of this shattered dream?”
So what should Christmas look like? I’m not totally sure but somehow manger scenes and all the other “normal” christmassy stuff just doesn’t seem to quite fit. Jesus came to redeem us, to show us the Father, “to do a new thing”. I wonder how Jesus wants us to celebrate His birth, His coming to earth. I wonder if instead of being so busy doing stuff, we should learn how to be still. Instead of looking for all the perfect gifts, maybe we should be looking for Him, and instead of listening to all the holly jolly music, listening with our hearts for His voice. I wonder how often we miss Jesus because He doesn’t look like we think He should. What if He is that family whose loved one died? What if He’s that family who just received earth shattering news? What if He’s that sad-looking person I saw while grocery shopping? What if He’s that disabled person I had to wait on? What if His the child that asks, can you do something with me? What if ____?
I found this poem on the internet and it touches my heart.
I found out something rather interesting the other day. Due to the severity of my brain injury, I should have been put into a medically induced coma for some time after our accident, but because of the other massive injuries my body suffered they couldn’t. The doctors said my body needed to feel the pain (of the other 20 injuries) to be able to heal. Think about that! My body needed to feel pain in order to heal. Totally amazing, I think.
I know- I know we resist pain. We don’t like pain. We don’t want to experience pain, but could it be- – pain is good? Beneficial? Could it be pain is trying to tell us something?
If God made our physical bodies that way, could it also be that for us to be emotionally and spiritually healthy, we need to allow ourselves to feel pain in order to heal? I’ve been reading and learning a lot. God has made us three part beings. And those three parts work together quite a bit. Meaning when one part of us is not well it affects the other two parts of us as well.
What does it look like to feel emotional pain? Spiritual pain? I have come to believe that our emotional and spiritual health run on the same track, similar to joy and pain. It has been said we will only experience joy to the same level we allow ourselves to feel pain. And in the same way we can only be as spiritually strong as we are emotionally healthy. So what does it look like to allow myself to feel pain emotionally? Spiritually? One thing I’ve learned is that I have to admit I suffer loss, lots of them. We live in a broken world. It was not the way God really wanted us to live. I have to be willing to honestly look at myself, my heart.
We were created with longings, to dream dreams but sometimes life shatters those dreams. What am I going to do when my dreams shatter? Grin and bear it? Or become a tough girl? Or am I going to pick up those pieces of shattered dreams and feel the sharp edges and allow it to penetrate my heart? Allow it to cut my soul? Am I going to allow myself to mourn, to grieve those shattered dreams? Am I going to admit that my dreams shattered? If I never allow myself to have dreams, they can’t shatter. And just as shattered glass can cut your skin as you clean it up, causing pain and bleeding so do shattered dreams.
And my experience has been that not grieving, not mourning is a lot more painful, a lot worse than being honest with God and yourself. Not allowing yourself to feel the pain, the anger, the disappointment, not grieving well the shattered dreams I experience leads to depression. I know; I’ve been there.
And spiritual pain? I have to come to the realization there is not one. single. thing. I can do to fix what’s wrong between God and me. No amount of rules I obey, no amount of good things I do, nothing I do can make me good enough. Jesus has done it for me on the cross; all I can do is accept His gift. And allow my heart to feel the awesomeness, the magnitude of that gift. A. W. Tozer says, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” And I’ve been thinking a lot about that. And I’ve decide it’s the most important thing because I will act out of what I believe about God, who or what I think or perceive God to be.
The truth is I’m still healing physically. When I stop and think about where I was March 31, 2014, more dead than alive, (as my dear children say) and where I was a year ago. I was finishing up therapy and just started driving again, (on the back country roads), so truly, really I have come a long way. It’s just I wanted life to be back to “normal” sooner than it is, yeah, impatient, I know. As I told one friend I’m hanging onto the hope that I will some day feel better than I do now at times. I’m trying to obey my daughter who tells me to be kind to myself but I admit it feels so wrong- – it seems we’ve traded places; she does a majority of the work around the house now. It feels so unfair, she had surgery too and yet she feels so much better than I do a lot of the time. Granted she wasn’t beat up quite like I was. But it is one of my shattered dreams; I was not going to have my girls doing most of the housework, like I did, with my mother’s sickness and death. Yes, I was going to teach them how to do all the stuff she does, I just wanted her to be the helper. Not the one doing most of the work. So what do I do with this shattered dream? How do I see God through this shattered dream? I do grieve the loss of my ability to work like I used to, some days I cry, sometimes I journal, which are correct response, some days I’m a grump and think how much better I could have done it, had I still been me, which is a sinful response and sometimes I just have a deep, deep longing for heaven. And on my journey I have come to believe, to see God as my perfect Father that He loves me passionately and deeply cares for me. And He wants to be there holding me in this storm if I am willing to allow myself to just be held, to be quiet and rest in Him and not try to be strong and keep it together myself.
I invite you to be aware of your shattered dreams and to allow our Father to hold you as you grieve those shattered dreams.
In my next post, I would like to start exploring how I learned to dance in the storm.
Years ago I read this quote on a church sign, “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, its about learning to dance in the rain.” It struck a chord in my heart. I think, because I was longing to dance but didn’t have a clue as to what that looked like. And the storm seemed pretty awful then, the rain was pouring down and the wind whipping away my ability to think- – to even see God through the storm.
It has been quite a few years since I first read that quote and in some ways feels it feels like the storm has reached hurricane strength and yet in all honesty it doesn’t feel quite as awful as it did years ago. And I believe it is because not only have I learned to dance in the storm but my Father, My God is right there dancing with me.
So I invite you to journey through the storms in your life. And my heart’s desire is that you too will become aware of your Father God holding you as you learn to dance in your storm.
