Rush Your Life

My daughter and I recently had the opportunity to go to Winter Jam, an annual tour of Christian music artists from a wide range of genres. It was a bit nerve-wracking to undertake a drive to downtown, but it ended up being so fun to do something adventurous, different, and grown-up together.

A silhouette from Winter Jam

A line from one of the songs and artists I was unfamiliar with really stood out to me and has been rolling around in my head ever since. It is from the song "Take Your Time" by Joseph O'Brien: "And You're not gonna rush my life".

As a parent of a young teenager, I immediately related to the concept of not wanting to rush my child's life and in turn not wanting my child to rush her life. I want to help her savor and find the good in each moment. I want her to enjoy the process of learning all the new things that are in front of her, from an overhand volleyball serve to new friendship dynamics to a blossoming understanding of who God created her to be and everything in between. I want to celebrate with her the moment when we both realize that I can no longer see the top of her head when we stand next to each other. I want her to look forward to high school, learning to drive, dating, deciding what to do after high school, etc, but I don't want to rush her toward those things. They will come in their own time. When I am at my parenting best, I don't even want her to rush through the hard things (pre-algebra and middle school awkwardness anyone?), but want to walk through them with her and give her whatever time she needs. 

I am officially at the stage of mothering where I can say the thousand sleepless nights between this picture and the one above went by in three blinks of an eye.

It makes sense then that God, the perfect parent who loves each of us more than I love my daughter, wouldn't rush our lives either. Rather, He carefully and intentionally leads us through each moment, giving us the time we need to learn our lessons well and working out His will in His perfect time. If God's "not gonna rush my life" I probably shouldn't either. Rather, I am called to be patient and wait for the Lord.

I need this reminder in my grief. I can get so frustrated at what I perceive as a lack of progress. Sometimes I hit a wall over what feels like an unrelated issue in my everyday life and can't figure out why I can't make something work. Inevitably it turns out that my grief is causing the lack of forward progress. When I acknowledge my grief (and it's accompanying fear) I can often move forward again, but it is so frustrating! You would think that I would get better at acknowledging the grief behind my challenges sooner, but I don't. And God is not going to rush these steps. Somehow, even though I usually can't see it, God is redeeming these missteps and using them for my good and His glory.

I need this reminder as I face changes. My family is moving this summer and most likely two summers after that. I am tempted to go into planning mode now. Our next move comes with some challenges, and it is actually tempting to overlook the challenging move and think/plan/dream/ruminate on the next one. But what I really need to do is live in the present moment and be content with what I currently have. For me this means I spend more time serving in our current homeschool group than I spend researching the next one or worrying about what schooling will look like after that. It means I try not to waste too much time looking for rentals in our upcoming location when it is way too early in our move timeline to find something. It means I am trusting God to provide a house for us just like He has every time we have moved, always in His timing and never without the hiccups that keep us humble and life interesting.

In what area of your life do you need the reminder that God is "not gonna rush my life"? What would it look like to trust His timing and provision?

Book Review: Through the Eyes of a Lion

I was gifted the book "Through the Eyes of a Lion" by a family in our Sunday School class. About two months after Oliver passed, I started reading it. My daughter (who I homeschool) and I would sit on our shady porch in the mornings, and in between helping her with her 3rd grade math, spelling, and writing assignments, I would slowly read one paragraph at a time. I struggled to concentrate enough to read anything at all during this time of raw grief, but these small chunks while sitting outside with my daughter nearby I could do. I would underline and star things I wanted to come back to with whatever colored pencil was within reach. By the time it was too cool in the mornings to sit on the porch, I had finished reading the book.

In "Through the Eyes of a Lion", author Levi Lusko shares the story of his young daughter, Lenya, passing away unexpectedly. He gave words to my grief during a time when my grief was only crazy feelings that could pull me in any direction at any moment. He pointed me to specific Bible verses of hope that I knew were there but I couldn't find on my own yet. He showed me a God big enough to guide me and anchor me through any struggle, big enough to work in mighty ways even through this terrible pain and loss. Through reading a book of someone else's loss, I didn't feel so alone. He imagined a bigger picture of my future and my family's future than I could at the time. Frequent pop culture references kept me distracted enough from the pain to allow me to keep reading (even if many of them went over my head).

This book is certainly for those facing their own seasons of grief and loss. But it is also for everyone. The title "Through the Eyes of a Lion" refers to seeing our trials through the lens of God, rather than our broken human lens. Lusko seeks to answer the question, "How do you live out an extraordinary calling while doing ordinary things and living in a world that is all screwed up?".

Lusko reminds readers that heaven is a real place where our loved ones are celebrating and where believers will be reunited because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. He calls believers to wait on God for strength and take heart because of the glorious promises God has given to us. He challenges us to see our trials as an opportunity to hear from God, proclaim His Word, serve others, and be blessed. He encourages us to cultivate our longing for heaven. "It's there to keep our heart set on pilgrimage and our feet moving forward. It's caffeine for our souls to prevent us being lulled to sleep. It keeps us alert. Focused on our calling. Laying up treasures in heaven." And finally he admonishes believers to run towards the things that scare us in order to take hold of our destiny.

We loved going to the zoo, especially when we were living
near Omaha, NE. I don't have a picture of Oliver with a
lion, but I did find one of him with a bobcat! He loved
small machinery. Those dimples and eyes!

It is rare in a book about grief and suffering to find someone raw and real about the pain while also maintaining a hopeful, biblical, Christ-centered focus. This book ended up being exactly what I needed during my early days of grief. I continue to turn to it when I need a fresh reminder of God's faithfulness in the midst of suffering.

Jesus has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. 2 Tim 1:10b ESV

Sowing with Tears

I would like to share more about the verses I named my blog after.

Psalm 126:5-6
Those who sow with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with them.

These verses became an anthem for me as I grieved the loss of Oliver. They were permission. I didn't have to figure out how to stop crying, I didn't have to figure out how to grieve, I didn't have to fix this unfixable thing, I didn't have to find the answers to all the questions, and I didn't have to give up living. Instead, I could continue sowing seeds by living my everyday life, trusting somehow God would do the work and joy was ahead of me and my family.

Here are a few shots of my everyday life:

The daffodil bulbs we planted this fall are 
coming up already. Hopefully they do OK
with this week's cold.

We tried cast iron skillet brownies this 
weekend. So good. Crusty on the edge, 
gooey in the middle.

We will be moving again this summer.
Putting away the Christmas decorations
with a little extra care always feels like
the first step in the moving process. Next
up is eating through the freezer! 

So much fun with one inch of snow!

My daughter and I have been enjoying
going to the gym near our house and 
practicing volleyball. 

While the verses became a beautiful promise to me, I couldn't remember where I had first read them and began applying them to my grief. Last year, our precious and greatly missed small group in eastern Washington was tasked with sharing a favorite Bible verse, and I took the opportunity to retrace some steps and try to figure out the verses' origins in my life.

The first place I looked was the book "Through The Eyes of a Lion" by Levi Lusko. This book helped me immensely in my grief journey, and I plan to write a blog post about it soon. The concept of choosing to sow seeds in the midst of suffering is certainly contained in the book, but Psalm 126 isn't directly quoted. Here is an example: "Resolving to believe has always been the defining mark of followers of Jesus, ever since the very beginning of the church."

Then I searched "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. Again the concept of sowing with tears is present, but a direct quote of those verses is not. "Living with losses, I may choose to still say yes. Choose to say yes to what He freely gives."

Next I started searching blogs I frequent and facebook pages I follow. I found the following facebook post made by Lysa Terkeurst of Proverbs 31 Ministries on July 8, 2019: "In the midst of processing deep hurt, I have learned to turn to truths that anchor me to the reality of who God is. Truths like [she listed more than just this one]: He is the one who can use my tears to water the soil of my heart so that it can one day be a harvest of joy: 'Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.' Psalm 126:5."

The date is significant. As far as I can remember, July 8th was the day we drove from my parent's home in Wisconsin where we had Oliver's funeral to Kentucky where we would have to begin restarting our lives minus Oliver. I don't remember much about that day, but it seems likely I read that post and made note of the verse. It makes me smile to think how much God loves us. That He would orchestrate the universe to give me those verses to claim as my own, right when I needed them the most.

Here are a few shots of sowing seeds in my everyday life in July 2019. They are wet with tears.

A watery walk with a neighbor.

We planted vincas a few days after we
arrived back home. The seeds from the 
spent blossoms starting sprouting in the
soil as the plant continued to flower.

We had a memorial with our local friends after 
our return to Kentucky. We blew bubbles to heaven
as a way to remember and say good-bye to Oliver.

Some friends sent a care package with journals.
My daughter and I kept thankful journals with 
them for a season. The bottom right drawing is a 
blueberry plant. Two friends took my daughter
and me blueberry picking the first day my husband
went back to work.

Less than a year later, Tim Keller and Gospel in Life did a series on youtube called "Trusting God in Difficult Times". One of the mediations included in the series is based on Psalm 126 and  titled "Don't Waste Your Sorrows" (you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeqwyqmIeyQ&list=PLqdAeLCMehGFJ0Q-8Ll1y0t5ml6qWYHiz&index=10). In the video, Tim Keller discussed how sowing seed during our times of sorrow produces joy, enables us to sorrow in patience without guilt, self-pity, or anger, and creates Christ-likeness as we follow His example. He encouraged believers facing a time of sorrow to take the ordinary grace that God offers all people as a way to sow seeds. He lists Bible reading, prayer, serving, kindness, sacrament, and obedience as examples.

Sowing with tears and reaping with joy is not easy. There are still tears! The complete fulfillment of the verses is only found in Jesus and eternity. The living out of these verses is only possible by the strength and grace of God. The promise that we will gather sheaves with joy doesn't answer the question of why Oliver had to die so young. It doesn't mean I don't miss him every day or that I don't long for the way things used to be. But the concept of sowing with tears has given me a promise to cling to and a way forward.

(I tried to write the final paragraph of this post with an "I" instead of a "we", but it just didn't work. While I am trying to be mindful of sharing my story and not my husband's or my daughter's, I also can't truthfully claim to have walked any step of this road without them.)

And so we press on, thankful for what was and for what is. We live in this day, the only one we are promised. We do for others what we wish we could do for Oliver. We follow our daughter whose childlike faith and resilience, as well as relentless growth in response to time, has shown us the way to acceptance and healing. We thank God for family and friends not afraid to be with us in our struggles, not afraid to ask the hard questions as we grieve. We cling to Jesus, the only anchor in the storm. We look toward heaven and the redemption that is coming. We try to live with joy and sorrow together, hoping the resulting tension makes a sweet harmony and brings sheaves to God's glory.

Tension

One thing that is hard is everyone grieves differently. What is comforting to one person is unbearably painful to the next. What one person never questions, another might wrestle with for years. Everyone’s pace through the grief journey is different and varied. Even when we feel stuck in grief, the rear view mirror still shows that our grief is changing with time.

These facts bring tension to all of my relationships. I want to share and experience grief, comfort, and hope with the people who are closest to me and loved Oliver the most, but I risk bringing them additional pain or feeling additional pain myself as we grieve together. Our grief rubs up against each other, sometimes smoothly and comfortingly, but often sharply and discouragingly. In the constantly changing landscape of grief, I never know exactly what to expect from myself, much less from others.

One example that illustrates some of this tension is the lego creations that Oliver left behind. It was summertime, and he and my daughter had been working on a lego city to cover the table we usually kept homeschooling things on during the school year. They were mostly finished when he passed, so we had tons of buildings and vehicles that were his recent creations. For a while they stayed just as they were. Sometimes I walked past the table and smiled, thankful they were left for us to see and remember. Other times seeing them just represented everything I had lost and caused me to weep. Sometimes I sought the table out in order to weep, other times I avoided the table with everything in me. My daughter and husband had their own varied and ever changing responses to these legos. Eventually we had to decide when to start using the table for its intended purpose again, how many lego creations to keep, who would take apart the ones we decided not to keep, and what to do with the ones we kept. We had different opinions on these questions and had to try to navigate finding a solution that worked for all three of us. It's something we still navigate each time we move to a new house or decide to rearrange some furniture. Countless other examples like this exist in our grief journey, some less important, some way more important and far reaching. It remains hard.

The lego city Oliver and Leah made in 
early summer of 2019

A few of Oliver's lego creations that we kept

I feel this tension in sharing on this blog. Some of what I share may resonate with you, and some of it might make you want to throw something! I'll certainly look back some day and roll my eyes at some of the things I shared. I pray that as I share I will not lose sight of how individual and ever changing grief can be. 

I don't have an answer for this tension. Obviously talking to one another should help. But the emotions often get so mixed up it is hard to identify what needs to be communicated. And it is not like anyone knows how to grieve or what they need in a given moment, day, or season. Acknowledging the tension and confusion can help, as can extending grace to yourself and others. Grace to be yourself, to be OK with feeling differently than someone, to change your mind, to not have the answers. 

The sunset we watched with Oliver the night before
he died. Grace given to us. Oh that we could extend
that grace to one another and ourselves better.

It helps to remember that while there is no right way to grieve, feeling the more painful parts of grief is what brings noticeable progress in finding peace. I want to avoid the parts that seem painful to me, to just stick to the things that comfort me in that moment. It is painful, but ultimately I feel better when I:

• tell the moms I meet at our new homeschool co-op about Oliver even though it is awkward and it is hard to get the words out

• hang the old pictures of our family with Oliver alongside new pictures of our family without Oliver and negotiate with my husband how many of each works for both of us (full disclosure, it took more than five months to put photos in our picture frames after our most recent move; like I said, this stuff is hard)

• say aloud to my family, “the reason I am more irritable than usual during the Christmas season is because I still miss Oliver, and I don’t know how to handle those feelings”

Learning to walk into the tension rather than skirt away from the tension brings relief.

I want this blog to be full of the hope we have in Jesus and to speak to all the ways that God has been with me and my family during our grief and loss. I know that means sharing the hard and painful parts. It also means taking risks when what I share could be painful or confusing to someone who reads it. I pray that God would use these hard things to bring us healing and Him glory. Thanks for reading!

One Thousand Gifts

I don’t have any intention of telling my story in any sort of order. However, my journey does have a clear beginning, and I want to start there today.

Oliver was born in October of 2008 while we were living in Alaska. My husband had left for a year-long deployment to Iraq three weeks before his birth. A dear friend went to the hospital with me, patiently offering encouragement and giving me space to do my thing (at least that's how I remember it; she probably has her own version of events). Oliver was born dimpled and perfect, and we were so happy. And I was so scared.

I loved being a mom. Oliver and I would talk to my husband on Skype early in the morning for us and late at night for him. We would Skype with my mom each day as well. I had a great group of godly friends who were all having babies and dealing with deployments together and a church family who offered me tons of support. Several friends and family came to visit me, and my brother stayed with me through the summer. I have so many good and joyful memories from this time. But I was so scared.

Pics from a walk in Alaska with a college friend who
came to visit about a month after Oliver was born.

My fear, a long Alaska winter, deployments, perfectionism, ugly intrusive thoughts, and postpartum hormones and emotions mixed together in a storm of anxiety and depression that affected me on and off for years: through reunification after the deployment, becoming pregnant with my second, moving to Missouri, giving birth to my beautiful daughter, and moving to Kentucky. I really struggled with trusting that no matter what happened in the future God was in control and it was going to be OK. I also struggled with the fact that I was struggling. 

Looking back now, I have so much grace and love for the girl I was then. I just want to wrap her in my arms and tell her she is doing great, and she is going to come through this season grateful for the things it has taught her and the ways she has changed. 

This season of wrestling through my anxiety and depression cemented my faith and helped me claim it for my own. I had to face not just my sinfulness, but my own depravity and inability to do anything good on my own. I reached out for Jesus my Savior again and again and He was there, a shelter in the storm. Everything didn't change for me all at once, but He carried me through and restored me. 

The number one thing God used to help me with my fear was the book “One Thousand Gifts” by Ann Voskamp. I learned about the book from a friend in Alaska and started keeping my own daily list of gifts shortly after hearing about it, based on my friend's description of the book and her modeling of the concept on her blog. Giving thanks for things large and small helped me to see God's presence and work in my life more clearly and helped me grow to trust Him more. 

I finally read "One Thousand Gifts" in the summer of 2011. In the book Ann Voskamp shares her journey of practicing thanksgiving and how it has taught her to: 

• find joy through thanksgiving
• be present for the small miracles and get the gift of time
• see grace in all things by looking from the perspective of God's Word and the gift of Jesus
• see God Himself in His glories big and small
• give and realize it is Christ who does the giving

Oliver building like Dad in Kentucky

It was during this time that Oliver, who was now 2 1/2, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. We were scared and sad, but also thankful and determined. The testing my faith had gone through after he was born had prepared my husband and me to respond to this new trial. To give thanks for insulin, for being together, for a neighbor who watched our dog while we were in the hospital, for the children's hospital only being 45 minutes away from our new home, for friends from Alaska who had just arrived in Kentucky and watched our baby girl while we learned how to take care of Oliver. We didn't respond perfectly and the situation was still heartbreaking, but we were able to see God with us through it all and cling to hope and trust Him. 

My story takes many twists and turns from here (six more moves and counting, two more deployments, and the decision to homeschool to name a few!!!). I didn't know what trials were ahead of me or the ways thanksgiving would continue to shape me. I just knew that God had given me a beautiful gift in teaching me to stop and give thanks for each moment. 

"Count blessings and discover Who can be counted on."

-Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

He who did not spare his own Son, but give him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32 

Light of Christmas

Happy Epiphany! These pictures represent a few of my favorite views from Christmas. I realized they all have something to do with light and are perfect for sharing today as we reflect on kings leaving their homes and following a star. Lord, guide us to your perfect light.

My favorite Christmas decoration at sunset...

dark of night...

and afternoon sunlight

Artwork old and new along with beautiful sounds

Moonlight at dusk on our dog walk

I like to keep my Christmas decorations up for the
first few days of homeschooling in the new year.
Our dog Ash is quite the homeschool buddy! 

Why Now?

Assuming I figure out how to make this post publish when I would like it to, my son Oliver passed away exactly 4 ½ years ago. Two years after he passed away, I wrote this on my facebook page:

“...It's hard to know what to say about the anniversary of Oliver's death. I have more words than I used to, but it is still hard to know where, when, and how much to say. I have been putting words on paper lately, so maybe more to come.”

Since then, I kept thinking that I would write more, but I never did.



I spent the two year anniversary of Oliver's death on the Oregon coast.

I was busy with homeschooling, Bible study, and raising a middle schooler. I made good friends who listened and asked questions, a gift from heaven in dealing with my grief and making writing less important than I would have guessed. As I worked through my grief, it didn’t become easier to know where, when, or how much to say. Instead it remained a challenge to find the right balance between living in the present and sharing the story of my past. And it remained ridiculously, unexplainably challenging for me just to say the words “my son passed away”.

Lately, through Bible study, prayer, and conversations with others, I know that God is calling me to find ways to share my story. Psalm 107:1-3 reminds us: “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story - those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.” In addition to being braver in sharing in person with those close to me and new people I meet in our military life, I want to write too. A blog seems like a better place to gather these writings than my facebook page.

I need to write now because I have realized that my memories of Oliver’s life and death are fading. Some of my memories of that time are seared in my brain forever, some were always lost in the fog of grief, but most are fading as time does its work. If I want to write with a crisp memory, it’s time to start.

And so here it is, with intention and precious but fleeting memories, the start of a blog.



Crazy what ocean mist does to hair!