Imposters Lurking...

 I knew I was going to hate this week.  I know that people say we shouldn't do things like that, pre-plan to hate a day or pre-plan a bad day or however you want to call it. The thing is I kinda hate weekends.  From Friday night to Monday morning I wish they would crawl into a hole.  

I know all the reasons for this dear reader, I understand completely why I dread Friday's and Saturday's, and Sunday's.  I can logically think it out and try and plan for it and put things in place to try and make it not be what it is, but it never really works.  So I fake it.  

I also know it's been a bit since I wrote, not because I haven't been feeling but because I've been feeling too much if that makes sense, and I mean lets be honest, it does get a bit repetitive after a while so even though I write in my head sometimes I don't always translate that writing to the page.  

There is this thing called a grief time line.  It talks about peak grief being four to six months into the process.   That seems to be what doctors and scientists have all said.  I don't know if I agree with the idea of peak grief because if what I am feeling has the potential to get worse I don't think I'm going to like it all that much.  

It's interesting to find how much going through the motions a person can do.  We learn how to fake it so much that there are times we can even fool ourselves into believing our own optical illusion.  With this, there have been days where I have just made myself put on that game face and I can almost make myself believe it's okay to do that, it's okay to nod and smile, even if the smile is so obviously a lie.  I think that's what's so hard in all this.  Because I mean let's be clear so much of I do and what we do is distract ourselves because in those times that there is no distraction, and there are many, the whole thing overwhelms.  It's like a big game of among us.  Where the traitor is hiding out and everyone is sus...

The other day I came across this as I was getting my coffee ready.   Where the machine is there's a cutting board and well it leans there it looks cool and it's one of those things that really don'ts move, I just wipe around it when I'm cleaning but every so often I'll move it and when I moved it there it was...

This was Josie, she just did things that would make you smile. They all do things that and it's hard and I feel bad because my mind and heart are so stuck on this.  I know it will be this way for a long time, likely forever and that's just how it is, but I so wish that there was some way to make none of this be true. 

I guess that's the hard part here.  Facebook is the constant reminder with it's remember this posts.  This time last the 18 year old went to college, finding the apartment,  moving her into it, spending those week day's there every other week it was amazing but it was the beginning of the pulling away right.  It's supposed to be that way, parents get a certain amount of time with them and then they have to watch them move off into the world.  I cried last year when that started but at the same time I was excited for what was to come for her.  Now she's off in the Army doing great things. The 14 year old is moving through life too.  Sophomore this year, it's like time marches and you watch these people that are so much a part of you and you can't wait to see what they will become even while you want to keep them trapped in their current form for as long as possible.  Knowing they are in the room next door or upstairs or in the kitchen or...or...or...

The thing is there were at least 9 more years closer to 10 and that's what makes this so much harder, to realize that 10 is now down to 3 or 4 but it's more.  It's not getting to see what she was going to become, and let's be clear as with the other two it was going to be something amazing. 

Her creativity , her drive, her desire to serve, all of it was so full and bright.   

The sting of death is something that we feel.  When Paul talks  about oh death where is your sting, he isn't saying what so many try and make him be saying.  He's not telling us we won't feel the sting of death here, ultimately the sting of death is mitigated well just read what he says...

⁵⁴ When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: 

Death has been swallowed up in victory.^, 

⁵⁵ Where, death, is your victory? 

Where, death, is your sting?^, 

 Christian Standard Bible. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020. Print.

See Paul gives us a when there to let us know how that works.  The sting is going to be here now.  The sting and the pain and the hurt and the sorrow and the anger and all those things are here and are going to be experienced here.  We don't get out of all of that just because we have a relationship with Jesus, we just get a promise that there will be a point, when we step into eternity, that we won't feel that sting.  

The hard part is we do feel it now and in feeling it now we have to walk through it, to deal with it, to feel it over and over and over or just feel it because it's real. 

And so dear reader I leave you.  Knowing that there will come a point when the sting won't be there, but not for a moment believing that we get to avoid the pain and sorrow now.  

Be Safe...

I'm doing a thing...

There are a lot of reasons that people do things after a loss.  I don't even know exactly how to explain the reasoning behind the things that we are doing, just know that we are doing them.  I guess that makes sense.  

Anyway there are things that people do to help remember the good things, to bring positive things in their minds, or to help just move forward.   Equally there are some things that I'm doing just to not get too deep into my head.  Things that I do so that I can function.  

Finally there are things that we do to try and move into something that resembles fun.  I'm not sure I can say fun yet, but I do know that fun is something that we hope to once again have.   

One of the things that I was not sure how it was going to work, was going back to preaching an yet somehow it's working.  I'm sure that has more to do with God than it does with me but I'm also sure that the willingness to do it matters and well I am still living that Lego Christian principle even if it feels like I've been stepping on Lego's barefoot in the dark lately.  People have been gracious at the church even as I'm not sure in myself of the sermons.  It's interesting how the process has shifted a bit.  I find more wrestling happening than before, likely because I still have to reconcile some things that I don't and will never understand, answers to questions that I ask of God in the quiet of nighttime or early morning when I'm the most raw.  What I'm realizing more than ever is that, it's not a bad thing that I'm doing this.  It's better to wrestle with that than it is to pretend I'm not.  

So that's one of the things I'm doing.  

At one point I really wanted a bike.  When we moved back to Ohio I was looking at them on a regular basis, wondering what it would be to have one, trying to figure it all out, deciding if I wanted to go for the whole license thing.  From there I started looking at slingshots, a bit more versatile and no special endorsement needed.  One thing that happens when something like this happens is it changes some of your prespective on things.  Long story short I shifted on some of those things.  Something that is fun, has potential to be a cool way to remember and to just have a good time with more than just one or two people, which brings us to Lucielle a 57 Pontiac Star Chief that will soon be rumbling, and yes I said rumbling because wow she sounds really great when I start her up, down the roads of Youngstown.  I am really excited about this project, from getting the floor pans in to buffing it out and that first drive down the road.  

Then there is one last thing that has been in the works for the last 10 weeks or so that was started yesterday.  It's not finished yet, but I'm really excited about it and looking forward to when it is, at which point I will share it with the world.  It took time and thought and well it is just one of those things that's totally for me.  I know that may sound selfish but oh well.  They way I look at it returning to the church is for all of us, Lucielle is for the family, but this thing is all mine.    

Here is a peek at what's to come.  

There is of course more and putting that here is kinda a stark reminder but I'll show you more as soon as this one thing is done.  

But why, why am I doing this and these other things.  

I think it has to do with moving forward and having life with different things.  The thing is life will never go back to what it was that is just a given and I know that.  We don't have a clue how to do some parts of life still.  There are days that just don't add up, that we don't see a way to inch forward, and then there are days that we function, usually with the list of things we set out to do, and in those moments we tend to come to realize that we will move ahead and we will have good days and we will have bad days and that's the way life will work.  

The way I look at it, life is work.  A lot of work.  It has always been that way, we have to do the things that we do to live and move and have something happen.  We have to work on ourselves, work on our faith, work on our relationships.  It is that work that is life.  Not the breathing we do while we work but the work itself. It stands to reason then that getting through this thing that we are having to get through is going to be work as well.  Even if it's things like I've laid out. It's the work that lets us have a way forward.  

If life is work then this verse has more meaning than I used to think.  In fact this whole thing is making me realize the truth about this verse.

Phil. 2:12    Therefore, my dear friends,^a just as you have always obeyed,^b so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Working out our salvation is a life long job.  Of all the work we do this is the most important, but the thing that I'm realizing, in working out that salvation all these other things tend to work better.  In working on my salvation daily, I'm leaning into my relationship with the creator of all things, and slowly figuring out how to cast these cares on Him, even the ones I can't trust Him with yet because of all the questions I have about His involvement or lack there of in what's happened. 

See Ya Around.