The Gaping Hole...

As I write each day, as I draw and clean and get ready for interviews, and go outside and well as I live, I want to not only use this space to let you know where things are with the journey that is happening, I also want to dip my toe back into writing about things that are going on in the world around us.

My political views have never really been a secret.  If you are curious, or just that bored you can pull up just about any random post before this month and somewhere you will find a political opinion or missive.  Sometimes I wasn’t very gracious, okay okay, most of the times I wasn’t very gracious. But that lack of grace was and has been reserved for both sides of the isle for a long time now.  

Last night Joyce and I were talking about a memorial that they are going to have at Josie’s school in Maryland today.  Joyce was putting together sketch books and stickers, she even got the Rice Crispy treats that Josie always wanted to get.  We used to tell her that we could make them and they would be better, but she always wanted the ones in the wrappers because of course Josie wanted to be able to share them.   

As we were talking about the event that is happening around 1:30 today, as we were crying and remembering the amazing person that God let us have in our lives, that pulled us closer as a family, that would try anything as long as it meant we were together our minds wandered to the tragedy that happened a few days ago.  Well, not so much wandered as sat there for a bit.  

In the last year I talked about the fact that Joyce and I had joined a club that no parent ever wants to be in.  The death of a young child is horrific in it’s own right for the community but nothing compares to the grief and anger and hurt that the parents in Uvalde Texas will be dealing with now and for, well forever.  There is a gaping hole left in the soul of the parent who loses a child, especially a young one.  I have been praying every day since it happened for those families.  For each Dad that has to wake up and realize his princess or his little man is no longer in the room next door, for each mom that has to look at the miss matched socks that were in the dryer when she got home from finding out a very piece of her soul was ripped away in a moment.  I’ve been praying for the teachers that are going to have to go back into that school next year, I have been asking God what can I do, what can we as a family do.  

The thing about senseless tragedies, senseless death is the very word.  Senseless.  It boggles the mind and if we aren’t careful poisons the soul.  It’s, very easy to get stuck on the day or day’s that the thing happened and slowly find yourself withering away to a tangled mess of weeds and briars.  This is what the parents of the little ones in Uvalde are facing.  Lots of questions, lots of banging on the floors of heaven, loads of overwhelming feelings of what now? Of anger, fear, resentment, hurt, pain, confusion, depression.  The list of what they are facing goes on and on and if they don’t feel it all, if they don’t let themselves feel it all life will get worse, trust me I know this first hand.  So I pray for them and I talk to Joyce and I pray some more.  

I started this post mentioning politics, and unfortunately it’s politics that has brought me to this space, today, it’s politics that has me waiting to post what I wrote Wednesday.  Because seemingly before the shell casings are even cooled the two sides have already dug in.  The narrative in Washington has already shifted away from the families to Gun Control, and the NRA, and Mental Health.  What makes me even more sad is what I see on Facebook.  You may notice I post very little.  The occasional picture, the blog or a comment from a show that I’m watching with Zoey that strikes me as funny.  I learned in the last 4 months that the rectangle in my pocket was keeping me from seeing people.  That the friends list was getting more attention than the friends, that the need to be seen, to get likes, to watch the numbers on the live stream that showed how many people had watched come Monday was more and more important to me than playing slobber ball with my dog.  

So imagine my sadness when I saw post after post today from people that I know and love and respect from both sides of political ideology using the gaping hole in these parents lives to make their point about gun control and mental health and background checks and don’t take my guns. 

Now you may be thinking.  “But Aaron aren’t you using that hole to make a political point?”  I sure hope not because here’s the point I want to make.  It’s Thursday, the shooting happened on Tuesday.  Think about that, as early as Wednesday I noticed people posting about their need for a gun, or the need to regulate guns, or the need to arm teachers or the need to take guns from people with mental health issues.  I’ve seen people saying that old tired line.  “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” or some variation of the same.  

I’ve read how congress is trying to come to some bipartisan agreement, even while they acknowledge that it’s not likely, all the while using that gaping hole as the reasoning.  It makes me sad and angry.  While all of those things are important to discuss in the long term.  What really matters in the short term is that a mom and dad are looking at an empty seat at the dinner table, that a brother or sister is sitting in the back seat unable to play the don’t cross this line game with the person that just a few days ago was sitting one seat over with the cup rest in the middle, that grandma and grandpa have a bunch of plans for the week that their grand child comes over that now have no meaning, that the cousins won’t be able to watch fireworks on the fourth of July after the family picnic.  That’s what matters right now, and to be honest.  For those of us that follow Jesus, even the broken ones of us that should be what matters in the long term as well.  

Isaiah 61:1     The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me,   for the LORD has anointed me   to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted   and to proclaim that captives will be released   and prisoners will be freed.^a

We are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  I called it being Jesus with skin when I was preaching.  If we look at what Isaiah is saying through the lens of the fulfilled covenant we find in the New Testament we should realize that as members of the family of God we have a mission right now.  It is not to score political points, it’s not to give our opinion on who should and should not have guns, it’s not even to preach death and destruction and all that goes with it.  It’s simply to pray for and comfort the brokenhearted.  Trust me more than their hearts are broken, their very souls are shattered, and people who claim to follow Christ know the one that can mend that broken soul. 

Prayerfully submitted for your consideration. 

I took the Blue Pill

Writing has always been something that I have done to process.  The interesting thing to me is the fact that writing is actually a positive way to deal with things and if I look at the blog for the past year, well the writing is so very sporadic, contrast that with how much I used to write and I can begin to see yet another proof that I was listening to the enemy and falling to my mental health issues.  

Working through things in healthy ways really is preferable to taking the Blue Pill.  I should explain.  Back in the day there was this movie The Matrix.  I know right go figure.  In the movie Neo (Even though every time I see Neo on the screen I actually see Ted Theodore Logan, but I digress.) ANYWAY, in the movie, Neo is given a choice of taking one of two pills.  The red pill is all about the truth, what’s really happening in the real world. The red pill is about feeling things as they really are, about seeing things that are actually there, about facing the hard parts of life while finding good things and people to share it all with and to partner with and to get the job done when it comes to living, even in a decidedly dystopian world run by machines.  

Take the blue pill though and none of that matters.  Taking the blue pill lets Neo ignore truth, it lets him inoculate himself from reality, it allows him to continue in a virtual world where nothing real and tangible can touch him.  In other words the blue pill is the ultimate form of escapism and wall building. It isolates and protects and cocoons the person that takes it in a self imposed bubble of willful ignorance. 

Willful ignorance.  Think about that for a moment.  Those two words speak volumes.  Willful ignorance differs from actual ignorance in one glaringly obvious way.  The willful part.  People that choose willful ignorance, and yes dear reader that was me, know that things are not really the way they seem or are willing to accept.  They know the truth, things are not okay, but it’s so much easier in the short term to just remain locked in the Matrix they created. 

So I took the blue pill because the blue pill was so much more preferable to the world that I was inhabiting. I programmed my own Matrix, and with each new “line of code” I wrote, another wall went up, more isolation occurred. The crazy thing is I really did escape to a virtual world. A world I created with the help of people from all over the place, geography has no real meaning once you “jack in” to your matrix.  These people were just like me, probably in more ways than I or they want to admit, it’s easy to log into a chat room or a KiK chat, or to text some VOIP number that isn’t real. and become something that you’re not.  The reason those places exist is for people like me, depressed, angry, sad, alone. The reason they go there is the reason I went there.  It’s preferable to be some character that can do anything, can be strong, or wise, or the bad guy, or fun, or powerful, or magical, or in control. I created a reality that had nothing to do with real life and then actively chose my Matrix and each time I did, Agent Aaron would lock the real Aaron in a cage smirk at him for all his protesting and walk out of the dungeon he inhabited, all the while the red pill people in my life were getting further and further away.  Each time one of them would stand in front of me with their palm open holding those two pills the red and the blue, I looked at them and shook my head and cried knowing what I should do and still I reached for that stupid blue pill because that was easier at the moment, and preferable to actually feeling and dealing with the pain and hurt and isolation and depression and wanting to be dead.  

Red pill people are in our lives because God loves us.  He loves us more than we can ever really understand and he wants us to be what we were designed to be as opposed to the rabbit hole we ignore because our Matrix is easier to deal with, and that is the real problem.  The longer we choose to stay in our matrix, the longer we sit and write line of code after line of code, all the while knowing we want more and real and true, the harder it is to allow ourselves the freedom of the Red Pill.  We become what we all dread.  Our own Agent Smith the one that keeps the order in our world and locks us away from the truth.  That’s what Agent Aaron did.  He looked at the people around him and decided that they were better than he was, that they were stronger than he was, that they couldn’t handle the work that it would be to pull him from the Matrix, and help him learn and live and move in a world that was real and tangible and that offered true healing not from the sadness and depression and pain of life, but healing through the sadness and depression and pain. 

In Second Samuel, Davids Morpheus. (Nathan the Prophet) stands in front of him holding out the Red Pill, and at first David reaches for the blue one. 

2Sam. 12:5     David was furious. “As surely as the LORD lives,” he vowed, “any man who would do such a thing deserves to die! 

Nathan has just finished offering David the Red pill.  Giving him a clear picture of the sin that David has perpetrated on Uriah a man that was fighting for the country.  A man that was where he was supposed to be, while David stayed behind in the city,  all comfortable and cozy, all up in the Matrix of his own design.  In Nathans story about a rich man and a poor man and a pet sheep God is doing something really amazing for David.  God is reaching to him, letting David know that there were choices made that added to the lines of code that were actually walling David off from those around him. Davids response is one that has picked up the blue pill, and is searching desperately for some water to wash it down.  I mean think about it.  When faced with the real world with the truth of what He had become, it was preferable to protest and get all frustrated and angry in a desperate effort to remain in the Matrix, even as his very soul, that part that we read about when Samuel told Saul that he was no longer going to be king.

¹⁴ But now your kingdom must end, for the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart. The LORD has already appointed him to be the leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command.”

God didn’t let David stay in the Matrix of his own Making.  God had sent Samuel to anoint David as the new king.  God through Samuel called David a man after his own heart, and so he sent Nathan.  

Why did I keep taking the blue pill, even when I didn’t want too, even when I knew better, even when I had people all around me more than willing to help me with the truth that the red pill offered?

Two things, choice and pain.  My un-redeemed flesh was in a lot of pain, sometimes physically, but more often than not, mentally and emotionally.  Being overwhelmed and hurt and sad and frustrated and depressed and suffering from nightmares and all of the things that go along with mental illness contributed sure, but in the end given the choice between the work of moving forward and of the comfort of my matrix I popped that blue pill in my mouth and shut the door and added the lines of guilt and shame and resentment and fear and doubt and anger and confusion to my matrix.  

And then God said enough, and I thank Him for it daily.

Did you need a picture of my Morpheus?

Call it what it is!

There is a secret that people that have positions of leadership, don’t want you to know.  The problem is the only person that really believes it’s a secret is the person that is in leadership.  

This secret is rooted fully in the sin of pride. I mean let’s be clear, I mean let’s let the Bible be clear as it tends to be more pointed and truthful than the best of us. 

Prov. 16:18     Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. 

I wrote about the elephant in the room last time.  Let’s be clear, there is no way to sugar coat a fall, sure people try and do it all the time but in the end it’s at best Splenda coated, or blue sweetener coated.  A false coating that doesn’t even taste good and in truth leaves a nasty aftertaste on the back of the tongue for just a bit too long. 

Anyway enough of the admission that pride is at the root of most of the sins that leaders, especially those in the church, especially me have issue with.  All the things that we fall to we do so from the cliff of pride. 

The secret that leaders don’t want to let anyone else in on is the fact that leaders are human.  Let that sink in for a moment.  I know that it had to for me, and I mean let's be clear this blog is my way of working through things and of letting people that want to know where I am. 

Now along with that humanity comes all the stuff that goes with being human. Along with that humanity comes fear, and anxiety, and joy, and sorrow, and depression, and stress, and trauma and positive coping mechanisms, and negative ones too.  One of the biggest secrets though that leaders keep is the one that I touched on a little bit in the last post.  That is the fact that suicidal thoughts and ideation are not relegated to people “out there.”  

Let me put it another way. 

Pastors can be suicidal too, I just knew as do many others that are out there in the same space that I was in, how to Splenda coat it.  So instead of calling it what it was, I would say something like this.  

“You know there are days that I just don’t want to exist.”  Now I am sure all of us have had those moments when we are embarrassed and we want to crawl into a hole and have no one notice us.  That is not at all what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about a daily wake up with the idea that it would be so nice to not wake up.  That being caught in a drive by, or a random act  of violence would be pretty good, the list goes on.  

Why am I telling you all this.  I want to give you a picture of what suicidal looks like.  See that, that right there is what suicidal looks like.  That was a selfie from last year right around this time. Now before you say “Well wait a moment, you had just lost your daughter, that doesn’t really mean you were suicidal, come on you were a pastor, you had people around you. Pastors don’t get that way.  So sure that picture is from this time last year when all hell had broken loose in a matter of days.  

Let's go with another picture months later, at a time that I was still hiding, a time when I was compartmentalizing and wishing with all I had that I didn’t have to  wake up. 

Recognize that guy from Facebook.  This is the guy that shut himself off from everyone that mattered, this is the guy that stopped going to breakfast with my pastor friends because I was tired of talking of politics, but lets be clear, that wasn’t why I stopped going, I stopped going because I was isolating myself away from everyone.  My wife, my kids, my family, people in the church I pastored, leadership all of them.  

The sin of pride was in full effect at this point because, you see, I was “protecting" all these poor people from Aaron.  I was protecting them from my pain and anger and sadness and hurt,  I was keeping them “safe” for that moment when I didn’t exist any more.  

What’s really sad is that fact that all those people I was cutting off, they were the people that God placed in my life that I was supposed to turn too, they were the ones that I was supposed to say “hey I’m just not okay.”  What I should have been doing was crying with Joyce, not isolating from her.  What I should have done was said, “Hey guys I know we are here for breakfast but I’m just not okay.”  What I needed to do was get into counseling and to actually be honest with myself and the counselor.    

 

What am I writing this?  What’s the point of going into this on the blog?  I can hear someone saying, “I thought you were better what are you doing this for?”

 

Let me show you the picture of a person that finally gets it, that has the tools that are needed to walk forward.  

Let me show you what it looks like to actually live in partnership with the one you love.  

People may wonder if I am still dealing with depression and PTSD. Yes.  I am, I will deal with major depressive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder all of my life.  It’s something that just is.  I can hear some people saying that I shouldn’t claim that.  That I can “speak to my depression.”  I appreciate that kind of faith, and I believe that healing does occur,  I also believe that we have doctors and medicine because God gifted and enabled people to use those gifts to help in our healing.  The thing that I had to do was come to the place that I was okay with needing more to be okay.  So while I am always going to deal with depression and ptsd.  I am not depressed and suicidal now.

I thank God regularly now for not letting me not exist.  I wish I didn’t have to learn the hard way but chalk that one up to being a hard headed Italian.  

So where does that leave this post.  Simply here.  For those that I have hurt, for those that were broken by my actions, for those that have the wrong picture of the God that I serve, because as I served him I was also serving myself in a desire to self medicate the pain away.  To those that I let down, and yes I know I let many people down.  I am truly sorry.  The great thing about God is he forgives and then he enables.  He has forgiven me.  I ask you to do the same, and know that I will do all I can in the days given to me, to walk and live and move and have my being in Christ.  

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week. 

The Elephant in the Room

I want to talk about, or write about the elephant in the room.  The thing about elephants in the room is that they are large they are obvious but no one really wants to accept them as being there. It takes a willful ignorance to not see a 6000 to 13000 lb animal.  It's huge and yet it's almost a comfortable ignorance not to see it. The question is what happens when you are that elephant, or when you feel like the elephant.  

That is where I am sitting right now.  Falling is something that we all do, even if admitting it is hard.  The thing about all of us falling is not whether or not we all fall but the distance of that fall.  Some people only stumble, some people are adept at falling gracefully and in doing so are able to move forward quickly and easily.  Then there is the big long ugly fall, the one that we see when a person is walking along their head down, not paying attention to what is coming, they run smack dab into a low hanging branch, or turn and don't see that clean window and so thy shop up and charge into the thing and end up sprawled flat on their back.  That is the best description for what has happened to me. 

With every fall there are factors that come into play.  State of mind and choice being the two major ones.  Sure there are others.  People that you are around, the environment that you find yourself in, wearing the right shoes...the list goes on. 

The question is does state of mind matter?  I don't mean simple things when it comes to state of mind, I mean mental health issues state of mind? Does the mental health of an individual have any bearing on the choices that are made.  Now bear with me dear reader because I know that may seem like there is an obvious answer to this question, but is there?  I don't mean that we as a whole don't give at the very least lip service to the idea of mental health.  Things like Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety, PTSD or any of the dream disorders that are out there. I know for myself it was lip service, even when suffering from some of the things in that list.  

I won't go into details that are any where deep.  If you are interested in some of it, it's littered across the past of this blog, I will say that wanting to be dead is not something that anyone really expects to happen, at least I didn't. I suffered from the small c christian way of renaming things or sugar coating them to make it more palatable.  I wasn't suicidal, I just didn't want to exist.  I wasn't depressed I was just stressed out and "in my own head." I didn't  have PTSD because I never went to war.  That last one was a surprise but if I look at it all logically it's easy to see how it was yet another excuse to keep from getting the help that I needed, and so I went down a dismal path of self isolation, electronics buying mayhem, and disassociation so huge that I created an alternate world to escape to, anything to get away from the ugly that was real life.  

There are triggers in everyones life, mine is no exception. The problem is when those triggers are dealt with using messed up coping mechanisms we make decisions based not on our redeemed self.  Following the footsteps of Jesus, taking our cue from Him and His word as opposed to that human piece of ourselves that is full of all the things that are wrong with the world.  When we let our hurt and pain and sorrow and damage guide us we are forgetting that we are supposed to be guided by that lamp and light, of course when we are not guided by God's word we are going to not just slip but slide pell mell down the hill of pain, isolation, sin, and death, and when we get to the bottom of that hill we look at the top and realize just how far we have fallen, just how much hurt, and pain, and sorrow and anger and resentment and...and...and...can trick us into believing that we deserve to do whatever it takes to not feel any or all of those things, if even for a moment.  Trust me it is only for a moment that we don't feel them, they all have a way of rearing their ugly heads within hours, sometimes minutes of their ending.  Then something worse sets in.  Self loathing and guilt and frustration.  

The elephant in the room dear reader is more than just me.  It's all of us and the mess of sin that we constantly have to fight, because while Jesus death and resurrection removes the stain of sin, there is also the whole armor of God thing that we are supposed to put on.  We put that on, God doesn't come down and dress us for battle, on the contrary we are supposed to dress ourselves for battle, and when we don't, or when we leave off a piece or two because it's so much more convenient and it's easier to do that than to face the peril we are setting ourselves for failure. 

What comes next is what matters.  What we do when the dust settles, when the muck is sprayed away by the grace of God and we are left to stand in front of the rest of the herd without the alternative armor we have been wearing that we've convinced ourselves is the real thing.  The armor that comes from the creator can't be duplicated or dressed up or hidden away, but what it can do and what it does is leave us protected from the enemy but vulnerable to the creator.  It leaves our hearts surrounded by a shield while at the same time showing those around us just how much of a mess we are without it.

I wish I knew what was coming next.  I know what I desire and for now that is enough. 

Stick around, there is so much more to come. 

Deconstruction

There's a trendy word going around when it comes to matters of faith.  There are whole courses on how to do it..spend the money and learn how to deconstruct your faith.  

The thing is I started this process before it was actually a named thing.  As life has gotten progressively harder, especially in the last year, I have come to the conclusion that it's a good thing I started it way back then instead of deciding to do it now, because lets be clear, if I was deconstructing right now things would look a lot different.

The thing about grief, especially this kind of grief that seems to get all the more visceral at holidays, is that it's not something that can really be managed, it has to be livd and in the living of it you inevitably re-live the events leading to that grief over and over. 

I don't think I've ever really talked about that night in any real, tangible terms.  I could be wrong, to be honest things get muddled any more when it comes to this whole process.  The thing is, it sneaks up on you, the re-living I mean, you can be doing something as mundane as taking out the trash, and suddenly things slam into you and you find yourself shutting the door curling up and crying.  

One thing that deconstruction does, at least one of the thing that is has done for me when it comes to my faith, is that it lays out all the pieces so that you can then see things more clearly.  The trick is in the re-construction, what blue print we use.  When it comes to faith do we use the blueprint that comes for scripture or do we use the blueprint that comes from whatever flavor of faith we have decided to lean into. That matters because going back to sacred texts and getting our information from there along with prayer and quiet meditation will yield a much different foundation than the one that is embraced whole heartedly by the place we worship in.  

Anyway I said all that to say that as deconstruction my faith, has lead to what I would argue is a more robust and tangible faith as I picked those pieces back up and started the rebuild process.  I wonder if deconstructing this whole thing can somehow yield some good.  So here we go.

When I was 16 years old I got my license.  I remember the day that I took the test.  It had snowed I did thew hole thing driving the roads doing he maneuverability, passed on the first go around it was great.  Fast forward to that Christmas we were in Akron my mom got sick my dad didn't really sleep that night, and to be clear, when a person with epilepsy doesn't sleep and has large amounts of stress, well it's just a bad combination.  I said hey what if you let me drive this time, only to be told that no I want your father in the front seat with me, 10 minutes later we were stuck in a wonderful families home waiting for someone to pick us up, the car totaled out.  When they looked at the wreck they told us we were all lucky to be alive the engine should have been pushed in on my parents, the drive shaft should have been pushed up into the back seat, but here we are.  That day changed me and my relationship with cars and my parents more than I realized at the time.  I can count on one hand with 3 fingers the number of times I have ridden in the car with my father driving since then.  It's just something I wouldn't do.  I remember going to a church function when I was home during my freshmen year of college, they insisted that my dad drive I got in the car and was a basket case the whole way to the church it was held at.  I refused to return in the car with them I had someone drive me.  Not only did this accident change my relationship with my parents it changed my relationship with driving.  If I'm driving I'm okay if others are driving it's easy to worry.  I think it's because since that day I have this recurring nightmare where I lose the people I love the most in a car accident.  I'm sure you can see where this is going but again this is my deconstruction so you'll have to just ride it out, that's what I'm doing.  

Throughout the years there have been accidents, and for some reason they seem to happen not when I'm driving but when others are.  It's hard to explain but that's just what is.   I've even watched one happen and it was so difficult because there was nothing at all that I could do about it.  I just had to watch it all happen in slow motion and stand in the middle of Belmont Ave trying to get a door open that there was no human way that I was going to do it.  

So it's a pretty safe bet that I have a reason to have this recurring nightmare.

Another issue that is a part of my every day existence is the fact that I dream, I dream vividly and I remember my dreams.  Sometimes that's a good thing. There is this whole story that I'm writing, well was writing, because of one of those very vivid dreams, they are Technicolor too which is very cool and very disconcerting all that the same time.  These vivid dreams have made the last 7 plus months hellacious.  I wake up and expect someone to be there that isn't and it just brings the whole world down around me again.  So when I dream about losing people I love in a car accident it's made all the worse. 

Now take those two things and go one more step with me dear reader.  To May 16, 2021...It was a Sunday and  doing all those things that I do on a Sunday.  The thump of the feet and the missive..."wait don't leave me."  and I didn't and I'm so glad I didn't.  The day went on like usual until it was time to go, and even then things were as normal.   I went down for my nap about the time that they pulled out.  I was just there ya know gearing up to start playing xbox or something when Goliath went off, and I got downstairs and my uncle was on the porch and he just said that there was this accident in PA, and suddenly it just all came into focus only this time it wasn't a dream

The entire ride out every time I saw a skid mark I thought oh thats where it was.  I wasn't allowing it to register, but then we got to this spot in the road that was completely shut down and we pulled off and I got out of the van and was walking to the guy that was manning the roadblock.  To be told you have to go the other way because of an accident is always a sad thing, you feel for the people but it was at this point that my stomach dropped and so I asked the question.  Was that accident up there one with a hay or corn truck and it was at this point that my world began to unwind.  The radio was used, did they need me to come up there, no just go to the hospital. I spent the next hour trying to find them.  No one would answer my questions, everyone wanted to give me water and when I did finally get the answer to the whole thing I lost it.  

An ambulance ride later and things just kept getting worse.  In fact that whole week and the weeks that soon followed kept going from one bad thing to the other and still I'm here and I'm so tired and it's how it is. 

There, I could go deeper into the hospital, to being stuck in a room to wait to be asking the doctor to tell me what I had figured out already.  Could talk about the ride to the other Hospital, or what happened when I had to tell people.  But the whole point is that first night to try and take it apart and see what if any redemptive factor can come out of it, and to be honest there really is none.  

And that is the problem.  No matter how many times I deconstruct it, it still comes back to the fact that there is not way to assemble it to make a positive.  Equally I don't see handing the pieces to God to have him do the same.  In fact there really is no way he can make the night into a positive.  Not that night, and I really don't think he would ever try.  There are things that we read in scripture that Jesus does for so many people.  The people he heals and brings back all of that is amazing, but there are also the things that he doesn't do.  For every Lazarus that is raised there is a John the Baptist that's not.  

So who knows where this will all end up.  The pieces are there but I think they will always be there at least from that day.  The reconstruction will be what comes after....If you wanna journey with me then you can if not, I wish you all the happiness.

How to Holiday

The thing about holiday's is that they happen.  There really is no getting away from them, they just happen and they keep happening.  So, the question that has to be asked is how to do them when you don't want too?

How do you lean into something that you just don't want to lean into?  How do you make these days that are supposed to be so great and enjoyable and full of all sorts of fun and all that bearable when all you want to do is blow up every Christmas tree, wreath and light display you see?

I've told my folks that there will be no tree this year, no lights, no outdoor decorations.  I'm not into it, can't be really and of course that was met with at the very least derision.  The sad part of it is last year I was starting to feel it again. I really was getting into it again; it had been a while and I was looking forward to decorating this year...now I am trying to figure out a way to keep all the windows and blinds and curtains closed so I don't have to see it or hear it.  

I'm avoiding Christmas music as much as possible, something that gets harder and harder as the clock ticks closer and closer to December 25th.  It's everywhere even on playlists that have no business having it.  

Add to this self-imposed boycott the fact that I can't really get totally away from Christmas because well of what I do and it makes for a tricky situation to say the least.  

Perhaps it's not all bad.  We always say that Christmas is more than all the stuff that it's become.  Trees and lights and presents and dinners and all that stuff are all fine and good but that's not Christmas, and while we give lip service to that sentiment the whole season, we still find ourselves running around to find that perfect gift, digging in the closet of misses that were given to us and wondering if we re-gift that set of glasses to Aunt Gertrude is it going to be okay because it's just possible that she's the one that gave us the glasses in the first place. 

  

All of that stuff gets so big and becomes Christmas even if we don't want it too.  To be honest it's easy to justify it when you have little kids.  The joy that you see with kids 11 and under when they come down the stairs is like a drug that you just want more and more of.  But take that away and suddenly the incentive to put up the tree and hang all the lights and find all the gifts just evaporates.

What's left then.  It's easy to just make December 25th another day.  I will be honest that's kind of what I want to do.  I don't want to go anywhere; I don't want dinner with family or gifts under the tree or any of that. The other option is to do what Mary did, which is what I personally want to attempt this year if I can get past the tears and heart ache that's been here for the last six months and promises to be here for the foreseeable future.  

This is what we should be doing more of this Christmas season.  Realizing what matters is not all this stuff.  What matters is what happened all those years ago.  

Maybe for me at least this year I can begin to get to that point.  I dunno.  It's highly probable that I'll be too caught up in my sadness and anger to really even want to think about all that Jesus did in coming to earth.  If I had to lay odds, I would say that's a sure thing, but even if this is all the extra thought, I give to what Christmas is supposed to be, it's a start down a path of reimagining what the Holidays are supposed to be.  A time to remember and think on and realize what God did for me even when I don't really like him. 

See you around the blog.

Milestones

 Six months ago seems like an eternity and at the same time seems like it was just yesterday. 

In our lives we usually celebrate milestones.  I have been pretty quiet lately here on the blog, mainly because, sometimes, just keeping my head above the water of life is all I can do.  It seems like there are days that I can move through things and it's all good and then there are the days that just slam into me making me want to shut the door and pull the blinds and rant and cry and yell at myself and God.  

Yesterday all the times that I would get frustrated about being asked over and over for something came into my mind and the guilt for ever getting even a bit exasperated was so very vivid in my mind and heart.  Today I just want to get on our bikes and ride to the park.  I want to grab the three girls and go have breakfast at a local diner, I want to drop Z off at youth group and take Josie to Steak and Shake and then to the mall or to the park or to a movie.  

I went into her room yesterday just stood there in the middle of all that was and cried.  It's been six months and yet it may as well have been six minutes.  Nothing in there has changed things are left just like they were on Sunday May 16th.  I never understood the meaning behind not changing things that were until I realized I can't change what is.  I'm still trying to figure out how we let them put the windows in the house without letting them in that room to move and touch things.  

I know that logically it doesn't make much sense.  I know the doors not going to bang open and she's not going to ever climb up in that converted bunk bed, and yet I can't change it, just in case I find a monkey's paw and suddenly things are what they are supposed to be. 

The thing that hits the hardest is that instead of getting to watch her move through the milestones of life we have to pick a gravestone, and while that is a milestone, it's the wrong one.  

Dave Matthew's has a song called Grave Digger:

Muriel Stonewall 1903 to 1954 she lost both of her babies in the second great war now you should never have to watch your only children lowered in the ground I mean you should never have to burry your own babies.  

Grave digger when you dig my grave would you make it shallow so that I can feel the rain. 

Little Mikey Carson 67 to 75 he rode his bike like the devil until the day he died. When he grows up he want's to be Mr. Vertical on the Flying Trapeze...

I have sung this song along with Dave for years.   It's playing now while I write this.  I never understood it, not like I do now.  

Of course the two verses that I've put up mean the most.  I relate to Muriel because Dave's right.  You shouldn't have to bury your own baby, and well Mikey because he was only a year younger than Josie and well also because he rode his bike.  I go to the place where she is and there are times I sit there and I'll sing this song, I've gotten to the chorus and I've laid down on the grass right next to her spot and i sing that chorus and I beg God to give her back but He doesn't so I pick up a rock from the dirt that's hugging my baby girl instead of me and I cry and cry and cry and go home and wash the rock off and cry and cry some more. 

Jesus says blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.  For me that verse means simply that it's a blessing to see the people that reach out to encourage or comfort, even when there is no real comfort to be felt.  That's the thing about that verse that I'm realizing it doesn't say blessed are those who mourn for they will feel comforted.  It says blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted...we are blessed in our sorrow by the people who come around us to hold us to lift us up to care for us to give us a shoulder to cry on, arms to hold us up when we just crumble because it's too much, prayers for us because we are so confused and mad at God that we can't seem to get anything more than "why God" out of our lips.  

Six months is a Milestone in death. I'm realizing that.  All of these things that were opportunities to be and do together, birthdays and holidays and vacations and the regular milestones of graduations and starts of school years, and learning to ride a bike or drive a car, all of those things that were times of being together are now big, monolithic, milestones that I wish were never erected in the first place. 

So here I sit six months to the day and all I want to do is shut the door to my room and pull the shades and tell the world that they can just go away and stop being because that's all that I want to do.

See you around the blog dear reader.