Dragonslayer

It happened again. 

Where do I start? Waking up this morning to face another day of pain, I rolled in tight to my pillow and wept. “I can’t do this, God,” I cried. “Please help me.” I’m tired of trying to get through this loss while I stay angry at God. I need Him. Desperately. I had to let go of the questions. I know God is good, so there must be something I don’t understand about the situation. Acceptance seemed my only out.

“I accept it,” I sobbed. “I accept your will.”

It’s not comforting when well-meaning people offer the “it was God’s will” explanation after the most important person in your world just died. Please don’t say that to a wounded heart like mine—when we’re ready, we’ll figure it out on our own. It’s just that I was crying and couldn’t breathe, so the fewer words the better. People keep reminding me it’s only been six weeks since Rob left us and that I’m early into this grief process.

Believe me, that’s not good news.

I got going and went to lunch with a friend. Accomplished a few tasks. Had time with family. And then the twilight snuck in—a time of day that has always been hard for me. My spirits crashed late in the day and I found myself crying again. In the truck. By myself.

Rob always hated it when I did that. Too bad. If he was here, I wouldn’t have been crying.

Grief is complicated. It feels like all the negative emotions I’ve ever experienced thrown together into one messy pile, and I have to sort it all out before I can get on with my life. Did I mention how bad I am at jigsaw puzzles?

Ignoring my feelings, I picked up some supper and headed back to the house. But that song, “Fires,” was running through my mind, demanding my attention, insisting that I listen. I reached over to drown it out with the radio and it was also playing on the airwaves—just like a couple of days ago. There must be something in that song God wants me to know, because every time I’m at the end of endurance and beg Him to show up, that song starts playing.

You’ve walked me through fires, pulled me from flames, if You’re in this with me I won’t be afraid.

“I am afraid,” I cried out, clutching the steering wheel with one hand and wiping my eyes with the other.

When the smoke billows higher, oh and higher, 

and it feels like I can barely breathe . . .

“I can’t breathe,” I wept. “I can’t breathe!” I kept telling Him how I felt, while the song finished playing all around me in the cab of my truck.

I’ll walk through these fires ‘cause You’re walking with me.

“It doesn’t feel like you’re walking with me. How does that help anyway?” I wanted to know.

I parked in the driveway, beat up by the experience, and brought my supper inside the house. Then I sat down to watch “Last Man Standing” on tv while I ate chicken strips and a lemon bar. The story line revolved around the death of someone’s mother. Great. Her son felt guilty for putting her in the hospital when she begged him not to. When she died there, he blamed himself for her death.

I stopped eating my lemon bar. I couldn’t see it very well anyway.

Tim Allen’s character, friend of the guilt-ridden man, told him the truth. “You did the very best you could for your mom. You gave her the finest care you could think of. It’s not your fault she died. You have no control over life and death. The reason is hurts so much is because you loved her so much.”

It was as if he was talking to me.

I’ve struggled with that same guilt ever since we lost Rob. Besides all the “what if’s” and “if only’s” after we both got sick, when emergency measures were needed to save Rob’s life, his doctors called me because I held his medical power of attorney. He was unconscious and I had to make life and death decisions for him about possibilities he and I had never discussed ahead of time. It’s a terrible place to stand, that gap. And when it was over, none of the life saving techniques they tried saved his life.

Somehow, all of that translated into, “This was my fault.” It’s a self-imposed prison of guilt. And it’s not true. I’m not the One in control.

I miss Rob so much, at times my stomach knots up and I hold my breath until the grief spasm passes. My life has changed permanently. Nothing right now feels familiar, and the future is blurry. I’m living less than one day at a time, only pulling it off one breath at a time. This healing is going to take a long, long time and I’ve barely begun walking through this fire.

It reminds me of a night-time training demo put on for the families of rookies when Rob and I were newlyweds, and he was in Fire School in Florida. At the training facility, there was a long, shallow, concrete pit of water. While the audience watched, captivated, the training captains added diesel fuel to the rectangular pit and set it on fire. The flames blew up twenty feet or more into the dark sky, illuminating the grassy area all around it with dragon-like breath. Even from where we all stood together a safe distance away, we could feel the heat generated by the watery inferno.

Rob’s team took their positions on the hose line, Rob in the middle, and as they turned the pressure up, the nozzle was adjusted into a fog pattern aimed at the determined flame burning paradoxically on the water’s surface. Rob had not told me what was about to happen. I wished he had.

As steam from the fire hose competed with the thirsty flames for domination, the men worked as one to push the fire off the surface of the shallow concrete pool. Then, as I looked on in disbelief, all of them stepped into the pit of fire-breathing water, the fog pattern of their super-charged nozzle combatting the threatening flames. That and their training were the only weapons they held as they battled their way through the blaze to the other side of the firepit.

Step by step, while their families watched on the sidelines, the men walked slowly through the wet flames, pushing the fire back as they moved in sync with one another. The point of the exercise was to simulate what they would need to do in the case of a fuel leak. Walking through the fire, their mission would be to reach the source of the rupture and shut it down. It was the only way the fire could be extinguished.

But I didn’t know that. All I could see were monstrous flames. A moment earlier they’d been  pushed ahead by the team of men. But now, in a surprising move, those same flames suddenly wrapped back around the sides of the burning pit. A gasp went up from the crowd as the three men disappeared into the jaws of the dragon. From where we stood, we couldn’t see the crew at all. The only thing visible was a two-story tower of orange and red flames raging against the dark night.

My eyes grew huge, scanning the enormous, vivid firebreather for signs of human life, or more mist, anything to relieve the fear building in my heart. One hand at my throat, I stood on tiptoes, trying to see if Rob’s superiors were panicking. Or calling for backup. Grabbing more hoses to rescue the endangered men. But there was nothing. Just the roar of flames. And silence from the captains.

And then—a slow cheer. From the far end of the crowd, applause began to build as the heroes inside the fire emerged, safe and sound, on the other side of the flaming pit. Mission accomplished, unsinged and unharmed, I watched as each of them stepped out of the water. A few minutes later, the fire, having lapped up all the vapors, slowly died down and disappeared. All that remained was the acrid aroma of burnt diesel fuel.

The entire time, the crew held that line together and were kept safe behind the water curtain they’d created. Standing still would have been deadly, so they kept moving forward in unison. Their progress was slow and gut wrenching for all of us who watched, but when they emerged on the other side, the sound of our relief echoed in the night.

I never went to watch another training exercise. The heart can only stand so much.

I know it’s hard to read these blog posts. They’re hard to write. Sometimes I can’t see through my tears as I put my feelings down like this. I need to do it, though. Because the flames are tall and the smoke is thick and I won’t be able to breathe if I don’t find a way to extinguish my grief.

You’re on the sidelines, watching in agony while I slowly move forward, rookie that I am at this kind of battle. Rob told me later he was scared to death during that exercise. And that every time he went into a burning building throughout his career, he was afraid. He knew what could happen. He knew it had happened to other men. He went in anyway. He had no choice.

I have no choice now, either. I wish my Captain would shut down the flames. Make this nightmare go away. Give me a trapdoor. Anything to get me out of the way of this fire-breathing dragon. But instead, He has given me Himself. I’ve been scared that He is not enough. I’m not proud of that—I’m just being honest again.

He’s the lead man on this fire line. He walks before me, the One Who loves me deeply. He has promised I will not be burned even though I am terrified, surrounded by this tragedy’s flames, barely able to hear His voice in the roar of the inferno, blinded by its choking smoke.

I will come out on the other side. Someday. Healed and whole. Just like Rob is right now.

Fires don’t last forever.

Love does.