Scars

It never stops throbbing. Or goes away. It’s always in the background, this jagged scar in my soul. Scars are like that sometimes. Even a gentle touch can make them spasm with pain, a reminder of what caused the injury. I want relief. I ache for relief, if you can believe the irony in that statement. I used to describe intensity like this by saying my circumstances made me feel like I was held in a vice. I craved release so I could breathe freely again. I was practically a relief junky, I joked. The rush I got from a happy ending was nearly worth the anxiety of the problem.

But there is no escaping the vice that holds me now. Not this time. There was no happy ending. There was an unhappy beginning with no turning back. No “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards have been dealt to me or my family. Sometimes you win it all. Sometimes you go bankrupt. It all depends on a roll of the dice.

My counselor explained things to me this way. “Sadness is going to be a companion to you.” I already knew that, but it was validating to hear it from a professional who specializes in grief. The first time I wrote about losing Rob, the opening line read, “This is where I live now. In sadness.”

I guess it’s strange to think of sadness being a companion. Who wants a buddy like that? It flies in the face of our most cherished and unalienable right—the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness. I think it’s fair to say that happiness and sadness seem mutually exclusive. Combining the two sounds like we’re either not good at picking a partner or somebody doesn’t know their rights.

I’ve discovered two things in the aftermath of injury:  I don’t have rights and I don’t have control. Instead, I am learning to live with loss. It’s not exactly the American Dream.

This is what is so difficult to explain. I didn’t understand it myself until I landed here. No one wants to live in this space or be companioned by sadness. We try to avoid it the way you’d step around a mud puddle or a pile of poo. We don’t want it on us. Or near us. A fragrance like that repels, it doesn’t invite. Being happy is the goal. Feeling joy is the expectation. Best to look on the bright side, be grateful, thankful, feel blessed, and decorate our walls with reminders to keep up the good work. No one buys plaques that say, “Life is Hard,” even though it often is. We must keep our heads up. Our spirits high. No negativity allowed. Positive energy is the god of the age.

But there was this man. He wasn’t famous for his good looks. His honesty offended the religious. He saw through the masks worn by everyone. And though love does conquer all, it was the way he identified with the broken of the world that stood out most. He was known as a man of sorrows. Well acquainted with grief. I have to assume grief and sorrow and suffering were his companions, too. One of the last things he told his devoted friends was, “In this world you will have trouble.” Not exactly a motivational speech, I’d say, even though he followed up with, “But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

You don’t overcome without facing something that requires it. And whatever it is won’t be easy.

So, I was thinking about trees. Rob and I always planted trees at every home we ever made. My family and I planted one in his honor right outside the window of my new place. It’s young and healthy and will someday be a magnificent oak. But when it is, it will bear scars. Trees can’t dodge trouble because they’re rooted in place. They lose branches in storms. Are targeted by insects and birds. Star-crossed lovers carve their initials into them. The list of damage is endless. I read that by the time a healthy forest tree reaches maturity it could easily have had a thousand wounds, each with the potential to leave the inside of the tree exposed to disease and the risk of death. If they’re going to survive, they have to overcome their injuries. But the way it’s done is surprising.

The trick is in sealing, not healing.

We’re tempted when we see a cut on a tree from, say, a careless lawnmower incident, to slather on tar and conceal the wound. Hide the damage and hope that covering it up will allow it to heal from the inside out. That’s what we do when we’re careless while chopping onions. Band-Aids to the rescue until all is good as new. Not so with mighty oaks.

New wood grows around the wound. It forms a protective barrier that prevents the infection or decay from spreading. This kind of sealing compartmentalizes the injury with the gradual growth of new, healthy tissue. The damage is isolated, not covered up, and the tree grows beyond it. But the original wound is always there. The resulting protective tissue is called “callus.” Wounds remain incased and trees simply grow around them.*

Seems even trees can’t escape the vice.

As I said, I’d give almost anything for permanent relief. Covering up the injury doesn’t help even though doing so might make the view less uncomfortable for everyone. Or, if I was merely taken captive by a temporary inconvenience, relief would be swift once the pressure was off. There’s no escaping this one, and no rushing the progress either. “This is going to take a long time,” my counselor told me early on. “There are no shortcuts. The only way through it is through it.” A callous will form, but the wound will always remain. A reminder of loss and life, courage and endurance.

There’s no healing for trees. There’s no healing for me either. For the rest of my life, I will live without Rob. You can’t heal that fact. Instead, over time, I will learn to navigate a world without him the way a tree grows new tissue around an injury—not ignoring it, but allowing its truth while, at the same time, continuing to live. And maybe, in time, the imperfection of a once unmarred life will exhibit its own kind of beauty.

I guess I’d better teach Sadness how to play some cards. It looks like we’re going to be together for a while.

 

 

*Woods Whys: How Do Trees Heal Wounds on Trunks… | Winter 2015 | Articles | W (northernwoodlands.org)

Many thanks to Tony Alter for permission to use his photo, "Nature's Heart", in this piece. Tony's original photo can be viewed by following this link: Nature's Heart | Nice heart shape formed in the scar of an o… | Flickr

Looking Back, Facing Forward

Sometimes I think about what I would change knowing what I know now. The pastime is tempting but leads to regret. I’m not who I was. I can’t go back, though God knows how much I want to. What if we hadn’t sold our home on Del Rio? If we’d stayed there, we’d have never moved to the mountains where covid tracked us down. But if we’d locked ourselves inside our house, we’d have betrayed our own hearts.

We rejected that. Both of us did. No one brought us a contract to sign, promising that if we avoided humanity, we would never catch a man-made virus. No one can guarantee that. More accidents occur in the home than anywhere else which makes me wonder just how safe it is to shelter there.

We don’t have control. I don’t have control. I could write that a thousand times and still something inside me wants to scream, “No!” The same guttural cry I screamed after Rob died when no one was around to hear me. And now, just as then, I have limited influence. I resent it. I resist it. Dozens of times a day we’re reminded that somewhere outside our view lies the remote control we’re missing. 

When the power goes off in the middle of a storm. 

When the baby gets sick and you have to cancel dinner plans. 

When the airline changes your reservations without asking and doesn’t care if it makes your life harder. 

When the temp outside exceeds your A/C’s ability to keep up.

When you go the doctor’s office with a fever and shortness of breath, and still they send you home.

We have no control.

Control freaks get a bad rap. The term sounds unhinged and selfish, but there’s usually a reason why people fight for the keys to their private world. Devoid of control, it seems I pay the price for the randomness that rules my existence like a roulette wheel. No wonder I hold on for dear life to everything that is dear in my life, until the wheel’s centrifugal force throws me to the side and whatever will be, finally is. Reminding me once again,

Control is an illusion.

I don’t know what the rest of my life is going to look like from here. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m living a life I never asked for. I loved the life I had for as long as I had it. When it was taken away from me, it vanished without a trace. I want it back. I can’t have it back. I’m stranded here in the middle of nowhere, a woman without the relationship she enjoyed with the man she loved all her life.

I’m living in the in-between. The space between what I had and what I don’t yet see. There’s a word for this—liminal. It means a threshold, a doorway, a transitional space between places. I see it as a wavering place where the longing to go back pulls my heart, but my logical mind keeps telling the truth—I can’t.

Three months after Rob died, weary of wandering along the arrow-pocked floors of IKEA one afternoon, I stopped cold in front of a large photo on the wall, unable to take my eyes off it. A wide rope bridge spread out over a river-carved chasm drew me in, its far-off, narrowed length exiting into the foggy green hillside where an enormous tree spread its arms in welcome. The photo is mesmerizing and peaceful, but the bridge leads into the unknown, inviting the observer to trust its swaying fibers, cross it single file, and discover what lies on the other side. There are no promises. There are no certainties. No companions. Not even any hints as to what awaits. It simply beckons.

It's mysterious and terrifying. And now it hangs on my wall because it looks the way my life feels. I didn’t ask to be here. I can’t find my way back. I don’t know what lies ahead. I’m frozen, even paralyzed at times, not knowing how to take the next step because I can’t see a next step. I only see a questionable bridge that ends in a forest shrouded by fog.

I’m frustrated. Deeply sad. Often angry. Impatient with my lack of motivation, yet aware of the energy absorbed by the necessity of grief, I exist here at a shadowy gateway without the benefit of a roadmap, wondering what will become of me and if I will remain here forever. Knowing I must be kind to myself in the interim while I wait and see. Just,

Standing.

Listening.

Weeping.

Swaying.

Sighing.

Remembering to be gentle with my liminal self in this place where I am neither this nor that. Caught by my circumstances, companion of grief. Giving myself permission to be, knowing this is all the control I have, I live in limbo. Here. 

In the in-between.

 

Dominoes

Triggers. They connect the dots like a falling wall of dominoes.

Watching my favorite detective series about an FBI agent and his sidekick, as the credits roll the agent surprises his longsuffering wife with a surprise marriage vow renewal, the intimate wedding of her dreams.

And, just like that, I remember.

The evening I picked Rob up from the airport after he’d been gone for two weeks, and instead of taking the familiar route home, he drove us to a resort for the night. Overwhelmed by the surprise, I told him there were things I’d need for a night way from home and what about the kids? The kids, enjoying a sleepover of their own, had packed my bag, he answered. It was in the back of the van. I never saw it there. I was in such a hurry to see him again.

Triggers have a domino effect, much like the tears rolling down my face.

A new memory arose, right on the tail of the previous. A full-on vow renewal of our own, celebrated in the backyard of friends under twinkle lights, complete with an audience and a fresh topper on the wedding cake. From there we flew to the UK to finish celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary.

There will be no more celebrations like those. I've been sidelined.

While I’m still Rob’s wife, I’m not a couple anymore. My presence presents a problem where foursomes are the norm. I can’t join in any longer on conversations when the topic turns to the habits of husbands. There won’t be any more surprise rendezvous with the love of my life. The anniversary clock stopped cold at forty-four years together, even though I’ll remember that day when year forty-six arrives right on time this month.

The line of memories is endless. The tiny reminders, the triggers, wait to sabotage even TV shows I enjoy. I’m learning that grief is something I will carry for the rest of my life. Not because I admire the way it slips over my shoulder and hangs at my side like a leather purse. But because it has moved into the hole in my heart where all my love for Rob resides. We grieve deeply because we loved deeply.

This is a lot of pain to observe. It has the potential to be a buzzkill, turning casual encounters on their head the way this afternoon’s pastime transformed into tears. A ninety-degree shift like that can leave you with whiplash.

Casual. I’m not very good at casual anymore. My elephants have been good at witnessing the aftereffects of my life's devastation. They are learning, just like I’ve had to learn, that advice is seldom appreciated. Ordinary questions can cause extraordinary pain. And in the end, when normal really does turn out to only be a setting on the dryer, everyone winds up with either unintentional hurt or a realization that they’ve been misunderstood. The wounded are wounded again while the healers are afraid to say anything at all.

This, too, is grief.

I don’t know why I got thrown into this hell hole. Perhaps it’s simply “too many candles on my birthday cake” as doctors have begun to tell me. It’s the price of love, I’ve read online, I think. Or somewhere else. Who knows. There are the judgy, unhelpful religious answers, of course, but those should be moved to the sin category and never mentioned in public again.

It’s simply very lonely here. I hear stories of some widows and how they’re doing. I’ve even met one or two of them and heard them take the high road, put on their happy faces, and tell everyone how thankful they are and what gratitude they have for the years they were granted with their soulmates. How staying busy is the answer and trusting God fills in all the other blanks.

And I don’t believe a word of it.

Which is where I found myself crying again this afternoon. I don’t measure up. I have never felt like I do, and even now when I’ve lost everything and am no longer trying to prove anything, I don’t measure up. I don’t have a straight A report card detailing how I’m moving on and getting better. There are no checklists showing resolute advancement into the Season of Life promotion I’ve been given. There’s no handbook on grief. No roadmap either. “It’s different for everyone,” the authorities write. So, good luck. You’re on your own trying to figure out how to start all over again without your beloved.

Just remember – be better, not bitter. It could be worse. At least you’re not raising children on your own. You don’t have to go to work to support yourself. You have your health. Try to stay positive. Keep a stiff upper lip. Rob would want you to live your best life.

Like I said. I don’t measure up.

If grief is another of life’s great equalizers, it’s been hijacked by the admirable desire that we find happiness again. As soon as possible. This year even the American Psychiatric Association decided that grief is a disorder when it lasts more than one year.* This makes it easier for doctors to prescribe medication that insurance companies will pay for - their words, not mine. Unfortunately, even medication does little to eliminate the problem of grief. And the pressure from professionals and innocent bystanders to cheer up results in fear among people already trying to find their way through the dark. What is a natural response to loss is now considered by some to be mental illness.

We already don’t know how to grieve. We don’t know how to support those in the middle of grief, either. So why not add to the confusion by labeling those in loss with a disorder and pressure them to take medication to cover up the symptoms?

I know this is starting to sound like circular reasoning, but it all comes back to the same thing. We don’t know what to do about the problem of grief. Even mental health professionals are on opposing teams. My favorite author on the topic explains, “Grieving people are met with impatience precisely because they are failing the cultural storyline of overcoming adversity.” **

Death, more than anything else, reminds us that we are not in control. And that’s a tough pill to swallow no matter which side of the fence you lean against.

* Prolonged Grief Finally Gets Its Own Diagnosis (webmd.com)

** Megan Devine, "It's Okay That You're Not Okay", p. 34

Many thanks to JoLynne Martinez for permissiosn to use her fluid photo of falling dominoes in this post. The original photo can be viewed by following this link: Falling Dominoes | Photographed in response to this week's C… | Flickr

Illusion of Control

I miss you so much today, Baby. The hurt runs so deep. I saw the hawk flying twice, circling, reminding me that God has me and you’re close. But here’s the rub. It’s pretty obvious. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this one out.

I can’t see you. Or touch you. Or hold you.

This has been the problem with knowing God all my life. And now it’s the problem with you as well.

They tell me life is messy and we don’t have control over anything. Some call it “the illusion of control.” How do I stop being controlled by an illusion? That’s where the cute phrases come in. “Let go and let God.” And tons of scripture that make it sound easy to stop asking for a clear-cut path or searching for answers to the impossible ‘why’s’. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding.” “We walk by faith, not by sight.” “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

But when your soul has been damaged by people who were supposed to love you unconditionally and protect you, and didn’t, trust becomes a foreign language all its own. You were spared that kind of wound. Trust was second nature to you. Your favorite hymn was my worst nightmare. “All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give . . . I surrender all, all to Jesus I surrender, I surrender all.” I wrote my own lyrics to that one, which shocked a few people but, as always, my words were honest. “I surrender some, I let go a bit, I can’t see You, I can’t feel You, Take what you can get.” See what I mean?

I don’t want to let you go. How crazy does that sound when it’s already been eighteen months since you asked us to? Eighteen months since you died, and it still feels like yesterday. I don’t know what’s normal in grief. I’ve never been here before. I hardly know anyone who has been here before. Losing your husband, your best friend in the world, half your literal heart, is a lot different than other losses. That’s what’s so hard to explain to people who think I should be able to blow you a kiss, wish you well, and move on.

You were my everything. “That’s what you get when you love someone too much,” somebody told me days after you died. That one went deep. And yet it’s true. You grieve much when you love much. It’s the price of loving full on, no holds, all in. Eighteen months. You’d think by now I’d be used to living in silence here. I’m not. Even counselors get it wrong sometimes. “This is an opportunity,” I was told once. I disagreed and she thanked me for my honesty. This is pain, she also taught me to say when I couldn’t breathe. I thanked her for her validation.

So, you died. Or rather, your body did. Still, I lost everything, especially you. I’m here trying to pick up the pieces, finding my way in the dark with our family, facing every day without you, not knowing who I am anymore. I was half of Us. I identified with Us. We talked about everything. We made every decision together. We carried each other through other heartbreaks and losses. Not anymore. And now I don’t know how to live this life I’m being forced to live.

A life I have no control over. So, I googled “the illusion of control.” Turns out, that phrase isn’t just a clever wordplay. It’s a psychological abnormality. Great. Guess I won’t use that one anymore. I changed things up, simply searching for some stranger’s outstanding advice on how to let go of what you never had control over anyway. That was also a bust. “While we can’t control the events in our lives," the copycats parroted, "we can control our response to them.” Good luck with that. I suppose that’s true when the grocery store runs out of your favorite potato chips. It’s a lie and more condemnation dumped on a shattered heart, though, when your personal world implodes. You can’t control the triggers waiting to remind you that your husband isn’t here to drink coffee anymore, and in America, where coffee is more important than Mom’s apple pie, that means I’m living in a mine field. When that long term memory gets tapped, so do the tears and heartache.

Who writes this stuff anyway?  

So, here’s my take on lack of control. Here’s what I am capable of doing when I hear myself say something you used to say, when I remember the way you looked at me, when I have to chart my own course on a road trip, when I celebrate our wedding anniversaries alone.

Keep. Breathing.

There it is. That’s what I can control. Maybe.

And one more thing. I may not know how to surrender (which I don’t think matters since it’s clear I don’t control anything anyway), but I am smart enough to know deep in my spirit that the One who has control also has me.

And that helps.

With thanks to JoLynne Martinez for permission to use the exquisite photo seen above. The original can be viewed by following this link: The Magician [Square Crop] | Thanks to my Flickr friend Shir… | Flickr

Tick Tock

I will never forget that woman’s face at that memorial. They rang that bell and she put an arm around one child. They called out his name and she held onto the other. The pipes swelled and even from across the cemetery I could see her suck in a deep gulp of air, her shoulders rising as she tried to hold it together while the Celtic strains of Amazing Grace soared heavenward. I watched as she blew out a huge breath, straightened her posture, and resumed a stoic expression.

Looking back now, I realize it was like looking into my future. 

Stiff upper lip, I could imagine her saying to herself. It’s been months. You can do this. You can sit on the front row where everyone is watching you, wondering how you’re doing and thanking God it’s not them. They’re honoring him, remember? It’s been a year. People expect you to be better by now. You owe it to his friends to be here. You owe it to him. The fire service was his life.

It still makes me weep. The things we do out of obligation.

Sigh. She was young, and I imagine that in time she remarried. Most likely she's had a wonderful life, in spite of it all. I'm sure the kids got therapy and turned out okay. It’s been twenty years. That’s a lot of Christmases without him, but they probably made it. Life goes on.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

I didn't want to stare but I couldn't help myself. I felt like I was trespassing on her pain. Look away, I told myself. It’s too hard to watch. How is she even holding up, sitting there on the front row with her two fatherless children? I could never do that. I could never survive. I dug in my purse for a Kleenex and stepped back into the sparce shadow to escape the heat and shift my view.

Rob’s in administration now, I thought. He’s not on the end of a hose line anymore. This is part of the risk. Everyone knows it and accepts it. This will never happen to him. Or to me. I don’t know how it happened to her and her husband. It was unthinkable. Unbelievable. Even unforgiveable. They get so much training. He was so strong. He was always the hero. Now he’s the one being mourned.

I looked at my watch. Was it time to go yet? How could Rob stand there so patiently, attending these memorials and tributes every fall? How could he make himself show up at funerals of men he didn’t even know and yet still considered his brothers? How could he endure the sadness knowing he was helpless to change anything?

I hated this. I should never have come. It was too scary to watch her and know at some shallow level of my own just how deep her loss was. All the dreams destroyed. All the nights while her heart was breaking that she’d have to find a way to console their children on her own. It was so unfair. There must be an explanation. Somewhere. Did he do something wrong? Miss a protocol? Go rogue and abandon his team? Get stubborn and try to be the hero? How could he leave her like this?

I didn’t know her. I could only watch and wonder and try to reassure myself that I would never be in her shoes. Her sorrow would never be mine. Especially if I followed the rules and didn’t deviate. If I stayed afraid and never took a risk. If we remained alert and avoided trouble and lived by the Book, I’d never find myself sitting on the front row in a cemetery where a uniformed man walked toward me and handed me . . .

“The Fire Service extends its deep sorrow at the passing of your husband, Rob McLeod,” his friend said, interrupting my reflection with the folded American flag in his hands.

Tick tock. Tick tock. Tick tock.

Puzzling Pieces

I think I need to explain.  

This blog is where I think out loud. Laugh at myself. Ask the hard questions. Explore the extent of my courage. Reveal my weaknesses. And sometimes hope for a little common sense to show up. This is where I risk exposing my point of view, the details of my journey through life, and what I’m learning in the classroom of experience. Everything I believe is dissected here in the sanctity of my private space and yet you are invited to listen in on my private thoughts—the good, the bad, and even the ugly.

But this is not a place where I invite anyone to try to fix me. No one wants someone else to fix them without asking. What we all need is to be heard. We long for someone to listen. And when we’re in excruciating pain, we need to be surrounded by the comfort of witnesses. "Grief is a natural response to death or loss. It is not an illness to be cured or a problem to be fixed. . . You need someone to see your grief and to acknowledge it." *

I’ve had people tell me that they don’t know what to say to me. They feel helpless or ineffective or useless because eloquence and wisdom evade them. But that’s the perfect place to be. In the absence of knowing what to say, we discover the truth—you don’t need to say anything. You just need to show up.

I’ve been on both sides of pain, as a witness to yours and a participant in mine. I’ve said things I regret because I wanted to be the savior, too, just like everyone tries to be. To come up with the answer to the impossible question and be the hero. I never do. No one does. No one can. In general, attempts to do so end up wounding a broken heart again at the exact moment that they most need comfort.

We don’t know the answers to the hard questions in life and yet we keep trying to explain as if God is on trial and we are His legal representation. We fear that if we don’t defend Him with our anemic reasoning, His reputation might be tarnished. As if.

• ·         We don’t know why a baby dies in a mother’s womb, but we’re quick to tell a grieving mother that she can have more children.
• ·         We don’t know why a father dies of cancer leaving his children to grow up without him, but we think it will comfort them to say that he’s no longer suffering, ignoring the reality that their suffering has just begun.
• ·         We don’t know why a wife dies but it’s obvious to us that it must have been God’s will and that God had other plans for her besides granting her family’s prayers for her recovery.
• ·         We don’t have a clue why a million things go wrong from sexual predators to elder abuse, financial bankruptcy to car accidents, mass shootings to terrorist attacks. We don’t know why avalanches occur or tornadoes appear or earthquakes erupt. We can’t explain how the wind moves or why the Titanic sank or why politics is corrupt.

The common denominator here is that we don’t know and yet we offer explanations to someone in pain when we’re not the ones trying to breathe in and breathe out every moment for the rest of our shattered lives.

Why do we do this?

For so many reasons. I’d like to think that at the core of our hand-wringing hearts, we want to stop the suffering we see in the eyes of those we love. We want them to smile again, laugh with us, find the lilt in their step and hope for a better future. We want to see them whole, to watch them enjoy life, we want the person they used to be before they suffered loss to re-surface.

And we want them to stop reminding us with their tears and anger and depression and questions that we might be in their shoes someday. We are uncomfortable with grief. We are ignorant about grief. Our culture has not taught us that grief is part of life just as dying is, so we don’t know what to do with either one except to try to make it go away.

And when people of faith suffer great loss, if they don’t bounce back quickly enough, praise God soon enough, and get back in the game fast enough, we shame them. We may critique their spiritual walk. We may even question if they really know Jesus. Certainly, we believe it’s our job to set them straight and explain that they have no right to question or complain or cry their eyes out endlessly. They must trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus, as the hymnwriters say.

Life is a no question zone. Put on your happy face and move on.

I thought I had all the answers once. I thought I had suffered and overcome enough to earn immunity from any more trauma and loss. I thought I knew how to pray without ceasing. I wasn’t great at trusting, but I’m a pretty good reader, so I thought if I studied enough and taught what I’d learned and discussed enough books that I’d figure out what God is doing in the world and in my life. I thought bad things happened to other people and that Rob and I would grow old together and never have to live a single day apart. I thought scripture verses would dissolve grief, so I gave them to people in pain and sat back in satisfaction waiting for them to rejoice.

And if the puzzle of their complicated life was missing an important piece, I thought I could share one of my own and it would complete their story. It didn’t matter if their picture was different than mine or the shape didn’t fit. Just pound that funky piece into place so no one would have to look at the awkward hole in their life anymore.

What I do here in this blog space is process my life. I write because it is my glory. It is an outlet for my difficult emotions and unimaginable questions. It’s where I put down “on paper” what I thought I knew and what I was forced to discover. It’s where I move the pieces of my puzzle around and look for a picture to emerge. When it does, I post it. It’s not always the picture others expect me to reveal. But it’s always honest.

I need to explain why I'm here with this broken heart, processing the details of my shattered life while I try to survive without Rob beside me. No one can comprehend how much he meant to me or how rich our relationship was or how safe he made me feel or how much he and I loved each other. No one sees me come home at the end of every day to an empty house where no one waits for me anymore, try to convince myself to prepare a meal that I alone will eat, and in the evening when something I read or watch on TV or see in an email triggers sorrow, that I am alone here with my head bent down, sobbing, trying to catch my breath with no one to put their arms around me and tell me it’s going to be all right.

No one else has the missing piece to my puzzle.

Nor am I the only one in this position. 800,000 people become widowed in America every single year. And I guarantee that every one of them has had salt rubbed into the wound by good intentioned, painful words assuring them that losing half their heart and all of their dreams is God’s will.

I’m not here to destroy God’s reputation. He’s not afraid of my honesty. He’s not easily offended, either. And He has never let go of me. The feelings I am experiencing are normal and real. I’ve taken some hits for expressing them in public, and I’ve also given voice to some suffering hearts who are afraid to speak up.

Remember the elephants who gather around a fallen member, standing still, forming a quiet circle of support? They don’t do or say anything. They just show up.

To those of you who have shown up, you have my eternal thanks. You know who you are. Thank you for being here without having answers. For loving me as I am. For reminding me that we are all human. And for praying for my family.

I say again that I love you. You are awesome elephants. 

*Megan Devine, "It's Okay That You're Not Okay"

With thanks to Shelah for the use of the artwork shown above. The original can be viewed by following this link: fitting the pieces together | Shelah | Flickr

Triage and Trust

I turned on your phone today and searched until the text messages I sent you in ICU appeared. I needed to remind myself that I’d done everything I could to tell you how much I love you and reassure you that we were fighting for you.

Each one spoke of my deep love for you. How you mean everything to me. I reminded you how you'd texted me early on that "we’ve done hard before” and we’d get through this, too. The messages were filled with love and devotion and scripture verses I was clinging to and lyrics to songs that were inspiring and hopeful and encouragement to keep fighting and my confidence that you would beat this. They were cheerleading blurbs, pre-loaded with positive energy, focused on what we wanted and expected and claimed from God, all based on the belief that we should always “stand on our authority” as children of God. Everything I could think of to spur you on, keep your mind focused on the business at hand—getting well again—it was all there, stored on the magic of your smartphone.

I couldn’t read all of them. I was crying too hard. I'd sent the last one on Feb. 16, the day before the palliative doctor usurped Risa’s call and gave us the bad news. You were done fighting and you didn’t want to continue anymore. You wanted to die a natural death.

I shut off your cellphone and put it back in the drawer where I keep it with your Florida Gators sweatshirt and that little piece of fabric that I found wadded up in your pocket for cleaning your glasses. As I closed the drawer, I said for the thousandth time, “That’s why I don’t believe in prayer anymore. Or healing. I only believe in talking to You, God.” Some tell me that’s what prayer is, but what they're really describing is a laundry list where faith is the price of its fulfilment. Well, we did that. We prayed without doubt. Believed without compromise. Faithed without flinching. And we lost it all anyway.

I walked into the kitchen with all of that fresh on my mind, all the words running together, when I realized how much pep talking I was doing in those texts. I'd sent weeks worth of cell phone messages, asking your nurses to read them to you because covid protocol wouldn’t allow us to be there in person while you were fighting for your life on a ventilator.  Everything I texted you was one sided. One desire allowing one outcome. Of course, God would heal you. Anything else was out of the question. It was standard operating procedure, our SOP. Everyone who knew what you were going through was praying their guts out for God to heal you. None of us could imagine a world without Rob McLeod in it.

Except Rob McLeod.

The realization took my breath away, Baby. You knew. You knew for weeks that this one was the one that would take you down. We were hours away from your hospital room. You were there on the frontline fighting for your life. Fighting to breathe. Struggling to stay alive. Facing the truth like the straight up guy you are and relying on the medical experience of your entire career to analyze the situation. You could see the writing on the wall when we refused to look. You knew if you made it out of the hospital, it would be as a broken man facing a life as a vegetable. It was unacceptable.

We were praying for you to live while you were praying to go Home to God.

Slowly, a strong realization rose up in my soul and I knew that in all those weeks I had only considered what I wanted, what I needed, what I thought was best for you and for us. And then it hit me. Nancy was right all along. I talked to her the night before Katy and I drove up to Show Low to ask you in person if you wanted us to let you go. Nancy believes in healing and so did I once. But it’s not our desires that set us free. It’s the truth. “So, you’ve been praying for Rob’s healing while he’s been asking to go Home. Which prayer is God supposed to answer?” she asked me. It was hard. Painful. Impossible to believe. I tucked it away in a corner of my heart where all the difficult things in life are kept under lock and key. Still, I knew. The next day we asked you in person, saw your firm answer, and let you go. You were free. It was our first of many days in prison.

I told God He was a liar the night after we got that call. I had a book full of scriptures and “promises” I’d been keeping to show you once you recovered, and I threw it in the trash. I started calling Him “The God I’m Not Talking To” as I began life as your widow, lost in a whirlwind of pain and shock. I blamed myself for a thousand things I wished I’d done differently, as if I alone have control over anything in this world. I blamed the doctors. The hospital staff. The government, although that one still seems appropriate.

But I missed the truth. I didn’t see it. I was so blinded by disbelief and anguish that I was unable to see it. I suppose timing is everything. If I’d had a glimpse of it before now, I wouldn’t have given it the time of day.

You wanted to go Home. It was your body. It was your life. You love me still with the fervency of true love, but you are a realist. You see the black and the white and have always been a good judge of circumstances, even the horrible, terrible, please-don’t-let-it-happen kind. Some of that was the years you spent doing triage on the side of the road, the horrible job of assessing which patients were the highest priority and discerning which ones would never make it. Some of it was the sturdy faith you always had in God, trusting Him no matter what. The early woundings my heart has suffered make trust difficult for me. You were always the truest version of Jesus I've ever seen in flesh and blood. You loved me like Him, and you trusted Him like I didn’t know how to do.

That day it all came down to the wire. Triage and Trust. It was time. You helped us recognize the unimaginable. You did your best. We did our best. The medical staff did their best. No one wanted it to happen, but you needed us to let you go.

How could that possibly be the right prayer?

I see it now. I was praying wrong. Or, perhaps, it would be more kind for me to say I didn’t know there was another way to pray. And the reason I didn’t know that is because the price of praying for that kind of wisdom is too high. For me. Not for you. I did everything I could to save the man I loved and when that wasn't how it was going to end, I gave you the freedom you asked for. I was praying for healing because I didn't want to let you go. Completely natural. I knew what it would cost me to love you enough to grant what you needed most. It was the last act of love I could give you, but it cost me everything. That's the definition of love.

Finally, standing alone in my kitchen, I was able in some degree to rest in the outcome of what happened, knowing you made that hard call and yours was the prayer that needed to be answered. You simply knew of the two choices facing you, which side of triage was yours.

I was praying for your healing. You were asking to go Home.

Which prayer was God supposed to answer?

Rock Life

I could hear her take a breath on the other end of the line. A pause. “What we’re doing is really hard, Mom,” she said. It is. I couldn’t say anything because my heart was in my throat again. Validation. No excuses or cheerleading or minimizing or avoiding. This is pain. I didn’t know this is how it goes until it happened to me. To us.

After a few minutes, we talked about last night’s storm - the one that missed us - and joked that it might rain here eventually. My best guess was sometime around Thanksgiving, sporadic as summer showers are here in the desert. We hung up. I went around closing windows and had put on my pajamas when a change in background sounds grabbed my attention.

Was that rain? Or just my imagination? Because sometimes when the air conditioner kicks on it sounds like . . . nope. It never sounds like thunder.

I walked into my bedroom, raised the blinds, and sat down in my chair across the room to watch the show. Lightning lit up the night sky, showcasing the beating the massive ash tree was taking from the monsoon’s onslaught. Violent winds whipped the branches, forcing them to twist and bend close to the ground in obedience to the storm’s demand. I began to pray that none of the old growth treasures in Katy’s backyard would be damaged by the storm. I remembered what happened to a neighbor’s elm a year ago during a similar onslaught. I didn’t want to see everyone’s favorite here pulled up by its roots and laid out across the back pasture.

Torrential rain pounded heavily against my huge bedroom window, but this house, this new home where I've lived for three months, was built strong and sturdy. It took the punishing wind in stride, allowing the storm’s fury to lash out relentlessly without giving up any ground. It reminded me of something I’d heard once, or maybe a thousand times, about another storm. How the rain fell, and the floods and torrents came, and the winds blew and slammed against another house in a similar storm. Yet that house did not fall because it had been built upon a rock.

I got it, but what about my questions? There are so many days when my feet seem to be sinking in quicksand that I have to wonder if my “house,” my life, can weather this terrible storm that’s overtaken me, pummeling my heart and those of my children, for the last year and a half. Every day I face multiple reminders of the truth my mind and my heart still haven't fully grasped. I carry the weight of it for hours, all day long, trudging through every normal routine with the energy of a sloth, and when I finally force myself to go to bed alone sleep is restless. I wake up exhausted, only to start all over again.

That just doesn’t feel like rock life to me.

So, I questioned the story of the house. I questioned the Author of the story. He’s used to that by now. And it doesn’t rock His world, so to speak.

“Are you sure, Lord?” I sighed. I knew those embedded verses floated to the surface at His command. They sure weren’t my idea. “What if I can’t keep standing against these winds? You hear them pounding me. You see me catch my breath and turn my head in public, trying to push the image of him to the back of my mind so no one feels uncomfortable or, worse, feels sorry for me when my eyes overflow with tears. You know it would be easier for me to resign from humanity and stay locked up in my house than to risk breaking down in public.

“I’m trying to rebuild my life without him beside me, not because I want to but because I have no other choice. What if I fall? What if I’m not stronger than I seem and braver than I believe and smarter than I think? What then? WHAT IF THIS STORM IS THE ONE THAT TAKES ME OUT?”

There wasn’t even a delay in the answer. There was no condemnation for the way I phrased it, either. There was, as there always is, supreme confidence and complete acceptance. And love. All enveloping love and understanding.

“God is within her, she will not fall.” Short and sweet and to the point, as usual, the reply came. There it is. This thing we’re doing is really hard. It won’t be over in a year. Not in two years. Or three. For all I know, it will take the rest of my life to grieve him and us. I don’t know. I’ve never been here before. I hardly know anyone else who has either. As Katy and Lee and I have often reminded each other, we don't know what we're doing.

All I can say for sure is that it’s hard. I miss him. Desperately. It makes me doubt what I’m made of. It makes me think I’m not “performing” well. I feel fragile and lost sometimes. I’m tired all the time. My family has had to circle the wagons while we take care of ourselves and each other. We used to run on autopilot, managing life with one arm tied behind our backs. Now it takes every ounce of focus just to put one foot in front of the other. Trying to survive is a full-time job.

Does it look like I’m falling? Yes, sometimes. Am I bent to the ground in sorrow? You bet. Will I break in this storm? I’m already broken. Am I built on the Rock? It’s the only thing I know for sure in a world that has taken away the security I once had.

When the storms come, I am His.
When the sun shines, I am still His.
Nothing depends on me.
Everything depends on Him.
That’s why he’s the Rock.
And I’m not.

Storms are scary, though. I’m afraid a lot. This one has dug in like a cut-off low and the waters are rising. Riding out this storm is harder than it looks, takes longer than you’d think, and is lonelier than you’d believe. How do I know I will come out on the other side in one piece?

Because God is within her. She will not fall. **

Fine. Bring me another umbrella. 

 

* And the storm came.  And the rain fell, and the floods and torrents came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. Matthew 7:25       **God is within her, she will not fall. Ps. 46:5   

Angel Story

It was an old blue Toyota that once belonged to his father. The two men loved that rusty piece of antique machinery. Lee paid so much money to repair it and turn it into a rock climber that he later told me, “I could have had a brand-new Corolla with its very own key fob for all I’ve spent on these wheels.” True. I felt kind of guilty there since it was my idea that he buy back the Landcruiser which Rob had driven for so many years before he’d sold it. And then I got over it. Even with its new Chevrolet engine and expanded, wide wheelbase, that faded blue truck with its original Toyota body still didn’t have air conditioning or enough seat belts or power anything. Lee dubbed the hybrid version they’d come up with “The Toy-let.” It was a man’s truck inside and out and that’s the reason they loved it. It’s also the reason I seldom rode in it.

“I want you to tell me about that afternoon in the mountains,” I told Lee today as we caught up by phone. “The day the steering gave out on the Landcruiser.”

Instantly, Lee was back behind the wheel of his first vehicle, careening out of control at sixty miles an hour down the last mountain grade before he hit desert flatlands--literally. With him rode two of his best friends, one in the passenger seat in the front, the other in the boxy rear without a safety belt.

“I told them to brace themselves,” he said, remembering the terrifying experience. “A pin came out of the steering column on the last steep grade coming down off the Mogollon Rim. I tried to use the brakes, but I had no control over the wheels.” The college age boys hung on in terror, unable to do anything as the Toyota gained speed, its wheels unresponsive to Lee’s frantic efforts to straighten out. With no one able to steer it, the truck and its passengers were headed for a deep ravine in the middle of nowhere in the Arizona heat.

“A curb suddenly appeared right before we went off the road,” Lee remembered, telling his story as if it happened yesterday. “In the middle of the desert, our right front wheel clipped a solitary curb, careened off it, and the impact sent us across two lanes to the other side of the divided highway.”

“You coasted to a stop on the side of the road then?” I asked.

“Yep. For a minute, we just sat there, trying to believe what had happened. That’s when another truck pulled in behind us. There hadn’t been anyone around for miles, we crash into a curb and come to a stop on the side of the highway, and suddenly there’s this old pickup rolling to a stop a few yards back of us. It was loaded up with a bunch of junk covered by a big tarp and the guy told me he and his family were moving to California, taking all the back roads on their way. This was a weird back road to drive in a truck like that. It looked like it was straight out of The Grapes of Wrath. The driver told me he’d run out of gas.”

He ran out of gas at exactly the same place where Lee’s truck had gone rogue.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“We siphoned some gas from my tank and put it in his truck.”

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you had an extra can with you. But if you had to siphon it, what did you use to get it out?”

“He had a piece of garden hose in that pile of junk in the pickup bed. And he dug around in there for a while, found a screw, crawled up under the Landcruiser and used it to tighten down the steering mechanism. He said it’d hold until I got home and was sure I could drive it. Dad arrived after the guy left and followed us home, but the man was right. I never broke down and we made it back.”

That’s when I asked the hard question. Right after I reviewed the crazy story he’d just told me.

The boys had spent a weekend camping in the mountains and trying out the rock-climbing features of Lee’s truck. They were headed home and nearly made it to the flatlands off the curvy mountain grade when a pin fell out of the steering system, making it impossible for Lee to straighten out the wheels and avoid driving off into a ravine at sixty miles per hour. Only two of the three passengers had seatbelts. There was tragedy in the making in the desert that afternoon when a piece of curbing suddenly appeared at exactly the right place to re-direct an out-of-control Landcruiser away from the ravine and back onto the straightaway so Lee’s braking could stop his vehicle. Then a stranger rolls in right behind them in his Grapes of Wrath truck with the know-how to make a screw work in place of a pin in an antique Toyota, whips out a length of hose and siphons gasoline from the Landcruiser into his own vehicle, and goes on his merry way. To California. In the middle of a hot September day in Arizona’s desert.

I took a deep breath and forged ahead. “So . . . did you think the guy in the Grapes of Wrath truck might have been an angel?”

“That’s exactly what we thought,” he answered. “As soon as the adrenalin calmed and we could talk about it, we were all convinced the guy was an angel.”

It still makes me break out in a cold sweat when I think how very differently that day could have turned out. It was an impossible situation, and they knew it. They were bracing for the worst, holding on for dear life with no options available to stop the inevitable.

But then a curb appeared.

Followed by a beat-up truck and a driver with an unlikely story.

And a screw in place of a pin that held the steering together all the way back from the desert to the city.

I mean, it could have been a coincidence. All those miraculous things that came together at exactly the right moment and saved the lives of three young men. It could have been. Except later we drove back to the scene of the crime, rode up and down that highway for miles, and we never found that cement curb—which had no reason to be there in the first place since there wasn’t another building in sight for fifty miles in any direction.

I don’t know about you, but in a world where things are desperately trying to go to hell in a hand basket, it gives me more hope than I can describe to know we have armies of angels on our side all the time.

Even before we ask, even if there’s no time to ask for help, God’s messengers are watching, ready to intervene. “What role, then, do the angels have? The angels are spirit-messengers sent by God to serve those who are going to be saved. . . I make my angels swift winds, and my ministers fiery flames.” *

And, sometimes, they even drive old pickup trucks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Hebrews 1:14 and 1:7, Amplified Bible

With thanks to SoulRider.222 for permission to use this photo of the Toy-let's twin, but with a lot less rust. The original photo can be viewed by following this link: Toyota Land Cruiser | May 2011. While riding. Nikon Coolpix … | Flickr