I've learned some things

 It's been almost 3 months since I posted. Once I started back to work and was able to get in 40 hours per week it seemed to take all my energy. I literally felt like a wet dishrag by the time I had put my 8 hours in for the day. No energy for processing my thoughts and getting them recorded in this blog. And quite honestly, a lot of the thoughts and feelings I've been working through have been quite dark. I didn't want to risk being judged for them. I am still way too fragile - that makes me think of The Christmas Story - to handle criticism for how I am feeling. 

But today while I was at church listening to my husband's sermon I realized something. Jim's text was from Philippians 4 and he was making a point about living out our faith rather than just talking about faith. He made a comment about wanting to leave a legacy for his kids and others that they will have no doubt that Jim believed God and trusted Him in and with all things. Pow! That's the comment that took me down a path I haven't wanted to go. You see, since I was 19 years old I have lived my life trusting God - at least trying my hardest to trust Him. And what did that get me? I trusted Him with my children and He let Brendan die, by suicide. My mind offers up thoughts about how God has let me down. Things like if He really loved me He would have never allowed this to happen. He would have NEVER let this horrific, searing pain all but destroy me. He wouldn't have ruined my life like this. Those have been some of the thoughts I've had that have morphed into feelings of despair, loneliness, desperation, and hopelessness.

Pause. What do I KNOW about feelings? Feelings are not facts. What do I know about emotions...like, can they be trusted? No, they can't. See, emotions and feelings are fluid. They are based on circumstances. They can be affected by weather, mood, hormones, perception, medication, the filter we use to process them, etc. It is not wrong of me to feel anger. Brendan should still be here. Parents are not supposed to outlive their children. Initially I was so angry at the person in Brendan's life who mistreated him terribly. So angry that I couldn't say the name of the person or pray for them. I tearfully had to ask God to help me get to a place where I could speak their name in prayer and ask God to somehow orchestrate things in their life so that they will understand their need for Jesus and seek Him. It is an understatement to say it wasn't easy. It is still not easy, but God has replaced the bitterness in my heart toward them with compassion for their condition as a lost person who is in need of the mercy and grace of Jesus. Just as I was before I called on Him. It's not wrong of me to try to assign blame to someone for this terrible tragic loss in the beginning. I believe that is my mind trying to sort through things and make sense of a situation that cannot be made sense of. It's just not helpful or healthy to stay in that place. In the beginning, I assigned blame to his therapist, to the world's philosophy of manifesting your reality, to myself for failing to be enough, to the terrible pastor who rejected him, to the immature Christians who believe it is their right to make others feel bad about visible sin while showing none of God's love for mankind and His desire to have a relationship with us because He loves us. I blamed social media for delivering the false idea that being happy is all that matters. All this blame was leaving me exhausted, sad, angry, and lonely. And none of it brought Brendan back or made me feel any better. In fact, I felt worse than ever. And when I realized that the therapist, the errant philosophies, the nasty pastor, the mean-hearted Christians, and the social media messages were not responsible for the sickness my son was suffering from I began to silently blame God. I didn't say it out loud. I didn't even admit it to myself. But there is a part of me that has been blaming Him. You see, when you have loved someone deeply the grief is real, thick, heavy, and ugly. It can change how you see things temporarily. It is kind of like the grief takes on a tangible form. It won't leave you alone. It is relentless. It sits right next to you and sometimes sits on you, crushing you. It lies right next to you in bed. It follows you to the bathroom, it is the invisible passenger in your car, it walks with you into work and pulls up a chair right beside you. It eats breakfast, lunch, and supper with you. It goes to church, the grocery store, Wal-Mart, your favorite boutique, and salon. It accompanies you to the doctor's office and matches you stride for stride as you try to take a walk to clear your mind. You feel unable to think, remember, function, and pay attention. You start to wonder if this is what it feels like to lose your mind. You become afraid to talk with anyone. You circle the wagons, so to speak, to try to protect yourself and keep others at what feels like a safe distance. One day you realize that you are mostly numb. You wonder why you are still here and if you have a purpose. What is the point in going on? You distance yourself further because you are afraid of what will happen if others know how you really feel. You are afraid they might want to tell someone and get you help and you know you don't have the energy for that because talking is exhausting. You are also afraid they won't take it seriously enough and you assume that means they think you are strong enough to pull yourself through and you know you are barely holding on. And you can't talk to God about things anymore because you know He must be mad at you because you are blaming Him for all this. If it isn't anyone else's fault, except maybe your own (I'm still working through this one), it must be His. 

You are so starved for hope and you know that you cannot continue like this much longer. You decide to give it one last shot. You tell God that you need Him to show up big somehow. You need to be able to FEEL again. The numbness is even worse than the anger was. You tell Him that you don't want to keep hurting your family and loved ones with your silence, distance, stand-offishness, (is that a word?), and cutting comments, but you don't see a way through any of this unless He intervenes. He does. A friend who used to attend church with you sends a message about this Bible Study she is doing and how much she is enjoying it. You think to yourself, why not? Probably won't help but you can give it a shot. You can hear your grandson's words echoing in your head when you tell him something he's doing won't work that way and he responds with, "But I can try, right?" So you try.

Fifty-two days later you have been reminded of many truths and learned some new things. You were reminded that God gives His people free choice. He wants them to choose Him, He wants them to walk closely with Him but He will not force them to do so. You are reminded that He is a perfect and holy God and that He cannot possibly be to blame for Brendan committing suicide because that would indicate God is guilty of making a mistake. He's not. You begin to believe again and FEEL that God is near to you as His word says He is near to the broken-hearted. You realize the only reason you are able to stand is because He is the One who is holding you up. He shows you through His word that he is indeed holy, generous, compassionate, forgiving and loving. He shows you that by being in close relationship with Him you can find and experience joy no matter what you are dealing with. 

When Brendan died it seemed like the light, the song, and the beauty of nature disappeared and would never again be found by me. The truth is that all of those things remained. It took me intentionally drawing closer to Him to feel the joy He gives and open my eyes again to the beauty of His creation, His blessings, and His provisions He has filled my life with. The darkness hasn't completely departed but as I seek to know Him more that circle of darkness diminishes in size. When that happens I can breathe easier, I hear the song of the birds, I feel the wind, I smell the scent of the flowers. I recognize His hand guiding me and I remember His purpose for me. He is the reason to keep going, to keep living, to keep believing, to keep trusting. My feelings and emotions are often not trust-worthy, but He is ALWAYS trust-worthy. 

Thank you, Amber Graves for sharing about the study and Tara Leigh-Cobble for following God's leading and developing this amazing Bible Study. I was really afraid of how low I had sank and didn't want to do anything rash, but I knew I couldn't go on the way I was indefinitely. The answer is always Jesus. I wish I had the words to make people understand what a difference He makes. Trusting Him as your Savior is wonderful! and necessary! But choosing to draw close to Him and learn who He really is and what His heart is passionate about is priceless. I have so much to learn. He has gone to the greatest lengths possible for us to understand how much He loves us and what extreme measures He has gone to in order for us to be in relationship with Him. But a relationship takes two involved people. One of the things I've learned is that the Jewish people understood the requirements and meanings of an animal sacrifice so much better than I. They understood that what was being done to the animal is what the person offering the sacrifice deserved to have done to them. It was a picture of what was to come. The innocent lamb that was sacrificed for their sin was foreshadowing God's Son who was also the innocent lamb that would be sacrificed for our sin. Sin has always required a blood sacrifice. In those early days it was the animal who suffered. Then it was Jesus who did. Why? For you. For me. For all mankind. Why would the innocent offer Himself up for the guilty? Love. 

Life is certainly not always puppies and butterflies. Sometimes it's frigid, dark, and scary. I believe that it is in these latter times that we learn the most about God's character and have the greatest opportunity to impact people for Him. I struggled with deciding if I should do this post or not. Some might be disappointed in what I shared about the struggle in my own faith journey throughout these last months. I have truly been a passenger on the struggle bus for quite some time and I know that my struggles aren't over. I hope that you can see that God placed people and resources in my life just at the exact right moment and then He gave me the energy to read, learn, and helped me comprehend. It is a miracle, in my mind. I cannot emphasize enough how depleted my energy has been and how I have been unable to think clearly or  understand simple things, let alone the truths of a mighty God. But He made a way. I know from first-hand experience that He is making the difference in and for me and I know that He will do it for you too. If you are hanging on by a frayed thread, give Him a shot. He is the real deal.