Joy on the Other Side

“My mess has become my greatest message.”  Carol Kent

Walking back to this arena of “sharing” is a bit intimidating and I have delayed doing this for some time….but as I look back at how we shared Amanda’s story I can’t help but think of all the blessings we would have missed if we had chosen to stay silent.  And it is with that lesson in mind I would like to share a little bit of my personal story from the last two years.

While Amanda was sick, and even after her death, we often heard about how strong our faith was and how people didn’t think they could handle a situation the way we did.  I have said this before, but we didn’t know any other way to face Amanda’s illness than to trust God through it all.  It is those same opinions that make me want to open up and share how grief completely derailed me two years after Amanda’s death.   

Even though my faith never wavered, I walked through a very dark valley, with no idea how long it was going to last, how bad it was going to get or how it was going to end.  As human beings, we have to allow our bodies and minds to process life events and that sometimes means depending on the help of people who have specialized in doing just that.  As Christians, we are not promised to be protected from the pain and suffering of the world, but we do have the promise that our Lord God will never leave us or forsake us.  And our God is faithful.

“In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.” Tim Keller

Those first two years…..

Three months after Amanda’s death, I went back to work and not long after that began working with our women's’ ministry at church.  In other words, I got busy and I got good at “stuffing” the process of grieving properly from the beginning.  Oh I was still grieving my loss, but I was also proclaiming God’s goodness, sharing our story, napping, working, fumbling at being a mom, wife and friend, and found myself falling flat on my face in exhaustion at night only to start the process all over again the next day.   Looking back, I wasn’t making enough time for my important relationships….I was spinning my wheels so fast and so hard that those closest to me were suffering, and in turn, my choices were causing me to pull a little further away from where I needed to be.  I trusted God, my faith was still strong but I felt like it was my responsibility to help things make sense…..I was trying to control things I had no control over.  There was a lot of “me” moments during that time.  What became evident as I look back is that I wasn’t taking care of me in the most important way, allowing myself to grieve in a way that was vital for my health and well being. I was trying to balance my grief publicly just as we had done with Amanda’s illness.  But there are some things that need to be done in a quiet place. I was not allowing myself to grieve in God’s timing and ways, one on one with Him, my husband and my son.  I’m just surprised it took two years for it all to come crashing down.

“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”  J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Grief must happen

Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.

John Piper said, “Joy and sorrow in the Christian life are not sequential, but simultaneous."

I have read many things on grief.  One thing I have heard, but honestly didn’t fully comprehend, was just how individual the grief process is for each person.  Sounds like a no-brainer, right?  But the dramatic differences in how I handle grief compared to how my boys handle grief took us a bit to figure out and that had some unpleasant repercussions.  First, let me say that no one's way was wrong, just different.  Tom happens to excel at being logical.  He is a thinker, and while he also is very good at showing emotions, he has the ability to be able to “turn them off” when needed.  I, on the other hand, am driven by emotions, all the time, and must often allow the emotions to drain out rather than be able to shut them down. Then I am so wiped out I feel like doing absolutely nothing.  So figuring out how to allow one another to grieve, each in our own way, while also learning from each other was a challenging but extremely important step for us.  

You may recall that we moved away for about a month the summer of 2016. That summer was the time everything came closing in on me. It was May of that year that my internal struggle to grieve and heal began to manifest itself on the exterior. That looked like all kinds of ugly, but it took us a while to realize what was going on.  We moved away from home and family, and at the time it seemed understandable that I felt the need for different surroundings.  That’s not a bad thing and for some, can be incredibly helpful.  But that was not where I was at.  Thank goodness Tom had the training to realize that I was nearing a breaking point.  For two years I had been running and running fast.  But I was running the wrong way. 

So there we were, away from our community, living in the middle of a corn field and I felt like I was coming apart at the seams. I couldn’t eat or sleep and struggled to function in the simplest of tasks.  I was overwhelmed with anxiety and fear.  We did have family close by and I had a dear friend who was just down the road, but Tom still had to drive an hour in to work and I still had to be mom to Brandon.  It was during this time that Tom connected me to a clinician who specializes in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and thus began our battle that would begin my long process of healing.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Coming Home for help

As we look back at that month we were gone, while traumatic in nature, we think it could have been the best thing to happen to us to help us see that something was terribly wrong. With the distractions of our “normal” schedule removed, we were forced to focus on just us.  Everything else moved to the back burner as we grappled with figuring out what in the world was going on.  

By the time we moved back to Georgetown, I was a full blown mess.  I struggled being in large crowds, going back on the campus at Grace Academy, being at church and I even struggled to be in our own home. I couldn’t deal with simple daily tasks or changes to anticipated plans, but worst of all, I couldn’t be alone. I struggled with feeling “safe.”  The stress and trauma of Amanda’s 17 month cancer treatment and then her death had manifested in an inability to cope, severe anxiety and a fear unlike anything I have ever experienced.  The simplest way to explain it is that I had an emotional breakdown.

As part of my therapy, I began EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR is “a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences….by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. - EMDR Institute, Inc.”  My therapist explained it like this: Sometimes when people go through a traumatic experience, it gets stuck in the frontal lobe of your brain (which controls your behavior) and is negatively stimulated by coming across things that brings back the painful memories.  EMDR allows those memories to be filed away where they are supposed to go, to become “unstuck”.  Much like we process our day’s events every night by the REM sleep cycle, EMDR uses the same methods to process those memories. 

After my first two hour session, I had the ability to be at home without the overwhelming painful feelings, I could drive on campus at Grace without bursting into tears - the change was incredible.  While I was still experiencing the other symptoms and struggles, the change that the treatment had on me was astounding.  Over the next three months of EMDR therapy followed by traditional talk therapy, I slowly felt like I was getting a grip back on who I was.   

“The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

But the battle was far from done

This was a dark time in our family as we each tried to find the right path and the right way for us as individuals and as a family to heal together.  During this time, I was most at ease being around our families and a few friends I was comfortable feeling that messed up in front of.   As this lengthy process continued, I was able to open up and talk about my feelings, my fears and my heartaches with Tom while listening to the same things from him. We were able to connect in our grief in a new way.  

I struggled with the fact that my faith was not healing me.  It made sense to me that since I trusted God, I believed His Word to be true and trusted that His will is best that I shouldn’t be feeling or struggling like I was.  But as it was explained to me that what I was going through was a physiological response to a trauma, I was incredibly thankful for the advances of modern medicine that were available to help me and worked at not feeling shame for getting the help I so desperately needed.

My memory of the last three years is very hazy.  In fact, I have very little detailed memory of that time.  I do have a very few “clear” memories, and one of them is of me standing at the dishwasher crying, not understanding why and feeling the suffocating blanket of anxiety and fear.  Tom came up to me, gave me a hug and said, “I don’t know why this is happening, but I trust God will one day use this experience for His good.” 

As you can imagine, this was a difficult season of our marriage.  Today, our marriage is stronger and healthier than ever.  He is my best friend and I am so thankful for how far we have come in our relationship.  My husband leads our family with confidence and is our example in how we should daily strive to glorify God in what we say and do.  We still don’t always see eye to eye, but we understand that in marriage, it is not about us as individuals, but we are a covenant example of Christ and His church.  It’s an act of dying to self each day and putting one another’s needs ahead of our own.  We work hard at that and have fun while we are at it.

One of the best things we did for my healing was for me not to work but stay focused on walking the path of grief, going through the hard stuff and focusing on Tom and Brandon.  I couldn’t afford to get distracted by all the good activities I could be involved in, but instead I had stayed zeroed in on doing the hard thing.  So even though it might seem I have “disappeared” from the usual places, please know that God had me and has me still right where I need to be as I, to this day, continue to walk through grief and healing.  

So why am I laying this all out there?  Because I know we live in a world full of hurts.  And I want people to hear hope in my story and to know that just because we find ourselves in a valley that is darker than we’ve ever been in, we are never alone.  We each have people in our lives who would be there in an instant if we can be honest about our hurts and ask for help.  Sometimes we must step back and deal with our stuff in private.  The most important thing to remember is that we have a God who never leaves our side.  There is no shame being in the darkness, but you must fight for the way out.  And yeah, it may be the biggest fight you have ever been in, but once you come out on the other side, every moment of pain, heartache and fear is worth the feeling of the victory of the battle.  There is life after the darkness.

Today I stand here blessed by God’s faithfulness in what we have been through and overcome. I am a different person on every level of my being.  This journey will never be complete for me.  Grief has forever changed who I am, and while I could be frustrated with what I consider to be hindrances or limitations compared to who I used to be, I trust that God will use that somehow, some way for His good.  I can say this because He has proven faithful in all things and in all circumstances.  And looking back over the last five years, I am grateful.  

I am grateful for Amanda.  She was a gift and a sweet life that impacted this world.  I miss her every single day.

I am grateful for Brandon.  He is a joy and has a heart for God.  What a blessing to be his mom and I am excited to see all that God has in store for his life.

I am grateful for Thomas.  He is my love who points me to Christ.  I can’t imagine this life without him.

I am grateful for my journey.  Amanda’s death will always leave me with a giant hole, but I have learned that only Christ can fill it, and it is a daily battle that I gladly fight for His glory.

As I look from the past toward the future, I have hope and joy.  And with a feeling of thankfulness in our journey of love and loss, I wonder where God will lead us next...

Lead on O King Eternal

Lead on, O King Eternal

We follow not with fears

For gladness breaks like morning

Where'er Thy face appears

Let Your kingdom come

And Your will be done

Right here on the earth

Like it is in heaven

Thy cross is lifted o'er us

We journey in its light

We follow as you guide us

Lead on, O God of might

 “You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” Tim Keller