Staring at the Sun.

To the ones staring at the sun
Afraid of what you'll find if you took a look inside.
Not just deaf and dumb, staring at the sun
I'm not the only one who'd rather go blind.
-U2

Yesterday.  Yesterday I had more than a handful of people praying for me.  I put myself out there and told more of my story than many may have known.  I pulled through.  I did some self-indulgence.  I did some public appearances.  I did some responsibility and I did some irresponsibility.  Essentially, yesterday was like most of my todays, my every days.  And I pulled through because I had more than a handful of people speaking up (literally - skyward to the Great I Am up) and keeping me from being all prostrate.   

Hubs and I made two pacts when we lost Journey.  One:  We will NOT lose our marriage too.  Some of you may not know but apparently divorce is pretty prevalent out there.  Like under the best circumstances, marriage has a 50/50 shot.  The divorce rate among couples who lose a child?  50 percent.  I'm not so great when you have take percents of percents but the best I figure it, that means couples who lose a child have a 75% chance of breaking up.  And I get it.  When I say that we were determined not to lose our marriage on top of losing a child, we had no idea how hard that would end up being.  We have come close, very close, to not making it.  It is so ridiculous that men and women are programmed to be diametrically opposed.  At least - in our pairing, we are about as cliche as it gets.  Extrovert vs. introvert.  Practical vs. emotional.  Thinker vs. feeler.  Talker vs. Stoic.  Plus - on top of me having to grapple with the fact that Hubs just is a man, he is also an engineer.  And if any of you have an engineer in your life, you get it.  That's a whole other type of brainiology. And added to that, all people grieve differently.  Which I keep forgetting.  Right after it happened, we were so on the same page and perfectly aligned in how we dealt with everything.  We talked and processed and cried.  It was me and Hubs against the darkness and the abyss and the odds.  But it didn't take long before Hubs started compartmentalizing.  And to be fair, he had to.  At some point, he had to go back to work and support a family.  And an engineer has to have alot of his brain back from the swallowing up of grief.  This was confusing and alienating because I just didn't have to do that and I didn't understand how he could.  And our flawed communication style was doing us NO favors.  What had initially pulled us together started becoming a wedge between us.  And looking back, I have no idea how we made it through.  Well, that's a lie.  The only way we made it through was God.  That dude put us together in His palms and intertwined His fingers around us and squished us there for all the time to come.  He softened our hearts toward one another just in the nick of so many times.  He reinvented laughter and closeness over and over again.  We will not lose our marriage.  Ever.

The second agreement that we made was that if there was anything that we could do to help others because of our experience, we were going to do that.  We had no idea what that would mean but it had to happen.  We spent time talking to someone who was forming a grief group at our church and told him what we wish could have been different in our community while we were in the thick of it.  I have not shied away from telling our story in varying degrees where I felt called to do it.    Yesterday a complete stranger read my blog and left a lovely comment.  She is on her own grief journey and encouraged me.  I am so excitahumbled that happened.  If a stranger finds solace or relatability in my words, I feel like I'm keeping a promise.  And keeping a promise that no one is holding me to, that really barely anyone knows about, is somehow the most aligned I can feel with God sometimes.  To that end, the end of potentially helping anyone through my experience of any kind, let alone grief, I want to wrap up a second day in a row of blogging about loss.

This is what I came up with in order to explain what happens to people who are in crisis (of any kind, including grief):

Imagine that your world becomes a solar system.  You are a flaring, volatile, unpredictable ball of heat.  You are the sun.  The people in your life are planets.  Out at Pluto level (whatever.  If you learn the planets in school and then after you are done with school, they tell you that one of them never was one, you can't just ask me to unlearn the one with the Disney name), are pretty much strangers.  The kind where you know of each other by name because you share similar circles but you have never met. Uranus is acquaintances.  These are friends of friends that you have met.  Parents at the same school that you would say hi to but don't know.  Your dry-cleaner.  You have a touch point but they aren't specifically significant in your life, nor are you in theirs. Next up is Neptune.  A bit closer to your life - a mailman you see everyday but haven't really gotten to know.  People on different floors of your building.  People you have been on a committee with once or twice.  Saturn you probably talk to with more regularity.  The people who check you out often at the grocery store.  Your barista.  There isn't an emotional investment.  The next group, like Jupiter, is probably the largest portion of people in your life.  Facebook friends.  People you shared life with back in the day but not so much anymore.  People you keep up with but with a random call here and there.   As you get closer to the sun, the relationships become more significant. Mars is your work mates.  Not just the people you see on the way to the copy machine.  The people you work with.  You do projects together.  You share a lunch hour.  You spend most of your time with these folks but the friendships aren't always that deep.  Earth is the people you invite to your parties.  They made their mark on your life.  You enjoy the time you spend with them.  These are your weekly peeps.  Sorority Sisters.  Frat Bros.  Your church people. Venus is your very closest friends.  These are your chosen people.  Mercury is your immediate family.  The people who have known you your whole life and have seen you through hell and back.  They know your history from the beginning.  

Now, imagine that a crisis has occurred.  At first, all these people are in your system.  But the thing about crisis is that it essentially has an expiration date.  There are different, sudden expiration dates for each planet and it varies depending on the planet's proximity to your sun.  All expiration dates are unknown to everyone but somehow each planet's inhabitants simultaneously abide by it.  The first to expire are the ones on the outer reaches.  Pluto - which was essentially never a planet in your system anyway.  Just like science keeps trying to convince us.  They feel bad to hear your news but as they never knew you, it doesn't stay on their radar.  Uranus, Neptune and Saturn will randomly hear your news and make a point to offer condolences.  It's uncomfortable because they don't really know the depth of your situation and don't have a position in your life to do much more than that.  Jupiter sends cards and calls.  They will make an offer to help in any way you need them to.  Mars will collect money for flowers and gift cards.  They will have your back on whatever you need to have happen in your work life.  Earth starts the dinner train.  They want to feed you and do for you.  They stand vigil, ready for instructions to carry out.  Venus will spend the night.  They will watch the ugly.  They will pick up the snot rags.  They don't wait for you to ask.  They just do.  Honestly, in some systems, Venus is closer to the sun than Mercury.  Maybe because it doesn't move as quickly.  It's slower to complete the task while Mercury is so overwhelmed by their own personal loss or proximity to the crisis that it can't offer what Venus does.    But even Venus and Mercury have their own expiration dates because when all is said and done, you are still an unpredictable, volatile, flaring ball of heat.  And in their own brokenness, they just don't have the capacity to stand and stare at the sun.  It's blinding.  It burns.  They, like the rest of the planets, crave the relief of moving away at some point.  And it's okay.  It doesn't feel okay.  It feels shitty.  It feels like you have been abandoned and forgotten.  But if those planets don't get out of the way, then there leaves little room for you to feel the rest of the entire universe.  The maker of the universe.  He is the one that gave you the planets - the communities to be tangible.  But they were never supposed to take on His job.  When you are left all alone, it's when you can finally feel how vast and unending He is.  He is the only one who can take on all of your heat.  

So, now you know.  This is for the person going through it - this will happen.  I am guilty of being the sun and still not being able to resist my planet's expiration date.  I know it hurts.  That is the nature of what you are going through - whatever the name of your crisis is.  And this is for those who are watching someone go through it.  I want you to know that the person you are watching has to lose even more because everyone leaves.  Every one starts shifting their orbit to regain their own distance and all the person in the center knows is, I need people, where did everyone go?  So planets, linger a little longer, if you could.  And suns, muster up some grace and comfort that when the planets leave, you aren't surrounded by nothing.  It's dark and quiet but it's not nothing.  It's where the beginning is.

God is good but will he listen?
I'm nearly great but there's something missing.
I left it in the duty free,
Oh, though you never really belonged to me.
-U2

Defying grievity.

About a week ago, I started writing the post for tomorrow.  I figured with this much time served, I would have a full handle on how that day would feel.  What I would want to share.  Today, I am left wondering about the nature of self-fulfilling prophecies and feeling so incredibly naive and foolish.

My fortieth birthday sucked.  I wasn't looking forward to it.  I let everyone know that I hated turning forty and that it just sucked.  And you know what happened?  It sucked.  My therapist at the time said that I pretty much told everyone how to handle it.  What she didn't seem to grasp was that everyone was supposed to rally and make sure that it didn't suck.  She told me that next time, maybe I should tell everyone that it's going to be a party.  That by calling out that my birthday was going to rock, it just had a better chance of actually rocking.   And you know what happened?  It rocked.  I declared it my "I made it through forty!" celebration.  I didn't get breakfast at Tiffany's but I did get a cup of coffee at Tiffany's while Hubs let me wander around and pick something out for myself.  I walked out with the legendary blue box.  41 rocked. 

Tomorrow, there will be all myriad of debauchery and celebrating.  Corned beef, cabbage, Kelly green, clovers and consuming of copious beer.  I don't know a "c/k" sounding beer word to finish that out properly.  OH!  There is Killian's but not everyone drinks it, even on St. Patrick's day even though it's Irish.  On the other hand, not everyone eats corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's day.  Which you should.  I wait all year to buy corned beef at a good price.

I had to look up why St. Patrick's day just is.  He is credited with bringing Christianity into Ireland.  He is said to have used three leaf clovers to explain the Holy Trinity.  Good on ya, Patrick!  So, when did all the drinking become associated, you might ask as I did.  Well, it turns out that because there are eating and drinking restrictions during Lenten, those are lifted for the day.  So I guess everyone eats as much beef and drinks as much beer as possible to make up for lost time and to store it up for the time to come until Easter.

My family doesn't do any of that for St. Patrick's day.  Except the corned beef and cabbage bit.  Because of all that I said just right there in that paragraph above about how much I love corned beef and would eat it all year long if only it was as cheap as it is for this "holiday".  I am an alcoholic and I can't drink beer or liquor of any color at any time, ever.  No matter how entirely "appropriate" or certainly enticing it is on this particular day.  We don't wear green.  Last year, I did lift the ban for the kids because they didn't want to get pinched or look weird.  It's a fair argument.  And the reality is, they are here and they get to relay those feelings.  And she is not.

Tomorrow, there will be a ten year anniversary that a handful of people will notice.  And the ones that do don't really celebrate, per se.  We, the ones left behind, find some sort of way to muddle through what makes no sense anymore.  I have one friend who lost her fifteen year old son and says that the anniversaries aren't any harder.  She says every day is awful, one doesn't stand out as more awful.  For me, the anniversaries feel different.  They are more marked.  It may be because it is on a day when year after year I have to watch people celebrate.  It may be because Hubs and I actually had to make a decision to let our daughter go on this particular date rather than it being a thing that just "happened".  It doesn't really matter why.  That's just what my reality is.  And as such, I had built up tomorrow as particularly significant.  Particularly painful and awful.  What I didn't count on was that I would have no control or warning over how it would feel today.

On the last day of a sale which features your 4 children's favorite cereal, you have to go.  It costs a dollar a box.  You have to go.  You are also out of milk.  You have to go.  I didn't mind that I had to go.  Until I went.  Today is gray and windy and cold.  There is talk of snow which makes people flock to the grocery to stock up on whatever frozen precipitation of any sort might potentially deprive them of.  I buzzed through my usual route through the store and felt increasingly raw.  By the end, I felt like a gaping wound.  I felt out in the open and like any thing had the potential to level me.  I felt the fullness of grievity.  It's when you have this out of body experience like you are not of this world and it all seems so strange and foreign and weird and you don't belong here but the sadness and the loss press down on you with such weight that if feels not only like it's keeping you on the ground but that it could flatten you.  And I wondered how in the hell I could have possibly assumed that I wouldn't experience anything until tomorrow.  That it would all fit tightly and rightly in the calendar box reserved for the date proper.  It isn't as if I'm not blindsided regularly on insignificant days.  Truly, I get knocked for a loop and am at a loss as to what the trigger was.  But as for today - did I bring it on myself?  All this anticipation building on itself, a house of cards on a bed of water?  Did it suck, does tomorrow suck just because I said it was going to?

In 2003, this amazing, beautiful girl entered the world and I got to be the conduit.  We named her Journey and she was sweet and curious and fun.  She turned a year old and started some wobbly first steps.  We bought her some Mary Janes from Stride Rite so that she could have proper friction and fit while she started taking the world by storm.  Her older brother adored her.  And the feeling was mutual.  One day in March 2004, the virus that her brother had been recovering from started to invade her little body.  And something went terribly wrong.  I took her to the emergency room and the next thing I knew, she was hooked up to all kinds of tubes and machines in the ICU.  Testing showed that there was bleeding on her brain.  On the opposite side of her brain, there was a clot.  These two completely opposing forces left little room for a different outcome.  On March 16, we noticed that there was a marked difference in her brain activity.  And we knew that Journey was only Journey when she was able to explore and really experience life.  Anything less, she wouldn't be Journey anymore.  She had reached a point of no return so early the following morning, we told her that we loved her and that we would miss her and that she belonged to God and it was okay to go.  And she did.

On St. Patrick's day every year since, we go off the grid.  We keep the kids out of school and do something we don't normally do because that day - it's not normal.  It shouldn't feel normal.    A few weeks ago, I asked Hubs if he wanted to keep it as it had always been or if he wanted to change it to just he and I.  We decided that this year, we would do something, just the two of us.  We had started thinking of what we would do when he got word that he would have to go out of town that day.  He leaves before the crack of dawn and comes back the next day.  There really just isn't any way to express the sucker punch this feels like. To both of us.  There is one person on the planet that knows what each and every today has felt like for the past 10 years to either of us.  There is one person on the planet that understands the breadth of tomorrow to either of us.  And we will be apart.  And after I got home from the store, I realized that part of my overwhelming feeling of exposure was the realization that my anchor, my heart, the love of my life and my partner in brokenness will be in a plane flying over a large portion of the country away from me.  The level of lack of control I feel is - I can't wrap my brain around it.  The fact that there is a plane that has just disappeared making like all the headlines anymore is really straining my sanity about this situation.  Obviously nothing compared to the families who actually have someone on that plane.

On a better day, I will share the beautiful things that have happened since Journey died.  The fruit borne of such a heartbreak.  But today, I am stuck here, in the this.  I don't know what tomorrow brings.  I know I have kids to get out the door.  And kids to pick up.  And kids to feed dinner to.  I know I have to not drink.  Beyond that, all the plans that I have tried to make for the day have kind of fallen through.  .I don't know what to do with that or if there is purpose within that. I guess all I can do is what I have done every day for the past 10 years.  Be honest.  Be true.  Be faithful.  Remember to breathe.  Remember to live.  Remember to love.  Defy grievity.

Lent it begin.

Two days ago, it was Fat Tuesday.  I ate some chocolate.  If I had more chocolate around, I would have eaten more. I didn't have any King Cake (which I'm always leery of - how does that baby not melt?  Or get eaten?).  Or paczki.  Or Mardi Gras beads.  Or liquor.  So the only way that I could differentiate this particular Tuesday from any other Tuesday was to eat a bit more chocolate than any normal Tuesday.  But I didn't really have enough chocolate to go all Fat with it.

I am not a Catholic.  Pope Francis gives me pause now and again about converting.  Never have I seen a Pope so Christ-like leading his people.  I am truly in love with him.  All that being said, I'm still not a Catholic.  I grew up Catholic-lite which is Episcopalian.  It's like Catholicism but with more exercise.  Stand, kneel, sit, repeat.  May peace be with you.  And also with you.  The first time I heard of Lent and was when I was 11 and lived in Belgium.  One of my friends went to the movies with me and wasn't allowed to eat any candy because it was Lent.  I'm pretty sure I encouraged her to eat some anyway.  Years later, I would adopt the practice of choosing something to give up for Lent. I liked the idea of giving something up for God. Honestly though, I'm not sure how successful I was with seeing it through.  As with most of my grand plans, my enthusiasm burns out far before it's executed.

The past few weeks more and more posts have been popping up on Facebook about the coming of Lent.  I had been mulling over what, if anything, I wanted to do about observing it this year.  The suggestions were plenty.  Foods.  Facebook.  Ungratefulness.  And they are all valid.  All good ideas.  All with  the focus of centering your heart towards God and Easter and it's unbelievable message of miracles and the truth of God's word and His unabiding love that runs so deep that He would sacrifice and resurrect His own flesh for each and every one of us.  Read it again.  Quiet your mind and read it one more time.  Let that just sit inside all of you whether you believe it or not.  Because even if you don't believe it, just imagine a love, any love, that burns that bright for any one, let alone you.  Because I promise you, it does.

At the heart of Lent, at the heart of the sacrifice that we consider for Lent, is discipline.  There is truly no way to sacrifice anything without having the ability to say "no".  Over and over and over again, "No".  And I, as a disciple of Christ, I crave discipline.  It does not escape me that the words are so similar.  I do not think that it is possible to be the best disciple I can be without discipline.  Habits and systems in place that make it the priority to spend time with God, to choose to say one word over another, to put others first.  I am not built of discipline.  I have never been good at receiving it.  Or particularly adept at giving it out.  I make excuses about how messy I am - I'm a creative!  I listen to the lie that I thrive on chaos.  It keeps me on my toes.  I claim its familiarity - It's all I know.  To walk on eggshells.  To be guarded about what lurks behind the corner  - because there is always lurking around the corner.

I think it's easy to talk about faith.  I do.  I don't face outright rudeness when I bring up that I'm a God-girl.  It's one of the privileges of living in this country - one I think we forget.  Most people can accept that even if they don't believe like I do, or at all, they have heard of Jesus, or Allah, or Buddha, or Ganesha (I don't know much about the thousands of other deities that go on there).  But as a Christian, I find that the roadblock is not in talking about Christ.  It's about talking about His counterpart.  Even among Christians, I notice a general acknowledgement of the character in the Bible meant to thwart God and Jesus at every turn.  But he is kept in the Bible.  He doesn't seem to make the transition into real life that God and Jesus do.  And I think that is a disservice to people of faith.  I think that is the impetus behind the question how can God allow suffering and pain.  Yes, as the Almighty, as the All-Powerful, it is within Him to change and right everything.  EVERY. THING.  But He didn't make that promise.  He promised to be right beside us because He knew it was going to be hard.  Because there are opposing forces at work.  Always.  Right here, in the living world.  And if you don't believe that, I've got a laundry list of the kind of people that I cannot just hand over to the concept of "human nature".  I'd really rather be an animal than to accept membership to a club that accepts that it takes all kinds.  Nope.  There is another kind.  And so, as I make reference to "the enemy" or "being under attack", even some Christians kind of look at me like I'm crazy.  And I get it.  For all my life, I have believed in God.  It was just a truth that was in my core.  Jesus came later in the game - about twelve years ago.  And a belief in satan being a real force in real time in real life - was far more recent than that.  Maybe part of it is that if you don't believe in satan being real, he just won't be.  But burying your head in the sand - well, that will still just suffocate you.  For me, there was even a transition of acknowledging him without empowering him.  Somehow I assigned him a benign post of existing but having no power.  After that, I believed him to be powerful enough to be single-minded in wanting to kill me.  But that's too easy.  Because if he kills me, based on my faith, I get to go the great big Mardi Gras in the sky.  End of story.  I win.  The truth is, satan doesn't want to kill me.  He wants to destroy me.  It seems like the same thing, but it isn't.  If he can disrupt my faith, he takes my hope and my joy.  As those sap drop by drop, it leaves room for him to slither in and fill the increasing emptiness with lies and festering fear.  Fear is the faith of the enemy and without hope and joy - fear wins.  A faltering army that is unsure of it's purpose or what side to serve - it is worse than having just one troop filled with conviction.  

Whoa.  What's with all this devil talk Jenny?  How does it all fit in?  Wrap it up, already!   Okay.  So here's how it all comes together.  I am under for real attack.  It comes in waves and it changes course so that I am never sure of how to fortify against it.  I reached out for prayer- which the enemy HATES!  I mean because prayer is all Godly by nature anyway but beyond that, oh how that hellion loves to keep you quiet and embarrassed to need and ashamed of failure.  He loves to have his claws in your isolated self and just tell you soothing lie after dangling temptation of escape.  When you shine light on his work - he's like a vampire in the light of the day star.  I stand by that comparison.  Anywho.  I called him out on Facebook and told people alot of the ugly I was dealing with.  And this one chick who I have known for so long and have always dug so much said - come over.  We are gonna pray it out.  So I did.  I went to her house and she gave me a cup of coffee and I filled her in on even more of what's what.  And she said to me: I don't know why the enemy would keep you in chaos except that out of chaos, you are a force to be reckoned with.   Those are some mighty words.  And you know what?  I claim them.  I claim that I am a warrior.  It sends truth tingles through my body (a post for another time... how long-winded do I need to be today!?).  Feeling like I'm being used by God, feeling like I'm fulfilling my purpose - It makes me feel whole.  Like unbroken in the first place.

So, as for Lent, the 6 members of my family have chosen something to give up.  I asked my children to tell me something that they would like to see me change.  I gave them permission to unfearfully speak truth.  It was nearly unanimous - being on my phone and computer all the time.  I choose this time to be a servant to my family.  My give-up is that I will not be on my phone (except for communication) or my computer while in the company of my family.  But what I haven't told them is that I'm not actually giving up something.  I'm starting something.  The opposition of chaos - of being out of control and disorganized and lazy and flipping out and being on edge and escaping my world by being on my phone or computer - is discipline.  And the opposition of the owner of chaos is the disciple.  This disciple is getting down with discipline.  Not just no to having escape at my fingertips but yes to showing my children faithfulness and being intentional and habit. Yes to mirroring what I say God wants for them by wanting it for myself.  Yes to saying that God wants more for us and giving him the space to give it to us.  Yes to being grateful for what I have instead of living in resentment of its upkeep. Yes to thought and prayer before action.  Yes to action over squandering. Yes to inconvenience and homework and out of my comfort zone.  Yes to prayer.  But also yes to chocolate because I did NOT give that up for Lent.   Peace y'all.