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