Monthly Archives: January 2010

Emotional Eruption

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We’ve passed the two-month mark now. Life is speeding along around us, and we’re doing our best to keep up, but every once in a while, we bump into a road block of anguish.

This morning I looked at the mountain of reading that has accumulated in the weeks leading up to Christmas, still untouched but calling loudly, and decided I’d better shuffle through at least some of it. Sorting it into piles was helpful: 1) for much later, 2) as soon as I can, 3) now!

That sounds efficient and well organized, but I am neither. Turning to leave with my pile of “nows” in one hand, the December Focus on the Family newsletter caught my eye. It was atop the “for much later” pile, but in a flash I was reading it.

Each December that newsletter breaks with the format of the other eleven months and shares a warm Christmas story, the kind families could confidently read around the holiday dinner table. I look forward to each December’s story and this morning found myself into it even before I had my pajamas off.

Sitting down with coffee, my “nows” and the newsletter, I read a husband’s story about his wife’s surprise pregnancy after cancer and intense radiation. Although they’d been told she would never have children, there was a positive pregnancy test, which unleashed nine months of anxiety over the condition of the child.

Their miracle baby due at Christmas, arrived at Thanksgiving, tiny but healthy. The young couple, without money for Christmas gifts, put their tiny month-old newborn under the tree with a miniature red Santa hat on his little head. His daddy wrote, “He was our gift to each other that year. Nothing else could have come close.”

They saved that Santa hat, and every Christmas since 1976, have topped their Christmas tree with it. The husband wrote, “It serves as a reminder of how out of the depths of despair and the shadow of death can spring hope and expectancy, and ultimately affirmation [of new life].”

This morning as I read that story and landed on that last sentence, I broke into sobs like I haven’t since my encounter with the homeless man weeks ago. I couldn’t stop. And once again, I didn’t know why I was crying. My head was hanging down, and tears began pooling in the lenses of my reading glasses. What was this all about?

Maybe it was the husband’s positive statement that hope and expectancy can spring from death and despair. If that was it, my tears were those of happiness. I might also have been unconsciously thinking of the three newborns God is sending to our family, one due in three weeks, the twins in about three months.

But also underneath that emotional eruption was Nate’s death and disappearance, along with my yearning never to let the memories fade. Maybe I was unconsciously asking, “What represents our Santa hat for Nate?” Over the next few days, I’m going to think about it.

In Old Testament times, the Israelites had their Santa hat. It was called a “rock of remembrance.” God instructed them to set up stone markers as reminders to them and future generations that he was the master of rescuing, of performing wonders and of bringing new life from the death of old ideas, habits and hopes. This morning while reading the baby story I realized afresh that God is the same today as he was in 1976, and the same in Bible times, and the same even before time began at all. One of the best things about him is how he still brings life from death. Always did and always will.

God saved the life of the young wife suffering from killer-cancer but even greater than that, he brought new life directly from her. This is the kind of spectacular work God does. He doesn’t always cure cancer or send new babies, but he always, without fail, brings new life. The categories in which he works are myriad. If we don’t believe it, it’s because we haven’t seen it. And if we haven’t seen it, it’s because we haven’t asked for it. When I ask, he shows me, and when I see, I’m overwhelmed with pleasure and hope, just as the young couple in the story was.

I know God will bring new life from my husband’s death. In a way, he already has by using Nate’s life as the focal point of this blog. With every positive feedback, a little something new is born. For that, and for all the new life I have yet to see as a result of Nate’s death, I am truly thankful.

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” (John 12:24)

“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

Mom never worried.

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My mother was a yes-mom who loved trying new things and taking risks. She especially loved children and thought every idea that came from the mind of a child was a good one. As a matter of fact, many of her adult ideas were childlike. For example, she used to have us collect rocks in a bucket then climb in the car. She’d drive us around Wilmette with the windows down telling us to throw rocks at stop signs to see if we could hit the middle and make a “ping”. To her it was good clean fun. Today she’d probably be behind bars. But being raised by a mom who never worried about the what-ifs made for a delightful childhood.

Actually, mom never worried about a thing. She used to tell us, “I have nothing to worry about; your father does enough for both of us.” That was accurate.

As we move farther into the new year, my mind wants to wander forward through the months, wondering what will happen. All of us look back to last year at this time when 2009 was stretched out in front of us and shake our heads remembering how little we knew. Here we are at another January, and after looking back, today we worry forward.

Worrying comes naturally to most of us. Last January we had no concerns about pancreatic cancer, yet it came. So our brains follow that with, “You’d better worry about that and lots of other things for this year,” as if fretting about the unknown could possibly help.

As Nate’s illness progressed, I worried about quite a few things. What if he fell again? What if he broke a bone and landed in the hospital? What if we couldn’t get him home again? What if I got the meds mixed up? What if he got out the front door and walked away without us knowing? What if he cried out in pain as he died or left us with an expression of agony on his face?

What if, what if, what if. Not one of these things happened. In essence, I worried for nothing. That’s one reason why worry isn’t good. A second and more important reason is that stressing about the future betrays a lack of trust in God to care for it. Scripture tells us worrying never helps a thing. (Luke 12:25) And more serious than that, it chokes out God’s efforts to guide us while we’re trying to be our own guides. (Matthew 13:22)

All of us have enough to do living one day at a time. We don’t need to mentally travel into the future putting down roots of worry there, wasting time and energy on unfruitful thinking while eroding our relationship with the Lord. He’s watching and making a continual assessment of what we need. Better than that, he’s the only one able to satisfy those needs.

I believe God is constantly preparing to take care of our basic needs ahead of our arrival to the future. We saw it happen again and again with Nate’s cancer and related needs, sometimes in dramatic ways. I’m ashamed to say I was often surprised when the needs were met, considering it a rare gift each time rather than the fulfillment of what God said he was going to do all along. Didn’t I believe him? Apparently not.

I hope to do better on that score in 2010, expecting my basic needs to be met through God’s provision, then responding with gratitude. That is precisely what Jesus was describing when he told us to “have the faith of a little child.” Children have faith that their parents will care for them and don’t wrestle with the what ifs. When parents do meet their needs, security and trust are built into their lives and they can transfer that kind of faith-in-parents to faith-in-God without too much trouble. We could take a lesson.

Maybe that’s what mom found so attractive in kids, their complete abandon of worry. As she spent more and more time with them, she became like them in that way. Once again, we could take a lesson.

There’s only one thing to be worried about: buckets of rocks in the back seat of a car.

“For all these things [food, clothing, shelter, goods, possessions] the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things. [You won’t be] forgotten before God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear; you are…  valuable.” (Luke 12:30, 6b-7)

Triumph in the End

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When I was a student at Wheaton College, President Edman had a favorite phrase with which he peppered his chapel messages and everyday conversation: “Not somehow, but triumphantly.”

As my family and I pace through these weeks without Nate, those words often come to my mind. I want to be about “getting through this” not just by the skin of my teeth but triumphantly. The opposite of that would be to get stuck where we are now, which would wear us out until eventually sadness would become the dictator of every day. For me, a triumph in this situation is not a fist-in-the-air-leaping kind of victory but a quiet confidence in God’s goodness. Some ask, “How in the world can God be good if he snatches a husband/father/grandfather without warning in only 42 days?”

I do hope the answer to that question will be evident in my life and in the lives of our kids.

At the end of this (and I do believe there will be an eventual end to our time of upset and mourning), I want to look back and say that although the cancer itself wasn’t good, God was. I want to testify, “What the Lord did in each of our lives turned out to be overwhelmingly positive,” with Nate at the head of that list.

I’m about to say something that might make people bristle. It may sound unrealistic and idealistic, but I believe it wholeheartedly. A year or so from now, if we stay close to God in prayer and hang on to the promises of Scripture, I believe each of us will be better off than we were before Nate died. To put it a different way, I think if we continue grieving while placing our trust in God, we will have experienced an increase in: hope for our futures, sympathy for the pain of others, gratitude for daily blessings and confidence that God’s way of doing things is always superior to ours…. increases in all of those. I don’t fully understand how this works, but because it’s in Scripture, I believe it.

Of course typing words on a keyboard is easy compared to living them. My resolve to live triumphantly melts when I see Nate’s cane standing in the corner or find one of his handkerchiefs static-clinging inside a pillow case in the linen closet. I can break down at seeing a New York Times or finding a stray Post-it note with his writing on it.

My widow warriors tell me the wound from losing Nate will heal but will leave an emotional scar. Scars change us to a certain extent but once healed, no longer hurt. That’s what I’m expecting. Eventually I’ll be able to see his cane or the New York Times with a flash of memory but not of pain.

So how to I handle Nate’s death “not somehow but triumphantly”? I think the answer lies in truly believing that God is doing his behind-the-scenes work in all of us right now and also in our being willing to wait patiently until it’s visible.

Dr. Edman also said, “Never doubt in the dark what God has taught you in the light.” Because the Lord has promised that Nate’s death will result in good (Romans 8:28), I want to run from doubting that it won’t. Even though tears still fall and the wound still hurts, I want to keep on believing the promise, because it was God who said it.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.” (Psalm 126:5-6)

“My soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.” (Psalm 130:6)