Thin Places

October 30, 2015

Thin Places

I spent some time the other night at the bedside of a dear friend who is dying.  He is in the late stages of brain cancer and he now lies in a rented hospital bed in his first floor dining room receiving daily care from hospice nurses and his amazing wife.

I felt privileged to witness the gentle and loving care of his wife as we stood there and she stroked his cheeks, asked him what she could do for him, and held his hand.  He can no longer respond though his eyes opened a bit periodically and seemed to be connecting with hers and with mine.

During these moments I mentioned that I find some comfort in the notion that a death bed for a believer is in some respect what the Celtic Christian would refer to as a “thin space” where the veil separating earth and heaven is very thin.  Since Daniel died I have sensed that the place of death functions as a transition point and so naturally is a thin space where heaven and earth somehow meet when a person is in the process of making this mysterious transition.

From my point of view, as I shared the other night, this place is made sacred as God bathes it in his holiness and holds our loved one in his hand through the transition from this life to the next.

I realize that all of this is my tenuous attempt to put words around one of the deepest mysteries of our lives – what happens as we die.  I also realize that many people find this thinking silly, old-fashioned, and highly irrational.  I know that none of this is provable to us as humans, and yet I also know that I need this hope and faith to survive and find some meaning in these losses. 

Believing that Jesus is waiting on the other side of this veil with open arms to welcome us home gives me a hope and assurance – a peace that passes understanding to keep going in spite of my own longing for the ones I have lost.  Thanks be to God.

I am blessed

April 1, 2015

Recurring “Daniel questions” and dreams

Recently I had two experiences that brought me back to some earlier times in my heart with what I call “Daniel questions.”

The first came when my brother asked how we felt about Ben taking a road trip over spring break from Spokane to California.  Specifically he wondered how we dealt with that type of situation since we lost Daniel after his accident on his little weekend road trip in 2008.

That question evoked a lively conversation and my sharing that we still feel very vulnerable and fearful for our other two kids’ safety and well-being, even though we know that we cannot ultimately fully shield them or protect them from harm.  In this five minute exchange, I was taken back to that fragile and vulnerable place and I marveled at how quickly I can revert into those feelings tucked away in my heart and feel the deep fear and vulnerability of life and its dangers.

I am reminded once again that I live with a very thin layer of calm, confidence, and ultimately faith, but beneath this very thin layer is a heart that is petrified of suffering any more losses.

A few days after this conversation I had a vivid dream that involved me running into an old college friend and her husband who had lost a younger child in a drowning accident.  (As far as I know, this circumstance is not real, but the dream was extremely vivid and complex.)  During a conversation in this dream the friend’s husband sobbed uncontrollably as he tried to describe the circumstances surrounding his daughter’s drowning and the enormous guilt and anguish he carried since he believed he should have been able to save her.

I awoke from this dream with a surrealistic feeling since it had seemed so real.  I also had a clear sense that I related closely to this father’s anguish over his loss, but also to his “parent guilt” since he had not been able to protect his child and prevent her death.

I rationally understand how completely non-responsible I am for Daniel’s death, and yet I also realize that I too carry some oddly placed feelings that I should have somehow been able to better protect him or save him as his father.

As we approach the seventh anniversary of Daniel’s death four weeks from today, I still find myself pondering the mysteries that surround this loss and the feelings that I continue to carry. 

April 19, 2015

More on “Blessed are those who mourn”

I am reading a book on the Beatitudes by a guy named Jim Forest for our small group at church and a reflection on the one that says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” caught my attention.

Forest quotes another author who was reflecting on the experience of losing a child when she said some years later:

"Mourning creates transparency in people.  It opens us up for others to know.  What we grieve over and mourn for reveals who we are."

"Mourning - the public expression of sorrow - helps us integrate our grief.  The inability to mourn losses appropriately results in depression, psychosis, and physical illness.  Until we can live with the reality of the loss of a loved one, the loss of a particular relationship, the loss of a piece of whom we once were, we have not integrated our grief.  In a way, we are not living in reality."

Living with the reality of loss and integrating our grief:  these are powerful words and resonate with my journey.  For almost seven years now I have struggled to live with this reality of loss and to integrate my grief.  But it also strikes me that I have begun to experience some success with this - this grief feels more and more "natural", like it has become a part of who I am, a unique part of my family's story, somehow as integral to who we are as many other traits or aspects of our lives.

How have I integrated this grief into my life?  Integration means that we incorporate or combine some new element into something that is already established.  

Grief has become a common part of my experience of life – it has been integrated into my daily experience.  It feels very natural to spend some moments of almost every day remembering something about Daniel's life and reflecting at least briefly on his death and how we have all been impacted by this experience.  I still miss him deeply and grieve this loss, though it feels more and more normal to me, as if it is somehow just one more part of my reality and my experience of life now.

I also appreciate this author’s distinction between mourning – “the public expression of sorrow” – and grief which presumably is the inner process, the complex and painful feelings that one experiences when suffering a loss.  One could infer from the text in the Beatitudes that we need to publicly share our grief with at least one other person – to openly mourn – in order to experience the comfort that can come through the responses of those who care about us.

This is certainly true in my experience: I have been comforted by God and through many friends and family as I have mourned this profound loss.  

I am blessed.

Peace, Acceptance. and Glimpsing the Eventual Gifts of Suffering

May 18, 2014

Peace that surpasses understanding

I woke up the other day with thoughts swirling around the concept of peace.

About six months ago I abruptly lost my job due to some organizational restructuring.  Within a few weeks, my mother made her last trip to the hospital and then on to hospice where she died.  A few months later, we marked the sixth anniversary of Daniel’s death.

Though a job loss pales in significance to witnessing the death of my mother and still struggling years later to fathom the death of my son, this combination of experiences has blended into making the first half of 2014 unusual and challenging emotionally and spiritually.  Over these months I have experienced many moments of feeling these deep losses and grieving the changes to life that they bring.

And yet when I woke up the other morning, my first conscious thought was one of peace.  

Somehow in the midst of loss, death, and grieving, I seem to “be at peace” with God and with life, sensing that indeed all things are somehow working themselves out for good in my life and in the lives of my family.

Is this a taste of the “peace that passeth understanding” that St. Paul describes?  (Other translations say “peace that surpasses or transcends understanding”, words that describe it even more clearly.)

I trust that this peace is coming from God since I know I don’t have the capacity to conjure it up on my own.  

June 29, 2014

Acceptance of loss:  “sacrificing our Isaac”

I was a lector at my church this morning and read the story from Genesis of Abraham taking his long-awaited son Isaac up the mountain at God’s bidding and making the decision to trust God to the point of being willing to sacrifice Isaac on an altar as directed by God. Of course the story takes you to the climax where Abraham is ready to slay his own son, only to have God call out at the last moment that this is not necessary and the boy is saved.

As I read this passage I was aware of the intensity of feelings that Abraham must have been struggling with as a father on the verge of losing, and actually sacrificing, his beloved son.

Father Stace preached eloquently on this scripture, highlighting that we are all called to be willing to “sacrifice our Isaac”, whatever it is or whoever it is that we think we have to hold onto to in order to survive or to be content or fulfilled in life.

I realize that I had no choice in Daniel’s death and so my experience of losing a son is totally different than the emotions that Abraham might have been wrestling with as he anticipated sacrificing his own son.  

And yet, I also realize that even now I am faced with the challenge of whether or not I am willing to accept this loss of a son and the sacrifice of so many dreams and aspirations that I had for him and for our family of five.

Losing a son feels like a huge sacrifice in my life and one that even six years later I struggle daily to accept.

Am I capable of sacrificing my “Isaac” – am I willing to accept Daniel’s death and thereby sacrifice the dreams and aspirations for him and for our family as a whole?

God:  grant me the enormous grace required to do so.

Glimpsing the eventual gifts of suffering

I ran across a poem recently while reading a thoughtful blog reflection on the aftermath of a recent college campus shooting by Jack Levison at Spiritchatter, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/spiritchatter/2014/06/a-memorial-service-memory-and-the-eventual-gifts-of-suffering/)

 At a campus memorial service after this shooting, this poem was handed out to participants; it speaks eloquently to my heart.

For Suffering, by John O’Donahue

May you be blessed in the holy names of those
Who, without you knowing it,
Help to carry and lighten your pain.
May you know serenity
When you are called
To enter the house of suffering.
May a window of light always surprise you.
May you be granted the wisdom
To avoid false resistance;
When suffering knocks on the door of your life,
May you glimpse its eventual gifts.
May you be able to receive
the fruits of suffering.
May memory bless and protect you
With the hard-earned light of past travail;
To remind you that you have survived before
And though the darkness now is deep,
You will soon see approaching light.
May the grace of time heal your wounds…

These phrases stand out to me:

“May a window of light always surprise you”

“May you glimpse its eventual gifts, May you be able to receive the fruits of suffering”

“May memory bless and protect you with the hard-earned light of past travail”

Rich, rich words that convey deep and profound meaning from Donahue, an Irish poet, former Catholic priest, and philosopher.  

Am I now beginning to glimpse its eventual gifts and perhaps to experience any fruits of suffering from losing Daniel?  

Is there some hard-earned light from this past travail that is beginning to shine through the windows of our hearts?

God:  grant us eyes to glimpse the eventual gifts of suffering, hearts to respond to its fruits, and an awareness of the hard-earned light that it provides in our lives.

Purpose, Hope, and Remembering

April 13, 2014

Purpose and tragedy

Is there a purpose going into or preceding a tragedy or does purpose come from or out of a tragedy?

I don't believe there was a purpose for or purpose in Daniel dying in a precipitous way - I don't believe a purpose came before and thus led to or caused him to die. 

But, I absolutely believe there is a purpose that emanates from his death or comes out of his death - a purpose that is the result of the horrific loss that we suffered and the grief that we still must bear.  I sense that we have to find a different purpose for our lives as the result of his death - we live differently because he died, hopefully more graciously and with more forgiveness and a greater sense of lightness, in a more relaxed, less controlling state, because we know life is fragile and we have little or no control over the ultimate outcomes. 

Since we know that life can be snapped away from us in a heartbeat, we know that we are here to love each other, serve each other, forgive each other, care about each other, and to be God's redemptive hand for each other.

We are not on this earth to control and to force our will on others

I want my purpose in life to be absolutely different as a result of Daniel’s death.  I want to live differently, openly, with more care and grace and peace and calmness and forgiveness.

Lord, hear my prayer.

April 20, 2014

Resurrection hope

Earlier in this journal I mentioned that my posture toward Easter and the resurrection of Jesus has clearly shifted since Daniel died.  His death has challenged me to my core in so many ways, including my belief in Jesus’s resurrection and the implication of that in Daniel’s life and my own.

Easter became even more personal on April 28, 2008 when Daniel died since all I have now is the hope that resurrection from the dead is real and that I will see him again.

April 28, 2014

Six Years of Remembering

Today is the sixth anniversary of Daniel’s death and as a family we once again face a day of remembering and pondering his life and our loss.

We have heard from dozens of friends and family today and in recent days several local friends approached me to share their love and concern as we approached this day.

Grieving a loss like this is so very personal and yet I feel the enormous power of God’s love through the words and care of so many wonderful people.  Perhaps that is why I chose to share these intimate thoughts in this journal and on this blog; indeed we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses even on this earth and the combined care, compassion, and love of this group bolsters us on our journey as we continue to wrestle with our human emotions of pain and constant longing for the son and brother who is gone.

As this day winds down, I miss Daniel terribly and yet I remain grateful for the privilege of fathering him (and his siblings!) and for the gifts he brought to us during his lifetime.  And I am grateful to receive the love and encouragement of so many who are walking beside us on this journey.

Rest in peace, dear son.  See you soon.

A Grace Story

In an earlier entry I described another wonderful book by Jerry Sittser called A Grace Revealed:  How God Redeems the Story of Your Life.  In the weeks since my mother died, I have reflected more on this concept relative to her life.

God reveals his grace in some unique ways through each of our lives and the circumstances of our lives. Thus when we look at the story of someone's life the question becomes - how did God use that life or engage with that person to teach us or reveal something to us about his grace?

In the case of Vivian, I see a life marked by ordinary openness and honesty, combined with an ornery faithfulness - my mother was very approachable and accepting of many kinds of people who were able to share their hopes and their doubts equally without being judged by her. 

Even though she was open and approachable, she also often challenged us in her own ornery style to step away from our perspective, see a bigger picture, and do the right thing even if that was harder or more uncomfortable.  At times, this fearless honesty focused on her fellow church members and peers as she challenged them to love people more unconditionally and fully.

Her call was to be a wife to a small town minister and a mother to her sons, and yet her own grace story goes well beyond these people as she left her mark among many other extended family and friends during her 90 years on earth.  

I have only begun to understand my mother’s grace story with its own unique richness and flavor, but I know enough already to have a heart full of gratitude for the legacy that she leaves behind.

Thanks be to God.

Groping for Words, but Comfortable in the Thin Spaces

January 28, 2014

Groping for Words

I am sitting with mother in the Denver Hospice on day two of her stay and I am overwhelmed with this amazing place - it is a beautiful facility with caring and compassionate staff.  Everyone is very attentive, kind, gentle, and helpful.

It is all about comfort here - helping the patient be as comfortable as possible as their bodies either rebound from their diseases, or as their bodies succumb to ailments or the natural progression of just wearing out and failing.  Hospice is designed to help people die as peacefully and painlessly as possible.

And so we sit, holding a unique vigil with Mom, listening to her breathing, holding her hand and talking to her, and as of today, not getting any real response. (Yesterday I did get one response of "I love you" when she briefly woke up and realized I was holding her hand.)

Sitting vigil like this brings a lot of random thoughts to mind as I reflect on this woman's 90 years and the myriad of people she has influenced and impacted, including me. Being married to a minister gave my mother a unique opportunity to connect with a lot of people both in our churches as well as in the communities where we lived. My Mom also had a very natural rapport with people of all ages including many younger people like some of my cousins and their spouses.

One of my cousins called me this evening to discuss my mother's condition and their last conversation just a few weeks ago.  He shared that he is “groping for words” to explain the range of emotions that are coming as he thinks about my mother dying, as well as others from her generation like his parents going forward.  

I agreed:  we are all groping for words.

January 29, 2014

Comfortable in the “Thin Spaces”

Sitting with my mother today as she is in the process of dying and listening to the soft contemplative worshipful music of John Michael Talbot, I sense the we are in the spiritual thin space between heaven and earth.

Since losing Daniel five years ago, this thin space seems oddly familiar and incredibly comfortable. 

In fact, I sense that moments I spend in these thin spaces are as "real" as life on this earth can get.

Thanks be to God!

A helpful article on trauma and grief

I came across a very good article this week on dealing with trauma, both from the perspective of one who suffers it as well as from providing some helpful understanding for those who love us when we grieve.

A New Normal: Ten Things I've Learned About Trauma, by Catherine Woodiwiss