Forgetting what Lies Behind, and Pressing Onward

Philippians 3:13b-14 says:  "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  ESV

There is also a song, Before the Throne of God Above.  One of the lines is:  "When Satan Tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look, and see Him there, who made an end of all my sin"  (Song Credit to Sovereign Grace Music)

It's been a good year for me.  It started out hard, but, as is typical in my life, it had an Ebeneezer moment in which the Lord rearranged my thinking and it became a good year. Widowhood is a journey, and there are many Ebeneezer moments...those "God had helped me come thus far" moments.  We grieve, we stretch, we grow. Then the cycle repeats.  We thrive in the love that others bestow on us. 

Then came October. The beginning of the end of the Second Year. 

This three months, October, November, and December, are filled with very. hard. memories.  There is no other way to describe them.  I have a text thread with my kids, as well as similar threads with friends, that describe in great detail the events of those three months two years ago. I read all of the events last year this time, and it was eye opening to see how hard it had been.  I thought it was all dealt with last year and I had moved on.  

Then came this October.  I was tooling along doing pretty well.  Enjoying family, friends, my job, church relationships, all in a pleasantly socially distanced manner. Then I started feeling the pull to go back, to rehash, to relive the last three months of Daryl's life. It tugged at me and invited me to wallow.  To remember all of the hard.  It felt like what I was supposed to do in order to remember Daryl well.  To remember those terrible months.  To relive the ache of what we went through.

Then the words to the song floated through my mind..."When Satan Tempts me to despair...and tell me of the guilt within..."  Oh yeah.  I remembered the guilt.  What I did, what I didn't.  And suddenly I realized that it was Satan tempting me...I really didn't feel despair in my soul...I felt joy.  I felt like God has called me to live well.  The temptation to despair was not from the Lord...it was from Satan...

I fled temptation.  I ran.  Upward I looked, and saw HIM there...the Lord...and my soul sank into His love.  He was not calling me to sink into despair, but to look upward.  To look into His Word.  

THEN...Philippians 3:13b-14 ran through my soul.  "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead...I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus"

Some things can be encumbrances...those memories, rehashed, and re-rehashed, are encumbrances.  It was time to stop rehashing.  Time to press onward toward the goal.  Toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 

So I am replacing the bad memories by remembering good things.  His love for family.  Family vacations.  Anniversary celebrations.  Trips with Grandkids.  His zany sense of humor.  His love for the Lord's church and those he shepherded.

One of my neighbors suggested I plant a tree in my front yard (which is now bereft of trees...but that's another story) and call it Daryl's Tree.  I will pick up that tree tomorrow (a fire dragon shantung maple) on my lunch break and soon will plant it in the front yard.  Every time I see it, I think I will try to grace it with a good memory. And there are a lot of very. good. memories! 

Who Were You? Who Am I?

It has been a strange season by any yardstick.  We are in the middle (or end, or beginning, or whatever you believe at this point) of COVID-19, which has set the world off its axis.  I have thought about blogging my thoughts, but they haven't really been well formed, or even presentable.  I like to take my thoughts captive, and hold them up to Scripture.  Then share what I have learned in case it helps someone else think through life.  It hasn't been pretty this season.  

I made it through the first year.  Gave myself a lot of grace for the absent-mindedness and spaciness of grief.  Let my friends and family pull me through the year.  I just relaxed into their love.  Let it go.  

I had this perception that once you got through the first year, you needed to stop expecting sympathy and help to be so abundant.  You needed to grow up and deal with it.  You can't take the energy out of family and friends forever.  Hmmm...that was a wrong perception. We all need each other.  And, I think the second year may be harder than the first....  

With COVID came more isolation than usual.  I am blessed that my job keeps me busy. The neighborhood friends started sitting outside at night in our socially distanced circle, and emotional needs for people were met. I have been seeing the local kids, who are fairly isolated too.  

But in the morning, and at night, when you are alone, the memories that were pleasant became jumbled up with the memories that weren't as pleasant.  I had read the warning not to make a super saint out of the one who passed away.  I felt like I had a pretty good balance on that.  Both Daryl and I knew we were not the easiest people to live with, that we had faults, and that the Lord made something good out of us anyway.  His grace covered us daily.  God gave us a wonderful marriage filled with lots of joys, despite the reality of our sinful selves.  

Then, for some reason, I started seeing his faults, seeing things that weren't perfect.  Seeing his feet of clay. Every weakness of his was running through my head.  One of my boys and I were talking about it one day, realizing we had both been dealing with similar emotions.  Daryl's last 11 years were spent dealing with cancer. And just as it might have been time to retire, he was gone. As a result, we missed the retirement years together.  We missed being able to travel, do things that were just for "fun".  We missed alot of ministry things we would have done. Chemo affected his personality sometimes.  And somewhere in the midst of feeling sorry for myself (not the right perspective, just being honest here...) I started seeing his faults.  He was a driven man...he was always on the go, always busy, always filling every 60 seconds full of race well run.  As a result, we lived a full and fun life, but I was exhausted!  I need recharge time, time to think, time to unwind.  Time to clean a closet or sleep late. We were, truly, nothing alike, even though we pulled a yoke together that worked beautifully.  And our differences did complement each other.  I needed to realign my thoughts, to see the balance of the man with feet of clay and heart of gold.  

And then, I pulled out my box of cards people sent me when he passed, and after I sent out last year's Christmas letter.  And my sweet Daryl was visible again.  I found a letter from a friend telling me what Daryl meant to them when they first came to our church.  And how his teaching Sunday School stirred their hearts.  And the note about how a friend "missed him with me".  And the note about how this person couldn't sit in service, so she would sit in her car and listen to the online broadcast in her car.  And Daryl would always walk past her car and speak to her, and made her feel like she wasn't alone.  I found a box of stuff I kept from the kids over the years, letters to their Dad, pictures drawn, cards saved.  Pictures in albums showing the amazing times we had following this natural leader through life. The picture books of a couple of trips with older grands. Rich memories.  The balance was back.  

And now, I'm figuring out who I am.  I'm am confident in the Lord to lead me into what that looks like each day.  I'm not afraid to do life without Daryl any more.  I don't want to just exist...I want to make days count. I think this next step is going to be stepping out of the past season and into a new season.  Seeing what God wants me doing today...and tomorrow...and the next day.  I read a blog today that talked about grief being like a plant that gets uprooted and transplanted somewhere else. You had roots that were ripped apart.  But you have to put down new roots and keep growing.  I'll keep you informed....

Waiting for The Other Shoe...

Some of you are experiencing for the first time what I have always called “Waiting for the other shoe to drop”.  It’s a place where your fears and your faith have not quite connected yet.  It’s a hard place to be, but for the believer, it should be a path to getting your feelings and emotions lined up with what you know to be true....God is in control.  God has always been in control.  God will never cease to be in control.

Cancer patients and caregivers live this way. People with chronic illness live this way.  I’m sure there are many others who live this way, but that’s the world I know best. I realized this afternoon that those are the familiar feelings I’ve been dealing with this week.  I am struggling to take my thoughts captive, to align them with Scriptural thinking, and preach truth to my heart.  

In the space between fear and faith, we do things.  We try to control our world.  Our circumstances.  We try, by human means, to “prepare” for the unknown.  We read every detail available.  We take sides. We look for the right question to ask, find the right answer. We buy toilet paper.  :-). We search for what gives us peace in the midst of the unknowns of an illness that doesn't have well defined borders or order yet.  

Peace is only found when we trust in the Lord. Trust His Sovereignty and His Goodness.  When we acknowledge that no matter what happens, it is for our ultimate good and God’s Glory.  

Search the Scriptures for those passages that preach truth to your soul.  One of those for me is Matthew 6:25-33.  Jesus is speaking to us about not being anxious for what we will eat, drink wear, or how long we will live.    Psalm 91 speaks of how we abide in the shadow of the almighty, and the call to make Him my dwelling place. That it is a place of safety.  Not from troubles, but from fears.  

I’m getting there.....

Said the robin to the sparrow,
“I would really like to know
Why those anxious human beings
rush around and worry so.”

Said the sparrow to the robin,
“Friend, I think that it must be
That they have no Heavenly Father
such as cares for you and me.”

                                   ~Elizabeth Chaney

Cleaning...

I got a good start on cleaning my garage last weekend.  After a reasonable amount of time after Daryl passed, a dear neighbor (who has had to look at our garage for 30 years) said they would be glad to help me clean out the garage this summer.  I have to chuckle because it was probably a statement of  both kindness and desperation to look at something besides my wreck of a garage.  Our houses have no storage, so garages are on-site storage units.  They love me dearly, but probably hated my garage.  :-)

I could actually park a car in there now if I wanted to.  If the driveway were straight...but that's another story.

The interesting thing is what doesn't mean anything to me anymore.  As I look around the house/garage and decide how to streamline my current life, I'm amazed at what things that held such special memories before simply don't have the same meaning to me now.  I am realizing that shared memories make items special.  If the memory has no one to share it with, if nobody was "there" when it became special, it becomes just a thing.

It's a little like losing a piece of my history. 43 years of shared memories, inside jokes, things that were symbols of shared times and events....some things have no one who was there for them except me.  And I find that it was the sharing of life that made stuff fun.  Not the stuff. 

So I am passing some things on to the kids now.  Things that still hold that "essence of Dad" for them.  Because now will be the time that they mean something to them.  And, I find that I can now have shared memories with them.  The stuff is fun again. 

I'm making new memories.  With kids.  With Grandkids.  With friends.   And there are new mementos of these fun times. 

And I have a delightfully cleaner garage!

The Ring Part II

Riding the waves of widowhood is sometimes emotional.  Issues you thought were resolved surface at odd times.  Recently, I realized that I miss wearing my wedding ring.  It feels exposed. It just feels unprotected.  Nothing to say I was married to an amazing man. Besides, I really really love my engagement ring.

Choosing my engagement ring was our first experience at compromise...and probably our first alert as to how different we were.  Every ring I loved, Daryl didn't.  Every ring he loved I didn't.  Then we found it.  The perfect-we-both-loved-it ring.  Not a day of those 43 years went by that I didn't love wearing that ring.  Both for what it signified and for the simple fact that it made my hand look pretty.

Last Valentine's Day I took it off my left hand.  It felt like I was being dishonest to wear it, and it seemed like a good day to celebrate our life well loved.  It was the right thing to do.  For then.

But I missed it.  And, as I said, I felt exposed.

So.....I got to thinking.  I read up on widow/ring rules and there aren't many.  Wearing it on my right hand seemed like a good idea, but not with my wedding ring.  That was sort of sacred and reserved for marriage.  So....I carried it around for a while, thinking about how Al, my favorite jeweler, could make it different but the same.

My idea you can see above.  I had Al disconnect the wedding band, which I set aside, and make me a Grandma Heritage Band.  It has 16 leaves that match my engagement ring leaves.  Each one has a diamond chip in it.  One for each of the 15 grandkids, and one for any more who may join the family.  I wouldn't want a kid to feel like they weren't thought about.  So, the 16th leaf/diamond is for any who join us to know that Grandma thought about them even before they were born.  (My original plan had him adding two leaves to the engagement ring so there would be one for each of the 8 grown up kids plus spouses, but the idea didn't work)

I love wearing it. It makes me feel protected. It says I was loved and cherished.  And now, it also says that we left a legacy of amazing, wonderful kids and grandkids who add joy to my life.    

One Year Out....

The first year is now behind me. I don't completely believe the saying that the first year of firsts is the hardest.  I've had others say it isn't always true.  I think it's a milestone, but I don't expect grief to just disappear.  Grief is unpredictable, and doesn't fit a calendar.

Note:  This post will be just a collection of rambling thoughts.

My kids made "The Day" easier.  They all showed up.  Daniel and Whitney and fam showed up via Facetime, but they showed up.  Andrew drove up from Houston. Matt and Emily live here, and Matt and Amy hosted the group of us that day.  We commemorated the day with Daryl's favorites...party mix and my homemade sugar cookies with frosting.  We watched old family videos.  (Thanks, Matt, for making the DVD's.  They are a treasure for all of us!) We laughed and cried.  And sat close to one another.  And hugged. It was fun to hear the grandkids present say, "Is that Grandpa?  Is that you, Grandma?  Is that MY Dad?"

A friend who walked this path earlier told me that I should have a lot of good pictures of Daryl handy.  That when the painful memories of the last two months of his life surfaced, to be sure and have pictures of good times handy.  That was stellar advice.  He was right.  It was, like, be aware of the hard stuff.  It was real.  But don't let it be where your mind dwells and wallows.

When we were in college, there was a saying, "Glance at yourself, gaze at Jesus."  I have found that to be true in grief, glance at the grief, gaze at Jesus.  But isn't that good advice for any kind of trial?  Or problem.  Glance at yourself/at your problem/at your trial.  GAZE at Jesus.

My next door neighbor started my new year off with a sweet comment.  He said, "I've been looking for the right moment to tell you this.  Daryl would be proud of you.  You have done well this year.  He would be very proud of you."  When someone is walking through grief, those are healing words.

So many lessons this year.  The hardest is the silence.  Noone to say good morning or good night to.  My sister has no idea how much her greetings have meant to me this year.  She sensed my need for connection, and often wished me a good night or good morning.  The kids have offered for me to stay at their houses all I want to.  But hiding from being a grown up doesn't fix the problem.  It just puts off the lesson.  I've learned to be content.  To embrace where God has me now.  But the silence may have been the hardest adjustment.

I am keeping my job and my home.  I am beginning to find out what I want to keep and what I don't feel attached to.  It has taken a year to be comfortable admitting that I really don't want to keep some things that were only special to Daryl.  It's taken a year to figure out what those things are.  To figure out which things still speak of Grandpa and his love for the family.  Which things of his still make us chuckle.

I'm looking forward to this new year.  To embracing the new freedoms I have.  To finding my niche now.  To deciding what I want to do.  So many opportunities.  May I honor the Lord as I make these choices.  May I avoid the temptation to live a self-centered life.  May I serve my family well.  May I exude the Joy of the Lord always.  I'm content and excited.

 

A fresh perspective is needed...

I heard from three elder wives on Thursday.  It was the weekend of the almost annual Elder retreat.  The one where they take their wives, and we laugh and talk and debrief and stay in an amazing bed and breakfast in Granbury.  And we walk around downtown Granbury and shop.  We have delightful fancy dinners with our husbands and each other. We make memories.  And Saturday morning, we girls sit and share our hearts with each other and pray for each other.  I know sometimes people think  that we all hang out with each other all the time, but we are actually spread out into different ministries.  Our husbands bear great loads as they shepherd the Lord's flock at Countryside.  And that time together is refreshing and encouraging and reminds us it's a shared load.

Several of the girls texted to say they missed me this year.  They have no idea how much it meant to be missed.  Others added their thoughts to me this morning at church.  So. Very. Special.

And...it opened the knowledge that one year ago, Daryl and I began the end of our story together.  The elder retreat was the weekend that we started the quick downward spiral.  I am so aware that now I will begin to have flashbacks to the events of last October to December.  I will re-live so much in my mind and heart.  And it's stuff I was finally, finally starting to forget.

I need a fresh perspective.

So much of life is filtered through human emotion and human ratings of "good" and "bad".

We aren't always right.

What we fail to see, so often, is the goodness of God in all things. That in our short sightedness of the "here and now" we fail to see the things that are to the praise and glory of the Father in the forever.

So, I shall try my best to look at the memories from a different angle.  The angle that this was not the beginning of my season of loss, but the beginning of the season of God calling Daryl to a most wonderful forever.  And I will rehearse His goodness at every memory.  And I will try my best not to think of what I have lost out on, like being an Elder's wife, having a husband to do things with, and having a life companion, but to watch to see what God writes as my next chapter.  Because, you know, He is good.  May it all be viewed as to His glory.