Trying to Make Sense of Grief.

I keep trying to make sense of things this week but I just keep coming up with contradictions.  Grief does not make any sense.  It is so hard.  It seems to go on for ever.  We truly do just try to make it though each day.  People say not to wish your days away but they must not know grief like this.  It seems to be an endless string of cliches and contradictions.

I feel the need to distract myself with work but then I can't focus for more than 10 minutes on anything.

I want to go away for the weekend to a remote mountain retreat but don't want to go through the hassle of leaving the house.

I throw myself into a clean eating kick and a fitness regimen on day and the next day I am so sad all I want to is pizza and Dove dark chocolate. Even though I know that won't fix anything, I am drawn to it time and again. Maybe this time it will work.

I want to go to the farmer's market this morning but I don't want to drive there and be around all those people.

I want to sleep a lot but once I fall asleep I only have bad dreams.

I know I will feel better if I get to the gym or go for a walk but I can't seem to get myself moving.

I have a business selling beautiful jewelry but I sit around in the same two pairs of black yoga pants, Old Navy cotton maternity shirts and my husband's fleece every day.

I want to "get our finances in order" but I also want to spend recklessly on fancy shampoo, blush and lipstick to wear while I sit around the house and work from home.

I wish my friends back in the Midwest were closer and could come over to sit with me while I cry before dinner most days.  However, I never pick up the phone to call any of them or answer the phone when they call.  I just don't want to be cheered up. 

As much as I want to be done grieving and be "better" or "happy again", I actually want to be miserable right now.  I hurt in a very physical and all consuming way but it feels right.  I should be hurting like that.  My son was taken from me.

In typical God style, He has slipped someone into my life to guide me and speak truth to me though this dark time.  I have been slowly getting to know a lovely woman since I moved to town almost two years ago.  Recently, I learned that she is somewhat of an expert on both grief and God's Word.  

She is having me read through the Gospel of Luke, very slowly, imaging what it must have been like for Mary of Nazareth to have an angel appear in her bedroom one morning to tell her that God love her so much he was going to use her to bring into the world the Savior of her people.  Wow.  Really sit and think about that.  He was not promising to make her life joyful and easy because he found favor in her.  He was going to impregnate her by the Holy Spirit before she was married, something that could get her stoned.  Then she would have her hands full with a child who ran off at the crowded temple to teach the elders, as the family had begun their days long walk home.  Later she would watch as her own Jewish people would say horrible things about her baby boy, plot to murder him and then actually watch as they did so.  

I think back to when I went to St. Peter's in Rome after studying Michelangelo's Pieta in Art History class.  I knew I was standing in front of a beautiful and significant work of art.  I had no idea how much it would resonate with me 10 years later as a mother holding her son's lifeless body.

I am looking forward to seeing what God shows me though Mary and Jesus' lives.  I hope I can find some comfort. We met earlier this week to talk about what I had read and the conversation really took a turn to a pretty powerful revelation.  I don't feel like God has been listening to me for years.  

A dear friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer in September of 2011.  She had just been out for my wedding and was thrilled to be expecting a child just 3 months after her own summer wedding.  She found out she had cancer 2 weeks after I saw her.  I prayed and prayed for God to touch her and heal her.  I had my church pray.  I asked everyone I knew or met to pray for her to be fully healed.  She went home to heaven in December of 2011.  God did not answer my prayer to save her.

My first year after moving East I prayed and prayed for Josh to want to move to Milwaukee.  I was so homesick I could not imagine living my life so far from my family and friends.  I knew God could move us home if he wanted to.  We didn't go.

When Jack was in the hospital I prayed and prayed for him to get better.  I begged God to heal him.  Our church prayed.  Everyone we came across said that their family, church, bible study, everyone was praying for Jack.  He was even on a prayer email that is sent to over a million people in the South.   I was convinced that God would heal Jack in an amazing miracle and so many people would be amazed and their faith would be strengthened and they would love God more than they ever had because He had listened and He had given us what we asked for: Jack alive.  I knew God would save Jack.  I just knew it.

We know I did not get the answer I wanted to that prayer.

My thought was never that God could not answer my prayers.  I became convinced that God did not want to answer them. I was not sure if it was because my faith was not strong or mature enough.  Either way, as my friend pointed out, I really did not feel like God was listening to me.

Monday afternoon I could feel the tears bubbling up in my chest.  It was as if my heart started crying hours before my eyes got in on the act.  When those tears bubbled up they overflowed in a powerful way with waves of sorrow washing over me for more than an hour.  

My home office is in the same room that was Jack's nursery.  While we have put away all of his clothes and furniture, his books remain on the shelf.  I pulled down a few books, curled up in a chair and started to read to Jack.  As the sun began to set on that day, I read "Mommy and Me", "Thank You God for Mommy" and "Snuggle Puppy".  Reading aloud evolved into shouting, sobbing, and hyperventilating with some bits of book mixed in.  The books were talking about mommies keeping baby safe, sob.  Mommies holding baby while he drifts off to sleep to the sound of her heartbeat, groan.  Mommy teaching baby about faith in God, wail.  I cried out to God though my tears and dripping nose, 

WHY?  

WHY us?  

WHY Jack?

WHY could you not have healed him and used THAT for your glory?

WHY did you let him die?

I trust you but this hurts so badly I can't breath.  I can't see though this darkness.  How can anything be worth this pain?  How can we be happy again without Jack here with us?  

I wanted God to hear me so I really let Him have it.  After all, Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. (John 11:35).   He also cried out to God asking for relief: About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46)

 And the Psalmist constantly let God know he wanted God to jump in and do something. 

"Evening, morning and noon I cry out in distress, and He hears my voice." (Psalm 55:17)  I pray He hears my voice, as well.

I wept and moaned until the dog even left the room.  I could not get air in my lungs to power my sorrow.  I actually cried until I physically could not cry any longer.  At the end there were a few little bouts left and I squeezed the tears out of me like a wet dish rag.  Afterwards, that is what I felt like.  Limp.  Worn out.

My friend shared with me a beautiful analogy about a snake shedding its skin revealing the new skin that is already underneath.   She wanted to show me that I am not going to be the same woman I was before Jack.  I have carried my son, given birth and buried him in a year.  I am not that same girl that I was when I lived in Chicago or even the day I was married just 17 months ago.  I could never be the same after Jack lived and died.  

When a snake prepares to shed its skin, it wedges itself in a safe place, away from predators and uses the confined space to wiggle out of its old skin that no longer fits.   After a time of healing,  it emerges ready to return to life with a skin that fits his newly grown self.

I suppose I can relate to that snake.  I want to hide in a dark, enclosed safe place while I learn how to adapt to the new woman I am.  It is comfortable for me to stay home, hide in bed, not answer the phone and turn down invitations.  I had so little time to get used to being a mother.  Now I am a mother without a baby in her arms.  I am going to need to give myself some time to shed my old skin and grow into the new skin.  I also need to trust that God will keep me though this process and bring me out the other side when my new skin is ready.