Sting of Death and the grave

I found out that the sting is not gone. I stared at the one picture of her that we have displayed and my mind drifted. To my hopeless abyss.

I told God my heart hurts because of how sick she was.

The sting is not gone.

I cried and I felt guilty. How can I let myself experience joy when my feet are failing me in this slippery slope to that pit?

I don't want to go back there. The pit where hatred, anger, massive amounts of guilt, and confusion were my miserable comforters.

I don't want to go back there.

I heard her whisper you don't have to cry for me to know how much you love me.

But isn't crying my way of displaying my brokenness? Isn't crying my only outlet sometimes? Isn't crying a sign of how much I really loved and love her?

Is crying the only way to let her know I will never be okay and complete? Will she know regardless that she took a literal piece of my heart and that it's emptiness cries out when my eyes are dried up?

???

But today six months she has been gone. I felt her so strong today. I hope that doesn't sound ridiculous, corny or superficial. I believe more than ever that she is alive. She is alive to me. Of course, not in the way we see things. The Bible says "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I was reminded of that verse as I thought about how I truly feel about her presence. She is dead in body, but very much alive in spirit.

I went to see her today, we both did and I think today was the first time I really believed that she isn't there. I used to feel guilty leaving the grave. Horrible, unadulterated guilt, even just driving by the cemetery. I think it will continue to be a battle of reality and illusion. Her body is dead but her spirit and soul are soaring. Soaring through the clouds, through the sunshine, through Heaven, making little visits daily to our world. She isn't there.

She isn't there. She is right here with me as I long for her, make myself crazy thinking about her, often taking steps backwards in this healing process. I know she is here. I don't know if I have explained this as keen as I feel it. Probably not. But what if it's just me and some limitation on my part that I can't see her.

We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:8  

 

Glass House

This glass house might break; don't ask me how I'm doing

I might really tell you how much I'm really hurting

You say you miss the old me but she is gone and buried

I'm learning to find the peace of mind where this glass house can feel safe again

The place that used to stand so strong is now moved with the slightest wind

Ever mindful of the pain that endlessly wounds and weakens the foundation

This glass house is transparent and clear, unable to hide

the fragments left over and the emptiness inside

The warmth and security left when the veil fell down that day

I have no strength to mask the heartache that is on display

While I don't want to share my grief with all

It's impossible to contain the pain, the guilt, the loss

So I am destined to identify with this fragile state of mind

A glass house in essence, but fragile in real life

Don't expect me to take the steps you think I should be taking

I'm fragile and I could break if I rush because you make me

The heart that once knew perfection is buried, you see

And this glass house can't help but show this burden of grief I carry.

Franchesca Cox

Picking up the Pieces and Healing Tears

I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but last night I felt so much better after I just let it all out. I waited until after I thought my husband was sleeping and I cried and cried and cried. I had a mountain of grief sitting on my chest and a million different emotions that can hardly be handled that were desperate for some relief. So I cried and it HELPED.

Nothing got solved, just released. Maybe that's what it was.

Aside from the million emotions, I didn't get a chance to blog away my heart. This added to the reality of facing my grief, which at times, is unbearable.

On a different note, I find it difficult to talk with people. Just simple conversation makes my brain crazy. It's not that I don't want to (or maybe I don't?) but it is so hard to FOCUS. I have never been more scatter-brained and that makes me crazier. I also find myself avoiding certain people because I don't want to talk about the frivolous things in life and they don't want to talk about my baby who died too soon. So I become a hermit who crawls out when I MUST be ok or when I finally reach a "safety zone".

On top of that, I haven't been able to go see her. Her marker is so pretty but its ugly too. It just urks me that she is in the ground. My brain knows she is in Heaven, but my heart can't get past her body being buried - the very one I felt kicking and moving inside, is buried. I can't write in words what that does to me. I hate it. I used to love going to see her and I wish I could see past the marker that so delicately marks her putrid grave. Why did I spend so much time trying to make it look so pretty??!! It is not going to matter! I thought it was the last thing I could do for her. Now it just keeps me away. I feel guilty, angry and disgusted that I can't make it better. It hurts so much to see her like that. I mean to go this Friday. She will have been gone four months. I want to go Friday, but it's going to be hard.

I thought about it like this.

In this house there is this beautiful, fragile yet perfect glass vase. And it sits in a place where it can display its beauty to everyone in the house, at all times. But one day it gets knocked over and it doesn't just break - it shatters throughout the entire house, in every corner and under every stool, table and furnishing. No matter where you walk in this house there are sharp remnants of this once-beautifully adorned glass vase. But the beauty is gone and all that's left is a mess and pain with every step you take. As I think about the glass pieces everywhere I go, I can't help but think I am just leaving the glass pieces on the ground to continue to wound my already wounded heart. How do you pick up the pieces? How do you tell yourself it's time to find a way to heal? When does the pain stop tearing you apart everywhere you go? When do the little things in life that bring you back to the darkest hour stop bringing you to tears? How does life return to a sense of normalcy after your innocence is gone? How do you pick that first piece off the ground and not feel guilty?

I don't know. But I do know that it has got to start soon. Some sort of stepping forward. Not "moving on" or "getting over it" as people say without the slightest idea of how those careless words rend your heart, but a true finding of what it means to live with this grief and without the guilt of leaving her behind.

It won't happen overnight and I know these next few months and even years will try my relationships. I hope that my friends and family can be patient. I pray that I can have grace. I know that I serve a good God. There are few things that I know for certain anymore but one is that He is right there, ready to help me pick up that first piece. And the second and the third.

...forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark...

Philippians 3:13,14

Name in the Ground

I never thought it would be this way
To see her name in the ground
To visit my firstborn in the heat of the day
and see her name like this
Beautiful
Morbid
Feelings of utter disgust


Something inside just can't see past
That part of me that let her down
Put she's ok today
I know she is
My heart weeps daily for the one that I love
She brought sunshine and love
Smiles and a whole bunch of hurt
When she left this earth.


It wasn't supposed to be like this
She should have buried me
Someday faraway
She should have picked my headstone
And the flowers and funeral arrange
But God had a bigger plan
Still not able to see it clearly


Maybe someday is not that far away
To see my precious one again
Each day feels like an eternity
Stretching my patience and sympathy
Trying my faith and peace of mind
Daily
Constant
Here I find His hand sufficient


When all inside me has failed
Failed myself
My firstborn
My dreams
My life


Here I find His grace
and love
The sweet comfort down inside
But there are days when I feel alone
Today I saw her name in the ground
Alone and beautiful all the same
It wasn't supposed to be like this


I should have been monogramming her name on pillows or sheets
Blankets or bags
Not on a headstone.
Not like this
Today the emptiness is drowning
This tide of sorrow blinds my sight
And I wait for tomorrow's hope.

Pierced & Comforted

Well, at church Sunday night, I was caught off guard. Completely.

Right before our pastor dismissed the service, he announced that there would be a couple dedicating their newborn to the Lord. He reminded us that this would not save the baby's soul but was a demonstration rather of the parents' willingness to give this baby to the Lord. The pastor went on to say, as he usually does, that we appreciate a healthy baby. Healthy baby. He said we don't take that for granted around here.

Boy, was he right.

Healthy baby. Just the idea seemed like an impossibility since our first and only baby wasn't. Then I remembered Jenna. Well actually from the moment he mentioned the dedication I was thinking about her. But when he said healthy baby for some reason I just could not take it.

I really thought I had reached the farthest level of pain, but I hadn't.

There are days that I feel numb, and that bothers me. But then I realize this is a randomized pattern of emotions I just go through. Normal? Not sure yet.

But that is just the way it is. Something like this beautiful dedication was in the past just another routine ceremony I got to witness once in a while. It was especially precious when it was my niece and nephew. But Sunday it hit real close to my heart. I think it actually pierced me that night. I wanted to dedicate my baby in front of the whole church. I wanted God and the whole world to know that we would raise her right. In the Word of God. In a good home. In the house of God. Guilt and a bit of confusion lingered over my mind for a few days that the dedication made me cry in a hurtful way. I woke up three days later breaking through all the emptiness that usually reminds me of my loss each morning. I laid in bed for a while and I was thinking about the dedication. Out of nowhere, I vividly remember something coming to my mind that must have been heavensent. I realized I don't have to dedicate her to the Lord, she is already with Him! Boy that did it for me. It hardly mattered that we did not get to dedicate her anymore.

Surely that was the goodness of God.