Journey 36 - Inconceivable, Awana 2009 Fall Conference

Each time I am asked to stand before a microphone and share our story I am distinctly aware that God's grace is enormous. Only our loving and gentle Savior could take our loss and redeem it in such a way that He is given glory and we are allowed a measure of joy. Precisely where I believed I would never know joy again, He is lavishing a peace that comes from retelling where we have been and what God is doing with it. To realize that somehow on his divine scale, what is still unimaginable and inexplicable, what still aches and is relentlessly painful, he takes and uses as a balm of healing in the lives of others. Our little boy's courageous, passionate life is simply an example of God's goodness. As he opens doors, I will walk through with that message: There is no pit so deep, God is not deeper still.

Journey 35 - August Cry

“Of one thing I am perfectly sure. God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.’”
Elizabeth Elliot

The hardest month to bear since James died three years ago begins.
August 17 approaches and I am fearful that its ravenous appetite can swallow me whole. I hear the smacking lips chomping behind me as I scramble and cower. Sorrow is an overweight giant, insatiable mouth wide-open for the kill; I am easy prey.
Undone, I cry for help to my Father who dwells on high, who understands my aching heart, who has already walked me through three years of grief. Escort me on through this dark forest, Lord. Let me not trip on root or tangled vine. Keep me from thorny bush and dim lit caves with their menacing form. You who are Light and Life, who speaks stillness to storms, speak that calm to me. You, who touched the leper’s sores, soothe sorrow’s wounds. You fed five thousand with a small boy’s lunch and shook blindness off an old man’s eyes; distill your miracle in me. Heal me as I brush against the hem of your garment with my battered heart. Refresh me with your Presence so I am overcome with your gentleness and not the sad remembrances of loss.
Remind me again that you do all things well, that you have a purpose beyond my feeble understanding. Sow within my broken chest once more the truth that you are fully capable of using all the splintered pieces for some grand eternal harvest. Right where I am, cognizant of my frailty, you are. Into my weepy thoughts, you come, not to remove the pain, for his death cannot be reversed. But you pour your wondrous self precisely where I am the emptiest. Grief carves crater-sized chasms in my soul. But you are my grief-bearer, sorrow-sharer, soul-binder, heart-healer. Come. Be with me even now.
Limping and spent I wait; He is present. Always has been. Always will.
Then like comforting news from a distant land, an old, familiar friend I have not recalled in months steps over the threshold of my mind. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11) The hope settles inside like a soothing balm. The phrase lingers, seeps into the deepest corners, curls around and makes itself at home. For this moment I rest, releasing sweaty fears into the palm that will not let go.
On August 2nd, I glance above my desk and see the periwinkle hydrangea plate inscribed with the words, “My grace is sufficient for you.” I have overlooked that Philippians stronghold recently. It is His grace, not my strength, not my self-discipline, fortitude, perky thoughts, or conscious determination that will carry me through this period. His indescribable, unending grace is my first line of defense. All the grace I will ever need for every day of difficult remembering is available.
But each August day marches fiercely toward me, to capture me with melancholy thoughts and emotional weaponry, to bear down its menacing hold. I pray relentlessly. Father, remember I am weak. You know my frame. The memories are too strong for me, too vivid still, too painful. Keep me from being overcome. I do not need people’s kindnesses or tokens to get me through. Human words or touch are not enough for this skirmish. I need you, Lord. I ask for you.
And still, I quiver like a rain-soaked traveler afloat on a raging torrent. The canoe will surely capsize shortly. Ahead, I see the impending waterfall and I am incapable of anchoring in less dangerous water to scramble to safety on shore. The boat is tipping, the current swirling, swishing, roaring, foaming, mouth open wide to immerse me in murky depths.
Through the rushing water the Lord of fair weather and foul throws me his lifeline: worship. Worship soaking wet, adrift, afraid. Yes. I remember learning this lesson before. He handed me this defensive tool when last I passed through this weepy place. Somehow, panic erased what I knew to be true. And I begin again to turn my face toward the Son, to lift my voice in whispered worship, to bring adoration to the One who makes all things new.
The aching remains; the overwhelming despair departs.
August will attempt to pin me in its grasp; The Lord of time and seasons is not threatened by her grip.

Journey 34 - Tea Talk

God promises to make all things new, to bring beauty from ashes, to create good from what is evil. But this time I thought His claim improbable. I knew the verses by heart, had listened to dynamic pastors exegete Romans 8:28 in brilliant fashion with dramatic flair to illustrate God’s sovereign rule over the affairs of man. But when James died suddenly, when God allowed our thirteen-year-old son to enter heaven’s doorway, I seriously doubted that He could distill one drop of good out of our tragedy.
Death is crippling. Suddenly, your heart constricts within your ribcage as if a giant hand squeezes out all doable function. Your lung capacity shrinks, your tear ducts overflow. Every nerve, cell, and microscopic platelet grieves, weighed down by sorrow’s all-consuming weight. Darkness brings no sleep; daylight delivers no strength. You stagger through expectations, and aggravations mount. The most inconsequential remembrance forces gigantic walls to crash in thunderous waves across your heart. Sometimes you long to disappear, evaporate into thin air, escape to some dimension that sorrow cannot cross. Yet, you linger in this land, separated from an exquisite love, sweeter than life itself. All the while the gnawing hole lingers; you trip and fall into its gruesome space, again, and again.
And you think it always will be so, relentless, unnerving, desperate. But the Author of life and death says, “No, this far may sorrow’s billows roll, but no further.” It cannot win because He will not allow grief to cast us where He has not already traveled. If sorrow’s volcanic eruption carved a crater in your soul, His presence is deeper than that horrendous cavern. Precisely where He allows the wound, He binds with His own hand.
In my own needy soul He has perhaps done the greatest work, carving out, cleaning up, creating newness of life, newness of purpose from the pain. I am quicker now to listen, slower to have a ready response. My answers are trimmed by the realization that He alone can mend, in His time, not mine. He has left deep imprints from sorrow’s branding iron, marking me distinctly now as one who physically feels another’s pain. The force drives me to intercessory prayer as if the need were mine. Fully aware of the futility of man’s remedies, I turn instinctively, imploringly toward Him.
And in some miraculous way, like a bulb beneath the soil coming to life after an extended winter’s reign, He is restoring joy to me, an abundant crop in the very field where I thought it could never bloom again. Our daughter calls from college and grants me a bucket full of contentment at her bright discoveries and fulfilled aspirations. Our third-grader catapults through the house, mesmerizing us with song, dance, and stories and I sense the very walls expand with her jubilant expressions. When our married son and wife share their wise choices and demonstrate their deep commitment to each other, I am engulfed with happiness. And when our second-born goes off to seek his fortune, I hear reports that, much like the “third little pig,” he is building with bricks and I smile; the wolf cannot blow his house down. Because the Lord redeems and restores, my mother-heart overflows.
I cannot help it – sorrow has changed me dramatically: eternity is closer and more relevant, everyday struggles pale in intensity, time with my husband is richer. How odd that our measureless loss would be used as a vessel to comfort and strengthen another, that our deep darkness could illuminate someone’s path, and that God could use this devastating separation from our son to forge us closer to Himself.

Journey 33 - Milestones

The anticipation always looms more dreadful than the actual event. Well, usually.
Maybe not for delivering babies or enduring root canals, but perhaps for painful anniversaries that sneak up with a container load of memories and unfulfilled longings in its berth. March 23 approached and I buckled beneath the birthday expectations of what should be but can never occur. I desperately wanted to flee this day with its absence of candles, presents, and son to embrace and celebrate. Calendars can be cruel too.
His birth is vivid still, the first one without Lamaze breathing techniques to propel me through the trauma. An epidural offer and I was a happy woman. Oh, is that really a contraction just now? Well if you say so. My, isn’t modern medicine a marvel.
But the contractions in my stomach would come later, when his color was bluish gray, his temperature low, and the incubator had no room for a cute rattle amidst the wires and the tubes. The grim diagnosis propelled the medical team to whisk him away and place him on a plane; our final destination unknown. Congenital heart disease was no longer someone else’s concern. Now his walnut-sized heart would need paramount attention, would be frozen, sliced into and rearranged to ensure all the mismatched pieces were placed in working order.
James Cameron Mitchell would be 16 today. Tell me again, Creator, why you allowed us to experience such immense quantities of joy with him? Let me in on the secret, you who were his Father from the first, how you could ever have granted us such a child? Why such privilege to parent this precious boy for all those days you shared him with us? As he lay within my womb, you saw the imperfections, held your hand from correcting the flaws, knowing the world would be a far more blessed place if you delivered him this way. Your spectacular plans for his life trumped our feeble thoughts and you carved into his soul an indomitable spirit to overcome the myriad hurdles that lay ahead.
He scaled them, every one, just like you planned. He should never made it off the starting block, never heard the pistol ring in his ears as he flew down that Olympic track. But he came to soar, to race unencumbered by self-pity or fear, to sprint through the tight curves, to speed around the course, both lungs bursting, head held high, eyes focused on the prize down the stretch, with the yellow ribbon always in view.
Then, with the crowds cheering wildly on all sides, with great lengths of track still left to cover, you moved the ending closer. “Cross now, run through, the race is over and you have proved yourself a champion, a relentless participant in life’s tumultuous pageantry. Well done my boy,” you whispered from on high. “Just run further in and further up to pick up your well deserved prize.”
And the maker and sustainer of life and breath held us, and asked us to watch our son’s final lap.
Two and a half years have passed, and still He imputes breath into our battered lungs. No matter what the birth certificate read, James was never truly ours. Just on loan, for just a while, till we learned worthy lessons He could impart no other way.
We are learning further truths on days like this when the calendar and the Kleenex box are intertwined. When the anticipation is washed in the spring of grace, when others remember and embrace our pain, when He gives peace right where we should feel bitter anguish. Even here He is reminding us that His plans are perfectly laid out, and though they cannot be interpreted into our earthly tongue, they are nevertheless the way He has designed them to run.
Birthdays are always milestones on the way.