Quiet Love

My mind has been disturbingly noisy of recent.  There are many and varied reasons why and I am doing my best to work on what is in my control.  Still, it is frustrating, disappointing, consuming and frightening at times.

And it's Christmas.  I especially dislike an unquiet mind when it's blazoned across the country that "it's the most wonderful time of the year."  I have spent far too many Christmas seasons in turmoil.

My girl is home for one glorious month.  Our family will be blessed to relax and enjoy each other throughout the holidays, and my Christmas preparations are slowing down...not speeding up. It's the perfect recipe for celebrating.  Yet my mind is racing.  That nebulous, empty, wild noise which comes far to close to the edge of mental and emotional torture.  I've been there before.  The welcome mat is packed away in some dark closet and there is no part of me that desires to ever see it again.

Last evening was dark.  Scary...opening up memories of days past.

And then God breaks through.  Often it is in the mundane that I hear His voice.  Last night it was with my hands in the dish water...."He will quiet you with His love..." were the words the Spirit whispered to the noise in my head. 

I've heard and read and recited Zephaniah 3:17 countless times over the years but this time it was those seven simple, but powerful words which touched me.  It's His love which hushes me, even if but for a moment."

Today is quieter and I'm filled with gratitude.

Prepare Him Room

Advent is upon us.  Oh how I love this season.  My library of Advent devotionals has grown over the years allowing me the opportunity to delve into pages past for comfort and hope and direction and challenge.  Beth A. Richardson wrote "The Uncluttered Heart--Making Room for God During Advent and Christmas".  Even in the title her words speak of an effort, a focus , an uncluttering of our hearts.  It's not something that will magically happen but instead requires something of me.   Invariably it requires that something in my heart be removed in order to "prepare Him room."

This Advent season is fresh and rich but it also holds an element of harshness that came completely unexpected.   I am surprised at some of the clutter in my heart.  Surprised because it's presence was somehow hidden from me.  Life has a way of "accumulating" over the years and is sometimes unknowingly shoved out of the way.  Seemingly out of nowhere I have begun to trip over these pieces of life.  It's not the path I had planned I would walk this Christmas.

The past couple of days I am being beckoned to--

"Prepare Him room
 Prepare Him room
 Let the King of glory enter in..."

It's a compelling call but one I can't ignore.  Whatever this undoing requires of me I am I am reminded that the very one I am preparing room for is Emmanuel-God-with-us.

Writing from the Heart

https://ashleyogilvie.com/about/

It's Saturday and I have a forever list that I am supposed to be working away at checking off, but I have done it again.  I made the "mistake" of going to my daughter's blog to see if she had posted anything recently.  I thought I would only be there 30 seconds because after all, she is neck deep in assignments and papers and presentation preparations so how could she possibly have a stitch of time to write???!!!!!!  But she thrives on writing.  She comes alive when she put words to her overactive mind and despite the writing she should be doing, she can't not write about her heart. 

And I can't not set aside my list and get lost in her words. 

I wish I could write as she does.  I'm in the midst of writing my Spiritual Autobiography.  I write in my journal 365 days a year, give or take a little.  I even have my own blog in which I bare my own soul now and then.  But my writing  does not hold a candle to my daughter's inscriptions.  She's a Romantic who feels everything twice over.  I expect she inherited some of this from my DNA, but the depth of her emotions are oceans; mine are lakes.  And when she writes the waters still or become tsunami's.  They capture brilliant sunrises and reveal dazzling sunsets.  Her words are a cascade of pictures and heartaches and longings and hopes and dreams and wondering and contentment and...

Which is why I wandered off the beaten track of laundry and dishes for a time.  Maybe every day should include a leisurely walk into another's landscape

Seasons of Life

We have often talked, Brian and I, about how or when this season may unfold.  It's not something which can be predicted and a good portion of it cannot be prepared for and yet it is inevitable in some form or another.  It's the season of aging parents requiring care beyond what is currently working.

Mum and Dad in "The Honeymoon Suite"

On September 13, life as we had known it seemed to fall apart.  Both of Brian's parents ended up in the same hospital on the SAME day, just at different times.  We affectionately named their room, "The Honeymoon Suite" which they occupied for two weeks.  Mum returned home to their assisted living apartment but with 24 hour care provided through CCAC.  Dad was transferred to a rehab hospital 30 minutes away and was a patient there for a month.  In the meantime, we, along with Brian's brother and sister-in-law toured Long Term Care Residences and were able to move Mum to a wonderful home almost 3 weeks ago.  Dad is scheduled to move into a retirement suite in the same village on November 16.

It takes only a handful of sentences to list in a simple fashion the events which have unfolded since that Tuesday in September.  But if you have ever entered into this life circumstance yourself, you will know that there is  an ocean of stress and heartache and challenges and concern and  important decisions which weigh on you day in and day out.  It was a whirlwind of activity which we were thrust into overnight.  It has changed everything.

Mum is 10 years with Alzheimer's now and went from her quiet "normal" with Dad as her sole caregiver to a world of confusion and depression and despondency.  It was so very painful to watch.  She could not grasp the revolving door of Personal Support Worker's  in her apartment when it had once been just her and Dad.  And each worker, whether they had been there the day prior or not, was always a stranger.  In fact, even if they only stepped out of the apartment for a brief moment, she would forget that they had just been with her.  I would try to imagine what it would be like to wake up in the morning with a stranger in my home and my soul would ache.  Over and over and over again we would explain to her where Dad was and why she needed the additional care of the PSW's.  At times she hardly ate and was psychically sick from anxiety and persistently said through tears, "I just want to die."

I struggled greatly with my own questions and trying desperately to see God in her circumstances.  It had been so evident that He was a God of generous provision amidst all that had transpired at the hospital, the Intensive Program she qualified for through CCAC for 24 hour care at home, as well as a place for Dad to recover.  We had countless opportunities to give thanks to God for all that He was providing.  But Mum was tortured in her mind and it grieved my spirit greatly.  Her ministry life had been widespread and faithful  for so many years and now He was not giving her peace.  Why???

My Spiritual Director wisely guided my thoughts to another question, "What are your expectations of God, Juanita?"  She gently continued to remind me that God had not promised us an easy passageway through life, but rather a guarantee that we would have trouble in this life.  And although He encouraged us by telling us that He had overcome the world, we have not!!  We still live in a broken world.  Did I really want God to listen to my dictates in the elimination of suffering?  Where would this end?  If God relieves my mother-in-law what about the young child with cancer and what about the next and the next and the next?  If this was how God operated, eventually, it would mean that I would lose free will.  Is that what I want?

Hard questions...thought provoking...soul searching questions.

She continued to direct me to remember that we will all walk through death's valley and within that, we will each have our own particular journey.  For some, the path has intense suffering and for others it's a different path.  But we will each have our own steps to walk.  "This is your mother-in-law's path; Alzheimer's.  It's wrong for people to suffer and die but it is our reality.  He grieves and enters into the suffering.  God has an eternal perspective."

Gratefully Mum has adjusted to LTC in some delightful and comforting ways for us as family.  The staff share with us of  her participation in activities (even exercise classes and Halloween parties!!) and of her cheerful, teasing way about her.  At this point, they are the ones privy to most of the enjoyment she experiences. They love the fun-loving "Mrs. O." which we remember from years ago.  However, it's a different picture for us. We believe that our presence transports her mind back to "how it used to be" and she then struggles because she has some level of awareness of  how much she has lost.  We are a reminder of her "old life" and her new home is her "new life". Our times with her are often about trying to distract her from the very real pain of a lost memory and a new life which seems so confusing to her when we are present.  We hope that eventually her mind will be able to bridge the gap between the two but there are no guarantees. 

Dad is having his own life altering adjustment after experiencing a decline in his physical and emotional health. Although undiagnosed, I am convinced that Dad's hospitalization for physical pain was a result of emotional and physical exhaustion.  He was burnt out.  And though he is convinced Mum is in the best place for her AND for him, it's not easy after 63 years of marriage to now be living apart and adjusting to this next season of life. 

It's been hard to watch the path Dad has been walking also.  He suffered with intense pain in his first couple of weeks in hospital and lost a lot of weight.  He quickly moved from a very independent man with a measure of quiet stubbornness :) to one who is now asking for help and relying heavily on others in varying ways.  His life is vastly different today than 8 weeks ago.  Dad has always been more private about his emotions and it has been surprising and welcoming to hear him express some of the turmoil and pain of these past weeks.  We are then able to support and encourage him in all that he is experiencing.  But where Dad hasn't changed is in his unwavering trust in God.  Despite all that he and Mum have been through He has been swift to give thanks and praise to God for His provision and many blessings.  Dad's legacy of faith has remained strong and sure. 

 Dan Allender, in his book, "The Healing Path" speaks some powerful and challenging words to me--

"Suffering can move us toward God, 

or it can move us away from him

and consequently away from being human and alive.  

If we are closed to sorrow, 

we will also be closed to true joy.

If we see death...a physical illness 

as nothing more than an event 

to be resolved as quickly and painlessly as possible,

then we will miss the potential to grasp the true meaning of the event...

if we are to experience the good that God intends through our suffering,

at some point it is crucial to ask:

'What happens to me, 

deep down,

at the core of my heart,

when I face loss,

suffering,

and harm?'

...Suffering changes the human heart--

sometimes for good and often for ill.

We are faced with the challenge of learning how to wrestle with sorrow

so it can bring about the greatest good.

If we want to become more like God wants us to be,

we must consider what it means to live well in a fallen world

rather than scramble to escape the veil of sorrow."

It has been pure honor to walk with Mum and Dad on their particular paths of suffering.  Painful and overwhelming but yet a great privilege   To be invited in to journey with my in-laws in such intimate ways has and continues to be a gift.  As I spend time with my God and Mum and Dad I am being ushered into more of "what it  means to live well in a fallen world."  An  unlikely but beautiful path of healing in the midst of suffering.

Love you to the moon and back

Seems crazy that it has been almost 3 months since I wrote in here!!  That would be known as "life".

I did actually get to Vancouver to throw my arms around my girl and have the time of my life for 12 days.  I drank in the moments...the quiet, lazy hours on her bed watching episodes of "24"...the crazy, wild moments of getting matching "moon" tatoos( "i love you to the moon and back")...the miles and miles of walking to buses and sky train in an effort to get to our all of our venues...the joy of being a part of her world of favorite restaurants and shopping and breathtaking views...and the fullness of a Mama's heart when all her family is together at last .

And now I'm counting the sleeps (FIVE) until she flies home for 6 days to be a bridesmaid in her friend's wedding.  The anticipation of seeing her again occupies my mind often.  It will be short but sweet as she has a flurry of wedding fun to be a part of but regardless, I will still see her sleepy eyes every morning and be able to give wrap-around-hugs here an there. 

Oh how I love the "Arrivals" gate at the airport!!

So Soon....

love you to the moon and back

It's been 8 months since I hugged my girl and smelled the aroma of her beautiful auburn hair in my face.  We have skyped fairly regularly and texted and talked on the phone pretty much every day...well ok, more than once a day!  I have known many of the details of her every day life, for better or for worse and thanked my God for the "better" and prayed my heart out for the "worse".  I have, from a distance "watched" her grow and learn and struggle and pondered all of this in my heart.  I have smiled at the pictures of healthy meals (because she sends me them regularly) and I laugh because most of the food she would never have considered eating at home!!  I say "goodnight" to her every night, even though her evening is just beginning and I am ready to collapse on my pillow.  And every new day at some point we exchange morning greets and a brief relay of plans for the day ahead.  This continuous communication is one of the gifts of our technological world and I am so grateful.  But it's not the same as face to face, arm in arm and the wonder of those big brown eyes right in front of me.  Lord willing, all of this will be my joy when I walk off that airplane tonight and wrap her in my arms.

"Do not ever get into such a state of heart 

as to groan over yourself 

so that you cannot praise the Lord 

for His abounding grace."

--Charles Spurgeon

At times, the Spirit's gaze is so revealing that deep shame covers my being.  I tend to linger here too long sometimes, aghast at who I really am.  The deep down, underneath -all the- masks- I- wear -part of-who I am is a disturbing place to be.  And it's necessary but only for the purpose of pointing me to Him.  The One who died for all the ugliness within me.  The One who took my sin and shame upon Himself.  I am learning to move from this self focused place to a God focused place. 

Oh the beauty of enlarging my heart to the overflowing grace of God!

Closer

I shared this piece with my church family on Sunday June 26,2016

"I find myself looking back

on a year filled with

unspeakable pain

haunting questions and doubts

complete hopelessness

a nightmarish desire to quit

raging anger

torturous thoughts.

The deepest, darkest days of my existence.

And yet, if I had to fight the battle

all over again...

I wouldn't change one moment.

Because out here on the battlefield,

battered and bruised, alone and despairing,

I fell in love with a God

who will not live in a box

and who lovingly and tenderly

lifted me out of my own box

so I could share the untold riches of intimacy with Him.

I find myself looking ahead

to an unknown, blank-slated future;

but one thing I know with all my heart...

Closer to You

is where I want to be."

I penned those words almost 11 years ago.  I was in a seemingly endless season of depression and one

which drove me to God...a God who allowed intense suffering without explanation--a God whose presence at times was like a blanket of comfort, but whose seeming absence at other times left me weeping in anguish and fear.  

I am deeply grateful to have had an abundance of health and hope restored.  Those years of darkness have been a part of shaping who I am today in both healthy and unhealthy ways.

I am at a crossroads in life for various reasons.  I continue to intentionally pursue God and yet there is also a sense of Him pursuing me even more.  Everywhere I turn He is unearthing the rocks of an earthly kingdom which I constructed.

You see, for the majority of my life, I've lived with clenched hands.  I hold tightly to that which is most precious to me.  In both tangible and intangible ways, I play it safe, control, and guard life as it swirls around me.  Why?  Because there's this corner of my heart where I don't fully trust God.

Sometimes life unfolds in ways which knock the wind out of us and leave us gasping for air--for a very long time.  I know all the right answers as to why life falls apart.  The sovereignty of God, our finite ability to understand an infinite God , the brokenness of this planet earth--I know these truths inside out.  Yet somehow, being at peace with His ways in my own life and fully trusting His character is always just slightly out of reach.

This past January, my Spiritual Director approached me about joining a group of other men and women to write our Spiritual Autobiography under her direction.  God is using pen and paper as a pathway to a deeper level of spiritual transformation.

It's time.

To be honest, I'm tired.  I'm weary of years and years of clenched hands.  There's this growing, almost desperate desire to live with open hands.  It won't happen with ease or overnight.  When God dismantles an earthly kingdom it's painstaking work; His work and mine.

Psalm 139:23,24 reads like this--

"Search me, O God, and know my heart;

Try me and know my anxious thoughts;

And see if there be any hurtful way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way."

I'm giving God permission to do this.  I'm inviting Him to do this-- 

But it will involve time in  His presence with less words and more listening.  Scheduled times of solitude and silence and postures of prayer which involve simply "being" in His presence is where I am starting.

John Bunyan talks about a time when he began to grasp the magnitude of God's love.  He was reading Song of Solomon, the first verse of Chapter 4--where Christ essentially says--'you are my love."

Did you hear that?  Christ says, "you are my love!"

I can't help but  but believe that to open my soul to the depth of these words will also begin to open my hands to living life with a spirit of  peace and trust and security.

Christ says I am His love.

Held

Tomorrow is the 46th anniversary of my mother's death.  And though I look at that number in terms of the longevity, I no longer feel neurotic for still needing to acknowledge and reflect on my loss.  How soothing it has been for my spirit to come full circle this past week.  To move from churning emotions to a sense of peace.  Not because the grief is gone, but because it is still here--and that's okay.  On this post Eden planet I will never recover from this loss.  How could I?!  Her death was too catastrophic, our mother/daughter relationship too binding to suffer being severed and move forward unscathed.  Her life and her death have irrevocably altered my life and I am strangely at peace with the reality this brings.

Earlier this week, I was given a vision or a picture from God which has been a beautiful healing balm for my soul.  I'm not one to be able to easily visualize something in my mind.  I need something concrete.  And so when I boldly asked God if He would give me a vision of sorts to show me that He was still with me on this journey, I was somewhat skeptical.  But within minutes it was there!

The night my mother died, our family was on our way to church.  The car that hit us was being driven by a drunk driver who 15 minutes earlier had been successful in outrunning the police.  When he hit us, the impact threw everyone from our vehicle except me.  My Dad says that my door often "stuck".  I was left alone in the back seat, confused and afraid.

This picture from God has changed all of that--Jesus climbed into the back seat beside me and lifted me up on to His lap...and held me.  He has been holding me ever since.

Simple but oh so powerful...so comforting and so completely reassuring that He is still holding me after all these years.  The realization that He is the only One who completely understands my loss and this never ending journey has blanketed me with such peace.

Natalie Grant sings a powerful song of lament and praise in "Held".  The refrain sings--

"This is what it means to be held

How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know

That the promise was that when everything fell

We'd be held."

After 46 years, I am still being held.

Motherless Daughters

I truly find it hard to believe that I'm here--

Here at this place of somewhat jumbled emotions all surrounding the loss of my mother.  I honestly couldn't imagine that there was "more" to be uncovered, but there was, or is.  I made a rash decision last week to order a copy of Hope Edelman's book, "Motherless Daughters--The Legacy of Loss".  My sister had lent me her copy 20 years ago in the midst of my deepest grief.  I don't know that I read it in its entirety, but I found some excerpts that I had written in a journal and was shocked by how they still resonated so powerfully with me.  It seemed risky to buy this book--what if it plunges me somewhere I don't want to go?  What if it just makes me more sad?  More confused?

But it hasn't.  Pouring over the first 20 or so pages has helped me to feel less lonely, less crazy, less confused, less afraid.  It's like I have been awakened to an entire community of women who understand and are expressing some of my thoughts in their words.  Hope's book is filled with interviews of many motherless daughters, as well as her own journey of loss.  I've always felt that I need to "get over it" and move on; not that I would ever forget my mother, but that I "should" be able to, to put it simply, check this off my list of things to do.  I mean, what would you think of a woman who, 46 years after her mother's death,  still has places of pain and thoughts of wanting her and missing her??  It sounds neurotic!

Oh how I loved Hope's powerful words here--

"Sometimes I think of calling back that high school friend, the one who asked me how much of my life my mother's death would affect.  And with the certainty of thirty-three years, I would tell her:  everything.  It affects everything.  When a mother dies, a daughter grieves.  And then her life moves on.  She does, thankfully, feel happiness again.  But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here--I will not lie to you, although you probably already know that.  That part never ends."

So much of my struggle to make peace with myself is what I would call, messy grief.  My grief work over the years, and yes, beginning when I was 5, was so very complicated with confusion and silence and anger and bitterness and unforgiveness and fear and this protective armor holding captive this raw pain that was so ugly it scared me.  Slowly over the years I found safe people who would listen without judgement and layer after layer of the pain began to heal.  I have spent almost my entire life trying to come to the "end" of grief work...I just want it done and finished!!  I hate messy, I resent the slowness and I definitely don't want to be labeled as neurotic!!!

Hope Edelman and countless other women say I'm not!!  And I can think of a few other people, my sister for one, who would preach the same mantra!  It came as somewhat of a surprise to me yesterday, to realize that I have very few friends who are motherless daughters. It just hit me.  Many of my friends have lost their fathers, but very few have lost their mother.  And mother loss for her daughter, is by and large, far more encompassing. 

Nancy Friday speaks this truth--

"When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself."

But I only had my mother for five brief years!!!!  How was I to "give birth to myself" without her??!!

Yes, I was given a stepmom and she devoted her life to the best of her ability to provide for me.  But it is not the same--it's so very different. 

I'm not sure that my sadness today is concentrated on losing my Mom.  I have grieved so well over the years...I know this.  Today, it's a greater awareness of how her loss has impacted my life and the specific ways this unfolds.  And this has been for better and for worse.  Herein is where the need and desire for healing lies...in the "worse" part--the habits and routines and safeguards which I have developed throughout the years. 

How and when healing comes, I'm not sure, yet I know that it begins today in the simple,
honest expression of one of the threads of what it means for me to be...a motherless daughter.

Waiting

Losing my mother in such a traumatic accident and at such a vulnerable age has meant that grief in its various forms and degrees has colored my life.  For many years I wondered if I would ever be free from the grief to truly live.  It seemed there was always another layer, another shade of grief around the bend.  It was so tiring and frustrating to come across new places of pain. 

Grief work is just that--work.  Excruciatingly hard and all encompassing work.  But I have plunged myself into this toil and inched painstakingly through each season with a longing and a hope for healing.  And over the last number of years so much of my pain has been soothed.  A healing balm seems to have been spread over the wounds that once were open and oozing sores of grief.

To say I am grateful is an understatement.  I'd like to say it's been a gift, but a gift is something we are
given and this journey through grief to healing was a treacherous battle.  I fought long and hard for these new colors of acceptance and peace to afford me brighter days.

So when a new, but trusted health care provider suggested that there might be more healing to be discovered I sank inside.  His belief that the ongoing pain in my body is still perhaps a result of longtime emotional pain still to be embraced, has pushed my buttons.  It's not that I think he doesn't know what he's talking about, because he does, and I have learned enough myself to know that our bodies carry memories of injuries and traumatic events for years and years.  I can clearly attest to this!

But really?????!!

Again??!!

More????!!

The timing couldn't be worse...or better...I'm not sure which.  Two weeks from tomorrow is the anniversary of my mother's death.  I was unsure as to how I would remember her on that day, but now there's this sense that her loss is already coloring my "today" and quite frankly that ticks me off.  I'm a little angry about all of this. 

I don't want to be sad anymore!!

I"m tired of grief work....Enough already!!

Am I EVER going to be done this journey??!!

A part of me just wants to avoid the entire thing and yet, if there is something to this health care professional's thoughts, and it's part of the key to freeing my body of physical pain, well then I want to be open to turning this over and looking at it.

Yesterday morning I sat down with God and visibly held out open hands to Him.
"Here is it is God...if there is more for us to work on together...more that needs healing, then You will need to make that clear."

So this is where I am today...open handed before the One who is perfect in wisdom.

And I wait...