Endurance

Many years ago, we learned some startling news that a close family member had received a terrible medical diagnosis – one of the dreaded few that many of us fear as we age. We were all shocked and saddened and deeply concerned.

As doctors explored the nature of the illness, they sought to answer our most nagging questions, “How serious is his condition?” “How rapidly is this progressing?” After much examination, the doctor returned with good news – the best you’d want to hear in these circumstances. He said, “He’ll die with this condition, not from it.” Phew. We all breathed a sigh of relief.

Enjoy Stress

Some time ago I saw a book review in the Washington Post that caught my eye. The title of the book was Enjoy Stress and somewhere in the subtitle or the first few sentences of the Intro was this quote from the author, “The opposite of being stressed is being dead.” Kind of a crass way of stating a point, but, yeah, I can sort of see it.

That quote reminded me of a time in my life when I rarely felt stress. My days unfolded like the movie Groundhog Day. Same thing. Different Day. No new experiences. No new challenges.

Unfailing Love

I’ve mentioned before that when I was pregnant with Jay, our 20-week sonogram was not quite the exciting moment we’d imagined. We went into it with high hopes of learning the gender of our firstborn child and never a question as to its overall health. While there, though, things took an unusual turn, from excited commentary from the technician about all the images we could see on the screen – these are his toes, his hand, his little nose - to eery silence as she moved back and forth over the same spots repeatedly and then suddenly and awkwardly excused herself from the room.

She returned with a doctor who stepped right in to provide an explanation for her technician’s abrupt departure. She seemed ready to reassure us and the technician that everything was just fine. But once her wand landed on the spot on my belly where Jay’s brain could be seen, she too struggled to mask her concern.  She began to explain what her technician saw and she now could confirm.

Numerous cysts ~ Bilateral  ~ Disorder ~ Days to live ~ Weeks at most

All of this was followed by one big caveat –the symptoms we observed could be perfectly normal and our baby boy would be just fine. But by the time it was spoken, that hopeful message was barely audible – a mere whisper amidst the loudly screeching sirens that warned of doomsday due to a fatal chromosomal disorder.

I was paralyzed with fear. I sat motionless for many moments trying to process the information. I delayed looking at Tim, knowing somewhere in my soul that the moment our eyes locked, this heavy reality would be ours to carry. I wasn’t ready to take it on. So I kept staring at the screen. At some point, though, I felt compelled to look over. I needed to check in. I needed to acknowledge this information with him.

Tim is a rock. I am moosh. I get ramped up with worry and he eases me back down with reason and logic. It’s not very often that I see him flinch. And that’s perfect for me. He is the anchor to my ship that is prone to be swept away by every turbulent tide.

So when I finally turned to him in that moment on that day, I needed to see his strength. I needed to see his resolve. I needed to see confidence that the caveat was the truth. I needed to be reassured that everything was going to be okay.

Instead, I saw in his eyes a look of sickening sadness that unnerved me even more than the doctor’s words. My heart sank to depths I’d never known. And for a flash – just a flash, I swear – I. Was. Pissed.

How could you do that to me? I gave you extra time! I needed you to be MY husband, MY rock! I’m the weak one. You’re strong. You’re supposed to reassure ME that everything is going to be okay!

And just as quickly as that hit me, my anger was supplanted (thank goodness) by an epiphany that came to define this experience for me more than the terrifying diagnosis (which, ultimately, turned out to be a false alarm): this is how couples who lose a child wind up divorced.

In that moment, so much knowledge and understanding washed over me. It caused me to feel deep empathy for the couple from our church who’d divorced some years earlier after their child died in a senseless accident at college. I’d never understood how that could happen. After all, your spouse is the one person who knew and loved your child as much as you did. He’s the only person that can understand the depth of your loss and your sadness. In my mind, that meant he would be the only person who could truly relate to you. He’s your best support!

But what if that person lets you down in your grief? What if today you want to wallow in the depths of your darkness and your spouse insists a walk in the woods would do you all some good? Or you’re resolved that this week will not be lost to tears and pointless puttering but your husband emerges from bed on Sunday morning looking shrunken and hollow with hopelessness? What if your spouse has decided to move in the direction of healing while you're still replaying the past in hopes of forcing a different outcome? Or what if your loss causes you to reach out to God for comfort and healing, while your spouse turns away from Him in anger and disappointment? I saw so clearly in that moment the myriad of ways a marriage could unravel because our spouse fails to be what we need or want them to be in crisis and its aftermath. And I never forgot it.

I also never really understood why I was given that knowledge and why it was etched so sharply in my memory. Until Jay died. Then I was reminded of the lesson from 19 years earlier. And I knew. It all made sense. I experienced that then so I would know now. We needed to steer clear of moments like the one I’d had in the sonogram room if we were going to be okay.

Our therapist shared with us a practice that could safeguard our marriage in the wake of this tragedy. Two simple words: Radical Acceptance.

As I look up the concept now I see that it is something that anyone can employ at any time in their life. As a well-developed personal practice, it can help us avoid unnecessary suffering in this world. But, in these trying times, I took it to mean something very specific to us: Radical acceptance of ourselves. Radical acceptance of one another. Radical acceptance of situations, emotions, reactions, even non-reactions.

If you think about it, Radical Acceptance is the living out of lines 4-7 of 1 Corinthians 13, scripture we had read at our wedding 22 years before. What we once appreciated as idyllic verse, we now needed to hear as an urgent directive to love one another completely. 

Be patient with one another.
Be kind to one another.
Do not insist on your own way.
Do not be irritable or resentful.
Bear all things.
Believe all things.
Hope all things.
Endure all things.

This expression of love never fails. This is what would get us through the most difficult trial of our marriage. But we had to be committed to the practice. No conditions. No standards. No expectations. No judgements. No exasperation that he’s over there and I’m over here. No demands. Just Radical Acceptance and Unfailing Love.

Go Forth in Love + Remember Jay

Orientation Part 2

Once I’d decided to get up in the jungle and I knew my Why – that is, to honor all of my children as I described here – I needed really to have a goal. Mine was to gain some perspective, to step out of this densely dark place and into a zone where I could see a longer view of things. So for the jungle -- perhaps a horizon. And not just a glimpse of light that could be interpreted as the sun on the horizon, by the way. I wanted a full, unobstructed view of the sky off in the distance in all its beauty.

Orientation

I have a friend whose son faced some monumental struggles in high school. She and her husband had tried a number of tactics at home to guide him. None was successful. They were desperate to get him the help he needed and landed on an outward bound-like program – where kids are sent from the comfort and shelter of home to a weeks-long outdoor experience that is intended to challenge them in a way that will build important life skills such as problem-solving, teamwork, communication. The hope is that they return to their families with a new-found self-confidence and outlook on life that will serve them as they face the tough task of growing up and out into this world. (One note – it wasn’t actually outward bound that they chose, so from this point on I’ll refer to the program as an outdoor re-education program).

Grief is like Life’s outdoor re-education program for you. 

Baby Driver

We've carved out some fun in the sun family time this week so there's little opportunity for reflection and writing. But I did want to share a quick something with you about one of the smash hits of the summer, Baby Driver.

The Parachute

I grew up a devoted church goer. My denomination was the Church of Pop Culture. The esteemed and charismatic leader? Oprah. She led worship every afternoon at 4 o’clock and I rarely missed. I so ordered my life as to be in attendance with millions of other followers as she imparted wisdom and knowledge and universal spiritual truths over the airwaves into my home.

One of the most profound and lasting lessons that I learned from Oprah was that I had the power to shape my own destiny. Whatever I wanted, I just needed to say it out loud and it would all be mine.

Getting Up

Last week I told you about a discussion I had many years ago with my book club about the mother of the main character in the book The Thirteenth Tale. She'd lost a child and was bedridden with grief even years later. This left her surviving child essentially motherless. My book club was indignant. Their basic response, what kind of mother does that?

Well, I did…for a time. When my son Jay died I was overwhelmed with grief and unwilling to get up and do anything even though I had two surviving children. You can read more about that here.

Awakening

Several years ago my book club and I read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Such a crazy good book with many dark and captivating twists and turns. The first comes early in the story when we learn that the main character, Margaret, was once a conjoined twin. After surgery to separate her from her sister, her twin died and their mother sunk into a deep deep depression that left her permanently bedridden.

Of all the goodness this book had to offer, this detail of the overwrought and disabled mom prompted the most heated discussion among my group. Most were in agreement -- she was a terrible terrible mother. How could she abandon her surviving child and indulge a depression over the loss of another?

Divergence

I've been thinking a lot about the experience of grief and how it can be described to someone who has never been there. I’ve tried to find an illustration that captures the totality of my journey (at least so far). There’s no shortage of them available on the internet – one, of a spiral stairway. Another, of shipwreck ruins in the middle of the sea. These images resonated to some degree with me but didn’t quite tell the whole story. I keep seeing the image of a much anticipated trip with an unexpected detour to the state of grief.  So I thought I’d share it with you. You might find it helpful for yourself or for someone else who is facing a tragic loss.

Rays of Hope

Hey Friends, took a little hiatus there kinda like the one we’re all suffering from with This is Us. I’m sure our favorite show’s torturously extended break** was scheduled long ago so that writers could pull together their next eight episodes. Mine? Not so much. How I wish I’d spent the last few months writing furiously to queue up blog posts for my upcoming season. But, alas, I was instead playing the cards that life has dealt me – not all bad, by the way -- and that has left very little time for quiet reflection and blogging.

Slowly but surely, though, things are settling down and words and phrases, insights and connections are coming back to me. I still don’t feel like I have tons of time and energy at this particular point in my life to blog with them. But lately I’ve found if I don’t give them attention they continue to buzz persistently in my brain. Left unrecorded, they are a distraction. Written down, they are put in their place and order is momentarily restored like freshly folded laundry tucked tidily in the dresser drawer. In this uncertain life, it’s good for me to create something that starts with a Capital letter, ends with a punctuation mark and in between has taken a raw | confusing | overwhelming feeling and transformed it into something that kind of makes sense, even for just an instant.

It turns out that those words that dance in my brain are like rays of intense, hope-filled sunlight that cut through ominous clouds on a rainy day. They shine bright despite the looming darkness. I can try to shut them out and continue to wallow in sorrow. Or I can I give the words my attention. I’ve found that giving them my attention is the best choice. Because when the swirling words and phrases are recorded, then worked and reworked and delivered to the pages of nowtheseremain, they are like those piercing sunrays– both a welcome break in the simmering squall and a promise of brighter moments ahead. I need that in my life right now.

So I write.

Stay tuned for Season 2 beginning later next week.

**Small aside regarding that crazy little show that has captivated us all. Thanks in advance for indulging my silly rant:

Thanks, but no thanks, This is Us, for trying to appease our appetite for more Pearson family life moments with retro-styled reruns this summer. I know parts of your show are set in the 1980s but *21^st Century Newsflash* these days, we can stream old episodes on demand if we feel the need to crush on Kevin or gush over Beth and Randall’s enviable marital bliss. Sheesh. At least if you’re going to rerun them, do a 90s-style throwback and pop-up video the show with director’s notes or something. Loyal fans would totally tune in for that!