Trying to Find My Way

Wrestling. It’s what I’ve been doing a lot of lately. I’m working hard to try and reconcile two things that don’t seem to want to be reconciled. God is love, yes. But there’s this other thing that rises up in my mind that also says God is...not hate...not evil...but maybe pain? Suffering? Everywhere I look I see that the two are inextricably connected. There is no great suffering unless there is great love.

I suppose at its core, I’m asking the age old question - why is there suffering? More specifically, though, I want to know why I have to suffer. Not that I feel I should be an exception to pain, I just want to understand.

These things are ever and always in the forefront of my mind. Dwelling on them has caused me to ask questions I’ve never asked and doubt things I’ve always had faith in. Is God really real? If He is, is He really as good and loving as I’ve always believed Him to be ? What gives Him the right to do with me whatever He wants? How do I trust Him when all of my trust has been shattered?

Even if I can answer all of these questions there is one that is ever lingering - Do I even want to follow Him? Wouldn’t it be so much easier to pretend like He doesn’t exist? That all of my pain is the result of science gone wrong and freakish, random chance?

It seems like it would just be so much easier. So much less agonizing over things I cannot comprehend.

It is difficult because I feel, ultimately, that I know what my conclusion will be. If I want to follow, all the struggle and frustration and anger really boil down to one thing: If I want to follow Him I have to accept that He is who He is whether I get it or not, He’s going to do what He’s going to do whether I like it or not. I sounds harsh, but notwithstanding His love and patience with my struggle, I have to get in line behind Him or walk way. Knowing that I do still desperately need Him, I know what my choice will be in the end. But it is a long and difficult road to get to the end and I feel somewhat trapped inside an endless maze.

I talk myself in circles, but I hope and believe that one day, like Alice in Wonderland, I’ll open up a before unseen door that will lead me at last to the glorious and freeing end of my struggles. Meanwhile, to find that door, I must keep talking and continue questioning. So, here goes.

This is what I know. I love God. He loves me. The purpose of my life is to know Him and glorify Him. By whatever means necessary He will work towards achieving that goal in my life. That is what I know. Now the circles begin.

I love God - most of the time. More than I love Him now I recognize my need for Him. I dislike that I have this need and very often wish that it was simply a need of my own devising. There are times I would gladly say, “I don’t really need Him. I’m only using Him as an excuse or a crutch.” I would love to say that. The problem is that I will always know, deep down, that I’m wrong. There is an emptiness in me that can only ever be filled by Him. I could pretend but I will always know the truth. I could hide from it for a time, but it would be time wasted, for I would always return to Him.

So. OK. Fine. That’s settled. I do now and will always need Him. I don’t love this, but it cannot be ignored.

Now, as to “He loves me.” This is simple and yet more difficult. There is Scripture that cannot be ignored, places where I am told over and over of His love. There are songs that resonate as truth to my soul that tell me of His love. There is all of my past and His many answers to prayers and expressions of love that serve as a reminder of this truth. There is the unavoidable fact that He sent His son to die for me - the greatest expression of love I could ever imagine. But more than that is the knowledge in the utter depth and dark places of my soul that He loves me. Every new day, every hour, moment and breath speak to me, whisper of His love for me.

Despite all of this (yes, I see my arrogance in even hinting that I could argue with all of this), there is an ever unmoving complication: He let my daughter die. He took her away and left me, like an amputee, limping and hobbling my way through the rest of my life.

When I look to Him now, I see the cause and source of great joy and sweet healing, but I also see the cause of my suffering. How can it be that He is both? How am I supposed to look to Him for healing when, as far as I can see (notwithstanding the sinful world I am part of) much of the responsibility for my life’s greatest pain rests squarely on His shoulders?

If it is love, I do not understand it. But whether I understand it or not, the evidence of His love cannot be ignored. So then, the love and the suffering must be able to be reconciled somehow. This, it seems, brings me to my final knowledge and the only explanation, however unsatisfying I might find it, that makes enough sense to fit. The purpose of my life is to know and glorify Him. I would add, too, that He wants me to know as much as I can the depth of His love for me.

If, as I believe, everything that I am and everything that happens to me is part of God's plan for me to know Him better and to glorify Him, it means that Lydia’s death and my current suffering was meant to teach me to know and love Him better and to give me opportunity to glorify Him. This feels impossible, but I cannot ignore it.

To stare at it and reduce it to its simplest terms, the question becomes this: Which do I want more - to know and glorify Him or to have my baby here and whole with me. I’ve struggled with this from before Lydia’s conception and indeed long before that. Always the same question - is He enough? The difficulty is that for every other time I said He was enough, it was a “victimless crime” in the sense that no one but me had to be sacrificed. If I never get married, You are enough. If I never get pregnant, You are enough. But...if You take away my girl...I don’t know.

I don’t want to accept it. To say He’s enough is to say that it’s OK that she suffered while she was on the earth, that I had to watch as she died in my arms, that I had to bury her sweet body in the ground and live my life without her.

None of that is OK with me.

But then, the love. Stubborn and belligerent as I am, it starts to seep in. He will do anything so that I will know Him better. His love for me is so great that He would let my child die so that I could understand another facet of Him that I have never known before - that He would let His child die so that He could show His love for me. And then, finally, I turn my eyes back to His face, I see tears in His eyes because He knows my grief. He suffered this great grief so that I could know Him...and to know me was enough of a reason for Him to watch His son die.

What I long to say though it feels like it costs me everything - if my child is dead and I must suffer that loss, God, You are enough - He says it about me. His child died and He suffered that loss and I was enough of a reason for Him to do that.

It’s staggering, the knowledge of His love. And deep in my soul I know and I understand it now in a way I never would have unless my own child had died. I feel so much like this should be it - the door out of the maze. But it seems it’s merely the door into another, smaller maze with a door to another smaller maze and on and on until when? Heaven, I guess, when the veil will be lifted from my eyes and I will see in full what I see now only in part.

It makes now so clear to me the longing in the words of the hymn... "Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight.”

Six Months

Today is six months since our sweet girl went to be with Jesus. I have a lot of things I could say, but I don't really feel like talking. Instead, I'm posting a video. I watched almost all of the videos of her that we have this morning. I love remembering the sound of her breathing and the little movements she made and the sound of her little squeaks, even if they were seizure induced.

The video is a little out of focus but you still get the overall adorableness.

Lydia from Jen Thompson on Vimeo.

The Room

I've been thinking a lot about when the right time is to change Lydia's room into something else. In eight days, it will be six months since she left us. So far, I've only done a few little things. My dad got me a beautiful cedar chest to keep some of her things in. I've cleaned out her dresser and closet of all her clothes and separated them. Some clothes I donated or gave to friends. Some I put in bins to keep for other possible children. Some I gave to Micah's mom who is going to make me a quilt from them. And some I've packed into boxes and put into the cedar chest. Doing her clothes wasn't too bad, because I know that if she were here and healthy, I would eventually go through all of her clothes and do the same thing.

The rest of the room is proving more challenging. I love her room. It was a joyfully laborious process to pick every little thing out - paint colors, furniture, quilts - it is my favorite room in the house. But I know it can't stay the way it is. I also know that to change it all at one time would probably be my undoing. I've started a process - I keep a small box on the changing table in her room. When I'm feeling strong, I go in and put something into the box that I want to keep for her. Once the box is full, I'll put it into the cedar chest.

Before I started this process, however, I decided that I needed to take some pictures of her room. I can't imagine ever forgetting how her room looked, but I took some anyway, just to make sure. I wanted to share some of them with you.

This Weekend

This weekend we went to the farm in Maine. My favorite place. We brought Lydia there last Christmas and this was the first time we'd been back since she died. We had a wonderful time cleaning the barn, making apple cider and spending time together. As ever when the family is all together, I'm acutely aware that she is missing. But, I carry her memory in my heart and keep her name around my neck. I wandered up to the big open field and took a few minutes to be sad and to make her part of my weekend in the small way I could.



And my sweet Grandpa Roy and Grandma Flo gave me a pumpkin picked from their garden to bring home to Lydia. Don't you love the curly stem?


On a somewhat related note, if you think of it, please pray for my Grandpa Roy tomorrow. He has his first round of many, many rounds of chemo. Pray for strength, health and good days for them both.

Anger

Perhaps you’ve noticed I haven’t been writing here lately...a smattering of whatever now and then but nothing really besides that. This is my fourth attempt at writing a post about what’s been happening here and I’ve made up my mind not to get up until I post something...except to get my tea.

OK. Tea acquired. Here we go.

How I’ve been lately can really be summed up in one word: angry. Part of the reason I’ve had such a difficult time writing lately is that my anger tends to come out all whiny and feeling sorry for myself. That’s not how I feel, but often it’s how it sounds. I make a slew of “I” statements (I feel sad. I feel angry. I feel like I want to take a sledgehammer to my whole house and start over somewhere else) and it all sounds like complaining. I don’t want to complain. OK. Well. Sometimes I want to complain. But I hope that’s not what you’ll hear.

What I’m feeling now is the kind of anger towards something that happens that you know had to happen but you didn’t want it to and you can’t change it. I know Lydia had to die. I didn’t want her to and I can’t change the fact that she’s not here. Of course, I wouldn’t bring her back now to suffer in this world, but sometimes I think I’d give everything I have just to kiss her one more time. The fact that I can’t and the fact that I don’t understand why I can’t makes me angry - deeply, soul crushingly angry.

That anger is naturally (and unfortunately) directed at God. I point my finger and say, “You did this. You took her. This was YOUR plan.” It’s not pretty. It’s not right. But it’s what it is. I just can’t understand it.

We were speaking with our counselor the other day and he put words to something I have been feeling but haven’t had words for. We were talking about how when Lydia was alive, it was so much easier to claim and hold on to the true things. God gave us the exact child He wanted us to have .She was created the way God wanted her to be. She was made for a purpose. He would use her life for His good. He would bring glory to Himself. It was so easy, when looking at my girl who had one foot in heaven all the time she was here, to believe these things. There was a purpose. I knew there had to be a purpose.

But now as every day goes by and I get further and further away from remembering the sound of her breathing or her scent, I cannot see the purpose. I see it in the past when I think of her and what we went through, but now as the emptiness stretches out in front of me, I cannot see a purpose in my emptiness. How could there be purpose in such a wretched, broken feeling?

And there’s more too. I want so much the feeling of closeness with my Savior. I want to be comforted. I don’t want to be angry. But it’s just not that easy. Now we have all of our future ahead of us. Before Lydia was conceived, we gave all of our planning and the life of our future child into His hands. When I was pregnant, we gave her life to Him. When her brain wasn’t perfect and we weren’t sure, we committed her again to His keeping.

Then, when she was born, everyday we gave her back to God, believing He had her best and ours in mind. And He took her. We offered her up and He took her. I don’t know why this surprised me or makes me angry now, but I guess I thought all along He wouldn’t take her. Now, as we look into the future, trying to understand what to do next, I don’t really want Him to have any part of it. We gave Him Lydia’s life and He took her away from us. Does He honestly expect that I’ll trust Him now? Seriously?

It’s so complicated. Even in the middle of my anger, I still know the truth. I know, in the end, we cannot go forward unless He goes with us. I will not find answers unless He provides them. I will not know peace or healing unless I let Him near me. I have no other hope but Him.

Sometimes it seems like a cruel joke that the source of our suffering and the healing from it should come from the same place. Cruel too that so often our healing only comes from more pain.

At the end of the day, after I’ve fought and cried my hardest and demand and beg for an answer, when the calm comes again I understand only that I don’t understand. In those moments, I utter the only prayer I’ve been able to pray for the last months.

Help me believe.

A Stone for Lydia

My friend Megan, who has walked through her own painful time with the loss of her son, wrote Lydia's (and many other babies' in heaven) name on a stone. She sent me some pictures and I wanted to share one of them with you.


To have Lydia's name spoken or written does something in my heart that I can't explain. Thank you, friend, for remembering our girl.

Respite Retreat

The past week or so has been difficult. Getting back into the swing of work (which, turns out, is hard to do when you only have teach three days of school in two weeks) has me pretty wiped out, despite being only part time. I will say, the first day of school was lovely. I don't know that I've ever felt more appreciated, so thanks to all students and teachers who made the day a heck of a lot better than I thought it would be. Of course, I cried like a loon when I got home, but come on. You expect it at this point.

There's been a lot of angry lately. Hope feels far and it's gotten easy to forget the times and ways that God has been faithful to me. Especially easy when I start to think that the God who loves me plays a significant role in my pain. How can I trust someone who has had a hand in my pain? I don't know. I don't know how to work it all out. I know I will, I just don't know how.

That's why this past weekend was a gift. Micah and I went down to Nashville, TN for a retreat run by David and Nancy Guthrie. It was a retreat just for parents who had lost a child. Here are the eleven wonderful couples that we got to meet and spend time with.

There were many wonderful things about the weekend. The most looked forward to was that we got to meet Jen and Kent. Lilly and Lydia were born two weeks apart and went to heaven two weeks apart, both from Zellweger Syndrome. Jen found this blog when Lilly was three months old and we've been e-mail and phone friends ever since. To see her IN REAL LIFE was fantastic.

In addition to meeting them, we met these ten couples. I can't explain to you the blessing it is to sit in a room full of people and look into their eyes, knowing they understand the kind of broken my heart is. The first night we were there and the beginning of the next morning we told the stories of our children. It was the first time that we told Lydia's story, specifically the end of it, all the way through. These dear people laughed and cried with us as we told about our beautiful girl and at the end, we prayed thanking God for Lydia's life.

I didn't have a big breakthrough, but I had many small moments of understanding that I haven't had before. As we talked, I realized how blessed we are to have people around us who miss Lydia, who speak of her, who care that she's not here anymore. It hadn't occurred to me that it could be any other way - that people's families don't care or speak of their child after they die. I'm surrounded by people who loved our girl and who love her still, though she's not here. Sometimes it's difficult to navigate other people's feelings about Lydia's death, but this time made me realize that whether or not I always appreciate how people express the fact that the miss her, I am so so so grateful that they miss her at all.

I was thankful to be reminded again that this huge pain won't last forever. As it is now, I still cry all the time and church is still unbearably painful. I sat across the dinner table one night from Jill. Knowing she was further down this grief road that I, I asked her if she hated going to church. She told me she did, but that it eventually got better. I think I know this practically, but it seems so far away that it's hard to focus in on anything but how it feels now. Thanks, Jill, for reminding me that the dark days aren't forever.

During times and talks with Nancy and David, I was reminded again about the patience of my Savior. Though I know I'm acting like a child who is screaming and screaming and refusing to be consoled, I know that I am being held tightly. I know that no matter how long I rage, He's not going to put me down. He will stay until I'm comforted.

I was thankful to remember again that I am not alone. One of the greatest tools of the enemy is the belief that this pain secludes me from the rest of the world. Eleven other couples, twenty-two other people have walked this road. They still walk it. They are not defeated. If you are reading this, please know how your strength has encouraged me. You have kept going when you didn't want to. I know that I can too. You have found Christ in the midst of your sorrow. I know I can too.

Nancy said it best - better days are coming. I will hold on until they do.