Mercy?

Five years ago today, I was sitting in a little room with glass doors. Listening to the beeping and whirring of machines that were sustaining the life of my tiny, baby boy. My baby boy that I couldn't even describe the bond I had with him when I had tried to just a few days earlier. My baby boy that had just been laughing and grinning at me just 24 hours before. My baby boy that I felt had completed our home and our family. I was sitting there looking at him. Watching the monitors, wishing I could see any glimpse of hope that we were going to make it out of this unscathed. But God in His mercy had other plans. I used to say that I didn't think I could ever get to a place where I could say this is "well with my soul." I have. I had a huge revelation from the God of the universe about my sweet man. And about life in general just the other day. It was this. God's mercy takes the bad, awful, horrible things that happen in my life and turn them into good for me. I love Him and am called according to His purpose. This is His promise to me. The problem is, Most of us (mere human beings born into sin) think we know what God's LOVE is supposed to look like. That was my mistake. I had this massive sense of entitlment. I should have been able to ask God to do what I wanted Him to do and He should have done it because I love him and I'm called according to His purpose. Now that I am walking with Him more closely, I am realizing that He never owed me anything. It was His gift to give me all of these children. And to be fair, they aren't even mine. They all belong to him. It's hard because I worked so hard to get then into this world and they look like me, but they are His. Jace is His. So are the rest of my children. I love the song "Gratitude" by Nichole Nordeman. It has taken on new meaning for me as of late. My favorite part is when she says, "Grant us peace, Jesus grant us peace. Move our hearts to hear a single beat, between alibis and enemies tonight. But maybe not, not today. Peace might be another world away and if thats the case. We'll give thanks to you, with Gratitude for lessons learned in how to trust in you. That we are blessed beyond what we could ever dream, in abundance or in need. and if you never grant us peace. But Jesus would you please?"
I pray that that is where my heart can stay. Submitted to His higher calling. Remembering that I belong to LOVE incarnate. And that it is not my place to say what it looks like for LOVE to love. I can't wait until the day I'm reunited with that tiny, chubby little man in eternity. Tucked away in safety and peace that will be never ending. Until then, God in His great mercy goes before me. And I will try always to tuck back under His wings and trust His heart for me.
Lydia

Constrained

Here I am again on the place where I MUST write. There are so many things that my Jesus is showing me. I have stepped into a place that I have not allowed myself to go in a very long time. I was afraid of this place. Afraid of what it would mean for me to walk back here. Oh how familiar it is. How I have longed for the truth and hungered for His words and I haven't even known it. I have thirsted for His words as though I have been without water for weeks. I have finally again accepted His invitation to dine with Him. To feast on the Bread of Life and Truth once again and let it fill my belly and course through my blood. The only thing that truly satsifes. How have I lived this long trying to find "my own truth" in this life. How have I wandered so far from the stream that I almost couldn't hear it calling me to drink? I have thought of the song by Shane and Shane this week,

"put down your paper plate
come to the table made
deep blue china
found on the table by the wine
so fine

it brings out flavor
like You bring out color in life

oh, i miss You so
the feel of forever
oh, that taste i know
it hurts to remember
unfortunately high
ironically dissatisfied
i miss You
i miss You

oh, i miss You so
the feel of forever
oh, that taste i know
it hurts to remember

i had a fleeting thought this morning
and i mentioned you today
it breaks my heart just to know You in part
and not to be with You where You are."

That is how I feel down to the last letter. I have missed being where HE is. Since my Jace died, I have only asked that He meet me where I am. Too weak, I have felt, to go where He is and be part of what He is doing. So focused on my pain and my disease to ask Him how I might be a part of healing others. Too tired and afraid to walk onto the battlefield and fight for my freedom and the freedom of those I love. Too long have I been shrouded in my own selfishness and my need to understand His plan. As if it is my right to know. As if He owes me anything. And yet.... HE has loved me with an Everlasting love... Oh to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be.... That has been the word that I have mulled over and over in my head. Constrained. The definition is to compel by physical, moral, or circumstantial force, or (my favorite) to oblige. to oblige means to do as someone asks so as to please them. I have become so focused ion not trying to please others. To do what I want to do and be truly who I am, no regrets. I have forgotten my truest self is the one that is hidden in My Jesus. The one that is "obliged" to the grace that has made it possible to have that freedom to be me. That the me that is most full and lives in the fullness of Christ is the one who doesn't live to please others, but lives my life to an audience of ONE. The ONE. I have forgotten what it means to fight. And to truly LIVE. Oh how I have missed experiencing my Papa in this way. How I have missed the words living in the page and showing me only that I will never truly understand the mystery that is my God. That I am constrained, I am obliged to live for Him because of the depth of what HE has done for ME. 

Still...

Five years ago tonight I was laying awake trying to convince myself to go to sleep. I was so anxious to meet the little man that was growing inside me and making all the last minute preparations to meet him the next day. I was so ready. I had wanted him for so long. Felt him moving inside me. I knew his patterns and that he calmed when I sang. He knew his daddy's voice already. He was born with a bunch of sweet red hair that poofed up all over his big, baby head. His hands and feet looked like a toddler's already. He was fat and squishy and he made my heart all melty. I held him, he was everything I dreamed of. I don't get to hold him anymore...  I was thinking yesterday of all the tributes I give to my living babies on their birthdays. Of the hopes and dreams that I have for them and all the beautiful things that I love about them that are unique to them alone. The intricate pieces that they bring to our family and our home. And that is mostly what I'm sad about tonight. The only things I got to know of my first born baby boy are the things that happened in the first four months of his life. I know that he smiled at everyone, no one was a stranger. That his eyes reminded me of the ocean on a sunny day and they always caught the light just right. That I just melted when he put his little fat arm around my shoulder when I'd carry him around the kitchen. That he was the final piece in the puzzle that made everything right.... Or so I thought. It was so good of Papa to hold me like He did. To continue to hold me like He does. To be ok when I scream at Him and tell Him that I feel like He held out on me. That  most days I don't believe that He kept His promises. That I don't care about His plan because I just want to hold my baby again. I want to remember what he smells like and what he feels like. That I want to watch him play with his cousin and not just wonder what that would be like. That I want to watch him start pre-k and ride a bike and play superheroes and see the ocean in his eyes again. How sweet of my Papa to hold me and cry with me. To stroke my face and bottle my tears and not "need me to not be" angry with Him. How sweet of Him to hear my cries and love my brokeness. To continue to patch the wounds that tear open over and over. To walk with me while I ask the darkest questions I think there are to ask and still find no answer... and to hold my hand all the while. I find myself today opening up the box where I keep all this hurt and all these emotions and revisiting once again. Asking myself what has changed in my heart. What have I allowed to be transformed... And all I know is this... That not much has changed as far as what I feel I know about theology and the Bible. That truly the only thing I KNOW for sure is that He loves me. Deeper and wider and truer than I can ever understand. And that is all.... it is. And I don't know if I will ever know anything more than that. It's not any easier to understand or feel than it was when we started this bittersweet journey. But I am more sure than I have ever been that my Papa has never left me alone. So this birthday I will choose to feel it all. I will choose to let it soak and let it touch me again. I will feel the things I am afraid to feel because the hard things are the real things, as my Bethy says. And I will again be transformed. I will grow and change and be different because that is the only thing that can make any of this worth it.

"If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever."
- winnie the pooh "

Tethered

Four years ago last night, I held a little boy. I carried him around the bedroom while I fixed his milk and got his medicine ready. I watched him while he ate. I marveled at the miracle that it was that he could suck and swallow, suck and swallow, over and over. I put his little train jammies on his stiff, chubby legs. I rubbed his tight muscles in his feet. I put his little socks on. And I laid dow with him. He put his chubby leg up over my side and got as close to me as possible. He was immediately calm and relaxed. Completely at peace.I listened to him breathe. And we went to sleep. That was the last time. It was the last time I ever held him with life's breath in him. It was the last time I rubbed his feet. The last time I fed him. The last time I slept with him snuggled up next to me. It was the last time....

I've thought a lot the last day or two about the word hope. I read a blog from my sweet friend Mandy and she talked about the one strand of hope that tethered her.... I love the word tethered. I think of a rock climber tethered to one strand and climbing higher and higher, all the while trusting in one single chord. He has put his whole life, dreams, everything, into the trust of that tether. If it breaks, all is lost. Tethered.... that is what I am. I choose everyday to HOPE. That is my tether. Hope is so necessary to faith. It is the evidence of things HOPED for. Our HOPE is an anchor.... We are tethered to Him with a single chord of HOPE. And I am holding to the promise that He holds my world in His hands. I am choosing each day to climb higher up the mountain and put my everything into the HOPE that He is worthy of my trust. That He will not let me down. And that if I were to lose my footing, the fall would end with me still being held.

today....

Today I'm sad and I'm not really sure I can pinpoint exactly why. I'm missing a certain little boy desperately the past few days and I find myself wondering so much what he would be like today. How different our family would be. How different life would be.... Its the strangest feeling, because there is this part of me that is getting bigger that feels like I KNOW that things are so much deeper because of the things we've walked through. That Rocky and I have a friendship like no other because of what we have been through together (and because he's the best man I've ever known) That part of me is learning how to stay in the in between.... the in between of saying that I KNOW there is good that is made out of terrible sadness, and saying its ok with me or that I wouldn't change anything. I'm not there. I don't know if I'll ever be there. But I know that there is something about the mystery that we as humans can barely handle. It drives us crazy when the formulas don't work and the steps don't result in what we thought they would. I'm learning that it means something totally different than I thought to embrace the mystery. That that is the most important thing that I can do right now is know that I don't understand any of this and that is the best place to be. I am learning about holding the tension of two totally different things and knowing that they can exist together. Its breaking all the rules that I used to abide by to not have rules..... I love walking in freedom, but I hate it too.... and it all belongs.

Lydia

God is Faithful....

Forgive me friends. This is bubbling me and I can't seem to shake it. I'm so overcome with emotion today that I think the only option is to write. I am tired, I'm sad and I'm a little on the angry side. I miss my son. I miss holding him, I miss feeding him. I miss the faces he would make and the silly things we would do to try to get him to have some kind of response again. I miss the way he felt in my arms, the way he smelled. And I have something to say. God is faithful. He is. He is faithful when the things we asked for come to pass. He is just as faithful when they don't. I am so glad that so many people have God answer their prayers just the way they hoped He would, but that is not the ending to our stroy. The ending we prayed for is not what was written at the beginning of time. If I have learned anything at all in life, its that God is not a vending machine. I am continually trying to ask the Lord to help me muddle through all the praising him for good results and the loving Him for healing us. I am confused. I'm hurt and I'm sad. I struggle daily with the praise reports of others, not because I'm not happy for their outcomes, but because it is so attributed to the prayers that were offered on their behalf. We prayed... ALOT. There were nights that that is all I did is lay awake and ask God what I'm missing. What am I not praying for that I should be? I was under a false impression of my all knowing, all consuming, furious lover that is my Papa. I couldn't change this. Not even if I prayed with everything in me... all of my strength. I couldn't change the outcome of our story. And its hurtful to me that the people around me seem to feel like they have it figured out. That the mystery is explained to those that are enlightened by the steps to praying and getting what you hope for. That in essence, my little boy wasn't healed because we didn't pray enough, or the right people weren't praying or we weren't as full of faith for his healing.... I'm so full of questions and f so fully aware that there is no man on this earth that is able to answer them for me. That my God that I serve cannot be figured out. That He is a mystery that is far beyond anything these small minds of ours can fathom. That prayer has a purpose and a very important place, but I don't know anything about it... And that we as brothers and sisters in Jesus must be careful giving our opinions on what works and what doesn't as Christians. It can be so wounding...

tomorrow...

(this was the night before he stopped breathing, Dec. 9th four years ago tonight. Oh How life changes.....)

Here we are again today. I have been remembering all kinds of things this year, I have remembered things that I didn't even know I had filed in my brain. I am flooded with memories of that day. The smells and sounds, and worst of all the feelings. They feel so real and raw, as if it was only yesterday that the ice coated the trees and caused everything to be slick and cold and unstable. The one thing I continue to remember is the feeling that I had right after we found him. While I was in the living room praying that the paramedics would be able to get him back, the feeling of complete devastation. That my whole entire way of life had been devastated. That those feelings of control and having it all together had been completely false. That any kind of security I had felt all those years of my life was false. That I had NEVER been in control and that I had no control over what was happening at this moment. Lately I have had so much insecurity about people I spend time with. That I am so serious and probably depressing to be around sometimes because things tend to always go "to the darkside" like my aunt Candace says :). I know that I do that, quite often actually. But its really hard not to right now. I wish people could understand what I have seen, the emotions I have felt, the losses I have suffered. I wish that people could understand that I still live those things, on at least a weekly basis and that this time of year is the very hardest. That I am sorry if I make you sad or make you feel uncomfortable, but I am just trying to make it through it with my sanity intact (which sometimes I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to do.) I miss Jace. I will for the rest of my life here on earth. I wish every day, all day long that things would have been different for us. That I would have known what life would have been like if that wretched day 4 years ago had never happened. That I would be able to close my eyes at night and not have to fight the images that threaten to overcome me. How I wish that I understood my Papa God a little better. That I could see just a little bit more of his plan. I'm so thankful for the truths that I have become aware of on this journey. For the way Papa has held my hand, and at times just carried me through. But tonight I am sad. I am sad that I don't have a little four year old boy to snuggle with and to tell me funny stories and and make my heart swell with that same joy I feel when I get to spend time with my other precious kids. I'm sad that he wasn't here to open the present when we told the kids we were having a girl. I miss the way things were. My sister just texted me tonight one of my favorite lines from Alice in Wonderland when he says, "You are not the same as you once were. You were much muchier then. You've lost your muchness." I feel like that so much. I miss the old me sometimes. I think, in a way, I grieve for her as well. I miss her carefree, trusting disposition. The little girl that believed her God would do anything to keep her safe... That naive belief that was never true or founded in anything What is "safe"? "Who told us we'd be rescued. What has changed and why should we be safe from nightmares." I love that part of that song. I miss me.... And I also wouldn't give the new me up for the world....

oh, great god, be small enough to hear me now
there were times when i was crying
from the dark of daniel's den
and i have asked you once or twice
if you would part the sea again
but tonight i do not need a fiery pillar in the sky
just wanna know you're gonna hold me if i start to cry
oh, great god, be small enough to hear me now

oh, great god, be close enough to feel you now
there have been moments when i could not
face goliath on my own
and how could i forget we've marched around
our share of jerichos
but i will not be setting out a fleece for you tonight
just wanna know that everything will be alright
oh great god, be close enough to feel you now

all praise and all honor be
to the god of ancient mysteries
whose every sign and wonder turn the pages of our history
but tonight my heart is heavy
and i cannot keep from whispering this prayer
"are you there?"

and i know you could leave writing on the wall
thats just for me
or send wisdom while i'm sleeping,
like in Solomon's sweet dreams
but i don't need the strength of samson
or a chariot in the end
just want to know that you still know how many hairs
are on my head
oh great god, be small enough to hear me now

-Small Enough, Nichole Nordeman