Honest to God . . . Not so easy

During the past almost 19 months, I have been thankful that I haven't had a lot of friends who tried to console me with spiritual platitudes. You know the sayings, "God has a plan", "God needed another angel", "God is in control", and all sorts of things that I would say that I believe (maybe with the exception of the angel comments), but which provide no comfort in times like these.

Having said that, I have been found to say things that I truly believe, but I am not speaking from my heart, just my head, effectively making these my own little platitudes. The problem is that these were words based on past experience of relationship with God, not at all based on current assurances received from Him.

As time has passed, I have unrealistically expected that this would get easier. When it did, I would reunite with my God. It hasn't gotten any better and now I don't know when I'll be able to be honest with God.

There is a real catch-22 situation when you know you don't have what it takes to deal with the pain apart from God, but you have distanced yourself from Him because of so many unanswered questions.

On one hand, the questions are unanswered because they have been unasked, but how do you ask without feeling like you are questioning the God of the universe about, "What could You have possibly been thinking when You let this happened?" And yet, that is the only question that matters to me right now.

There is no good answer - maybe there is a good answer, but not one that I expect will find satisfactory. Then what am I to do?

So I just don't ask . . . denying myself relationship with the only One who can bring relief.

What Rules My Heart?

Good question . . . I am not sure these days. I just confided to a friend that I am carrying some deep resentments and her response? "it's understandable...but just don't let it 'rule your heart.'" Good advice, hard to control.

Rule my heart . . . I can't decide if my heart is numb or in overdrive. It is either a boat that won't start or one that is in the water spinning wildly out of control as if it has nobody at the helm.

Maybe that is it. My heart is a boat in the water that I used to think I had well under control. Then on December 7th, I hit a crushing wave that threw me away from the controls and now the boat is spinning totally out of control and I can't seem to get back to my feet to regain control of the vessel.

I think that I've stopped trying to get back up; there is no use in trying. I am just hoping to run out of gas

Some things can't be redeemed . . . at least not in this life.

The hardest thing about this grief process (besides it sucks!) is that is has recently dawned on me that this is my new reality and there is no changing it; I can't go back.

I realized that there are a lot of things that can go wrong in life from which you can recover. If I dropped out of school, making me a drop-out, I could always go back and finish and I'd no longer be a drop-out. I could marry and divorce and feel as though I had failed at marriage. I could still re-marry and feel like a successful life-partner. Even if Christopher had gone down the wrong path, he could have turned around and made a great impact on the lives of many. Death is different.

Losing a child, however, cannot be overcome; it cannot be undone. That has been a harsh reality these past few months. I've described it as a kind of unbelief. It isn't that I didn't from day one know that this was permanent, but that reality continues to set in in new an unexpected ways. I will always be a mom of a son who died. There is no way to change this, now, fact.

No matter what I learn about this reality, I don't like anything about it.

My friends of great faith would probably be disturbed at my words, that this situation can't be redeemed at least in this life. As I told a friend today, it feels like this life is all that matters. He was kind to acknowledge that the this life is all that matters right now.

I see these friends post statuses on Facebook that would make the great men of faith proud and I am glad for them, but I think that they would be offended to hear me say that those spiritual platitudes don't work for me anymore even if I still believed every word of them. They are just too simplistic to address a pain as big as the one that I have known for the past eighteen months and continue to experience in new and equally horrific ways.

Anyone dare to argue with me?

The Tenacity of Disbelief

Tenacious is an adjective, "holding fast; characterized by keeping a firm hold."  

Disbelief is a noun, "the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true."

In my case, I would say that my inability to believe that my reality is that my son died is holding firm.  I don't refuse to believe, but I don't seem to be able to grasp as fact that this is the way that it is going to be forever.  I just can't seem to believe it.  

Where does that leave me?  

I have no idea.

A friend, whose perspective I appreciate a lot, said that he is not sure that it will ever be believable in this lifetime.  My response?  That is not the right answer.  I just don't know how a person can go though potentially 40+ years of living not able to accept their personal reality.  I have struggled through 18 months so far and have not enjoyed a whole lot of it.

I totally can see me moving forward . . . after all, I am starting a doctoral program in just under three months.  Ready or not, the future is coming.  What I need to figure out is what to do with this part of my reality.  I think that the issue is that it feels very all or nothing; either I am moving forward or I am living in the reality of my disbelief.  It is like I have two worlds and I can't seem to have a foot in both at the same time.

I know that this isn't making much sense, but this whole experience doesn't make much sense, if you ask me.  

I just don't know what to do with all this emotion . . . it is either on or off; it seems like there should be a medium.  

I hate this.