Have you ever watched something really sad?
I have been really into Army Wives lately, and I think it has more to offer than just entertainment. Sometimes I have to remind myself that it is a scripted, ideal life situation. Even so, it offers me lessons of how to deal with the harder things in life, like losing someone very close to you.
The episodes that I have been watching lately have to do with the death in one of the main families, The Holdens. The daughter, Amanda, is killed in a tragic bombing. Often the episodes end with this dramatic change in tone and all of sudden one of the surviving family members is reminded of this great loss and I find myself crying right along with them.
This was my experience just a few minutes ago as I watched the mother and sister characters walk into the rebuilt place where the bombing occurred. The sister broke down and began coming to terms with the loss of her sister after fighting with the guilt of being happy throughout the entire episode.
I think there are so many real life implications here and the biggest one is that these things that we spend our time with, whether it's television, music, reading, whatever, give us an outlet to express emotions. I can relate to this situation of losing someone near to me in a swift, unexpected, moment. No goodbye, no warning. In my case a phone call changed everything. And now every time I do something that reminds me of him, my heart aches at the very least and at times I find myself bawling at the oddest of times.
The great struggle that we see in my silly analogy, but also in real life, is that we struggle with guilt when we're happy. Every time I smile, laugh, act goofy, and so on, I feel guilty. He died in pain, in the wee hours of the morning, with no one to hear his last words. Yes, he lived his life, but is it fair of me to go on living when he's gone? This is my tension.
I think if he were here there would be no question, and further more he'd be angry if I weren't living or if I were stuck in this constant suspended state between happiness and guilt vs. being stagnant. Ideally, we grow, change, feel love, pain, happiness, and all sorts of things, and in the process the ones we may have lost are not forgotten. Their memory is honored in how we live our lives well.
I honor him everyday by living my life proud of who I am and where I come from. I live in honor of him by doing right by myself, my future, and whatever future family I might have. I hear all the time how proud of me he was and I never really knew this because he was a man of few words, but I live my life in honor of him by doing things that would make him proud. And if I feel happiness along the way I think it makes him feel more proud to know that I am living and carrying on his spirit through my life.
My greatest regret is not saying goodbye. There was this moment where I almost demanded to be taken to the airport to get a plane a few days before he died, but I didn't because it was finals and I felt like God was going to let him hold on. I was so angry at God when he died just a few hours before I got home. I realize now that in a sense I don't have to say goodbye.
He died at home, in the house where his children grew, in the house where I have memories, and in the house I continue to visit today. His ashes were spread in the yard behind this home and it is as if he is part of the home and part of our lives in every way. I have chosen to honor that home with his memory by believing that he is there and that though his body died on that horrible day nearly three years ago, his life lives on through me, his family, and his home.
I hope you can find ways to deal with your loss in similar ways. I know that my journey to this kind of closure has been a long road and it hasn't been easy. Find your outlet to begin that journey and then don't be afraid to express those emotions. If I hadn't started writing while those tears were rolling down my face just now, these words would have never crossed my mind much less made it to this page. Sometimes that raw emotion we are so afraid of brings healing. Sometimes that lack of control, that uncertainty, brings hope, peace, and sometimes even joy.
For all the ones we've lost and all the ones we still have. To love and to healing.
10.19.2011
10.12.2011
It's been almost a year
and a lot has certainly changed. In the last year I got engaged to the love of my life, transferred (again), changed my major, and decided to start loving life for exactly what it is...an adventure.
One of my favorite writers, Jamie Tworkowski, said the following things in the mission/vision statement for the organization he founded. They have become the foundation for how I live my life.
You were created to love and be loved. You were meant to live life in relationship with other people, to know and be known. You need to know that your story is important and that you're part of a bigger story. You need to know that your life matters.
We live in a difficult world, a broken world. My friend Byron is very smart - he says that life is hard for most people most of the time. We believe that everyone can relate to pain, that all of us live with questions, and all of us get stuck in moments. You need to know that you're not alone in the places you feel stuck.
We all wake to the human condition. We wake to mystery and beauty but also to tragedy and loss. Millions of people live with problems of pain. Millions of homes are filled with questions – moments and seasons and cycles that come as thieves and aim to stay. We know that pain is very real. It is our privilege to suggest that hope is real, and that help is real.
You need to know that rescue is possible, that freedom is possible, that God is still in the business of redemption. We're seeing it happen. We're seeing lives change as people get the help they need. People sitting across from a counselor for the first time. People stepping into treatment. In desperate moments, people calling a suicide hotline. We know that the first step to recovery is the hardest to take. We want to say here that it's worth it, that your life is worth fighting for, that it's possible to change.
Beyond treatment, we believe that community is essential, that people need other people, that we were never meant to do life alone.
The vision is better endings. The vision is the restoration of broken families and broken relationships. The vision is people finding life, finding freedom, finding love. The vision is graduation, a Super Bowl, a wedding, a child, a sunrise. The vision is people becoming incredible parents, people breaking cycles, making change.
You might be thinking that I have to be pretty messed up to have this as the foundation of my life, but think about it. What are things that are being valued here? Love, healing, community, humility, redemption, forgiveness, the list goes on and on...
I believe the part about how everyone struggles and everyone has problems. And ya, sometimes it's the small-scale sitcom like problems you see on that after school special we all wish our lives were a little more like. But sometimes they are deep, painful problems that affect us in ways we will not fully understand all at once. I know I have experienced both. I think what I have learned this year is to know the difference between the two.
Have you ever heard the serenity prayer?
God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.
I think we can sit around and argue about how this little diddy is only useful in certain environments, but this simple wisdom of knowing the difference between the things I can and cannot control makes life just a little less overwhelming, a little less daunting, a little less scary. I think that when I surrender the need to control things that I never had control of in the first place, I stop pushing people away and I am able to allow that love, healing, forgiveness, redemption, etc. to take place.
For the longest time I felt stuck in this broken place because I thought I had no control over my life, but then I realized that if I took smaller steps and broke down my expectations of myself to a reasonable level, I have a lot more control than I ever thought. And the things I can't control are a lot easier to let go. This doesn't mean I lower my expectations because I can't achieve my dreams either. It means I just take more steps or smaller steps to get where I want to be. It means I take more chances, learn more, and experience more along the way. I have learned that living this way lets me love more, laugh more, and at times it will hurt more, but in the long run it's well worth it.
Micah 6:8 says:
One of my favorite writers, Jamie Tworkowski, said the following things in the mission/vision statement for the organization he founded. They have become the foundation for how I live my life.
You were created to love and be loved. You were meant to live life in relationship with other people, to know and be known. You need to know that your story is important and that you're part of a bigger story. You need to know that your life matters.
We live in a difficult world, a broken world. My friend Byron is very smart - he says that life is hard for most people most of the time. We believe that everyone can relate to pain, that all of us live with questions, and all of us get stuck in moments. You need to know that you're not alone in the places you feel stuck.
We all wake to the human condition. We wake to mystery and beauty but also to tragedy and loss. Millions of people live with problems of pain. Millions of homes are filled with questions – moments and seasons and cycles that come as thieves and aim to stay. We know that pain is very real. It is our privilege to suggest that hope is real, and that help is real.
You need to know that rescue is possible, that freedom is possible, that God is still in the business of redemption. We're seeing it happen. We're seeing lives change as people get the help they need. People sitting across from a counselor for the first time. People stepping into treatment. In desperate moments, people calling a suicide hotline. We know that the first step to recovery is the hardest to take. We want to say here that it's worth it, that your life is worth fighting for, that it's possible to change.
Beyond treatment, we believe that community is essential, that people need other people, that we were never meant to do life alone.
The vision is better endings. The vision is the restoration of broken families and broken relationships. The vision is people finding life, finding freedom, finding love. The vision is graduation, a Super Bowl, a wedding, a child, a sunrise. The vision is people becoming incredible parents, people breaking cycles, making change.
You might be thinking that I have to be pretty messed up to have this as the foundation of my life, but think about it. What are things that are being valued here? Love, healing, community, humility, redemption, forgiveness, the list goes on and on...
I believe the part about how everyone struggles and everyone has problems. And ya, sometimes it's the small-scale sitcom like problems you see on that after school special we all wish our lives were a little more like. But sometimes they are deep, painful problems that affect us in ways we will not fully understand all at once. I know I have experienced both. I think what I have learned this year is to know the difference between the two.
Have you ever heard the serenity prayer?
God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.
I think we can sit around and argue about how this little diddy is only useful in certain environments, but this simple wisdom of knowing the difference between the things I can and cannot control makes life just a little less overwhelming, a little less daunting, a little less scary. I think that when I surrender the need to control things that I never had control of in the first place, I stop pushing people away and I am able to allow that love, healing, forgiveness, redemption, etc. to take place.
For the longest time I felt stuck in this broken place because I thought I had no control over my life, but then I realized that if I took smaller steps and broke down my expectations of myself to a reasonable level, I have a lot more control than I ever thought. And the things I can't control are a lot easier to let go. This doesn't mean I lower my expectations because I can't achieve my dreams either. It means I just take more steps or smaller steps to get where I want to be. It means I take more chances, learn more, and experience more along the way. I have learned that living this way lets me love more, laugh more, and at times it will hurt more, but in the long run it's well worth it.
If you would like to know more about that organization I was talking about, check out www.twloha.com. This organization changed and saved my life. A broken, scared, lonely sophomore girl about six years ago found this video on MySpace about a girl named Renee and these people (one of them being Jamie Tworkowski) who were helping her. A few minutes later, she was weeping because she realized there was someone out there who cared about what she was going through and there were people out there who are going through the same thing. Six years later that girl is engaged, a senior in college, planning on changing the world with her story (because some guy named Jamie told her that her story mattered) and this little MySpace born organization has helped thousands of people just like her.
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"
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