Reassurance – Walking in the Shadowlands

Posted on February 5, 2025February 5, 2025 by walkingintheshadowlands

Entering In

Ethan’s Mom: “What is some of the deepest suffering you have experienced, and how did you cope through it?”

Those words have been staring me down this week. The question is number 4 in this week’s BSF lesson, entitled “Perseverance in Suffering.” There is about an inch of white space underneath in which to write an answer. Who among us can describe their suffering and coping strategies in that much room?

After five days of sitting down to work on my lesson only to walk away after a few minutes of staring at it, I have finally come up with an answer:

“See blog.”

Since the inception of this blog, it has been a safe place to process our thoughts about suffering, grief, and loss. The loss of Ethan, primarily, but also the myriad of secondary losses we experience as a result. I don’t know that anyone out there reads this consistently or anticipates hearing from us, but that’s OK. We have viewed the blog first and foremost as an outlet for us. It is a blessing, but not necessarily a goal, for others to benefit from our writings.

All that to say, I’m not sure anyone has been sitting around thinking, “I wonder why Ethan’s parents don’t post as often as they used to?” But in case you have, it is not because our hearts have healed. That is one thing I don’t like about the wording of the above question – it is in the past tense. How did you cope through it? I cannot be the only one who would rather it use the present participle – how are you coping through it?

I last held Ethan in my arms in the early hours of March 10, 2017. If Jesus tarries, as the old Baptist preachers say, I will live the rest of my days longing to hold him again. There is no earthly end to this suffering.

Of course, daily life does not look the same as it did this time seven years ago, coming up on the first anniversary of March 10th, for many reasons. Seven years ago, I had to make an intentional effort to enter into joy, and even then it was for brief moments at a time. Grief was a constant companion, always right in front of my eyes no matter what else I tried to look upon. But life didn’t stop – specifically, the needs of my four living children continued. We had help from friends and family, but I needed to care for them as much as they needed to be cared for by their mother. In many ways, they were my gateway to the moments of joy my soul so desperately needed. Jumping on the trampoline, making muffins, zoo outings, giving and receiving warm hugs – these were the means of grace that “brought my soul up from Sheol” and “restored me to life” (Psalm 30:3).

Now, at times, I have to make an intentional effort to enter into sadness. While the kids still bring me much joy, we have moved into a season where their schedules dictate my schedule in a new way. Instead of falling into place around a naptime, my day now centers around school and extracurricular activities. Taking care of the four living kids seems more urgent than giving myself space to grieve. Having a “sad day” here and there was a necessity then, but it seems like a luxury now. Sometimes, it is easier to skirt around the edges as opposed to diving into the deep. We have written on the blog about how difficult and costly it can be to sit with others in their darkest moments. In some ways, I feel like it is also costly to sit with myself.

I just can’t dash off a quick answer to the question in my BSF lesson in a few sentences or write an entire blog post in the carpool line. Writing these posts requires quiet, time, and space to think – all things at a premium at this stage in the game. I just counted, and I have 8 unfinished entries on my Google Drive. The phrase, “I should write a blog post about that…” rolls through my consciousness with regularity, but when I looked at the last few entries on the blog, I realized there wasn’t a single post between Ethan’s 7th birthday and his 8th birthday. That breaks my heart a little.

Speaking of his birthday, this year it fell on the first day back to school after winter break. There aren’t many quiet moments for reflection in between making the magic of Christmas happen and cleaning up the aftermath. Then Saturday before school started, we celebrated #4’s birthday with a party at a local rock climbing gym. He deserves to celebrate with his friends, and I want to be able to give him that experience. The only way that happens, though, is if I can compartmentalize my feelings about hosting a birthday party for him where none of the guests know he has a twin brother who should be here as well.

Although I felt a little bad for thinking this, I was glad that I would have some quiet time while they were at school on the 7th. I knew I needed to feel my feelings, but when the day arrived, I felt numb. The temperatures were just above freezing, limiting our visit to his grave. The house was in need of a thorough cleaning after two and a half weeks of everyone being home full time, and I couldn’t shake the compulsion to scrub all the bathrooms. Then after school we ate birthday cake before all the regularly scheduled activities. The day passed in a blur, and I hardly shed a tear.

At my next monthly session, I related to my counselor how not crying on Ethan’s birthday really bothered me. She put words to my feelings. “You haven’t had a chance to enter in,” she said. I am not used to thinking of grief that way. For years, it crashed in like a tidal wave. It still does at times. A birth announcement, a conversation about the challenges of raising twins, an icy forecast – all of these and many more can bring strong waves of grief that knock me off balance a little, or a lot, depending on the exact circumstances. The waves still come relentlessly, but not every wave knocks me down.

I guess the world might look at this and call it healing, or closure. I don’t think that’s quite it though. I do need to enter into the darkness at times – if I try to ignore it through staying busy or just waiting until the “right time” comes, things do not go well for me and for those around me. But I am not at the mercy of the darkness in the same way, either. A sneaky voice whispers in the back of my mind: “Is this leaning too far into joy? Am I leaving Ethan in the past?”

Love is eternal; pain is not. One day, pain will be no more. That is the real point of this week’s BSF lesson, but I had a hard time seeing that through all the attempts to rationalize and spiritualize our response to suffering. As we move ever closer to the day when we see Ethan again, it is right to feel the balance tipping in favor of joy. It is also right to fully enter into the sorrow. Both are necessary; both are, in their own ways, good. In the words of A Liturgy for Embracing Both Joy & Sorrow, “For joy that denies sorrow is neither hard-won, nor true, nor eternal. It is not real joy at all. And sorrow that refuses to make space for the return of joy and hope, in the end becomes nothing more than a temple for the worship of my own woundedness.” It goes on to remind us that we have a role model in our practice of holding the tension:

For this is who we are:
a people of The Promise –
a people shaped in the image of God
whose very being generates all joy in the universe,
yet who also weeps and grieves its brokenness.
So we, your children, are also at liberty to lament our losses,
even as we simultaneously rejoice in the hope of their coming restoration.
Every moment holy, Volume II

Maybe that is where the confusion lies for some who hear our story. People assume we are angry at God and need to work through those feelings to arrive at a place where we can continue to believe and to worship Him. They think that to embrace joy necessitates leaving lament behind. They presume that finding peace and purpose in our suffering requires that we wholeheartedly accept God’s sovereignty and abandon our unanswered questions. But it’s both/and, not either/or. We are at liberty to lament and rejoice. I don’t know if anyone else needed to hear that – I sure did.

Anywhere
By: The Gray Havens
Eyes wide late night windowsill open
There’s a shadow at my back saying everything’s broken 
So I pointed to a star saying that’s where I’m going
Second to the right then straight til’ morning
Praying in the dark please if you’ve got a moment
There’s a shadow in my mind says you’re never gonna notice
That I been dying inside I been trying not to show it
But I never want to feel this way again 
So take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here
Ah take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here
I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care where 
Just take me anywhere
Anywhere but here 

I’ve been trying to keep the faith 
I’ve been trying to trust the process
But it just feels like pain, doesn’t feel like progress
And it seems like a waste if I’m really being honest 
I’ve been trying to fly away but I keep falling 
And Neverland keeps calling
So take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here
Ah take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here
I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care where 
Just take me anywhere
Anywhere but here 

I could spend my nights
Staring at the sky
Dream of ways to fly away
Chasing happy thoughts
Or a better plot
While I lose another day
And what a tragedy
To awake and see
That I’ve never learned to stay
So bring me to a place
Where I don’t chase escape
Somewhere I could finally say
Don’t take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here 
Don’t take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here 
Don’t take me anywhere anywhere anywhere but here 
Don’t take me anywhere, anywhere 
Eyes wide late night windowsill open

Posted on January 8, 2025 by walkingintheshadowlands · 1 Comment

A Great and Marvelous Gift

Ethan’s Dad: Our boy would have turned 8 yesterday. Of course, one boy did turn 8 — our Noah — and I certainly do not take that for granted. It is a joy to watch Noah be happy, to watch his face light up when he receives a gift he loves. But it also hurts because there should be a boy right beside him doing the same thing — lighting up our lives with his wonder at receiving new things. Ethan is not here to offer us that joy which comes from giving him presents as a celebration of being part of our lives for another year. It is the eighth year we have celebrated this day without him because he never made it even to the first birthday. I do not know how to quantify such a loss of joy, but the absence is very apparent with each smile or gasp from Noah. I usually do not feel it in that particular moment, which is a small blessing, because then I would miss the joy that is there. But later, in the silence — after the party, the laughter, the cake, and the toys — the absence is there. It is a gnawing deprivation, a robbery worse than the grandest of heists.

It is also at that moment — in the silence, amidst the darkness, surrounded by emptiness — that I am reminded that it could be worse. How? That joy could have not come in the first place. We were not trying to have twins. We were not expecting to have twins. Initially, we were just excited that we would be having another baby at all. And then that sonogram showed two heartbeats rather than one. It was colossal news. I remember Ethan’s mom, for a second, thinking it could not be true. Yet there he was, and everything changed. We already had three children. But five? Yes, five — it turns out we were delighted with that. It required a lot of scrambling, recalculating, reimagining . . . and every bit of it was worth it. (I would give absolutely anything to be living the chaos of five right now).

Even so, it still almost did not happen. There is no need here to retell the whole story in this post, but Ethan was not in the correct position around the time of birth, and then he and Noah decided to pick the rare event (for Alabama) of an ice storm, of all times, to join the world. That precipitated the elegant bravery and unflinching fortitude of their mother to will them into this world, with just a little help from an EMT in an ambulance traveling on an ice-skating rink of a road. Honestly, Ethan beat some long odds just by making it that far.

And there was still more to overcome because, a short time later, we learned of Ethan’s heart defect. Again, this post is not the place to delve into all that was involved there. However, I mention it just to illustrate the point that nothing says we were ever entitled to be graced with his presence. Ethan was a gracious, unmerited gift, a blessing bestowed despite immense obstacles. He and Noah together gave us overwhelming joy. I truly thought I was the most blessed father in the whole world.

And really, I was. That is the reason it hurts so much. To lose the double nature of that precious blessing is excruciating. I cannot hold him, hug him, tickle him, light-saber battle him, shoot hoops with him, laugh with him, correct him, watch him fall asleep, or see the light in his eyes when he opens a birthday gift. Why would such a unique gift be given and then taken away in such a brief time? This blog is full of posts exploring that inscrutable question, and the probing will continue.

But I would not know the immensity of Ethan’s absence if he was never with us in the first place. “God does great things, and unsearchable, marvelous things without number.” (Job 5:9). “Many, oh Lord, are Your wonderful works which You have done; and Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.” (Psalm 40:5).

The Lord did a great and marvelous thing in giving us Ethan (and Noah) eight years ago. He was thinking about Ethan when we were not, and He gave us Ethan without our asking for such joy because the Lord “is able and willing to do more than we ask or imagine.” (Ephesians 3:20). And He continues to think about Ethan. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11). That Scripture passage is usually quoted as if it is some kind of high school graduation slogan. I will save all the reasons I think that is a misreading for another time, but presently I will observe that Lord is not talking about the here and now: He is referring to eternity. As much as Ethan’s absence here and now hurts, Ethan is living in peace with the Lord right now, and we soon will be. In the meantime, the Lord says to both to us and to Ethan that He “is in our midst,” and that “He will rejoice over us with gladness, He will quiet us with His love, and He will exult over us with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17). Amen. And Happy Birthday, Ethan.

Posted on February 16, 2024 by walkingintheshadowlands · 1 Comment

A Tale of Two Sisters

Ethan’s Mom: Over the past year or two, I came to realize how many times we take stories from the Bible and make them about the people in the stories. Be courageous like David standing up to Goliath, be obedient like Mary when the angel visits her, etc., etc. In both the Old and New Testaments, we take the focus off of God and put it on the people. Despite that in almost every case, a few chapters after Abraham, Noah, Moses, or David show great faith in God, the Bible will relate how these same men fail miserably in their ability to be the moral role models we make them into.

Meredith Anne Miller, the author of the book “Woven,” has really opened my eyes to the extent in which we do this when we teach kids the Bible. She advocates for a different approach, which she calls “God centered storytelling” – read a passage/story, make a list of things you notice God being or doing, teach the story focusing on one of those things, and end by asking the kids what else they notice about God. She suggests this helps kids grow to trust God and lets the humans in the Bible be, well, human.

One example of how I have internalized the “human centered storytelling” approach is in the story of Mary and Martha. Growing up in and around church, I have heard many sermons and even read books about Lazarus’s two sisters. In most situations, Mary is lifted up as an example to live by and Martha is the cautionary tale of being too worried about earthly things. Let me give you a quick summary:

Mary and Martha are sisters. One day Jesus and his crew came to their house. Martha focused on welcoming them into their home and feeding them. She was busy trying to make the house look good and generally give off a good impression so that she could be praised by Jesus for being the hostess with the mostess. Mary, on the other hand, was focused on listening to Jesus. She busted into the room with all the men, sat right at Jesus’s feet, and drank up all the wisdom from his teaching. Martha gets mad, asks Jesus to fuss at her sister for being lazy and leaving her with all the stuff, and Jesus rebukes her. Mary is the hero of the story because she chose the better thing. Boo on you Martha for being worried about the stuff that doesn’t matter. Be like Mary. She’s awesome.

A while later, Lazarus dies. The sisters send word for Jesus to come. Jesus stays where he is instead of coming to heal him. When he shows up, Martha runs up to him and gives him a piece of her mind. What were you doing Jesus? If you had not taken your sweet time, you could have healed my brother. Jesus starts talking theology to calm her down. Mary comes out, asks Jesus where he’s been. But this time, Jesus cries with her. They go to the tomb. Martha tells Jesus not to open the tomb because Lazarus smells. Martha, we all know this, why do you have to point it out? So uncouth. Jesus says “Lazarus come out!” and happy ending.

Finally, Mary is also known to pour perfume on Jesus’s feet and anoint him with her hair. Like her actions in the first part of the story, this is very brave and insightful of her. Also, it is noted that Martha is serving the disciples when this happens. Be like Mary. Once again implied – don’t be like Martha.

OK, so that was a little tongue-in-cheek, but truly it’s not far off from my understanding of these two women. I have always identified more with Martha than Mary. I can say I am going to finish my BSF lesson or journal, but before I sit down, I’ll just need to put the clothes in the dryer or start dinner or run the vacuum. One thing leads to another and suddenly it’s time to head to carpool or it’s past my bedtime. I know I should be more like Mary, but somehow I default to Martha-mode every time. And because Mary is the hero of the story as I have told it to myself, I am tempted to believe that Jesus loves the Marys and tolerates the Marthas – Marthas like me.

But through the study, lectures, and notes from our BSF lesson on John 11 last week, I am starting to see how Martha is more than a cautionary tale; in fact, I realized that her siblings are not the only ones that Jesus loves. Jesus loves Martha, too.

My teaching leader pointed out that the sisters send a message to Jesus that is simple and to the point: Lord, the one you love is sick. They don’t add any details or give any instructions. Mary and Martha appear to trust that Jesus will help the one he loves. The BSF notes also pointed out something I had never heard before. The notes suggest that based on the timing of the message, Lazarus may have died that same day or even before Jesus received the message. I have always kind of assumed that because the Bible says Jesus stays where he was two more days that he is intentionally waiting to come until Lazarus dies, which just seems kind of mean. Either way, he receives the message and makes plans to head to Bethany in God’s timing, not in the sister’s suggestion.

I thought there was something beautiful about being able to send for Jesus without needing a plan first. We know that Martha is portrayed as the one working hard and taking care of things, but she doesn’t have to orchestrate this part of the crisis – she and Mary just tell Jesus the facts. Nor do the sisters remind Jesus of why he should care. Martha doesn’t give any reasons, like “Lord the one who opened his home to you or the one who donated to your ministry or the one who told all his friends that you are the Messiah…” The only qualification is “the one you love.” What if we did the same? What if we came to Jesus, confident in our identity as his beloved, and just put the situation at his feet? “Lord, the one you love is sick..or sad…or hurt…or lonely…” Just sending that “simple” message to Jesus shifts the weight off of our shoulders and onto His. In this situation, Martha and Mary both seem to get it right.

My brother-in-law and the BSF notes also drew out a different perspective on Jesus’s interactions with each woman after he arrives in Bethany. First, Martha is the one who gets up and runs to Jesus first. Mary stays put. Maybe she was too sad to move, maybe she was the one who was angry with Jesus – we aren’t privy to the reason. But Martha gets to Jesus first and says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” I have always read that as an angry accusation. As a person who has been hurt and confused by Jesus’ inaction when someone I love died, I don’t blame her for asking, even in anger. But the notes suggest that “this if/only statement should not be seen as a rebuke of her Lord. Martha expressed deep sorrow with confidence that Jesus could have prevented her brother’s death.” Martha knows that Jesus could have intervened and does not question that he would have, had he only made it in time.

But Jesus doesn’t leave Martha swimming in regrets and “if onlys.” He starts right where she is and then engages her intellectually. He knows how to talk to Martha and how to help her in this moment of despair. He reveals himself as the resurrection and the life and guides her from “if only” to “I know” to “I believe.” The BSF notes go on to explain: “Our faith often stumbles when we lament the past or enumerate what did not happen…Like Martha, we can mourn the past and feel paralyzed in the present, even when we cognitively believe God’s promises for the future…What promise is God calling you to believe, not just to provide distant future hope but to find strength for today?”

Once Martha is strengthened by belief, she goes to tell Mary that Jesus is asking for her. When Mary comes out, we find Jesus engaging her emotionally, not intellectually. As my brother-in-law pointed out in his lecture, Jesus doesn’t come at Mary with words of comfort, only his presence and compassion. It is at this point in the story we get verse 35, famous for its brevity and profound in its meaning. “Jesus wept.” He could not hold back the tears, despite the miracle that was moments away.

Studying this passage and focusing on Jesus throughout the story was a very timely exercise. Right now, we are in the ten weeks of the year that hold the most heartache. There are always days during January, February, and March when I don’t operate at full capacity. In fact, today is one of them. I don’t know why. Nothing in particular is going on, just a cloudy day in February. I have tried to go about my business today, but I keep finding myself staring off into space and wondering how the world can be so full of heartache.

Looking back at Martha and Jesus’s first interaction helps me to know that Jesus loves me, even on the days when the weight of missing Ethan keeps me from “getting things done.” He is troubled when his followers are grieving, including me. The story of Lazarus shows that “the things that make us sad move Jesus’s heart” (BSF notes). I can just say, “Lord the one you love is sad today” – no explanation or qualifications required – and, amazingly, the God of the universe is moved by my sorrow and meets me in it.

And when the “if onlys” increase in frequency and intensity as we approach March 10th, I can remember how Jesus gently led Martha back to what she knew and ultimately what she believed about him. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul tell us what this statement means for those who are are “asleep” like Lazarus and for those who mourn them:

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

The final time we see Martha in the book of John is in chapter 12. John briefly mentions that she was at her house six days before Passover, serving Jesus, Lazarus, and the disciples. While the men are reclining at the table, Mary pours out her expensive perfume and annoints Jesus’s feet. There is not a rebuke for Martha this time. Judas is the one to try and get Mary into trouble with Jesus, who defends her actions again. I have to think that Martha’s heart was different during this dinner. I think my heart is different now, too. Martha and I have come into a deeper realization of who Jesus is through our experiences with grief. The following song is one that I have listened to on repeat the last few years. I wonder if it might have resonated with Martha as well. Martha, the one Jesus loves after all.

Braver Still
I never saw it coming
There was no way to prepare
The world kept spinning 'round me
And left me standing there
And it's okay to grieve
A life that could not be
I'm trying to believe
In something better
Even if the dreams I had turned into dust
There's no wreckage that's too broken to rebuild
The world is just as scary as I thought it was
But Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver
I spent my whole life running
Trying to find a place to rest
Why did it take a wound like this
To let You hold me to Your chest?
Now I can hear You breathe
You're singing over me
You're making me believe
In something better
Even if the dreams I had turned into dust
There's no wreckage that's too broken to rebuild
The world is just as scary as I thought it was
But Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver
There is a valley
Where shadows are covering everything I hold dear
There in the darkness
I hear You whispering "I am here"
Even if the dreams I had turned into dust
There's no wreckage that's too broken to rebuild
The world is just as scary as I thought it was
But Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver

-JJ Heller

Posted on May 19, 2023 by walkingintheshadowlands

Tracing the Rainbow Through the Rain

Ethan’s Mom: Each year, Bible Study Fellowship sets aside the last week of our class for “Share Day.” This is a week where all class members are invited to share what God has taught them over the course of the last eight months of intensive personal and small group Bible study. It provides a sense of celebration and of closure for the study. This year has been an intense one: People of the Promised Land: Kingdom Divided. This study has brought us through 15 different books of the Old Testament, as we studied the period of Israel’s history after King Solomon through the fall of Judah to the Babylonians in 587 BC.

The material was more intimidating, but the fellowship and bonding in our discussion group was the same as previous years. Saying goodbye to the group you have walked alongside since September is always difficult. This year, however, is even more of an ending than usual for me. Next year, I am going to transfer from the daytime women’s class to the nighttime women’s class. The daytime class has a program for babies and preschool children; the evening class has a program for school aged children and teenagers. Next year, I, my husband, and four big kids will all attend BSF together, in different small groups but meeting in the same host church. I am confident this is a transition that needs to be made, but goodbyes are always hard, even if they are right.

As I reflect on the ending of this study, my time with this class, and my role as a group leader, a verse from our study of Isaiah comes to mind. In Isaiah 25:1 the prophet says, “LORD, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.” This post is my way of exalting God as I reflect and process through the ending of this study, my time with this BSF class, and my role as a group leader.

In a way, it is also a way of looking back and taking stock of my journey of healing this far. Saying goodbye to my BSF class feels very weighty because so much of my story as Ethan’s mom is all tangled up with my experience with BSF. I attended an orientation class in April 2016 to register myself, a 3 year old, and a 1 year old for the next year’s study. When I returned to the host church in August 2016, I brought my 3 year old, 1 year old, and a surprise set of twins in utero. BSF was one of the places I carried Ethan during our short time together.

The study in 2016-2017 was the book of John, and my group leader was Laurie. Our small group met in the Media Room of the church, surrounded by giant rolls of paper and baskets of craft supplies. After discussing the lesson, we would move to the sanctuary to hear the teaching leader’s lecture. That very first lecture included encouragement to remain faithful to studying God’s Word even when it didn’t make sense or left you with unanswered questions. Just act on what you do know and keep going. Those words have come back to me several times since that first lecture.

Studying John was a gift. The gospel of John has some distinctions from the three synoptic gospels, including the seven “I am” statements. That fall, I got to know Jesus in a deeper and more personal way by studying this particular book using the four step method of BSF. In the coming spring, I would need to draw on that knowledge more than I could have ever anticipated. I needed to know who He was in order to face the future that held unspeakable tragedy.

My group was also a blessing to me from day one. I was very nervous about the twins being born very prematurely, as I had issues with premature labor with all three preceding pregnancies. Laurie told me she was going to pray that the babies would make it to 36 weeks. I thought that was pretty optimistic but appreciated the sentiment. Just after the New Year, my boys were born at 36 weeks.

Two months later, Laurie and a couple of others showed up at our house with a huge basket of toys for the kids and gift cards to all manner of kid-friendly takeout or drive-through restaurants. I was so touched that they would see the kids’ needs as well as mine. Some ladies joined our meal train. Laurie watched #4 so that Ethan’s dad and I could visit the cemetery alone. One of the group members even took me out for a massage that summer, knowing from personal experience that grief is surprisingly physical in its manifestation.

Remember the teaching leader’s encouragement to just keep at it, even when you don’t understand? I returned to class much sooner than I think people expected. Just do what you know to do — well, by then what I knew and found value in was doing my lesson and attending class every Tuesday. The first week, our group was combined with another group due to Laurie being out. After the other ladies headed down to lecture, my group members circled up and prayed for me. I mean they prayed FOR me — I couldn’t even say “Dear God” much less speak any sort of coherent prayer, and they stepped in to offer prayers that I literally could not pray but wanted so badly to say.

The next week, our Scripture reading included the passage about Jesus’ burial. One of the questions was, “why do you think it was important that Jesus was buried?” I surprised myself by sharing my answer. “As a person who has recently spent a lot of time at a graveside, it is very important to me that he was buried.” As strange as it sounds, studying that passage of Jesus’ burial was the most meaningful thing I could have read soon after burying my son. I’m sure we went on to have meaningful discussions about the resurrection, but what stands out to me is that week we talked about how Jesus’ friends cared for his body and mourned the loss of his life.

The next study was Romans, from the fall of 2017 to the spring of 2018. To be honest, this is the year that is the fuzziest in my mind. I think that makes sense, as most of my physical, emotional, and spiritual energy was spent on survival. However, I think the gift of this study was a systematic, rational review of some of the basic doctrines of my faith. When I was questioning everything I thought I knew about God, I worked through a structured study of the New Testament’s longest book on Christian theology. It addressed my questions on a macro-level (Why do we deserve death? What is God’s plan for us?) so that I could begin to process through them on a micro-level (Why did this happen to my child? What is God’s plan for him? For me?).

In 2018-2019, I completed my first Old Testament study with BSF. This study was known at the time as People of the Promised Land I, and it covered the period from when Joshua led the people through the Jordan River to the Promised Land through the reign of King Solomon. This coincided with my experience at the inCompete Retreat, which I have referred to often on this blog because it was a definite turning point for me. I remember working on my BSF lesson while at the retreat, and it was about Joshua placing his foot on the neck of his enemies foreshadowing Jesus’ ultimate victory over death. God had promised the Israelites victory and possession of the Promised Land; however, they still had to fight the battle. That was analogous to my stage of healing — God had promised to bind up my wounds, but I had to participate in the healing process. God had promised to be with me in the battle to overcome the effects of trauma in my body, mind, and spirit, but I needed to start “doing the work.”

Part of that work was re-engaging with people and pushing back out of my comfort zone, which had shrunk substantially after Ethan died. So when I was asked to take on a leadership role in the next year’s study, I agreed with a good deal of hesitation. By this time, I was completely sold on the format and method of BSF and was really looking forward to facilitating a group discussion and participating in the weekly leaders’ meetings. I knew I wanted our group to be a safe place to share, but I didn’t know how much personally I should share about Ethan in a group of young mothers. That actually has been a concern each year I have served as a leader, but the first year was the most intimidating. This post details the circumstances surrounding the beginning of the year, and I found God to be faithful in equipping me to minister from within my “prison” throughout the entire year. I discovered that I really enjoyed being a GL and that, with God’s help, I actually did a pretty good job in that position.

The spring we studied Acts was the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. After evaluating all the risks and necessary precautions, our BSF class went virtual for the 2020-2021 study of Genesis. My group that year was surprisingly close, given that we never met each other in person until the last day of class when I hosted a lunch to celebrate the end of the year. I remember telling one girl, “Wow! I had no idea you were so tall!” It’s hard to gauge height while people are in a tiny square on your computer. This was one of two years when I really felt like my experiences with grief and loss were directly helpful to some of my group members. Genesis was an interesting study, and I really learned a lot from my group members and their perspectives. As an example of my many “light bulb moments” was the realization that I had always read Genesis 3:13 with a punitive tone in God’s voice, like I sound when I discover permanent marker on my freshly painted living room walls. But during the discussion, one member said, “What is this you have done?” with hurt, not anger, in her voice. Since then, I have tried to be aware of the tone of voice I hear when I read Scripture, trying out different emotions as I read tricky passages to see what fits into the immediate context and what we know about God’s character. Throughout the year, we persevered through technical difficulties and toddler photobombers, and I saw God answer some big prayers and use his people to encourage each other in profound ways.

For our Matthew study in 2021-2022, we were back in person and back in the New Testament. If studying John grew my love for Jesus, studying Matthew grew my respect for him. Jesus was truly an amazing teacher; he always had the right words, illustrations, and posture in dealings with a wide range of people. Several lessons helped me wrestle with some hurtful events at my church — allowing me to see the sin in my heart that has played a role and reminders that deepest needs are met by Jesus even when his followers get it wrong.

Another overarching theme was the upside-down kingdom of God. My group experienced this reality in a tangible and unforgettable way. Just before our first class, the substitute teaching leader let me know that one of my group members had received the results of prenatal testing that morning and was carrying a baby with Down syndrome. Walking through this study while she was absorbing this reality and preparing for her baby’s arrival was a high privilege. And even as this friend was wrestling through some difficult feelings, she encouraged me that my story, Ethan’s story, mattered. My group even brought me a hydrangea to class on March 1st, which fell on a Tuesday. It is planted in our Ethan garden at home.

Ten days later, this precious baby entered the world at 12:01 a.m. on March 10th. That was too much of a coincidence to not mean something, but it was a lot to process, especially when she ended up with the same heart defect as well. Her birthday is a sign to me that God will one day fully redeem that day, and her story of healing reminds me that God will fully heal all his children in due time. Through BSF and our study of Matthew, Baby E. and Ethan’s lives will be intertwined with each other in God’s beautiful story of redemption until His Kingdom comes in full.

I will go into details about this year in a second post, as this entry is already too long and I need space to work through some complex thoughts related to the Kingdom Divided. Spoiler alert: I am going to revisit a recurring theme on this blog and dive into a paradox. For now, I want to conclude this post by stepping back to take a view over the whole landscape of the past seven years.

I am amazed by all that I have learned and experienced through BSF since 2016. Not to mention what a blessing it has been to my children, which would be a whole other post. It hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes a comment during a discussion was hurtful, sometimes people’s personalities clashed, and sometimes the topic for the week seemed like really bad timing. I have been forced to look straight into the face of my grief more times than I can count, whether at home completing my lesson, in the group discussion, or in lecture. But just like setting a broken bone, pain is part of the healing, too.

God has used it all in his relentless pursuit of my heart — both my idolatrous, selfish, sinful heart and my wounded, doubting, grieving heart. Just like the people of Israel, I am tempted to forget God’s past faithfulness, both because of my sin and my loss. But Love did not let me go. He prepared for me to encounter His Word and His people through my local BSF Day Women’s Class during this portion of my journey in the Shadowlands, and I will forever be grateful.

O Love that Wilt Not Let Me Go

O Love that will not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in thee.

I give thee back the life I owe,

that in thine ocean depths its flow

may richer, fuller be.

O Light that follows all my way,

I yield my flick’ring torch to thee.

My heart restores its borrowed ray,

that in thy sunshine’s blaze its day

may brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,

I cannot close my heart to thee.

I trace the rainbow through the rain,

and feel the promise is not vain,

that morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,

I dare not ask to fly from thee.

I lay in dust, life’s glory dead,

and from the ground there blossoms red,

life that shall endless be.
George Matheson

Posted on May 20, 2022 by walkingintheshadowlands

Blessed are the Pure in Heart

Ethan’s Mom: We have participated in baby dedications for each of our five children. Our church allows for special moments to present the new baby, acknowledge the family’s commitment to teach the child about God, and ask that the congregation participate in the spiritual formation of the child. Some of the details differ based on the pastor or children’s minister involved, but they always included a presentation of a certificate and a tiny New Testament. Early on, I asked our children’s minister at that time if Ethan could still get a New Testament, and she assured me he could and suggested we do a full baby dedication for both boys, just as we would if Ethan was still living.

One thing we had to decide in preparing for the dedication was what Bible verses we wanted to designate as special “life verses” for each baby. This can be a bit intimidating under normal circumstances, but finding an appropriate verse for Ethan’s dedication was even more daunting. Ethan’s dad was the one who came up with the one that felt right:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Matthew 5:8

As with many things in the Bible, there are multiple layers to this verse. The Beatitudes in particular are more complex than they appear. This verse reminds us that Ethan, being pure in heart, is in the presence of God right now. He can see God.

But I hadn’t considered how this verse might also speak to another way Ethan’s life and death has changed me until studying the Beatitudes at BSF earlier this year.

I believe I have written before about counseling and how that has been an important part of healing for me. One thing that I particularly appreciate is how my counselor pushes me to grow more comfortable with the mystery of God. She has helped me work through anger that was preventing me from seeing ways that “heaven and earth collide,” as she says. While anger is an expected and understandable emotion, getting stuck in it leads to bitterness. When bitterness was taking root in my heart, I was blinded to the miracles that were happening around me, even in the darkest of valleys.

When giving his BSF lecture on Matthew 5, my brother-in-law compared looking for God with sin in our hearts to looking through a dirty windshield. When we repent of the sin which clouds our view, we can see God more clearly. That illustration has stayed with me because it was such an accurate description of my own experience. The BSF notes beautifully describe what it is like to see through a “clear windshield”:

“The pure in heart will see God today. They find Him in the Scripture they read daily. They look for God’s handiwork in daily events and nature. They recognize God’s image imprinted upon their neighbor, their spouse, their child, and themselves. They recognize God’s Spirit moving in the seemingly mundane and in miraculously life-changing moments.”

Here is a particularly mundane example from recent memory. One day during the heavy season from January to March, I went on a much needed walk. It was one of those walks that ended up having a lot of running portions to work out some pent up emotions, and I was getting low on both energy and hope as I huffed and puffed up a hill at the end of my route. A fellow runner approached and called out to me, “This hill sucks, but you’re doing great!” Maybe it sounds strange, but I immediately had a feeling that this message of encouragement was not really about running up a hill, nor was it really from a fellow runner. I truly believe it was a message from God to encourage me through the coming months of intensified grief, which it did.

Being a mother to Ethan has taught me more about seeing God than any other single experience in my life. I cannot look at the falling leaves, seeds, flowers, dragonflies, or lightning bugs in the same way again. I catch my breath when a train whistles at the exact moment I need to hear one. There are simply too many examples to list.

A precious baby with a hole in his heart has helped me learn about the importance of being pure in heart and looking for God everywhere, even in the deepest pain and darkest nights. Truly, this is our Father’s world, and God does “shine in all that’s fair” — if we have hearts to see.

“This is my Father’s world,
And to my list’ning ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.

“This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas—
His hand the wonders wrought.

“This is my Father’s world:
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.

“This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.

“This is my Father’s world:
Oh, let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.

“This is my Father’s world,
The battle is not done:
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.”

Posted on April 17, 2021 by walkingintheshadowlands · 2 Comments

Springtime in Ethan’s Garden

Ethan’s Mom: Happy Eastertide – here we are on the “other side” of the event that changes everything, Jesus’ death and resurrection. As expected, March was difficult, but again, I was surprised by the different manifestation it took this year. For some reason, I found myself really struggling to respond to the acknowledgements of friends and family when that hasn’t been an issue before. Sometimes the bereaved struggle to find words just as much as those who seek to comfort them. So if you are reading this, know that I read every text/email/card multiple times, and they each brought comfort to my heart. My precious sister-in-law expressed a desire to “take a little patch of the weeds and tear them down” in reference to the figurative language from my last post. Truly, knowing that people remembered Ethan, prayed for us, reached out to us, and said his name did keep the weeds from completely taking over. Thank you.

Yesterday, God lifted my gaze away from the weeds and onto the beauty of the garden. Our BSF study notes stated this week, “…if God takes away what we treasure, we can trust that His loving care and faithfulness will go with us into life with the loss…If something you once held dear is gone, how has God met your deepest needs?” I had to think about that one for a few days. One of our deepest needs as Ethan’s parents is to know that his life mattered. Another is reassurance of God’s love and design for us, which includes the consummation of His redemptive plan at Christ’s return. Both of these needs were met in a sweet experience at our kids’ preschool this week.

After Ethan died, family and friends who wanted to make a donation in his memory contributed to the preschool our children have attended, which is also a ministry of our church. In fact, many of the teachers have come to feel like extended family as they have cared for at least one of our children each year for the last decade. In 2017, our middle two children were in the crawler and 3K classrooms, and the school did so much in taking care of them (and us!) in special ways during that very difficult spring. Two years later, they welcomed Ethan’s twin brother to school and acknowledged our pain of not dropping off two boys to their first day of 2K.

It took a while to decide on something to do with the fund that would be both meaningful and useful. But eventually, both the preschool director and I came up with the same idea – a garden. The money was used to buy materials to rehab a small section of landscaping on the playground into Ethan’s Garden. Two master gardeners from our church (one of whom planted our backyard Ethan’s Garden) prepared the soil and planted a Japanese maple tree and a row of Lenten roses along the back. In the summer of 2019, Ethan’s Garden was dedicated in a small ceremony attended by preschool staff, church family, and other friends and family. Ethan’s dad made a beautiful speech, and I led everyone in “A Liturgy for the Planting of Flowers” from Every Moment Holy Volume I. We then planted flowers while a friend sang “Hymn of Promise.” It was a beautiful and bittersweet ceremony.

Yesterday we planted petunias with the 3K class that our boys should be in together. The children experienced God’s creation as they dug holes, scooped dirt, and watered the new plants. As we smelled the fresh leaves, felt the moist soil, and observed the delicate roots, we talked with the children about how God satisfies the needs of each flower with sun, rain, and nutrients from the soil. Some asked about the caboose bird feeder in the center, and we told them it was a reminder of our son. I think it was a special experience for the children; it certainly was for me.

After the children went back inside, Ethan’s dad and I read the same liturgy from the garden’s dedication. These words brought tears to my eyes:

“[These flowers] are a warrant and a witness, each blossom shouting from the earth that death is a lie, that beauty and immortality are what we were made for. They are heralds of a restoration that will forever mend all sorrow and comfort all grief.”

After the darkness and doubts of the past several weeks, I needed the testimony of these delicate witnesses. Through them, God met my need for a reminder of his faithfulness.

The liturgy then moves on to a request for God’s blessings on the newly planted flowers and closes with this benediction:

“Let these flowers, O Lord, bear witness in their deepest natures to eternal things. Let our lives also, O Lord, do the same. Amen.”

As Ethan’s dad said at the garden’s dedication, “it is our hope and prayer that a tiny mental seed will be planted of God speaking to [the children] about life and growth and how death is not the end of the story: that God gives new life to all who believe in Jesus.” These flowering witnesses were planted in a garden created because of Ethan. His short life bears witness in its deepest nature to eternal things — on the playground, in our home, and in my heart. God used this small garden to show me that Ethan’s life mattered and matters still as God uses him to bear witness to His love, just like the flowers in a springtime garden.

Springtime by Chris Renzema

You’re the resurrection
That we’ve waited for
You buried the night
And came with the morning
You’re the King of Heaven
The praise is Yours
The longer the quiet
The louder the chorus

We will sing a new song
‘Cause death is dead and gone with the winter
We will sing a new song
Let “Hallelujah’s” flow like a river
We’re coming back to life
Reaching toward the light
Your love is like springtime

You’re the living water
God, we thirst for You
The dry and the barren
Will flower and bloom
You’re the sun that’s shining
You restore my soul
The deeper You call us
Oh, the deeper we’ll go

We will sing a new song
‘Cause death is dead and gone with the winter
We will sing a new song
Let “Hallelujah’s” flow like a river
We’re coming back to life
Reaching toward the light
Your love is like springtime

Come tend the soil
Come tend the soil of my soul
And like a garden
And like a garden I will grow
I will grow

We will sing a new song
‘Cause death is dead and gone with the winter
We will sing a new song
Let “Hallelujah’s” flow like a river
We’re coming back to life
Reaching toward the light
Your love is like springtime

Posted on August 10, 2019August 10, 2019 by walkingintheshadowlands · 1 Comment

Lament for the End of Summer

Ethan’s Mom: In one week, my children here on earth will go back to school — all four of them. As I have mentioned in a previous post, back-to-school time is difficult for me, and this is the year when I will send Ethan’s twin brother to preschool for the first time. There was no decision on whether to place them in the same or different classes (I would have totally advocated the same class for as long as possible). They won’t be known as “the twins” to their classmates’ parents. There are no matching backpacks waiting to be filled with lunchboxes. Would Ethan have loved PB&J as much as his brother or would I have to pack them different food? How cute would our three musketeers have looked marching down the preschool hallway together to their 2K and 4K classes?

Summer is drawing to a close, and I am sad to see it go. We have had a nice balance of fun adventures and lazy times this summer. Nothing makes me as happy as being with my people, even though they often drive me crazy. I am not ready for it to end.

I don’t want to fill out all the back to school forms listing siblings and ages. I don’t want to make small talk at parents’ night or meet the teacher. I don’t want to leave Ethan further behind.

But I just recently realized that it’s not just back to school looming on the horizon. I’m at the top of the hill on the roller coaster, closing my eyes before I hurtle down and wishing I never got on this ride.

The hot days of August will fade a little bit and we’ll arrive at my husband’s favorite season — FOOTBALL. We will all dress in our matching college football fan gear, except Ethan. Ethan bear will have to represent on his behalf. The glorious sunshine of October is next, and the leaves on Ethan’s trees will turn colors and fall. The talk will turn to costumes and candy, and I will miss dressing up one precious little boy. The decorations and scariness I hate about Halloween will return. Then we slide into November with its Thanksgiving feasts and handprint turkeys, but the only handprint I will ever have from Ethan was made at the funeral home. Then Christmas and all that holiday cheer, balancing the desire to celebrate with my family here with my need to grieve Ethan’s absence during the “most wonderful time of the year.”

Then the calendar will roll over to a New Year, another one without my little caboose. Winter marches on, and I will cringe every time the weather forecast includes the chance of ice or school is cancelled for snow. We will celebrate the twins’ birthday, full of joy for the gift of their lives even though one was far too short. Finally, the final drop through the 63 days until the anniversary of the worst day of our lives. At the bottom, I will need several weeks to catch my breath and feel the adrenaline dissipate.

Guess what? That puts me back at summer. I miss my baby every single day but there are less of the emotionally intense dates to deal with during the summer. I think that is really what has been bothering me. I am not ready to face any of it again. The first year was, as you would expect, agonizing. People warned me the second year would be just as bad, and it was. But it was bad in totally different ways. I don’t know what to expect in year three, and I don’t like surprises.

I first listened to the music of the Gray Havens at the inComplete Retreat I attended last fall. I laid on the pier in the sunshine with my legs dangling into the lake as the music washed over me that afternoon. I have been reminded of this song over the past week. I can’t get off the roller coaster, but I know one day it will end, even if the ride seems endless now. I am getting better at recognizing the provisional grace given to us along the journey, and I have to believe more is coming our way in the months and years ahead.

Take This Slowly by the Gray Havens

“If I took all that I got
And spread it out on this table
It might not seem like alot
A once glimmering joy
Slowly fading from view
All the change in my pockets, not enough
And this picture of you
Still I’ve heard all that I have
In the moment is hardly a sign
Of everything coming my way
I believe when I need it, it will be mine

So let’s take this slowly
All I need is coming
But it’s just beyond what I can see
So if my eyes press forward in fierce alarm
Just turn my head back to see
To see how we got this far
And I’ll be alright

“I’m not asking for mountains of riches
No silver or gold
Don’t need fame or fancier things
I can’t take when I go
I’m just asking for grace
Grace to carry on
Grace to take joy at my place at the table
And the rock that it’s standing on
Still I’ve heard all that I have
In the moment is hardly a sign
Of everything coming my way
I believe when I need it, it will be mine

So let’s take this slowly
All I need is coming
But it’s just beyond what I can see
So if my eyes press forward in fierce alarm
Just turn my head back to see
To see how we got this far
And I’ll be alright

“And even when I’m broke down
Even when what I’ve got now
Is falling faster down beneath the cracks
And I don’t know when it’s coming back around
Even then I’ll be calling out louder
Loud enough to wake ’em up
Believing I believe I will see it done
I believe what I will hold
What I hold will be enough
Will be enough

“So let’s take this slowly
All I need is coming
But it’s just beyond what I can see
So if my eyes press forward in fierce alarm
Just turn my head back to see
To see how we got, got this far
And I’ll be alright
It’s gonna be alright
It’s gonna be alright
It’s gonna be alright.”

Addendum 8/7/19:

We met the teachers today, and there was grace for that. I am sad, no doubt, but not despairing to the point I cannot also hold the sweet excitement of my 4 kids that had teachers to meet and classmates to greet. It went better than I expected, and I have hope that tomorrow and Friday will as well.

While this grief journey truly changes from moment-to-moment, God’s presence with us does not, no matter how it feels on any given day. Isaiah 43:2 was the “verse of the day” in my email this morning. “I will be with you when you pass through the waters, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. You will not be scorched when you walk through the fire, and the flame will not burn you.” There truly is grace for each moment we walk in the Shadowlands. I want to end this post with another sweet song of God’s provision, Enough by Sara Groves. I pray you know somewhere down in your soul that God’s grace is enough for you today and there will be enough tomorrow.

“Late nights, long hours
Questions are drawn like a thin red line
No comfort left over
No safe harbor in sight

“Really we don’t need much
Just strength to believe
There’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see
In these patches of joy
These stretches of sorrow
There’s enough for today
There will be enough tomorrow

“Upstairs a child is sleeping
What a light in our strain and stress
We pray without speaking
Lord help us wait in kindness

“Really we don’t need much
Just strength to believe
There’s honey in the rock,
There’s more than we see
In these patches of joy
These stretches of sorrow
There’s enough for today
There will be enough tomorrow.”

Posted on April 5, 2019 by walkingintheshadowlands

The Hills and Valleys

Ethan’s Mom: If you have ever read a book, pamphlet, or website about grief, you know that there are “stages of grief.” If you’ve read a few, you likely know that these are not linear stages. You don’t progress neatly through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I never liked the word “acceptance” but that’s probably a topic for another blog post…

So much of the last two years for me has been spent cycling back and forth from “Am I sad enough?” to “How can I survive if I am this sad forever?” It’s particularly frustrating when just a random day becomes heavy under the weight of unexpected grief.

The last few days I have felt anxiety swelling up inside. Sometimes I don’t know what part of that to attribute to my personality, my more generic “mom anxiety”, or to grief. I know sometimes when I am too busy, the emotions build up. Apparently you can put grief on hold but it will have it’s way eventually. It particularly doesn’t help when regular stress compounds the feelings. For instance, Ethan’s twin brother has in the past 10 days (over our spring break road trip, no less) chewed through his pacifier and climbed out of his crib. Thus, my youngest child at home is sleeping his second night in a toddler bed upstairs as I write this. The transition to a big bed is never smooth, and indeed last night there was a lot of crying and waking. That is stressful anyway, but then you add the layer of “how would we do this with 2 two-year olds? Would they be getting up to play or climbing into one bed?” and “These are just more milestones I’ll never experience with Ethan, everyone is just leaving him in the past.” It’s not an overt, stop-me-in-my-tracks pain but more of a generalized cloud over me.

As much as I have heard the stages of grief are not sequential, predictable, or linear, I have always thought of the imagery of the valley as talking about a period of time where the pain is intense and the grief is overwhelming. And certainly, the darkest valley of my life was the first two weeks of March two years ago. Nothing else comes close. Yet, these smaller dips in the pathway can be so challenging in their own right. The little valleys are all but invisible to outsiders and often completely unexpected. No one could have anticipated that the last few days would be tough for me when I had no idea myself.

On the way home from BSF I was pondering our discussion about the Proverbs 31 woman. Our leader encouraged us not to think about this passage as a to-do list or worse, a list of ways we don’t measure up. She reminded us that God sees us every time we serve our family, even if no one else does. She told us that El Roi, the God who Sees, is one of her favorite names of God. This brought to mind a book I am reading with a small group of women over six weeks this spring, Sensible Shoes. One of the characters has a tattoo of an eye on her wrist. The original meaning was to remind her of El Roi, the God who saw her when she was a young single mother in desperate circumstances. Over time, the eye turned from a loving gaze to a judgmental all-seeing eye watching her mess up over and over. The storyline for her character includes how she is learning how God really does see her and truly loves her both because of and in spite of who she is.

As I was pondering the idea of El Roi in my present circumstances, “Hills and Valleys” by Tauren Wells came on the car radio. It was such an encouraging reminder that I am not alone. When I was 14, I spent the summer at a far away camp where I didn’t know a soul. On a particularly lonely day, I received a note from my dear Grandmom that said, “Remember, we Christians are never alone.” On many, many occasions since then, I have recalled that note, written in her slightly messy handwriting and signed with her trademark phrase, “Don’t forget you’re loved.”

Instead of worrying about stages of grief or progress or setbacks, I am realizing I should be focused on climbing hills, trudging through valleys, and taking things a step at a time, always grateful for El Roi and the people he has placed in my life to walk alongside me on this journey. It’s not always easy to believe, but no matter where I am or how I feel, I am not alone and I am loved.

“I’ve walked among the shadows
You wiped my tears away
And I’ve felt the pain of heartbreak
And I’ve seen the brighter days
And I’ve prayed prayers to heaven from my lowest place
And I have held the blessings
God, you give and take away

“No matter what I have, Your grace is enough
No matter where I am, I’m standing in Your love

“On the mountains, I will bow my life
To the one who set me there
In the valley, I will lift my eyes to the one who sees me there
When I’m standing on the mountain aft, didn’t get there on my own
When I’m walking through the valley end, no I am not alone!

“You’re God of the hills and valleys
Hills and Valleys
God of the hills and valleys
And I am not alone”

Posted on December 19, 2018 by walkingintheshadowlands · 3 Comments

When Love Refrains: What Else the Story of Lazarus Tells us about God

Lazarus 1 Ethan’s Dad: My wife has mentioned in this space before that sitting in church can be a trying experience for us. We never know when a song, a prayer, or a statement made in Sunday School banter might open the floodgates of sadness that reside within us from losing Ethan. Of course, this is also true in everyday encounters, but we have found that the likelihood of it occurring is magnified in church because mortality and miracles are topics of discussion in church much more often than in everyday life.

One of those occasions occurred this past Sunday when our pastor was giving a sermon titled “Who is Jesus.” It was part of a series he has been doing in which he has listed three descriptions of Jesus in each sermon and expounded upon them. The first of those descriptions this past Sunday was that Jesus is “the resurrection and the life.” This is a description Jesus gave about himself that is recorded in the book of John, chapter 11, that tells the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. In one part of the story, Jesus has a captivating conversation with Martha, the brother of Lazarus. Just after Martha informed Jesus that Lazarus has died, Jesus said:

“Your brother will rise again.”

“Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He would believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’

“‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, who was to come into the world.’” (John 11:23-27)

Our pastor was, of course, right that Jesus’s pronouncement about himself in this passage is foundational to the Christian life because it revealed to Martha (and all who would later read those words) who Jesus was in the grandest eternal sense and what they must do to inherit eternal life, which was simply to believe in who He really was. My problem was not with the pastor’s reference to this exchange or to the story of Lazarus in general. My issue was with the pastor’s use of something Martha said right before this part of their conversation.

When Martha first heard that Jesus had arrived in Bethany — the town where she, her sister Mary, and Lazarus had lived — she said to him, “Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (v. 21). To fully understand this comment, you have to know that several days earlier Martha and Mary had sent Jesus a message informing Him that Lazarus was sick, and they no doubt had expected Jesus to come quickly to Lazarus’s aid. Instead, Jesus arrived in Bethany four days after Lazarus had died. Jesus’s delay piled confusion on top of the crushing grief Martha was feeling because of her brother’s death.

Our pastor chose to focus on those two little words near the beginning of Martha’s statement: “if only.” The pastor did a riff on how we all have “if only” times in our lives, i.e, times when we believe that things could have been different if only God had acted or if only we had made a different choice. He made some statement about how, in thinking this way, we are often more focused on temporal things while God is concerned with eternal matters. Again, that is a true statement in itself (to a degree). And I believe the pastor’s point was that whatever those “if only” moments might be in our lives, Jesus is the ultimate answer to them because He is the resurrection and the life.

Now, as I have said, I had no theological problem with any of this in the abstract. My issue was that as soon as the pastor started talking about “if only” moments, my mind (and my wife’s) immediately veered to March 10, 2017, and that horrific period when we literally screamed for God to save our precious Ethan. We begged; we pleaded; we cried oceans of tears. . . . And nothing happened.

So, here is the thing about Martha’s statement that the pastor chose to gloss over: she was right. If Jesus had been there before Lazarus had died, He could have saved Lazarus from death. Indeed, in all likelihood Martha had seen Jesus do it before for total strangers. All she was wondering was: why didn’t Jesus come earlier and save His friend Lazarus? And is that really such a bad thing to wonder about?

I don’t think so. For one thing, Jesus did not rebuke Martha in any way for her implied question. In fact, if she had not wondered about it, I think it would mean that Martha did not really believe that Jesus was who He said He was. But we know this isn’t true because Martha gave not one, but two great statements of faith. Right after Martha made her “if only” statement, she said: “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” (v. 22). And then when Jesus asks her if she believes that He is the resurrection and the life, Martha responds unequivocally: “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who was to come into the world.” (v. 27).

As one who has been where Martha was, in the throes somber grief, I have to say that this is a wonderful testimony on her part. The Holy Spirit must have encouraged her, but it is truly admirable that Martha did not let her deep sorrow swallow her faith in Jesus at that moment. The sincerity of Martha’s faith practically explodes off the page because of the palpably desperate moment in which she expresses those statements. It is not unlike that moment when a thief hanging on a cross, in the midst of excruciating agony, expressed his faith in Jesus even as Jesus was on a cross right beside him (Luke 23:40-43), or when Stephen asked the Lord to forgive his executioners as they stone him and he proclaimed that he saw Jesus standing at God’s right hand in heaven. (Acts 7:54-60). To proclaim Jesus as Lord when doubt has enveloped the heart and darkness is one’s sole companion: those are the testimonies that speak most to me because I know first-hand how difficult it becomes in that lonely place to cling to this truth.

But as commendable as Martha’s faith is, do not lose sight of the fact that, at the same time, she questioned Jesus’s timing. For faith and questions are not incompatible; they are, in a sense, inseparable. We do not continue to learn about who Jesus is if we do not keep wondering about why things must be the way they are. For Jesus is “the author and perfecter of our faith,” (Hebrews 12:2), where “perfect” really means “finish” or “complete.” Our faith must mature, and it only does so when we probe and ask Jesus to show us who He is, just as Martha did. And I think the answer she received stretched beyond her imagination, because how could one really conceive that Jesus was going to call Lazarus forth out of that tomb, and that Lazarus would actually walk out of it as if nothing at all had happened to him?

So as I sat there in the pew now only half listening to the rest of the sermon, I kept poring over this story about Lazarus, a story like the widow of Zarephath, which inevitably causes a believer who loses someone close to him or her to wonder, just as Martha did: Why didn’t you save him, Lord? And I am not afraid to confess that I did not receive an answer. But what I did see was something I had never noticed before in all my years of being told about and then reading this story. It was this: Doing this was really hard for Jesus.

I don’t mean the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Indeed, the remarkable thing is that that was the easy part for Jesus. For Jesus, raising Lazarus was no different than restoring a blind man’s sight or causing a lame man to walk or walking on water. Certainly, it seemed different to everyone else, but for the One “through whom all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,” resurrection is not difficult. (Colossians 1:16; see also John 1:3).

No, what was really difficult for Jesus was not saving Lazarus before he died. Go back to when Martha and Mary first sent their message to Jesus telling Him that Lazarus was sick. John 11:3 says: “So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’” Martha and Mary knew Jesus would understand that they were talking about Lazarus, which tells us that Jesus and Lazarus must have been extremely close friends. Jesus responded to this message by saying: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” (v. 4). This response, though somewhat cryptic at this point in the story, tells us that something bigger was going on than anyone could really understand.

But then John decides to give the reader an interesting side note.

“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Yet, when He heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where He was two more days.” (vv. 5-6).

This note drives home the point that Jesus loved all three of these people very much, and yet He did not do what everyone would think He would do and rush to see Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. No, instead, Jesus essentially decided to kill time with his Disciples while Martha and Mary watched their brother suffer and die. Despite appearances, this isn’t callousness; it is the exact opposite: it is unfathomable love. John is telling us that Jesus really wanted to rush to Lazarus’s side, but that for the sake of something greater, He had to wait.

This point is reinforced again when Jesus said to his Disciples: “Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.” (vv. 14-15). Jesus says He is glad for their sakes, not His own, because if this was just about His personal feelings, He would not have allowed Lazarus to die. Jesus was also acknowledging here that if He had been there, He would have healed Lazarus rather than letting him die. Think about it: where in the Gospels is there a time when Jesus refused an in-person request for healing? He certainly would not have refused to heal if He was standing before his dear friends watching Lazarus suffer. So, Jesus did not go right away because He knew what had to happen — Lazarus dying — and that it would not have happened if He had gone to them sooner.

John decides to make very sure the reader does not miss how difficult this was for Jesus by noting that when Jesus saw Mary and her friends weeping near Lazarus’s tomb, “He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled,” (v. 33). And then he observes that “Jesus wept” when He saw Lazarus’s tomb. (v. 35). The word “troubled” that is used in verse 33 is the same root word Jesus later used in the Garden of Gesthsemane to describe His spirit in its agony before the crucifixion. And yet again, just before Jesus raises Lazarus, John notes that “Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb.” (v. 38).

John (God, really) is practically begging his readers recognize that Lazarus’s death precipitated intense pain for Jesus. Jesus understood that allowing Lazarus to die had caused great pain and grief for people He loved very much. Jesus weeps for the real anguish that is present even though He is about to remove the reason for it by raising Lazarus from the dead.

In the same way, I believe that God weeps for us in our sorrow for Ethan’s loss. God knows that Ethan is with Him and that He will raise Ethan again for us to see one day, but He also knows that there is real and genuine suffering caused right now by Ethan’s absence. He knows that torment because Jesus lived it. The fact that Jesus is the resurrection and the life gives us incredible hope for eternity, but it does not erase our reality of agonizing loss in the here and now. God does not ask us to ignore or diminish that reality because He has shared it.

So God wants us to know that He truly understands our pain and grief. But in this incarnation story, God tells us more than just that He felt as we feel. He tells us that there are times when, in His love, He refrains from acting to save even though it deeply wounds Him to stay His healing hand. In the immediate sense it is not what He wants: God does not enjoy seeing our suffering, and it hurts Him even beyond what we can imagine because He knows that He can help us. But sometimes God chooses “to stay away from Bethany for a couple of days” even as He hears our cries. I do not pretend to know why He makes this choice at some times while at others He rushes to save one in need.

Certainly the answer comes easier in the Lazarus story, for Jesus delayed coming so that He could demonstrate that His power extends even over death itself. Further, Jesus’s raising of Lazarus started to bring the conspiracy against Jesus to a head because the miracle caused a great many more people to believe in Him, and, in turn, the religious leaders resolved that Jesus must be stopped at all cost. So His raising of Lazarus became a part of the chain of events that led to the crucifixion, which caused His death, which precipitates His resurrection, and leads to our redemption.

God’s choice to refrain from acting in our circumstances does not portend such heady consequences — at least so far as I can see. I believe that at least in part the answer to why He sometimes stays His healing hand lies in the fact that this world is corrupted by evil, and in many cases God must let the consequences of that evil play out; otherwise, love and choice do not exist. And part of the answer lies in how suffering occasions examples like Martha who proclaim their belief in Jesus even as they drown in sorrow, and by so doing they embolden others to believe likewise. But those are only partial answers. Right now we know in part, but there will be a time when we will know in full. (See 1 Corinthians 13:12).

Yet, as much as I wonder about a complete answer to the why question, even a full answer would not bring Ethan back. Consequently, for me what is more important is the knowledge that God’s failure to act does not equate to a failure to care. God can simultaneously allow and yet participate in our suffering. In fact, this also happens when people sin. Sin hurts the sinner and often those around him or her. But it also grieves God to see His children participate in evil. Thus, whether the suffering is caused by the world’s brokenness or by human rebellion, God permits pain knowing that it will cause Him intense pain as well, all because of His greater purposes.

In the story of Lazarus Jesus tells us that greater purpose is “God’s glory,” (v. 4) and our eternal lives (v. 25). The stories of our earthly lives take places within that context, and so ultimately we can take lasting comfort in the assurance that the tragedies which befall us — tragedies seen by a God who hurts with us as we experience them — will one day be made right again. One day He will call Ethan forth and we will see him again because Jesus truly is the resurrection and the life.

Posted on October 20, 2018 by walkingintheshadowlands · 1 Comment

Kept for Us

Ethan’s Dad: Last week was somewhat difficult because it included a 10th (as we have mentioned before, Ethan died on March 10, 2017). And on evening of the 10th last week, which was a Wednesday, I was at church helping with my oldest son’s activity group that has age rages from first grade through sixth grade. The leader of the group that night read the kids the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath from 1 Kings 17:7-24.

For those of you unfamiliar with that story, it involves the prophet Elijah’s encounter with an Israelite widow and her son who are starving to death in the midst of a drought and famine brought about as a result God’s punishment against Israel’s evil King Ahab. The part of the story that is repeated most often concerns Elijah asking the widow for some water and bread. She readily gives him water, but she initially hesitates at offering him bread because the widow says that she and her son only have enough ingredients to make bread for one more meal for themselves. Elijah tells her not to be afraid, to make her meal, but to give him some bread first because the Lord had told him that she will always have enough flour and olive oil in her containers to make bread until the day the Lord sends rain and the crops grow again. So, the widow made bread for Elijah, and events unfolded exactly as Elijah had said: “There was always enough flour and olive oil left in the containers, just as the Lord had promised through Elijah.” (verse 16).

That part of the story is usually told as an example of what happens when someone shows faith in the Lord. Indeed, the Wednesday group leader summarized it by saying: “You do what the Lord says and good things happen to you. I am not saying a miracle will always happen, but good things result from obedience.”

The leader then went on to discuss the second part of the story, which is not told as often. 1 Kings 17:17-24 relates that later on the widow’s son somehow became sick and he eventually died. The widow expresses her anguish to Elijah, saying:

“‘O man of God, what have you done to me? Have you come here to point out my sins and kill my son?’

“‘Give me your son,’ Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, ‘Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?’ Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, ‘Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!’

“The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, ‘Look, your son is alive!’

“Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.'”

The group leader did not add much commentary to his reading of this part of the story beyond observing that the widow blamed Elijah even though he had nothing to do with her son’s death, and that God is able to do great things. For the moment, I do not want to focus on the probable meaning of Elijah’s raising of the boy back to life. Instead, I want to convey what hearing a story like that can feel like for someone who has experienced the loss of a child.

We have so far not related the details of Ethan’s death in this space because that is an extraordinarily personal and painful memory. What I will say is that his passing was very sudden, and as it was happening, as efforts were made to resuscitate him, we literally screamed to God to save our child. Immediately after we were told to accept that he was gone, we cried rivers of tears, pleading over and over for the Lord to bring our Ethan back to us.

Nothing happened. His body became cold. His life slipped away. We were left in the dark.

I don’t write that to make you feel sorry for us. I relate it because that is the way it is for many parents who lose a child. And so when you read a story like Elijah’s raising of the widow’s son, what someone in our position immediately starts thinking about is the death of our own child. Why didn’t God bring Ethan back to life? Was it because I did not have enough faith like the widow? Was this a punishment for some unrepentant sin? To many people it is just a Bible story. To us, because we have lived this, it (like so many other stories) takes on an entirely different character.

So, I felt discouraged coming home from church that night. That Friday, the same boys’ church activity group went on a camp out with their dads. All of the kids seemed to enjoy it very much, including our oldest, who caught his first fish during the outing. However, that night while the kids were playing, the men were sitting around the campfire chatting. At one point, for some inexplicable reason, one of the dads turned the conversation to talking about people’s ashes, and urns, and then cemetery plots. I got up and walked away from the fire because the discussion depressed me. What was idle talk to them was nothing to joke around about to me because my youngest son’s body rests in a cemetery. I felt disquieted the rest of the night (and not just because I was sleeping on the ground in a tent).

But then on the following Saturday evening and Sunday morning before church, I was reading the Scripture excerpts for those days from Daily Light for the Daily Path (my copy is in the English Standard Version, unlike most of the online versions which are King James), and some of the verses unfolded into a timely reminder:

“Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10)

“Understand what the will of the Lord is.” (Ephesians 5:17)

“It is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” (Matthew 18:14)

“Christ died and rose and lives again that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” (Romans 14:9)

It was not God’s will that Ethan would die. Sometimes “this present darkness” distorts God’s perfect will in this imperfect world. (Ephesians 6:12). That is not to say that God did not know or could not have prevented Ethan’s death — He certainly did and He definitely could have, but in this instance, evil was allowed to run its course. Yet, this is one of the reasons Christ died and rose again: so that He could reign over death and prevent such a little one from eternally perishing.

Later that same Sunday morning as I was sitting in church, the Scripture reading for the service included 2 Timothy 1:12. The second part of that verse says: “I know in Whom I believe and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that day.” I used to take that verse simply in its context of Paul discussing preaching the gospel to unbelievers. After Ethan’s death, however, the verse became a promise from God for us: that He will keep Ethan, who we have committed to Him, until the day Christ returns. (This interpretation stems from the context of verse 10: “our Savior, Christ Jesus … has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”) Obviously we did not willingly give Ethan away; evil robbed us and him of his earthly life too soon. But God has promised to keep and guard Ethan for us until we come to him. Ever since I was reminded of that verse shortly after his death, I have included it in a string of verses I repeat when I visit Ethan’s grave.

So I sat in the pew thinking about that, and about the verses on the Lord’s will I had read earlier that morning, and then the music minister had the congregation sing the hymn “I Know Whom I Have Believed,” which is based upon 2 Timothy 1:12. If you are unfamiliar with the hymn, the fourth stanza says:

“I know not what of good or ill
May be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days,
Before His face I see.”

This is followed by the refrain, which is repeated after each stanza:

“But I know Whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which I’ve committed
Unto Him against that day.”

Then the final stanza reads:

“I know not when my Lord may come,
At night or noonday fair,
Nor if I walk the vale with Him,
Or meet Him in the air.”

By the time we finished singing that hymn, I felt overwhelmed with God’s reassurance that even though a miracle did not occur on that day Ethan passed, and even though his tiny body is resting in that small grave I so often visit, Ethan is okay because he is being kept safe by God until that glorious day. As I was reminded today: “Behold, the Lord God will come with power, and His arm will rule for Him. … He will gather His lambs in His arms and carry them close to His heart.” (Isaiah 40:10,11).

And as for Elijah’s raising of the widow’s son, it should be remembered that even the widow, with her great faith, despaired when her son died. She earnestly questioned Elijah as to why God would perform a miracle to keep her and her son alive only to let her son die of a sickness. It must have seemed like a cruel joke. Elijah himself did not understand what God was doing, asking God: “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?”

God did not rebuke their doubts, which merely stemmed from a lack of understanding. As I explained above, both the widow and Elijah erred in concluding that God caused the boy’s death. He did allow it, but He did not cause it — there is a difference (as difficult as it may be to see) between causing the tragedy and allowing it to unfold. For what the widow and Elijah could not know is that this event was meant to foreshadow a much greater one hundreds of years later.

The widow’s son died; Elijah laid his body over the boy’s body three times; the boy came back to life; and the widow exclaimed that by this miracle she knew Elijah was a man of God who spoke the truth.

Mary had a son named Jesus. He was crucified on a cross even after He had performed many miracles. (Mary was probably a widow when this occurred because Joseph is not mentioned in the Gospel accounts after Jesus’s childhood, and on the cross Jesus told his disciple John to take care of Mary). Jesus was buried, and after three days God resurrected Him from the dead. And it is by His resurrection that we know Jesus is God and that He spoke the truth.

The point is that there was something larger going on with the boy’s death that neither the widow nor Elijah could comprehend because the events that would give its context lay in the distant future. I am not saying that every death of a child has a larger purpose beyond demonstrating with stark coldness the evil that pervades this world. But I am saying that the fact that we may not understand why a tragedy occurs does not mean God allowed it to happen without preparing the future context in which it will be wiped away. Because in that future

“The Lord God will swallow up death forever. He will wipe away the tears from all faces. He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth. And in that day it will be said: “This is our God, we have waited for Him, and He has saved us. This is our Lord, we have trusted in Him; come, let us be glad and rejoice in His salvation.'” (Isaiah 25:8-9).

Until that day, “the Lord will bless and keep Ethan, and make His face to shine upon Ethan and be gracious to him and give him peace.” (Numbers 6:24-25).