Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Joy Found in “The Morning”

Earlier this summer, I was invited on a girls trip to the beach.  My daughter, one “old” friend, one “new” friend, and all three moms spent a few days with the sand between our toes.  I love the beach – the sights, the sounds, the smells – so I knew the trip was going to be fun.  An added bonus I did not realize until we were there chatting under the beach umbrella was that all three girls had brothers and only brothers.  So even though the other two moms had older children, we were all in the same boat as far as parenting middle school girls for the first time.  We traded tips on finding appropriate swimwear and navigating big emotions.  It can be so nice to be among people living a shared experience.  “You too? I thought I was the only one…” are usually welcome words that can bring relief and validation.  

This holds true even when the shared experience is one you would never wish for anyone.  Sometimes people describe being a bereaved parent as being a member of a club to which no one wants to belong.  We wish no one else would ever join our ranks, but the reality is that our number will continue to grow until Jesus returns.  Recently, the devastation of flash flooding in Texas took the lives of at least 36 children.  Who knows how many were born still or died in the night or succumbed to cancer during the past 24 hours alone?

Even though I wish this were not the case, it is.  And there are some things that bereaved mothers share that no one else can understand fully.  I cannot tell you how invaluable it has been for me to develop friendships with moms who are at similar places in their grief, as well as those who are further down the road and those who are just beginning.  

Soon after Ethan died, a coworker put me in contact with an old friend of hers that was developing an online ministry for mothers impacted by miscarriage and infant loss.  My first experience with what would become The Morning was a beautiful art print with Ethan’s name on it, which was given to me by this coworker.  I did not know at the time that this print (which still hangs in our playroom) was the beginning of such a meaningful relationship.  

In 2018, The Morning released a podcast, “The Joyful Mourning,” hosted by the ministry’s founder, Ashlee Proffitt.  I listened to every single episode for the first few years, many times while taking #4 on walks in his stroller.  I heard the story of Ashlee’s son, who was six weeks old when he died unexpectedly of SIDS.  It was like walking around the neighborhood with a friend and mentor, receiving much needed encouragement and practical advice.  She shared how grief had changed her relationships, her parenting, and her faith.  She interviewed moms, each of whom shared their own stories.  Sometimes the details were similar to our story, other times not as much.  In other episodes, professionals explained the physical, emotional, and relational effects of grief.  Most episodes offered some very practical advice, and each episode offered something even more valuable — hope.  

The ministry added an online community to facilitate interactions between mothers.  The Morning Community grew into a multifaceted support system — a place where everyone was invited to tell the story of their babies, vent frustrations, and receive encouragement.  The Morning added another “big sister” to act as a mentor in this space.  Meg Walker was exactly what the community needed.  Her writing skills and her ability to connect with people, even virtually, made everyone feel welcomed and valued.  Eventually, they added community moderators to assist in managing the online community.  I served as one for six months and had a much better understanding of the sacrifice Meg willingly gave, even while her own family was growing.  Meg gave us questions to discuss, checked in on us during holidays and hard days, and made everyone feel that their baby mattered.  

To illustrate the kind of support this group provides, consider the universal dilemma of the bereaved mother.  “How many children do you have?” may seem like small talk to most people.  To mothers who have children in heaven, it feels like crossing a minefield, every time.  When I answer 5, the follow up questions will almost always reveal that one has died, and the reactions to that fact are awkward at best, painful at worst.  When I answer 4, I feel that I am being disloyal to Ethan and discrediting my motherhood.  I have five children that I love with my entire being.  Five children that I do my best to support and to celebrate.  Five children that I pray will know the love of their Creator and play their role in His redemptive story.  But that is a lot to try and sort out with a new acquaintance on the ball field or in the band booster club.  

Every so often, a new member of the community would ask how to handle this situation.  The other newer members would agree, “yes!  I never know what to say!”  The older members would encourage the woman to do what she feels most comfortable given the particular circumstance and that it does get more automatic with practice.  And everyone would reaffirm that the child in heaven is no less a part of her family and that she is no less a mother to him/her than if that baby was in her arms right now.  

That’s the kind of sisterhood that grew under Ashlee and Meg’s leadership.  And I haven’t even begun to discuss the other ways The Morning has touched lives — devotionals, workshops, holiday support groups, specialized merchandise, templates for funeral programs, cell phone wallpaper, suggestions for how to remember your baby during each changing season, and very helpful guides for family and friends seeking to love a grieving mother well.   All the resources and websites are beautifully designed with soft colors and meaningful images.  On Ethan’s birthday, I write an entry in his linen bound birthday journal.  Each winter, I wear my “One Day Closer” sweatshirt and drink coffee from a mug received from another community member during a Christmas mug exchange.  They give me a measure of comfort on the long gray days between Ethan’s birthday and the anniversary of his death.  

During this summer, Ashlee and Meg are taking a sabbatical to seek God’s guidance for the future of The Morning.  I have been praying that they will experience much needed rest from their labors of the past few years and hear His voice leading them in the way forward.  Whatever God has in mind for The Morning, I know He will continue to work healing in the lives of grieving mothers.  After all, Jesus’ own mother is “in the club” and he provided for her with one of his final breaths.  For this period of time and for my own life, The Morning has been a conduit of His grace, and I will be eternally thankful for the work his servants have done for me and for countless other mothers who are learning that “joy can be found, even amidst the morning.”

This Thing is Not Going to Break You

By Christa Wells

You could not plan for this, No, there was no silhouette

Up against the pink horizon to warn you of the hit

But you absorbed it all with grace, Like a child you spoke of faith unmoved, That holds onto you

This thing is going to try to break you

But it doesn’t have to, You’re showing us how

This thing is going to bend and shape you, But He won’t let it take you

You know it somehow, This thing is not going to break you

You could take your loss, You could hide away from us

With your grief lassoed around you, But you’re laying it in the sun

And you stare straight into the light, You say you’d rather go blind than look away, What can I say?

This thing is going to try to break you, But it doesn’t have to

You’re showing us how, This thing is going to bend and shape you

But He won’t let it take you, You know it somehow

This thing is not going to break you, this thing is not going to break you,

this thing is not going to break you

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Weep Until You Have No Strength to Weep

Ethan’s Mom: This week was pretty weird in our BSF study of People of the Promised Land. The assigned chapters in 1 Samuel included Saul meeting with a medium (1 Sam. 28:3-25) (that is a whole other post for a different day, and probably not one written by me) and the study questions included one about experiencing the silence of God (also a tender subject with my husband and I). Ethan’s dad had an intense conversation in his small group for that portion of his discussion last night, speaking up about how the silence cannot always be explained by unrepentant sin driving a wedge between you and God. My group did not take that direction in answering that question, but I had my own moment of “is this really how we are going to answer this question?” a little later on in our discussion.

Here’s the background (1 Sam. 30): David and his men were between a rock and a hard place – they had been living in Philistia, hiding from Saul and deceiving the Philistine king Achish into thinking they were allies against Israel. For a minute, it seems David is going to be conscripted into fighting against Israel, but God mercifully provides away out of the bed that David has made before he has to lie in it. His men return to their home base at Ziklag to find that an enemy clan has burned it to the ground and kidnapped the wives and children of all the soldiers, including David. Verse 4 says, “So David and his men wept aloud until they had no strength left to weep.” That verse is what I wrote down to answer the first question on that section: “Describe the scene at Ziklag. How did David and his men respond?”

No one immediately jumped to field that question, and my group leader tried rephrasing it. “What was the first thing David does when he returns to this scene?” she asks. I replied, “wept until he had no strength to weep.” She seemed a little surprised and said, “Well, yes, but… what was next? What did he do? In verse 6?” Someone else provided the answer she was looking for, that David found strength in the Lord. She follows up with “Then in verse 9?” Someone else answers, “David inquired of God.”

First of all, if someone “does something next” that is not, by definition, the thing that he does first. But I was taken aback by more than mere semantics. Glossing over the fact that David’s initial reaction was to weep until he had no strength left to weep totally discounts his grief over losing his family. Yes, they were kidnapped and eventually rescued, but initially David didn’t know their fate. For all he knows, he will never see his family again, and he is leading hundreds of men who will never see their families again.

Let’s allow them to weep before we are demanding that they find strength in God, shall we?

I firmly believe after my experience, watching my husband grieve, and reading several books/memoirs by fellow mourners, that the tears must come first, then the strength in the Lord, and then the inquiring of God.

In the lecture that followed, the teaching leader made a statement that struck me as she was summarizing the divergent paths of Saul and David. “No one drifts toward God.” While we do not earn God’s mercy or grace towards us, faith does require a conscious choice to seek God. This has never before been so clear to me. Sometimes I feel like not only am I not drifting to Him, I am fighting against a strong current of pain and doubt as I struggle to swim towards Him. But in those initial months of shock, confusion, and disbelief, I could do nothing but be tossed by the waves. I could not even ask why or articulate to God that I was angry or sad or anything.  It was a terrible place to be, but I couldn’t just sit up and say, “let me go and find strength in God.”

Choosing to trust God and find strength in him requires more effort than I had for quite some time.  But eventually, I could.  I think I am just now maybe beginning to move to the inquiring of God stage — to trust that He will not only keep me from drowning in a pit of despair (finding strength in Him) but also guide me into an abundant life as I inquire of Him what to do next (wow, that was even just hard to type, I am definitely just beginning to move into that stage!)

So I want to encourage you, whoever you are, that if you are faced with a devastating loss, it is OK to weep until you have no strength left to weep.  Don’t let anyone rush you through this — the time frame that is right for you is known only by you and the Lord.  You do not have to find strength in God or have stalwart trust that He has a plan for you in the midst of this tragedy.  There will come a time when you will have to look to someone or something for strength to resume your life, and at that point, you will have to make a conscious choice to find your strength in God.  He will strengthen you and eventually you will then be able to inquire of God — looking for redemption in the midst of your tragedy and discerning “what is His good, pleasant, and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2) for your life, including your life after loss.

Posted on by walkingintheshadowlands

Grief is like a Hurricane

Ethan’s Mom: Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on the Gulf Coast. I lived in Long Beach, Mississippi, from birth until college. In 2005, I was in my last year of graduate school in Nashville. My parents and grandparents still lived in Long Beach. We all watched the meteorologists as they predicted the path of this monster storm until it became clear she was headed straight for the Mississippi Gulf Coast. By the time I woke up from a fitful night’s sleep on the morning of 8/29/05, the community that I knew and loved had been gutted. I remember vividly being at my internship that afternoon, checking the initial damage reports and reading a single sentence that broke my heart, “First Baptist Church washed away.” I had always daydreamed of being married in the same church where my parents said their vows and where I was baptized. It was gone. Totally and completely leveled, as were the homes of quite a few childhood friends and/or their parents. In less than 24 hours, the entire Mississippi Gulf Coast was demolished, and neighboring New Orleans was underwater.

I was unable to take a day off my internship until October. I flew home to maximize my time there, and I remember watching through tears out the window as the plane landed – so many blue tarps, so many empty lots. The southernmost portions of the town were still barricaded, but my mom, as the church secretary, had a pass to visit the site of the church with me that weekend. Piles of rubble. The beautiful stained glass from the mosaic in the narthex lay mixed in with twisted metal, lots of paper debris, and an overturned piano. Only the cross-shaped steeple lay intact on its side. The church sat at the south end of main street and surrounded by residential areas, but you wouldn’t know it. It literally looked as if a bomb had exploded. Nothing was even recognizable.

My parents moved to Birmingham, very near to us, in 2011. In the times I visited my family between 2005-2011 there was a lot of change. The roofing men were in constant demand. Infrastructure was being rebuilt. FBC bought land further inland and built a large multipurpose sanctuary/gym/education building. The toppled steeple stands out front. Friends and acquaintances bought or built new houses. Progress came, but slowly. Still along the shore, things looked wild and depressing. It was better, for sure. No one needed disaster relief volunteers serving food or water or boxes of sheets and towels for their temporary “Katrina cottage” FEMA shelters. There wasn’t an “emergency” but the community was still in the early stages of healing: cleaning out, taking stock, and beginning to plan what they would do next.

My 20th high school reunion was this summer, and I debated long and hard about going. I had not been to the Coast since 2013. In the end, several people I wanted to see in person were attending, and it was a good chance to take the kids to the beach. So off we went.

We stayed in a little guest cottage off a main thoroughfare in Long Beach, which was so much nicer than a hotel. We had room to spread out with the kids, and it felt more like a visit home by staying in a familiar neighborhood. I enjoyed (much more than the kids did, I’m afraid) sharing stories and memories from my childhood. We drove by my old house and elementary school, both of which survived the storm with relatively little damage. I took them to my favorite po-boy restaurant, which was rebuilt almost exactly the same as it was. We dug in the sand and waded in the water that was part of my history in so many ways.

And yet, there were times when I was completely discombobulated. A beautiful town green sat in the middle of main street where an elementary school had always been. Stores were closed; restaurants had moved. Driving along the beach was still a navigational challenge because landmarks I had depended on for years and years were still gone. In fact, most of the lots closest to the beach are still vacant. They don’t have the wild, grown over look as much but they are still vacant. I would be where I knew I had been many, many times before but have no idea where I was.

It was so familiar and so different at exactly the same time.

On the drive home, it occurred to me – that is a very fitting analogy of my life at this point. In 10 days, we will mark 18 months without our precious Ethan. His death has changed me in a way that nothing else ever has, or maybe ever will. Last spring, our world exploded. Everything was affected – our marriage, children, extended family, friends, community, and even (especially) our faith in God. All at once, NOTHING looked like it did, or even remotely like it should. The wreckage and debris from those early weeks and months can be described as nothing but trauma. It was so overwhelming, I could not even begin to think about rebuilding my life or feeling any joy again. People wanted to share stories of friends who were further post-loss and living productive lives, and I couldn’t even comprehend how that could be. I heard people recommend journaling to begin to process my feelings – that was impossible, I couldn’t even begin to pick up a pen most days. All that I could process was basic survival mode.

Slowly, over the past year, we have begun the process of rebuilding our life and our family. We resumed being the primary caregivers for our surviving children. We returned to church, and eventually I made it to the grocery store and the beauty salon. My husband returned to work full time, and I fill in at the hospital when staffing needs arise. After a few months, I was able to read and pray again, and new infrastructure could be laid. We faced all the “firsts” – holidays, birthdays, family vacations – and found touchpoints of the familiar amongst the grief that continues to be so confusing at times.

The thing about my trip home this summer is that the evidence of Hurricane Katrina and the wreckage she inflicted was still very apparent to me. It is a city with a broken past that endured a difficult season of growth. It is not the Long Beach of my youth, but it is still home. After the devastation of 2005, some places were repaired or rebuilt. Other places I saw on our visit were brand new construction, even some really nice and beautiful places. Still other places were empty and awaiting redemption.

“Awaiting redemption” makes me think of the Friendship Oak. A seedling when Columbus sailed to America, this beautiful, enormous live oak tree used to be the crown jewel of a local college and a favorite place of mine. I wanted to take the kids to see it, but instead we pulled up to a decaying tree surrounded by “Keep Out” tape. There is no way to repair, replace, rebuild, or improve on the Friendship Oak until Jesus restores creation to its full glory, and I know there will be places like that in my life as well. Things that just will not be right until I see Ethan again. But in the beginning, that felt like all there was left to my life. Truthfully, that was how I wanted it. What kind of a mom “heals” from her son? Now, almost 18 months later, I can finally see that I am not healing from Ethan or the experience of being his mother but from the storm surge that made landfall on March 10, 2017 – the tragedy that swept my child away from me and destroyed almost everything I had ever known. Almost.

Some things survived the storm intact, but I couldn’t see them for the wreckage. I am starting to identify some places from my “life before loss” that can be repaired, other things that can eventually be rebuilt in a different location, and still other lots which will be vacant for a long, long time to come. I hope that one day, I can even build some beautiful new spaces in my life, like the town green where my classmates gathered with our families and watched our children play in the splash pad under live oak trees that weathered the storm 13 years ago. I don’t know that I am there yet, but the fact that it is even starting to seem possible is only by the grace of God, the love of my family, and the support of a few close friends. Please don’t stop praying for us, checking in on us, and braving the sorrow with us as you are able. We are still very much under construction.