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A World Where There Are Octobers

Ethan’s Mom: The world has been so, so crazy this year. I haven’t posted anything since the pandemic erupted. The NBA cancelled the rest of their season on March 11th, the day after we marked three years since Ethan’s death. To me, that was the first time I really noticed something major was going on, possibly because for the first two weeks of March, my brain is in 2017 more than in the present time. Usually, it takes the rest of the month to work through the feelings and flashbacks before I start to feel normal again. However, this year instead of a period of recovery, I found myself in an impromptu homeschool situation with 4 kids, aged 3 through 9, with limited supplies of milk, bread, and toilet paper.

I told myself this was no big deal. After all, no one I loved had died. That’s what you think after you’ve lived through child loss; all other crises just pale in comparison. We were safe, my husband had a stable job that easily adapted to working from home, and I had more time with the kids. It was a huge blessing that our spring weather was perfect this year — we spent hours on the trampoline and on after-dinner family walks. Of course, I was worried for friends in the medical community, my “mature” family members and friends, and others whose world was shaken far worse than mine. But how long would this really last anyway? I thought surely this virus would be behind us by time to return to school, and until then, I would do my best to steward this unexpected season of cancellations and extra togetherness.

We all know that didn’t happen. As the pandemic dragged on, I began to really feel the weariness and feared there was no end in sight. Indeed with the summer came rising virus levels in our state, and vigorous debate about school re-opening was everywhere. Just like everyone else, I was distraught over making the “right choice” for our children. The constant internal debate was exhausting. After considering all options, we made a decision. Returning to school five days a week is definitely the best decision we can make right now for our individual children and family, we said. OK, let’s do this. We are all in.

Oh wait, make that 2 days a week, as the school system decided a week before the pushed-back starting date that we would be on a staggered schedule. On those days, everything about “back to school” looks different anyway. No visitors are allowed, so I definitely won’t be meeting my “eat lunch at school” every month goal. In fact, the kids aren’t even going to be eating in the cafeteria. No mystery readers or birthday treats. No playground for my little kindergartener to look forward to exploring. Masks hiding all the smiles from teachers and friends.

Most days, I feel like I am in a Google classroom twilight zone that will never end. This feeling of neverending-ness was reinforced when the week before our 2nd attempt to return to school 5 days a week was cancelled by the school system. They backpedaled to 4 days a week for elementary, no change in staggered schedules for middle and high school. So tomorrow (fingers crossed!) my kids will double their days at school and will be back full time by mid-October. Maybe. I hope.

We were also supposed to return to onsite worship at our church this week. We had one other false start earlier in the summer, so I was not really holding my breath. In fact, we received word late Saturday afternoon that all of the activities, including live and streamed worship services, were cancelled due to 2 staff members testing positive for coronavirus. There have been some major changes at our church this summer. One change was particularly painful for our immediate family: we are saying goodbye to a minister who ran into the darkness and sat with us in our grief when so many were scared to enter in. When I heard the news of this development, I felt the ground shift under my feet again. Nothing feels right, and the future is totally uncertain.

Other things we depend on to mark the seasons of our lives are missing or very different this year. Football is delayed and for a while, it looked like my husband’s beloved Cornhuskers wouldn’t even play a down this year. No pumpkin patches, and no school field trips to the farm. Everything else in our yearly, monthly, and daily routines have changed so much that, subconsciously, I was waiting for someone to cancel fall and leave us in the humid, hazy days of a never ending summer.

But today when I opened the door on my way to visit Ethan’s grave for the first time in a while, a cool breeze greeted me. I decided to swing by Starbucks to pick up a pumpkin spice latte on the way to visit my little boy. Starbucks is a rare treat as I just cannot bring myself to pay that much for coffee, as I am a relatively new and unsophisticated coffee drinker. But today, driving with the windows down and the sunshine pouring through the trees, it was money well spent. I just kept thinking to myself as I drove, “It actually feels like fall is coming, it seemed like it would never come.” My heart felt lighter than it has in days, just with the dropping of the temperature and humidity.

Like one of my literary heroines, Anne of Green Gables, I am so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. I praise the God who hung the sun and placed the earth in a specific orbit around it in order to provide us with changing seasons and fresh starts. There is so much symbolism in creation that speaks to eternal truths. Each season brings its own joys and challenges and revelation of God’s heart toward us. Fall brings images of the farmer bringing in his harvest. The light is sharper and more precious as the days shorten. Cozy clothing wraps us in warmth. Even jack-o-lanterns can be used as a metaphor for the gospel of Jesus Christ, an activity my first grade Sunday school kids enjoy every year.

But most of all, autumn reminds me that God keeps His promises even when it seems like this life is a never ending stretch of loss and heartache. If not for autumn and winter, how would we know the joy of springtime, as the earth wakes from its sleep into newness of life? We can lean into this season because it doesn’t last forever, because spring is indeed coming. No matter if all the man-made ways we mark the calendar do not come to pass, God will bring the change of seasons and, one day, the redemption of His entire creation. Just as fall finally arrived when I had almost given up, spring will come again, too. In the same way, at the exact right time, Jesus will come. He keeps His promises — all of them.

You Keep Your Promises by JJ Heller

Sandals in the closet
Jackets by the door
Orange, red, life and death
Scattered ’round the feet of the sycamore
The waiting hands of winter
Catch us when we fall
Is it just me? I can’t believe
The green of spring was ever here at all

You keep Your promises
You keep Your promises
I might not see it yet
You keep Your promises

Everyone I care for
Just like every perfect dream
Withers, fades, and drifts away
Feels like we’re all falling with the leaves

You keep Your promises
You keep Your promises
I might not see it yet
You keep Your promises

There is hope within the breaking of the heart of every seed
And I know You feel the aching at the end of all good things
I believe in restoration, I believe that You redeem
Because I know somehow the sycamore will bloom again in spring

You keep Your promises
You keep Your promises
I might not see it yet
There will be life again
You keep Your promises

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When Fortune Cookie Theology Isn’t Good Enough

Ethan’s Dad: So since we last made an entry here, everyone’s lives have been affected in some way or other by the COVID-19 virus, more commonly referred to as the coronavirus. Some parts of our lives have been put on hold, and for some their worlds have been completely turned upside down. If you are in that last category, please know that we are praying for you.

There is so much that has been, and could be, said about the virus and the chaos it has created. But one thing I certainly think the situation has starkly demonstrated is that there is a lot about our lives we do not control. You cannot really control whether you will get the virus or not (you can enhance or diminish probabilities, but that isn’t the same as control). You cannot control what effect the virus will have on you if you do contract it: will you be asymptotic, severely afflicted, or somewhere in between? You cannot control how the stock market will react to the measures that have been taken to mitigate the effects of the virus. And so on it goes.

A natural reaction people often have to the realization that they do not control as much as they believed they did is to feel fear. It is the same for things we cannot fully understand: a natural fear accompanies a lack of knowledge or a lack of control. For Christians, this fear can be managed, mollified, or even defeated by the thought that God is in control and that He understands all that is going on.

We have already been through an event of horrifying chaos in which we were completely helpless, watching our son’s life expire without warning, no matter how much we screamed for it not to be so.  And in the immediate aftermath of that horror, we had our share of “armchair theologians” tell us that it was all okay because “God is in control” and “everything is part of His plan.”  In attempting to absorb those responses, I came to understand that in such a time, the proclamation that “God is in control” turns into a mantra, a crutch that is used to quickly move past difficult questions rather than to honor God’s truth.

When “God is in control” acts as an incantation in the face of all we don’t understand, as the full-stop answer when we have no answers, then it loses its value as a foundation for faith.  When someone is in the midst of overwhelming grief, there is no capacity to delve into what “control” really entails, and so, rather than the statement serving as a faith conversation starter, the “good Christian” — the hurt Christian — will immediately nod his or her head and say no more.

This is one of the reasons you should not blithely say “God is in control” (or a variation of it) to a fellow Christian who has just suffered a tragic loss. You may think it sounds comforting, but to someone who has just lost someone irreplaceable, it is belligerent and cold. The sheer finality of the statement does not allow the sufferer any space to grieve, to fume, to question. It says: “Don’t be sad. Don’t worry. Don’t wonder. Just accept that this is how God planned it.”

I can tell you from personal experience that the person who is suffering the loss will not appreciate what you are saying; he or she will resent it, loathe it, scream (at least inwardly) about it, and then feel guilty for those perfectly acceptable feelings. (It was only later that I learned to extend some grace toward those who would share this “bit of wisdom” with me, a grace born from the realization that it can be extremely difficult to find a “right way” to comfort someone suffering a profound loss). In the end, you are not ministering to that person with this trite expression; you are really just trying to make yourself feel better about what has happened because you don’t have a good explanation for it. But hey, at least you were able to say something Biblical about it, and that’s a lot better than saying nothing, right?

Actually, this might surprise you, but one of the best things you can do is to say very little, and instead just be there to listen — even if the person suffering isn’t saying anything. Mind you, I am not saying that you should just pretend the terrible thing didn’t happen for fear of upsetting the person more. Acknowledgment of a person’s loss is crucial. There has never been a moment in which my wife and l have wished that people would just act like Ethan did not die, because failing to acknowledge that is like saying he never existed, he never mattered. Just because you cannot specifically identify with a person’s loss because you haven’t suffered the same thing does not mean you cannot acknowledge it. By mentioning the one who was lost, you are not going to cause the sufferer to feel a deeper despair than he or she is already experiencing. You will be honoring the rightness of the grief because it shows you know the loss was real.

But beyond the acknowledgment, listen and give the one who is grieving room to express true feelings of anger, bewilderment, and even some despair. Allowing that honesty without sermonizing can be its own witness to that person. If you want to do something with the Bible, then go to the Psalms with them. Read Psalm 13 or 77 or 88 with them so that they can know it is okay to feel as they do. For why else would such expressions of despair and questioning be in God’s Word? Loving in this kind of a situation is not about spouting fortune-cookie theology to solve a problem, but about listening to the questions, the expressions of anger, and the sighs of anguish and despair.  It is about being present while giving space for real grief.

That is about all this post can handle.  Since I have fired a shot across the bow about what God’s control might really mean in relation to evils like a child’s death or an insidious virus, I will follow up with another, much lengthier entry. But for the moment, remember that when it comes to the throes of grief, listening is far more important that dispensing answers.