Holy Prophet Elias

Today the church commemorates the Holy Prophet Elias. He is the patron saint of my third child, whose death I learned of on July 20, 2010. Memory eternal my Elias. I am thankful you walk in the company of the saints and angels, though my heart misses you dearly.

One foot in front of the other

I need to reset. For some months now, I have been trying to gather my thoughts and return to normal. What is normal for me now? So many questions in my head, my heart, and I am afraid of some of the answers. I am frustrated with myself of late, for as a person who is organized to a fault, I seem to be unraveling into someone I no longer recognize. Just recently, I was finally able to define what is going on, why I am forgetting important things. Overlooking details that would never have slipped past me, lashing out at people around me whom I dearly love. Harboring resentment towards people for things beyond their control. Impatience and irrationality. Anger and disorganization. Maybe it is clear to people on the outside looking in, but it has taken me a while to realize how very broken I am, and I can't seem to put myself back together again. Perhaps, I have been trying to ignore this and keep soldiering on, you know, just keep on doing what you are supposed to be doing and eventually it will all go away and things will be fine. I am still trying to fix this myself. It has been like watching myself from a distance, seeing myself respond to different daily situations and knowing as it is happening that I am completely out of line. And yet, I can't seem to stop myself, I can't seem to get things back in order in my life.

For awhile, I have felt such guilt, as though God knew I wouldn't be able to handle another baby and therefore took my child. I have battled with the thoughts that I don't deserve another baby and so it was kept from me. A few Sundays ago, as I sat in the baby cry room holding my almost 2 year old son, I was listening to Father's homily. He spoke of sorrow and grief, and that these are not things God punishes us with, but things that are placed in our lives for our salvation. I am loosely paraphrasing him here, but it is what I heard that morning. Father's words spoke to me where I was, where I still am, seeking to understand this pain being given to me and wondering what I am supposed to do with it. Not that God took my child, but that this world is broken, and broken things happen, and the time here in this shattered world is meant to prepare us for eternity in the presence of that Great Light. He doesn't hurt us that way, He loves us, loves me, and He sorrows alongside of me even as He watches my two little ones skipping past Him. Even as I inwardly, and at times outwardly, rage at Him about how unfair it is. Useless questions, why me, why twice, will it happen again if I ever find myself able to try again, what did I do wrong. I am looking for answers, and perhaps there simply are not any. I still struggle with guilt, with feeling like this is a punishment. Those thoughts are there often.


There is not a day that goes by, so very few moments that pass that I am not reminded of what is absent. All the pregnant ladies whom I pass, trying not to mentally figure out where I should be in my pregnancy. Every precious little baby I encounter, oh the sorrow I struggle with, wanting to hold and see their unique beauty given them by God and at the same time mentally trying to control my emotions. I worry about making others uncomfortable with my sadness, because honestly sometimes I am simply unable to NOT cry. It is humbling to be in crowd of people and realize there is nothing I can do to stop the onslaught of tears. Rather, I try to find a quiet place away from other people's eyes. I want to be me again, someone who is happy. It feels like my whole world has been upended in the last three years, it has almost been three years since Elias died and nothing in my life has ever been the same since then. I want peace, I want the knot in my stomach to finally loosen and go away. I desire calm in my heart and my soul, replacement of the chaos that exists there now. I just want to stop being so angry, with myself, with God, with those around me. If this is not punishment from God, and I know deep in my soul it is not, then I just desperately want to know how to live with this, and live well. Live lovingly, joyfully, with kindness for those I encounter in my life. I want to remember my babies joyfully, and not allow the overpowering sadness to darken my soul.

Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord

My heart is full of so many emotions right now, so much so that I am afraid to begin this soul soothing process of writing again. Writing has always been for me a method of healing, a place where what I really think and feel bubbles to the surface. Sometimes that happens with a ferocious speed, and other times it is a process akin to labor. Ahhh, there it is. My first unwitting reference to the birth of new life. There will be more I am sure. It is just where I am right now.

These last fews weeks of my life have been something I cannot understand. Have you ever been in a place where you knew exactly what you needed to do to make things a little better, but every fiber of your broken being raged against that? I have never been there before until now, it is a lonely and desolate place to exist. I believe in a merciful God who loves me beyond my comprehension, but I have been unable to face Him of late. So much anger towards Him, frustration that He did not intervene, rage that He is allowing me to walk through this kind of pain once again. And so I have run from Him, much like Jonah, refusing to acknowledge His goodness and wisdom. I have hidden from Him, stalked the halls of my home and cocooned myself here in the safety of isolation. Mostly, I have withered into myself and allowed myself to wrap this depression firmly around me. It is odd how that isolating depression can become something I am dependent upon, making it so physically burdensome to fight against that despondency.

As an adult, I have known how difficult the journey through Lent can be. It often feels as though not only are we struggling to control our passions, but we are confronted with the most painful or trying situations. My grandmother's illness comes to mind, visiting her in the hospital after Pascha, and her funeral during Bright Week. I began Lent at home this year, alone, and it has been a long one. Slow, painful, tedious, difficult to stay focused on the task at hand being so desperately distracted by sadness. Bright sadness, we say that about Lent, don't we? We sorrow in our loss of paradise and the death of our Lord, all the while knowing a little secret...that soon we will rejoice with the angels in our resurrected Savior. My head knows my little babies will be resurrected when He comes again, my head knows they are safe in Her embrace, my head knows this separation is temporary. My heart screams out that none of that helps right now.  I have been so angry with Him this Lent, more out of control of my heart and emotions than ever before in my entire life. I want to find that Brightness in the midst of this, I have struggled so to find it and it slips through my fingers with the drop of a tear. Now, as I sit here, mid-way through Holy Week, I am so physically exhausted already. I feel somehow as though my struggle through this week is so very important to my healing a little bit from this pain. I know my Savior doesn't want any of this for me, but it is so hard to understand why these kinds of things happen.  I know He is soon to be crucified, and I can imagine the horror His mother must have felt at watching that happen to Her Son. My words are scattered and confused here I know, but it is all jumbled in my head as well.

It is terrifying the things which will trigger my emotions, and I seem to be especially susceptible these days. One moment I am fine, the next huddled up in tears. In the midst of a conversation, and then hit with it all over again. I remember the first week or so after my Juliana died. All I wanted to do was sleep, but sleep was so elusive. I would wake each morning feeling fine, and then the reality of what was going on would wash over me. Kind of like having short term memory loss, and having to relearn everyday that you have lost your child. Horrible. Now this new truth is no longer one I am able to avoid through sleep. I am confronted by it throughout my everyday in different ways. The way my daughter hugs me, burying her face in my belly where just a few months ago she knows her sister was. Sweet ladies around me with their happiness. Plans for my life that are so dramatically different from what I had thought. Moving my youngest from crib to toddler bed, knowing that crib was supposed to be used for another, and won't.

So, today as I sit here at this point in Holy Week, I am also designing my daughter's grave stone. A task that never in all my thoughts or dreams did I imagine I would be doing. But I will. I am so tired. I am so tired of sadness, long for a smile that isn't forced or a laugh I really mean. Through out this week, my heart has been turning towards the words from Saint John Chrysostom's Paschal homily, anticipating hearing that hopeful proclamation, asking God for mercy and forgiveness.



Stuck in Reverse...

 

When you try your best, but you don't succeed

When you get what you want, but not what you need

When you feel so tired, but you can't sleep

Stuck in reverse

 

 

And the tears come streaming down your face

When you lose something you can't replace

When you love someone but goes to waste

Could it be worse?

 

 

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

 

 

And high up above or down below

When you're too in love to let it go

But if you never try you'll never know

Just what your worth

 

 

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

 

 

 

Tears stream down your face

When you lose something you cannot replace

Tears stream down your face

And I....

 

 

Tears stream down your face

I promise you I will learn from my mistakes

Tears stream down your face

And I...

 

 

Lights will guide you home

And ignite your bones

And I will try to fix you

 

 

Memory Eternal my sweet Juliana

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



My thought for the day

"We will spoon feed you socialism until one day you will wake up Communists and don't even know it. We will never have to fire a shot."
                                    Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Prime Minister

Just one of the many reasons why I have chosen to educate my children at home. Well done public schools.

Wisdom of a child

Tonight we as a nation stand on the brink. Tomorrow(hopefully, Lord Have Mercy not another hanging chad incident) we will know who will be at the helm for the next four years. Given my tendency towards fear and pessimism, I could probably wax poetic for hours about the possible horrible outcomes of tomorrow night and all the devastating things that could happen based on our decision as a country. However, with a tip of the hat to optimism and peacefulness of my soul, I will keep this to the point. My daughter approached me tonight to ask when election night was, and I explained that is was tomorrow, but that whomever won the election would not be inaugurated(yes, we discussed what that word meant!) until January. She then thoughtfully stood there for a few moments, and then explained to me the things she would tell the country if she were president. I wrote them down.

 

Presidential Advice from a 6 Year Old

 

1. There is one God

 

2. Love God

 

 

3. Be a Christian

 

4. If you don't get it right the first time, try again

 

5. Try not to sin

 

6. Treat your country right

 

7. Never fight

 

 

That said, I pray you will keep her words in mind, and GO VOTE. She in her innocent way sees so much more than I do, and I think if we all as a nation adhered to these 7 standards, we might just start to get it right. Lord have mercy. 

Mortality and Eternity

 Our bodies are so fragile, easily broken, marred or damaged in ways that are irreparable. Our souls are eternal, meant for perfection with Christ, blackened by my stubbornness and my middle of the night fears. I am shocked at my own unwillingness to embrace my mortality, my ability to place blinders on my soul so that I do not have to think about the reality too often. Death is so unnatural, so unreal in a way. So wrong. Devastating. Tonight I was told of the death of someone I knew as a little girl, no longer an individual who I have contact with, but someone who was a part of my childhood. Someone my age, with a husband, children perhaps, just gone. Car wreck. Happens too often, too quickly, too many people in too much of a hurry or selfishly wrapped up in their own lives to look around and see the families and hopes represented by those other cars around them. I too am guilty of this, hurry to make that light, why is that car just sitting there, answering the phone, changing the station, gosh we're late,....and all the while not thinking of the end goal. To love, be loved, show love. To find myself at the end of the day in the warm embrace of my family, knowing I am not promised another day. I forget. I brush it aside, push it under the veneer and worry about it in the darkness, not in the moments when I can make sure that if these were my final moments I would not regret them. The faces of my children, a haze of spilled milk, runny noses and dirty diapers that I forget I might not be allowed to clean tomorrow.

Sweet souls, designed by our Creator with love and delicate touches. Sweet soul who was too fragile to stay here with me, waits patiently for me and I for him. Blessed Savior who knew all this was too much for us to grapple with alone, and holds His cross on high for us.

My heart rebels against confrontation with death. I rage, I seek retribution, want Someone to make it right. I see myself gone, wondering how my children would cope, gasping and begging God to never make them have to try. I fear losing my parents, their absence in my life will be an overwhelming void that even now makes my breath catch. Remember losing my little one, how lost I felt and still feel from that. What if I one day must be alone without my husband of 11 years? What then. Friends, family.  I find myself not really believing that God would let anyone else go....that this broken, fractured world of ours cannot possibly endure anymore. I repeat over and again. Come quickly Lord Jesus. No more death. No more sorrow. No more pain.

It is an overwhelming sadness.

My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

There it is. Why I don't go absolutely crazy in the face of death. Why, as our society prepares to glamorize death, I want to remember that death has no more power. Its victories are limited to this world. 

"Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord! First and last alike receive your reward; rich and poor, rejoice together! Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!"

"Let no one grieve at his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again; for forgiveness has risen from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it. He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he said, "You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below."

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with. It was in an uproar because it is mocked. It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated. It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive. Hell took a body, and discovered God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O death, where is thy sting? O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated! Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down! Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is Risen, and life is liberated! Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ having risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!" - Portions of the Paschal Homily of St. John Chrysostom

Come quickly Lord Jesus.