heaven

Walking comfortably in discomfort

It’s approaching two years since Jacob died. He would have been 24 on March 3rd but he left this life March 26th 2014 at 22 and he will forever be 22 in my heart.

I have sensed a new phase of my grief that I doubt I can communicated in words for others to fully grasp. I have arrived at a point of accepting my new reality of life without Jacob. Perhaps it’s like breaking in a new pair of stiff leather shoes. The longer you wear them the fewer blisters and discomforts you endure. The thing about these new shoes is they are permanent, these clogs are for keeps. I keep walking this rocky road with these now broken in shoes but pebbles keep finding their way inside to irritate the “soul” of my feet. It takes time to work out the painful intruder, I stop, I empty my shoe of its unwelcome guest. Slipping it back on I walk forward until the time comes to repeat the process again.

It’s taken two years to break in these boots. It’s an odd feeling I have, it’s comfortable but the comfort strangely troubles my heart. Everything in me once resisted the notion that he is gone forever yet now being settled with the reality is somewhat unsettling in itself as well.

March is going to bring some bitter sweet days. I am confident that my shoes will have to come off to remove a rock or at the very least tie the laces so I don’t fall on my face. This is my life now, I am comfortably uncomfortable in my grief journey.

My walking shoes are only part of what people see in my overall attire. People might see me shed a tear when I have an irritation in my walk. Most people know nothing about my shoes and wouldn’t notice them at all without the limp they create as I walk. It’s OK that they don’t notice and it’s OK when they do as well.

Jacob’s boots

These shoes only make up a portion of what I wear every day. Grief is my everyday companion but I never want grief to overtake my identity, anymore than a pair of shoes would represent my complete attire. It should not, it cannot, it must not! Though there are times I get overwhelmed with sorrow I refuse to allow grief be how people identify me. People must see that I am wearing other items that look much better than these leather boots. Beautiful things like, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.” (Galatians 5:22) I hope these are noticed more than anything else when people speak of my character.

Yes, I have been broken and I wear a new pair of shoes that get issued to a select few in this life. I walk my path, I stop to empty out the pebbles that irritate my soul. And there you are, my friend, standing with me in this road and you always stop when I stop. You always bring me comfort and support so I don’t collapse as I attempt to put these shoes back on my feet.

The feet of my friend are badly scarred by his journey as well. He has told me of how the scars came about and of all the bad things he endured which actually have a wonderful and beautiful ending.

I’m ready to walk again now, my friend has his staff in hand and says to my heart. “Come, follow me for I know this road. I have walked it before and I know it ends at a city of peace and rest.” And then I remembered the heavenly city and recalled this verse to my memory. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news and happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns.” (Isaiah 52:7)

I looked my friend in the face again today. I smiled with a tear in my eye and said, “Thank you Jesus for walking a mile my shoes.” He gave me a nod, returned a smile and a wink and said- lets be on our way my friend, we still have a ways to go.”

The day the music died

Those closest to me know that I never listen to music, at least not deliberately anyway. It has became particularity difficult for me after Jacob died to listen to songs about lost love and the disappointments of life . Music is penned from the soul of people and while it brings comfort to many I have found mostly pain in it all. Music rubs at my raw soul the wrong way I suppose, so I choose to shut it out of my life.

I do not have a playlist or any downloaded music on any of my apple devices, Pandora was deleted long ago and the radio in my truck only displays the time for me. I have wished, and actually prayed that this would change for me but up to this point I still struggle with it. The day that Jacob died is the day that the music died in me.

After he died I found myself literally running to escape music. I could say with honesty that I hated it because of what it would do to my heart when I heard it. I cannot, and have not found comfort in music. I remember sitting in a Burger King as I tried to choke down a chicken sandwich while enduring Elton John’s classic hit, “Sad songs.” I sat there and sobbed alone that afternoon hating music and hating the fact that it was inescapable and everywhere around me. Why is it that Elton John can find a gentle touch in a sad song and I get a sucker punch to the stomach? Even simple TV commercial riffs have caused me to quickly grab the remote to avoid getting the wind knocked out of me.

notes

Turn them on, turn them on
Turn on those sad songs
When all hope is gone
Why don’t you tune in and turn them on

They reach into your room
Just feel their gentle touch
When all hope is gone
Sad songs say so much

The cutting edge of the knife has dulled some over time, thankfully it’s not as bad as it was. In the onset of grief I would actually get queasy and shaky when certain genre’s of music were heard. It became difficult to escape from the noise and my awareness of it became extremely heightened. Music is everywhere and is impossible to be totally free of in this world, though I try, it still finds me and catches me off guard and punches my soul.

I realize I am a bit of an enigma when it comes to my contempt for music. Most who grieve find a place of comfort and peace in it, I am glad about that because my son and daughter have been comforted by it. Music has been a healing balm for them.

Jacob had a beautiful voice, he loved to sing and play his guitar. He was an old soul, he appreciated the music of Johnny Cash and Willy Nelson and was somewhat critical of contemporary musicians. He sang in choral groups when in high school and would occasionally play and sing at church, weddings and funerals. Three months before his own death he sang the Old Rugged Cross and Amazing grace at his granny’s funeral. He wanted me to accompany him with the harmonica but I decided to opt out. I regret that decision sometimes but I figure that I have been spared a bitter sweet memory.

I have taken out my harmonica and played a couple of times in the last 22 months. I hope that someday music can be a part of my life again. March 26th, 2014 is the day the music died for me and sadness replaced my song.

I sit in church and wonder what Jake is singing for Jesus in heaven. I have yet to find my song in a worship service. As a sojourner in earth I feel like the captive Jews of years ago who who hung their lyres in the willows. “For our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!” How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? (Psalms 137:3-4)

Someday in heaven I will sing a new song with my son. Someday I hope to play a harmonica with Jacob singing Amazing Grace…how sweet the sound. Till then the sound of music is not so sweet to me. By the grace of Christ I hope that in time music in this life will no longer be bitter to me but sweet once again. Someday… perhaps.

World peace imagined and world peace realized. Finding peace during the holidays.

Northern Michigan is warm, wet and brown this December. It was a balmy 60 degrees yesterday and the weather forecast has much of the same for the next ten days. It doesn’t look like Christmas, it doesn’t feel like Christmas and it’s OK with me.

I’m not being a bah hum bugger or a grinch and I’m not on the, “Christmas is too commercialized band wagon.” either. It’s just easier for me to endure this second Christmas apart from my lost son, and other loved ones, without all the sights, sounds, smells and bells of the holiday season.

I am haunted by the ghost of Christmas past each day in December. I am waiting anxiously for New Years eve because it marks the end of another season that can’t get over fast enough. I go Christmas shopping with my wife and I get slapped in the face with Christmas music. Holiday songs awaken my grief and the ghost takes my mind to a place I once was but where I can never return. Songs like, Blue Christmas and I’ll be home for Christmas cut my heart open wide and my internal bleeding rolls down my cheek. I walk and I wonder who else is hurting like me among all the shoppes and shoppers in all this holiday hoopla.

Here I sit in my undecorated home. No tree, no lights, no nativity. No indication that it’s the holidays, only a couple Christmas cards on the counter and some unwrapped gifts in the bedroom. I hear the rain dripping off the roof, I see the snowless landscape out of my bay window and I like it this way. I am reminded of last Christmas as I sit here musing. The tormenting spirit pokes me again. There, on a table sits a Christmas gift to us from my brother and his wife. It is a hand crafted night light, a beacon of hope and a gentle reminder of healing really. It reminds me of last year, our first Christmas without Jacob and the awful pain we felt. I hurt, I am sad, but that light reminds me that the pain is duller and the grief is not as intense as it was a year ago. Maybe in years to come we will get a tree and decorate it with all the special ornaments that the kids made when they were small. Not this year, not yet, and I prefer it this way.

People say remember the reason for the season. Christmas means many things to many people but as a Christian it is a reminder of the incarnation of God into the stream of humanity. December is a time to remember this great truth but for me not a day goes by that I do not remember that Jesus entered into this world and returned home to his Father. Every day is Christmas and Easter for a believer because the good news of Jesus Christ never leaves our heart.

I remember Bethlehem, I remember Jerusalem and I remember Jesus on a hill called Calvary nailed to a tree. I remember his death on a cross that brought peace and good will towards men. I continually remember that he walked out of a tomb and appeared to 500 people over 40 days. I recall his ascention and his glorification and his promise that I cling to daily. A promise engraved in a book, in my heart and in marble at my sons resting place. It is in Jesus that I have found daily peace and in him I have good hope and genuine eternal peace.

world peace imagined

“His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace……” (Isaiah 9:6b) .

In John Lennon’s classic hit Imagine he said, “You, may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you will join us and the world will live as one.” Was John Lennon the price of peace? John was a dreamer and many have dreamed along with him but will peace and oneness ever be possible in our world? Did he unite the world in the peace movement, can we today? No, the imaginations of John Lennon are impossible because peace is a byproduct of something else; something this world lacks.

Peace is a byproduct of righteousness. Isaiah said, “The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.” (Isaiah 32:17) Is the world concerned with righteousness? The world is actually quite unconcerned with righteousness, Jesus said himself that the world loves darkness rather that light (John 3:18-21) How then can world peace be possible in a world that loves darkness?

World peace realized

I do believe in a coming world peace but not without the Righteous One; Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Any other way is for dreamers, unimaginable and frankly humanly impossible. Are we closer to world peace than when Lennon penned those famous words in 1971?

Read through the cited verses on my son’s headstone and you will discover these words from the returning Price of Peace. Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (John 14:2-4)

The world cries out against peace and thirsts for blood as they did in the days of Jesus. Pontus Pilate said, “Behold your King! And the world responds as his own people did 2000 years ago. “Away with him, away with him!” Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. (John 19: 14-16) The people agreed and screamed, “We will not have this man rule over us!” They bowed to government while killing the King of the Nations.

An invitation from the King of Peace

….Isaiah concludes, “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” (Isaiah 9:7-9) This is a real King who will rule on this earth from Jerusalem forever and ever……..

….and I conclude are you ready for this coming King?

The bible closes with an invitation to life and peace. Jesus the Prince of Life and Peace cries out from his throne and says, “Surely I am coming soon!” (Revelation 22:20)

Can you say with the apostle John, “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!”

Peace to you my friends and Merry Christmas. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matthew 5:9)

Enduring the holidays; no deposit and no return

The linear journey

There is never closure for the parents of dead children. I was reminded of this again recently as I listened to a traumatic grief counselor in a phone conversation. He used the word journey, a word I have used myself many times but this time I pondered what it really means for me during the Christmas season. I was reminded again of the fact that the road traveled for grieving parents is linear, not circular therefore closure is never possible. I move farther along the path of life after death to the western horizon until the sun sets on my time here on earth. Each day there are a few steps in a path which distances me from the terrible day that began my journey. Death will be the end of my pilgrimage of grief- closure comes when they close my casket. Yes, each day creates distance and the potential for healing but I will walk with a limp and carry many scars until I step foot into my eternal home. On that day I will truly rest in peace.

Jacob of the bible understood the journey ahead upon hearing about the death of his son Joseph. In his deep grief it is said, “All his sons and daughters rose up to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted and said, “No, I shall go down to Sheol to my son ,mourning.” Thus his father wept for him. (Genesis 37:35-36 ESV) Jeremiah also foretold of the lament of Rachel when Herod killed all the children in Bethlehem that were 2 years old and under. “A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15, Matthew 2:18 ESV) I understand this, I am living with this and I know my laments for my Jacob will only be silenced when I am buried next to him.

No place for love

There is no combination words that can capture what a grieving parent feels during the Christmas season. This will be at best a feeble and hopefully slightly helpful glimpse into the journey we walk. The following thoughts about my grief journey came to me in this way this past week.

Christian Author Gary Chapman wrote the top selling book, The five love languages. (http://www.5lovelanguages.com/) Many years back I attended his seminar and heard his concepts on the languages of love. The five ways we express love according to Chapman are 1. Words of affirmation, 2. Acts of service, 3. Receiving gifts, 4. Quality time, and 5. Physical touch. I agree with his love language concepts but recently these concepts made me think deeply about my love for my deceased son. My love for Jacob has only deepened since he died, but there is now no way to express my love for him. All five of the languages were expressed to me by Jacob and I reciprocated that love back to him- but now he is dead, and I have no place to pour that love on him. Life without my son is like possessing an empty Coke with a label that reads, “No deposit, no return.” Jacob cannot deposit love into my life and I cannot give him any of the love that overwhelms my soul. Death has separated us but love love remains without a means of expression.

The holidays represent a time when the 5 love languages are to be fully expressed in the family. I have remaining family to love, but loving others and being loved by others brings no relief for the void that remains in my heart. There are no words to express my love. There are no kind acts that I can do to express my love. There is no shopping for that special gift to display my love. There can never be quality time to show him my love. There is never going to be an embrace to affirm my love for him. All the love I desire to pour into him has no outlet, and I will never receive it from him again. There is no deposit and no return. The holidays are a time for family love and love will be expressed to the living. The terrible pain during the holidays for me is that all the love that I have for Jake is retained and the expression of love for him has no outlet. The desire to receive that love never leaves me. Oh that I could hear his voice and feel his embrace for Christmas. It can never be, it never will be. The holidays are the harsh reality that there will again be no deposit and no return. Surviving the holidays is the best I can do. As I walk this journey I expect to heal and to limp my way through life. Someday I will reach the river Jordan and cross over to the land of promise. Until that day I expect my journey to be difficult and the path wet with my tears. There are some sorrows that only death can relieve, making death a strange comfort to me indeed. Not that I desire to die but I desire to truly rest in peace, to see Jesus face to face, and to have him wipe my tears away forever. Joy comes in the morning. The best Christmas morning will be when I wake up and again see my sweet boys face and feel his embrace. On that morning I will get to express all the love I have in my heart for him and I will receive all the love he has for me. Till then….No deposit, no return…..

Jacob’s hope, a tree of life

A fear of forgetting

I was afraid that I would forget my son. I was afraid that I would not remember the sound of his voice, the smell of his clothes and gait of his steps. A strange and unfamiliar fear overtook me in the first hours, days and weeks after his death. I have heard others speak of this same kind of fear, I feared that my memory of Jake would be lost. Love reacts to this fear of forgetting by doing many wonderful things to remember the one we love. We want to remember the dead, we want to memorialize a life and to never forget. So we have a memorial stone made, a memorial tattoo inked, a memorial scholarship established, a memorial benefit hosted or a memorial fund started in the name of the deceased. My wife and I memorialized our 4 loved ones on one day by planting 4 trees in their memory.

Jacob’s tree

GLMA cadet

What I want to forget

The fear of forgetting was graciously replaced with daily memories of his life. The fear of forgetting faded, yet there are many things that I have purposefully tried to forget. I want to forget the phone call, the sound of my wife’s sobbing voice, the ride home in unbelief and the sight of my dead son on the basement floor. I want to forget calling his brother and sister, choosing his casket and the moment I first seen him in it. I want to forget the funeral and the burial of 3 loved ones six weeks later on May 15th 2014. I would like to forget it all, yet it is all there in my memory. I don’t go there often, it is terrible place and very difficult to ponder and to write about. I refuse to live in those moments in time but I wander there from time to time in my mind, reliving the terrible aguish all over again. I want to forget but it is always there, forever burned into the memory of my life and all the things that surrounded his death.

Ways to remember

I have watched grievers very closely since since all this grief poured into my life. I have noticed many great and wonderful things being done on behalf of somebody who has died. Generally the cause is closely related to how the loved one died. Some join the fight against cancer, or get involved in suicide prevention. Some take up arms and join the fight against drugs or drunk driving with the hope that one life might be spared because of their effort. We honor the memory of a loved one by crusading with purpose. We hope to help someone else with the very thing that took the precious life that we lost and remember every day. These are all commendable causes but are not the things I have chosen to remember my son by.

What I cannot change

Jacob had anxiety, depression, panic attacks and self medicated with prescription opiates. There are many avenues I could have gone when he died. He was near graduation from the Great Lakes Maritime Academy, I could have establish a memorial scholarship fund for him there. I could go the route of drug awareness, education and enforcement to remember his life and perhaps prevent another person from overdosing. I could bring attention to depression and anxiety dissorders in our youth and crusade about that. All these things people are already doing and they are commendable causes pursued by hurting people. But I have never personally felt compelled to honor my son’s life in any of these areas. I certainly want to honor him and remember him for the greater good of somebody else but not in any of those ways. Why not you may ask? I see them all as being helpful, valuable, necessary and good but I find them to be temporal and not eternal. I am for education about drugs, depression and support greater law enforcement on narcotics, especially the drug dealers that have the MD embroidered after their name. But realistically I feel there there will never be enough education, cops or laws to slow this enormous problem down. Especially in a culture that seeks to numb every ache and pain imaginable by the ready pen of their family physician. I want to have an impact, I want to invest in something that has eternal reward and not just temporal value in this short fleeting vapor we call life.

What I can do

Most people involved in these honorable causes will tell you that if one person can be helped then it would be worth all the effort. I believe that, I hope for that, I want that just like everybody else. I have come to realize that I will likely never help the masses with my message, but perhaps I can help one person at a time.

What am I doing to honor the life of my son? I offer hope, this is the greatest good that I can do for individuals. I offer hope to every man ever born who find themselves helpless and hopeless to overcome their greatest fear. Death! That unspeakable, feared and dreaded word that comes to our minds and causes us to shutter when we realize that our chances of dying in our lifetime is 100%.

Who has defeated our hated enemy Death? And if someone has overcome death, did he make a way for me to overcome it too? In the history of mankind only one man, the God man Jesus Christ of Nazareth had power over death. Follow his life and you will find him raising the dead on many occasions. The record of it was foretold and is undeniable. The prophets prophesied of it and the New Testament writers were eyewitnesses to it. Even his most hated enemies could not deny his power over it. When he died, they mocked him by saying, “He saved others but himself he cannot save.” Jesus was no victim, he was fully in control of all the events leading up to his death and trough his resurrection from the dead. He alone claimed something that only God could say or do. “For this reason my Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.” (John 10:17-18 ESV)

The tree of life and hope

Eyewitnesses saw Jesus stop a funeral procession in the village of Nain and raised a widows young son out of his coffin. (Luke 7:11-17) The enemies of Jesus heard him say, “Lazarus come forth” and saw him walk out of his grave fully alive after being dead for 4 days. (John 11) Jesus walked out of his own tomb after three days by his own power. (Luke 24:6) He showed himself alive for 40 days (Acts 1:3) to his disciples and about 500 believers saw him after his death burial and resurrection, (1 Corinthians 15:6) then he ascended to the right hand of God. (Acts 1:6-11) The great hope of the Christian faith is that death has been defeated by the Son of God. The soul that sins will die, (Ezekiel 18:20) and “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23 ESV) God placed the punishment for our sin on him so that we may live in a wonderful hope. (2 Corinthians 5:21) By his stripes we are healed! (Isaiah 53)This is my hope filled message, this is what matters most to me because it has eternal, not temporal, implications.

Who would die for a lie? 11 of the 12 apostles died proclaiming that Jesus was alive and repeated his words, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life, no man comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6 ESV) The life of the apostle Paul was a life of constant persecution and suffering for this message of faith and hope in Jesus. Why would any man endure what he endured for a lie? He said, “If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead…What do I gain if I fought with beasts in Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, Let us eat drink fro tomorrow we die.”(1 Corinthians 15:19-20, 32 ESV)

The bible begins and ends in a garden and in the each garden there is the tree of life. Mankind was expelled from the garden and was graciously forbidden to eat from it. Every man will taste of death, but Christ tasted death for every man that we might we might gain entrance into the paradise of God and eat of the tree of life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life! He is our only hope, he is the good news to all mankind, he killed death for all who believe. He gives us great hope and precious promises, He says, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7) O taste and see that the Lord is good.

The trees we planted last summer serve as a memorial to the ones we have loved and lost. But each spring they push out new buds and flowers fill their branches. They serve as a reminder to me of the new life I have in Christ because of his resurrection from the dead. They are with the living one, the eternal one, the very God who became man so that we might have life through his name. Peter summed it up after he seen him alive from the dead. He said, “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12 ESV)

Grandma’s tree

Justin’s tree

If Jesus is in the the tomb, the words I type for you are a lie and a great self deception. But he is alive and this is the great eternal hope that I will present to everyone who is living a life of meaninglessness and hopelessness.

To you who believe I leave you with these words. “Now may the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good word and work.” (2 Thessalonians 2: 16-17 ESV)

Granny’s tree

For you who do not believe I ask you a few questions. If you cannot beat death why do you reject Jesus the only one who did? What or who is your hope hope in without him? The bible says that you are in a desperate place, “Having no hope and without God in the world.” It doesn’t have to be because, “Now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace.” (Ephesians 2:12-14a ESV) He offers you a real hope, and a peace that passes all human comprehension if you will only trust him. Trust him today, for he is trustworthy!

Wrestling with Jacob

Wrestling with Jacob

heaven

Walking comfortably in discomfort

The day the music died