seasons

Joy comes in the morning

Next month marks five years since our son Jacob died of a prescription drug overdose.

My life is nothing like it once was. Thinking on these last five years of flux the only thing that remains the same is God. He is the same yesterday today and forever. My faith has changed. I have changed. Life for us is completely different than expected or planned.

This is not the script I would have written for myself. I’m not complaining I am just stating the truth. Honestly, we are in a good place in life now. Seasons have changed and we are changing with the seasons that have brought us to new places we never imagined to be.

Truly, “There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” (Ecclesiastes 3:4) Time moves forward and time brings changes. Life would be unimaginable if the seasons of weeping never changed to laughter. Life would be unbearable if our mourning never ended and the dancing never began.

God flips the script for those who mourn. He heals the brokenhearted and shines new hope into the lives of the hurting. The death of a child is perhaps the most difficult pain in life to endure but God returns the joy and laughter of life even in this loss.

I have suffered something that is all to common these days. How I respond to the seasons of sorrow as a Christian must be uncommon and it is uncommon. The unbelieving world has an unending dirge that rings of hopelessness but the opposite is true for a believer.

God does not want me to live my life in hopeless and continual sorrow. Why? Because faith in the once dead, now living, resurrected and ascended Son of God assures me that sorrow may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. Therefore I encourage you who are hurting to consider these comforting words from the apostle Paul.image

But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

Seasons of silence

My wife had her heart set on a pretty dress she found last Friday but didn’t buy it. She mentioned it to me and I thought it would make her a great early birthday gift. We decided to go the next morning and left for the local Saint Patrick’s day activities.

Saturday morning we walked out of the condo into the salty south Florida air to get Stacey’s dress. Three blocks into our walk a twenty something young man was slumped over himself on a city bench. My wife and I walked by, she looked away and I looked on as the two officers attempted to wake him and feel for a pulse. It was an apparent overdose.

We walked on and didn’t speak about what we had just seen. The boutique door was open and I purchased for my wife the cute black dress for her to wear to the Kenny Chesney concert. The silence continued as we took a different route home. Nothing was said, nothing needed to be said, what is unsaid is always understood between us.

I am not sure if he became a Palm Beach county overdose death statistic or not. On average 600 people die in this beautiful place each year. A cold dark reality in such a warm and sunny paradise. Seeing this triggered some horrible memories which were immediately discarded to avoid unnecessary pain.

I guess it’s time to write again. It has been 61 days since my last post, and that is a good thing. When I am not writing it’s a safe bet that I am doing OK in my journey with grief.

I have never wanted to write about grief just to write about grief. In this blog I have endeavored to express my faith and my struggle with grief in a real and practical way. These 100 or so posts have been closely connected to my day-to-day experiences. My experience with grief in the last two months has been, well, uneventful and nothing to write home about.

Thinking about this, and having nothing to say, nor anything to write, it dawned on me that I should explain to my readers why I get silent.

In the early days of the blog when grief was so intense it was easy to communicate what was happening because it was all fresh and new. But now, living life without Jake feels normal and I have accepted this reality now. It’s not without pain and discomfort but the shock is gone and this no longer feels like a bad dream.

Jake left us 4 years ago on the 26th of this month. Early in my journey I remember having a conversation with parents who were 5 years into their journey. I recall them describing their healing and wished I could fast forward to the place they were. Now that I have arrived to that place I have less to write about because grief is no longer the dominant thing in my life.

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There was a time it felt as though the pain would never subside. But it does, the seasons change and life goes on without the one I love. You take a walk, you remember, you buy a pretty black dress, you celebrate a birthday, you go to a concert and a Saint Patrick’s day parade. You move on and you live life.

Obviously I have my difficult moments and days but the healing has given me less to write about. I have considered ending this blog on a few occasions but realized there will always be something to write about in my grief journey. Grief doesn’t end for me until my life ends, but I have a hunch there will be less and less to write about as time goes by.

Enjoying my season of silence in sunny south Florida.