The Good Times

One thing that shocked me (is still shocking me really) is how much life does not stop when grief hits. I remember the week after C told me he was leaving, walking around waiting for everyone else to be in on the joke that was my life. It seemed unbelievable that everyone else's life just went along like normal. Kids kept going to school (not mine), people had babies, went grocery shopping, attended church, had small talk conversations like life was the same as the day before. Except for me it wasn't. I felt like I had a big sign on my forehead that read "failure". I think what finally made me realize that I too had to allow my life to keep going on was my children. They did not stand still. Forward motion is the very essence of children and mine in particular had a fondness for the head first dive into all that is life. I couldn't stop, the momentum was fierce and what I determined after a time of wallowing in self pity and denial was that following the current was the best bet for getting out alive. I started to look at what was in front of me and to embrace it. I started to trust that God had written a good story and I needed to stop fighting the obvious realities that were daily coming to light and instead follow the arc of the story. This has led me to today. The people that surround me out of this last year of crazy grief, confusion, and unending change have become my family. I have family whom I love dearly but I'm talking about the people who have chosen to be in my life every day. The ones who came to my house on a moments notice just to sit with me and play a game with my kids so I wouldn't be alone when the grip of grief was too strong to fight. The ones who dropped what they were doing to have tea with three girls, one weeping, two laughing, all trying to make sense of a new life, a different life, a life none of them could have possibly foreseen. The ones who cleaned my house, threw parties with me, and lingered a little longer on looking me in the eye when we would laugh even when my expression would be glazed with pain. These friends have also been witness to celebrating with me as God laid before me a new life. Another life that none of these three girls could have ever predicted for ourselves. I originally put this video together as a way of announcing the gender of our new baby but as I cut clips together I realized it was more a reflection on these people, this make shift family of mine. The song by Modest Mouse, The Good Times Are Killing Me, felt fitting because there were and still are so many days where I feel as if God is killing me with goodness. The stretching of my heart to understand goodness in the midst of constant grief, that is still a daily struggle for me, has been the greatest and most terrible experience of my life, one I would not trade for anything. So in the end this video does announce the gender of our baby but it is also a thank you to my "family" for all of the love, care, and constant commitment to encouraging and supporting me and my girls in this grief that hasn't so much passed but been put in its place of back seat to joy, and good times.

An Announcement

A word about my Tobin.

 There is something different about him.
It could be that he talks to me like he believes even more of me than I could possibly believe of myself.
It could be that when a conversation gets difficult and I can see everything in him want to flee or just say something to make it end he generally doesn't.
It could be that he loves his God and the loyalty he holds to him is above all else.
It could just be that he has this fantastic style that crosses between hip hop thug, motorcycle rough, and school boy prep.
It could be his taste in music never ceases to surprise or intrigue me (much like his style).
It could be his dogged determination to write, write, and write some more.
I could just be his crazy curly red hair.

Whatever it is there is something different about him and whether I am hearing;
"This life we have been given is everything I've ever dreamed of, you are everything I've ever dreamed of."
or just;
 "Baby you're hair looks nice today and I like that shirt on you."
I could listen to him share this life with me every single day and I feel like the luckiest girl on earth. 

The Grief of Clarity

It's when my children leave that clarity comes.
T is right to tell me that my children's joy covers over a multitude of sins.  It does.
I am guilty.  I am guilty of failure on a level I'm not sure even I have complete clarity on.  He left me, this much is true.  He asked for the divorce though sometimes I wonder if I can't remember it right.  There have been many, or at least several, conversations that T has had to remind me happened that year..he has told me the words I said.  They sound right but I can't recall them coming out of my mouth.  I start to wonder if this could be the case about the divorce.  I remember using that word in the bathroom.  I was sitting on the counter across from him.  I don't remember what he was doing.  I think he had just gotten out of the shower and was wrapped in a towel.  I remember he said something ridiculous and I felt belittled.  I remember I felt like I was hearing him through a filter…the big stuff getting sorted out and only leaving these tiny details that made no sense to me, in which I saw no purpose.  I remember feeling like he was purposely confusing me.  I sat on the counter and he stood near me, our eyes were level.  They are usually not.  He was not wearing his glasses.  I think I said divorce first.  I don't think I meant it at all.  I think I was scared.  He grew colder and I remember him looking at me with mean unfeeling eyes.  He said divorce.  One week later he said it again after counseling.  One week later he said for sure.  One week later we sat in what was now my bed together, his being a pallet on the living room floor.  Our backs against the wall.  I felt stiff.  I remember him putting his arm around me awkwardly.  I remember wanting to call T…I wanted him to explain to C why I needed intimacy, again. I felt intensely guilty for that, I wanted to be able to communicate it myself in words he'd hear.  I wanted him to love me but I felt hatred.  I felt distance.  I felt like a corpse under his arm.  He kissed me.  It was October i think, though it may have been November.  It was a cold kiss.  He said goodbye then even though I didn't know it at the time I'm pretty sure that was when he said goodbye. 

Since then I have felt varying waves of grief.  At first I was grieving the loss of a husband.  I was grieving the loss of a partner to experience life with, to raise our children with, to love with.  I was losing my love.  The man I had devoted over a decade to but I think he lost a weight around his neck.  He stepped out of the hangman's noose into the bright light of a brand new day.  He coveted freedom and safety as much as I coveted intimacy.  He spent the better part of our marriage coveting freedom and safety.  He got what he coveted.  I didn't at first.  I had to grieve the loss of that desire.  I had to say goodbye to my first real love and recognize that what I longed for would never be.  Now I have intimacy in marriage and I feel guilty for it.  I feel like it is what I coveted with him for so long that it must be a sin to now have it….

Another manifestation of my grief is in relationship to the children I have had to say goodbye to.  My girls are no longer under the protection of my home.  They now have two households that are obviously very different.  I have no control.  I probably had a false sense of control before divorce anyway but however you look at it I'm still grieving the loss of what I thought I was capable of controlling for them.  The third child I lost was C.  I worked so hard to build his confidence, his belief in his own ability to pursue righteousness and goodness.  I manufactured scenarios in our life to encourage him to believe in the goodness that I SO desperately wanted to be in him and now I can not do that for him.  I watch him live outside that influence and I'm so very saddened at the man he is as opposed to the man I thought he would become if he just believed what I believed about him.  I should have known better than to treat him as a child then but that is a regret I will have to learn to live with, another grief I can not undo by lamenting.  Today the teacher in church talked about Rachel having to say good bye to her children who were led into exile.  She wept.  There was much grief.  This resonated with me.  I understand the weeping, the loss.  But Rachel would be returned her children.  They were not gone forever, and mine always seem to return, eventually after each visit.  The teacher also spoke of the children of Israel where they were taken and killed.  Those children would never return.  This resonated too.  Ultimately I must come to peace with my God.  The God who takes and sometimes returns but the God who is good either way.  

Finding Safety

The interesting thing about having children is that they are just ALWAYS there.  If you happen to be an emotionally complex and dynamic human, like I am, this can prove to be a continuous and fascinating adjustment.  In the home I had before the divorce I gave everything to creating a "safe" space for my kids.  I was careful not to be too over emotional in front of them.  I had the misguided idea that they would interpret this as strength in their Mama.  They had a father who rarely deviated from silence and when he did it was to read to them or discuss intellectual ideas and scientific concepts.  He has always been gifted at sharing ideas, I suspect this is why I gravitated towards him.  This is what I knew growing up as well.  It is much more comfortable to discuss an author or a process with the actual emotional effect removed, especially if it would effect the relationship.  What I'm realizing now is how much my desire for "safety" didn't serve any of my family well before.  My eldest was stunted in her ability to process her feelings, and in a small child this is devastating.  The frustration of having no real language to use in processing her own emotions meant she had to process them somehow because there is this beautiful element in children of being unable to sit in denial.  She acted out, mainly in anger.  Her temper was intense.  I blamed this on heredity.  I didn't see how I cultivated this very element in her.  Now the change in her is so profound it is as if I have been introduced to a new child.  The difference in my house now is that I do not hide.  Of course I am also more supported than at any other time in my life emotionally so it makes it easier to not have so much I feel I need to hide.  We talk about our feelings often.  I have given her a language and true safety which came from my own vulnerability.   Sure it means I have to apologize more when I get frustrated with her when instead of acting out of fear that she'll be afraid of my frustration I express my frustration which inevitably turns into a 30 minute discussion of actions, consequences, love, patience, temperance, and many other nuanced layers of human interaction that she is growing daily to understand and navigate more successfully.  I feel more exhausted than I ever have as a parent but not because they have needs and I am the parent that must fulfill them (though that is still true) but because I have committed myself to looking in a mirror every day and attempting to make less of the same mistakes as the days pass.  It is emotionally exhausting but also more rewarding than a good schooling day or a clean kitchen (though those are still nice too).  These are baby steps but every day I thank God that my children are still so young and capable of so much growth.  When God decided that my entire life would look different than I had always dreamed it would and had worked so hard to build it to look I was angry.  Now I understand and I believe this life is not only the goodness God has promised but better than the good I was seeking. 

Back to Normal

What is normal?  People have asked me, repeatedly, over the last 6 months if things are getting back to normal.  This has seemed like such a funny statement to me.  My husband of almost 12 years left us after what felt to me like very little fight for our family at all.  I entered single parenting for the first and, I hope, last time in my life and was completely floored at the intensity of the experience and responsibility.  I grieved (will probably always be grieving on some level) the loss of my first love who I was not ready to give up, who despite treating me like a stranger, I was still in love with.  My friend and his best friend of the last 11 years fell in love with me and confessed his desire to care for me and my girls.  I fell in love again (such a strange term "fell" will have to examine that one further another time).  I got married again.  I trusted my God to care for us through out all of what I could hardly keep up with well enough to define.  Now my life looks different.  I can say things for certain.  I live in a healthy house.  My new husband demands a certain level of psychological, emotional, spiritual, and physical presence that I have previously never known.  It is challenging and rewarding in so many ways.  I see my children benefit from my own fight for specifically emotional and spiritual health and how it has changed our relationships for the better.  I have watched my eldest put down defenses I had previously believed were simply personality traits that we would always battle.   She is vulnerable and loving where she was once guarded and defensive.  We have laughter and joy in our house daily as well as intensity and process, the one being all the more rich because of the other.  I used to say I trust that God is a good God and he works all things for our good.  I say I used to say it because I think that is as far as it could go for me.  I was so continuously hoping for a change that I knew only God could bring that I said that over and over as a mantra to convince myself it had to be true.  Now I make the statement God Is Good.  I have watched Him work in my life in a way I can now say with certainty is good despite pain, suffering, brokenness, and misery.  So are things getting back to "normal"?  No.  they never will because normal will never be what I strive for.  We are not living a static existence.  Every day is new.  Every moment is another challenge to love better, choose truth more authentically, know ourselves and our God more intimately, and that most likely won't ever look normal.  If by "normal" my well meaning questioners are simply asking if I'm eating every day again, schooling my girls,  washing the clothes and the dishes, going on play dates and attending gymnastics classes, then yes...we are back to "normal". 

Honey & Lemon

    
                  Honey & Lemon
Life is this,  layer upon layer of joy and pain.
confusion, clarity.
honey and lemon.
There is no greater joy than this.
to be seen, to be made each day, slowly, concisely in his image.
They are perfectly formed.  They of my body, of my very blood and bones.
It is they who were made to see me first.
They will always hold the secret closest to my heart.
To know my children know the truth;
What greater joy can is there than this?

The Russian writer works my mind reminding me of reality
"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man."

There is more, he whispered.
My love, my beauty is greater than all of these.
I don't believe it yet.
I don't believe I am of this nature.
I don't believe I am seen in this way, loved to capacity
Though it was you who showed me these words:
"Knock, And He'll open the door
Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.”
It might be true.
I must be.
I may be.
I could be.
I will be.

I will be like the "soul at dawn, in darkened water that slowly begins to say, thank you, thank you."