Category: Feeling Blue

A Time for Everything

Posted by bcgal80 – January 17, 2005

A Time for Everything

There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die…

For little Landis, the time to be born was followed too closely by a time to die. I never saw him, but I went to his funeral and stared through watery eyes at a white casket not much bigger than a shoebox. I can’t quite wrap my mind around how small six ounces is, but I do know that it’s too small to survive on this earth. So I stood there in the biting cold, a lump in my throat and tears that never quite made it past my eyes, watching my friend sob over the baby that she never got to cuddle or feed or bathe. But she did get to love him. Those eighteen weeks she carried her child inside her she loved him with the fierce love of a mother. A love that I marvel at.

And I grappled with the questions. Why was her time to rejoice cut short by a time to grieve? Why was a piece of her heart bound up with that grave in the frozen ground? Why did it happen this way?

But my questions were cut short by the words of our pastor, who said that Landis’s life, as brief as it was, touched the lives of that small group huddled together in the cold. And it would touch other’s through the lives of his parents, his grandparents, his aunts and uncles. I still don’t understand it, but once again I must find comfort in God’s perfection. And I have to believe that Landis’s parents will get to hold him one day. Until then, these frozen tears will serve as a reminder of the one we lost.

I don’t understand

Posted by bcgal80 – January 12, 2005

Every day I realize a little more how little I understand about life. This latest realization began about a month ago when I went to visit a friend in the hospital who had just had her first child. I remember sitting in a rocking chair in her room and holding this tiny little baby, just a few hours old, and thinking what a miracle it was. He wrapped his tiny hand around my finger, he tried to focus his eyes on my face, and he let out lusty cries. And it was all amazing.

Then four weeks later I was standing in another hospital, looking down at another baby. A baby whose tiny body should have still been sheltered inside his mother. A tube down his throat breathed for him, and wires snaked out from his body in such a manner that his own mother couldn’t even hold him, but could only stroke his cheek. His body, no bigger than my hand, shuddered with silent cries that he couldn’t force around the respirator. I couldn’t see it, but I knew that his tiny brain was bleeding and his heart was damaged. As I look at his mother, I know that she hasn’t slept in days, and the fear is evident in her eyes. Just 18 months ago her body brought forth another child, a little girl who only lived a few hours. I can see the pleading in her face: Please don’t let this happen again.

And finally, just today, I found out that a woman from my church, only 18-weeks pregnant, is in the hospital, fighting desperately to keep her child from a world where he can’t survive.

And I just can’t understand why.

“One often calms ones grief by recounting it.”

Posted by bcgal80 – October 29, 2004

“One often calms ones grief by recounting it.”

My grandmother died two weeks ago today. It’s strange to me when I feel like my world is crashing and everyone around me is going on as if nothing has happened. Sometimes I just want to stand up and scream “I’m grieving, won’t you just help me.” But I guess that’s what happens when I’m surrounded by those who don’t know the person for whom I grieve. I desperately want someone to say “tell me about your grandmother,” so I can just pour forth the memories that, while stuck inside me feel like they’re eating me alive.

But in the midst of the pain, God blessed me so much with the opportunity to go home for a few days to see my family and attend the funeral. It was a blessing shrouded in pain, but a blessing none the less. I’ve discovered in the past few years that there is nothing so painful as seeing your parents cry. When my stepdad died, I had to stand by and watch my mother so broken that I didn’t know if our family could survive. Now, I’ve seen my dad and my aunts and uncles stand over a casket and choke out the words “I miss you mama.” I almost couldn’t handle it. I’m not sure how well I did handle it. I stood to the side and wrapped my arms tightly around myself, physically trying to hold it all together.

My cousins bunched around my grandmother’s body, crying and touching her. I couldn’t do it though. That wasn’t my grandmother lying there. She was gone, and I wanted nothing more than to see her again. To sit in her living room and watch the Wheel of Fortune together. I wanted her to tell me I was beautiful and call me Sugar and to exclaim “Well Do!” when I told her something interesting. I had so many regrets. Why didn’t I call more? Why didn’t I spend more time with her while I was home?

But God knew the cries of a grieving, angry, hurting heart. I turned away from the casket, and my Aunt Sissy took me in her arms and whispered in my ear “Your Grandma loved you so much. Never forget that.” That’s all I needed. To know that in spite of all of my mess ups, she still loved me. Part of me still doesn’t understand why God took two people I loved in such a manner when I was far from home, but more and more I’m learning that there are many things that God does that I will never understand. Maybe I don’t need to.