Living Phoenix

Tag: death

  • Sunday Sidebar

    Sunday Sidebar

    I should have published the usual Sunday Sidebar yesterday, but chose to get up and move instead, followed by getting under the covers and hiding from the world for the rest of the day. Sunday Sidebar’s are for me- they pertain to grief and the journey back to life- but they are directed from whatever emotions are sitting on my heart at the time. Raw. Unedited. And I didn’t have much good to say yesterday. My prayer: God I know you are real, I know I am made in your image, I understand how you see me, I think. But today I have anger in my heart and I don’t know what to do with it.

    People say give it to God a lot. What exactly does that mean? Hand it over mentally? Ask him to take it? Will it into his hands? All of the options sound like the promises of terot card readings and crystal balls. What if my anger is not only at myself, but a little at God? There is shame that comes with that feeling. God, I’m a little angry with you. Do you want to take that? I know he doesn’t deserve it. How dare I even ask. But David did. And God sure loved him.

    “O Lord, how long will you forget me? Forever? How long will you look hte other way?” Psalm 13:1

    “How long must I struggle with anguish in my soul, with sorrow in my hear every day?” Psalm 13:2

    So, I don’t know what people intend when they say give it to God. Mostly, because it implies he will take it away. And that is not typically the case. He will, however, join you and channel your passion for something better. Not necessarily better than what you lost, but better than your current bed of anger. C.S. Lewis said he sat with anger long enough until she told him it was grief. Something like that, anyway. The point is that anger comes with grief. And it is the last to leave. Especially when we admit there is a God big enough to save people, marriages, relationships, entire populations. And yet, here we sit doing everything and giving everything inside us to our pursuit of him with nothing but what seems like a new plan. I am angry that it is any plan other than the one I thought he blessed me with before. I’m angry it can’t be put back together. But all he wants is for me to share that anger with him. To allow him to show me where that comes from and what I can do with it.

    Tomorrow will come and his mercies will be new. Sometimes you have to hide under the covers until the morning comes. And start again. One. Step. At. A. Time.

  • The Trees Do Scream

    The Trees Do Scream

    There was rumor once, of a place in me that grew, the most beautiful of lush green gardens. Rich was the soil, dark and moist, from which sprung life: foliage of all the colors bright and plain. Rumors told, too, that God wandered there; His own Son even prayed, knees upon that very soil, moist then from the sweat of his brow, from which sprouted more life so pure. Trees reaching, stretching their outermost fingertips to the skies in worship. Every ray of sun bleeding through to the pathways of unworn grass, untouched by weed or pest. There was rumor that garden, beautiful and green, was painted on my soul. What’s more, the rumors were true, whispered among the angels who watched me grow, that the garden was me, every tangled limb and reaching leaf the pieces of my being. My heartbeat vibrating softly through the vines and across the forrest floor. Living. Breathing. Known.

    Did you hear the rumor then? That the trees did scream, too. Their pain was heard not by man or dog, but by ears eternal. The garden grew, but was not maintained. Weeds were gathered and planted about. Their thorns and vines striking through the soil, seeping up it’s moisture, strangling every flower that bloomed. Suffocating new life. The trees looked on in terror. Protectors of this forest floor, shade to the garden that was my soul. Rumor has it, it started with a spark. Not divine, but intended for evil. That spark grew, and drew upon itself every ounce of air til flames erupting, jumped about. That fire burned, hot and high, devouring every ounce of deadwood that fell, consuming vine and weed, branch and limb. Rumors spread, that the pain was savage, that even the trees did scream, too. Until after rain, and setting sun, and morning new: remained the life, once smothered by every weed and rotting log peaking through.

    There is a rumor now, that God recognizes every plant that remains upon this garden floor. His watchful eye and strong right hand moving burned deadwood away. It is no rumor, that garden grows beautiful again today.

  • Our Identity is Our Compass: so how do we navigate through grief when it’s lost?

    Our Identity is Our Compass: so how do we navigate through grief when it’s lost?

    Knowing your true identity is our only fail proof navigation system in life. It is not about “finding yourself”. It’s about being honest with God and asking Him to know yourself, as He knows you.

    The loss that brings your greatest grief strips you naked. It reveals your most vulnerable self to yourself and to the world. The bruises, the lacerations, the bites and scratches, the decaying flesh: frozen in time and space, unable to move and avoid the embarrassment and shame of your appearance and place. The universal experience of grief is not pain, it is the endless questions that plague your heart and mind. In this state, battered and deformed, it is hard to recognize yourself. You remember who you thought you were: who you were known to be. And you remember the mistakes you made, the horrible things you called yourself, and the horrible things people now call you. This, at a time when you are most vulnerable and must lean on whatever identity you can summon. How easy it is to believe that you are a wretched soul, deserving of this, and that this grief is your true identity.

    The truth be told, if we were true to our identity we would rarely experience an unhealing grief. If we could forgive others, forgive ourselves, see God’s hand, and make our choices only within the true unique identity he gave us, we would have never have faltered and we would remain in his peace. We would not have lost our person to bad choices. Or we would celebrate the life of the person taken from us and heal in understanding of God’s eternity. But the struggle of dishonesty about our identity begins like a quiet and unseen virus, infecting our self perception before we start to display the symptoms. And when we are laying in the ashes of our most profound loss, what we need of who we are is hardest to see.

    Honesty and confession. That moment where we find ourselves with only a shallow breath remaining and no will to go on- no more self defense, no energy to fight, no sense of direction- accepting the wave of self defeat and hoping for death…that moment is our opportunity to tell God what we call ourselves. Tell God the names and descriptions of what we believe has become our identity. I told God that I believed I was alone, unloveable, unredeemable, a failure, a bad husband, a bad father, a bad friend, a bad son, a bad brother, insecure, unworthy. I imagined myself sitting in the burning dirt and brush, bleeding and broken, unable to stand. The car I was in only moments before, full of a happy family, a loving wife, a satisfied husband, now wrapped around a tree, mangled in a heap, still smoking. I wrote those names on a list as Jesus walked up behind me. Reaching down with one hand he grabbed the list, dark and shaded in gray scale and no color. As his hand took the list a light spread down the paper and my outstretched arm. His other hand grabbed me by the side and lifted me up. As the light flooded in, like a rapidly rising sun over the horizon, the landscape was revealed. I was there, again, in the valley between flush green mountains, the fire burning beside us, flames dancing as if rejoicing my prodigal return. His arm never left me, but he reached down with the other hand and placed my list into the flames. It flashed, consumed by the fire, and a dove emerged: beautiful, white, disappearing high over the surrounding hilltops. Gentle, genuine lover, caretaker, resilient, father, son, friend, protector, fighter, servant, willing; He called out the names of my identity as he saw them, written on his heart. He pointed to look above me and there were the pieces of my world, his many angels working diligently, picking up the many fractured parts, building new ones, and putting it slowly back together.

    Our identity is unique to us. But it was gifted and generates its actions the same: through love. And because he first loved us, that while we were yet his enemies he died for us to live eternal as his children. There is no condemnation in Christ. That is hard to understand when the blisters of self condemnation still drain from your grief and shame. But it is true. And if we accept our honest and true identity, we have all we need to remain in his steadfast direction.

    Jesus had an identity that was unique to him and served as his compass throughout his life and ministry. It was proclaimed when he emerged from the water, held by John the Baptist: ” And a voice from heaven said, “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy.” Matthew 3:17. He chose not to accept the false identities hurled at him from those who loved and hated him, the world, and evil. And his path, his identity, brought us to freedom.

  • Sunday Sidebar

    Sunday Sidebar

    “Hearts can break. Yes, hearts can break. Sometimes I think it would be better if we died when they did, but we don’t.” — Stephen King

    There are some things worse than death: loss of true love and separation from God. The pain exists in the space between the connection had and the seemingly endless future of connection lost. Like a ship lost in a storm with no sails and no rudder, we are at the mercy of the wind and waves, we drown below the surface of the deep waters, or succumb to the pounding rain above. One or both may never recover. One or both may. Only one is not reliant on the limited forgiveness, love, understanding of the will of man. That of the connection of God cannot be permanently deleted. God doesn’t walk away from us with his back turned because of hurt and anger. He cannot. He is part of us. And that connection is always a choice of our own, unlike a covenant between two fallible people.

    I always thought that choice was a one time event. That forgiveness was available but not free. That it required some significant strength or quantity of faith and belief that had to be satisfactory to the cosmic police to get me into good standing. That confession meant saying “I am sorry”. None of that is found to be true when you are moments from being a corpse, with nothing that made you who you were remaining, your life in utter ruins. Sorry, did not connect me to God. Honesty did. And it wasn’t my strength, or quantity of faith, that led him to start picking up the millions of pieces. I know because I had no strength or faith remaining. I was on my final breathe when he stepped in to lift me up. Surrounded by angels. And even if we are still on life support, when he comes because we were honest to him and asked the right questions, we are at least no longer lying in the grave.

  • Sunday Sidebar

    Sunday Sidebar

    God still speaks to us. Why is God silent when we need him most? He isn’t standing by. He isn’t teaching us something through silence. He isn’t sadistic. The answer is chaos. There is so much chaos. So much pain and loss that terror fills every part of us so that all we can hear is the echos of our screams. For the same reason we are unable to see someone’s love and commitment to us when it is right in front of us and we make choices that contradict our true identity- we don’t see that we are standing in our own way while God speaks. He speaks: through feelings, emotions, thoughts, dreams, words, visions… But if I am so surrounded and filled with FEAR, I cannot hear the voice in the storm. Fear of losing what we had forever. Fear that we already know it will never return to “normal”. Fear that what God will say we do not want to hear. Because only one thing, one single response, would do. And that is what we want most and most what we cannot have. And fear is so damn loud.

    My vision comes to me in low resolution, like an old television, bunny ear antennae straining in different directions to pull in bits and pieces of the image across the screen. Christ kneeling in a garden. It’s dark. It’s dark all around in the trees that surround him with a single torch burning in a small clearing. He doesn’t look at me. I cannot see his face. I see his clothes. His robe- brown and white, his low resolution bare feet behind him but I cannot make out his toes. Odd that I look every time. I hear him praying quietly, desperately, and with fervor. He is sweating and it drips to the ground. I hear him praying. And I hear him say “come sit with me”. He doesn’t pause his prayer, he doesn’t turn to say anything to me, but I hear him.

    This is where my journey with him often ends. He doesn’t speak any further wisdom to me. I have nothing profound to walk away with. Nothing to change my life back to whole. Only an invitation to kneel by him and suffer beside him. To witness the pain on his face as he prepares to lose everything he has known in life. His friends, his family, his hopes, his dreams, his comforts. Only an invitation to hear his desperate whispers. To be still. And to know.

  • Sunday Sidebar

    Sunday Sidebar

    Most often I find myself praying to forget. Despite them being my fondest memories in life, they are what cause me the most pain. Those treasured moments burn like hot coals in the morning and keep me from sleep. If only I could focus on the troubled times, the hard parts, the things that didn’t bring joy. If only the worse times with her weren’t better than the best times anywhere else. I would gladly have the operation to remove every memory from those years. To go on with a hole in my memory where all my hopes and dreams once lived. Unnoticed. Unaware.

    Grief is a sign that you loved deeply. And the deeper the grief the greater you loved. The greater you loved the more painful this unnecessary torture of life’s experience will be. There is no way around it but to feel it. And there is nothing good about what you will feel. It is too big to bottle up and hide in the corner. It is to grande, too much, to deal with in quiet rooms alone. It is evidence you are capable of huge love. And therefore, at risk for greatest loss. When love is in front of you the risk is worth every bit. When it disappears, and you feel the pain of generational loss, the gamble seems unfair.

    I grieve because my heart was honest about my love for a person.

  • Nevermore to Escape the Haunt of this Black Dog

    Nevermore to Escape the Haunt of this Black Dog

    “There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral’s Kiss

    The haunting thick fog of depression that settles in through the cracks of our grief and loss and persists well beyond its welcome holds a horrific grasp upon our mourning. If you are looking for a more cheerful and motivating take on the suffering of this Black Care, today is not the day. Perhaps, tomorrow, a more helpful and hopeful essay on the rise from its clutches will evolve. But depression, the most massive stone that falls upon our hearts, mandates that an honest description precedes prescription. And for all its weight and all it’s persistence, there is much to say.

    There is a cold and quiet shock after loss, that moment when you sit, somehow still inside yourself, while you shake in terror somewhere far outside your body. Every small background noise, once unnoticed, falls deafening upon your ears. Even your anatomy seems to shift in fluid form, melting: stomach into throat, tongue to roof of mouth, heart toward intestines, heartbeat into your eardrums, and eyes somewhere across the room watching. The amorphous mess you are in the suddenness of loss.

    While every other emotional stage of grief seems to come and go, depression settles down upon you and fills your pores like smoke. When does bereavement transition into depression? Who cares- besides your therapist. These early moments, while the mind buzzes and ceases it usefulness, is when depression takes the opportunity to fill in all of the gaps in your shattered reality. While you deny, rage in anger, and bargain for your life back, distracted by the chaos, those blue devils are settling in for a long and lonely stay. Waves of every form of grief come and go from your shore, but this great sadness has anchored itself mercilessly to your soul.

    As the shock slowly fades, and the flames calm to embers and ash, the cold empty version of you will be all that remains. How long must we suffer at this great affliction? Taste has abandoned your tongue, swallowing and deep breath become a conscious effort, focus will evade you at every routine task. Depression never brought a single answer, but a thousand questions. How? How can one person have the power to wreck my existence, my entire human experience? Why? Why would a loving God stand-by in our greatest time of need? Who? Who have I become in instant unawareness? When? When will this empty pain become tolerable? What? What will become of this broken heart? Job asked a thousand questions. But we don’t suffer as Job. For in his story, God finally answered, and restoration was paid for his obedience. No, our depression gathers at the corners of our lips as jealous anger toward Job and his loving God. What is depression? It is everything. It is you now. It is the eternal echo of the hammer against anvil reverberating off the canyon walls. It is embedded into your DNA to pass on for generations.

    Nobody tells you that the depression that overlies our grief is a hungry beast. We feed it out of desperation, at first. The stage of mistakes- looking for a quick fix in another person, place, or thing. Later we make sacrifices to it- all things that once brought us joy. But hungry still we face it’s gaping fangs to wonder what might satiate this creature. Wise and shifty, depression never speaks, it introduces thoughts and feelings using your own voice. When it bears down upon us in this very moment and we hear those familiar words- “what I, Depression, crave to consume is you”- it is time to resist. With every last bit of self. With every hope you still might have in God. Resist. Depression doesn’t deserve your life. Somewhere you are something more than this beast upon you. Fight. Keep going through hell. One step at a time.

    The very real fear is that in our grief we will become our depression. A cancer consuming every healthy cell. “[b]ecause wherever I sat- on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok- I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.” (Sylvia Plath, the Bell Jar). It is an ever present air that we breath. It fits like heavy wet clothing. It is holes in your socks on a cold winter night. How do we resist it becoming our identity and following us to a welcomed grave? I don’t know. All I know is that what eventually feels the best is throwing everything back at it- striking that beast in the mouth. We have little control in this new world of grief. Giving up and letting depression define us is one more loss that we, perhaps, cannot afford. Look to the literature, the historical figures who suffered, your family, your God. Look back at that happy person you were before the Black Dog grabbed him by the throat. You owe him something. He has suffered more than he deserved.


  • Denial Is Not a River in Egypt: It Is a Small Raft Afloat in an Ocean of Despair

    Denial Is Not a River in Egypt: It Is a Small Raft Afloat in an Ocean of Despair

    “Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand. … Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back.” C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

    In the opening of the brilliant novel, The Goldfinch, by the literary genius, Donna Tart, the young Theo Decker finds himself in a tragic and sudden transition from the safety and freedom of a loving mother to the literal and figurative aftermath of an explosion in an art museum: left confused, surrounded by the rubble of walls, ceiling tiles, dust, smoke, and body parts he is thrust into a lifelong journey through grief. Walking into the museum that day his mind never ventured to imagine life without his mother. Why would it? As he wandered and worried about the trouble he had caused in school and the disappointment and anger his mother may have, his thoughts never led him to believe at any moment it would be his last opportunity to say good-bye, or I love you, or I’m sorry. He couldn’t imagine the guilt of leading his mother into that museum or the pain of losing her. For days he sat in the apartment certain the phone would ring and it would be her, she would walk through the door with dinner, seeing her, hearing her, smelling her. First a constant sea of denial followed by waves of remitting and recurring denial, anger, sadness, shock…always an underlying fear.

    Denial is not a large body of water. It’s not even fluid. It is the small raft your mind strands you upon in the midst of terror and loss of reality for the sake of survival. The edges of that raft, it’s borders and size, are simply determined by what your mind can handle in the moment. An emotional buffer between the safety of your previous reality and the new reality of loss and pain. In the aftermath of tragedy everything slows down to a survivable pace- the silence of the house, the growing pile of dishes in the sink, the sounds of the settling house and the clock on the wall. Tick, tick, tick, tick… We move slowly, we breath slowly, we wait for that person to call, walk through the door, seeing them, hearing them, smelling them.

    That is denial. A slowing of the pace of reality: the brains desperate attempt to restrict how quickly the painful realizations of your new life are absorbed, like a nozzle on a firehose. But there is no permanent comfort on this small raft. While it may protect us in those early days, to stay here and dine on the lotus flower of Calypso’s island is to damn yourself to a life of pain and sadness that will live forever beneath the surface, giving way to an even greater loss- our souls.

    In the movie, Braveheart, William Wallace is visited by his deceased wife, the love of his life, during a dream. There is something sad, sweet, and very real how he begs for her to remain when he says: “I don’t want to wake. I want to stay here with you.” Her reply is what God is telling us softly with each growing day: “And I want to stay here with you. But you must wake up.” His reality is no longer there with her and his journey must go on, he must fight, fueled by her memory but not remaining there, defenseless, within it’s company.

    I believe C.S. Lewis was right, and that his gutted portrayal of his grief is amongst the greatest in literary history, when he said don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion, what was taken away will never be given back. That is the underlying etiology of the fear beneath our guilt and grief and why we find ourselves in denial. We don’t want to wake up. We don’t want to say goodbye. The only quiet glimpse of consolation during this period of loss is the silent image of the cross, the hope in a Savior, a garden of prayer. And all of those things are still fleeting for some great time. Waves of consolation broken on the rocks of a sudden memory. But if you are to step off that raft and try to fight, to continue your journey, it will be those moments of His consolation that may sustain you the most. You will never rid yourself of the pain. You are hurting even when you deny it exists. You will hurt when you open your eyes and rummage through the pieces, too. That pain, if you were genuine in your love, will remain: you cannot rid yourself of it, you must change your relationship with it.

    “I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.” Lamentations 3:20. “Though he brings grief, he also shows compassion because of the greatness of his unfailing love.” Lamentations 3:32

    When you are ready to look around at your new reality, start by sitting on the edge of the raft with your feet in the water. Feel each emotional current pulling and pushing. And ask God to be with you before you are submerged and swimming toward the shore. Ask him to remind you that your feet will stand on solid ground again. Move. Stroke. Fight. And breath.