Wednesday's Woe - "Snapped Shut to Grace"

Wednesday's Woe

"Snapped Shut to Grace"

~Ann Voskamp

“Losses do that. One life-loss can infect the whole of a life. Like a rash that wears through our days, our sight becomes peppered with black voids. Now everywhere we look, we only see all that isn’t: holes, lack, deficiency.” 

~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

~~~

For decades, a life, I continue to flail and strive and come up so seemingly … empty. I haven't lived up to my christening.

Maybe in those first few years my life slowly opened, curled like cupped hands, a receptacle open to the gifts God gives. But of those years, I have no memories. They say memory jolts awake with trauma's electricity. That would be the year I turned four. The year when blood pooled and my sister died and I, all of us, snapped shut to grace.

Standing at the side porch window, watching my parents' stunned bending, I wonder if my mother had held me in those natal moments of naming like she held my sister in death.

In November light, I see my mother and father sitting on the back porch step rocking her swaddled body in their arms. I press my face to the kitchen window, the cold glass, and watch them, watch their lips move, not with sleep prayers, but with pleas for waking, whole and miraculous. It does not come. The police do. They fill out reports. Blood seeps through that blanket bound. I see that too, even now.

Memory's surge burns deep.

That staining of her blood scorches me, but less than the blister of seeing her uncovered, lying there. She had only toddled into the farm lane, wandering after a cat, and I can see the delivery truck driver sitting at the kitchen table, his head in his hands, and I remember how he sobbed that he had never seen her. But I still see her, and I cannot forget. Her body, fragile and small, crushed by a truck's load in our farmyard, blood soaking into the thirsty, track-beaten earth. That's the moment the cosmos shifted, shattering any cupping of hands. …

~Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

Wednesday's Woe - Sibling Grief Too Abides...

Wednesday's Woe

Sibling Grief Too Abides...

“When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.”

My son was recently at home for a week,

Spent sweet time with him that left my stomach weak:

Hearing his saga, so much like mine

Tales of the heart so hard to define

When you've lost your little sister

(or your child), and cannot get over daily missing her...

Protecting our hearts (as they're woefully broken),

from potential hard hearts who treat souls like a token,

a token which could prevail their own ends,

a token which has no worth till it mends...

a token which has only one dimension

with no need at all for soulful attention.

Where are we grievers now to go

to be blessed and attended versus merely add to our woe...

His heart's cry pierced anew this mother's broken heart

To see another beloved child... by death be ripped apart. 

I thought it cruel that my son too does own

Some of the same depths of hurt as his dad's and my own...

What will break through this terrible pain

As grief still floods this family with its torrential rain?

Grief Quote, from the novel, Carry the One

Poem - Sibling Grief Too Abides... - Angie Bennett Prince - 6/24/2012

Wednesday's Woe - The Shock of "Merry" Christmas

Just one of the many greetings which has my baby's name in it...

Wednesday's Woe

The Shock of "Merry" Christmas

Holidays are bad enough. Christmas is hard enough after having lost our child. But for us, with our child's first name being "Merry," it seems almost impossible. Her siblings and friends always called her "Merry." The first Christmas or two after Merry Katherine was gone, I had some interesting experiences with text messaging. On my phone, all I would see by a text message until I clicked it would be one word... I saw by the phone number that popped up on my phone that I had received a text message from my hairdresser of many years. I was shocked at what she might have to tell me as the only word that I saw was, "MERRY" (my daughter also had been her hairdresser customer) ~ and my first thought was "HAS MERRY BEEN FOUND?!!!" and was greatly shocked and even disappointed to just read a Christmas greeting from her of "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" because however sweet it really was intended, it was a let down because my hopes had been driven up so high by just one precious word... I knew of course she would have no way of knowing that all I would see at first was my child's name, so I accepted the gracious reaching out that she had intended.

But later in the afternoon, I received a text from my oldest child, my son Rollin. We had all been to the beach together that second Christmas holiday, but he had to return home early before Christmas to close the deal on a new house he and his fiancee would be purchasing as their wedding was coming up soon thereafter. So, back at home before we were, he was texting me a message. I saw his name, and then I saw right beside his name was, "MERRY" and my heart leaped once again to the excitement that she must be here(!) only once again to be disappointed by the excited Christmas greeting inside: "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" So, even my son had stepped into that texting trap accidentally, wanting to send a loving greeting to his mother that instead melted her to tears... (thankfully, he didn't know that however!)

My younger son called me from down in Georgia last week, having been greatly triggered by some sweet Christian songs on his radio that he and Merry had loved. Then he added, "All these billboards down here with "Merry" on them are driving me crazy as they wish us a "Merry Christmas"! I see them everywhere! Living away from home now after his having lived with us these past three years since college ended for him, he was anticipating coming to visit us for the holidays and was thrown into the deep grief of knowing that unlike most of the Christmases of his life, his baby sister (just two years younger than he, and like a best-friend to him) would not be here awaiting his arrival to enjoy the laid-back days of the holidays together. It also didn't help that he had received the devastating news from here that two of his very good friends from middle school and high school had just died last week, one from "natural" causes and one murdered... They were just 25 and 26 years old, one 8 1/2 months pregnant, and the other had a 4-year-old baby girl. And of course we all know the devastation ahead for these parents...

Picture, thanks to Google Image

Monday's Mourning Ministry - Breakfast Table ~Christ Rice

Merry Katherine and her older brother Rollin

at her 19th birthday dinner

Monday's Mourning Ministry

Breakfast Table

~Christ Rice

Today, I had a wonderful Mother's Day with my hubby Tommy, my two sons Rollin and Nathan, and Rollin's wife of two years now, Stephanie. After Rollin and Stephanie left a few hours ago, I was reminded of this song that Rollin picked out soon after Merry Katherine was killed... But first, some background so you can better understand the song's significance.

***

Rollin is Merry Katherine's older brother. As children, with him the oldest, and her the youngest and both having very strong personalities, there were a lot of clashes. Nathan was the middle child and being close to both of them, was usually their peacemaker. There were probably quite a few hurtful things that transpired between Rollin and Merry Katherine over the years, a few of which I know about from what they have shared.

But when Rollin started high school, he began going to the youth group of the same church in which his daddy had gone as a child/growing teen. As Rollin began to faithfully attend all aspects of the youth group, appropriately called "Journey," his faith took on a more personal and deeper note with His Lord. He seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds, surrounded with good friends who were growing in the Lord too, as they honestly challenged one another, growing as they were being discipled by one another as well as under some great youth leaders.

Rollin's brother and sister watched skeptically, not sure they could trust such a major change in his life, but they began to see a real difference in him day-in and day-out. Merry Katherine, meanwhile, was beginning to stretch her wings and try new things in her then middle-school years, but her brothers were faithful to talk to her about their concerns and prodded her to join them in their youth group as she was leaving middle school and entering high school. So she did join them her freshman year.

Rollin was so precious to take the songs that had ministered so much to his heart, and introduce those songs to Merry Katherine so that they might minister to her as well. They had a very similar taste in music of all the pop culture songs anyway, but these songs were songs that seemed to penetrate the heart and soul. The songs gradually pierced her in a way too that began drawing her heart ever closer to the Lord.

It was so sweet watching both this transformation in the two siblings that fought the most with one another, and the transformations in their hearts as God was getting ahold of them with His amazing life-transforming love.

(Nathan was also growing tremendously in the Lord in their same group.) Merry Katherine continued to struggle off and on with her sin nature, and the tug-of-war between God and Satan, but God's hold on her was real. Her heart was so tender toward Him, and she too began to grow and be discipled by her friends in the youth group and by her own amazing youth group leaders.

We would often hear her belting out the songs Rollin had been sharing with her as she would sing along with her loudly-playing stereo from her bedroom, or with headphones while mowing the grass, singing out above the noise...

***

So after her death, it really touched me when Rollin came to me a couple of weeks after her funeral with the following song that he found, saying that this was the song he felt he most wanted to share with Merry Katherine, expressing his heart's sentiments in the way that he typically did with her...through song.

The song just seems to capture their personalities and their adventuresome spirits along with their newfound (over those past six years) tenderness with one another, their hearts' desire for God, and their growing relationships with Him...

Breakfast Table

Chris Rice

Was it a million miles to Heaven,

Too far to hear my lonely song?

Or is it just my imagination...I hear you humming along

I only hold you in my dreams now

I wake up with cold and empty arms

Lord help me get through this long night without you

And soon as the morning comes...

Soon as the morning comes...

Save me a seat at the breakfast table

Save me a dance around the Milky Way

And save me a thousand years to whisper in your ears

All I've wanted to say

Save me a smile and an angel's feather

Save me a walk down the streets of gold

And maybe, we'll change our minds just like old times

And maybe we'll just fly away...

Or maybe we'll stay!

You lucky dog, you're in heaven before me...

You were my taste of Heaven here

Remember we loved to talk about it, we couldn't wait to get there

So you go on and find your way around now

But remember I'm here missing you...

Do me a favor and say 'Hey' to Jesus

And tell him I'm missing Him too

Tell him I'm missing Him too

Then save me a seat at the breakfast table

Save me a dance around the Milky Way

And save me a thousand years to whisper in your ears

All I've wanted to say

Save me a smile and an angel's feather

Save me a walk down the streets of gold

And maybe, we'll change our minds just like old times

And maybe we'll just fly away!

Save me a seat at the breakfast table

Save me a dance around The Milky Way

Save me a thousand years to whisper in your ears

All I've wanted to say

Save me a smile and an angel's feather

Save me a walk down the streets of Gold

Maybe we'll change our minds just like old times

Or maybe we'll just fly away...

Maybe we'll fly away...we'll fly away...

'Cause I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, I miss you!

Baby, let's fly away! We'll fly; we'll fly; we'll fly,

We'll have forever; we'll have forever and ever

yea yea yea yea yea yea yea yea yea yea yea yea yea

I can't wait to see you

I can't wait to hold you again

You were my taste of Heaven

We'll have forever...

I can't wait to see you

I can't wait to hold you!

song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NhAdDhWpxY