Cool, Lake Erie breezes, high soft clouds in a light blue sky, warming sun and an exquisitely perfect day for Cedar Point. The park has grown into a tree lined, rollercoaster paradise for both mother and sons.

As the sons fast pass their ways to shorter lines and fierce dedication to extreme fun, I stroll among the park gardens. The colorful smiles of the not so overwhelming numbers of passersby buoy my spirit infusing it with the kind of joy that comes from sharing the beauty of fun…The Valravn, The Millennium and Magnum Force, Steel Vengeance, the Rougarou, the Dragster and my beloved Corkscrew and Blue Streak of yesteryear. In the heat of the day, I share a frozen vodka lemonade with my son in the shade of the saloon while we wait for the stories from our own epic thrill seekers.

When I can hold my companions off no longer, I join them on the Millennium Force. “Just hold your head up and it won’t bother your neck” one thoughtful son tells me. As I slam my eyes shut, I brace myself with both feet and hands. Tightly grasping the yellow bar in front of me, the ride begins. Upward we soar 310 FT. in the air before we plummet @93mph. I think of Philip speed skiing at the 1992 Olympic trials at the same or faster speed. The thought helps me negotiate the somersaults my stomach is taking though I am surprised I am not as intolerant of them as I anticipated I would be. All in all I am pleased with the state of my being as we de-coaster. I could do that again, I think…but there is no longer anything to say I should.

Gloriously fine weather and company, fun has been had by all as it shines from our faces. On our second day, we are slowed only by our weary feet. They are seemingly unaware of our indomitable spirits ready for the next big thing… which we all agree should be a nap.

Anne
July, 2021

There’s a scene in one of the Jurassic Park movies where the characters are in their car and are thrown into a tree by the T-Rex. They begin to climb down the tree and are almost out of the car when the car dislodges and falls down on them. The boy then says, ” I guess we’re back in the car again.” I think of that scene often these days. It’s a picture of grief for me: just when I think the onslaught is over and I can rest in safety, the T-Rex awakens and I find myself back in the car… again.

I got my jaw injected today. I’ve been grinding my teeth for months now and my jaw finally had enough as it once did in 2015. It causes quite possibly my most intense physical pain to date, second only to natural childbirth. It doesn’t last long but it sure does pierce my weary soul and unleashing the tears of pain unleashes it all.

I thought I might drown in the sorrow today until a friend unwittingly changed the direction of the car.
She simply hoped that the shot would be worth the price of the pain… Her words made me realize that hope is always worth the price because Jesus is my only true hope. He knows a thing or two about soul wrenching pain… and about hope.
Thank God that He’s sitting right beside me in the car, again and again, or I would be truly lost, indeed.

Anne
June 23, 2021

My spirit has gone dormant. I sent two sons on a cross country trip to St Louis where one will stay for the summer. I was all alone in my house. I managed to get a scrapbook done but I did a little else.
It seems I have little to say, less to feel and naps to take.
In the stages of grief, I think I started with shock and numbness, did a bit of acceptance moving into anger and now am blank. It is a curious process with all it’s layers; such a stinky onion of a thing.

Still connected to life on some days with the endless projects of putting an absent life into order but then on other days simply sitting blankly. With the heat of summer coming on, I sometimes feel a bit like a dried up old rag crackling in the sun.

I go to the Superior Court today to prove for Social Security that I was married. To do that I have to prove who I was before I was married, ironic really because I have no idea who I am now that I find myself unmarried once again.

Anne
June 2, 2021

I had a hard day yesterday with both head and heart pain. I am, of course, more susceptible to feeling overwhelmed when I have a migraine so it’s not surprising that I was sucked into the whirlwind of perspective loss.

Just as unexpected kindnesses have a way of reconnecting  me to hope so also, does unexpected harshness have it’s way of plummeting me into darkness.

God gives me a choice in the darkness. I can free fall into it or I can reach for the hand holding me and allow Him to pull me out. And the wonderful thing is He holds on until I decide.

Darkness is helpful when one has a migraine even if it is a different kind and the darkness of yesterday escorted me to the pages of God’s Word. The light I found there was soothing and empowering, chasing me out of the darkness and back into the light of hope. 

He not only lifts me out of the pit, He also empowers me to have compassion on those who refuse to leave it. 

Wow.

Our God is good, ALL the time

Anne

May 16, 2021

It’s beautiful cool morning at Hamilton High. Joe is swinging away with his batting coach while I’m walking the dogs in the green fields with the ducks and the birds and the kitty hideaways and one frightened turtle, me.

I feel like a turtle and all I want to do is go back into my shell and hibernate or should it be hide-ernate. I stuck my neck out, tried to be brave and now all I want to do is cry, besides the punching thing of yesterday. 

Tired of this always being about me. It feels like maybe it’s me I want to punch today. Snap out of it! Move on! Feel better! Stop being a sorrowful mess!

I know it doesn’t work like that but I’m going to to wish it did for just a little while; say a brief moment at a quinceanera? A Quincie that is absolutely not about me and doesn’t become about me as it drudges up memories embedded as deep as my toes?

Do I go to a wedding next week which, again, is not about me, only to tarnish the day with my own embedded-ness?

Or do I welcome God into my process and receive His sometimes hidden gifts? Allowing Him to use the joy of others to bring me healing and rest? 

Allowing Him to use His redemptive power to bring me back to my own life of joy through, not around, the joy of others…

I guess I have my answer.

Anne
May 9, 2021

I woke up ready to fight and it didn’t matter who, initially. When faced with unpleasant feelings I have taken to finding something that brings me joy and doing it. This time, I turned my attention to a book I’ve been reading, The Epic of Eden, by Sandra L. Richter. It is a thoroughly enlightening book on the redemption, rescue plan of God.  She brings such clarity and connection to the whole of the Bible, enabling me to temporarily put aside the darkness of my grief as I immerse myself in the light of truth. Today, the book did its job as it awakened my mind to the amazing bigger picture, the plan put in motion by God Himself.  As nicely as this tethers me to His goodness, I knew I was using it for nefarious reasons: to avoid the darkness within me. 

Even so, I was not deterred. My next step was to go do some more burden blasting in the yard. With my yard armor on, I began the clean up of the piles of pine needles I had made. Just as I began, I was interrupted by a body issue and, subsequently, each time I began again, I was forced to attend to something else. Finally, it became irritatingly clear that God wanted my attention, not my avoidance, so I took the dogs out to the lake for a walk and a chat. 

Yesterday, Joe and I attended our first quinceanera. As beautiful and life-affirming as it was, it harnessed in me some profound feelings of loss especially as I watched her parents match each other, step for step, on the dance floor.

Philip would have loved everything about this evening. He loved our baseball team and had a particular fondness for our girl. Celebrating her life in this way would have quite possibly exploded him in joy. I could have foreseen a dance injury or two to myself as he twirled me frantically to the music. 

I did my best to delight and celebrate with her family but this morning I could no longer control my internal anguish. I tried to avoid it by slipping into fight mode but that was clearly a ruse. I tried joyful distraction, another ruse. I tried burden busting yard work…until at last, I used up my last bit of avoidance and fell into my grief. As I walked around the pond, I stopped at each shady tree for a fresh wave of sorrow; powerful sobs that I have not seen since the night I sent Philip to Jesus. 

Yes, it is my honor to cry for Philip but it sure is stupidly inefficient and painful.  The addition of physical body issues makes me feel pummeled from multiple sides and it all makes me want to  punch God in the face and move on…

He’s okay with that, I think, because He sees that big picture thing. I daresay it’s why He interrupted my morning so often until He got my attention. He certainly knows the anguish of grief and so much more… Yet He reaches down into my point of need before I am even willing to acknowledge it, and He allows me to want to punch Him. 

Wow.

Thank You, Abba,

Anne

May 8, 2021

Beth Moore Galatians Bible Study week 4, day one: 

Galatians 4:3-5 ESV

“In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

Beth Moore encouraged us to consider the ways we have been enslaved under the elementary principles of the world. I tried to answer this with examples from my past but I knew that was a cop out. My answer needed to confront my present. Specifically, the ties that bind me to my need for my mother’s acceptance and approval in all their painful vividness.

In my recent time of needing to be surrounded, accepted and nurtured in a safe place of family, I am instead met with her derision and disapproval; always falling far short of who she thinks she wants me to be.

I’m a nurse. I have defenses against the dark arts of emotional attack, typically, but those defenses are overwhelmed right now and it is so abruptly wounding even when I recognize her dementia driven angst. 

My need is so great, my emotions so close to my surface, I am so easily bruised…

But!!! I have not been left in my enslavement. I have been given a new life of growing fully into the freedom offered in Jesus. He reminds me that I live by different rules now. Rules fueled by love/acceptance freely given b/c of my irrevocable binding to Jesus Himself!

Wow! 

And as if that wasn’t enough, there’s more! His irrevocable binding will, in turn, fuel my healing and eventual acceptance of my mom. 

Double Wow! (Mom upside down)

He never ceases to amaze me with how He always answers with so much more than I think or imagine. And His living, breathing Word meets me at the point of my need even when I think I’m behind in my studies.

I love that Guy!

Anne

May 5, 2021

I have gone to my mother’s house to celebrate the Kentucky Derby as I have for a decade or more. And in these latter years, Philip and my sons have come with me. This year will be the first time to see many friends and relatives who rejoiced with Philip and I through our lives and mourn now with me in his loss. It is typically a time of joy but I have been full of dread as I anticipate it.

I was managing okay until I greeted those for whom greeting me is brand new since Philip’s gone-ness. The tender distress of the tears in their eyes took me to the edge of my undoing…

This morning, however, my mourning was interrupted when my God in His Abba-ness, sent me to the Galatians Bible study I’ve been doing. He sent me to the very words I needed to calm my ‘racing’ self. (pardon the pun)

Isaiah 43:3-4.3

“Listen to me, you whom I have upheld since your birth, and have carried since you were born.4 Even to your old age and gray hairs. I am He, I am He Who will sustain you.I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.”

Powerful words to sustain, carry and rescue me as He invites me anew into His presence, the presence of my Abba.

Beth Moore’s study in Galatians tells me “‘Abba’ is a cry of the heart not a word spoken calmly with personal detachment and reserve but a word we call or cry out”-Timothy George. 

It is a term drenched in intimacy out of a heart in dire need; not just a response but a summons; a calling out for comfort.

Jesus said it in the Garden of Gethsemane: “‘Abba Father’ all things are possible for You.” Mark 14:36.

Though my need does not compare with His, He reminds me, anyway, of the power of ‘Abba’; gently renewing His invitation to fall at my Father’s feet. 

There I can know, without a doubt, that I am welcomed into the very presence of God as His child. My Father Who will run to meet me at the point of my need regardless of whether I am in true peril or not.

And even more!  He invites me to summon Him, the God of the universe, to my side as a frightened child calling for the safety of a parent’s presence. 

“Abba, all things are possible for You.” I repeat over and over again. And as I do, I am sustained, carried and rescued. Your interrupting redirection; Your intimate invitation; Your illimitable Word of power bids me come with the tenderness of One Who knows me.

Thank You, Abba,

Anne.

May 1, 2021