Walk with Me

Walk with me through my hurts
Be with me. Hold me.
Tell me it's OK to feel the way I do
Do not tell me it will be all right...
Not to be angry...not to cry.

When you tell me to understand
What has happened and to accept it
Without first feeling anger, grief or pain
...that's for you.

When you tell me to understand
The other people, or when you excuse them
For the pain they caused me
...that's for you.

If someone bothers me
Or I cry,
Hold my hand,
Be near and understand.

When you do not ask me
Or talk to me
About my feelings, my grief, my sorrow
...that's for you.

When you take my agony,
And compare it to yours,
Or make mine sound small compared to yours
...that's for you.

Walk with me through my feelings,
Let me share my joys and sorrows,
Fears and hopes, hates and loves,
Do not ignore or deny them
Understand them.

Then someday, another time,
Even tomorrow,
I may walk with you through yours....

Otherwise, we shall both be alone,
And I can think of no sorrow worse
To be alone with my feelings
And you to be alone with yours.

- Dewaine Kolbo

It is 9 months today since our precious daughter, Renee left us. The introduction in the Daily Bread devotional yesterday was about how much joy it brings to hold the hand of a child to keep them safe, to keep them from stumbling. I had one of my grief burst moments as I read that. On the weekend as I had been walking along the Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon, I had been thinking quite a bit about holding Renee's hand in the various stages of her life and at the end. Then the excruciating moment came where I had to let go physically and the process of letting go continues. Grief means "torn apart".

Psalm 73 says that even although we stumble and make mistakes, the powerful hand of God is holding our hand and will walk with us through life - all the way home. It is a comforting thought that Jesus was there holding Renee's hand throughout her life and as she "crossed over" to the other side to her glorious destiny and that she is with the One whose birthday we are celebrating.

How can it be that almost a year has gone by since last Christmas?

Thank you to all who have prayed and are continuing to pray for us. Thank you for those who have shown that you care.

Unheimlichkeit

The latest series of messages we have been listening to from redeemer.com is on the so called parable of the Prodigal son. It is actually the story of two sons and the father. There sure is a lot packed into that one story. The one we listened to this morning was on Unheimlichkeit. Reminds me of the song, "This world is not my home, I'm just a passing through."

We want everything on this earth to stay the same or at least the good parts. We wanted our relationship with our beautiful daughter Renee to continue. Ray loved his research and development work. For that to be taken away from him was so terribly painful. Now for him to start a new R & D under the circumstances of all this grief, it is so hard.

There are so many families broken as the result of selfishness, greed, and misunderstandings. Even although the process of forgiveness has started, it does not erase the pain. Family is supposed to be a place where you feel safe, but when you feel betrayed and rejected it causes so much pain. God wants us to come to Him and find our resting place in Him.

I finally got the book by Alan Wolfelt - "Understanding Your Grief". Wish I had had that book a long time ago.

Oh, this grieving is such lonely, hard work. It would be so nice to have someone come and just cry with me. But I don't do very well with crying when there are people around.

We did not do a good job of grieving our loss when Kris and Jason and Leona all died within one and half years. It was just too much to deal with. And everybody keeps saying God does not make mistakes. He won't give you more than you can handle. But we have been given more than we can handle. That is the truth of the matter.

When Lazarus died both of his sisters asked Jesus, "Where were you when our brother died?"

I'm listening to a CD right now that has the song on it, "One day at a time, Sweet Jesus." Yesterday is gone, tomorrow may never be mine. " That reminded me of when that song was sung at a ladies meeting just before Renee was born.

Oh, God, I miss Renee so much, but I'm so thankful that we were blessed to have her in our family, for all the good memories.

Now I got myself a terrible headache from crying so much. Please, help me God to get through this terrible agony. Thank you for the assurance of the promise that you will never leave us or forsake us.

Lament or Praise

At the Grief/Share session today we learned that there are more Psalms that have complaint or lament as the main theme than Psalms that have praise or thanksgiving as the main theme. We can be honest to God about how we feel, as long as nobody else hears it. The people that wrote the psalms were an exception I guess.

The above picture I took at the silentgrief retreat. It was the only cloud in an otherwise perfectly clear blue sky. I felt like God gave it to me as a sign that He is with me. I am so thankful for the promise that God will never, ever leave us or forsake us.

Out of the Ashes

Some one made a comment about the picture I have on my blog header, that she was expecting a flower to pop up amidst all those broken and discarded flower pots. Yesterday I found this sunflower growing in the ashes and rubbish in the fire pit container in my back yard!

I also want to quote some things I read in the "One Year Book of Hope". "The value of a life is not determined by how long a person lives or by how much that person contributes. Every life is valuable because God himself gives life and breath. He is not only the source of life; he is also the source of satisfaction and meaning in life."

"This life is not all there is! This life is just a rehearsal for our real life, our forever life in the presence of God."

"He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is the Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, and human hands can't serve his needs - for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need there is. His purpose in all of this is that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him - though he is never far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist." - Acts 17:24-25, 27-28

Brokenness

I don't really have much to say as I'm thinking so much of a year ago when Renee found out that the leukemia had come back.

But we must somehow accept that there are no answers and still believe that God loves us.

It's Monday and It's Raining

Those two things aren't that bad, but having my face feeling all numb and having spent one and a half hours in the dentist chair isn't making me feel like a very happy camper right now. In a few hours it will be better. I suppose we should be thankful for dentists. If we did not get our teeth put in order, we would be going around with half of them missing. That would not be so good!

My cat is snuggling up and trying to interfere with what I'm doing.

We had a good day yesterday. We had an early Thanksgiving. Alayna and Justin each brought a friend, so we had six at the table for lunch. We had Kara on the speaker phone, so she could join us for a bit of our conversation.

After lunch we spent some time looking at photo albums of the growing up years. We had a good time of remembering family trips and outings or the kids just being silly or whatever the occasion was that needed to be photographed. Lots of good memories.

A New Day

In the book by C. S. Lewis that I mentioned yesterday, he says grief feels like fear, like suspense or like waiting, just hanging about waiting for something to happen. "Grief is like a bomber circling round and dropping its bombs each time the circle brings it overhead." "The mind always has some power of evasion. At worst, the unbearable thought only comes back and back, but the physical pain can be absolutely continuous." The pain and struggles Renee had to go through are way worse than what I'm going through.


Lewis says a mother has to deal with the fact that the maternal happiness of mothering her child has to be written off when the child dies, and that is what makes it so awfully painful. I have to hang on to my hope that some day I will get to heaven to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever' where there will be no more tears.

Something that I read today in the grief/share workbook is that tears are God's gift to us to express the extent of our loss and not a sign of weakness or a lack of faith.

I'm thankful for the three children that I can still mother, to the extent that adult children need mothering. Right after I wrote that sentence one of my precious daughters called me for some advise. That felt so good.

Day One Hundred

Today is the 100th day since we started receiving the daily grief/share emails. One hundred days and that was just some random day that I happened to see the email with the link that had been sent by a friend quite some time before that.

So anyway the topic for today's email was the goodness of God. The daily reading from the "One Year Book of Hope" that somebody sent us, happened to be on the same theme. Yesterday I read "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis. He writes about how he wrestled with that question after his wife died of cancer.

Tears and Overwhelming Pain

This week was so, so very hard - just reliving all the pain and being pushed into fresh waves of pain. Maybe it was supposed to be therapeutic.

Oh, Renee, I'm just so very sorry that you had to suffer so much. This is more than I can bear, and I'm so sorry I could not do more for you. Jesus suffered way more than we can imagine to set us free and we must always keep that in mind. Renee, you desired so much to experience and practice the presence of God in your life and now you are in His presence and we cannot even imagine what that must be like.

But I wish I could at least have just one more conversation with you, Renee, make one more smoothie for you, watch another movie with you, make the leukemia go away, make the pain go away, see you continue serving the Lord, maybe get married some day, see you make all the movies and documentaries you were hoping and dreaming and planning to do. I love you Renee and I always will. I'm so sorry.

Oh God, if you can use the story of Renee's life and what you did for her and through her and in her to bring even one person to invite Jesus into their heart it will be worth it. But right now I'm feeling very sad. I don't want to just think about myself and wallow in self-pity but I have to work through my grief somehow.

The verse for this week from the book - One Year Book of Hope was about the Lord being close to the brokenhearted. I need to trust that God is close and wants to comfort me in my distress.

My All in All

Dear Jesus,

You want to be my all in all, my everything. I need to keep my focus on you.

The grief/share email for today was about how to handle the anger which is a normal part of grief and to do it before the sun goes down. The sun has already gone down many times, so I guess I'd better get to work. I don't know if this can all be done in one day and I don't think I want to do it on the blog.

Six Months

Hi Renee,

Tomorrow it will be six months since you left us. Oh, how I wish you were still with us. Now all we have is memories, pictures of you, some of your stuff, and a big aching void. I have my ipod with your music, but I would much rather have you.

I guess I'll add a nice picture to this and then maybe it won't seem quite so sad. I thought maybe the clouds would do. It makes me think of heaven.

Where exactly is heaven ? Somewhere up above the clouds? or not so far away?

I wish I could give you a hug, but rest assured, I love you very much and miss you so much. Some days I feel like I will go crazy, but I'm going to be okay, at least I hope so.

Taking a Break

Hi Renee,

Do you like my picture of the lilies? Thanks for all you taught me about photography - I think I did learn a few things anyway. I really like the camera we bought for you last summer, which I am using now. It helps me to feel connected to you in a small way.

I was mowing the lawn and thinking so much about you. I used to complain about our lawn not being green enough, and then you reminded me that at least we had grass and that lots of kids grow up not even knowing what grass is, in places like Jordan and some of the other countries you visited. I am so thankful that you helped me get a better perspective. It is still often out of whack. It is hard to find the right balance.

I miss you so much,

Love from,

Your mom

Tears, Truth, Anger and Grace

I just listened to the message again from the Redeemer Presbyterian from the Sunday after 9/11. That is a very comforting service. Dr. Keller emphasizes how we need tears, truth, anger and grace when faced with suffering and death. I wanted to be genuine and embrace my grief, but in my desire not to be a burden, I probably kept the tears too much to myself again. Weep with those that weep. I think we need to learn how to do that, myself included, instead of just glossing it over. Jesus wept, and he is weeping with us.

The truth that we need is that Jesus IS the Resurrection and the Life. He can bring new life out of the tragedies that come our way. And apparently the verse that says that Jesus was troubled as he approached Lazarus's grave should read, he was angry. God is angry at death. And Jesus knew that by resurrecting Lazarus, he was putting himself into the grave. From that day on the religious leaders were seeking to put him to death.

And then we need grace. We need grace to know what to do with our anger and allow Jesus to be the Resurrection and the Life to us, as we continue to some how try to cope with all the multiple layers of grief one day at a time.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

That poem is mentioned in the June '08 Guideposts I was reading this morning. I googled it and watched a couple of different versions of it on YouTube. The words are beautiful and calming, but I'm not sure what to think of it. We do need to release the tears. Maybe this is just glossing over the sorrow of death.

While I was at it I also watched several versions of "Nothing But the Blood." One was by Jars of Clay. Another one that ministered to me was their "Angels are God's Messengers - I'll Fly Away. " "I'll Fly Away" was the song we sang at the graveside on that bitterly cold March day.

More on Anger

I just read a quote this morning in Guideposts. "For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of potential happiness." I don't know what to do with all these emotions. You can't just stuff them down deep someplace, cause that leads to depression.

Another interesting quote: "If at the end of the day you feel dog tired maybe it's because you growled all day." I know this grieving is hard work and sometimes I feel dog tired before the day
has even started.

"The joy of the Lord is your strength. To have this joy you must praise for it." That is a stanza from that song I found in the hymnal at the church we went to in NYC. So I must keep praising the Lord whether I feel like it or not.

Anger

I think that if I would really express how I feel a lot of the time, maybe nobody would want to read these blogs. Some of the anger issues are probabaly better to just leave them with God. Our message at church was about Jonah and how God kept giving him second chances and about his anger issues.

There are a lot of things going on that should make us very angry and other things that should just slide off our backs. Anyway, I don't know really know what else to say about this right now, so I should just quit. I do know that it makes me angry that Renee did not get to live out her life and make the films that she was dreaming of producing to proclaim the truth of the gospel. I don't know if I have a right to be angry about that or not and I'm not angry at God.

This Day

Psalm 105:4 I came across this verse again this morning. "Search for the Lord and for his strength, and keep on searching." In the pages of God's Word we will discover a God who is waiting for us to find him. I know God gave me strength to get through the winter - our journey through the return of Renee's leukemia. There were so many people praying for Renee and our family. I want to trust that God will continue to be with us as we continue this journey of grief.

Suffering is universal, and there are some very crazy situations in the world, with all the war and crime and craziness. The song, "This is my Father's World" helped to bring me a sense of peace, as I was trying to get back into a routine after coming home from NYC after Renee's first session of treatments at the end of '05. "Though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet."

Proverb for the Day

It is dangerous to make a rash promise to God before counting the cost.

- Proverbs 20:25