Joy

Grief… Such a Small Word

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grief

Grief.

Late nights of counting sheep, can’t sleep.  I want to scream.  The king sized bed is empty.  I am a mess.  I miss you like crazy.  I can’t catch my breath.  I am angry.  I am trying to stay strong.  I don’t get why you couldn’t be here.  I am angry at you for fishing that night.  I am angry at you for having to check the jug lines one more time before you planned to come in.

That one more time took you.

I can’t breathe sometimes.  I am suffocated with anger, fear, loneliness, guilt, memories, love that I can no longer give.

Grief.

But I have to be strong.  There is a little blue-eyed, blonde-haired baby girl that looks up to me.  She grins and my world is right again… for a moment.  And then I remember I will never see her in your arms again.  The lump in my throat returns.  I gulp it back.  Blinking back my tears rapidly so I don’t feel the hot liquid run down my cheeks.  Because then I can’t stop the streams.

Grief.

I question God.  I used to think I should never do that.  But now I find myself screaming questions at Him.  He loves me the same.

Grief- such a small word.

People use the word ‘Grief’ so loosely.  Like you can just get over grief.  Or grieve faster.  It doesn’t work that way.  Grief is its own entity.  I find myself grieving my husband’s untimely death and my marriage.  The unity I had with one person out of 7-billion people on this planet, is no longer intact.  I’m grieving the loss of my team.  My team was broken.  My family was broken.  These are not pity words.  These are raw words.  How does someone come up from this?  Truly rise up from such devastation?  Some mornings I lie in bed and have to talk myself in to getting out of bed and face another ‘great’ day.  Because I am a Christian- everyday should be ‘great’, right?  Wrong.  Not realistic.  I’m craving to be transparent and real.  Life is hard.  This season has been dark and hard.

This season has been lonely.  I am craving my best friend.  My heart aches with thoughts of never running my hands through his hair again.  Or holding his hand.  Kissing his lips.  I beg God to answer me why?  I yearned to be married at a young age.  I waited for Cody to come into my life- my ‘to be’ Husband.  Impatiently waited I might add.  I loved being a wife.  His wife.  He challenged me in ways I never knew I needed to grow.  That’s what marriage is supposed to do.  Challenge you, make you more holy, reflect the image of Christ.  God redeemed our marriage through dark seasons.  Both of us had failed one another.  But God.

But God… Those two words are beyond powerful.  I no longer have a ‘But God’ in my marriage.  I no longer have a marriage.  I no longer have my daughter’s father.

Grief.

Have you ever hurt so much that you wanted to crawl out of your skin?  Out of your being?  Just vanish into thin air… Just to eliminate the pain in your soul?  A deep pain in your spirit that you can literally feel your physical heart throbbing and aching.  The pain is so intense it’s shocking to your body.  I’ve thought in those moments how someone could literally die of a broken heart.  I hate those moments.  I beg God to take the pain away.  I’ve begged God to take the memories away.  That sounds so cold, but the memories are a flood and I can’t think straight, or function.

Grief.

The following words depict grief so purely to me.  “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give but cannot.  All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hallow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Tragedy changes you.

Grief changes you.

It makes you bleed with rawness.

It brings realness to life.

One of the most beautiful things in life is to feel.  To feel love.  To feel emotion.  To feel passion.  To feel life.  God made us emotional beings who have the capability to feel on dimensional levels.  I used to run from my emotions, for fear of looking weak, for fear of looking ‘human’.  I am learning to embrace those feelings.  To become empowered by them.  To allow these roller coaster of emotions to deepen my relationship with Christ.

I changed on January 14, 2017.  I will never be the same person I was.  One of the things I am truly grateful for through this- is that change.  I saw myself from the outside looking in.  I didn’t like what I saw.  I saw someone who rushed through life.  Who was selfish.  Who took loved ones for granted.  Losing someone you didn’t think you could live without knocks all of your ‘props of life’ out from under you.  All you have standing in front of you is your faith and the choice to choose hope in a more than hopeless situation through the eyes of the world.

I am still here.  I ask God why?  His answer… To bring glory to Him.  It’s not about me.  I find the ultimate freedom in that revelation.  To bring glory to Him.  My time spent on this earth is to bring glory to my Heavenly Father.  In good days, in bad days.  In seasons of harvest and in seasons of loss… I am to bring glory to Him.  Even when it hurts.

I surrender.  Every day, I surrender.  Every day I have to choose to LIVE.

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God

“My Wife Can”

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My Wife Can

Photo by Cori Lusk Ford

As he hurriedly walked through the house with a level and tape measure in one hand and his phone to his ear with the other, he stopped to smile at me as I held the sleeping body of our 8-month old baby girl.  He was on the phone with a project coordinator lining up contracts for our telecommunications company.  His business call ended.  His smile turned to glossy eyes as he admired what he called a “beautiful sight”.  He updated me on the content of the business call- as I was now our Office Manager.  We were more a team than ever.  We were new parents who both had the privilege of working from home—which is where we both desired to be.  With one another and the new edition to our family.  How blessed we were.  And we discussed that often.  Nothing was short of the Grace of God.  During the hustle and bustle of this day—Cody asked me a question that still crosses my mind on the regular, “If something were to happen to me, can you handle all of this?”  I looked at him, and immediately shook my head “no”.  His next words will never leave my mind… “My Wife Can.”

He was referring to life.  He was referring to the remodel of our home.  He was referring to taking care of our precious baby girl who was demanding of attention.  He was referring to running our telecommunications company.  He was referring to the upkeep of our home, vehicles, and our fur babies.  He was referring to the life we had created.  Could I handle this without him?  What an odd question to ask.  And just weeks before he departed from this earth.

“My Wife Can.”

Such three simple words.  These three simple words have changed my mentality these last 6-months.

His Wife could.

I am she.

I can.

So many times a day, doubt seeps over me.  I second guess my every decision of the last 6-months.  I doubt my newly single parenting skills.  I beat myself up over the slightest failure- or what I see as a failure.  But then I hear those words—“My Wife Can”.  And I stand a little taller.  My God confidence arises again.  I am called for a time such as this.  For whatever reason—This is the path the Lord has ordained for my feet to walk.  So I shall.  With faith, with hope, with peace, with joy.  Faith, hope, peace, and joy.  Those four words, those four beautiful action words seem impossible to encompass during seasons of grief.  But they’re not.  With God, all things are possible.  I am living proof of that.  That is not an arrogant statement.  It is a testament to the living power of Jesus who resides in me.  In reference to we are the bride of Jesus and He is the Bridegroom—I can hear my Lord saying, “My Bride Can”.  We are the Bride of Christ.  That is beautiful.  That is all-consuming to grasp.  I am the Bride of Christ.  You are the Bride of Christ.  I am not alone during this ‘aloneness’ season of life.  And with Him…I can.

If my soul is stirred with the memory of my Husband’s voice proclaiming “My Wife Can”, oh… how much more my soul and spirit awaken when I hear the sweet and powerful voice of my Lord decreeing “My Bride Can”.

“For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.”  Isaiah 54:5

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God.

I Love You, Are You Ready?

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love

Photo By Katherine Culpepper 

Cody and I were standing in our bedroom.  We were panicked.  There was danger outside.  Devastation looming ahead of us.  We could see vividly out of the two double windows.  The lake, the beautiful and peaceful lake lay in front of us.  On the lake were six tornados coming our way.  Six tornados spinning our direction, not slowing down.  Cody in all his protective nature remained level headed.  We thought we had more time.  We took one more look out the window, it was inevitable—The tornados were too close.  Cody grabbed my hand and said, “I Love you, are you ready?”  The tornados ripped through the bedroom, ripped through our lives.  Chaos abounded.

Then I woke up…

Cody and I were driving down the road.  Cody was driving, while I was in the passenger seat.  Something was happening.  Danger was around us.  Cody was trying to get away.  We were going too fast.  He went up a big hill of some sort.  All of a sudden the vehicle was flying through the air.  I looked out of the window and saw darkness.  We began falling.  Cody grabbed my hand and said, “I Love you, are you ready?”  Darkness eclipsed us. 

Then I woke up…

Cody and I were in our home office area.  He was sitting in our nice leather office chair, reclining back a little bit.  I was sitting on my knees next to him.  He was working patiently teaching me something about our company office procedures.  All of a sudden a huge explosion erupted outside of our home.  We both grabbed our ears to stop the ringing.  We looked around and it was beautiful, indescribable colors floating around us.  Out of this world coloring and images.  Gravity was failing us.  We began floating in these colors.  Cody grabbed my hand and said, “This is it, this is the end, I Love you, are you ready?”

Then I woke up…

My heart is beating out my chest recalling these dreams.  All three dreams I had within the last 6 months of Cody’s life.  All three dreams woke me up out of my sleep, shuddering from the realness. Shuddering with fear.  I remember waking up and turning to my husband for him to cuddle me close.  The dreams left me feeling insecure and aware of devastation looming.

But can we really be prepared for devastation?  No. We. Can’t.

Over the six month period of having these dreams, I recalled each one to my husband the next morning.  We would talk about what they could mean.  If you know me, you know I have always had vivid and very detailed dreams.   Some have a deep, underlying meaning, or some derived from eating too close to bedtime.  These felt deep though.  I thought about them regularly afterward and even shared them with my mother.  The last one I had was within weeks of Cody’s death.  I often think to myself if The Lord was trying to prepare my spirit in some way?  Again, you can never be prepared for devastation.

My flesh cried out in fear after these dreams.  Fear of the devastation becoming reality.  But God did not give us a spirit of fear.  “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”  2 Timothy 1:7.

Power, Love, and a Sound Mind.  For years I have fought to have these God characteristics.  I have struggled to put on fearlessness.  When I think back to the first year of marriage, as most newlyweds do, we had a tough first year and half of marriage.  When I say tough, I mean tough.  My biggest fear then- was our marriage ending in divorce.  My biggest fear was becoming reality when we separated for 5 weeks and divorce papers were drawn.  But God.  God showed up.  God changed me in those 5 weeks.  My trust in Him grew more in 5 weeks than in my 25 years.  I will never forget the day we had a supernatural breakthrough and we cried in joy as we shredded the divorce papers.  Was marriage perfect after that season of darkness?  No.  But we were stronger for it.  God walked me through my biggest fear then.  To be honest, the enemy still had a stronghold of fear over me.  The fear of ‘losing’ Cody never subsided.  The fear of aloneness remained in the back of my mind.  Aloneness was and is the root of my biggest fear.

Since my husband’s death, I have had many people share with me how amazed they are at my faith through this season of loss (nothing short of the Grace of God and trust me I have my dark days). I have had many people admit to me their biggest fear is losing their spouse or a close loved one.  Many people have shared similar descriptions of how fear grips them to the point of a temporary paralyzing feeling.  That fear was not and never will be from our Heavenly Father.

What happens when your biggest fear becomes reality?  What happens when you wake up one day and you find that your whole world is destroyed by devastation?  What do you do?  Give into the paralyzing fear that you won’t be able to get up from it?  Or fight your flesh and know that all you can do is surrender the fear.  Give it up.  I no longer want to be a slave to fear.  I whisper the word fearless under my breath dozens of times a day.  I am fearless in Christ.  You are fearless in Christ.

Even in our worst fears—God is still here.  Walking this faith journey and living through our biggest fears—brings beautiful glorify to our Heavenly Father.  It makes us stronger warriors for Him.  It doesn’t mean hard days will not come knocking—but we can have a peace in knowing Who holds those hard days and every trial we face during our time on this earth.

God is perfect love.  If we abide in Him, we should have no fear.  “There is no fear in perfect love, but perfect love casts out fear…” 1 John 4:18

Three months ago, while praying, The Lord gave me a vision of myself standing on a rock in the middle of water.  I was balancing myself on this rock.  I was fearful of falling.  I was fearful in the aloneness I felt.  I looked up and the word ‘Fearless’ was floating around me.  I thought I was all alone, but God had His hand outstretched reaching for me.

God has walked me through my biggest fears in life.  He is still continuing to walk me through my biggest fear in life.

He is calling me to be fearless.  He is calling you to be fearless.

I can hear The Lord prompting me to a life of fearlessness as he reaches for my hand, saying,

“I Love you, are you ready?”

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God.

If I Die Before You, Can You Be Happy For Me…?

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If I die before you can you be happy for me

Photo by Cori Lusk Ford

“If I rise, let me rise on you.  Not on all of my success, my esteem or my pursuits.  If I lose, let me lose my life.  Cause if I belong to Jesus, the flesh is crucified.  For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.  If I grow, let me grow in You.  Wilt the seeds of wanting more.  Rippin’ pride out by the roots, and if I’m still, let me hear You speak.  Not the tone of my transgressions, but the song of the Redeemed.  For me to Live is Christ, to die is gain.  My great desire is to be with you.  But this is the place you chose for me.  To lift my cross and give everything.  This is the time you gave me… For me to live is Christ, to die is gain.  I’ll never be the same…” To Live is Christ by Sidewalk Prophets.

I closed my eyes and worshiped to this song as we drove down the road.  Cody squeezed my hand gently, bringing me back to reality.  I looked over at him from the passenger seat.  “If I die before you, can you be happy for me?” I asked him.  Cody’s eyes grew wide as if to say, “Why are you asking me this?”  He immediately responded, “Don’t say stuff like that.”  I shook my head, “I’m being serious.  Death is inevitable.  We’d be home, dancing with Jesus!” I exclaimed.  Cody squeezed my hand again, interlocking our fingers and just grinned.

Ten days later this question was ringing in my head.  Ringing in my heart, shattering it to pieces.  Repeating over and over in my ears.  “If I die before you, can you be happy for me?”  What made me ask such a question?  Could I fulfill my own request I had asked of my husband just 10 days prior?  No.  I was not happy.  I am still not happy.  Nor will I ever be fully happy with the way my life is being written.  It feels like chapters and chapters of my life have been ripped out, shredded to pieces and the little pieces are floating through the air aimlessly.  Chaos.  The ripples of paper are pure chaos.  Chaos of emotions.  Chaos of fears.  Chaos of anger.  Chaos of memories.  What will make the torn pieces of paper whole again?  Nothing.

There is nothing that will puzzle those same pieces of paper together like they were.  God is showing me that the torn pages are not supposed to be reclaimed and put back together neatly again.  He ripped them up for a reason.  He has a purpose for the chaos.  He has a purpose for the pain.

He has a purpose.

If we were whole, intact, in perfect condition, had flawless lives, experienced no death, no poverty, no ailment, no shipwrecks to endure, why would we need Jesus?  We wouldn’t.

I get it.  I need Jesus.  But my flesh is also screaming how much I need my husband and the father of my child.

“If I die before you, can you be happy for me?”  I am remembering my spiritual emotions while asking this off the wall question.  The words in the above song evoked passion and ignited my spirit to crave to be with our Creator.  To be in His presence.  To be face to face with Him in glory.  I couldn’t contain my praise or spiritual excitement.  I was imagining what it would truly be like in heaven, and in that moment I wanted to go.  Not because I didn’t want to live my life here, but because I know this is not my forever home—Heaven is.  I wasn’t worried about what it would be like for my loved ones in the wake of my departure.  I didn’t think that far in advance asking my question.

Heaven has a new meaning to me now.  I can close my eyes and visualize Cody, so purely and magnificently LIVING.  Let me say that word again—LIVING.  To be absent from the body is to be present with The Lord.  Cody is LIVING in the presence of the One who created him.  The One who knew the number of hairs on his head and how many freckles were on his body.  Cody is more alive than he ever was walking this earth.  That is freeing.  I have to focus on Heaven.  Otherwise my mind becomes a hell.

If Cody had asked me the same question, I would have been struck with an instant fear just as he was.  Our flesh doesn’t have another response for death.  Death is so dark and lonely this side of glory.  Dark and lonely doesn’t even come close to sufficient enough descriptive words.  But death is lost somewhere between earth and heaven.  Its death for us mourning the loss of our loved one(s) here on earth and then its ultimate, joyous eternal LIVING for those that departed having Christ as their Savior.  Eternal—Forever and then forever more.  Never ending time.  Cody is LIVING in Heaven in never ending time.  He is more alive than I am, than you are.  Wow!

The best thing we can do in the wake of losing a loved one(s) is to get up every day and despite the pain and loneliness we have to choose to LIVE.  We have to LIVE with a purpose and Laugh on purpose.  Be selfless.  Praise God with a passion.

I Trust my God, I Trust my God, I Trust my God.