Category Archives: grief

Easter is a Doorway

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I read an article this morning about a little boy in Massachusetts who was gone for months before he was reported missing.

His body was found this week.

Stories about five year old murder victims whose whole lives were defined by abuse, neglect, and pain do not go with our Sunday best, our Easter celebration. These are hell stories.

These would remain hell stories without Jesus.

What Jesus does with the stories of lost children is what matters.

He takes the pain of broken lives.

He restores the impossible–life for death, peace for pain, love for hate.

The cost too high to calculate: he pays it.

So it doesn’t have to feel like Easter to me. I can face the loneliness of my own story–

Fostering the broken

Adopting the rebellious

Taking on the identity of the crimes committed against those I love.

No easy answers.

Just Jesus, alive, for me.

The Darkest Days

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Jesus gave them plenty of warning–he said he was going to die. He warned of betrayal and grief. He told them things they did not want to hear.

Even so, the space between the last supper and the resurrection was almost unbearable.

Almost because he took the unbearable part.

Just short of unbearable.

That is the promise of Christian life–it might get pretty awful, but it will never be as awful as the atonement.

The grief of the disciples seems so dark. So painful. And their brokenness was pretty broken.

But

It is finished

And Sunday is one Son-rise away.

A Metaphor for You

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You were the one
To tell me all the others did it too
With a percentage
A statistic
Because it is the way you roll

50% percent, eh?
Half of all you knew.
I took the statistic to the source
Never got an answer.

Not surprised…
Inclined to believe they, like you
Would tell the students

obey the patriarchal voice

And hell, eat your broccoli as well
As the water rises around us
To the end.

Leave Notes

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My young son is bored on a quiet Sunday. He decides to play in his father’s (the coolest) car.

I stand by monitoring him. Just a safety precaution.

I look down at the passenger’s seat and see an appointment card.

Unfamiliar doctor.

I squint at the details and realize the date of the appointment was on my father’s birthday. Eight years ago.

He died before his next flight physical.

I cleaned out his personal papers when we bought the car from my mother the week after his crash. Each object a reminder of catastrophic loss.

His Gideon Bibles. The gospel cd in the dash. I kept the faded stickers from his job.

But I have never seen this card before.

I want to call the number on the card. I want to ask the doctor if he remembers my dad. Just reminisce, you know…Does HIPAA apply to the dead?

I don’t believe in death that way. I don’t believe it is final. And this card seems to prove it.

One or both of my dads just dropping a note to his little girl–

I am here. I am still here.

Hebrews 12:1
All of our Palm Sundays…

Sibling Day

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I always see a rather dour group of chocolate, flower, and card execs huddled together in a dimly lit office…

(Think Brando in Godfather)

Coming up with new holidays–world chicken day? Classic sitcoms day? Creative tie day?

So there. You have my context for Sibling Day. Notice I have waited until the celebrations have subsided to comment.

Years ago I had to buy a book called Sibling Abuse after my adopted daughter revealed that my adopted son was abusing my youngest daughter. And others. He had a list of victims.

He had used his siblings. He abused their trust and their innocence.

And the aftermath was scorching. Our family has stood in a lonely place for a long time now.

My sibling did nothing.

My husband’s sibling as well.

So “sibling day” is kinda painful for me except for one thing–

The children in my family now have the best siblings. They shelter each other and enrich the lives of their brothers and sisters.

They give me hope.

I just wish I could give them the uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins, and friends they so richly deserve.

Dear Veronica Badamo,

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In the fall of 1998 I lost you. Since I was your foster mom, I never had much legal right to you anyway.

What happened to your real mama. What happened to your whole family was awful. Criminal awful.

I was just a broken bystander.

You were, for one precious year, my baby. And when they took you away I was broken.

Barely survive broken.

Whole world changed broken.

I was pretty sure the people who took you would erase me, but I could not let you go without a benediction.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published it. I knew that they would change your name so I called you Little One.

And for year I have been calling and calling, Little One.

I missed you. I missed the years, days, hours with you.

You were my lost treasure.

One good thing happened; losing you gave me a plumb line for love.

Anyone’s child could be you. Suddenly the world was full of Veronicas.

It was a painful gift. I would have rather had you, real you.

But I was the ghost. And I can give you these two promises–

I loved the world better because of you.

And I love you. Always, always, little one.

Forgiveness in pieces

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The news article announced–a person guilty of mass murder in Rwanda had been forgiven after 20 years.

A cause for celebration?

Perhaps. If you don’t want the survivors to languish in the grips of anger and a desire for revenge–perhaps.

Beware of cheap forgiveness.

What do I mean? I mean that anyone genuinely harmed by another person has to forgive at a terrible price. The price of rape and murder is unthinkable.

It is too big a number. Too large a sum.

Which brings me to Jesus.

I understand that however we humans talk of releasing the debt of pain and loss caused by irrevocable harm, what we mean is let go of it.

We do not have the power to undo it. We do not have the power to expiate. We do not have the power to redeem.

Only Jesus can do that because he does and he did.

He has the power; he paid the debt.

Prophesy to the Breath

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Well, to start with you should know: Ezekiel’s life was no walk in the park.

Stroll in the bone-strewn valley, perhaps.

He lost people he loved.

He was constrained by God to do wacky, uncomfortable, challenging, and humbling things.

And in return–visions. Beautiful visions.

And here is God, taking him out to the dead husks of a human wasteland to challenge his faith.

Do you believe God can raise the dead?

Do you?

Sometimes people can still have a pulse and seem so dead. The idea that a murderer or child molester could be resurrected to a compassionate life?

Almost feels harder than Ezekiel’s bones.

But God makes the injunction:

Ezekiel 37:9-10 (NIV)
Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, `This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” [10] So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.

I confess, I believe God can make these dry bones live.

I believe Ezekiel can prophesy to the breath.

Lord, help my unbelief.

In You, dear Ransomer.

What does it cost?

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I struggle with a voice in my head telling me that a woman in my ramshackle physical condition has no business hitting ramps on a wakeboard.

It is a powerful voice.

And yet I cannot help thinking that challenging that voice and hitting those structures is a victory of the heart.

Victories of the heart are often costly victories. We are challenged to face our deepest fears of loss and humiliation, pain and failure for love.

And so with the even objectivity of a math problem you could say–the measure of our love is the measure of our willingness to overcome our fear.

Or better said by a Braver Man–perfect love casts out all fear.

Tell me you love someone and I will ask you, what dragons have you fought to preserve your beloved?

Community College

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You used to stand
In the doorway of winter
Receiving the Russian men
With their flowers and words of love
As transparent as their motives

Never letting on
You were a sucker
For their swarthy accents and abundant facial hair

But not that much
That you would fail

To mark each hour of rising light

Not yet
The full Twelve
He speaks of so casually
Before dark.