Friday, February 22, 2008

He Gives and Takes Away

Here we go . . . I'm totally new to this blogging thing, so bear with me.

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits." Psalm 103:2

It's been a tough year and a half for us. We lost my dad suddenly on October 17, 2006, and less than one year later, I was standing by my grandmother's bed, saying goodbye to another one of the best people I knew. She died October 8, 2007.
Sandwiched in between these devastating losses, God blessed us with our third child, Daniel William Joseph. His story is pretty amazing, really.
Joe and I were content with our two boys. After the birth of our second child, Josiah, we had two early term miscarriages. I wasn't getting any younger, and we figured that God had given us two delightful, beautiful boys, and we were happy and blessed to have them. Besides, having two children had its benefits -- we had a good one to one ratio. We moved into a smaller house, a cozy little cottage in a quite neighborhood with enough room for the four of us and the dog. Life was going along swimmingly.
When the phone rings at 11:30 on a Sunday evening, it usually isn't anything good -- and it wasn't.
"Joy, I can't wake dad up . . ."
The next three days are a blur of emergency room, life-flight, ICU, doctors and nurses and specialists, phone calls, questions, tears.
By Tuesday afternoon, my husband and I were driving the 45 minutes to pick up our boys, who had been staying with friends, and tell them that Pop had gone to live with Jesus in Heaven. Isaac cried and cried. Josiah stared off with big hazel eyes, moist with emotion. "I'm not crying," he always says when something touches him, "my eyes are just leaking."
Isaac felt robbed. "It's not fair! We were going to build the moped, he was going to teach me how to work on cars! . . ." He saw a lifetime of memories and days to be spent with Pop vanish like waking from a dream.
There are no words for how I was feeling, or rather, there are words, but none of them seem to capture with any justice the deep wounding of my heart over dad's sudden passing. I did not even get the chance to say goodbye. He was comatose by the time I reached his house that Sunday night, and never regained consciousness.
I am not one to fly in the face of God, and though I was feeling raw and broken, I did not blame Him or even question Him because through the years I have come to believe in His absolute sovereignty, His perfect will, His bigger picture. For many reasons, I knew from personal experience that though He slay me, I should trust Him, and while I accept that this is how it is, on that particular day, I was not okay with it.
After gathering at my grandparents, I snuck out to the empty field across the street from their house. The sun was sinking, and the air was nippy with autumn chill. The sky blazed orange in the west for a few moments as the dark came on and folded over the day. It was the kind of evening I would have marveled at normally.
Instead, I paced the field, silently at first, tears streaming down my face, and then I started to mumble, "I am not okay with this! I am not okay with this!" until finally I was sobbing and yelling "I AM NOT OKAY WITH THIS!"
God, faithful as He is, met me in that field, and He said, "You do not have to be okay with this."
I cried until I could not cry any longer, and went in to be with my family and the church friends that were arriving to grieve with us. They came with hot soup and tissues and broken hearts. My dad was their friend. They were hurting too. Somehow we comforted each other as God began to ever so gently comfort us. In that way, we made it through the first night of many difficult nights.
Dad was buried on a Saturday. Sunday, a good friend of ours from Omaha came to see us. It is so hard for anything to be good in those first few days and months after death, but his visit was a welcomed one that lent at least a bit of distraction from staring into space, wondering what to do or say next.
At one point, our friend, David, said, "You know, it would be okay if you guys had another baby."
His words shocked me. We were in the middle of death here, and he wanted to talk about babies?! I didn't even think I could have any more.
"Even if I could, I would never have another baby now." I shot out.
"Why?" he asked.
All I could manage was "My dad isn't here to see another grandchild." That was it for me. How could life go on, change, when my dad was not here to see it, to be a part of it?
That Tuesday, one week to the day my dad died, I was sitting in my doctor's office, listening in disbelief as she said the words "You're pregnant."
My pregnancy with Daniel was very difficult. I had terrible morning sickness, and beginning in December, I found myself in the hospital every month, bleeding and cramping. I would have been afraid that I was loosing him, but I knew this baby had a special purpose and was arriving at just the right time . . . for such a time as this, if you will. I was sick a lot, and sad a lot, but there was a peace that surrounded me when I thought of my son.
It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, June 10th, when Joe and I drove to the hospital in a flood. Daniel was on his way. It rained so much, the top floors of the hospital were flooding, and the ceiling tiles were falling, soggy, all around us. We didn't care. Very early the next morning, Daniel arrived. He was perfect and beautiful and, like his brothers, seemed to have an old soul, and to know things -- the secrets of the universe -- we forget as we grow up.
We named him Daniel, for my grandfather, William, for my dad, and Joseph, for his dad. It's a legacy name.
A few weeks after he was born, I was sitting at my grandparent's kitchen table with my grandma, and she said, "I feel like I could live ten more years. If I could make it ten years, Daniel will remember who I am." This sounded good to me.
That is why it was such a shock when less than ten weeks later she was coming home from the hospital on Hospice after a series of heart attacks. Her prognosis was not good. Several weeks later, On a Monday morning in October, almost one year after the death of my dad, grandma went to meet him, and to live with Jesus. Talk about deja vous.
It has been hard, dealing with death, nighttime feedings, dirty diapers and crying (both Daniel's and mine).
There are days I feel like it is all too much. There are days I focus on the loss and the sadness. But then I look into the eyes of my small son, my five year old, my nine year old, and I know. I know that God is good, that He does have a plan and that somehow we all fit into it -- me, Dad, Gram, the boys, Joe . . . all of us. His plans don't end when our lives do. In fact, death is only the beginning of true life. And while I live, I will praise the Lord. I will remember His benefits, which, for me, come in the form of three beautiful boys, my terrific husband, my extended and church families. He gives joy, not just happiness, and peace, not just quietness. He fills the gaps, the holes, the wounds with His Holy self, and asks only all of me in return. He gives and takes away, blessed be His name.


4 comments:

Patti said...

well...thanks for making me cry

as i read along i was taken back through the past 16 months...it's been hard, but God is still good

He has taken much away, but look what He has given.

Michelle said...

How you, Patty, your mom and Grandpa have walked such losses out with such love for God in the midst of grief truly is a testimony. Thank you all.

Abigail Kreighbaum said...

Right when I read what Isaac said it makes me cry.I can just remember that morning when my mom came in my room and say that Bill had a stroke. I was devistated. I prayed and prayed. The boys were at our house when he died. When I asked how he was. My mother told me he was dead. I ran upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom and sobbed. It is prettymuch thae same story with Grandma Ray. I miss them so much and I cannot wait 'till I see them in haeven. Daniel has been a great blessing to your whole family I'm sure.

bekbrooks said...

Joy, I only wish every person in this world who has ever lost something and attempted to blame or turn away from God because of it...would read this blog. Your family is the tangible proof of the amazing faithfulness of who He is. Even in the utmost miserable moments of our life...God's goodness prevails. Who else can we say that about? Who else is 100% faithful, 100% of the time? No one. Thank you for this blog. Perhaps one day someone going through something similar will read this and run to Jesus instead of blaming him. I greatly admire you, Joy. Thank you.