Gardener to God (a sermon on John 20:1-2, 11-18)

This is a short sermon which I wrote and preach at Redeemer Lutheran Church in Hinsdale, IL on June 25, 2014 on John 20:1-2, 11-18 

In today’s text, we find Mary in the midst of grief, confusion, and loss. In John’s account, Jesus has died and Mary is going to the tomb, but rather than finding the body of the Lord, she finds the tomb has been opened.

In a panic, Mary runs to find some of the other disciples. As they return to the tomb, they are greeted by angels in the place where Jesus’ body had been.

Mary is still weeping and the angels ask her why. She replies “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”                   Mary thinks that someone has taken Jesus away from her, but that is not true, Jesus is right next to her, only she doesn’t see him, she sees a gardener.

I think this is a very relatable feeling.

Many times in life we are feeling hopeless and despairing,             we may try and seek Jesus but only find seemingly empty tombs.       

Like in the early stages of writing this message.                   I kept searching for where God was in the text, trying to find what the Holy Spirit was leading me to and as I could not find the words, I felt as if I kept seeing the gardener, not the Lord.

Or maybe the more serious times in our lives.              

You may or may not know this, but Noah is not our first child.

In August of 2012, our son Josiah was born, stillborn 3 weeks before his due date.

Throughout Josiah’s pregnancy, it was easy to see God. I don’t know that I have ever had a greater appreciation for creation or the Creator than the first time I felt Josiah’s kicks.

Josiah was a very healthy baby          until he wasn’t.

Without warning or a cause known to us, he died.

This may be something like what Mary felt.

Jesus ministry and movement was growing and going well, there were alleluias and hosannas in the highest all over the place,       until there wasn’t.

Then it happens. Jesus has died and has been placed in a tomb.

Days later, Mary goes to the tomb seeking the lord and cannot find him.

I remember the days after Josiah had died. I felt lost.

I prayed that God would heal Josiah, I prayed that God would undo this death and let him live.

I was probably much angrier at God than Mary Magdalen is in the text, but God was not where I thought he was supposed to be.

Mary thought Jesus would be laying there                and he wasn’t.

He was instead standing next to her in the tomb.

My expectations were met in a similar way,             Jesus was not undoing Josiah’s death like I thought he was supposed to, but he was standing next to me.

It happened in a reading at Josiah’s funeral.

It was from Mark and it was a text where Jesus says, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.”

Just as Mary knew the Lord as he called her name. Jesus went from gardener to God as I heard this gospel promise and I knew Christ was with us and also with Josiah. It was not how I thought it was supposed to be, but there was Jesus.

This is the part we often overlook about Jesus.          We share stories of how Jesus loved the outcasts and healed the sick. We celebrate him in the bread and wine. We acknowledge that he has taken our sin so that we may be forgiven and have eternal life. We confess but don’t often discuss that when Jesus died on the cross, he descended into the dead, he took on sin, the very thing that separates us from God, and took on death, the very thing that separates us from each other.

Through Jesus’ redeeming work on the cross, he conquered their powers so that they may no longer separate us.

Yes, sin and death are still very present in the world but know that when you encounter them, the one who conquered them encounters them with you and will continue to stand by you.                 

Amen. 

From Dust You Were Made and to Dust You Shall Return

Ash Wednesday is the start to my favorite time in the church year. The time spent in Lent has been one I have loved since I started attending church in high school. To love this contemplative, alleluia-less season means many things. Maybe I love it so much because I’ve never actually followed through on the giving up something practice that so many take part in. I think I gave up pop one year, but I was allowed to drink it on Sundays because someone had said that Sundays are not included in the 40 days, and because it’s the Sabbath and self-denial is hard work! Work – and you aren’t supposed to do that on the Sabbath, so go to church and enjoy a Dr. Pepper at your post-worship Olive Garden lunch and rest the day away– that was my theory then anyway. Nevertheless, I don’t think my denial of pop brought me any closer to God, prepared me for Easter, or even helped to understand temptation (I don’t think I lasted the 40 days either). The aspects of Lent that I have participated in are traditional in other ways – soup suppers and Holden Evening Prayer – how can you not love soup and Holden? It is such a beautiful service and I especially love this practice because it is one I’ve taken part in since I knew Lent was a thing. As soon as the familiar songs begin, it brings back memories of past Lents and triggers a reflection which continues through the season. It feels like adding a ring to a tree’s growth every time we encounter these 40 days. The songs and prayers from this service are a way to touch and revisit each of those rings from years passed. Ash Wednesday is the kick off to the whole thing.

Ashes to Ashes / Dust to Dust

On Ash Wednesday, I had a whole mix of emotions as I looked down at my sleeping 1-month-old startle as he received ashes in the sign of the cross on his forehead and heard the words “from dust you were made, and to dust you shall return”. I thought of my love of Lent - where my life had been in previous years and where it is now. I thought of Noah and wondered how will he take on these practices in his own life. I think most of all I was overwhelmed by looking down at one of my sons with an ash cross on his small face, and thinking of my other son who sits in ashes in a marked box in our bedroom.

From dust you were made, and from dust you shall return.

I think Noah’s response to this reminder of our mortality was one we should all have. Startle. Yes, death is a part of life and one day it will happen to us all. So be startled. This startle is not fear. This startle does not petrify us. This startle is a brief wake up from our comfortable on-going lives. This startle is a chance to reflect and ponder where our lives are because, at any unknown time, it is dust which we shall return. Now I doubt that is what Noah was doing at this time (although I am his mom and I think he is brilliant, so I’m not totally ruling it out). His following response is also more than appropriate – he smiled and returned to his nap peacefully. 

This startle should not upset you. Put this startling news to good use, so you can smile and happily return to your life when your Lenten journey ends.

My Startle – My Lenten Journey

For Lent I have decided to take on a new practice. Be gentle with yourself. It is the name of my blog which suggests that I think it’s important and do it all the time, right? Well no, that is a lie – not the importance part, but the actually doing it. These are not words of wisdom that I came up with, so I should explain the namesake. When Josiah died and a new semester of seminary started the next week, Josh and I met with one of our professors. While discussing whether or not we should start classes and how to live in our new reality, this was his advice: Be gentle with yourselves. If you are having a good day, allow yourself to have a good day without feeling guilty and if the next day is a bad day, let it be a bad day and not feel like the good day was a lie.                  But beyond this life circumstance, shouldn’t we all be gentle with ourselves at all points in our lives? On the good days, the bad days, and the days in-between, be gentle with yourself.                          

I am startled. I am reviewing my life, knowing, like with Josiah, that we never know when our time here is done. I am startled. I am using this Lenten journey to give up the things that keep me from being the best me because they distract me from who God created me to be. And I am being gentle with myself in preparation for Easter. Easter is the time which we celebrate the hope we have in Christ. We also celebrate the grace God has for us. And this is why I am taking on the practice of being gentle with myself – here’s the thing, when you are not gentle with yourself, not only do you get in the way of being your best self, but more importantly you do not allow yourself to accept and experience God’s grace. You will be too busy with why you should have been better, why you need to do more, why you are not enough – but I mean really, if God can forgive all, if God extends limitless grace to all, can’t we give ourselves a little?

I am practicing being gentle with myself already because obviously Ash Wednesday was 9 days ago – so I will let the time that has past go, and start here and now.

I will be doing this journey with somewhat of a format. Each week, I will be gentle with myself with a focus I have chosen which I deemed as “problem areas” for my self-gentleness (okay I thought I’d try out that phrase but it sounds weird so I won’t use it again). Each week will have goals that go with that week’s focus and I will blog about them each which. (Much of this journey came to me while reading Rachel Held Evans A Year of Biblical Womanhood – read it, it’s great!)

The focuses are:

-Be gentle with yourself, with a discerning spirit 

-Be gentle with yourself, with a realistic attitude

-Be gentle with yourself, with flexibility

-Be gentle with yourself, with intention 

-Be gentle with yourself, with forgiveness

-Be gentle with yourself, with real presence

From dust you were made and to dust you shall return – so in the meantime, be gentle with yourself.

What's in a Name?

In the last few years I have realized there is a great significance to a name – maybe not even just the name, but the actual act of naming. I have realized this in a number of ways – through grief, through joy, through anger, through confusion and numbness. Naming is so powerful because it is the point of which you are ready to recognize a thing, you give it importance or at least assign the amount of value you see in it with its name. Other people may not give something the same name. A good example of this is every time I go home, I assign myself the task of throwing out everything, hm, no, cleaning…no... simplifying my mom’s closets, garage, or attics. We both may start at naming the items as ‘stuff’ but as the project continues the names change – I tend to call it ‘junk’, ‘crap,’ or more colorful words as the day goes on, while my mom names it as ‘not that bad’, ‘still good’, or by the memory it is tied to. She also does not name my self-appointed task as simplifying – but you get the point. Names show value and feeling. (Note- my mom is not a hoarder or anything – I just really like getting rid of stuff)

The act of naming is at least equally as important. It is the process of acknowledging the thing – then calling it what it is – at least what it is to you in that moment. There is such power in that act alone – because once you acknowledge and name something, you can begin to understand it and the relationship you have with it (‘it’ could be a thing, ‘it’ could be an event, ‘it’ could be a person or relationship with a person.) The act of naming also allows you to claim something – to claim your feelings, to claim what it is that is happening, to claim it and name it – not just let it blindly happen to you. Once you have named the thing, you know what to call it takes away some of the power it has over you – you can face it and call it by name. I would imagine this is largely why groups like Alcoholics Anonymous (irony in the anonymous organization being a good example of the importance of naming – but anyway)  start out by saying “I am my name and I am an alcoholic” Two powerful things happen here – first you recognize who you are, you value first that you are you, not just a condition or your brokenness, you are not a nameless victim overcome by your problems, because you are claiming first and foremost – I have value and I have a name bigger than this. But you do not ignore the brokenness. Instead, you name it. You face it. You don’t make excuses or try and sugar coat it – you call the thing what it is so you can begin to overcome it and reclaim your power. Because before you can name it – it is naming you, and generally not very nicely.

So far, I have spoken of naming mostly from a ‘power’ standpoint or how beneficial it is in situations of conflict or negative relationships with a person or thing – but it is much more than that. In the first chapter of Genesis, we learn of how God speaks things into creation and names them as ‘good’. From the start, God has seen all creation as good. In the second creation story (yes, literal creationists – there are two creation stories in Genesis – and they aren't the same! But that's another story - haha get it?) But anyway, in the second story God does the whole creation thing, we are in the garden and God gives the man the job of naming every living thing. From the beginning – or just after the beginning began – God gave us the privilege, honor, and great responsibility of naming. So what do we do with it?

As I am now pregnant with my second child – naming has been on my mind for a while now! Naming a child is one of the greatest responsibilities a parent is first given. Throughout both of my pregnancies, I have focused on names since the beginning – actually since before the beginning, when we even thought of having kids and probably before that – I have thought of names. There is a scene from the movie Where the Heart Is that always comes to mind when the naming process starts. This is not word for word, but the pregnant woman is asked by a stranger what she is going to name her baby. She responds something like “I was thinking Wendi – with an i” and the man is not pleased. He tells her she needs to give that baby a strong name. She ends up naming her Americus. I’m not going for that name – but the name has always had to have meaning for me. (I should include, my husband, Josh, is included in the naming process, but he does not obsess about it from the moment we see the lines on the stick, or start thinking of having a baby. He is sure we will figure it out by the time we need to and doesn't wake up in the middle with the perfect name.) Josh and I come up with very different names. Mine probably fall more into the Wendi with an i categories, and his are more Americus sounding...neither work out too well! His general reply to my name suggestions are also “that is not a name, that's a word” and sometimes "that's not even a word" and he likes to (jokingly) suggest things like Jebediah or other Old Testament horrors that I refuse to let happen. It truly amazes me we ever agree on a name – but when we do, we both love it and it is as if that baby has always been named that and we finally discovered it.

Josiah seemed to always have his name. Here are few things we loved about the name Josiah. 1) It’s biblical – and has a pretty interesting story of a boy who became king at 8 years old and restored the Kingdom of Judah to God. 2) My husband’s name is Joshua, his brother’s name is Jeremiah – Josiah is like lovely combination of the two!                       His middle name comes from his grandfathers. Josh has both his grandfathers’ first names as his middle names (Alfred Ted). The problem we came across with Josiah is that my dad’s name was John – and our last name is Johnson. Josiah Dale John Johnson sounds like a racecar driver’s name and I was not about that. So we went with our dad’s middle names – Josiah William Claude.

There have been many things that have come up since naming him that have been lovely reminders that this was most definitely what his name was to be. One of these occasions was the night that Josiah was born. Josiah was stillborn at 37-weeks. Hours after he was born, we had a blessing and naming service with our parents and pastor. Part of the service includes a reading from Jeremiah that talks about how before we were formed in the womb God has known us. The verses right before this reading talk about King Josiah.

While searching for Noah’s name, I looked up what Josiah means. I had to laugh when I saw the meaning. God heals. At first it felt like tragic irony – luckily I have a great sense of humor for this sort of thing (it’s a gift of grief.) But for Josiah to mean God heals. God heals?! Heals my baby that died before he was born. It did not often feel like God healed him. I can’t say how many times in the days to follow the news of Josiah’s death that Josh and I prayed for God to heal. Our prayers for healing were to make this not have happened – undo this – Lazarus this situation or something! But in reflecting on our journey of grief and growth since these days – I think the name is perfect. Healing does not mean cure – it is one of the great and painful misunderstandings when reading about all of Jesus’ miracles after you have suffered great loss. (I’m not claiming that a physical cure didn't come with Jesus’ miracles – but the importance is the healing) Healing in Jesus time was about restoration. Restoring, wholeness, and meaning. Jesus healed the lepers because they were restored to community – during Jesus’ time, life centered around community – it was not the individualistic world we like to try and live in today. So Josiah was our healing – God may not have healed Josiah in the physical way that we wanted – but God healed us through Josiah.

Now for Noah. When we found out that Noah was a boy, we first liked the names Jacob, Isaac and Isaiah – but landed on Jacob – for a couple of days. We both really liked the name but then a few days later we looked at each other and agreed that we did not think this boy’s name was Jacob. Or Isaac. Or Isaiah. So we were back at square one. I was driving to work about a week later and the song Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey came on and I was talking to the then-unnamed Noah, telling him how his brother loved this song when I was pregnant with him and he would kick and dance the whole time the song was on. Suddenly while talking to him I felt like I knew his name – he was Noah. I shared this with Josh and he agreed that this was Noah. Noah’s middle name is Kenneth – which is my grandpa’s middle name and Josh’s best friend’s name. (Clearly we have a pattern – first name: biblical, middle name: family)

So what does Noah mean? Comfort. I couldn't believe it when I read it. (Now I laugh because I can tell you that 2 weeks from my due date – comfort is not in the top 100 words I would associate with this kid! But I do think it fits him – once again, in a non-physical way.) Being pregnant with our second child, again a son, just 9 months after the death of my first child seemed like anything but comfort – anxiety, stress, complete fear and constantly being terrified of just about everything, occasionally trust, hope and joy – but I would not name much of this as comfort overall. When I look back on our timeline, it felt like 3 pregnancies. I was pregnant with Josiah for 9 months. Then there was 9 months between Josiah and Noah. This pregnancy was the worst. It was the hardest – it was a pregnancy without a child, but with fear, with loss, with grief, with reoccurring loss of hope with each negative pregnancy test or each reminder that Josiah was gone. It was a pregnancy of growth that I never wanted to endure. A pregnancy of finding the new me and fighting it much of the way. Through a child was not born from it – many other life changing things were and I would not be the same without that time. And then we have my pregnancy with Noah – my pregnancy of comfort – while it started with lots of anxiety and fear, as Noah grew and it became more real that hope can come after loss and that good things can still happen.

Just as God’s healing was felt through Josiah, God’s comfort has been felt through Noah.

(I do worry a little I may be subconsciously putting a lot on my kids with their names – but I tend to view it more as a subconscious celebration of God’s presence in our lives.)

I am Grieving

I am grieving the innocence I had before great loss. I have experienced some of this loss when my dad died nearly 4 years ago. He was young, I was young, there was so much life that he was supposed to be here for, and I had to learn at 22 that what was supposed to happen doesn't change what has, and only makes the new reality more painful. I had to learn early that the world can have much more pain than we think we can handle, and after that, we cannot see the world the same. While some of the innocence can slowly return as time helps to scab the raw wounds we endure with loss, but there is always a small part that knows that the scar is still there, the pain life can give and you can’t fully trust that there is much goodness as you remembered. You can no longer say ‘well that only happens to those people, for this reason, ….it can’t happen to me’ but now you know better, now you know it can, and it does, and it doesn't care what else has happened in your life, how old you are, how good of a person you try to be, or any of it, it happens, and your innocence is gone.

I am grieving the excitement I had before great loss. This follows the innocence, and in many ways it is very much the same, but also different. As soon as I saw those two pink lines on the stick, there was never anything that could go wrong, the first time. We got pregnant with Josiah rather quickly and as soon as we learned of his existence, we were nothing but excited. This excitement was present at every appointment, whether a general check-up, an ultrasound or even the less comfortable appointments. There was always excitement with Josiah because we did not know anything could ever go wrong. We never believed it could happen to us, and honestly did not think that stillbirth was still a thing that people have happen, with all the medicine, technology, and care, we didn't think it could happen. This reality was crushed as we learned that our healthy baby boy was no longer alive. Even as they searched for his heartbeat at our 37-week appointment, I still did not know this could happen, as we walked down the hall to check the ultrasound, not being told yet of what the facts were pointing to, I remember being excited that we would get to see him again. I was excited until they turned on that screen and my heart broke as we saw the still picture. No flicker. No sound. No movement. He was still. He was gone.

Now I am pregnant with Baby #2. We have had some excitement, but it is accompanied with a fear. This excitement and fear have been present with each pregnancy test, especially all the ones that were negative. It is hard to only be excited when you know what can happen. We know what could happen. I don’t want it to seem that we are not excited about this baby because we are, and we are very happy and excited about this baby. But we know what we could lose. This partnership of fear and excitement are also present at every appointment as well.

I am grieving the hope I had before great loss. Again, this is similar to the grief, of innocence and excitement, but it is different. Tomorrow is our ‘big’ ultrasound with baby #2. I am 21-week along. Tomorrow we get to see the baby, for the 3^rd time (once at 11 weeks and again at 17). Tomorrow we get to start to call the baby, he or she, instead of Baby or it. Tomorrow is also the day that our hearts could be broken again. This ultrasound is more extensive and looks at the baby’s organs and how everything is going. There is no reason we have to think that anything should come up showing that the baby is unhealthy. There is also no way that this ultrasound could tell us that what happened with Josiah would happen with this baby. We think Josiah died because of a cord accident. An ultrasound could only prevent death in this instance if you were having an ultrasound as the accident happened. Maybe the worst part is also that there is no way this ultrasound can restore all the hope we've lost. It can bring some, but until I have a crying, breathing, healthy baby in my arms, I can’t know another reality.

I am grieving the loss of the family I don’t get to have. I grieve that this baby will not know its brother. I grieve that Josh and I don’t get to know Josiah more than we did. We do not know what our son’s cry sounds like, what his eyes look like or see his small chest rise and fall as he breathes. These are things that we will get to experience in the first moments with this baby, and we will grieve for a lifetime with Josiah. I grieve that I will always cringe when people ask me how many children I have. I grieve that I will never have a family picture with my whole family.

I am grieving, but I give thanks for that which I had before and have after great loss.

I don’t want to seem like there is no way I will ever have innocence, excitement, or hope again. I will, and each come back a little at a time, but I am grieving what will never be again. I will take hope in the promises of God and God’s presence and healing. I take excitement knowing that good things can still happen, even after horrible things happen. And I regain innocence as I trust in things that bring me excitement and hope.

While I grieve, I give thanks. I give thanks for the time we did have with Josiah. I give thanks that we are here again, about to see our little one and I give thanks that though I grieve, it is not all I do. 

Grief Cake

Sometime in the last year I got this idea to write a book. (This idea should fall into a category of ‘something will most likely never happen, but the idea of it gets me excited.’ But hey at least it’s getting a blog post!) I thought about this months after Josiah died. What inspired this idea actually came from a time a grieving, a time when I was angry grieving.               When I get angry about things, I tend to pile. I pile every reason why it’s not fair, why it’s not my fault, why it’s just me that this happens to, and why I don’t want to have to deal with it and then I pile on top of that a list of that of all the things that have gone wrong in my life. This is probably not the most mature or even helpful way to deal with anger, in fact it’s a bit on the dramatic side, but I get it all out – and after that, something happens.

What happens is I have gotten out all of my griefs and angers, and then – I can start to deal with them.

On this particular day, I was angry grieving, and thinking it is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to have just turned 25 and have endured the loss of my child and my parent. I’m sure at the time I also had more things on my list that I was grieving, but those were the biggies. So that inspired the idea for a book Grief Cake.

Really all I had for it is an idea and a title. The piling that I do is the mixing of the ingredients to make the cake. After that angry, griefy batter has all the ingredients thrown into the bowl, you start to mix. In that mixing, you do the work, or the ‘grief work’ as they call it in books I’ve read. It is not something you can phone in, tragically there is no kitchen aide mixer for grief cake (but if the book doesn’t work out, I need to invent that!) But anyway - you must do the work, process it, and keep stirring, even when your arm gets tired. Otherwise, the cake will be lumpy and won’t turn out. After you have mixed, processed, and done the work, you can start to bake. In the baking, you don’t always feel like your grief work is doing something (maybe if I knew more about making cakes I could put in some good analogies about the baking process, but while I don’t know cake, I do know grief.) You can’t tell until a point down the road that the grief cake has baked, I wish it was only 30 minutes like cake baking, but that is generally not the case, and I don’t know of any toothpick tricks for grief cake either. But at some point, you start to see things differently, feelings change or your way dealing with the feelings change, you start having more better days than worse or you learn and grow from that cake you were forced to bake – and unlike normal cake, grief cake doesn’t cause your waist to grow, but it causes your worldview to grow, the way you understand God, love, life, death, and finding peace to grow.

(This is my mixing)

So here is why I decided to write this today. Last week would have been my son, Josiah’s, first birthday. I did not know what to do for this day. I didn’t know if we were celebrating or mourning, so the one thing I wanted to do was bake a cake. Leading up to the day, I said ‘I’ll probably make a cake and whatever else we feel like doing that day.’ I even bought a little fancy frosting thing to pipe decorations on the cake. As the day came and passed, we never really knew what we’d feel like doing, so we didn’t. I said throughout the day ‘maybe I’ll make a cake’. It didn’t happen. So I waited. Yesterday, almost a week after, I decided to bake the cake. It was a slow moving process. The box sat on the counter for a while, then I put the dry mix in the bowl but found other things to do, so that sat for another long while, and finally I decided to bake the cake. Today, I was going to decorate it. As the day was almost over, I finally decided to do it. I had this grand idea of what this cake would look like in my head. I even was thinking how maybe decorating cakes for my kids can be a tradition that we do every year and thought of how cute they would be. I was excited as the frosting was turning out to colors that I liked. I am not a fan of pastels and didn’t want the pale baby blue color for the cake. After putting the blue on and figuring out how to get the green frosting into the piping bag, I had to figure out what to write one the cake. This turned out to be more difficult than getting myself to bake it.

I don’t like saying that it’s Josiah’s birthday because it doesn’t feel that way. I say he was born a year ago, or something along those lines. I think because he was not alive at his birth, I do not consider it his birthday, but when he was born. To me, somehow these things are different. So I did not want to write “happy birthday”. I have an odd, probably inappropriate sense of humor. It is part of how I process my grief. I don’t think it’s avoidance, because I say exactly what I’m thinking and sometimes it’s just so sad or depressing sounding and my brain just comes up with jokes as I deal with them – maybe that is avoidance, but I don’t think so, but anyway, they are the sprinkles in my grief cake. So I told Josh maybe I should write something like ‘Fact: You were born a year ago.’ Or ‘Put in a good word with God for me’ and ‘Good thing they say heaven doesn’t have time, because we are a week late on your birthday cake’ But I found it’s actually very difficult to use a piping bag and write on a cake so I went with what I did not want to and wrote “happy birthday Josiah”

To my disappointment, cake décor is not one of my gifts! The cake looked nothing like the cake in my head. But I guess that fits, this 1^st birthday is nothing like the one I expected and wanted it to be – he is not here. His birth or being born, was not as I wanted, though it was amazing to see him and hold him, I wanted and planned in my head for a whole life of joy and happiness that he was there for, not the 24 hours of holding him which he was not there for.

Life does not go as we expect, planned or always wanted. When you find yourself in that place – it is time to bake a cake.

(Take this note as a copyright to my Grief Cake book idea!)

Painful Clichés

Many things prompted me to write this post.

The most obvious – this week is one year since my son, Josiah, died. Josiah was stillborn at 37-weeks. He is our first child. We found out he died on August 22^nd and he was born on August 25^th.

Another thing that made me want to write it, as dumb as this may sound - I am watching Grey’s Anatomy, a guilty pleasure of mine. It is a re-run on TV, for those who know the series well, the season 2 finale just aired, and now season 3 premiere is on. Izzie’s fiancé, Denny, has just died. She is laying on the bathroom floor in the prom dress she was wearing when she found out Denny died. Her friends and co-workers are individually going into talk to her, to try to get her off the floor and out of the dress. They try many different approaches, but they are mostly just saying things, none of which Izzie cares to hear. (If you are not a lover of Grey’s – that whole story probably sounded crazy, sorry, please read on.)

The things that Izzie heard are not the all the same as those that I have heard in the last year. But the clichés that have been said to myself and my husband often end up hurting, much more than they could ever help. The difficult thing is, as hurtful as they all are, they are said in love and with the best intentions to be helpful, healing and provide comfort.

Let me unwrap what I hear when such things are said to me. Please know, I hold no ill will toward anyone who has said them. I myself was guilty of thinking many of them before losing Josiah. But I think it is important to know what is heard when these things are said.

(Also a disclaimer – this is how I have heard them, I don’t speak for every grieving person, but I think many would agree with these feelings.)

Absolutely anything about ‘God’s plan’            This may bring comfort and hope to some people, and my wish is not to take that away from them, but it is not who I understand God to be. I don’t believe that God plans for horrible things to happen to God’s people. I also don’t believe we could ever know ‘God’s plan’ or if God has some master plan. When we talk about God in this way, it makes it sound like God is a puppet master, just deciding to clip some strings as God pleases – and that is not who I believe God to be. I don’t know why God didn’t intervene so that Josiah did not die, but I don’t find truth in calling this tragedy God’s plan. I believe God wants us to live happy abundant lives, but part of life includes horrible things, but this is not God’s will for us. We do have a promise that God is with us in our pain and we have the promise of resurrection hope. So let us share God’s promises, not guess about what we think God’s plan is.

‘Everything happens for a reason’ or ‘It was meant to be’            This is probably one of the lines that I said the most before Josiah died. Even as my own dad died when I was 22, I remember telling myself this all the time. Saying it somehow made me feel like there was no other alternative, it had to happen. But really, this is the reality we live in, once something has happened, there is no other alternative, it has happened – we don’t know if it had to, but what if is a game that you cannot win. Some of this relates back to what I have said about God’s plan, I guess all in all, I don’t think we live in a predetermined world where we can say something was meant to be, we live in a world where once things happen, that is unchangeable, and it has happened. As for ‘everything happens for a reason’, I think, yes, as we process and grieve we grow and learn things about the world, ourselves and God – but I do not think that is why they happen, I often jokingly say if that were the case I would much rather have just read the book on it instead. I guess the only truth I find in that saying though is yes, things happens for reasons – my dad died because he had a heart attack and his heart stopped. We think, Josiah died because his cord became twisted and kinked long enough for him to be without oxygen – but those are the only ways I can gain any comfort from ‘everything happens for a reason’

‘God never gives you more than you can handle’             I recently shared an article on facebook about confronting this very saying, and it summed it up well, but I will put it in my words. This is another saying which I used to take comfort in. It’s a lie. God often gives us much more than we can handle. I think a better way to say this is ‘God will give you the strength to get through all things’. I think when we stop trying to handle and are honest in the pain and struggles we are going through that God meets us in that and gives us peace.

‘You are young, you can have more kids’              We are young. That is true. We hopefully can also have other kids. But they will never be Josiah. We will never get Josiah back. If you are a parent already, think of one of your children, think of your first child. Imagine if they were never in your life, take away smile, every laugh, every tear, every time they have amazed you with something new, or you have just watched them doing something they do all the time. Take away every moment, and everything they brought into your life and will bring into your life as they grow up. And now just know that you were supposed to have that child and don’t get to anymore. Now imagine someone tell you, ‘you can have more’ You can never replace that child. I will never have another Josiah, and I also wouldn’t want to put that on the other kids I will have. I hope they can grow up and be themselves and bring us all the joy, hope, and love that they can, as themselves, not to make up for the missing piece in our lives.

The episode of Grey’s ends with Izzie still on the bathroom floor saying she wants to be able to get up and do all the things people want her to, but she doesn’t know what happened and she doesn’t know how to be this person. When a person is in such deep heartache and grief, they don’t recognize their own life, they don’t know how to be a person in it, let alone themselves. So think. Think about the things you say to them as they learn how to be this new person. Think about what things you will say to make them feel better – and think beyond that to what they are really saying.

I’ve found the most helpful things said to us in our grief were words of honesty. ‘It sucks’ and not needing to fill silence because you are uncomfortable. The grieving person does not expect you to have some magical words which will heal their broken hearts – there are none. We were told to be gentle with ourselves and offered God’s peace and those were not painful clichés.