I was reading something online the other day, I can't even remember where, that made me think. It was talking about how we don't realize what good things are in our lives until we no longer have them. Don't you think that's so true in our American culture? It seems we're always wanting more, more, more, when we probably could use to stand back and take a look at what God has already blessed us with and be thankful for it.
Today is the first day of October, a month that really gets me thinking deep thoughts.
Eighteen years ago this Thursday (October 3), our baby daughter Jessica died, suddenly and completely unexpectedly. To say that was life-changing and the worst day of my life is probably quite obvious. I can't even begin to tell you how that day affected us, and I wish so much that others didn't have to learn from experience what having a child die is like.
Nine years ago, I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and learned I had to have a craniotomy (the fancy word for "cutting someone's skull open with a saw") to have it removed on October 26. We had five kids at home, the oldest not quite eleven years old and the youngest only four months old. This was for sure the scariest thing I have ever dealt with in my life so far.
So when Matt & I were facing this scary thing nine years ago, knowing I had to have neurosurgeons cut my skull open and dig into the middle of my head to get this tumor out... that they might not be able to completely remove the whole thing, that there were possible side effects that could affect me the rest of my life (including a slight possibility of death), what really helped us was looking back nine years and seeing how God carried us through that.
(I realized today that it's been nine years since our brain tumor experience and we had been looking nine years into the past and feeling like it had been so long ago. Wow. Where does the time go?)
Being a part of the body of Christ is amazing... you don't have to go through things on your own. The term "body" isn't a joke... when your thumb hurts, the rest of you suffers, too. It helps so much when you're going through something you can't imagine having to deal with.
When Jessica died, family and friends came to our house just to be with us when we didn't even know what we wanted. We collapsed in bed in exhaustion that first night after she died only to wake up a few hours later, not able to sleep. It was so nice to have friends from Marquette show up just then, having driven through the night to be with us. So good to have people with us when we had to make meals and plan for her funeral and to have extra noise when otherwise it would have seemed so much quieter and empty. And then an older lady from our church that we hadn't met yet (we were still new in town then) came to our front door with a box of pastries and with tears in her eyes, told me that her baby daughter had died forty years earlier.
Grieving is a tough process, and it's not neat and organized like in the textbooks. There are the so-called stages of grief, and with Matt working on getting his Masters of Social Work degree at the time, you can be sure we were well aware of those stages. But they don't happen in order, neatly, like you read about them. It's messy and unpleasant, and sometimes both of us were in different places with our grief. I'd want to talk about Jessica and Matt didn't because it was too painful for him. And a couple months later, his mom died, too, so that was especially hard to deal with at the same time. Sometimes he would just go in the basement and cry out because it was too much for him. I remember on New Year's Day 1996, just hoping the new year would be easier on us than the previous year had been.
But through it all, we truly felt God carried us and loved us and didn't judge us for being all messy and ugly inside. I had thought at the beginning that surely God must have something really BIG for me to learn from this, but really what it came down to was much more simple. Just, "I love you and I care. It's okay that you hurt. I love you." No big expectations from God. This wasn't some big assignment I was supposed to learn something from and share with others or else I had failed the test. Nope. Just that He loves me. (Which I guess in itself is pretty big.)
So, nine years later, I felt like we were the Israelites being reminded of how God had carried them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, how He had parted the Red Sea and cared for them in the wilderness and brought them into their own land that He had given to them.
And the truth is, all our prayers about my brain surgery were answered in the way that we had hoped. It seemed so perfect ending-ish, when I know many, many people's stories aren't like that at all. (And sometimes I fight off feelings of guilt about how well my story turned out.) My brain surgeons were able to get my whole tumor out, my vision was restored fully, I was able to get home five days later, get back to nursing Naomi (when I'd been told I might have to stop), I didn't need to be on anti-seizure medications, and within a few weeks, I felt totally back to normal again. I had been told it could be as long as two years before I'd feel "normal" again, and many brain surgery patients never do. We had lots of people from our church and from Youth for Christ helping, bringing meals, watching kids, and planning to keep it up for at least another month. But after three weeks, I realized it wasn't necessary.
It is truly mind boggling to think of all the things that could have gone wrong that didn't. Or haven't since. Every other year I have an MRI to keep a close eye on what's happening, and every time it's been clear. I am quite aware that one of these years that could change. As the neurosurgeon out here said to me when we asked him about recurrence rates, "Well, you've obviously shown that you have the ability to grow a meningioma."
So in October, I am reminded of a couple of the "bigger" reasons I have to be thankful. There are so many others, and when I think of the people in my life and the blessings God has given to us, I am grateful.
God, please help me not to get distracted by things that don't matter. Help me to be thankful always.
Today is the first day of October, a month that really gets me thinking deep thoughts.
Eighteen years ago this Thursday (October 3), our baby daughter Jessica died, suddenly and completely unexpectedly. To say that was life-changing and the worst day of my life is probably quite obvious. I can't even begin to tell you how that day affected us, and I wish so much that others didn't have to learn from experience what having a child die is like.
Nine years ago, I had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and learned I had to have a craniotomy (the fancy word for "cutting someone's skull open with a saw") to have it removed on October 26. We had five kids at home, the oldest not quite eleven years old and the youngest only four months old. This was for sure the scariest thing I have ever dealt with in my life so far.
So when Matt & I were facing this scary thing nine years ago, knowing I had to have neurosurgeons cut my skull open and dig into the middle of my head to get this tumor out... that they might not be able to completely remove the whole thing, that there were possible side effects that could affect me the rest of my life (including a slight possibility of death), what really helped us was looking back nine years and seeing how God carried us through that.
(I realized today that it's been nine years since our brain tumor experience and we had been looking nine years into the past and feeling like it had been so long ago. Wow. Where does the time go?)
Being a part of the body of Christ is amazing... you don't have to go through things on your own. The term "body" isn't a joke... when your thumb hurts, the rest of you suffers, too. It helps so much when you're going through something you can't imagine having to deal with.
When Jessica died, family and friends came to our house just to be with us when we didn't even know what we wanted. We collapsed in bed in exhaustion that first night after she died only to wake up a few hours later, not able to sleep. It was so nice to have friends from Marquette show up just then, having driven through the night to be with us. So good to have people with us when we had to make meals and plan for her funeral and to have extra noise when otherwise it would have seemed so much quieter and empty. And then an older lady from our church that we hadn't met yet (we were still new in town then) came to our front door with a box of pastries and with tears in her eyes, told me that her baby daughter had died forty years earlier.
Grieving is a tough process, and it's not neat and organized like in the textbooks. There are the so-called stages of grief, and with Matt working on getting his Masters of Social Work degree at the time, you can be sure we were well aware of those stages. But they don't happen in order, neatly, like you read about them. It's messy and unpleasant, and sometimes both of us were in different places with our grief. I'd want to talk about Jessica and Matt didn't because it was too painful for him. And a couple months later, his mom died, too, so that was especially hard to deal with at the same time. Sometimes he would just go in the basement and cry out because it was too much for him. I remember on New Year's Day 1996, just hoping the new year would be easier on us than the previous year had been.
But through it all, we truly felt God carried us and loved us and didn't judge us for being all messy and ugly inside. I had thought at the beginning that surely God must have something really BIG for me to learn from this, but really what it came down to was much more simple. Just, "I love you and I care. It's okay that you hurt. I love you." No big expectations from God. This wasn't some big assignment I was supposed to learn something from and share with others or else I had failed the test. Nope. Just that He loves me. (Which I guess in itself is pretty big.)
So, nine years later, I felt like we were the Israelites being reminded of how God had carried them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, how He had parted the Red Sea and cared for them in the wilderness and brought them into their own land that He had given to them.
And the truth is, all our prayers about my brain surgery were answered in the way that we had hoped. It seemed so perfect ending-ish, when I know many, many people's stories aren't like that at all. (And sometimes I fight off feelings of guilt about how well my story turned out.) My brain surgeons were able to get my whole tumor out, my vision was restored fully, I was able to get home five days later, get back to nursing Naomi (when I'd been told I might have to stop), I didn't need to be on anti-seizure medications, and within a few weeks, I felt totally back to normal again. I had been told it could be as long as two years before I'd feel "normal" again, and many brain surgery patients never do. We had lots of people from our church and from Youth for Christ helping, bringing meals, watching kids, and planning to keep it up for at least another month. But after three weeks, I realized it wasn't necessary.
It is truly mind boggling to think of all the things that could have gone wrong that didn't. Or haven't since. Every other year I have an MRI to keep a close eye on what's happening, and every time it's been clear. I am quite aware that one of these years that could change. As the neurosurgeon out here said to me when we asked him about recurrence rates, "Well, you've obviously shown that you have the ability to grow a meningioma."
So in October, I am reminded of a couple of the "bigger" reasons I have to be thankful. There are so many others, and when I think of the people in my life and the blessings God has given to us, I am grateful.
God, please help me not to get distracted by things that don't matter. Help me to be thankful always.
1 comment:
Thankful is a really big word to describe but you seem to do well at sharing what things you are thankful for. We too are truly thankful that those events of the tumor turned out like they did. The death of Jessica hurt us too a LOT since we were hurting for ourselves & for you too. Grief if a odd thing & we all go through it differently. I have not yet cried over losing my Dad & was feeling guilty that I hadn't cried when others had, it was like I didn't love him or something. But that God assured me we all grief differently. Wow I didn't mean to get into all that, sorry.
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