One Year Gone and Alone

The death of Isabella is approaching one year. Our lives have changed and they will not be the same again and we feel - I feel very alone. Maybe God should be enough; probably He should be and maybe if I were closer to Him He would be, but at this point in my life, He is not.

                I really don’t know where I should be at right now. I know that everything I have held dear to in my life has had to be let go. I let go of my ministry (what little of that it was anyway). I let go of my daughter. We let go of homeschooling. I let go of the music that I love so dearly not knowing if I will ever pick it back up again. I let go of part of my wife and she sinks in to a lack of contentedness that I have never seen in her before, not materially but just unsatisfied with life. I cannot be all that she needs, but sadly, for the most part, I am all that she has.

                Everyone has moved on with their lives, some quicker than others. On the rare occasion that I am asked about how we are doing it comes in the form of “how is Gladys doing?” I do not say that to get pity but I really am not a factor in the equation to most people. Maybe it is too scary for them to ask face to face. Maybe I put on a good front and it appears I am holding everything together just fine. Maybe people really just don’t care and they ask me because they know that I will just say everything is fine, even though it is not.

                The truth is we have bad months and we have worse months. Gladys still has a lot of trouble being in places when people start ooing and awing over babies that are present. It just goes through her.  I think that is normal and I really do understand why that would bother her. But I can hear other people’s thoughts in my head now. “Why haven’t you just gotten over this by now?” Well to answer that question we are not over it now. We are in a funk with every area of our lives. We have sought counseling and it has and does help. But it doesn’t erase the pain that no one really cares that much anymore. They never bonded with our child; they have just moved on sympathizing with us. And I knew this would happen it is normal for those dis-attached. But there are others who I really feel should give us more comfort and more concern. Those really close to us close to me; they just don’t ever talk about things. They talk about anything else they possibly can. They talk non-stop about other people’s problems and other people’s loss but really never inquire about our own.  And it does hurt. I wish there was more honesty in my relationships. Some of that is my own fault, I admit that. I am so introverted and the older I get the worse being an introvert seems to get.

                Anyway, that is how I feel right now. Life is very unsatisfying. My children are my only real source of joy at the moment and I find myself getting short with them many times. I love my wife but some days it is hard when we both have so much pain to deal with. We are getting through it together but it is a real battle we must work at so hard together every day. My job is frustrating because it is just that, a job. There does not seem to be purpose to what I do and one of my strengths is belief. I need to have a strong belief in what I do with my life and when that is not there it is hard to get satisfaction out of what I do. Don’t get me wrong. I love computer work. I love learning code and languages for the computer but I want to believe that what I am doing is helping the world – making a difference to God. It is sometimes hard to do that at an insurance company. I wish I could incorporate my giftedness with computers with my ministry background. But that opportunity has yet to come through. My ministry to church has gone completely flat. I am just surviving and not doing a lot. I resigned the little bit of ministry I was doing when we lost Isabella to focus on my family. I do not regret that. My family is my first ministry; even that I fail at. Our church family has moved on. Worship is stale for me; I find it hard to get much meat and I find it hard to worship.

                There are things I can do. I can draw closer to God. I am beginning to do that. I am and have been fighting for my marriage and my family and I will continue to do that. I am seeking to know where God would have me go in ministry. I know this, Lord willing, I really want out of Shepherdsville. I just don’t feel like there is much holding me here anymore. I am ready for a change of scenery. But that dream seems so impossible right now. It is a terrible economy and a lousy market to move in and we do not have any foreseeable increase coming to our income to realistically make a move. But I so desperately want to move. And nothing can seem to break this nagging feeling that I really am truly alone. I know that my aloneness is mostly my own fault. I just don’t know how to have close friendships. But I would really like to start over.

                If you care anything at all for us, pray! Pray for me.  Pray for me to be a better husband, a better dad, a better disciple. Pray for me to be a better friend. Pray for me to care about serving God and his church. Pray that my heart softens and that I can heal and that my healing can rub off on my wife. Pray that those close to us would finally show some concern that is deeper than just asking how are you?

                One thing that struck me this week was when a couple who were total strangers to us, stopped by to talk to us and truly took time to empathize and ask us hard questions. Strangers asked me how I was doing with God through all of this. I have not been asked that by anyone close to me. It meant so much. One of them even prayed with Gladys. They recognized our pain and took time to minister to us. I am thankful to God for that but sad that so few others recognize this need in us. My prayer is that He will send more people like that into our lives in the next few months.

                As we prepare for our next baby, there are so many fears. But there is no turning back. I just wish I did not feel so alone.

Feeling Like Peter

Yesterday was a very rough day. My Pride and ego got a much needed checkup. Sometimes being a Christian is not fun. It is hard to be part of a faith that reveals how messed up I truly am. Yet, it is even harder to make sense of so many things that just make no sense. Death seems to be all around us right now. I know it is easy to focus on the negative and overlook the positive, but something just seems different with the world. My world is definitely different. Yesterday was a day where my faith was tested and I failed.

The weekend overall was just very blah. Gladys had a friend that gave birth to a beautiful baby girl only to feel the same pain we felt 6 months ago, this baby is now playing with our baby in heaven – without us. I understand their pain, but every loss is a different pain for each person. This wonderful couple knew that their baby’s chance of survival was slim. But hope was always there. Their pain is no less than ours.

So in the backdrop of that starting our own weekend, pain was reintroduced to our home, not that it ever left. Yet, in many ways life was beginning to move ahead for us as a family. Soccer games were wrapping up for my boys and we were preparing for our first real family vacation to the ocean. But this family’s loss touched our lives this weekend, especially for Gladys. Old wounds come rushing in. The whys of our pain are still there and now we wonder for this couple the same whys.

My band was scheduled to play a concert at a car show that a local church was having on Sunday. I always look forward to playing out, but I wasn’t particularly excited this time. I wasn’t sure why, but looking back I see now why. You see, we were playing at the very church our daughter was buried at. In fact, from where I was standing, I could see her grave. She heard the songs I have written many times in her mom’s belly. It just never crossed my mind that I was going to be playing those songs to her in her grave. I have worked up a couple of new songs that are about our experience and the band has been rehearsing them for a while now. We have one that is concert ready and we played it out one time before a few weeks ago. It is called Safe. It is kind of a take on being Safe in God, even though as C.S. Lewis wrote, he is not safe, but he is good.

So here I was scheduled to play at a concert I had not really thought through on a weekend when another couple was experiencing fresh what we have experienced for the last 6 months. O.K., I am pretty tough and I love singing and I am thinking I can get through this. I am ok; I have been dealing with this just fine for the last few months- little did I know what rage was still inside of me. I get all of my gear loaded up. My plans are to play the concert, do a quick change and meet my wife who could only stay for part of the concert – at the grave site for a grave site service. Everything is loaded in the van. I get my boys loaded up, kiss the wife and we are off to set up for the concert, or so I think. I go to start the car and click, click, click. “Oh come on,” I mutter. Click, Click, Click. “Ok, I just had the stupid alternator replaced on this thing - what now? “ I pray, “God, just this one time, I need some help here. I have this concert I really need to get to, I don’t want to do it because it is not going to be easy but I need to get there. I need a car so I can leave and meet my wife at this grave site. She needs me there. Please come through.” Deep down inside I am thinking some more wicked thoughts. I am really thinking, “you couldn’t come through for me when I asked you to save Isabella but the least you can do is start this stupid car for me, so I can get all this done. I cannot cancel!” I am starting to see, my real struggle is deep down inside I don’t think God came through for my family, and here we go again. My rage is getting to a breaking point.

I decide to hit the steering wheel and yell at my boys to be quiet. I seem to have a knack for making a fool of myself. I decide what this starter needs is a good hammer. I go toward the house to get it all the while acting like a madman and a fool who is going to praise God at a concert he will be the front man in! Nice! Gladys says something to me to try and calm me down, but I am beyond rational at this point and I mutter back three words I couldn’t imagine myself ever saying.

“I hate God!”

Wow, I can’t believe I am telling you this, but I said it. I thought I meant it; those three words broke me. What? Is that all it takes for me - A starter on a car? I hold it together through the death of my only daughter and my starter goes bad and I lose it? The truth is I lost it a long time ago and I have just been letting it build. I am sorry for those words I said. But I think God used that starter to draw out of me something that needed to be addressed. I am angry at God. I am angry that he did not save my daughter from death.

“Great! Now how am I supposed to play a concert?” Well I did, and God used that concert to reach deep into my soul. We are outside in the pouring rain playing under a metal shed to a grassy hill with all the people inside the gym, because it is pouring. God used two of my own songs to help bring some healing to the way I had just denied him. The first song is called Rest. It is a simple song that is just about how life beats you down and especially service to God’s people in the church. With all the struggles we go through as ministers sometimes we just wish we could rest in God. We just want to rest in his arms. We want to lay down our head and lie in his arms, like a child broken by exhaustion who clings to daddy and sleeps. I needed to hear that song. Right after that song I sang Drowning. This song is a typical song about Peter walking on the water. Peter was doing great walking on the water in the midst of a very real storm. Then he took his eyes off of Christ, focused on the storm and he begins to sink. That is it that is where I am at. I am drowning.

The words to the chorus of drowning say, “I’m not the man that I need to be, I’m drowning. I falling again, from the man I should be, Lord save me!!!” How very true after the way I had just lashed out at God. I look up in the middle of that song and look out at Isabella’s grave in the distance and there is a figure standing by her grave – Gladys was standing beside Isabella’s grave as I sang Drowning. What a picture. I am drowning and so is my family. They need a Dad who is a much stronger man, Lord save me!

I made it through the concert. I found a ride to the grave site to be there for my wife. I somehow found words to try and console another grieving father. More than anything, I found that I need God desperately. I need to rest in his arms right now. I need Him because my family needs me. I’m not the man that I need to be. I have taken a really hard wave from life in the death of Isabella, but Christ is there with His arms stretched out responding to my plea, Lord save me! I just need to reach out and He will walk me and my family back into the safety of the boat and he will calm the storm.

I hope you can see through more than my violent weakness as a broken man. I am a broken man, but I have the only true source that can offer healing.

The Dark Side of Faith

Too often we as Christians are just not real. Or maybe we are as real as we think we are supposed to be but we are living out a sense of how a Christian should be rather than just being frank with God and each other about who we really are. I know too many Christians that are miserable because they are trying to live a perfect picture faith on the outside. I think sometimes we are so used to the image of the Christian that we should be, that we convince ourselves we are that image; but those around us see through the falseness and we get a reputation for being hypocrites. It is so easy to see other’s faults but never our own.

Even worse is when we as Christians try to share our struggles with others in the church only to be shot in the back by those who should understand how much of a sinner we all are. We just try to pretend we are something we are not – sinless. Combine our inability to admit we are dirty, sinful creatures with our determined American Individuality, (the pick yourself up by your boot straps mentality) and you get a deadly caricature of what a Christian probably looks like to rest of the world. We do it to ourselves and then wonder why the world looks at us as such hypocrites. Christianity is meant to overcome our own cultural inadequacies.  All cultures have their flaws because all people are depraved. We are sinful!

I think we just aren’t real enough with each other. There is a tension to our faith in Jesus Christ. The God of the Bible is a difficult God to understand. This is what I mean when I say there is a dark side to faith. We really don’t like to admit to each other that we are struggling to hold on to what we believe. And when someone does admit their struggle to hold tight to their faith they are verbally or emotionally reprimanded by fellow believers who are shocked at our lack of faith. But being real and being honest is what will get us through what John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Soul. King David was very expressive in being real and honest with God and he got the title Man after God’s own heart – a compliment indeed. Read the Psalms to see his honesty. We are going to face those crises of belief moments that Henry Blackaby discusses in Experiencing God. God takes us into those moments and grows us through them.

So to my point that there is a dark side of faith I say to you, lose a child like me that seems to be perfectly fine. Have a birth experience that is pretty uneventful without any worries that something is wrong only to watch your child come into the world with a faint heartbeat and never to take a breath. Then tell me things like, “Oh, God has a reason for this.” Really? Are you saying that God did this intentionally to teach me something? Watch your child receive CPR and nothing happen. Pray and pray and pray only to feel that your prayers were never really heard.  Watch this and then have someone make you feel like you have no faith because you are not over this yet. This is the dark side of faith when we cannot explain God we put Him in a box to make ourselves feel better. But be careful because when you think you know God, he swoops down and takes the carpet out from under you.

However, through all of the emotional ups and downs I experience I know God is there. I am just waiting on Him to come through. I am waiting because He always has and he always will come through. That is what He does - come through. No matter how evil the world gets, no matter how dark life feels, no matter how small my faith gets, He always comes through. Our faith is going to be challenged, my faith has. A real part of me wants to throw my hands up in the air and say, “I’m done God. I just cannot trust you to take care of me.” (This is the part where I am being honest – don’t freak out). There is a part of me that reads the story of Herod killing all the babies in Bethlehem 2 years and younger because he thought he could kill the Messiah. I read that and I really understand what those parents went through that night as they lost their children. I understand the agony and the not knowing why. I know the crying out to God and asking why? Why? They never found out on this side. I read this story and I think, “God, you could have done things different, you could have intervened – but you did not” and I cry out why? It is ok Christian to cry out why? God is not scared of your doubt.

But, in time we must come to the place where we either decide to trust that he will make all things right again or we must walk away from our faith. It doesn’t mean that life moves on and we forget what has happened to us. On the contrary, what has happened to us has reshaped our life and we will forever be different. I cannot be the same and those Christians who think that I should move on past this and just go back to being normal, there is no normal now but I will choose to trust God with my life and He is going to come through. That is the bright side of faith.

Baby Taylor

                I wanted to spend a little time talking about a very precious gift I received for Christmas from my wife. Those of you that know me know how much I love playing guitar. It really is a love that I have developed over the years. The truth is I was born holding a microphone. I always loved singing and it came pretty naturally to me. I am not bragging on my voice by any means. I would love to have the voice of a Bono, Phil Collins, or a Rich Mullins - something unique and beautiful. However, I am not much of a front-man. I do not have a dynamic personality and that definitely comes across in my singing. So I decided in high school to learn guitar – I needed something to hold to take away from my dryness. It did NOT come naturally. It hurt, my fingers bled, and it really wasn’t much fun. When I got to college I was surrounded by guys who played guitar. I would say 50% of the guys at my college played guitar in some shape or form. That is when I really began to learn guitar. Eventually, I became a worship leader for a season of my life. That is when I developed a taste for good guitars. There is a difference between guitars and I would say I am a little nerd when it comes to guitar sounds.

                I have surrendered my acoustic sound to the Taylor brand. I love their product, I love their company. I love the care that they put into their instruments. However, I do not make a living well enough to buy a Taylor guitar. Any savings I manage to scrape up typically gets put back into my family, not my hobby. Yet, over the last few years I have been truly blessed. (Be patient, I am getting to the point of this blog soon enough). I own three guitars right now - 1 electric and two acoustics. My electric I bought on my own. It is a cheap old Epiphone Les Paul. It really isn’t much but it has a great paint job that my father gave it. I think I paid like $40 for this guitar and dad gave it like a $500 paint job – haha. Let me get back to the point. My main acoustic is a Taylor GA3 and it is amazing. It was a gift given to me by some donors that choose to remain anonymous. I could never have afforded this guitar and I use it often. I am very gracious to them. A bonus is that it was signed by Tommy Emmanuel – look him up some time. Recently however, I decided I really wanted a Baby Taylor. This guitar is ¾ the size of a normal guitar. It looks like a child’s guitar but it has such an amazing sound for such a little thing. I needed this because my other acoustic was too expensive to take on vacations, or camping trips, etc. I never felt comfortable with that so I wanted something I could back-pack with and not feel so insecure with it being outdoors. It is a great go-to guitar when I have ideas for songs.

                I still didn’t think we could afford this guitar but my wife and her mother decided they wanted to buy it for me for Christmas. It has been as awesome as I hoped it would be. The beautiful thing and why I am writing this blog is because this guitar is very symbolic. Gladys put a lot of thought into this guitar for me and here is why she bought it. She wrote all that it symbolizes concerning the loss of Isabella and I wanted to relay that to you. Gladys and I are from two different worlds, one American and one tropical. My Baby Taylor is colored in what Taylor calls Tropical/American tone. Together, my wife and I have made Tropical/American babies. Our children have dark eyes just like my Baby Taylor. This Taylor was New, never used before. All of my other guitars were used and frankly they always have been. This is my first new guitar. It symbolizes the newness of Isabella Grace. It may not be the same but Gladys wanted me to have something new to hold and embrace and spend hours playing with. Through this guitar I have found some element of healing over the loss of my baby girl.

                Gladys wrote me a letter when I received my guitar and this is what she said. “May God use your new Baby Taylor for a new creation, for new music that speaks about His grace to you and I. May your heart find a new joy and much healing as you embrace the new Baby Taylor.”  If all of this weren’t special enough Gladys had Isabella Grace inscribed on the back of the guitar along with a life size image of Isabella’s footprint. A local artist put it on the guitar. Now when I hold my Baby Taylor, in a way I am holding my baby Isabella. Thank you Gladys and her Mom, Helena for the beautiful gift and the beautiful symbolism it carries. I will cherish this guitar always. I have attached a picture of the guitar to this blog on the right. I wonder if Isabella ever gets to hear her guitar in heaven, not sure but I play it for her often and I look forward to the day when I will play guitar to her in heaven. Daddy loves you Isabella, look forward to the day when we see each other again face to face.