So, let's catch up.....I've been offline for a while. In September I attending a Women of Faith conference for the first time. I went primarily because Rick Warren from Saddleback Church was one of the speakers - in him I was not disappointed. I went to hear Rick Warren because he lost a son earlier this year and I wanted, I needed to know how another Christian grieving parent was walking through this journey. The rest of the Conference was ok; not horrible, not great but ok.
Being the eternal rebel, my friend Dorothy (my fellow rebel) and I stayed an extra night with plans to attend The Grove (a Saddleback satellite church) the next day. I knew Pastor Warren was speaking on working through your pain, so I was anxious to hear what he had to say. His sermon did not disappoint - in fact it made the trip down to LA worth it. This was the last in his series since returning to the pulpit following the death of his son. It was the first time in a long time, I left church with some hope that there is a way out of the valley I have been wondering through. At least a glimmer of hope.
Rick talked about how he was walking through the grief. He buried himself in the word of God and in God's presence - I didn't do that. I was too wounded, too caught up in my pain to let God comfort me. Too caught up in the 'whys' and 'why nots'. Too lost in my sorrow. Let me tell you what Pastor Warren shared that helped me start to see light at the end of this tunnel, this valley of death. My pain can be used for a good purpose: I can use it to draw closer to God, to draw closer to others, to help others and to witness to the world. "Have you gone through all of this for nothing? Is it all really for nothing?" Galatians 3:4 Please don't let all this pain be for nothing.
Rick Warren is great at one-liners: "You can handle the pain if you see the purpose" Boy, is this true. If I knew the purpose this would be so much easier! Not knowing the purpose, not seeing the reason or the 'silver lining' around this dark cloud has made it so much harder. And yes, I hear those of you who will say, 'God knows the purpose, just trust Him'. Easier said than done. When the eternal author has become the author of your pain, trusting is hard.
"God didn't spare Jesus from pain - why would he spare you?" That hit home. I am not the first person to suffer pain. My pain has been predominantly emotional, Jesus suffered both physical & spiritual pain when he was separated from God. My pain is nothing compared to his. In this, I can follow Ian's example; his response to being diagnosed with cancer was 'Why not me?'
"Your deepest life message will come out of your deepest pain." This will be true if I don't waste my pain.
Pastor Warren has a sermon series entitled "How to Get Through What You're Going Through" . If you are going through any kind of trauma or loss, listen to this series!! He talks about the 5 stages following a trauma or loss: Shock, Sorrow, Suffering, Surrender and Service (these make a whole lot more sense the the 'stages of grief' that you hear about). I'll be honest (like that's a new concept in my blogs), I'm stuck in Suffering. I haven't surrendered this pain, the loss of Ian yet. I'll get there but I'm not there yet.
This last Thursday was Ian's 21st birthday. I took the day off from work, knowing that I wouldn't want to be at work that day - I wanted to spend the day remembering Ian. I was asked if maybe it wouldn't be better to keep busy at work to distract myself but that wasn't my goal. My goal was not to forget about Ian but to spend time celebrating him. Eric & I had breakfast at IHOP (one of Ian's favorite places) then went to the cemetery to put new flowers on his grave before Eric had to go to work. We talked a lot about Ian, the day he was born, funny things he did or said; we remembered the good days. We got to the end of the day and we felt like we had missed something, we had nobody to celebrate his birthday with. If Ian had been alive, he would have been away at school (he dreamed of going to Rhode Island School of Design, so for us, that's where he would have been because he could accomplish anything he put his mind to) and we wouldn't have been able to celebrate with him. We probably would have called him but he would have been too busy to answer, so we would have left a message. Then he would have been busy celebrating with his friends so we probably wouldn't have talked to him on his birthday, kinda like it was this year. We would have sent him some money or a care package, cuz that's what parents do. So, we thought, if we can't send Ian something, why don't we pick somebody else and send them something? A new tradition was born - every year we will pick somebody and send them something in honor of Ian. In a sense, we're paying forward Ian's birthday. This year we picked one of Ian's friends who's away at college, I like to think he would have approved.
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