I don't know how much more I can handle

I am sorry to be so negative today, but I need to get these feelings out.  My house has grown, from a big, four bedroom home sitting on a acre in Ramsey, to a behemoth monster sitting in my head that has gotten so big that I can't even hand it off to God.  The shade that this massive house casts has blocked off my grieving for Gar, the joy and happiness that I have been regaining in life, and many other emotions.  It has made me feel more lonely and isolated, even though I have had wonderful friends who have been wonderful about helping me out.  It also makes my stomach and back hurt.

I am getting things done there, but there is so much to be done.  I just want out, financially, emotionally and must of all physically.  My goal is to have everything out in 3 1/2 weeks, so that I have time to get my real estate agent Jess out, get final touches done, and have it almost ready to go before I leave for Charlotte, so that it can be listed while I am in Charlotte.  Without a miracle, that isn't going to happen.  I am  moving forward with my plans for Charlotte, because I don't know what else I can do.  I need to get away, but how much of a vacation can it be with that awful house hanging over my head.

As I lay, not sleeping last night, I did more thinking than necessary, but I couldn't shut my brain off.  I realized that it's been a pattern in my life, whenever there's more than I can handle, I turn messy.  The final weeks in this house are fitting that pattern totally.  I did a lot of talking to God, even confessing my biggest sin of being totally afraid to trust God.  Maybe if I can work harder on that, the rest will be easier.

The girls also have a lot of stuff to get out of the house, and their jobs and lives are so busy that they can't even do that.  I still have one of their rooms that my handymen can't start painting until it is either organized or emptied.  I don't know how to handle that because I can barely handle my own belongings that remain in that house.  Again, something that needs to be turned over to God, yet I don't know how to trust God right now.

There is so much grief involved in this process.  There is the ongoing grief for Gar, memories as I get rid of so many things in the house and grief over leaving the house.  At the same time, I am becoming ready to move forward into the next stage of life that God has planned for me.  I can't move forward with the house hanging around my neck.  I know that I should go to some type of grief support group, but I don't have time, because of the house.  So I continue to pray.  Thank goodness God is a loving parent who keeps letting me come back in prayer.  I also ask for and covet any prayers that you have on my behalf.  I think that I can make it through this process, but only by the grace and help of God to lead me and guide me.  God is good, all the time.

Happy Father's Day

To all men who have made in difference in the life of a child, yes I mean you too, Happy Father's Day.  While today I continue to miss Gar, I hurt for my children.  It's their first Father's Day without their father.  All over, on TV and social media, people are remembering Father's Day, and it's like a little pain in your heart everytime you hear those words, because you don't have a dad to make the same wish to your father.  In 1994 my father died on June 6, and I remember that Father's Day was one huge ache all day long.  While it's been a little longer for my daughter's, it doesn't make the pain any less.

A year ago, all of the girls had to work, but we were able to do a quick lunch and get some bowling in with Annie and Kari before their afternoon shift.  Gar did some really good bowling that day and was quite happy about it.  He had a great day.  Now here we are a year later, with plans for church, brunch, and then gathering at his family farm with two of his sisters to scatter some of his ashes.  What a difference a year makes.  It will be a small gathering, I really don't want to make a fuss, just return part of Gar to the fields that he worked so hard on.

As I said earlier, this marks the 20th anniversary of the year my father died.  His death came after a six month battle with pancreatic cancer.  I still miss my dad.  He was a man who loved to have a good time, and the most important things in his life were his wife and his daughters.  I still miss my daddy's hugs and the way he could talk away my fears.

As I sit here looking back on Father's Day, I must stop and pray and give thanks to my heavenly Father.  It's because of God that I was able to move forward when dad died, and then when Gar died, because I knew that they were both home with God.  Thank you God for those two wonderful men in my life.  God is good, all the time.  If you are able, go and hug your husband and your dad.

Looking for hope

Yesterday was another tough day.  I don't know why, but Sunday afternoons and Sunday nights are my very worst day of the week, when I am at my lowest.  It's odd, because I love church, and the day starts off with such a high, then it slides straight downhill.  Last night was no exception to that.  The excitement of the new camper has taken a back seat to the work that needs to be done to sell my house.  I'm just stuck in a rut of work and saying good-bye to our house of 25 years.  I'm also thinking that part of my problem in getting stuff done is trying to avoid that final good-bye.  Yet that house is not my home anymore, it's an empty shell filled with memories.

So I get up this morning and decided that maybe if I did some blogging, some of the pressure inside would be relieved.  I was all set to blog that I was feeling as if God had abandoned me.  This was a new feeling to me, the first time that I had felt that since Gar died.  Well, God had a little surprise for me.  One of the bloggers that I like to follow is Timothy Siburg's.  He was our Worship coordinator and choir director at our church for three years, and I value my friendship with him and his wife Allison. His blogs show up on my blogspot, and I was catching up on some of his blogs.  He had shared Allison's post following the shootings at Seattle Pacific University.  Timothy and Allison are Seattle natives.  Allison wrote so beautifully about the horror of that event, and the four letter word that kept coming to her mind follow the event, the word hope.  As I read her beautiful words, my mind was nudged by the Holy Spirit.  It wasn't that God had abandoned me, it was that I had abandoned one of God's most precious gifts, hope.

Since Gar has died, probably one of my strongest emotions has been the feeling of hopelessness.  I've been lonely and not sure what the future holds, really I don't have much hope for the future except for a long string of lonely days.  So I googled how many times the word hope is used in the Bible, and it is over 125 times, depending on which version you read.  I also found this verse from Romans 13:15 ~~Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit~~  So now it's time to change my prayers and my focus.  Instead of focusing on missing Gar and focusing on how much I have to get done before I can sell my house, I will instead focus on hope, God's hope.  Thank you Allison for giving me that word today, and your faithful reminder that God is hope.  

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day.  But, it's not only Mother's Day today.  It's also Gar's 69th birthday, only he's not here to celebrate it with me today.  When Annie and Kari were small, Gar and I always had an agreement that on Mother's Day, Father's Day or one of our birthday's, the person being honored did not do any child care, mostly diapers.  It was our joke that when Gar's birthday fell on Mother's Day, the kids stayed wet all day.  

As a family, we all continue to grieve Gar's death, yet being the individuals we are, we have each done it in our own ways.  I don't know if this is normal for all families, and sometimes I feel as though we are falling apart as a family.  I pray that that is not the case, and that soon we will pull together as we realize that all that we have is each other.  I am so grateful to all of my children and grandchildren, and I love them all so much.  I also know how much Gar loved each of his girls and grandchildren, and was so proud of them.  I pray that they may always remember that. 

It's also alway tough on Mother's Day without my mom.  This is my third Mother's Day without her.  This year has been especially tough.  So many times I have wanted to tell my mom that now I understand what she went through after my dad died.  Love you mom! 

It's been a tough week for me as I tried to have a moving sale at my house.  The turnout was lousy, but that meant nothing.  The hardest part was getting rid of things that have been part of my life for so long.  It's kind of funny, but the pieces that some people come in and see as useless have so many memories attached for me.  This week I need to do some organizing so that work can be done at my house while I'm on vacation.  I really hope that I can get enough in me to get it done.  Moving out of my house is harder than I thought it would be.  It has been such a good home to us for the last twenty five years.

As I re-read this, I realize one thing.  I could not even get out of bed in the morning if I didn't know how much God loves and carries me.  Through my breakdowns, tears and dark thoughts, God's light keep shining through.  At Gar's funeral, the gospel was John 1:1-5.  When I chose that, Pastor Brian looked at me and said "it's not really a funeral reading" and I said, "but I still want it."  This verse is why "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it".  This was true of Gar's life and how he lived after his accident.  It is now true of my life and how I have lived since Gar's death.  God is good, all the time.  Thank you God for putting Gar in my life.

Nine Months

Nine months ago my world was turned upside down when I returned home from an outing with Annie and Kari and found that Gar had passed away while we were gone.  At some times it doesn't seem very real and at other times it is painfully real.  I have learned several things, and while it is reinforcement of what I have known all of my life, it is still been a huge learning process for me.

First and foremost, I know that God is in charge of my life.  God is a good and loving God, and life is much easier when I place it in God's hands.  Secondly  I have learned that while the grief changes over time, it  will always be with me.  It is my choice to either go with the flow or be bitter about it.  Being bitter will not bring Gar back, so go with the flow it is.  Gar will always be with me, and he left me beautiful gifts in our four daughters.  The other gift that God, and Gar gave me are the gift of my memories.  I have so many wonderful memories of our thirty years together, and no one can take those away.  So many things can trigger so many wonderful memories.  More often than not, they trigger wonderful memories instead of tears.

On Sunday, when it was exactly nine months was a good day.  In the morning, I was honored to become a Godparent to Angel Blessed Livingston, a baby that was born to a couple at our church.  It is such a privilege to be part of this little girl's life.  It was a full circle day for me.

Yesterday I learned that I'm not as strong as I thought.  Winky was spayed yesterday, and there were several other stressors during that day.  I thought that I was doing better, then that knocked me right down.  It caught me by surprise because I have always been able to handle days with a lot of stress, and yesterday I just fell apart.  Thank goodness God was there to pick me back up.  Thanks to everyone who prayed me through last night.  I am learning that for a while I need to be a little gentler with myself.

Well, this blog was a lot of rambling, but that's okay.  It's my way of journaling.  In many ways my life has begun again, so I watch myself grow with God.  I do know that God is good all the time, and God is always there with us.  Thank you God!

Life, it's everywhere

So many random thoughts running around in my head, I thought I'd try to capture some.  In two weeks, it will be nine months since Gar died.  The first six dragged so slow and the last three have really flown by.  Nine months is gestation time in humans, so let's see what has gestated in the last nine months in my fertile mind.

First of all I have learned that grief is everything they say it is, and it rarely goes away.  It's always there waiting to upset your day in one of it's many manifestations.  But grief is not as bad as everyone thinks it is.  It forces you to confront basic feelings that need to be dealt with .  In the first few days and weeks after Gar died,  I learned that the sharpness of the pain reminds you that even though the person you loved so deeply is dead, you are still alive.  But for me the best part of grief, yes there is a best part, is that it forces me to reach out to God in order to move on.  I don't know how people make it through the grieving process without God.  God loves us and carries us.  A few weeks ago, Pastor Brian reminded us in his sermon that Jesus wept.  Jesus has experienced the loss of loved ones and knows our pain.  That helps in the healing, but because when the pain is too great, I know that I can turn it over to God.  There is also the knowing that Gar is with God and that we will be together one day.

Another thing that has happened is that I am more sharply aware of how death affects people.  When I hear on the news of people dying suddenly, I often stop what I'm doing a say a prayer for the family.  I had never experienced an extremely sudden death like Gar's, and now I know what a different pain that is, but either way it doesn't matter.  Someone has still lost a loved one.  I have a friend whose husband has terminal cancer.  I hurt for both of them and pray daily for both of them.  I follow them in his Caring Bridge site, and their faith and trust in God is amazing.  They are also truly living out the saying that cancer is the long good-bye. I pray that I can be there for her and she reaches out for me when the time comes.  Now is when they need to be together as they are.  I also learned yesterday that some cancer has recurred in a high school classmate.  I hurt for her, her husband, her children and her friends, and I pray that they are able to stop it again.  Yet another friend of mine is coming up on the year anniversary of her husband's death.  I know that she misses him every day, and I pray that she will be strengthened in his love, God's love, the love of her family and the love of her friends.

The last thing that I am sharing today is how I am learning to live each day.  This week is Holy Week, and we are looking at the final days of Jesus' ministry and time here on earth.  To me, this is always a reminder of the great sacrifice that Jesus made for us in order that we might live.  Therefore, we are to make to most out of each day.  No matter how great out loss is, life is still amazing.  For me, a lot of the joy and fun is returning to life, and I really enjoy that.  Gar may be gone, but I am still surrounded by my children, grandchildren and friends, and for that I give thanks.  God is good, all the time.

Decisions, decisions, decisions

Finally, a day where 70 degrees is a real possibility.  As I write this, I am sitting next to an open window and it feels wonderful. I am also enjoying the new desk with all of it's wonderful organization possibilities.   I got some big decisions made today, and am feeling fairly good about it.

This first thing done was to order a stone for Gar's grave.  I found a really nice company in Anoka, and she was very helpful.  I am keeping the design a secret until the stone is installed.  I am really happy with it, and the lady was very helpful.  It will be put on the grave before Memorial Day, as soon as the ground is ready,

The other decision is on my move.  I had a self imposed deadline of having everything out of the house in Ramsey by May 4th. I am learning that this deadline is unrealistic.  I work on it every day, but seem to be unable to get as much done as needs to be done to achieve this deadline.    I work on the house each day, but it is harder than I anticipated.  I get overwhelmed by the amount of work, the memories and the quickly approaching self imposed deadline, then I do a mini shutdown.   So today I decided that I will keep on working, and it will get done when it gets done.Maybe this will free me to get more done.

A huge part of getting my house ready involves some of the details that Gar and I were unable to do while we lived there.  There are also the necessary repairs that are needed after 25 years in a house.  I have been truly blessed to find two wonderful handymen.  They are taking care of all that needs to be done, and doing some things for  Liz and I at Liz's house.  They are hard workers and they have an amazing work ethic, taking pride in all that they do.  They are also very respectful of my budget.  I have thanked God for them several times during this process.  Thanks to Ruth too for recommending them.

So, as you see, it's baby steps, but I am learning how to be proud of baby steps.  I know that I take this baby steps with God holding me up and it is all in God's plans.  God is good, all the time.