Old and New

I listened transfixed yesterday to the Old Testament reading for the Festival of the Baptism of Our Lord.  "Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations...See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them."  I heard once again the invitation to return to my pastoral vocation in whatever fashion best serves the Church.  I was grateful for that reminder, and I pray that I will be allowed to serve the Church in some productive way in my new life.

The pastor reflected on our baptisms into Christ's death and resurrection and the identity we have as children of God through that baptismal covenant.  When he talked about identity, I became even more focused.  It is hard to figure out just who I am these days, with a life in such flux and transition.  The pastor reminded us of Luther's words from the Large Catechism about baptism.  Luther urges us in the midst of uncertainty and struggle and temptation to remember, "But I am baptized!"  Never have those words had more meaning for me than at this moment.

I thought about all the identities I have lost over the last two months--roles and positions and relationships that I will not have again in this life.  It has felt at many moments as if I have lost everything.  Of course, I have not, and I am so richly blessed in the midst of Anne's dying and all the disruption that has followed.  But sitting in the pew yesterday I was reminded of the one constant in all of this--that I am baptized into Christ's death and resurrection.  That gift, role, status, identity--that I cannot lose even when death has done its worst.  Through it all, I have remained God's beloved child in Christ.  The one identity that sustains all others in my life is there for good and all.

So today I cling to that sure and certain hope.  My life remains in flux, transition, and some measure of discombobulation.  That is as it must be.  The former things have been declared and are now taking their places in my past.  God is doing new things in my life every day.  I am moving into that newness with joy and hope, with fear and uncertainty, with trust and...more trust.  And I seek to embrace that newness.

It's in something as simple as relating to my nephews.  I spent time with my brother and his family over the weekend.  I've been enjoying new connections with my three Minnesota nephews over the past few weeks.  For a variety of reasons that hadn't been the case earlier in their lives.  I worked weekends.  Anne had a busy schedule as well.  My brother and his family have their own hectic lives.  Most of all, Anne was the one who kept track of birthdays and sustained relationships.  Now that buffer is gone.  It's up to me--unbuffered.

So here we are, nephews, face to face with no intermediary.  And it's been such fun--playing cards and watching movies, laughing till we cried with "fart in a can," getting and giving hugs.  On the one hand, I know this is happening because Anne is gone and no longer part of the relationship equation.  On the other hand, I am enjoying this new dimension of my life, this new thing that God is doing in me and through me.  That is a description of so much of my existence these days.  The price was Anne's dying.  The newness is thrust upon me.  I am glad to embrace that newness in the midst of the bittersweet memories.

So wonderfully complicated...

Faithful Terror

I am ready to get on with some things in life.  I was accepted into the master's degree program at Creighton for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution.  I am very excited about that program and the learning involved.  And I am terrified.  I don't have any concerns about the academic work.  I've already read half the books on the list I've seen as well as lots of others.  I've done similar work in church settings for years.  But I did all that as a different person--a spouse, not a single parent, a pastor with a parish, a person with a community, living in a world where things seemed to be nailed down, where I didn't feel anxiety every time I said hello or good bye to anyone...it's hard to explain.

Now I live with very few things "nailed down."  I love newness, so this is all so exhilirating.  I love learning, so this is all so awesome.  Yet I am negotiating new roles and identities almsot on a daily basis, so I am intimidated in ways I have never before experienced.  I'm not sure I've ever felt more alive.  I am sure I've never felt more uncertain.  It's a combination some people live with all the time--I know that.  But I'm still adjusting.

I haven't worked this hard in a couple of months.  It's good to have some structure in my existence again, but that's another adjustment.  For a while I could say yes to almost any appointment.  Now I have to check a calendar again--a blessing and a curse...

I've completed my Rostered Leader Profile for parish ministry and our bishop has processed it.  I'm hoping for short-term interims or other assignments that may help me ease back into the "saddle."  I'd be glad for some supply preaching opportunities as well.  I know that I can do this work and do it well.  But I am once again terrified.  Who am I in this whole business?  Will I get in front and just fall to pieces?  Probably a few times...am I really ready to do this?  I guess there's only one way to find out.

I couldn't do this without the support and encouragement of my very best friends.  They've helped me to fall in love with my call again, and I am so grateful.  They encourage me to take the risk and to know that stumbling a few times will be all right.  That helps so much.

I also know the things that are nailed down.  I am a beloved child of God, baptized into Christ's death and resurrection.  I have been called by the Holy Spirit into public ministry in the past, and I have no reason to doubt that such a call will come again.  I am sustained by that healing Holy Spirit even when I panic at the thought of returning to preaching and worship leadership.  As one of my friends says over and over, "Time...time...time."  Yes, that's right.  It will come, and I'm grateful to have the time I need to grow into this new life.

So, friends, I'm ready to try some things.  Invitations for supply preaching are welcome, even if they will make me break out in a cold sweat at first.  It's time to go forward with the Lord. 

Landmines, Pitfalls and Boobytraps

People who know me have heard the "Lowell-ism"--"Panic is overrated."  I'm usually very calm, even in the face of crisis.  Often, the worse things get, the more calm I become.  That was even true as Anne lay dying.  In this grieving process, however, that is sometimes not the case--especially when it comes to the health of people I love.  I am learning that panic may be overrated, but that doesn't mean it is always avoidable.

Anne's death began with what seemed to be a simple case of the flu--sneezes, coughs and body aches.  She was so very tired for several days.  From there it spiralled into a fatal staph infection that had triumphed before we even had a diagnosis.  The origins of the infection remain undetermined.  Her attacker materialized out of the darkness, invisible and anonymous almost to the end.  Her killer was stealthy and silent, masked and camouflaged.  I didn't see it coming.  I couldn't see it coming.

Several times now, someone I love has coughed or been over-tired or had body aches.  Someone I love has sneezed or sniffled or had a headache.  And I have felt the tightness of panic in my chest.  What if it is happening again to someone else I love?  What if I miss the signs again and there is a catastrophe?  Where does the enemy lurk this time--hidden and waiting to spring?  I can't see it, and at some moments I am terrified.

I know these are not quite rational feelings.  Most of the time, a cough really is just a cough.  I know that I am responding to events that made deep grooves and ruts in my unconscious brain.  It will take some time for those grooves and ruts to smooth out and be replaced by more normal pathways.  I am reacting below the thinking level to inputs and experiences that had horrifying results in Anne's case.  This is as close to pure reflex perhaps as one can get.  I know these things, and knowing doesn't keep the panic away.  But at least the knowing helps me to respond in ways that don't cripple me--not for long anyway.

A few times I've had to pick up the phone just to hear a voice...just to make sure that my family member or friend was all right...just to make sure that nobody else was going to die on me in the next days.  I imagine I will need to do that many times in the future, until I can really believe that the hidden enemy is not about to take another casualty.  But it will take time indeed.  And until then I'll have to do a lot of deep breathing.

Landmines, pitfalls and boobytraps--this process is filled with them.  They can't all be removed.  I step into some and just have to go through them.  It does help, however, to learn to detect at least some of them in advance and to be ready when I meet them.

At a deeper level, this is life in its reality.  Anne's death illustrates the fragile nature of existence.  It is a sign of how close our mortality lies at hand all the time.  It is a moment to remember how much effort we exert to ignore that pending mortality, or at least to ignore it most of the time.  If we didn't suppress that fear of death, we would be debilitated as I have been for brief moments, with fear and panic.  I find that I must breathe deeply to get through it.  I breathe some simple words: "Lord Jesus, have mercy and save us."  Over and over that is my breath prayer, and then I can go on.

Perhaps that needs to be a breath prayer for us all at every moment in this life lived under threat.  When I pray that prayer, the gift of trust returns to me.  I remember that Anne is in Jesus' arms...and that I and all I love are there as well.  Panic, in the end, is indeed overrated.

Maternal Glue

I went "off the grid" for a few days of fun and relaxation over New Year's.  No, I didn't plunge into any emotional abyss or anything--quite the opposite.  But thanks for checking on me...

Today is our oldest son's birthday, and that has been difficult for me.  The physicians talked about the pain in Anne's breastbone as "referred pain" that actually came from her damaged heart.  I think I'm experiencing referred emotional pain as I hurt for sons who don't have their mom to chat them up on their birthdays.  I have at some point at least the potential of a new relationship and someone in a space in my life similar to the one Anne occupied.  The boys have lost their mom and that's that.

Anne loved to be a mother--LOVED to be a mother.  She was a doting, attentive and thoughtful mom on birthdays, at Christmas, and at other times of the year (and every moment in between).  I find that I'm not very adequate when it comes to being both dad and mom, and I guess that's not really the task.  As in many families, Anne was the emotional link and buffer between the boys and me.  Now that link is gone and we're renegotiating how that works.  I have two great sons and they are helping to work this out.  But it is new territory, that's for sure.

In addition, we are three men with our own agendas, work and plans.  We have to really strive to cross paths with any frequency.  And that doesn't come naturally.  Anne was the glue of those connections, and we're searching for a new form of adhesive.

I'm attaching a few pictures of Anne as mom.  She was the best!

Being Forgiven

It is tempting to frame this part of the experience as my need to forgive myself. How can I let go of the regrets I feel for not having done more? How can I relinquish the guilt and shame I feel because I failed Anne so miserably (at least that’s how it feels sometimes)? What can it mean to “forgive myself” in this context? That’s an important question early in this process. If I cannot somehow deal with this question and the feelings that go with it, it is hard to imagine how I can move forward in a healthy way into the future.

Do I have the right to forgive myself? In fact, it is the person who was wronged who has the right to forgive, not the one who feels like the offender. Even in our life together, I asked Anne’s forgiveness over and over for those times when she came in second place to ministry and other priorities. She was so wonderful in her understanding, her patience and her partnership in ministry. She always forgave, and I knew that her words were genuine.

I think of those times now and know that she forgives me. I would be deceiving myself if I thought that everything I did in those last weeks was completely absent of selfishness and impatience. I’m so very human, and so I know there were times when I responded first to me and second to her. I also know I have her ongoing forgiveness and love in spite of my failings. If she can forgive me, who am I to do less?

It may be that I need God’s forgiveness to help me deal with my regrets and second-guessing and guilt. Yes, indeed, I ask for that forgiveness each and every day. And it comes even without my asking. I don’t take it for granted, but I also don’t doubt the reality of the Forgiving Love in Jesus Christ. Again, if God can forgive me, who am I to do less for myself?

In another book I reflected at length on this business of self-forgiveness. There I wrote, “Self-forgiveness really requires accepting and owning the new story that others have helped to write as they have forgiven me.” That’s what this is really about. I am a man who has lost his wife far too soon. That is what I am, but that is not all that I am. I am a man who wishes he could have done something, anything, to save her. But I couldn’t in spite of my very best efforts. That is what I am, but that is not all that I am. I am a man who now lives into a new reality, a new life, and even a new hope. That is the story I must write for myself from now to the day I die. It helps me to know that Anne would expect no less of me and perhaps is even allowed to help me write the background for the rest of the story.

In my book on forgiving and being forgiven, I wrote that “the challenge is integrating forgiving love into an autobiography where [we] are convicted sinners…Integration means telling the whole truth about oneself and accepting love from those who know the whole story and offer forgiveness anyway.” This is why the real path out of regret, self-recrimination and second-guessing can only be found in the words and hugs and support of others—most of all, those who know me and my story the best.

It helps that doctors and nurses said over and over again, “You did everything you could.” It helps even more to have trusted friends and family say to me over and over, “It was a terrible tragedy. You loved her so very much and did everything you could. She wants you to continue living in this new life.”

To preview a copy of my book on forgiving and being forgiven and/or to order online go to:
http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/1460298
Or you can contact me directly.  I have copies on hand as well.

The If Onlys

As I worked on my grieving book today, I added a description of what happened to Anne.  When several people had asked by email, "What in the world happened?" I decided to write down the events that led to Anne's hospitalization and death rather than having to re-explain it each time.  That description fits well into the early part of the book to lay the groundwork for my experience and reflections.

So I read my own account several times and expanded it in some details.  I didn't realize the impact that would have on me.  Off and on all day I returned to those events and what I could have done differently.  I could have seen her sore chest as heart-related rather than bronchial already on Thursday.  I could have taken her to the hospital on Friday as I thought I might at some points.  I could have carried her to the ER earlier on Sunday, even though she was feeling a bit better.

If only...if only...if only...if only the chiropracter hadn't said her neck and shoulders were way out of whack.  Then I might have made some other connection.  If I had ever once in my life actually heard of endocarditis or thought about the ubiquity of staph infections, I might have done something else.  If only...

I began to think of all the times I was gone for church events and activities, all the evenings away and the times when Anne and the boys came in second place on my schedule.  I cried over the hours and days I could have spent with her but didn't.  If only I had made other choices, we could have had so much more life together.  If only...(and, never again will I allow such skewed priorities).

My CPE supervisor one day shared with us what he called several "noble half-truths."  One went like this.  We make the best decisions we can at the time.  Otherwise we would make other decisions.  I know it doesn't always quite work that way, but it's a noble half truth.  If I had known something else, I would have done something else.  But I didnt...so I didn't.

I didn't.  It gnaws at my heart even though my brain knows the truth--that I did my best and that's all a person can do.  What helped me most was a friend this evening who shared some of her own experience.  Her family also suffered a tragic death and lived with the "if only's."  Some family members still say out loud that if only they had insisted on a small schedule change, the accident would never have happened.  But that would require a kind of foreknowledge we don't get to have.  So we do the best we can.

Thank you, dear friend, for the story and the reminder.  I think I can let go of the "if only's" for tonight and get some sleep.  Tomorrow is another day.

It Takes Gas to Power the Engine

Some of these blog posts are going into a book that I'm writing on these early months of grieving.  One of the ways I approach this is through work I have done previously in reading about cognitive neuropsychology.  This has direct relevance to an understanding of grieving.  One of the questions worth asking is, "What is grieving good for?"  What is actually happening to me and why?

I find it critical to remember that most of my grieving process is happening far below any conscious awareness. While I engage in all sorts of activities and behaviors as I consciously grieve, the great majority of the “work” is being done far below any conscious awareness I might have.

Grieving is a cognitive process in the sense that everything I experience is a cognitive process—it happens in and through my brain and associated neurological tissues. This is not to say that grieving is somehow a purely rational or intellectual process. Far from it! But it is to say that my grieving processes are subject to the same realities and limitations as anything else that happens to me in my cognitive systems.

The mind is the great “iceberg” of human experience. Our consciousness is not the process of being conscious, but rather it is the result of such processes. Karl Lashley has pointed out that the content of our conscious experience does not come from the middle of cognition but rather as an end result. Ninety percent (at least metaphorically—I don’t know the real number) of what happens in my brain and mind happens beneath my conscious awareness. And that is certainly true of grieving processes.

That’s why this is such hard physical work, and I as the bereaved don’t really know why. My mind is working overtime to process some measure of recovery and then to produce some sort of helpful and healing results. Joseph LeDoux notes, “subjective emotional states, like all other states of consciousness, are best viewed as the end result of information processing occurring unconsciously” (The Emotional Brain, page 37). To use another image, moving my car forward is the outcome of internal combustion, not internal combustion itself.

The engine in my car, however, requires huge amounts of energy to produce that forward motion. So it is with grieving. That activity under the surface is absorbing huge amounts of energy, attention and processing power. It’s like three-quarters of my brain is engaged in solving differential calculus problems while the other quarter is just trying to balance the checkbook. It’s no wonder I had so many mistakes in my checkbook in those first days.

This is, of course, the good news. If I had to devote all my conscious attention to the work of grieving in those first days, I wouldn’t even be able to focus enough to go and relieve myself. Grieving is that underlying process of healing and recovery that goes on while I try to stay alive and functioning long enough for it to happen. The best things I can do to help that underlying process are to get enough to eat and drink, to try to sleep as well as I can, to exercise regularly, and to surround myself with loving people who will do what they can to help me.