To my Andrew,
Today marks one week since that tragic morning. The darkest week of my life. The emotions that I have faced this week have crushed me: mind, body, and soul. The gaping hole I feel inside now that you are gone is suffocating. Oh, how I long to be with you right now. I would give anything just to cuddle up into your chest and hold you again.
The last few days have been incredibly difficult. There are countless decisions that need to be made to honor you and put your body to rest. What will you wear? What type of casket will you lie in? How will we pay for it? What location will be best? Do we buy 1 plot or 2? Who will speak at the service? These are questions we shouldn’t be facing. These are questions I was supposed to answer 50 years from now when I am old and grey. How do I do this without you? Why are you gone so soon? How do I tell the boys?
Today we walked the cemetery. It was surreal. Overwhelming and peaceful at the same time. We felt a small kiss from God when He graciously provided a place for you right next to your dad. Now every time we visit, we can remember you both and imagine the joy you must feel now you are together.
Tomorrow I will tell the boys. The life they once knew will never be the same. The dreams they had with you are gone, just like mine. The daily routines, the daddy dates, the donut runs and the soccer games now distinctly different than before. The house will be quieter, lonelier, and duller without you. You filled our house with joy. You filled our home with fun and laughter that only comes from a dad. You knew how to crack just the right joke to cheer me up when life felt overwhelming. I miss you so much, Andrew, every single part.
I hate the loss and the pain, but there is nothing I can do to change it. There is nothing I can do to bring you back, so I will choose to lean [on] God. The stories flooding in are lifting me up and holding me up. The life change that is happening only comes from God because He promises to work all things together for good, even this.
Your story, your life and your death, is opening the door for conversations all around the world. Your story is helping people to share their hidden thoughts and secret struggles with their family and friends. Your story is paving the way for an even bigger conversation about how the church can better come alongside people with mental illness, including pastors. God is using your story and this tragedy to do miracles in the lives of other people. As much as I don’t want to, I can’t help but see God’s hand in all of this.
My mind keeps wandering back to the last message you gave, titled “Mess to Masterpiece.” Just as you told the church about how God will meet them in their mess, I believe God is meeting us, right here, right now, in this mess. And my prayer today in my darkest hour is, “Heavenly Father, complete the work you’ve begun in me.” Only God can turn the greatest tragedy in my life into triumph.
I love you and I miss you with every piece of me,
Your Girl1
I sat cold and numb in a small office at the private, tree-lined cemetery. I’d heard the words, but my mind couldn’t process them. “One plot or two?” Faced with a decision beyond the realm of possibility, I cried. How am I supposed to continue living when the love of my life is gone?
“You’re young,” the cemetery manager said. I was twenty-nine years old and picking out a plot for my husband. My beautiful husband who was so full of life. My husband who, as he lay dying in the hospital, still looked perfect to me. I needed to escape the moment; it was too much for my brain to process, for my heart to handle, and for my mind to comprehend. So I closed my eyes and went back to the hospital room, to the last time I felt his warmth.
From the top of his head down to the bottoms of his feet, I knew him so well, and I loved every part of him. His big blue eyes, his long eyelashes, his thick brown hair, his strong arms and shoulders, his tattoos; I loved his tattoos. My mind stopped at a single tattoo he had on his arm, Paul’s powerful words from Philippians 1:21: “To live is Christ and to die is gain.” Why did Andrew love that verse enough to get it permanently etched onto his arm? Why did it mean so much to him? What did it mean, anyway? This didn’t feel like gain. It only felt like loss and pain. What did Paul mean when he penned these words thousands of years ago?
In his letter to Philippi, Paul said:
I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance, as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again. (Phil. 1:18–26 ESV, emphasis mine)
It’s the tug-of-war of life, isn’t it? The push and pull between the here and now and the yet to come. The desire to live our one life fully is muddled with the desire to depart from this place of darkness and pain. When we lose someone we love, there are moments where the choice to stay and live is easy, but there are equally dark moments where we are left wondering, What’s the point, anyway? Remaining in the flesh becomes, in Paul’s words, “necessary.”
“Hard pressed between the two”—that’s how grief feels. That’s how I felt at the cemetery picking out a plot for Andrew. One plot or two: an impossible decision with a long life ahead of me and countless questions racing through my mind. Will I be one of the lucky ones who finds love again, or will Andrew always be my one and only? How do I make this decision now? Why him, why me, why my family? One plot or two?
To live is Christ and to die is gain. The words echoed in my mind. To live. The choice to live was my only choice, and it’s the bravest choice I’ve ever made. “One plot is all we need,” I whispered under my breath. I then excused myself from the office. I knew Andrew wouldn’t want me to give up now; I knew he hadn’t wanted to die, but to live. I knew his death meant gain for him, even if it stripped everything from me. While he was rejoicing in eternity, I walked slowly through the tall trees of the cemetery to see the place where his body would be laid to rest. Tears rolled down my cheeks relentlessly. I was alive, but barely. I hadn’t eaten in days, so my clothes draped loosely over my thin frame. I stood in the warm sun on the green grass near his little plot and thought about my choice to live.
To live for Christ, for him and his glory.
To live for my Andrew, to honor his name.
To live for my boys; they needed me now.
To live for my future; it needed me too.
To live because life is worth living.
To live is to suffer; it’s part of being human. No one is exempt from the brokenness of this place; it touches all of us at some point. Although we would like it to be, life isn’t fair. We can go through life making all the right decisions, but bad things will still happen to us. It’s upside down, backward, and twisted. Bad things happen to seemingly good people all the time—cancer appears out of nowhere, babies are born without breath in their lungs, accidents happen in an instant. If I have learned anything from the loss of Andrew it’s that our bodies are fragile. It’s an absolute miracle that we live as long as we do. We are all just an inch, an accident, an illness, a misstep away from death. So how do we live? How do we live beyond the suffering?
“To live is Christ.” To live fully dependent on Christ—that’s the secret to living beyond the suffering. It’s a secret Paul knew all too well because he had experienced hell on earth over and over again. Paul was able to discover joy in the pain, joy in the prison, joy in the impossible situation, only with Christ.
I always knew God, but I didn’t know how much I needed him until I lost Andrew. In losing Andrew I gained a whole new dependence on Christ. I couldn’t survive the loss or overcome the pain without him.
When I couldn’t eat, he gave me sustenance.
When I couldn’t see the next step, he paved the way.
When everything looked blurry and I couldn’t make decisions, he gave me clarity.
When I couldn’t stop crying, he held me in his arms.
When I didn’t want to live, he gave me reasons to stay.
I lost Andrew, but I gained spiritual depth.
I lost Andrew, but I gained perspective.
I lost Andrew, but I gained wisdom.
I lost Andrew, but I gained a new life.
It was a new life I didn’t want. No matter how many times I tried to go back, the only way forward was forward. I continued to process my grief out loud through blogs, and I buried myself in books and therapy. I will never forget a saying my counselor shared in one of our first sessions following Andrew’s death: “We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust our sails.” What happened to Andrew, what happened to us, was out of my control. I didn’t choose this, I didn’t choose loss, but I did have the opportunity to choose how I would respond. The harsh reality, I learned early on, is loss requires adjusting.
After Andrew died, everything had to be reexamined. I realized the house we lived in wouldn’t work anymore. It was too big, too much to manage on my own. So we packed up, moved out, and moved in with family. I was a stay-at-home mom, but I needed space to grieve and figure out what to do next. So I enrolled all three of the boys in school full-time. My identity as a pastor’s wife was stripped away when Andrew was, so I faced the decision either to stay in a church I loved and find a new way to fit in or walk away and find a new church home. I’d become a single mom overnight. This was the biggest challenge—raising three boys, ages two, four, and five—all on my own. It was daunting. Life would never be the same for me or my boys. We were forced to grapple with a new reality that we had never planned for.
This is still our life. We are always adjusting. Things happen all the time that are beyond the realm of our understanding. As hard as we try to control our lives, the truth is only God has the ultimate power over life and death. I have discovered through my grief and pain that the only way to live is in surrender. To live is Christ, my life fully in his hands.
Surrender
Surrender, giving ourselves up into the power of another,2 is a daily part of life. It is an act we do all the time without even realizing it. But the type of surrender God asks from us is different; it’s sacred. He wants us to totally and completely give our lives to him, without holding anything back. Jesus said that when we finally let go and let God have control, we will actually recover our lives.
“Are you tired? . . . Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly” (Matt. 11:28–30 THE MESSAGE, emphasis mine).
Isn’t that amazing? Through surrender, through walking with God, we develop a new rhythm of grace. It’s how we acquire the stamina necessary to live another day. Surrendering will require courage, strength, and grit, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be a simple act, such as whispering to God, “I can’t, but you can.”
When we surrender bad things will still happen, life will continue to throw hard, fast curveballs that bring us to our knees, but surrender means we don’t have to find new footing on our own. He will hold us up when we do not have the strength to stand, and he will redeem our stories, either on this side of heaven or the other. There will be purpose even in our pain if we bravely choose him, choose joy, choose courage, choose life, and choose surrender.
When I think about surrender, I think about Psalm 139, my favorite psalm. I was introduced to it during my sophomore year of college when the local church I was attending started an event called “Third Wednesday.” On the third Wednesday of each month, the church would hold three sessions a day for people to gather and seek God through fasting, worship, and prayer. At that time in my life, I was feeling far from God. The hype of freshman year had worn off, and as a sophomore, I felt lost and lonely. I decided to try to seek God in a new way and give this Third Wednesday experience a chance.
As I walked into the room, I felt insecure and skeptical, but I immediately knew I was supposed to be there. The chairs had been removed, the lights were low, and soft acoustic music filled the atmosphere. I found an empty space and sat down on the floor, soaking it all in. I felt the presence of God covering me like a thick warm blanket. Halfway through the session, a woman came to the stage and began to read a Bible passage I had never heard before. She asked us to close our eyes, relax our minds, and allow God’s powerful Word to wash over us. I followed her lead and was instantly broken by the love of God. I felt a divine release.
This is Psalm 139:
You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.
For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand—when I awake, I am still with you.
. . . Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
What God revealed to me through this psalm was the key to unlocking a boundless relationship with him. I came to realize he was always there; he never left me. Even when I felt alone, lost, confused, angry, and sad, he was there. Even when life hadn’t gone the way I’d planned, he was there. Even when it felt like my friends and my family had abandoned me, he was there. I discovered then and I know now in the depths of my unrelenting pain that he is there. The suffering of this world does not diminish his power. God is near, and he makes his presence known through our suffering.
When we suffer, when we are in pain, when we are overcome with grief, God suffers with us. He is not distant or detached. He is near, and he shares in our suffering. There will never be sufficient words to comfort, but the Word who became flesh is enough. Every single worry, every single grief, every single pain, every single doubt, every single bad, terrible thing—when we don’t know what to do, we can lay it all down at the feet of Jesus.
The Wilderness
We are able to suffer without being defeated because Jesus suffered first. We can walk through the wilderness seasons because he showed us the way. We can find our footing again and brush off the dust because of his promise to work all things together for our good (Rom. 8:28).
After the angels attended to Jesus in the wilderness, he traveled to Galilee to begin his ministry, declaring, “The time has come” (Mark 1:15). He had passed the test of the wilderness, and God was ready to bring his ministry to earth through the literal hands and feet of Jesus. It was a plan millions of years in the making. God used the wilderness to prepare Jesus for his purpose.
What if our pain can serve a purpose too?
What if our wilderness is working a miracle deep inside our soul?
God knew when Jesus would be ready to start his ministry here on earth, and he also knew when it would be time to call Jesus home. As it was for Jesus, our time here is limited, but we serve a God who isn’t limited by time. We can trust that in and through each season, each trial, each step in the wild of the wilderness, God is right there with us. And even the most devastating loss has the potential to be used as a part of his greater plan.
I don’t have all of the answers, and I will never fully understand why God allowed Andrew to die at thirty years old the way he did, but I still have hope. I can pin my hope in God because I know if I lose hope, I lose everything. Life without hope is life without meaning. That first week after Andrew died is still a complete blur. The decisions I made were too many to count, the emotions too overwhelming to describe, and the gut-wrenching pain too deep to comprehend. But I still had hope. In my soul I knew God was still there, sitting right beside me, weeping with me, holding me through every moment of my pain. My mind was lost and confused, but in the center of the confusion, there was hope.
Hope beyond my circumstance.
Hope in my future.
Hope in heaven.
In the dark moments and days following Andrew’s death, there was a delicate dance between hope and fear. The seed of hope was rooted deep within my soul but fear had run its course and destroyed my life. Fear had crept into our home and spread like wildfire. It had been fear gone wild, wild enough to take over everything.
The anxiety was rooted in fear.
The panic attacks were rooted in fear.
The depression was rooted in fear.
The spiritual warfare was rooted in fear.
And ultimately the suicide was rooted in fear.
Although we would like to live without it, we actually need fear. Fear protects us and stops us from making bad decisions. Fear tells us when something isn’t right. Without fear, our lives would be filled with even more problems and pain. From the moment we are born we learn to fear certain things in this world in order to survive. Fear is part of being human.
We need fear to survive, but we also need hope—just enough fear to keep us grounded and just enough hope to keep us looking up. But how do we know which one is running the show? How do we know when fear has taken over and is running wild?
A FEW SIGNS FEAR MAY BE RULING OUR LIVES:
We settle for less.
Fear can cause us to shrink back from our dreams and aspirations. Fear is the tiny voice that whispers, “You could never do that. You aren’t smart enough. You aren’t talented enough. You aren’t qualified enough. It will take too long. It won’t happen for you.” If we feel like we are settling for less, we can decide today to fight for more. We can stop allowing fear to control our dreams, and we can start to believe we are capable, we are smart, and we can do anything because with God, anything is possible.
We say yes when we want to say no.
Fear of letting people down can cause us to respond with a quick yes when it would be best to say no. We can’t be everything to everyone all the time. When we try to be, we will become bitter, and resentment will build up in our hearts. The next time we feel the urge to say yes even though we want to say no, we can stop and ask ourselves, “What is motivating my response?” If the answer is fear, we can take control and decide to say no.
We seek to numb the pain.
Fear can cause deep inner pain, which can make us physically ill. Fear can manifest itself in anger, sadness, loneliness, and fatigue. We sometimes try to avoid the pain with temporary Band-Aids like alcohol, drugs, food, sex, work, television, or social media. Before we reach for empty relief, we can choose instead to pick up the phone and call a friend, get down on our knees and say a prayer, pull out a journal and write our thoughts, or turn off all of the noise and sit in solitude. When we create and seek healthy outlets for our pain, we minimize fear and create space for hope.
We want control.
Fear may cause us to feel the need to control everything and everyone around us. Especially when the fear is birthed from a place of trauma. We may believe that by having control we can actually prevent the bad, awful thing from happening again. To let go of control we must replace fear with faith. Faith that God keeps his promises and he will truly work everything together for our good.
We get sick.
Living under constant fear comes at a high cost. Fear can weaken the immune system, causing heart damage or intestinal problems such as irritable bowel syndrome and ulcers. Fear can decrease fertility, cause us to age at a faster rate, and even lead to premature death. Fear also has a powerful impact on the mind. Over a period of time fear can impair memory, cause brain damage, and even change the way our brains process information, which can cause us to make poor decisions, react irrationally, and respond negatively to the world around us. Long-term fear can lead to mental health complications such as clinical depression, fatigue, and PTSD.3
The word became flesh to conquer fear and death forever. Through the cross we have been given a living hope. We can choose to believe the same God who raised Jesus from the dead and shocked the entire world still has surprises in store for us. We can choose to believe, no matter how dark our circumstances, that we serve a God who always has one more move.
When the test results come in and it’s not good, God still has one more move.
When the job falls through again and again, God still has one more move.
When it feels like everyone has abandoned us and we are all alone, God still has one more move.
When the pain is overwhelming and we want to give up completely, God still has one more move.
When suicide strikes and we feel like our lives are over too, God still has one more move.
The secret to conquering fear and death is safely securing our hope in him who always has one more move. To live as Christ, we will share in his suffering, but we will also share in his victory. Although we may lose everything we love in this world, with God we still win in the end. He is our living hope, drawing us home to heaven one breath, one moment, one day at a time.