Embers

“Embers”

ember

[em-ber]

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SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR ember ON THESAURUS.COM

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noun

a small live piece of coal, wood, etc., as in a dying fire.

embers, the smoldering remains of a fire.

           

Over the holidays I was sad and lonely for a variety of reasons.  The end of December marks the fun of Christmas but is followed shortly after on the 27^th with the date of Liam’s death.  Frank and I married on December 29^th so that date is also now somewhat bittersweet.  Frank had asked me if I would be alright if he took them on a trip over the New Year and I was happy they had the chance to go on what turns out to be an epic vacation with him but then I got sick and a friendship ended and I was much more on my own than I had anticipated would be the case. 

A close friend of mine runs a Bible study course from him home on Sunday mornings and I have been through the course twice before in the past four or so years.  In December, he asked me to join them one Sunday morning and sing for the people attending the course.  I agreed and forced myself to go even though I was feeling sad and down. 

I have learned over the years that when I am down I have to force myself to do things and to get out or feeling down will turn into depression before too long.  I am in a place now in recovery as a result of having gone through the steps in such a thorough way and finally gotten a very clear picture of myself, that I listen to my own advice now, I don’t just give it anymore.  The steps have allowed me to live in a place where I can have sadness but don’t get depressed; where I can worry but don’t get anxiety and where I can get scared but no longer live in fear.

So I showed up at my friend’s house and I sang “I am Not Alone” by Kari Jobe.  It is a beautiful song by a Christian artist and if you haven’t heard it, it is worth looking up.  I had not heard it before my friend introduced me to it and had me sing it at another event a few years ago.  It speaks to not feeling alone because God is always with you.  I sang it in the car once when I was trying to learn the words initially and Wren was with me.  When she heard it the first time, she cried.  She told me it made her think of her brother Liam and how she never got to meet him but he is always with her.

I don’t know what happened to me either, but I sang for the people in the room and one woman cried while I was singing it.  I made it through to the end of the song and then I burst into tears as I sat down afterwards.  It contains a powerful message and one I clearly needed at that moment. 

After I sang, I stayed to hear the pre-recorded sermon that the group watches and then discusses.  In the sermon, the pastor talked about embers on a fire.  He talked about how while the embers are on the fire they burn well, but if you take one off the fire, it begins to lose its heat and the fire in it begins to die, just as the dictionary definition above denotes.  He goes on to say though that if you put that same ember back on the fire with the other pieces of coal or wood, it will begin to burn again because it will draw heat and energy from the others.

It was a message I needed at the time.  All of it.  I needed the song and the sermon.  I was and am not alone and when I am feeling like and ember I need to find my fire again.  I need to find the people who feed my flames and build me up spiritually and emotionally not tear me down. 

Then because my fire is stronger I need to turn around and build up the heat in other dying embers.

Belonging

“Belonging”

 

“The pessimist complains about the wind.  The optimist expects it to change.  The realist adjusts the sail.”

                        William A. Ward

           

I am at a place now in my recovery where I no longer crave a drink.  I can honestly say that I don’t think about drinking anymore.  I guess that isn’t entirely accurate.  I think about it all the time in terms of recovery and addiction and meetings and sponsees and living my best life and knowing I can’t do it etc… But I don’t think about it in terms of longing anymore.

I went to rehab and started attending 12-step meetings so that I would stop drinking because I saw that as my problem.  When I got some periods of sobriety under my belt my life would improve because the chaos caused by drinking would be removed but eventually I would relapse because I had not taken care of my underlying issues.  What I had not realized before doing the steps was that it wasn’t the drinking that was the actual problem, it was my thinking.

My thinking, my general unease with myself and my lack of connection with a spiritual life was the root of all my problems.  Drinking was a symptom.  Drinking was what I turned to so I could shut off the noise and interference going on in my head.  I didn’t know what it was then and I didn’t understand how to interpret it.  I do now.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t still experience the noise and interference.  I do.  For example, this past Thanksgiving I spent the day at two different houses.  I had two dinners with two families.  I felt for part of the day, adrift.  I felt disconnected and uncomfortable.  In my head I heard myself saying, “I don’t fit in anywhere.”  This was a genuine feeling I had.  This was nothing anyone else made me feel however.  Neither family said or did anything to make me feel this way.  I made myself feel this way.  It took me several hours to turn that around and see the reality of the situation.  I had two Thanksgivings.  Two families cared enough about me to have me at their houses and accept me at their tables… and yet somehow I managed to feel as though I did not fit in rather than doubly loved?

This is an example of the fundamental flaw in the way that I can sometimes think.  But now I am able to recognize if for what it is.  I see it as my humanity and vulnerability cropping up and reminding me that I am a singular mortal link in a chain.  When I am in that state of mind I feel all of my naked insecurities and I imagine myself alone.  But because of the spiritual journey I embarked on doing the steps I am reminded that I am not alone and that I am indeed a link in a chain.  That chain is love and it is endless and eternal and all-powerful and I may not understand everything that I encounter, but that I don’t have to understand it all to live a happy and fulfilling life and know that I am loved.

 

 

 

 

God Weeps

“God Weeps”

 

“God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

                        -Revelations 21:4

           

This past week has been long and full of pain and sorrow but also beauty and overwhelming love and acts of kindness.  My closest friend lost his son and I’ve had a ring-side seat to his progression through grief thus far and asked if I could write about it on the blog. I wanted to capture it for many reasons, not the least of which has been because Brendan’s anger turned so quickly into a sort of acceptance about the death of his first-born that I am in awe.

Brendan is a friend of mine from recovery.  We met at our home group and have grown very close over the past eighteen months or so.  We often laugh about how we would never have met in our former lives and if you saw the two of us together and knew anything about our respective lives before recovery you would say, “Wait, what?  Really?”  But we get along so well and talk daily about any and everything.  He has become a staple in my life and I in his.

His eldest son, also named Brendan, had struggled with addiction for the past ten years or so.  He had been in and out of rehab countless times and had last gone to rehab and then a recovery house in California a few months ago.  Brendan and I had dinner a week ago Thursday and one of the main topics of conversation was young Brendan, because it appeared he had relapsed and no one was sure where he was or how he was doing.  What his father told me he feared that night would happen to his son, did indeed happen a mere two days later.

As most of you know, Frank and I lost our eldest son, Liam, fifteen years ago.  Liam was only 68-days old when he died.  Brendan was 29-years old and the circumstances are very different for sure, but a parent should never lose a child under any.  Frank had cancer at the time and was just at the onset of his treatments at the time of Liam’s birth and then subsequent death.  Brendan also has cancer and had to go from finding out his son was deceased on Saturday to his first round of radiation on Monday.  I remember thinking fifteen years ago, “how much more can one man take?” and here I am thinking the same again.  I said to Frank on Sunday about Brendan, “I don’t think I have ever seen anyone look so broken before…  Actually, yes I have.”

Losing a child is a pain all its own.  I don’t mean you win some sort of prize for one-upmanship of anguish or anything, but it’s just so outside the natural progression of things.  In terms of categories of grief it is an agony that so should not be.  It is a special kind of hell and I would not wish it on someone I hate let alone someone that I have come to love so much. 

On Monday last, Brendan managed to go to our home group with one of his other sons.  He spoke about his anger.  He was angry at God then that his son was gone.  He wondered if his son knew he was loved and questioned if he had done enough to show him that.  Throughout the week he wrestled with his thoughts and emotions and some of the conversations turned and he told me a number of times that he believes “God weeps” for man and then told me this directly and I had to relay it because it is so powerful:

 

“God give man the gift of free will and when man uses that free will to hurt himself or others, He weeps.  God looked at Brendan as he tried to stop the ‘noise’, as he drew every breath of duster, as his heart broke because he just didn’t know how to stop; God said ‘Enough suffering my child’ as he pulled Brendan into His arms of incomprehensible love… and stopped the noise.”

 

I don’t think he’s angry anymore, or at least less so.  I am amazed at the way he was able to work through his emotions this week and get to a place of relative peace.  He keeps saying he is grateful for all the love and support he and his family have been shown and he knows that his son must see that now.

I only met young Brendan a handful of times so unfortunately I did not get to know him.  But from being around his family this week and knowing his father the way that I do, I would say he is far more than the circumstances of his death.  He is remembered so fondly by his parents and brothers and his Aunt and cousins.  He has two beautiful, curly-haired daughters who I hope will learn about the positive impact he had on all the people I have seen reach out over the past week.  If he was anything like his father he was a beautiful human being.

 

There is certainly a lot of ugly in this world, but there is also a lot of beauty and that has poured forth and embraced Brendan’s family this week.  God weeps for us here on earth but I like to think that wherever young Brendan and Liam are now, there is precious little to weep about anymore.

Accidental Perfection

“Accidental Perfection”

 

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.”

Mother Teresa

           

Over the summer the kids and I went on a road trip.  This is the third year we have done so and it has become a much-anticipated event.  We have visited many friends but always go to see my college roommate and her family in Indiana as the main part of our trip.

This year, while visiting, my friend’s fifteen-year-old son made us guacamole.  It was really good and we told him so.  He didn’t seem to believe us, and, at first, deflected the compliments we were lobbing at him.  He claimed he had forgotten an ingredient, or that he hadn’t cut this or that correctly.  After his mother and I insisted that it was indeed really great guacamole, he smiled and shrugged and said, “I guess it’s just accidentally perfect then.”

I stored this memory in the notes section of my phone to revisit for a post later because it was a profound sentence and interaction.  Last night I thought of it again when I received a text message from someone in my twelve-step program.  I was asked to speak on New Year’s Eve at my home group.  I accepted and told the woman who will be chairing the month of December that I would be happy to and that it would, in fact, be an honor to speak at my home group.  She wrote back that the honor was all hers and proceeded to tell me that I was an inspiration to her and several other really lovely things that profoundly touched me.  Now I don’t mention that to pat myself on the back or because I want more compliments, but because it took me back as compliments always do.  My gut reaction is to deflect them like my son’s friend did about the guacamole.  My instinct is to tell her that I could not possibly be an inspiration to her or anyone else, that I was a hot mess for so long, that I am nothing remarkable and that she should not waste her breath.

However, that gut reaction is now quick to die out.  That voice in my head that told me for so many years I was worthless and still rears its ugly head when someone says something nice to me, is so much quieter than it was.

It took me many years to get to a place where I have re-trained my brain to move past the negative and allow in the positive.  It hasn’t been easy.  I didn’t get sober and go through the steps until I was 41.  In that process I found a spiritual connection all my own.  I found a Higher Power and understood myself for the first time.  That journey led me to discover my humanity and with that I embraced all of myself, including my many flaws.

Not too long ago Dermot and I were talking about standards of beauty.  He told me I was beautiful and my instinct was not to believe him.  I wanted to disbelieve my own son when he told me I was beautiful.  Think about that for a moment.  How much self-doubt and self-loathing do you have to have fed yourself on that you would doubt the sincerity of your child when they innocently compliments you in conversation?  I stopped myself in mid-thought, smiled at my humanity when he said it and simply thanked him instead.  I have discovered that the flaw is not in the way that I look, but in the way that I think about the way that I look.  The flaw is not in the way that people see me, but in the way that I think about the way that people see me.

I think about it this way now…  Before the steps and doing extensive work on myself, I saw myself as if I were looking through a funhouse mirror.  My impression of myself was skewed.  Now I see myself more through God’s eyes and there is beauty there even in my many imperfections.  So the next time someone compliments you, pause, smile and accept it.

Maybe we are all accidentally perfect.

 

Fifteen

“Fifteen”

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go”

Jamie Anderson

           

A friend of mine posted that quote to their Facebook wall the other day and it stopped me in my tracks.  I think it is spot on.  Completely accurate.  Grief does feel like unspent love.

I feel that way about Liam.  Like I have a lifetime of love for him that is stored up and has nowhere to go.  That the love I have for him, formed when he started to grow in me is still here and I don’t know what to do with it sometimes.

I remember thinking when he was gone and we were thinking of having more children that I was afraid I would not love them as much as I loved him.  I thought my heart would not be big enough to handle loving another child.  Of course as soon as I held Dermot I knew I had enough room to spare and then worried about the same thing again when I was pregnant with Wren and discovered again when she was born that I needn’t worry.  My heart apparently is vast and my ability to love has yet to find an end.  But there is a place in it that is just for Liam and that place feels full of unused potential.

I stopped by to talk to my brother-in-law and my nieces yesterday and my brother-in-law asked me how I was doing and I said I was sad.  I was sad as I looked at my fifteen-year-old niece, the only cousin to have met Liam when they were both babies.  I was and am sad because I miss him and yet I don’t know him and that, I think may be one of the hardest parts of all of this.  I’ve written about that before.  I don’t know my own son and that feels so inherently wrong.

I woke up this morning at three and could not fall back to sleep.  I was thinking about all the things I don’t know about him and all the things that have happened in the past fifteen years.  What would I tell him about life these days?  What would I want him to know?  Does he know us?  Does he see?

I would tell him that a lot has happened since he passed away; a lot.  His great-grandfather Wally died and his grandfather Tom.  But he has a little brother and a little sister now and four more cousins.  I would tell him that his dad is better; considered cured and healthy and running races, triathlons and half iron-mans now.

I would tell him that his Joanie still does too much for other people and Uncle Andrew is married now and he has an Aunt Melissa.  I would tell him that Big Jerry is just as cranky and giving.  That his little brother Dermot is full of passion and curiosity and is very funny.  I would tell him his little sister Wren looked just like him as a baby and is independent and fierce and very smart.

I would tell him about my struggles because I would be as honest with him as I am with everyone else.  I would make him understand that I am flawed and that I don’t always get things right but that I always try and that when I fall I get back up.

I would tell him that his dad and I are not together any more but that we do our best to do right by his siblings even when that seems really hard.  We live in separate houses and lead separate lives but will always love each other on some level because we made the three of you.  I would tell him that we are both perfectly flawed and beautifully human and that may be our biggest strength.

Mostly I would let him know that we miss him but that we are alright, because for the most part, we are and that today, on his birthday, we honor him.  We are going to take some of our unspent love and use it to do something good in his name. 

I would tell him that on this day each year, I get to be his mother again and I am grateful.

Love vs. Fear

“Love vs. Fear”

“I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”

Oprah Winfrey

           

Over the summer I was driving in the car somewhere with the kids and I mentioned that I had some fear about something I had to do.  I can’t even remember now what I was afraid of, but I told the kids about it at the time.  Wren piped up from the backseat, “but mom, you’re not afraid of anything.”

I do remember being taken aback by the strength of conviction in her voice and the look of earnestness on her face when I glanced in the rear-view mirror.  She believed absolutely in what she was saying.  In her mind, I am not afraid of anything.  And how wrong she is.

Fear has been a theme throughout my life.  I grew up in a household that fed me a steady diet of it.  I was afraid of my mother’s mental instability from an early age.  I knew instinctively that something was off and that I needed to tread carefully.  My father was my ally when she was not around and he was sober, but he was seldom home without her and it was rare that I would catch him alone before cocktail hour.  And my brother filled me with fear of a whole different kind.

I feared confrontation and family strife and being myself and letting people down and being abandoned.  I could make an extensive list.  In fact, I did, when I wrote my fourth step.  I wrote for months and examined all facets of those fears and stared them down and turned them around and addressed them.

I can have confrontations now which I could not do before because of crippling fear.  I still don’t like confrontation, but I can have healthy anger now and won’t back down when I know something is wrong and I have a right to speak my mind.  I have a really close friend who jokes that rage is my sword because he has been on the receiving end of some of those confrontations himself.

I was afraid of becoming a mother once.  I looked at my own mom and was afraid I would repeat history.  I am not trying to bash my mother because she is ill, but because her illness was left unchecked where mine was not, damage was incurred.  I did not want to inflict pain on my children in the same vain.  I was afraid I would not know how to do it; to be maternal.  I can safely say that once Liam was born a switch flipped and it turns out I am more maternal than I could have guessed.

Recently, I have had a lot of fear.  A close friend of mine lost a family member in a tragedy and having to watch her hurting has been hard.  I feel powerless to relieve her pain and like I am flailing around for something to make it better.  I hate watching people I love suffer.

The same close friend who jokes that rage is my sword might also possibly be ill.  He isn’t sure and is waiting to see from a biopsy what the future holds.  This has me full of fear.  I’ve watched Liam struggle and Frank struggle and I don’t want to do it again.  There is a part of me that wants to run away and hide because watching people I love suffer feels like too much.  It makes me feel like I might break in half.

I won’t run though, because I won’t break and because what Wren sees now as fearlessness is simply that I am no longer paralyzed by fear.  I will just be vulnerable and full of love for my friends and family who need me because that is what I do best.  I plan to just be maternal and loving and “mom” at them. 

Maybe love is my sword.