Status Updates

"Just found out my mother passed away. Rapid change in Thanksgiving plans."


I posted this status update to my Facebook account yesterday, and had over 125 comments from sweet friends within hours. Proof that social media can reach out and touch. Also proof that a dozen words cannot tell a nuanced story adequately.


The plan was for Young Son to fly with me to Wisconsin to see Married Daughter and her husband for Thanksgiving. As I am typing this, I'm waiting for Married Daughter's plane to make it to my side of the country to help plan a funeral. She's being picked up by her brother who is doing everything he knows to help his mom as she processes this newly unexpected wrinkle in the agenda.


My lifelong friends know the details of the life I experienced with my mother. I don't feel this blog is the appropriate place to share them. The best I can offer are the lyrics to Kelly Clarkson's "Because of You" to explain a journey I am still healing from as an adult with adult children of my own. I am dealing with this loss as authentically as I can: I am determined to not put on the "Fine, fine, everything is fine"mask, because I am decidedly not fine at this time.


Some friends have asked me if I thought there would be a final visit toward restoration. I knew there would not be. I discovered long ago that sometimes God's healing is done without homecoming. I was already prepared for the final bite in her will. Somehow, realistically anticipating that for years has lessened the blow.


And where am I now? I am mourning a lost childhood. I am asking God to prove Himself real to me and to redeem the years that the book of Joel says "the locusts stripped away". I am praying for wholeness, for the broken places to be strengthened and for proof that this can all "work together for good". I am looking for any generational tendencies to be broken off my children and future grandchildren.


"Pain endures through the night; a shout of joy comes in the morning."


Squinting hard in the darkness to see the light of dawn.

I believe, Lord; help me in my unbelief.