true north

ok, i just don't always have it all together in my heart...a long journey

2011-12-12T12:21:00.002-05:00

this journey is long.

there are days my feet walk well, i stand tall....i speak with steadiness....i have clear eyes.

then, something happens and i find myself touched in the tender place of loss...

this time, it was listening to a friend tell my friend's mother--my dear friend who just died...what she needed to do....."you need to eat, you need to ...., you need to............and on and on..."

all said to sayto her with deep love, "take care of yourself" you need to.

then i said to her....with a dear tenderness..."you can do what i did....and she turned and looked at me...and i said, "you can drink." and she said..".it would help the pain, wouldn't it?"

and i said, "it did help me"

and my other friend said--"don't tell her that!"

and I said, as i looked at my friend's mom..."she hasn't lost a child, she doesn't know....."

ugh...

it is amazing that any of us who has let go of our dearest child's hand, ever stood up again.

now, i don't live there in that place, but i still know how to find it...and it is sometimes very close....i remember the air...the feel, the horror of the days of those early moments--that still cross my doorstep, sometimes too often, most times...no one knows.

another holiday coming...another full moon....more and more your voice is softer in my memory...it is harder to remember....

i miss you.

miss you sweet C.

2011-11-11T09:44:00.001-05:00

as i look at the wild waves today out on the lake, i miss you---
the lake reflects my wild heart today.
tossed, grey, cold.
I remember so many years ago at this time, wondering which day you would decide to be born as we already went past your due date of 11/4. You waited till the 19th. such a girl...always on your own clock!

just miss you. miss what life would look like if you were here. miss talking. miss making stuff for Christmas...miss planning the meals, what we would need to buy or do on black friday...
i just am sad. deeply sad at times...no words to say it well.

no vote in this one. just walking out the results of what happened. no more whys, just the sadness of what is.
sure do miss you.

i know heaven is coming. just miss you today.

2011-10-12T12:10:00.001-04:00

Am blessed.

Art show went well. Many came, many were able to grieve again and lean against one another--lean close. tell stories, smile at memories...

Getting ready to take off for few days to search my thoughts and center.

We will go to a retreat center in Southern Ohio and meet with a Spiritual Director. Feel like a whole new season is opening to us--maybe the first time it will truly become our journey together. So much happened over the last years and now, it is time to begin life again...not live in the fragments of what happened after the sudden death. Stopped working, picked up church work, got to know many new people/family in each other's life--created memories and got to know one another deeply and well.

I feel a sense of a new thing coming. I believe I have my new word for the coming year too--it is Essense.

It builds right on top of the word for this year--rhythm....

there is a stirring in me, a new season coming....and yet it feels like this season I am in will be rich with more to come. I look forward to these next days apart--a time to listen, move slower...savor, discover.

2011-09-27T13:33:00.001-04:00

Trying to reach through to the other side is in the quietness of my ache in my heart today. I feel you Sarah, close, yet unreachable...
I know that people who lose ones they love feel this intensely especially in the loneliness of the journey--the questions in their heart. As I laid in bed this morning, before I opened my eyes...I just looked and looked around in my soul...seeking...wanting to see you, see what you are doing...see heaven...see my mom...others who have gone...even my sweet friend Sandra, gone just 30 days now....what are you guys up to...are you seeing us wondering?

I listen to Neil today, along with songs that bring you close---Hey Jude...traveling music, remembering camping, traveling, playing, creating, watching movies, eating, drinking....sitting close, holding hands when in the car, phone calls, voice messages...all the preciousness of life on this side....blessed.

So here today, I remember the sorrow of the first news, the crushing realization of you gone...memories like shards of glass-always ripping my heart open...all of our hearts as we relive the first day. even 4 years later...still cuts as though today.

I will not stay too long here...no good fruit to be picked. So for now-will go cook frosted flake porkchops, mashed potatoes, green beans, scones, gravy, apply pie and ice cream...and enjoy the time with Christopher and Tif...and drink some good merlot. good day to eat your favorite meal and remember you.

I love you....so.

sweet girl

2011-09-26T17:07:00.000-04:00

tomorrow will be 4 years since you left earth.

I have met so many people now that have lost children too young and we all somehow lean close on these days....helping to keep us from falling over, falling down.

I can feel your strong arms still hugging my neck...and that hug that held so close.

miss you sweet girl.

miss that smile, miss your eyes.

miss your good hearty laugh.

miss your strong opinions.

miss your wonderful way you lived in fullness.

Miss your impact on us-how you challenged us to live and enjoy.

You made a strong impact on me.

I can remember so many great times--and memories.

I am grateful for each and every one.

So, tonight-as many of us get ready to have tomorrow pass through our hearts again...I just say thanks.

love you.

September again, 4 years

2011-09-13T16:20:00.000-04:00

Manarola, Italy

Beautiful place to be.

What a life this is...

it never stops...new people getting sick, dying, being born....day in and day out.

I sit here and listen to the waves on my beach....am enjoying the day of sun, a fall day...warm...

then I remember....you died in a wave.

then I can't even think straight for a minute.

Wrestle my mind back to a center and then breathe again.

I struggle to know what letter, let alone a word to type next. All in all, I am doing well. Life is going on, a good life, full of friends and love and new memories and family. Truly full of lots of color and joy. Embracing it is not so hard any more. Not dropping any pieces of it, savoring and sipping the full glass I have been given...wow. Thank you God. I am rich with blessings. Full of blessings.

Then something happens....or someone says something that slips into my tender and sore heart...and I remember. Undone then.....most times no one knows...I hold fast to the anchor of you God. I cry softly to you---hold me....help me not slip down too far.

I surely miss my sweet Sarah C. I know the sorrow I see in other's eyes for the one's they miss too---grief...such a journey. I was talking to my watercolor teacher today and he is having a very serious surgery soon, and he told me his strength and hope is because he believes in God and He holds him. Somehow I shared briefly about Sarah and her death at 28 and my similar hope in heaven and God. After class he said, "can I talk with you a few minutes?" So I walked away with him--he is in his late 70s...and he looked at me and said, I lost my only son when he was 26. I saw in his sweet eyes, the dear sorrow...the pain, the swelling of his tears...and we both were silent for just a brief minute of shared pain.

Long this life is sometimes...it slows down and the heart beat does too...and we wander around our hearts in those slow minutes, remembering---the sorrow crashes into the joy---the memories of the death, then the memories of the joys of their lives...and we are wrecked for some time...till it eases away...

There are these places I have gone with others too who have lost their children, there are no words needed...just a place of holding on...leaning close. I do feel the presence of many of them as they know I am walking closer and closer to the day of Sarah's death. I love to remember that this is also the day of her entrance into heaven and her eternal life...but that is not where my feet stay too well yet...I slip back to this is the day of her death, her departure, her last touch on all of our lives...

May these days coming up, find us just close...leaning....remembering....excited for the kingdom to come....yet, held by our Father in a way that a good Dad does...sometimes He just pulls us close and says, "just rest here on my shoulder, I'll hold you close and won't let you go, or fall. I'm not leaving you...."

I feel you Father. I ache. I hate this. I just do. I hate that any of us have had to release our kids yet....we weren't done...we had too many things we looked forward to do, dreams of theirs we were watching come into being....

so, that's it for now.

love that she has art that people like and want to have. love that she has other's who benefit from the selling of her art to help them in their dream of becoming an Art Therapist...that is cool....Just wish she were here to put it together and walk around in some bright skirt and her wild hair flowing and hear her laugh all the day long.

Sarah's website to purchase art to support her scholarship fund.

2011-09-13T15:20:00.000-04:00

Sweet friend Sandra ...ladies group

2011-08-28T07:10:00.000-04:00

I am writing early. Last night I got a telephone call that my dear friend from our Ladies Group of 21+ years died yesterday. Sandra is the 2nd from left in the bottom row. Life has been very hard for her in the last few years...

All of them were just here a few weeks ago to celebrate our 21st year as Ladies Group. Sandra, Susan and I were the original members---starting because Susan wanted to have us come alongside Sandra who had been ill...just the beginnings of a life long, love of friendship of women. I will miss my dear friend...all of us will...she was core. She was writing the book of our friendship and love...

Sandra, you know now what we all wonder about...what is after this life...have you seen your dad who died recently...have you seen Sarah, others we love and have lost...what is the wonder of that journey after the last breath on this side....

I will miss you my dearest friend...you have been a strong source of strength for me through all these years when I could barely make it in the trials I have faced. I remember so many times you would just pull in my drive to stop to check in on me and sit on the stoop and catch my tears...hold me and pray for me.

I can't believe it that you have slipped away...quietly, all alone last evening....
I just have no words yet.
We will all miss you so---we always wondered who of our group would go first, so now you have started the journey we will all follow someday.

we love you, I love you. I give tribute to you, my sweet friend and companion. I will miss you so...the journey here will be more empty with you gone. I long for heaven more and more....we were not made to bear death. The sting and sorrow are too heavy for our small shoulders. Yours were bent low these last months and now the load is gone.

I met with 2 of Sarah's friends just 2 nights ago with my sister and we listened to their tender and dear sorrow of the loss of their dear and precious friend Sarah. We talked about how the journey of grief with loss of a friend is sometimes more silent and alone as resources are not many for support for that group. I did not know how quickly I would have to eat those words and digest them for my own journey. I am blessed to have all my sisters from our group to journey this loss with---bless her 2 sons who now will mourn their mom gone...and her frail mom who will miss her only daughter... God keep them, help us support them too.

Sweet Sandra....love you.

birthdays...

2011-06-28T18:19:00.000-04:00

sweet girl....sure knew how to do birthdays...miss our times.

thinking of you today---

missing you.

how time flies.

what are you doing today?

so many things to wonder about.

love you. thanks for the memories.

Heartache, moving on...

2011-03-26T14:58:00.001-04:00

i am packing to go on the first cruise in 2 days since leaving the ship at Ephesus, Turkey when we found out you died.

I am quiet in my heart. I know it will bring many memories back...want to move through them...and tuck them away into my treasure box to leave there. Tears come to my eyes....softly slip out. I feel like I am carrying a full cup of coffee and trying to walk without spilling it.

Most days my mind isn't wrecked...and then when I dwell on some memories, I can quickly slip away into them, swept off my feet....that same wave seems to come still to us who live and breathe today.

I have been gone from home in Florida for 5 weeks, so am already feeling a bit at sea...far from home, comfort...glad Rick is here....miss my home, my family, my dog...my life.

So, God, please help smooth this journey ahead....and let all live while we are gone. Let us enjoy our time, a vacation...and come home refreshed. not many words, just a full cup of coffee.

New Year 2011

2011-01-10T16:14:00.002-05:00

Time moves on and just nothing slows the clock nor the tides or seasons.

I can hardly believe that it is 4 years of dates since you lived here in your body and life. 2007....seems long ago. Amazed at how much has happened, how many new things you have never experienced.

I am trying to figure out how to live a day and the seesaw of then and now.
Trying to live fully.

Trying to honor our life from then and keep you alive without it tripping my step each moment.

Living on.

Knowing that it can happen again...even today.

When is my day...my last day?

Don't want to miss today.

Moments, memories, new things, old things....

dust on the old...blowing off these things, memories....breathing fresh air.

Spring cleaning the soul, my heart...my mother's heart.

don't have many words that spill out of this older fingers that even ache with age. How to do this....hummmmm

oh well, best I can do today.

Just a normal type of day

2010-12-15T22:11:00.004-05:00

Found this picture tonight as I was purusing my photo albums....one of you at your desk when you were still here...focused...working...in a lovely place, and bet Neil D. was playing....

somedays, I just want a normal day again, get a phone call to meet you or just to talk truly about nothing, laugh, plan...just one more time.

missing you is something that happens, just all the time. Was dusting your painting of you today and looked at that magnificent painting done by the artist in Italy and thought, why am I dusting a painting of you...how unusual to dust a picture of you...who would have ever thought that I would dust a beautiful momento of you...just stopped me right there. For a minute I couldn't really move...I was without thinking moving through the act of dusting...and it just hit me right then. I felt like i was in a state of true shock...like what the hell am I doing?

that happens way more than the world even knows. just seems like life has such an unusual component to it now...unnatural...you shouldn't be gone....that's for sure.

10 days before Christmas....and you would have a list quite full to get....you probably would have everyone done now--and wrapping, etc. I miss painting and making stuff with you...so remember the art table full of paints and brushes and all kinds of ideas all the way back a few months....just was so much fun. miss that too.

never changes...always missing something....missing you. missing the tradition we only did for one year. hummmmm, that truly sucks.

i surely am glad and grateful for all I have now...just wish you could have gotten to meet all these wonderful brothers and sisters and a dad and nieces and nephews ...you would have been blown away...and have already shopped for all of them! You had the gift of shopping down pat.

well, seems harder to write here these days. trying to live sarah...trying to keep on....walk on in the midst...to find joy, laughter...stay connected to the air I am breathing...for more than just organ survival.

still miss you. just as simple as that.

Friday morn

2010-11-05T08:06:00.002-04:00

cold night-lots of wind and waves here on the lake-so noisy it woke me up!

I have been walking in a deeper valley this week. I know this valley of sorrow and know some of the trails that I take and each time they bring that fresh smell of loss. I also know how to walk back to life again and I am on the uphill climb to the light and air.

That deep place of the loss is so hard, so sad. I am glad I don't live there anylonger. Just so helpless, so unchanged. The story is the same. The ending is the same, it is a finished painting of what happened.

I took this picture up in the Rockies this last trip and loved the aspens. By now I am sure all the leaves will have fallen. There will be a barrenness to all the branches-but the hope is in the spring that will come after the long and cold winter.

My hope is in that final spring-the final place I will be for all times. For now, the need to keep with the changes of the heart, my dear heart that moves sometimes slowly through the season of grief. I don't know if it will ever feel like a right fit. I know many now around me who journey their own land of loss. I am glad we see one another across the borders of that sorrow to wave and shout encouraging words and smiles. That tenderness of a shared burden makes one's own burden lighter. If you listen hard and close your eyes--you will hear the breeze blowing through these aspen leaves and they are clapping--and making sweet noise, rejoicing at the last of their brilliant glory!

early morn

2010-11-04T07:24:00.003-04:00

Never give up in Life video.

I saw this video clip at church last Sunday and last night after never going to sleep, yet finding myself resting quietly in my Father by morning, quiet in my heart, yet still so much swirling more quietly...that this song was playing quietly in my mind and wanted to post it. It is powerful...and good...and I know He holds me...and I will never give up, but run well to the finish.

Late night-swirling thoughts

2010-11-04T02:45:00.005-04:00

been awhile since I couldn't sleep. just many thoughts swirling in my mind.

was writing tonight more of the journey i have had and it was alot to process of our life through many years.

also went to a grief reunion group of the group i did a few months after you died dear sarah c.

i miss you. i miss our life. i miss that there wasn't more to write of our journey.

i get to a place that no more words seem to make it make it better.

i am grateful and glad for things like this picture given to me just a week ago by Diana of a piece of wood she found for me on the North Carolina shore that looks so like a seagull and she wanted to give it to me as it so reminded her of all the parts a seagull has touched me in this land of loss and you.

i want to show it to you. i want to tell you and show you so many things. i watch other friends call their kids or they get phone calls from their kids...and you never call me and never will again. just am so quiet when i watch them talk-remembering the many calls from you-just random talk about anything calls. i still have 4 voice mail messages from you i listen to sometimes....randomly-and think how totally normal your voice is. and save them again for another time.

i am so grateful for the calls i get today from my dear other kids-and just savor the calls. still wish you would be here. want to tell you even about all them.

so the night is one of lonely wishes...and those just seem to get me into trouble with sleeping and peace...so decided to get up and write and try to leave these thoughts here. try to pry them out of my mind so i can sleep.

talking today at grief group was deep and hard. words spoken there by all of us that don't see air often now anymore as we journey farther out of the beginning and have gone further down the road. ability to share real stuff that still is in our hearts and processing events that are still a challenge-often to us with no one else knowing. grief is a challenge. we want to do it well, we just don't really know how. how to live well with joy in a land that is totally foreign to us...like a language with not enough words we know how to use. like when people ask, "how are you doing?" do we know how to answer, what to answer-how much do they really want to know-how long do they have to listen...how to end the conversation if you get started and the pain and tears begin to come--kinda like pumping one of those old wells and all of a sudden the water comes with a gush--do you keep pumping or stop and try to make the water stop too.

i don't like this new land, only it isn't a place you can move from to another place to change the scenery--it goes with you where ever you go--it is now such a part of you. so, tonight is a harder night-and it is midway through the night. i know the new day will come, the sorrow will slow and not be so heavy...and i will go on. it is just late and too many words swirling in my mind and, like i said....i miss you.

you would have been 32 in a few weeks. so many thoughts about that--how your life would have looked. loss of dreams and you. moms have dreams for their children that are part of the grief to reckon out and release too. those are sometimes new ones to deal with as you would have grown older--they then become a fresh release...seeing you with children, finishing school....on and on and on.

the night is quiet. i hear the clocks ticking, Rick's breathing...wonder who else can't sleep tonight? I think of the words of the psalms that have comforted me in the night hours and will go read a few of those and know others have journeyed before me...and lamented and sorrowed and see if i can find the trail of hope and see some of where God is tonight. Go sit in His presence for a bit and snuggle into the arms that knows me without words.

tucking you back in now. miss you. love you.

2010-09-27T12:11:00.003-04:00

how can it already be 3 years since you left living on earth? it seems like just yesterday i heard you coming down the outside stairs, talking on your cell phone to one of your dear friends with your "outside voice" and coming into the cottage-throwing your books, your oversized purse down, petting harry...going straight to the frig and looking in (still hadn't said hello to me yet! :o) ) and then looking up over the frig door and saying to me..."Mom, all you have is condiments in here!!" All this time you would be doing that, I would be watching and smiling at you--loving to see you so alive, so full of your life and all you were doing. Then you would come over to me--still on the phone and give me one of our "kisses" that everyone would laugh at!
so, 3 years, and yet, i would not be surprised to see you just walk in again right now--as the last time I saw you-you were so full of joy and life...and then the news came that you were gone. the long trip from turkey to Italy to see you and sit by your broken body with Christopher who was also so broken...and marty and tom and A. Bunny and then Chris's dad...till we were finally handed your warm ashes to bring back to america...
how in the world do you ever get to the place that any of that makes any sense...or can hold it as the story of you-life and death....
such a new land for all of us. i am here in colorado, looking at the mountains....getting ready to go on a guided spiritual retreat today--and I come to you, My Father, with a heart that has so much soreness in it and come with handfuls of questions....and pray for you to see and meet with me and help me to live better and more fuller. i so miss you sarah. i have been blessed with more life...and a full life....that is for sure....and still holding you and all our life and memories close to my heart. so many memories that will never be told again...so many thoughts and places we went, so many things we did...seeing you grow up from a child to a beautiful woman....wow...what a blessing...but then gone. oh my....how to keep on...how to treasure and hold close without it destroying you...those are the tender things that are still here 3 years later.
i am blessed to have others who have lost close now too, so most times, i don't feel insane in that place as i see them in there pain...their sorrow, their journey...and we have somehow joined hands, small hands...and walk this road of loss of a child...young or older...our words we use are put together one chosen letter at a time....to write to each other.
i am blessed to have my family still so close and still so missing you...each having their own grief. I am blessed to have her friends who loved her so....love hearing her stories of blessing them. i love having Christopher still close to my life and heart...after all---she challenged both of us to care for the other if you died...just like you to do that...such a girl.
I love having my new husband, my new family from him....and know you would love each and every one of them...you would love to have brothers and sisters and neices and nephews to love on and enjoy...
i love that i had you for the one i got to be a mom to all those years. i held you close but always loosely--as you were a gift to me...one I never thought I would have. but i did get to have you and raise you--and i sure am proud of you sweet sarah c. you loved well, you laughed well, you lived honestly--sometimes others didn't like that so much--including me a few times :o))), but you were authentic, a jewel in my life...the joy of my journey...thankful i am as yoda would say...
i miss you, more than words can write out of my heart. deeply.
your mom

these 2 pics---one of Christopher, who is right now on our porch...having a fire and drinking a beer...and many of our family and friends will be coming soon to celebrate and remember...unfortunately...i am here in colorado...but my heart is fully there with you....knowing this is where God has directed me for this year. The other picture is of dear sarah...i have posted it before...just a beauty, my girl.

things we hold close

2010-09-11T13:04:00.006-04:00

funny...this is now my 2nd time doing this post as my first time got deleted...

so my first run of words is gone...

will try again.

I wrote about the things we hold close...and was talking about how the blue heart on the green paper was given to me by Karen G. while visiting in Seattle....along with the photos to the left...dear to me, held close now. memories...treasures....

coming home from our trip, I found the word sarah written in pipe cleaners on the table in the living room...left by my grandkids who had just visited while we were gone...touched me so deeply...so dear...another of the things I hold close...as I hold them close too...treasures...

and then to the right...a letter and card along with a silver necklace that has a box on it to place some of Sarah's ashes to carry...treasures from Karen j. Got this gift when came home-was in the mail...a gift to mark this 3rd year of my sweet girl gone on before to heaven..

so, the things i hold close are not only the treasures given, but the hearts of the ones i have known for long years and those who have come into my path of life in this season of loss. gifts...gifts from this road, my life now.

i am touched deeply, always amazed at the goodness of God while still here in the land of the living. I sometimes so want to peer across the veil to see them--these ones who have left too early...and just know....

just to know...would help, but it is not the way it gets to be. it is a faith time...a faith that is found under all the stuff that happens...holding the rest of it. solid, whole, not broken...even if I feel like I am.

a deep breath...a tender month...how did 3 years go by...

i still have 5 voice messages on my cell phone that I have to resave every 3 weeks...i lost one of them this year...a dropped call while listening to them...and i cried and cried...like losing her fresh...

i listened to your voice yesterday...wishing me my 55th happy birthday...telling me that thousands of wonderful things would happen to me this year...and many did...but losing you in the days of that year were not part of the wonderful things...but it was one of the most powerful things...and then in the midst of this loss, I met so many new people, went to lands I would have never known--physically, mentally, emotionally....spiritually...the journey still goes on to this day...

never do I know or have an idea of the new things that will come across my path...i now see with different eyes, hear with different ears, smell differently, taste with passion...sip more, eat slower with deliberateness...touch and hold with tenderness..care...carefullness...but never holding it too close...never owning another thing in this life...knowing it is all part of the journey, grateful for the journey. grateful for the ones with me on this journey.

still my heart is quite sore right now...remembering...and trying to keep breathing...these anniversary months are hard...

i won't be here at home on the anniversary this year...will be on a guided spiritual retreat in Estes Park, Colorado at the Barnabus training...we prayed and I felt it was what I needed to do with Rick right now...but many will gather here on the beach with Chris and I know my heart will come and be here too...I hope that I will be ok that day...I want to hear God clearly that day...and trust Him in that day...

I wish my thoughts could come clear right now...it seems that my heart is still some unsettled with leaving here at that day. God come and help...I want to live well right now...and trust...and keep on going forward...to that home that will never end, no more pain, no more sorrow, no more death...thank God.

I am glad for my companions...my dear friends who still are close in this path...

well, that is enough for now...

no words tonight

2010-08-16T22:39:00.001-04:00

just am sad tonight. sad for my friends who have lost their children too and are far away. Just thinking of them tonight--for each of them in their different homes, places they live...where they are right now and praying for their sleep tonight--and that God will come and comfort their heart and their dreams tonight.

"never forgotten, always loved"

2010-08-05T17:11:00.003-04:00

Tiffany put these words with this picture of Sarah for Christopher for the widow's conference they will be attending this coming weekend in San Diego. He does not know about it yet, but she shared this with me yesterday....and it so touched me, so undid me for awhile. Such amazing eyes, such an amazing smile-and always will be loved by so many and never forgotten.
I have thought about her all day today. Not that I don't think about her all the time, but again--in a strong way, trying to remember things...her voice, her laugh...her presence.
This journey of walking on....on...on....
I have worked hard to stay present in the day-to connect with life in a tangible way, to keep my eyes forward, with memories and tenderness in my heart...yet not missing the oxygen that is in the present breath I take, enabling me to keep on...walking on....
yet, sometimes, for bits of time, I wonder if I am breathing...and in those moments...it all floods back...the deep and terrible loss...of sweet sarah c. so huge. so big...

God I miss her. I miss the fullness of all of it...every last drip of it. all done, all gone. Makes me crazy if I don't take another breath quick and fill my lungs with oxygen and remember to breathe again. God, I have armfuls of gratitude and thanksgiving..so much given to me to hold and embrace...and yet....I sure miss you sweet girl. how my life has taken on new dimensions that you are missing in...and will not be part of other than stories and memories.
just do miss you.

know others miss you--miss your presence, miss never knowing you...miss.

my fingers move over these keys, not knowing what to type, what key to press down, what word to create here on this blog that will help my heart...help me move forward....sometimes I type and sometimes I delete...forward, backwards...never knowing the correct word that describes the journey...no map, no secret clues, no foreknowledge...no help...
trusting God, holding fast, lingering in God's arms...having faith...believing even if it isn't true that I will see you again somehow, someday, not knowing when...
who is there, are you ok? Are you happy? Are you busy? Do you miss me? Chris? all our family? Friends? The cats? Your home? toooooo many thoughts, toooooo many questions...toooo many things begin to swirl and unravel...

back to the picture...she sure was beautiful, she sure touched many...she sure was....wasn't she?
Glad to have had her...thank you....thankful.

God's Chisel - The Skit Guys

2010-07-21T19:09:00.000-04:00

Haven't written in awhile, but was sent this today. Really blesses me and reminds me that I am not a mistake. I am an original masterpiece. So are you. take time to watch it. bless you.

Inside Worship Podcast Episode 24 - 1000 Generations' Fail Us Not

2010-06-01T07:02:00.001-04:00

Haven't written for a long time. I love this song. I love that God fails us not...in all things.

I still grieve and miss Sarah so. I live and embrace the days at hand. I live fully, wildly, embracing the moments with the ones around me. I do not grieve as one without hope. I hope wildly in heaven-in the Kingdom to come. Sometimes I feel Sarah's close presence---a touch, a gentle connection when the veil seems so thin. I can't wait sometimes to go, yet...need to be fully awake and here till called home.

Being seen

2010-03-30T13:48:00.002-04:00

I have posted a new song-"Raindrops keep falling on my head" on my blog today. It was sent to me by my dear Tiffany, Christopher's new and beautiful wife. She blessed me with tender words telling me she sees me and that means so much when you often feel like you are not seen in the midst of relearning to live.

I am blessed to listen to a song that I heard BJ sing in person back in Las Vegas with Sarah's dad, even before she was born---and never really heard the words till I read them today and listened with my full ears.

Life feels like that often, like we don't even really hear the depth of songs, or words or music till it comes at us from a very different angle. Today, this song, her words, all help me to walk a bit stronger and with less of the slump I have found on me in the last months.

Could it be that maybe I will also be "coming into a new season"? I am watching the spring flowers push hard against the earth to come up and bloom. I too am trying to do that--push against the dirt in my life to breathe and live and move in this new season. I want to have joy again. even in the midst of missing dear Sarah.

a look back at our trip

2010-03-17T19:55:00.005-04:00

Such a fun trip to Florida this year-saw family, friends, breathed the air and savored the sun. It is almost becoming spring here now too. Thankful for the new season. Ohio is so gray and cloudy in the winter....it gets to all of us.

The lake here is free of ice now too-wonderful to see open water again. Funny how open water is like our hearts. Sometimes we are iced over too. I have felt my heart like that and in seeing how the ice has been breaking up and melting before my eyes under the warmth of the sun makes me think of you God--how you try to warm me...my heart to flow better.

This season of deep sorrow and grief has found me so often helpless in how to walk...breathe, let alone run or do well. The longer I go on this journey, the less I know of what the new days will bring or the challenges to my heart and breath.

I find myself like gannetgirl's comment from the last post---quiet and not sure how to talk as some of the answers to my thoughts from others who haven't lost their child in a tragic way-say things that in an odd way, just amaze me that they even think what they just said might in some way be of any comfort. I have learned to just be still more often than not with someone else's grief or sorrow-I truly have NO idea what it may feel like for them and to offer up a group of words to try to fill a gap is just almost insane. We try hard, I know, even I do...to be of help to others...but more often than not...I now say---I just don't know what to say, just want to be here beside you if you are ok with that.

oh well....just random thoughts from my sore head today. Have been aching. Missing...trying to find my footing in this land I live in. Not sure of much these days. lopsided, crooked, out of link...zipper is stuck...nothing works right. going to go take a nap.

march

2010-02-20T21:17:00.004-05:00

I am near the end of another journal-seems that is where most of my words go any more. Life is moving forward. It seems like a dream sometimes-missing you Sarah. I miss your voice. I miss you calling-for no reason...seems like I don't get those kind of calls anymore, spontaneous, needing something right now. it is such a new season for me, trying to find my place...seems like I keep looking for that place, that seat that had my name on it...that when I sat in it, was so comfortable, so sure.

now, I am learning new words, new places, new titles, new....new....new...somethings beginning to feel more familiar, more like it fits.

don't look back too long....will ache and ache...and takes so long to get my footing.

never changes the ending....

have met so many who have lost a child now. so many with the look in their eyes i know.

long for heaven, but love this land with Rick so. He is the best, the best gift. I am rich with the life with him, his kids, his grandkids...and they are becoming more and more mine. just takes time and time is sometimes so hard to understand.

grateful. yet so sorrowful.

shoes don't fit anymore, need new shoes to walk this land. sorting through the things, moving things to new places, putting new things up...moving things to precious spots to treasure... new things taking the place left open.

that is like the inside of my heart...trying to make room. room for life. honest to pete...this takes me to places i don't have strength for. don't have any directions...no clues...failing more often than succeeding...falling and getting up and falling and staying down.

early grief is just so wild, so full of every moment full of the loss....and now...seems like a solitary place...so many things to process but more on my own...not as many people now have any clue how many triggers each day there are for me to touch and handle and cry only in my heart...to hold tears back...so not to have to explain...how fragile you still are...how lost you are in that moment you are fighting so hard to live in and smile...

sometimes i even depress myself! i know that sarah would want me to not get stuck. we talked about that too...we talked about how in the world the one left would move on...it sure is not the same when you try to do what you talked about. Just would like to talk again...miss our talks...
even the hard talks...the ones that had us calling not long after the words were thrown...to say sorry...just didn't want to waste time...glad we didn't.

wish i had a new picture today to put up...hard to not have a new memory, new pictures of new things.

i think i am slipping down into the place...and don't want to today. just wanted to touch here.

touching many of you who also write me, if you are reading.

i pray comfort to your tender heart today, may God's kiss press into your mom's heart today. that place that still aches. may He kiss mine too.

life goes on

2010-01-21T15:28:00.002-05:00

no picture today, just words.

i have had a hard couple weeks. went to a training on "peer to peer" debriefing...not realizing it would challenge me in the deep place of grief as really nothing has in awhile. i found myself wide open and swirling in images of sarah's death and all the details and happenings...just triggered so much that has been put away and not thought of in a long time...at least not so much at the same time.

i learned something...i am still very fragile inside...i may look pretty normal at times to the world, but inside, i am still just putting life together with the strong hand of God on a day by day basis. sometimes...minute by minute.

most days i find my thinking is able to handle and process events and things coming at me in a logical sense---like, "don't go there, Chris...just take it easy, you are tired, let it go right now...maybe tomorrow....blah...blah..." that kind of stuff....or, "of course they have no clue how that is for you---they don't live in this place of losing their only child and the future hopes and dreams...so they just don't know how it challenges you right now." and on and on...the self talk that people who have lost someone do to manage much of what is going on all around them in the normal events of every day....if you have lost someone...that sentence will make clear sense...if not...oh well...you may remember it someday.

but last week...well, we learned all about tragedy and crisis and unpacked each detail of it...and it retriggered it all for me--all over again...and i wasn't ready for it...so everything that was shared...well, I found a memory and in detail of the same...and by the time i knew i was in trouble...i was in panic...and was a mess...wow...i was totally caught off guard....

so, i finally left the training and called my grief counselor...whom i haven't called in many months for any reason like this...and couldn't even speak. she knew i was in Florida at the training and since all i could do was cry, she began to pray...and God came and helped through that prayer.

i learned alot that day...that i need to really pay attention to what is happening in me...and that i can only do what i can and to listen better to my heart and what it is telling me....
to pay attention still...i did better at that earlier in my loss, but it still has that potential to take me out.

i am better today, but sore...sore in my heart...sore that it is so real...and true...it is just so true...to have lost my dear girl...and in such a hard way...with so many unanswered questions that need to be left in the strong hand of God...i cannot take them back and try again to find answers to questions that have no earthly answer for me. it wrecks my heart....so....

thank you God for rescuing me...help me listen to my body and mind better in the future...to trust when it is too much for me and to know i can leave. i do not have the ability to do all of life blindly...but need to pay attention to what is happening to me. help me be sensitive to what is happening and my limits in healing. help me to realize it is still so early in this loss...

ahhhhhh....deep breath in and deep breath out....

2009-12-22T05:45:00.003-05:00

Just a fog on some days...seems like i almost see you...hear you...and then...my heart remembers it all...

last night as i was wrapping presents for so many new people in my life, i realized there were none for you...and then the tears came...

i had felt odd before it happened...a bit tense and overdrawn..and couldn't quite figure out why i was crabby, out of sorts, not enjoying what i was doing...and then... i knew. i went to the couch and pulled myself deep into the corner and just sat.

and remembered.

i am sometimes so lost in all this. i feel like my thoughts are like a misbuttoned shirt...no matter how many times i rebutton it, it never matches. and my heart feels that way too. trying to live well, yet still my shirt never buttons right.

i have lost my dearest daughter. i hate those words, that they are mine. i sometimes fight the wrongness of that and am so angry, so ripped off...so lost in my lost.

i can get to the side of walking it out again...knowing so many others now who have lost. their is a wildness in the eyes of someone who has lost. i see it. i even see it in my eyes when i look long enough. a sorrow that never leaves them. the worn edges aroung my eyes from tears. from the longing of another word or hug or smile or memory.

one more goodnight song...your wet hair hanging across my legs as you lie on my lap to have me run my fingers in your hair. feeling your full weight as you run and jump on me---even as a 28 year old...acting 5. don't think you ever grew up, sarah c...at least not with me...you were a girl in a woman's body but so easily slipped back into the joy of youth. i miss your joy in this season. i miss the card table up so we could make presents--with all the new ideas we gathered in the year. i have your last list on my computer that you sent to a. barb and i when we went to sagatuck....so many things we had still to do...

lost...in the memories...wires disconnected still in my brain, trying to realign them...to make it make some kind of logical sense, yet logic and sense never will connect in this for me. oh my, my brain is so tired when i am on this street...night hours pass slowly.

missing you tonight, every night...every day. wonder.

wonder so much. what you are doing right now...do you see me, do you know? do you know how much so many people miss you? i miss hearing that answer...that full answer you would have with any question and how you loved questions, learning more about me and everyone. you loved learning more.

and now another christmas--3 now you won't be here...i am trying to get the groove on in my step, new life, new kids, new grandkids who don't know what to call me...how did the buttons never match up? i didn't know life could get so hard...i didn't know i wouldn't know how to live...i never knew it would take all i have and more to do this...

i so need you God. please help in these moments when my buttons don't match and i can't figure it out. please come. please hold me, please kiss my girl too...tell her i miss her and love her. life is not the same anymore...

life is good, just not the same...never the same.

Happy birthday my sweet Sarah C....

2009-11-19T09:45:00.002-05:00

happy birthday dear one. wonder what you are doing right now in the new place you have gone...wonder. wonder about my mom and dad and sister...what they are doing too. we just see so limited, and have to just stretch high and believe...up onto our tippy toes...stretching high with both hands up, reaching high...and still not seeing...but believing.

i have had the privilege of meeting others whose children are gone now too---do you all gather and know this where you are? do you see us touching each other's hearts in tenderness on days like this when we want to celebrate but instead remember...and hold dear the memories of days before? i wonder if you all are so thrilled we have connected--or did you talk to God about us and He brought paths of ours to touch one anothers...?

i woke today remembering exactly where i was 31 years ago at that moment...i was about 10 hours into labor and you were not descending, so they did an xray of my pelvis to see if i could even deliver you..and found it would be marginal...so we waited 8 more hours to then decide to c-section you---and i still didn't know if you were a boy or girl...but i was ready...i had held you in my belly for many months---holding you closer...and then when i woke from anesthesia, i heard your dad keep repeating, "it's a sarah" it's a sarah"...and i can remember opening my eyes and they held you before me for the first time...and how absolutely beautiful you were...your slanted eyes, lots of brown hair, very pink...and then...into my arms...held close...

i hold you close today...i feel your presence with me as i remember. how you loved the story of your birth...made me tell you it all, every detail, every year...and i loved watching your eyes as you listened and would remind me if i tried to leave a detail out...you were a stickler for all the details...

how glad i am for all those times...the tender and close times...glad we took the time....

blessed i am...to have been privileged to be called mom by you...thanks God...what a gift you gave to me...what a blessed time it was...

happy birthday sarah c. pumpkin noodle...loved all of you...

as a mom...i sure could go on and on...and could just talk all day and night. i do miss bragging about you..and telling what you have been up to. i miss new stories and new things going on...it gets harder when you have no new pictures to show, no new memories...that i don't like about the longer you walk down the road of you gone...ugh...that truly sucks.
so, i have to corral those thoughts...hold fast to the road i am currently on---wrapping my arms around the life here and not stay too long in the life back there. yet today, i pray...God, grace all of us who remember the dear memories of our bella sarah's life...and pick up each treasure and hold them softly...dearly, close to our heart...i am...and then hold me Lord as i hand each of these back to you so i can keep on.

see you soon girl....love you...here's a toast, a yugabanuch to you today--one of many to come when we gather later...

mom

just cuz i don't write doesn't mean i am missing...just pondering

2009-11-11T17:49:00.002-05:00

here it is, just a week before what would have been sarah's 31st birthday. the ache is present in my heart as it always is....
have been asked to preach in dec. and to talk a bit about the birth of Jesus from Mary's perspective. so, alot in my mind about a woman who was chosen to bear the son of Man and to ponder so much all her life and then to continue walking out her life after He was gone--even if it all made sense then to her as she saw Him in his resurrected body.

i want to walk out the rest of my life with faith of knowing it is true. God, help me and others who share this common faith to walk this well, to know it is not all in vain and to have a brokenness in our hearts that lays us down...for the count.

God, come and touch all the one's I have met in this journey--even the women of late who have lost their older children, and are so sore at heart. It is such an honor to walk alongside each of them.

My inner thoughts are deep within me more of late, and don't seem to be stirred to the surface right now...not sure quite why...just is...harder for some reason, not sure what...to talk...to visit the sorrow...to go to the place...

i ponder much though...deep in my heart...deep in my heart.

2 years

2009-09-27T22:03:00.002-04:00

this is the day---surrrounded by love, kindness, love...so many people who are missing you dear girl...lots of toasts and hugs...we just spent time together....am so blessed and grateful...so loved...and so touched.

thank you God. Thank you to all of you....

we miss you Sarah. 2 years.

a day in the life

2009-09-24T19:38:00.003-04:00

With Hope - Steven Curtis Chapman
Source: www.youtube.com
For everyone who has experienced the death of a loved one, here is a song of comfort, reminding us of God's constant grace and the hope of the heaven that is to come. Music and Lyrics by Steven Curtis Chapman Speechless, 1999, Sparrow

This speaks my dear heart today...

just spent the evening with my son in law, Christopher---and a dear time with tears and memories....just a gift from God to me today....

i want to have hope in heaven...this life is too hard sometimes...

my heart misses so.

we love our children with a love so wild and full and complete, never expecting them to leave first. it is what a parent does...just loves fully. and I am glad I did.

just miss my dear one, my dear girl today...

2 years now since I last held you close

2009-09-19T06:47:00.008-04:00

Sleep isn't coming anymore tonight...yesterday was the last time I took a picture of you-the one above with Aunt Barb as we were finishing packing that night before we left today for our trip. I am thanking God you did come over one last time-inbetween classes (also to eat--you were always hungry!!) to say "goodbye" to us as we all left today, 2 years ago for the "trip of our life", hoping to meet you and Chris in Venice and in Rome. Only you guys missed that train to Venice by one minute. I won't go back down the road of what a minute means...

Here is a picture of you small--so full of light and smiles--and a dirty face from peanut butter and jelly probably...and the gym outfit I made for you...loved sewing for you.

I am looking out the window right now-at the calm waters of lake erie and a beautiful soft pink sunrise just starting to glow over the water. coffee is perking and smelling good...Harry (chocolate lab who loved you too) is shuffling, waiting to be fed and let out.

But in my heart right now swirl so many memories. Carefully I touch them, holding my tears in check.

Thinking back sometimes is too hard to do. So many people have said things to me of late---"how is the 2nd year?", "I hear the 2nd year is harder than the first." and on and on...questions asking me to share how it is...how I am...where it is on this path for me...kindness from others really...just them trying to find a way to touch into me in this journey.

I have more compassion for others on this road alongside of me these days---I want to say,
"thank you to you all. Thank you for your warmth and quietness and soft eyes at times I didn't even see. thank you for continuing to find me when I didn't know how far away I had gone. For reaching out-taking my hand, sitting still beside me, for letting me make hundreds of toasts to her and all the memories I could conjure up-one after another---trying to keep the warmth of life in me while I toasted---to keep going so the sadness and grief wouldn't press its' unwanted way back in--the reality of "no new memories" ever again. thank you for listening to me tell stories or even making me tell them at times I have been quiet."

I thank my family-my sister Marty and aunt Barb who journeyed with me 2 times during this past 2 years---and grieved so deeply themselves for their beloved niece who loved them both so much too. I thank my friends who have not often known what to say or do, but did everything they could think to do to help. For my pastor and his wife-who has been there through so much-married Chris and Sarah---sowed into them, believed in them, encouraged them...

For my dearest husband, who only got to meet Sarah and Chris one time, and is a gift truly from God to me...somehow I think Sarah was involved in both Christopher's and my future as we both have been blessed now with incredible people in our lives...this new land...new discoveries, new families, new journeys.

but, how is my heart...truly...

well, the truth...my heart aches. it aches as it beats, each beat feels the loss of my sweet child, my sweet friend, my sweet girl. i miss you so. i press on, i believe with faith that is compelling me to press on---and look with hope to heaven...where there is no more death, no more disease--mental or physical, no more enemy...no more.

i am tired sometimes--way too tired...and fight to stay here-to stay present and savoring the gifts here in my life, the fullness....trying hard not to stay too long in the darkness of tragedy or loss. to not lose hope, to not get hard, to not become bitter or full of self pity...to remember the joy of being able to have a child---and to have her for 28 wonderful years full of memories.

each of us has our trials...and struggles...and some of the best times for me anymore are the times spend quietly beside a friend. resting. quiet. loving. To embrace my new family---and savor their absolute beauty in my life today. To not miss them--miss making new memories...not to miss their presence in my life.

September 27th is not too far away. i appreciate prayers for all of us who will be remembering that day...for my dear son Christopher---mostly...for his healing and life. For his heart of watching his dear wife die before his eyes. for him to live well, healed and whole.

not as many words spilling from my fingers these last weeks and days...but they are in my mind...and always looking for a place to land.

a tender month

2009-09-10T10:27:00.004-04:00

http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=84138e76e13c5c50e12c

Can't seem to get this song on my blog at the moment and don't have time---but this is Steven Curtis's new song about his daughter who died. click on the link-or cut and paste.

can't wait for heaven.

no picture today

2009-09-02T20:07:00.002-04:00

please pray today for gannetgirl and her family. today is the one year anniversary for the death of her son. you can visit her blog if you wish. today she posted a song that touched my heart so.

dearness....

2009-08-28T06:59:00.003-04:00

walked the beach and the insides of our hearts yesterday---dear gannetgirl and me...

touched...listened, prayed.

i was humbled to hear her.

i felt heard....seen.

it is a treasure to have this now in my heart, this memory of a common place of mother's pain of loss. both of us have lost a dear child, it has forever changed our life. we are learning a language to speak that has words too hard to say yet---will it ever get easier with practice? i do not think so. the words are so dear...so tender...so full of ache.

she is forever part of my landscape now. as are many of you. these pages of blogging--sharing our journeys through this loss of child, whatever the age, the reason, no matter what....has drawn us together. i am rich because of you in ways i didn't know i could be rich. i am not alone....no matter how often i feel so alone in this deep sadness. mine is mine and yours is yours...but we can see and touch and know that we are not alone. and i then think...for me...that Jesus helped me find you...and you to find me...to help us....

this has been a very hard week for me, my sister, my aunt, my son-in law---as i heard from a couple who had been in the cinque terra the day sarah died...and the husband actually was one of the men who found and threw a life preserver to sarah--to try to save her...
they both wrote their rememberance of that day to us---i could hear their deep agony of trying to help, and she didn't survive....i got to tell them, that she didn't drown, but died of the massive head injury of hitting the fierce rocks....and i hope that brings healing to them....and their words have brought more to me to ponder on this walk. i hope it brings more to Christopher, my dear son in law, who tried so hard to help, almost dying himself...i hope it helps him...as i know the images run in his mind...seeing his dear wife die before his eyes...helpless....oh my....please comfort him and touch him in only the way you can Father....please....

what a journey this is...yesterday it has been 23 full months since that day. next month will be another year---year 2. gannetgirl asked---how was year 2? i have thought more on that since she left...seems like every day of 2 years, it has taken so much of deliberateness to keep breathing. i miss you sarah more than i can even say...life seems so completely not the life i had before. i truly am blessed with so much right now---so am so grateful for my husband, my family...my sweet friends....so please don't think i am grateful...i am....

i just am so profoundly missing my girl...the one i spent more time with...and loved...and cherished...my dear daughter and my best friend. she impacted me so much...and i miss her so. i was not ready to be without her. so is the 2nd year easier, harder...i guess, no answer...but it is a longer year...more silent, more keenly aware of you missing in the days...not as much anesthesia of grief---more acute pain with no numbness...more reality. more having to be intentional to walk, to smile...to make the life work...deliberateness...on purpose living...not as many times that people really ask---"so how are you doing?", not as many times to really grieve with someone else or cry...or at least it feels that way...probably more people would let us if we asked...just hard to ask, hard to know how to do it. it just is messy and not easy, and others miss you too Sarah...so want to help listen to them too.

writing is harder these last months for me...words seem to clog the end of my pens...build up, and no real flow---tried writing more in my personal journal and even that seems harder...so will keep writing here right now, going with the flow.

it is hard. i hate that it has been 2 years since i have a new picture of you, a new voice mail, a new memory. i hate that i don't remember how your voice sounded as well...that you feel far...and i can't find you. i don't like that life has gone on and everywhere i go, you are not part of it at all...you were often so involved in everything...and you are missing. sometimes when others are here....and everyone is talking....i look up on the wall at your picture and you are smiling, but quiet...no sounds...no sarahvoice in the midst...and i have to leave the room...and cry....just seems so odd to have you silent and only there in a painting on the wall....ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

this is a road i have traveled a long time on...and know how far to walk down before i can feel the deep pain of it...and don't want to keep going as it leads away from my heart into endless pain...and i am learning more and more....that i can't do it...it takes me out...so, now to turn around again...and come back to today...and press into all i believe of the hope of heaven. i know my relationship with you will never be the same...that it will be more than i can ever imagine and will be good. probably better than good---ha! i sense your presence more in deep peace in my heart this year...a deep peace of a "knowing" that you are good. i long for heaven...for home. i long to not hurt like this and not to hurt again....but life is life and i have no control over it....
so God, I give this all to you today...where i am...where this all is...and again release to you my heart of deep sorrow for this loss....I give you my dear friends and ask you to comfort them as only you do....touch them today too. Help us Lord...to walk this well...and please hold our breaking hearts and catch our hot tears....

just walking

2009-08-17T15:45:00.003-04:00

i think i am in italy today, walking in the most beautiful land, with the dearest of people. it now has been over a year since i visited.

i often fly in my mind over there and take the trains from Milano down to the Cinque Terra and get off in Riamaggiore and then walk the walkway through the tunnel of the sea and then climb the stairs and walk through the "walk of love", looking at the chalk art...slowly moving my fingers through the lockets-looking for the american touristor locket...and then moving on....

up the stairway, looking at the seagull mozaic and then down the stairway to the manarola harbor...looking upwards toward Pont Bonfiglio...

why is this land so far from here..so hard to get to...makes the grief on days like today feel like the trip there---so impossible.

oh my....swirls and twirls of brain cells...some that have not been recovered...and my mind has slipped off the block. can't recall as much, and sometimes, don't even remember recent things clearly. almost 2 years---just a month away...

wrecked...my heart feels wrecked...recovered in some ways---full of passion and love...

feels like an old 78 record, skipping around, sometimes playing the song for good long time...and then...skips...and misses the beats...my song gets wrecked too...but the wail...is still long and deep...if you are listening.

heavy in my heart

2009-08-05T11:18:00.002-04:00

This journey is sure long. miss you Sarah. I am having a grief time again--and not sure what is the center, nor when i get into it, not sure where I walked in and where i will walk out. seems like there are pockets of deep grief we get into---like falling into a blog.

i have a friend who was in Ireland a few years ago, and he was hiking and was off the path and all of a sudden, he went over his head into a blog and didn't have a clue how he would get out--if ever.

that is what times like this feel like...and it is so overwhelming. you wonder if you have made it down the road at all. and then if you do say something---people then worry and want to do something...but there is not a thing anyone can do--but pray for this place.

i ache...and have been....is it the full moon...the passing of another wedding anniversary with you not here, your house empty---so much moving further into the distance...you not part of a day, or even any recent days...

oh my....

no maps, no landmarks...a solo journey---each of us takes when we lose what is most dear...quietness in my heart...no words to tell others...i feel their grief too for you---and touch their words on the screen, or where ever they come with my small hand and lift them to God...probably like they do for me too...

wow...we are sure made of clay....

leaning into and on you God...fully today.

want to walk to cinque terra today and spend a long time.....miss you.

pondering

2009-07-24T08:08:00.003-04:00

I think life is perplexing to me. I have been pondering the fullness of loss as Karen's friend loses her 2nd and last child, after losing her other child 10 years ago. it is too much for me to try to understand. it is the greatest fear of a parent-to lose their children before them---and to lose all you have-even for me, my one and only...it causes you to ponder~as well as many other things...but today, i am pondering.

these days can take you out and that is a "not good place to be".

in this new land of "losing your child", i have met many people who are trying to find their new sea legs to walk.

i was telling Rick the other day-after I did the women's conference in Washington, Pa., where i told my life story as i shared about the weavings of joy and sorrow in our tapestry that represents our life---that the women at the conference who had lost children, they hugged me in a different way then the ones who hadn't lost a child...maybe i have just begun to think it feels differently to me...maybe they hug alittle longer, maybe hug a little more like---"my heart is broken too"

----maybe i am just thinking it so...i can do that sometimes...think more into something than is there...

but to meet others who have lost more than one, or lost one that you were in conflict with and hadn't resolved the difficulty, or lost due to suicide or overdose or something else like that---is just harder than the alphabet has letters to help explain. i am at a loss for words for any of this, but it becomes life to us...a new land, a land we never bought a ticket to visit.

i never in a million years thought this land would be one i would be exploring---i am an adventurer...i love to explore and find and seek and see and learn and understand...but never in a million years would i think i would explore this land...

it has been almost 2 years now---2 long and quiet years without her voice and her influence in mine. i have met people and have a new family and new children...and still have an unsteadiness in my step...a limp maybe only really noticeable to me at times...but it is there. i want to keep my arms open for all the wonders and new and joys this new land brings...i am trying hard...some days it is too hard....

wish i could find words to say what is in my heart...the words of deep colors and heavy that are still there, swirling around, longing to have understanding and freedom to be loose from my heart.

ache...it is always there...i am more accustomed to the feeling of it now, can live a whole day or two and not truly lean into it...and then...if i do lean into it...is still sore like it has always been...so take care to lean when can and have the ability to process and then wrap it back up into the fragile place it lives...

i ache today for Karen's friend who walks this journey again...and for my new friend Karen someone whom i have never met except for our blogs, but this woman has now hugged a woman in italy who has touched me and my family like no other...our dear paula...and also Karen has walked and seen where sarah died...how dear is that to me...more than any words i can find. brings tears to my eyes and a closeness that no words could say---she took time to touch a place that touches me...thank you Karen...more than you will ever know.

so, to end this post is like saying i have said it all--and that is a lie...i have so many words and questions and feelings...but they must keep swirling for now---i sometimes question the place of what sanity is when i say my heart thoughts as they look so raw and real when i type the words of my thoughts here.

so, today is a day of pondering, a day of being careful to walk~ not too close and then to go too far~ but to stay in prayer for the one's who hurt fresh today and to pray for those of us who have a grief of loss that is fresh in its' long journey...

To Cameroon, Africa and back

2009-07-04T09:13:00.006-04:00

Here we are, on the trip that has taken me almost 40 years to get to do. Since I was 16, I have wanted to go to Africa-only to see the hopes get crushed a few times. The day we were to leave--June 18th, we got to the airport and found out that we still may not get to go as our plane was delayed by 2 hours and that would throw off the whole flights to Yaounde. The next flight there would not be able to be done till the following Tuesday, which would be one half way through the Health, Hygiene and Sanitation seminar we were doing with Carol and Mike Nowlin from Thirst Relief International. I was crushed, hopes gone...and then Rick asked what it would take to go through Douola Africa--which was 120+ miles from Yaounde. They could do that--so off we went. Of course this changed all things for Peter-our host...and Carol and Mike were still flying into Yaounde. Needless to say, we finally all met up and had an incredible journey...full of wonder, stresses physically as the roads were in bad shape for much of our journey as we were often far from any cities. We traveled alot-got to see many things we have never seen before, met people who were just beautiful inside and out.

I traveled with Sarah's ashes--as she also always wanted to go--so took a small amount with some sand from our beach. Often I felt her presence...somehow laughing and delighted that her mom was there---on her first wedding anniversary with the most wonderful husband...and then also on her mom's 57th birthday---almost as a gift...a treasure...

Always I was looking to see where to leave her ashes, and near the end of our trip, after all the workshops were done and we ended up in Limbe on the coast, the other side of the Altantic---was this spot. A set of stairs that led to the beach, a beach made up of volcanic rock and black sand---from Mt. Cameroon---which had erupted in the 90s the last time and sent ash and lava to the ocean. It was here we found these stairs that looked so like Manorola. As we climbed down the difficult and steep stairs, I felt your strong presence...Sarah and my dear Heavenly Father...

we were so quiet...Carol and Mike joined us...we just waited for the perfect wave...and released the sand and part of you...just then, a beautiful white crane with a black neck, flew solo right past us the full length of the beach....and Rick and I looked at each other and smiled through tears.

Who knows whether this is true or we make it true, it blessed both of our hearts and touched Mike and Carol...who never knew you.

I miss you...I am glad to have had you for the years we had. Such memories my sweet girl. We carried both of your packs on our back too throughout this trip and felt close too.

We are now in a new time, a new season. Christopher and Tiffany are now married and are beginning their journey. It is a new land. We will live well, we will remember you and also Rick's wife, Shyrl. We are all blessed to be living~not small but full. Embracing each day, each other...with fullness and joy. You, who have gone on now---have taught us so much and we will embrace the memories, yet live fully present.

love you...my sweet girl.

held close

2009-06-04T11:55:00.002-04:00

love this picture, have used it before...somehow...I feel you next to me when I see it...and remember.

loved holding you...such a treasure to hold your child. i watch other mom's doing it now and want to say---do it for real...hold gently yet, intentionally...they aren't yours, just for a season...and you are given the privilege to have them for now.

i always had that in my heart...that you were not mine, just given as a gift to me to cherish and to raise...somehow, God let me know that from the very beginning, when I didn't even think I would carry you inside till birth...just a privilege.

blessed----I was blessed and am blessed with so much...so many memories.

today will probably be the last time I officially "move you". I was thinking of all the times I have moved you in my life this morning as I laid in bed...to different houses, to college and home each year...to mom's to live--to fairport and then to our house and then to your house with Christopher to get married...and now...we are moving the last of your stuff to their new homes...

i really think I can't understand this life. i don't know if i have the capacity to wrap my mind and heart around it...so will let it be today..and keep walking this out. slowly, gently, tenderly...remembering this is the land i have been given to walk...and God...you are close and will help. my heart knows deeply the sorrow of this land like no other can know. there are many moments of no words to speak...and that is just the way it is....and God, you know me...and search my heart and help. you are close to the broken and heal.

i am grateful...

life continues

2009-05-18T12:12:00.004-04:00

I cheated---Karen challenged us in her blog that I visited to pick the 4th folder and the 4th picture---and I picked the 5th photo....the 4th only had Harry in it alone laying on the floor and the 5th had Sarah too---she was running in with school work to have a snack on the way to school. Only stayed long enough to say---"Mom, you only have condiments in your frig!!!" She was a hoot at times...would run by just to hug and eat. miss those times...

ah, living in today. i have had a few hard weeks. Today I am purposefully going to be in today---not in the sore past, nor in the fearful future of losing another. both of those places rob me of today.

i have been working overtime on my sorrow and i am tired. changes nothing...and hurts. so, just for today---i will....embrace the fresh wind and glorious blue sky, the brilliant sun shining on my face. i will enjoy the sound of Harry---my dear chocolate lab...snoring at my feet. i will savor the sound of Rick's quiet laugh as he reads his email on our WE day together. I will sip the mocha coffee next to me and enjoy the strong flavor of the good mix of beans.

i will look forward to visiting cameroon Africa next month...just 30 days from now---God willing to go...after wanting to go for the last 40 years of my life...and embrace this new journey I am on.

i will lift my hands to heaven and rejoice with the Father....for the wonderful life i have had...and the sweetness of memories...and leave my heart open to new ones to come.

grateful to all who have been praying and walking alongside of my sore mother's heart....thankyou... sometimes it is too much to bear...and today, i will leave it resting in my Father's strong hands...and keep the hope of heaven in mine.

mother's day year 2

2009-05-10T08:47:00.005-04:00

year 2 of sarah gone on mother's day.

the days leading up to this day have been hard--hard to try to understand this long journey that i am on...

to lose your only child is like trying to learn a language that is not hardly ever spoken. i know no other personally that i can speak with in this language. i can speak with others who have lost a child, but none that have lost their only child. i know there are many who have, i just have not met one yet. the one's who have lost a child look at me with eyes of extreme somethingorother in their eyes---that i can't quite understand either...

i want to walk this journey well and see the other side of what lays beyond--and know that it was more than i could imagine. yet there are days on this side of the veil that tax my resources to the utter limits. i do know those feelings do pass...and my footing which feels like it will never stand when i have fallen...will come back.

it is in those dark and extreme places that words are beginning to fail me more and more. i write more now in my journal than before and less here...yet that doesn't mean the journey is less hard.

i fear sometimes of what my extreme words would say to someone reading these words. grief is just like the final print--the story has been printed and allows no corrections that can be done--it is what it is...no way to rewrite it, edit it, alter it...nothing to do be hold the letters and words in your hands and try to comprehend the weight of what they all mean.

i have learned more about secondary grief...the grief that brings new presents to an unsuspecting day--and moment--to bring a fresh wave of unexpected pain and sorrow...and again...your footing slips.

my dear sarah. how i have missed you these last few years. your spontaneous joy and laughter and unique comments on anything and everything....just are missed. not just by me, but by so many. your spot in this world is unfilled. never to be filled. doesn't mean i don't and others don't embrace and love and appreciate the one's around us. i don't ever want to do that---miss what is present and so beautiful in my life. just means that you were just you. i am glad to have savored every part every day---just glad i did.

the sting in my heart is still there. the ache that never leaves but joins each heart beat...sometimes less, sometimes more.

change.

so much has changed.

so many things of yours that have slipped into places in our homes and our lives...people who don't know they are your things that you made or loved will never know---just see them as belonging where they have been placed. i even have things from others who have gone on...that mix in the spaces of my home...

we do that---we take precious items from others and have them in our homes...and in special places that warm our hearts when we see them.

i wish i were more able to comprehend things i think about, make more sense of them...i sometimes ponder way too deep about all this stuff and it is like being on a merry go round till you are dizzy...and then need to get up and walk away till you stop spinning... that is what it is like some days.

i did find a card you were going to give to me in the midst of your card collection for mother's day and will place it in my journal for today. thanks sarah...for buying it and placing it there...you never knew it would touch me in the dearest way when you were no longer here. we never know what our acts will do...makes me try to live much more intentionally....with purpose and joy. trusting in the impulse to do.

everytime i visit here..it is sacred to me. like my fingers type away and my heart pours into them the words i feel.

i am grateful to have been a mom, i know many who have not been given the gift of bearing a child...and am thankful for the privilege of having her for the 28+ years. a gift. a treasure. a joy. help me my God to let that water my soul today. to rest in that. to stay there. to embrace the memories left.

i love my new ones you have also placed in my life--my new kids through rick...just are the best presents given to me. each of them is like a precious jewel that i haven't discovered the true value of yet, but will not miss exploring in the days to come. sarah would have loved knowing them and enjoying them. help me to stay present to the moment and sip the fresh glass of life you have placed before me---to not look back and live in what was...but to stay present. i will never forget, but do not want to miss today either. what a workout somedays. i need you to help me to walk this new life out well.

the day is ahead of me....things to do, write, read...quietness in my heart today. a still place to be. gentle waves today flow over my heart and mind....not the storm tossed thoughts. i need the day to be still and quieter...the days of late held too many of the other. help me to continue to heal my heart, my thoughts. help me understand that which will never make any sense, but needs to be able to have some way to accept and live.

tragedy. a word that in itself tears wide open the heart of whomever it is sent to. i have heard more tragedies in the last few years and know that the word itself is made up of shards of glass, unable to be grasped and held. i pray for all those today who are walking through a tragedy...a time of things wrecked and torn apart....please come. please touch those hearts today---please bring oil to heal. please Father.

rainy day...

2009-04-20T17:08:00.002-04:00

rainy day-lots of quietness in my heart

lots of missing you. grief is quietness sometimes with no words and wild with many words at other times...tears and then no tears.

have had tears lately---soft falling off my face, loud unspoken wails in my heart...echoing against the walls...

long time since I touched your fingers---studying the way your fingers were like mine...your nails always so well kept.

you always cracked your knuckles and I would warn you that you would be sorry for how your hands would look and i was wrong...they looked so fine, so soft and so lovely...and they were so kind and so loving. you had a soft touch. i miss it. i miss how we would hold hands always when we drove together on trips....just did...always.

well, just a few words...seem they are all inside, just have a harder time writing them here lately...but they are there.

such a long, long way home...

2009-03-31T21:20:00.004-04:00

i have completed the room...at least the things i took...there are a few things left for christopher to work with---all her art---needs to be photographed so others can make prints if they would like.

i ponder so much, so many thoughts run through my small mind...and i keep walking into the unknown...toward you Father.

it is quiet in my head. quiet and sore in my heart. i hurt. i ache. i miss.

i don't say much anymore...the words bring no different ending. no new release, no new out. no new freedom from missing.

i don't hide, i don't avoid. it just isn't the center of talking much anymore...

not that i would want it to be...but now, 18 months into this journey---it just is a long long way home. i long for heaven sometimes....just stretch myself toward the homeland.

i sometimes get lost in thought about seeing you---Father...wow. seeing your Son...wow....seeing the others...already there....just mystifies me...is more than i can ponder for too long...get so lost in the thoughts of it.

but, here we are...coming up on easter again. i am glad for this season...so refreshing of what i totally believe. i know many others don't, but i do...and i do deeply, more deeply than ever before. don't want to debate it anymore either...so guess it is settled, and maybe thought of as narrowminded. i really don't try to tell others their answers...but if they ask how and why i believe, i am more than able and full of passion to share...and just tell my story and how i can see no other path but one. just one...and that one is Jesus. so....that is that.

but...as far as this journey of moving forward and on---i have much to sort through...much to touch and feel...and savor...and remember...it isn't enough, but it is sweet.

sweet, sweet sarah c. sweet girl...my girl. miss you so...right now, the tears wash my eyes, so can't see as well what i am writing...not too painful, just the sweet tears of your mom...your mom who misses and loves you so. what a girl, what a wild child...full of life, love and passion...so full.

thanks sarah--thanks for it all.

Sweet girl, sweet memories

2009-03-25T15:10:00.002-04:00

I have now been to Sarah's room 3 times and most of the stuff is now in my garage. At least it is moved...and now to begin to go through it a bit at a time. Feels less like a place that I dread to go now. Life has moved on even if I feel like I have moved slowly in this area.

Grief is hard at times---crippling, debilitating, sufficating, like you have no arms or legs and can't move out of it.

Then other times, it feels like there is movement and softness and comfort like no other.

Then other times, it feels like so much has changed that you can't even remember the sounds of her voice...nor the other voices of the ones gone on.

I am so mixed up on those days...is better to be quiet and slow to move.

Just this week, another friend lost her 14 month old daughter---same name....Sarah. my Sarah knew the mom---and they had talked some before Sarah died and were going to be on a Koinonia weekend together, but the mom was almost ready to deliver...her Sarah...so didn't do it. Sarah-my sarah, never made it to the weekend either as she had died shortly before. This new mom said to me...."your Sarah is with my Sarah." quietness in my soul...pondering that...

such a profound thought....our Sarah's together...however that is in heaven...wow God....somehow my mind just is unable to picture that. yet there is comfort. Sweet mercy...sweet mercy.

this picture is of Sarah's room before I started, messy, but the last of the view. art, neil, cards, always projects waiting to start...such a girl.

one time done

2009-03-15T07:06:00.003-04:00

have done one time now in your room to begin to take things apart.

it feels like you God, are somehow showing me the map of how to do this.

sarah, here you are in front of a map in paris--or spain...maybe you are with christopher and he is taking this picture. it was a month before i met you in paris-for that full, wonderful week we had together before you came home.

the map for this new journey i am on now is hidden in the center of God's strong hand. he is leading ever so gently to me and christopher and all of us who love you. the journey in grief is a road with no signs, no familiar gas stations or sites you have been to before, so it takes a long time...sometimes even tracing your steps as you get locked in a repeating circle of something you can't or haven't let go of yet. i am trying to not do that too much as it totally wipes me out...so i would rather sit and ponder and stay in a place till i am ready to move on. each of us have our pace.

what got me was that somehow it made it to 18 months before i could move one thing in your room. maybe if i lived there, i could have done it sooner or differently, but this was what it was for me. i am blessed with a son in law who gives me my total time space...with no rush, no words, just walking quietly beside this mom and holding her hand...gently. he is so dear. sarah-you would be so proud. he understands and learned so much from all this. he is dear to me.

so, now it is started...and somehow for me, it is ok. i found a treasure in there---your christmas list for 07 and then found 3 things you had gotten for me...tucked away in the closet---3 pair of colored ankle socks, a mother and daughter book and some "mom" magnets....all from marshalls--Ha!!! we loved shopping there. touched me so....will love the book....

so much to still do, but will continue....it is time for me to do this.

am talking today again about you with some people who attend a journaling class with the woman who wrote about the one year update for us this last September-she was from the plain dealer. you touch so many people still. sarah.

help me talk well and tell your story well. i love talking about you...always have. wish i had some new stories to tell...miss seeing new things....just holding the old...is hard to hear people tell me new things that they are doing with their kids...but that is life, i guess...it moves on...and you are gone.

we never know how long we have, so i am glad i savored the glass of life i had with you---boy it was good. well, have to go and get ready now....

love you girl...

late again. i'm not sleeping...

2009-02-19T00:47:00.002-05:00

we had a great night-the last birthday we got to celebrate together of yours. was thinking about it--and laughed...you almost threw me into the table of older women when we tried to polka...of course we had been sipping that wine...just never knew it would be the last one.

i am up and it is late. just have nights that memories run through my mind and just smile. then my heart aches...just would love to talk to you. not too often, but often enough--i go to reach for the phone to call. then...stop. miss the casualness of what we had-wasn't hard to live life with you. i had such a good time being your mom. you were fun. you were great.

so, here i am, writing again cuz i just can't sleep. i miss you. hard to see life going on without you. hard to do this...somedays i don't know if i can. i am doing the best i can...and sometimes i don't know if i can ever take the training wheels off my heart. just didn't think i would have to do this. it is your worst fear---losing your child...then you were my only one...and that is something that would lear in the background of all the days...not close, but present fear...

now it is not a fear, just true.

heaven seems so far away today...and to hear your voice...would be nice. so many have dreamed about you and you were brilliant in light and joy--and you had such encouraging and promising words for them. i have not had any of these dreams...and wonder if i will...

i find my faith has been to lean on my Father...to lay on his hand and trust this is all true--this everlasting life faith...to know i will see you again..to just throw all of it on Him and trust. so many don't believe any of this, or some of this today---

that just makes me sad---what is their hope?

i feel restless tonight God. i have too many tears after crying so long and often...seems like too many left...

the comfort of the tears comes, but the emptyness never leaves. the loneliness is so huge...don't think it is describable. the loss is more than i can bear. i can't linger there too long---need to walk back to what is...the present...and hold fast to the new. my fingers wander the keyboard to type things that would be hard to read, and then hit delete...but the words still fill my fingers and the fight goes on...my, oh, my...this is a fight...grief work is a wrestling match. no simple words or formula. no well trod path that is well lit, no final answer that sums it up. for the ones who have traveled this path---these words ring true...for those who haven't---they just don't know...and never want to know.

i am rambling, still have lots of words in my fingers, but not making much sense...just writing and typing and it at least feels good to do that...even if not one bit of sense is made, it helps. some nights are like that....just no sense, no rest...thinkingoftheroomandwhatneedstobedone.

i need to move on this...and will.

miss you girl...miss you.

a night of words that can't find air

2009-02-11T23:23:00.002-05:00

doing grief work tonight and knowing that i need to get sarah's room done. i have put it off, moved it further ahead...it is my room to do and seems too final and so i don't do it. if i lived there, i would open the door tonight and begin...so since i don't, i will begin to prepare my heart to do it. it is time. i know it will be very difficult. it is the room of her heart and love of life. it is the best of what she and i shared--our love of unusual things, art, pens, cards, and things. she just was so alive in this room. we had such fun there and dreamed so much when we spent time there. just is hard. i wish it were something i could tuck into my heart and leave with it and store it somewhere safe---and visit there when i wanted...but know that isn't good to do. it is full of dust and lifelessness....and makes me so sad....

i miss her so. talked alot about you today at our group at church. i can talk and all---and then hours later, find that my heart is aching like a broken tooth that doesn't stop...a heart that has been disturbed and needs reset.

i wish i had words to speak about this that had sentences attached, so when rick says, "what is wrong, honey", i could speak and make sense and not have tears fall...talk like it wasn't about to crush me like that same wave that crushed my girl. seems like that will happen...overwhelmed, drowned....in the depth of it. don't have as many times that get this hard now.

got back up and hoped that typing would calm me, help me. soothe my heart, Father...hold me...help me.

it is time...have known it, have said it...then the time slips away...or do i let it, then avoid it...probably both.

so, i need to make a plan and do it...and then, when it is done...then what....ugh..that is what stops me i think part of the time---then...there will be no places that feel like her still. i don't want to be one of those people who leave a room undisturbed...i worry about people like that, and yet...now i know something more about them...how hard it is...

my heart hurts....i miss you...i have so much of living around me...sometimes even that messes with my mind...and there is this confusion that comes then. i let people read my thoughts and blog and then find myself editting myself because it is raw and then people don't know what to say or do...and there is nothing they can say or do---truly, this is my journey. you have your own......and so, i don't want to do that-stop writing, stop feeling my thoughts onto this blog...and writing and scraping the insides out so they are out and not still in. you who read--need to do your own work, your own blogging...your own finding your answers to these questions and thoughts that disturb you. don't worry for me---God has me, i will be fine...

wonder what fine means. talked to a woman today whose 32 year old son dropped dead of a heart attack and now she fears her other son will somehow die too--and i can see the fear in her eyes...that fear of how you can't stop anything from happening---and you are not in control...and your fear and worry will not do one thing to stop anything....yet will rob you of peace and joy and life. i will not let that happen, yet---feeling this stuff that comes out of nowhere, without invitation---and interrupts good days---this thing called grief...and sorrow...well, when it comes, you find that it is still not a friend nor been welcomed. i don't want to not do this thing called grief work---and yet, i do not want to deny nor repress nor all the other things we do when something awful happens---i want to cry and moan and rest and reflect and blog and journal and talk and listen and stop and go and live and breathe...and remember...and miss...and be sad...and hope someday...that i will not be so hit broadside by things...

you just are never prepared for the very unexpected thing that will bring you right to tears...and sorrow--just the simplest thing, the smallest and softest thing...a song, a way a mother holds her daughter's head, or brushes the hair from her face, or a daughter slips her arm around her mom's waist...and neither even really notice how dear and special that moment is...because...they still have one another...

help my eyes not linger and long for what is gone...and to relinguish this to you my father...

i want to remember with full joy--the wonderful life i did have with sarah. i want to savor the many things we did together. we lived. we lived well. we loved well---and i have no regrets...just wanted more. i don't get more. i get different--and i want to enjoy and savor the new wonders you have placed into my dear small hands. sometimes i think i am not up to this new adventure...maybe you think i can do it and i tell you i don't think i can.

i have 2 arms...and they love to hold and hug and will. i am blessed...and get to participate...

ok, back to the room. it is time. chris has been kind to let me pick the time. it is time...help me make a plan, help me to be brave and go. soon.

ok, the heart is beating

2009-01-30T07:20:00.003-05:00

last night we had grief group #2...and it was good....

but all night now, my heart has ached...beating, but aching.

when you talk about the losses in your life---"life losses"...it becomes very apparent quickly that we are walking a journey of change and loss...gain and loss...

and to hear all the stories of other's pains and losses...well...it just makes me plain and simple....very sad...and mad and sad...

my heart ached last night for the hollowness i saw in people's eyes as they describe their loss and pain..and even as i heard my own voice share...

and it will not stop in this life...the losses we feel or experience. that makes me want to puke. it is real work to be optimistic about anything...for you never know for whom the bell will toll....

and in this area of grief, i am ok with dying myself...whenever...but hate to think about the sorrow left for others when you go.

but...my sorrow...is still very present. my heart is beating today and the words fall like marbles from my hand...

i can remember when my hand held color and joy...and sometimes even now---good colors come and i hold them tight...and try to not be afraid of losing them too. what a workout life is...and i don't remember joining this gym...at least, who would on purpose join something that would cause sorrow.

i do think that Jesus was sure glad to face and defeat death...it compelled Him as he lived. i am glad He did it..and often think about His dad--and how hard that must have been, even though He knew...but death is done...what an odd thing though...cuz we will not know till after we physically die about the resurrection and all. unless He is coming back...before we go.

anyway...i need to write and just write, not figure it out...cuz i get lost in the darkness and hardness of sarah's loss...i miss her so. i fight to live and be present, enjoy and savor...embrace and hold close...and then i can so quickly lose it all and dive into the deepest part of the sea and get so lost in it all in a quick second.

i have a sermon to finish today---about your unchangingness God--i need your help...to talk about the faith to walk without seeing...and to know this by faith...to help point to you to others who have been shipwrecked and lost hope...

you will come, you will help. i do trust you. HELD. i do feel HELD.

winter and cold

2009-01-29T16:33:00.002-05:00

this is the view outside my door...it is cold, winter...should be sleeping and hybernating i think....
seems like letters that form words that help me to write--here and in my journal are frozen to my heart.
am doing ok---moving more, working out, eating better...just not writing. will preach this weekend, so have been reading alot...is from malachi 3---the God who doesn't change...

i know you don't change...i do trust you. just wish sometimes we could see beyond the veil so i would run with joy that would be so free and full of happiness and excitement for what is ahead.

need to grease my wheels and write...i do better when i am writing...at least i feel better. need to ponder, defrost....let go of the chill of my heart. i have some things to do soon--need to clean out sarah's art room and attic at her house...and need to write about that...it is heavy on my heart. need to write so i can go do it....seems so final and necessary...and yet...too final...the last of her things she set in a certain way...yet covered in dust. chris has given me all the time i need to do this...and that is so kind....it is the part of her i shared the most...the center of our hearts where we connected...so Father...come and defrost my heart...help me write...help me to do this thing i dread...
sure miss her...is too long since i heard her voice, her laugh...felt her hand around my waist...felt her warm and hearty hug...enjoyed the moments of spontaneity and joy....planned things to do...

new season...new life, new names all around me...new challenges and new loves and joys...not that i don't love these new things...just didn't think it was time to let go of the old...and wasn't asked. that makes it hard when we aren't asked...and loss is like that...what would we ever part with if we got to say....

sarah used to love playing the "would you like to die like _____ or like _____, mom"....she would pick the worst ways you could die...and laugh and laugh cuz i would say..."those are terrible ways to die...why do you like this game???" somehow she was always talking about dying...and now she did...

it is hard now...cuz as i write, my heart is defrosting and my solid tears feel warm on my cheeks...need to write more, need to keep grieving and feeling this...

i do feel better on today. there are still moments that totally catch me off guard and i still totally fall apart...is harder today as you don't know what will trip the switch...a simple thing you may witness--a mom and daughter hugging in your view....that is the hardest still....
my empty arms for my girl...so glad we hugged so much...never missed one...always savored each one...glad to have them. can sometimes feel her close. looking forward to heaven...feeling them again...

is this worth it...to feel the warmth come back...to feel a beating heart that grieves..and feels and hurts....sometimes i really wonder...

what to do with the anger?

2009-01-08T12:15:00.002-05:00

I am pretty angry lately and know it has probably alot to do with you being gone-too soon. I find myself mad at alot of people and situations--more than I would normally be. I write alot---not so much here as I know others are reading and it is too raw sometimes for even the air to hold the words that come out.

The tears I cry even sting more---different tears than the sad ones. I have found that sad is easier than mad. Mad feels like it will tumble the day, my heart, the ones around me. Could just get an ax and chop down a forest and maybe that would help...at least all the emotions swirling inside would have an outlet that would not harm anyone---just the trees, and I love trees...so am working hard on traveling this road...

I dreamt about you the other night---no words spoken, you were just sitting behind me with your arms around me and we just were so close...I felt you---like we had done so many times before. Made me cry.

You had such an impact on my life on a minute by minute basis the full 28 years of your life. How lucky I was...and still am.

Miss you....

journey is long, hard

2008-12-27T07:03:00.002-05:00

sometimes it is just a hard road. i ache, not every day, but when the grief comes, it is deep. i ache today--and have for a few days. just the holidays probably. have thought of so many people these last days who have lost others---children, parents, spouses, friends. then i ache more. just want to go to heaven on those days...and moments and be done with grieving.

i get sick of the ache, it tries to befriend me and i never want to be its' friend. never. it is not something i have sought out--and when you begin to talk about it with someone who has not had a loss like this---i can see it in their eyes---the fear....

it is fearful to think of possibly losing your child. your spouse, your friend. each day we get up and never know if that day will bring death. we just never know. what a depressing thought--and sometimes, when i need to talk...there are less people who are there that can go that distance to hear your heart. God is kind and I have been fortunate to have places to do that deep work of the grief heart.

Grief is brutal, total, devastating...deep, destructive, angry waves that kill...crush...break noses and bones and crush skulls...that is my journey. it is one i need to write about or i lose my mind at times...visiting that truth of the horror that happened in the most beautiful of lands. HOW CAN THAT BE?????? i try to wrap my mind around it and try to tame the thoughts and when they come, i just hold on...and crawl into my Father's lap and stay till the sounds quiet again. I am grateful for the one's who are around to hold too---but often these come in the middle of the night, or just when you smell familiar places of memories, places that brought deep joy...and now rip your heart open...jabbing at the emptiness that is found. these thoughts used to bring such smiles and laughter--and times to talk about joys with you dear sarah.

how i miss you today--- 15 months ago you died. i can hardly believe it is that long. seems so long ago when you say 15 months, yet my heart aches like it was today. another Christmas with you gone, quiet where your voice should be. holes of air hanging empty where your laughter would fill the air. it is almost like i can see the empty bubbles floating around...with no person to attach them to any longer....

sometimes i even depress myself...then begin the long process of picking up the pieces of my heart again and shoving them into my chest to beat and live. what a workout.

i am grateful to have a strong faith that knows this is temporary...i am intense and live in deep waters...and try to limit the time there as i would need medication today...somedays that sounds tempting to take the sharp edge off the cutting edge of this...it is not good to live in this place too long...drains the joy i do have in my new marriage...can see in his eyes when he worries...and prays for me. see it in my sister's eyes...and that sorrow is there in her's too---that deep sorrow. then see Christopher's eyes...and those take me out...the hollowness that has learned to live there...

he fights to live too--and embrace his new land. we both see it in each other's eyes and that sometimes is too much.

God--help this new year bring more healing to the hearts that have lost...my heart, Christopher's heart, Sarah's dear family and friends. help us to have a song in our heart again--and joy of knowing our homeland is still within sight...and it is not here....it is with you...where death is no more and tears are no more....and light is going to shut out darkness...and we will be with YOU.

help the coming year bring more freedom to live and love...and less fear. I WILL NOT LIVE AN UNLIVED LIFE. I WILL NOT GIVE UP. I WILL NOT DESPAIR. I WILL EMBRACE THIS JOURNEY AND LOVE WELL.

as the year draws to a close...

2008-12-19T06:40:00.003-05:00

it has been a sweet time these last days. i have been remembering years gone by, of our times of preparing Christmas and presents and candy and cookies. you loved getting ready. i can remember having the craft table up in the living room for weeks as we painted and assembled the gifts we would make. we would head early to Amish country to our favorite stores for ideas to make and then buy more than we ever needed or could make--to then spend the time putting the things together. if i heard you say it once, you said it a thousand times, "mom--buy it---I am sick of you looking all these things over and then saying you can make it cheaper!!" I would laugh, and even do it on purpose just to get you going on saying it again...ahahhahahaha
such fun i always had with you dear, dear Sarah C.
now it is a new season....in a new land i have never walked before. i deliberately look ahead...not often behind...to see the new scenery, new people, new places i am going to. it takes alot of energy---and it is not a time when i have alot of energy. God---you are stretching me and my heart in ways i am unfamiliar with. i have not walked this journey ever before. i need you so much--in each moment. i feel your strong hand in mine. my tears often are held in my heart, till they spill at unusual times. the further you walk in the new land of sorrow---but life abundant, you find yourself caught by so much you can hardly assimilate it all to make any sense of it. it is like a huge puzzle with so many pieces...and takes time and intentionality to put the pieces in the right place. i feel like i am trying to find the edges first so will know the boundaries of this new place...
are there any?
i really wonder...
seems like the wonder of heaven is in this place...
seems like sometimes i can feel the air of that new place with a brush of my hand...
feels like i feel YOUR presence Father closer than ever...
like i am walking in this new land, just have no eyes to see it yet...
maybe that is what will happen in the years to come...my eyesight will begin to adjust to what my spirit feels at times...and will see for real.

i have a hope welling up in me...an excitement of this journey...that will last for all times....
and to see the ones gone on before...
to live with more freeness than before...
to hold fast...
to not give up....
to love better....
to live more fully...
to embrace this day, this life, this man, all of it...

a new year ahead....help me to dream more again...
to have the energy to live more, to not be so discombobulated in my mind...now that is a word to see in print.

to have confidence in YOU Lord.
to reflect you in all i do and am.
to allow others to see that the worst thing cannot take your heart out of life.
that my heart still beats and has hope...even though...
help me.
help us.
heal me.
heal us.
breathe life again Lord...over the areas of sadness...of the loss

you are near...

time to write...time to ponder....

2008-12-01T16:29:00.002-05:00

Is Dec. 1 of 2008....only 30 more days left of another year. I just can hardly believe how fast time goes at times. It is time to write and put together the words that will make up Year 5-Life at Sea, Stay the Course.

Staying---means to keep to the path...the one carved out for you by the hand of God. His road, his direction. To stay means not laying down...not quitting..not giving up. It is more than we can do on our own strength. It means leaning and recieving from the ones around you on the path. For me...today I am grateful...for all the ones on this path..the new ones I have met along this journey---this year and last especially have impacted me in such profound and deep ways. The ones I would never have met had I not lost my dear Sarah. If she stayed, I would not have walked this way...but this is the path carved out and is mine.

Today brings a joy to this journey that I would not have expected. A deep sense of wonder and majesty---to touch the souls of others who have also lost and have a new language that is filled with words not ever spoken before. Eyes full of a sadness and depth that can quickly fill with tears and you can get lost in their depths. Yet--full of hope and love for life in new ways never explored before.

Holding on lightly yet fully to all that is left...and tasting slowly the new and enjoying the flavors of new friends and loves. Almost exploding with a deep sense of gratitude for the gift of a new moment...seeing the moments with a new sense of wonder and grace. Seeing the things you have done before with new eyes and sensing colors new.

This probably doesn't make too much sense...I find myself writing as the words fall from my fingers. I am deeply in grief still...missing Sarah more and more, yet releasing her more and more...just amazes me. If I don't release her and let go...it starts to pull me under...and there is no air nor life there...it is a frightening place...a place of deep agony and takes all my energy to not diminish....

but life...it beckons me to come and breath and see and taste and feel and wrap my arms around what remains--and to savor...and slip and dance, and laugh and spin and drink fully .....

I see another year ahead---full of what I wonder? I want to live as though...intentional, on purpose, fully....glorious...joyful...remembering...looking forward to the Lights of the City---and knowing someday...and never know when that someday will come...I will go home...and there will be for all time...with no more sorrow, no more death, no more pain, no more tears...no more...just fully home....EMBRACED.

This is what it means to be held

2008-11-20T12:15:00.003-05:00

just added this new song in the profile. my sister has sent it to me a few times...it is the place to be. Held.

Held by the Father. no other place to be.

Sarah gone and would have been 30 yesterday, a tender day. so many around with so much love. grateful...glad.

sad...missing her.

held....held....held.

grateful.

significant week in my life

2008-11-17T11:48:00.003-05:00

just a year ago tomorrow---11/18 i got ordained. here is the picture of the loving and wonderful community who came from many miles and near to support what they saw God doing in my life. it was a day of seeing for me-what i had felt God doing for many years. i still am awed at this.

i am awed that God does things in seasons when we are feeling the least of having anything to offer. it is almost like He does it that way to give only the glory to Himself. that is cool---because we sure love to take credit for anything...at least i have...

this week is also sarah's birthday. what a wonderful gift that God gave to me for 28 years. she would have been 30 this year. now is celebrating--if they do that---her 2nd birthday in her home in heaven...wonder how and if it has any significance....your earth birthday? probably not... but i do celebrate her life, her impact...the memories.

it is also the first day that rick called me...almost a gift from her, from God to me...on her birthday...and what a gift he is to me. i can't even believe myself how dear he is to me....just feel like the e-marmony commercial---my soulmate, my lover, my friend...my companion...and it is truly a God gift. from almost the first conversation---we both knew....amazing, isn't it.

sometimes we have significant days in our lives....significant weeks...almost like milemarkers for us. this is one of those weeks for me. it will be Sheryl's birthday (Rick's former wife) tomorrow too---she has been gone for 3 birthdays now. She is fully living in the kingdom too. We both have our significant ones' in heaven---they are probably having the time of their life too! Both she and Sarah...somehow...can see them both laughing and delighted. Heaven blows me away...is more than I could EVER imagine...makes me smile. makes me long for the Homeland...and seeing our dear Jesus....and Father....

in the meantime....to keep on, pressing on, staying the course...being faithful, loving others, forgiving...becoming more like Him.

sitting in the rain....

2008-11-12T09:43:00.003-05:00

can still remember standing inside watching you sitting on Bob and Thom's wobbly dock taking pictures through the slots of the water...quietly staying there for quite awhile--in the rain.
this was just not too long before you left us...and i was seeing such a beauty in your spirit---a true peace with life. even in the midst of much craziness that you were in with going to part-time at work, school going on---loving that man of yours....you still took time to be still....to see the world and the beauty in it. you were soaking wet when you came in....

i even remember that you walked right through their screen door on your way out one of the times---and you and Barb had to put it back together again....we laughed so hard...what a girl....
sometimes i wonder what your entrance into heaven was like....wonder many things....

you had a way of seeing things all around you, capturing beauty, bringing beauty into relationships with all who you knew. i loved that about you...and find it a sore empty spot now.

you did teach us all about living while you lived it out in front of us. thanks Sarah....
i loved to watch you live....and did so every day of your life....can still remember the first time i saw you and they handed you to me...you laid on my chest for the next 4 days between feedings...wouldn't let them take you away---was so glad you were finally here. such a joy, having you as my baby....a miracle i never thought i would have....
so glad to have had you---God was so kind to me....gave me you. let me be your mom...loved being your mom. still am your mom. that is something to hang on to when it feels like it has been so long since i heard you say my name....
and boy did you say it always with passion--especially when you were needing something----loudly!!! MOM!!!!!!!
when you were little you decided to call me "ma" for a season--and i didn't like that...sounds twangy and awful....but that didn't stop you----so had to bear that season out till you went back to "mom". then of course...there were always the times that only "MOTHER" worked for you...and that also had your passion and tone mixed in it...and indignation...and frustration....especially when i wasn't totally available when you needed me to be....which was everytime you needed me!!! :o)
all in all....hearing you say mom was the best thing i ever heard from you....
i still have 5 voice mails...and listen probably too often...just to hear you say "hi mom"....and "i love you mom".

miss those things....miss you.....

last birthday we celebrated together

2008-11-11T08:23:00.004-05:00

here we were-the "yowell girls" celebrating my birthday before you went to heaven. Now the 3 of us will celebrate what would have been your 30th birthday....but is now onto your 2nd year in heaven. oh my...how the season has changed.

miss you like crazy-every day to find full and wonderful reasons to live with you gone. it is a fight on days like these of late. aching in my heart. longings... talked to christopher and he is the same way...and so are the others who loved you so. we just miss you, miss your presence.

who gets grief anyhow? Rick and i talk about the gift of grief...and i am trying so to understand how this is a gift...but somehow it is...and will continue to be a gift in the remaining years of life---or days, or whatever i have. sometimes i want to just quietly still come to heaven...but know it is just my grief...just the tiredness of walking out this new landscape that i have no map for...and the food is tasteless...

held

2008-11-06T10:45:00.002-05:00

held close....so glad I did.

always we held close.

always we lingered together to talk and to hold on. we lost so many things in our years--and we learned totreasure one another...had the hard talks, deep talks, treasured shared words.

I now hold your memories like this picture is held. held close to my heart.

i do love my life now-love my new journey. God has been so kind to me--to bring such fullness in this place of loss of you. I wish we could laugh and talk about the joy of this season I find myself in. You would be glad--I know it!

Reading Lament for a Son again. Read it about 10 years ago--this man lost his 25 year old son and I remember reading his deep sorrow and now as I read it again...find myself seeing words and phrases that touch me in the deep place where other words are lifeless.

the loss of your child is so hard to describe in any words that make sense. let alone your only child...and best of friend. yet--in this place---i find joy. joy of having known you, my dear Sarah. don't want to live afraid, to guard my heart, to not love as deeply if not even more deeply---because now, i do know what it costs to love and lose someone you love and loves you too. i would rather love and lose than never love at all---or to love small---or carefully or guarded....

God--help me to keep on this path that often is so misty and treacherous...and costly and lonely and hard and agony. today as i look at the bluest of skies with the yellowist leaves framed against it over the soft and waveless lake---i am full of a beauty in my soul...one that knows what it is like to see it dark and full of angry clouds and stormy winds that chill you to the inside of your bones. let me drink in this day--this gorgeous day---keep the storm clouds at bay today. i am going away for 2 days with my dear husband--to savor time set apart for us...to pray and seek you Father for your direction for our life in you.

grief is fickle--and greedy--and wants to eat and erode the moments of joy--to steal the colors out of the day. it stays close--waiting to be found in a song or a tune that catches you off guard--to sneak in and tumble your heart...tackle you from behind...trip your footing, crash you to the floor. I will keep my eyes on you Father---locked on your eyes...fixing my eyes on you...

lonely looking sky, lonely looking sky....

2008-11-04T06:41:00.003-05:00

neil diamond's songs sing to me in the night hours....haunting my heart. it is a long night when sleep doesn't come. the quietness of flying in the air to lift one's heart above the sorrow seems to be a way to do it...to find the air current of hope and ride it as long as you can.

last night was a long night. thinking of the years gone by, of your birthday's and celebrations. we would be deep into it by now--what cake you wanted, what gifts, what friends to come and celebrate.

you always loved celebrations. you loved to make my birthday so special too...just can see your smile, hear your joy in your voice. see your determination to make it be the best one yet.

we will celebrate your 30th too dear Sarah. we will probably go to debonne' again and toast to the many "sarah-stories" and cry and laugh. somehow i often think you are watching to see if we remember how to make it that special...

i wonder too about the celebration of entering heaven--will you be on the planning committee. somehow, if there is such a thing...or maybe you will even convince God to let you start a new tradition there...to have such an event. i can only imagine the homecoming...ha! brings a smile to my face...seems like my face notices because i don't smile as often anymore.

i want to live life in that deep trust that you are so full of heaven and all it offers. i want to know this in my deep soul...and live with hope that shines from me to others. just one more time to run my fingers through your hair and sing a song, to kiss that "special place" between your eyes---that place i have kissed all the days of your life since the first time you were placed in my arms. that will be where i kiss you again when we meet. another smile...

thanks sarah...so being the dearest thing to me...for making this mom's heart so full, even now...with you gone. i have been so blessed to have you. my dearest friend. little did i know how short it would be...

God, please help to carry this deep sorrow...please help me. please help all of us...

where have all the flowers gone.

2008-11-03T11:02:00.003-05:00

feels like my soul is like this tree today. where did the leaves go that brought protection from the winds of sorrow and cold. i ache lately. the longer it goes, there are then days that seem like it will be endless---the ache.

i try to stay in the present moment and on times like this, it is like it takes all my energy to do that. more words that are full of my feelings go into the paper of my journal than here...sometimes afraid to write the truth of my journey here. then may hear words about--"why isn't she doing better?" and things like that. then i remember this blog is mine and needs to have freedom to write what i need to write here, and no one ever needs to read it nor comment.

the air seems heavy and difficult to breathe in when i get to this place. seems thick. seems murky and hard to use. my chest seems to have trouble to handle it, hard to make it rise and fall with the breath i take. ache. here it is november...and you would have been 30. we talked so about this birthday and the bash it was going to be.

i found a sheet yesterday with the plans on it that we talked about for your baby shower i would have for you---all the things you wanted to have at it....ugh...read it about 10 times...then closed the small book it was written in---and put it away. didn't throw it away---thought about it...why ever read it again...didn't seem ready to do it yet.

want to be better...not hurt so much...but how can it be that way when it is so final.

the trees teach me about seasons and that a new season is ahead...and new leaves will come and bring life to this aching soul of mine...and i think they will be more beautiful than ever before...and will have a color of green never seen. the shape will even have softer edges...not so sharp. i hope i do better next season...don't think i can ever lose so great a treasure ever again while i breathe this life. hope not...but you just never know, do you?

moving forward

2008-10-16T18:52:00.002-04:00

Today is sometime since I have written...not that there are not many words in my heart to put here...it is just hard to do somedays. It is like the handle on the pump to get them flowing is stuck--needs greased.
I am trying to move forward. Today is a good day, but to tell the truth...it was just a week ago I thought about being committed...so just will not put all my eggs in one basket yet....

loss....grief....emptiness....aloneness, loss of dreams, loss of the future you thought was coming. New players, new people, new names, new journeys...it is amazing and also is so beyond your ability to process when tired.

I have learned to be very careful not to do too much on one day. To conserve, to take care. I am not able to be all I was...maybe I wasn't to be anymore anyway. It is hard to say as where I was and who I was is never to be again either. It is new-a new land. Someone prayed over me about 6 months ago and said the painting of my life up to that moment was done. The canvas was lifted off the frame and was now sitting on the floor---completed. Not one more brush of the paint to alter it would ever happen again. But Jesus had lifted a brand new canvas and set it on the easel...and he held in his hands a palatte full of paints--waiting to start this new painting--he was excited and intent...and I would see it beginning.

i have seen the strokes of His brush and felt the colors coming on me. i have felt the closeness of His gaze on me-intent on what and where He would be creating. He is not randomly brushing here and there--but it is deliberate. I feel His presence...I feel His touch. Sometimes I see His tears as He knows the colors are hard at times for me to embrace...the colors of sorrow...but I see the colors on the pallate and they tell me Joy will be coming and becoming part of what He is making of me in this new land. I trust you Father...you are good to me, kind to me. I am learning much in this new land. Help me stay the course, catch the wind, set my rudder to hold fast. I do not want to miss this journey...

hard week

2008-10-05T18:28:00.002-04:00

This was sent to me by Michell today--and she was a dear, dear friend of Sarah's. Just one of the many who miss her daily. We have met-many of us--and connected this last weekend to remember Sarah and her impact on our lives.

It was a very hard week for me after this weekend of remembering her. Just get to this place of such despair and deep sorrow. I got many emails from people who read the article and also so many hugs...and am so blessed...but in the midst...there is this place that became so raw again--aching--aching...so hard.

I am better today-thought I should write all week...but didn't...but the place I was and can still see just off to the side of me---is so wordless...no way to describe it...just can't believe it, can't wrap my little frail hands around it. I want to scream out loud---THIS CAN NOT BE TRUE.

ugh...that becomes one of my favorite words....ugh...a groan that is so deep....a language of only deep grief...

In that place, only God can come---and help. I laid in His strong hand often this week...with tears coming from all parts of me---it felt like my body cried....not just my eyes...like every part of me missed her. This writing is good--enjoy!

October 3, 2008Fresh and UnfixedThere Is Only Now
It can be easy for us to walk through the world and our lives without really being present. While dwelling on the past and living for the future are common pastimes, it is physically impossible to live anywhere but the present moment. We cannot step out our front door and take a left turn to May of last year, any more than we can take a right turn to December 2010. Nevertheless, we can easily miss the future we are waiting for as it becomes the now we are too busy to pay attention to. We then spend the rest of our time playing “catch up” to the moment that we just let pass by. During moments like these, it is important to remember that there is only Now. In order to feel more at home in the present moment, it is important to try to stay aware, open, and receptive. Being in the present moment requires our full attention so that we are fully awake to experience it. When we are fully present, our minds do not wander. We are focused on what is going on right now, rather than thinking about what just happened or worrying about what is going to happen next. Being present lets us experience each moment in our lives in a way that cannot be fully lived through memory or fantasy. When we begin to corral our attention into the present moment, it can be almost overwhelming to be here. There is a state of stillness that has to happen that can take some getting used to, and the mind chatter that so often gets us into our heads and out of the present moment doesn’t have as much to do. We may feel a lack of control because we aren’t busy planning our next move, assessing our current situation, or anticipating the future. Instead, being present requires that we be flexible, creative, attentive, and spontaneous. Each present moment is completely new, and nothing like it has happened or will ever happen again. As you move through your day, remember to stay present in each moment. In doing so, you will live your life without having to wait for the future or yearn for the past. Life happens to us when we happen to life in the Now.

Year 2 begins....

2008-09-30T14:05:00.002-04:00

year 2 begins...and grief in some ways feels like a weight that has become a part of me like it is knit into my skin. i have had many emails and comments to posts since the article came out...and so many people have lost dearly. life is hard...plain hard...
i feel tired...like running a race of grief all year and have finished the first lap. ugh...and just to find out that there is another lap to begin...God help us all with the race of life..and losing...we so need you and each other. boy, do we need each other.

this is a picture Paula sent from Italy, where Sarah died--the day of her anniversary. She went and sat and visited this place for all of us who could not be there that day. How kind...how good. we all need one another.....
thank you to all of you---and to my dear husband too...

a full year now--another begins.

2008-09-28T13:09:00.002-04:00

couldn't have put together a better tribute and day to remember you---so many who loved you and came to touch the place you so loved and to be part of releasing your ashes to the water's you loved so well and the beach you spent so much time on. just is a tribute to you today and to the grand goodness of God to bring a beauty out of the tragedy.

the article was in the Plain dealer also on Saturday--you can go to cleveland.com/religion to see it. so much to thank God for--so much to ponder...so much to just sit in and wonder still what the heck just happened...

God--please help us all to continue to walk out this precious, most precious of life---moment by moment...embracing one another, sipping the full glass of the moments you give to each of us...to look up, not down...to hope and not despair...please help us.

miss my girl...miss her so...such a girl.

closer

2008-09-25T21:52:00.002-04:00

getting closer to the year date of your death. spent the afternoon on the beach and writing in my journal and reading all the entries from last year at this time. I didn't talk with you on the phone ever again after the 19th...ugh...
you called me so many times that day as we drove to the airport--even when we landed in NY-talked and talked...didn't know it was the last...
still have your messages on my phone---love to hear your lighthearted laugh and encouraging words..and hearing you call me mom. didn't know how much that word would be missed. never to be called mom again by you in life. don't know what heaven will mean for how we will relate...is such a mystery to me about the spiritual life we will live...it will be grander than I can imagine...but for this minute...i am sad to not be hearing you say it again...or even MOTHER!!! You loved to say that when you wanted my attention NOW. When you were serious...or just frustrated with me not paying attention to you at that minute! LOL
Sarah, you were the best. I miss you more than words can say---can't figure out how to arrange enough words out of letters to say it all. Loved it, loved our time...all of it. reread the journal of last year. wow---was pretty broken, pretty sad, pretty defeated...overwhelmed in grief...
am better now---try to stay away from the black hole of grief, doesn't mean I miss you less...and all...just is better...life is better...but miss you the same...that probably won't ever change...miss hearing you, being with you--dreaming with you, playing with you, laughing with you...all of it...will always be a big empty place...no one can fill it. life does move on....have to keep moving...keep believing...keep hoping in some great place called heaven where no more tears, no more death...no more of this yuck of life and death...we were never made to understand nor cope with death...I just can't do it...can't ever figure out how to...
unless you lose the dearest thing---you don't know what I am talking about---you just don't, so don't try to get it...it just is impossible to imagine...
Treasure it all---love life...live it, savor it....don't wait to have it come to you---go for it...hug it tight, but it still is never yours...we just get to be part of it, never owning it or possessing it. just is the facts of it all. it still is good---just isn't yours.

in place for the one year....

2008-09-23T10:30:00.002-04:00

here it is...the final plaque in place. to remember our dear sarah. sometimes i try to understand why it is so far away, so hard to go to...but it also is as right as can be---for she would love to be really---cuz it is so beautiful and romantic and just the most dazzling place. i live there too somedays--my spirit feels the wind and sun and hears the surf. i feel her...i sense her...and can almost hear her voice laughing like the gulls...
heaven is coming and it looks better than i ever imagined it to be...and i long for home. but the course of life is still the chart held in my hands. i know that i have been compelled to continue to speak truth and hope and light and life into people. i only can do that because of you, my dear Father. You have filled me with this compelling force to not settle to live small, nor afraid, nor under the heavy weight of sorrow and grief. I will not wear these grave clothes for all days. I will not walk as though there is no future kingdom and no future glory. i will run this race-with perserverance and smile at the wind. I will continue to look forward with expectant eyes to see You, my Father---and run into your arms and be finally home...and then to also see the ones gone on before...and to laugh and eat and celebrate for the remainder of all eternity...wow....

on this dear week of her death--Sarah's so unexpected and untimely death that sucked all our breaths away and caused us all to droop and fall and crumble....help us all Father. We don't want to live here...we want to embrace one another and celebrate the 28 years we had with that wild child you gave me....the one filled with such passion and daring to live each moment with gusto. I love that she did that. I want to keep doing it too---to laugh from the bottom of my belly---to drink the whole glass of life. I want to savor and swallow the beauty in the midst of this great sorrow. It is the greatest sorrow I have wandered through...it is the hardest and most difficult road I have ever walked. I want to lay down on some days and just cry till my eyes run dry...but they never do---there are so many tears inside of me...and then I remember you catch them all, you save them all...you created them. you made them to bring relief in the sorrow...and sometimes even sleep---rest when done. You are so amazing God--so Big, so Kind, So Loving. I am blessed.

almost a year....

2008-09-18T19:56:00.003-04:00

Those without wings

Bounded to the sky

With blue thin thread

Wepoor toys

we love each other

So what the seagull have wings?

and have memories

When the same..Sad

somewhere

on a foreign shore

and forgotten

We poor toys...

we die..

People ask me where I find these photos--and the words above are the translation....

I feel blessed to find them..they help me to find the heart of my sorrow on some days. I am full right now--of anticipation of next week...the one year anniversary of dear Sarah's death.

Everyone is asking...."How are you?" I don't know what to say, but answer...Fine...but deep in my heart...just have sadness. I want to begin to live better...it has been a very long year. I can hardly believe that it has been now a full year since I heard your voice talking to me for real on the phone...as we didn't take our phones on our trips....thinking it would be a bother to try to keep them charged in a foreign land.......

soooo, I still have your voice messages stored on my phone and listen to you sing happy birthday for 2 different years and other sweet messages I saved...and that helps.

Moving on in grief is a wild journey-and so original for each of the ones traveling their assigned road. I have been so blessed with many walking with me-and a sweet and tender husband now too. Yet...it is so solitary...the ache in your heart that stays just like the beat of your heart....just a part of the life of grief. tears that have carved a path in your face from the familiar road they travel. the sadness that you fight to keep from weighing you down every day...keeping you on some days from being able to take full breaths...and causing you to stoop and not see as well.

I am working hard to lift my head up these days....to see...to see the life all around me.

But just do miss you my girl. So many do...you touched many...loved many...

how can you really be so gone? Just so gone.

summer is ending and fall is coming

2008-09-02T09:12:00.002-04:00

fall is coming and with that...the first anniversary of Sarah's death on 9-27-07.

It is like a sunset---seems like it takes the sun forever to get to the horizon and then in the last 1/2 hour---it goes so fast that you want to slow it down to watch the splendor of it. Then once down...the glorious afterglow of the sun just melts you away.

losing someone is like that---you see it ending and want to slow it down...move the sun back up into the sky...but you can't. and then the sun slips away. at this point you could walk away and miss the glorious afterglow of the sun...many people do--they leave the beach before seeing the show of the colors as the sun has gone away...

i am in the season of seeing the afterglow of Sarah and her impact on life itself as well as those she touched. many are still having a very hard time with her gone...even having trouble with how to move on---and how can anyone close to her move on....but life is like that...

i don't always get it...and if i am not careful...i can not understand how others do it in their own situation. i have learned a big lesson in this experience...life isn't what you think for others. how much do i really know about what it is like to walk in their shoes...their pain, their daily life. NOTHING. help me to be so careful to not judge, not criticize, not condemn, not try to figure out how someone should do it for them....

grief has colored life in a new way for me. seems like i see in a broader way than ever before. i have patience and grace for others....

i also understand how terribly over life is when someone dies abruptly and that they are no longer there---not for just that day...but for all the rest of the days on this earth...forever. it is a big word...forever. i have learned to look to heaven for a great hope like never before either....and am thankful for that. it is more than i could imagine..and keeps me wanting to live more fully because it is there--heaven is to follow this life and how full do I want to live here till i go there? i want it all fully here--to embrace what is before me, i want all the ones who also loved Sarah to have life in fullness here too--to live well. She and I believed that with all our hearts...and she wanted that for all of us...we talked about death alot....even planned our funerals on my birthday last summer with her and Marty and Kim when at Brios for dinner. what a girl. she probably has more to do with all that is happening to bring full life to me and others...don't get it, don't understand it...but feel deep in my heart that it is true.

help others God to heal. Help them to see the good in life and moving on...to trust. to see more clearly what is the goodness of living in great loss. i guess if you haven't lost greatly and abruptly---you can't know. it just changes everything...and you either live...or you don't.

life is hard enough...then there are those who make it harder....

2008-08-29T14:49:00.003-04:00

In the midst of life--there is enough of the hard stuff and then along comes people who can make it even harder by just causing things to unravel because of their own distortions of seeing things.

I am mad...mad that instead of believing in the goodness--people chose to see things through limited filters and then speak of these as though they are true and then make it look as though something that is---isn't and that it is something else that would be evil or wrong.

God-help me to trust you--not in man or womankind. I am so disappointed today--life is hard enough---the rules that seem to help us walk in a certain way---sometimes become a noose that hangs us all.

It has been a very hard year---more hard than even words can describe and then someone can say something to cause more harm---and cause things that are trying to ravel into order again to unravel.

I am so disappointed sometimes in people. Ugh. Help me not to be bitter, help me not to doubt what I know as true. Help people be more careful...to not speak without knowing....gossip...so ugly, causes so much harm...wounds deeply---

2008-08-21T10:08:00.002-04:00

A gorilla at a zoo in the German city of Muenster is refusing to let go of her dead baby's body several days after it died of unknown causes.

The gorilla at a German zoo has been carrying around her dead baby since he died last week.

Allwetter Zoo spokeswoman Ilona Zuehlke says the 3-month-old male baby died on Saturday but its 11-year-old mother continues to carry its body around. Zuehlke says such behavior is not uncommon to gorillas.
Zuehlke says the mother "is mourning and must say goodbye." The mother gorilla is named Gana.
Signs were posted near Gana's enclosure Wednesday to explain the situation to visitors. A staff member is also present to answer questions.
The baby was named Claudio and was Gana's second baby. She had a female baby in 2007 that now lives at the Stuttgart Zoo.

Tiffany sent this to me last night---amazing---even mother gorilla's have a deep sense of loss and how to release and let go....such sorrow. Such loss....

emptiness

2008-08-20T19:48:00.004-04:00

There is a place that is just empty. Like something has been cut out, taken away...

right out of my life, my heart.

The one year anniversary of Sarah's death is coming in just over one month and it feels like years at times...and like it was just yesterday at other times.

So much has happened in this year---I can't even catch my breath. I feel fuzzy most of the time...need alot of rest, need alot of time to be still, to be quiet. Need to make sure to let this emptiness start to be filled back up again. I wonder if that will ever happen. I wonder if it will be something I will ever know.

Sometimes it is very hard to be so far away from Italy and not being able to go to the place she died and just be there. It was good to be there, but I want to go more often than I can because I live here.

oh well..enough. Sarah...my dear girl...just missing you today. Nothing new about that...just trying to learn to live this life without your daily presence. It is hard.

Released and Receiving...2 big words

2008-08-18T22:17:00.005-04:00

I am in the midst of a big thing, and I know this for sure. I believe that God is teaching me something that will be forever altering me inside. I am undone most of the time, but beginning to see His hand bringing the image out of me---like Michaelangelo brought life out of a dead piece of marble so many times. We saw marble that he had started while in Rome--and it was incredible--also saw some in Florence--and to see the images beginning to take shape out of a square piece of marble is something to behold.
That is what I feel like so often now. God is doing something very new, very big in me. I have not been here before. I have to release things---from my heart and mind and soul---to clear the way to receive the new. To on purpose and with surrender---let go. Many things have changed in these last 11 months. I woke to a whole new scenery, new landscape---the players changed dramatically...and not at all in a bad way, just in a way that feels like I was abducted and moved to a whole new identity...or like one of those television shows about the guy who is given a new identity to protect himself...but I didn't get a new identity really---just many things changed....job, family members left and new ones showed up...roles changed---on and on...
so, here I am...given this incredible choice----to release the hopes and dreams and all to a loving and caring God--the ones which will break my heart if I don't. I was watching Master and Commander 2 days ago---and at one point, part of the mast breaks off when they are in furious seas---and a man fell in too with this and it was all still attached--and it began to pull the whole ship down into the sea---to kill all on board. The captain played by Russell Crowe had to decide to cut the mast loose--or lose the ship...and he did...he let the man and the broken mast go---
Odd....but we all have choices like this sometimes---and I feel like it is time to release...on purpose, with freedom---and then receive...with joy and love and gratefulness---the gifts the Father is giving to me. Now, don't get me wrong---this is not at all easy--and I know I will be doing this with a soberness and an alertness in the days to come as I have a very fickle mind that so easily falls into the rut of remembering...and staying there---sometimes too long...and then I have been sucked into the vat of sorrow, sticky and hard to get released from...so that is what I am learning. Learning is not easy, nor have I done too well on some days.
Do I miss you...yes....so much...so much. Dear Sarah...You are one of a kind...my dear one... my dear daughter...my loving and best friend. I so know in my heart that you are soaring like never before and never could have in this life...that heaven holds fullness and wonder and full joy for you. I am needed here right now---God has called me to love and be part of a wonderful family---and I love them. I will see you again. They will meet you too and I will be glad to have that to happen...as you would have loved to be part of them too. I know that.

This last picture is of us on the Walk of Amore-toasting to life...to fullness and richness. I was taught by many there of the fierceness of life, the hardness...and also the need to press on. I have learned many things before...and never knew it was so hard to then do it. Learning is one thing...doing is another. I am trusting in my Father to help. I am blessed with a wonderful man who is walking alongside too and good friends and family. I am rich. Thank you God.

Home now...or is italy home

2008-08-02T20:06:00.003-04:00

Images of the ceremony while we were in Manarola, Cinque Terra. You are welcome to visit myspace page to see the rest of them. http://www.myspace.com/truenorth78

still no words, so much swirling in my heart. it will take a long time to process the absolute beauty of our time there and the wonders of the gentleness and kindness of the people who were there, embracing us, loving us.

I will write more in the days to come, but words and letters do not seem to be coming together right now---just my heart of hearts that so misses Sarah all over again. To finally see the place she lost her life was more than can simply be put on paper at this time. To touch the sea, feel the water, smell the air...it all was surreal.

Many questions were answered and healing did come in odd ways...but the realness of it all has hit home. To hear the opera singer whom the president invited to sing, "Time to say Goodbye" per Christopher's request...to get the painting I am holding in my hand from a famous artist the president commissioned to paint of Sarah's last moment...on and on...the stories are many, the generosity and humbleness of the people who loved and served us....touched our hearts so deeply...and feels like their hands and hearts are still right there with us.

The pictures above are: Chris spreading some of Sarah's ashes at the place she died. 2. Chris and I with the President Franco and his wife and 2 of the American consulate people 3. the 2 plaques done--which are now being framed to preserve them and will be hung above the spot she died at Point Bonfiglio, Manarola. The one on the right was painted by the artist who did the painting's girlfriend. 4. One of the posters which were all over the Cinque Terra of Sarah with the poems in Italian and english--and inviting all the people to the ceremony. 5. the place sarah died. it is the landing right below the walkway. The wave that hit her was at least 10 feet over her head. 6. Chris and I holding the painting while the soloist sang, "Time to say goodbye".

It is alot. Here is the link to part of the ceremony that was on their TV station running over and over during the whole week we were there.

Here is the Cinque Terre website and video news coverage of Sarah’s ceremony. Go to this link, http://www.parconazionale5terre.it/ then scroll down to "In ricordo di Sarah Scherer" and click on the video button.

That is all for now. Heart is so full. Miss her.

Sarah's eye....a star named for our girl...

2008-07-11T09:11:00.003-04:00

It is just a day before we go to the place she lost her last pair of shoes---struggling to swim and live. she had no chance to live as the injury to her head was too severe. nevertheless, we go to celebrate and commemorate her life.

christopher had a star named for her---"Sarah's eye" a while ago---and she was so touched. some nights---it is a help to know her star shines still done on all of us....

I got this email from a student Sarah went to school with for her master's in art therapy and community counseling...it is dear and the poem she included blesses me so....thank you Father for the many, many , many kind things and blessings that continue to pour over all of us in the days since Sarah left us. I am rich with love adn care and blessings. Fuller than I ever have been---at such a high cost.

"You may not recognize my email, but I was a classmate of Sarah's at Ursuline
and have been deeply touched by Sarah's gifts!
Please know that I think of you often and pray that you find peace in the memories you have with and of Sarah. She was truly a great light in this world... thank you for that gift!

Recently, I came across this poem and hope it may be of some comfort to you:

There are stars up above,
so far away we only see their light long, long after
the star itself is gone.
And so it is with people that we loved,
their memories keep shining ever brightly
though their time with us is done.
But the stars that light up the darkest night,
these are the stars that guide us,
as we live our days these are the ways
we remember, we remember.
As we live our days these days we remember,
we remember.
~ Jewish poem "

we turn to face east, the flight, the stairs...the water and waves...and to see the last place you stood...please Lord, hold us...keep us...smile on us...let us grieve well but have the eternal part of hope to help each of us live. Sarah would want that. I know.

ashes....

2008-07-10T11:16:00.002-04:00

ashes...my dear sarah's ashes...in my hand. grey, chips of bone...lifeless...all that is left of her earthly body.

our breath-christopher's and mine---taken away for the minutes after we opened the urn...and gazed for the first time.

sorrow that was deeper than any words ever to be found.

tears stinging.
never right to experience for anyone.
long journey ahead to the land that is so far away-to take some of these ashes to leave in the water that held our dear bella while her life slipped away to heaven.
good friends, good family to go with us for this next part of the journey.
didn't ask for this one.
didn't ever want to have to do this--none of us.
God. please help.

"There to wait a little while.....

2008-07-09T03:37:00.002-04:00

while rick and i were in Virginia on one of the 3 separate times for "honeymoon"...we kept driving past a cemetery and I could see this angel in the cemetery--but couldn't see what was written. on our last day there-as we were driving to leave, we stopped in for a picture of her.

i began to cry as i saw the words..."there to wait a little while".

who knows what this new world for sarah really means...is she wonderously exploring her new world, resting and waiting....i do not know...but i do know she is with her Father and is in a fullness i could never understand in my simple mind. i believe she is fully all she could ever be--and somehow sees us at times and prays too for each of us who sorely misses her.

today is another missing day of her--for me, for christopher, for friends and family. today would have been #4 anniversary...so few years were given to this beautiful couple...so many dreams never realized....so many things lost. hard to reckon this one out---it is just plain the hardest thing to continue to live and wrap your arms around.

in 3 days the group of us---the sourjouners for this leg of the journey of life will again take a plane to italy with some of sarah's ashes with us---to go back to the land she left this life---dear cinque terra-and see the people who loved her, loved us...walked with us...cried with us...felt deep sorrow for this loss with us...9 1/2 months ago. i ache, i cry to think of seeing for the first time this place where she was the "happiest of her life" only in minutes to be swept away and crashed to the rocks to slowly see her life slip to this new land of eternity--forever from our lives and joys here. never to know her new family along with never having her own family to raise. just many sorrows and regrets---

i pray dear Father--the words many have prayed for us-as we return to this dear land...

here is a prayer i received tonight from my dear friend joyce---
"I pray that you will feel the awesome presence and peace of Sarah in that place and space that she left behind. May you feel her eternal spirit soar within you and come to rest peacefully within your heart and soul forever more. I pray this celebration of her life is pleasing to the Holy Spirit, to you, to Christopher, and to all those who will come to know of her life through the dedication of this memorial. I pray that Rick may feel the presence of the daughter of his new bride and in so doing come to love her as you do. I pray that Christopher may cherish the memory for his wife forever and yet because of her, I pray he may learn to love again. I pray for you, Chris, for the peace, grace, mercy and gratitude as you release the beautiful daughter you raised to be the reflection of Christ's love in a hurting world. I pray for the country of Italy and her people who give voice and witness to Sarah's life so that others may learn of her zest for living. And for
Sarah.....I pray that this too may be "the best day of my life" as she lives on in eternity."

such a dear prayer---Father, please cover us as we travel...and may peace come, may freedom to let go and be released from the deep sorrow and tragedy come for all of us---to believe and KNOW you and the peace of her with you. thank you Father for the ones going with me, with Christopher to make this journey--they have been assigned to us for this walk and we are so grateful for each of them...we will never be the same.

sarah gave me a pillow she made a few years ago with the inscription, "I will never be the same after seeing the moon on the other side of the world." it is true----and we will never be the same, but better...fuller, richer...and holding a dear thing in our soul--for continuing to walk out the terrible loss of our dear sarah, my dear sarah c...my pumpkin noodle...my joy. my dear daughter...how I love you...how I miss you...how I look forward to seeing you in the fullness of God. I too will rejoice as I continue to settle this in my soul more and more in the days to come. thank you God for the days we had her---help each of us live in the way of moments--embracing and holding and savoring like a fine glass of wine...this dear and short life we have.

peace tonight, rest now.

56 and a whole new season of God's favor and goodness

2008-06-28T07:42:00.001-04:00

Joyful, that is what we were right then-2 joined to one for this life.

new day, a year older...a new season. A wife-a mom to 4 new children and a grandma to 10 grandchildren...and a daughter who lives in heaven now and a wonderful son in law...wonderful new parents and a new brother and sister in law I haven't met yet.

I sometimes feel like I don't live in Kansas anylonger...and I truly don't. So many things the same and so many things never to be again.

I find myself with open arms to embrace this new land, this new season...smiling, yet tears streaming down my face. A determination not to miss one thing the Father gives to me, to us.

I am grateful for 56 years of life and all the richness of the days-the wonderful things given to me by my heavenly Father. Such a kind giver of gifts.

I do miss you today Sarah. You always made my day so wonderful. I have the last 2 years of you singing to me still on my phone and later today, I will listen to you sing to me...miss you singing today---maybe you are singing from heaven~wonder how that works....know you are in my heart today--for all times.

watching life go on

2008-06-27T23:19:00.002-04:00

9 months today. i find myself watching life happen all around me. i see other mom's with their daughters, eating fast food, shopping at the grocery store, fixing their hair--simple, everyday stuff---just moving along...not aware that these are the simple things you tenderly remember when there is no more.

i remember...somehow i knew i needed to grasp each memory of us-and you as we went along---i seemed to savor them, caress them, remember them---and can still close my eyes and remember them. i can feel your hair in my hands, i remember the first time i french braided your hair-it took me forever, and you were getting so impatient--but boy it looked so beautiful! i loved doing your hair, putting it in braids, in ponytails, in pigtails--ribbons, hats--whatever. and even as a grown up girl--you still loved hats--and you wore them everywhere. Chris and I were going through your hats the other day and we found some of the most outlandish hats---What a hoot you were!! The wilder and crazier--the better---especially if you thought Chris would hate it!! And you would laugh as we bought it!! i remember when you and marty and kimmy and gram and i went to put-in-bay and tried all those hats on in that hat shop!! we laughed and cried!

well, i can laugh...but then the tears do come...the deep sorrow in my little mother's heart. i so miss you my dear girl. i miss that we don't make more memories...that i have to look into my little heart and just hold tight to the ones we got to make...there will be no more. you are my dear girl. thanks Sarah...thanks for the memories..for all the fun times...for all the great times...the laughter..the tears...the quietness, the wild and crazy times...

love you.

it is here---the day I become a madame...a mrs.

2008-06-21T07:10:00.002-04:00

wow, it is just 3 hours from now, i will join in the most mysterious way with this dear man...my husband. i know it is just a wonder in the kingdom....a mystery of God. the joining of man and woman-a reflection of the glorious kingdom of God. me---a bride...Rick, the groom.

could hardly sleep last night, such a great party after the rehearsal. so many people helping us...celebrating with us...just am awed and blessed...and so excited...soon....very soon....

thank you God.

I know you will be there.....

2008-06-20T09:04:00.000-04:00

My dear bella Sarah....I can see you standing near me...as I marry...as I commmit my life to this man. I know you have been part of this whole journey for me. I am undone right now, just under 12 hours till I commit my life to Rick.

You have touched me so over the years Sarah. I have been blessed with your friendship and love. I am so thankful for so many people here tonight....Rick's family, Christopher and friends, my family...my friends, people from the church. I have had enough merlot right now to soften my heart...to soften the edges of my sorrow...but to also remember the tears of my missing you...you...my sweet, sweet Sarah C. My sweet girl...who would be here---full of life, full of joy. I just want you to know how many people have helped--and been there for us--for me...through all of this...just to help bring the greatest joy and celebration to our wedding day. I am so excited...so full of joy....can't wait to become Mrs. Provard...just am so excited. I have the best man to be my husband. He is the dearest and kindest man I know....God--be over our day--from beginning to end. Thank you for the help of everyone--from my dear Aunt Barb, my sister....my family...my friends, his family, his friends...all of them...we are rich! We are blessed...we are so happy...so thankful....yes Lord...Yes Lord...soooooo glad. I am heading to bed. It is almost 11 and only 11 hours to go....wow God. This is cool.

where are you going, my little one, little one

2008-06-14T12:54:00.002-04:00

my little one, little one....a song sung to you all the years of your short life.

I sing it again today--along with the other songs I have sung to you.

i miss you Sarah...i miss you so much on this day, one week before my wedding. i wish you could do this with me. it is hard, sweet one--to move forward and make new memories without you in them. it seems so bittersweet...so right yet so wrong to move on...

all of us miss you so, can't wait to see you again. what do people do without the hope of heaven? I am also marrying Jesse today to dan...and you and chris would be there...again..missing you...these are your friends. so many places i would see you...and see your smile and happiness that i was doing what God has called me to do...yet, the tears come again---missing your voice and your comments and your thoughts on all of it.

again...i am grateful, for the days, minutes and years i did get to be your mom...so grateful. just the best. God please help us all, help me...help me to do this life without my girl...

life is changing

2008-06-10T23:04:00.003-04:00

Life is changing right before my eyes. I am making room in a small space for a new person to walk this journey of life with. I am amazed to be doing this. I have been single so long-I forget how to share space, room...not that I don't want to-just it will have to be with intention. I can do it when I am connecting during the day--in normal life when others are around, but now---this will be the norm--He will be here, on a daily basis and nightly basis. Wow, that is a thought-more of a constant. So that means, when I am used to being quiet or alone, I may have to speak, to explain...to share...I think I will really enjoy doing this, so that is really good. I remember when I became single, had to learn to be more independent, more able to exist solo. I even began to embrace that word-solo. I liked it...had a feeling of being myself. I will work to not lose what I have gained in these past years of living well, being authentic, fully myself. That is the part I want to bring into this new oneness--a wholeness, a person who knows her inside and her value. I bring my hands full to share with Rick. I bring a sense of living that I have discovered in these past years. I loved doing it with Sarah. How well we lived, how well we savored the days and times. I know this too is what Rick brings as he has also lost greatly. We both live intentionally, courageously, and with a great sense of discovery. We have much to explore and discover. The journey together is now just over 10 days away. God be with us in these last days we are apart--and bring excitement and joy to our last minutes that we look forward to the miracle of this covenant commitment we make together and before you.

sorting, grieving, making it neat again

2008-06-09T12:56:00.002-04:00

grief is alot like sorting clothes-straightening out your drawers--then coming back in and finding everything you thought you put away, pulled back out and hanging all over the place.

or discovering your inner room you thought was in order, all dumped out all over the place. so you begin again, picking up the first item and deciding where did that go the last time---and you can't remember...so you think...where do I want to store this, or do I really want to keep this hard memory, or has it outlived the purpose and you can actually throw it away--maybe.

then you pick up the next item--and find it is something you threw away and try to think, how in the world did it get back in here--or is it just close to what you thought you threw away. and how did everything get so messy again--and how did every drawer get overloaded again.

grief is like that--somedays, you think it is all in order...neat, orderly---each drawer makes sense. it is managable, tidy. and all of a sudden...you get slammed with one too many memories---like a rogue memory---and the explosion happens, the drawers and shelves all leap out and bend over and throw all the contents all over one another. you are lost again--hoping the life jacket of eternal hope holds while you flounder for a bit....tears blur your vision totally---and no thought is anything but wreckless and wild. no sentences make any sense. all rocks around you are too slippery to hold on, and you drift in the midst of it all....deep inside, you know it will pass...you will again have to begin the simple, yet painful process of picking up the pieces and smoothing them out one by one---folding them, gently lifting them...and placing them again in a drawer--the ones that are to stay. you begin to intentionally hold them up to your inner frame-to see if you have yet outgrown the need to keep each one--trying to find the correct amount of items and memories to take with you--to journey more light these days. the time to pick up and smooth out takes so much time and energy--so you begin to see your choice in this action--each time the contents are spilled.

wish we lived in a land that didn't have so many earthquakes, rogue waves. but we do, for now---and God help us when they hit...come and help me fold the fragile and precious pieces of my heart--and place them tenderly in place for today.

odd but it works for me

2008-06-05T23:20:00.002-04:00

I know it is an odd picture--an elephant in utero---I so remember when you were inside of me Sarah--I remember the very private relationship we had as you grew and I could feel you and we began communicating with one another--and most of the time it was so intimate and no one else even knew. You and I were so close--from the very beginning. I never thought I would have a baby--so was so thrilled and also afraid because I had such trouble carrying you. I never thought I would ever even hold you in my arms. and then..you were born. We had so many years together--so much holding and hugging and always touching, holding hands--even in these last years--while we would drive together---we would hold hands. Just always touching.

I still feel you--and know your presence in such an intimate way. You seem to be present still for me in the most intimate way.

Again tonight---you were there. We were all at the church and putting together the table stuff for the wedding and wrapping the silverware...and all of a sudden--Maggie played the song---"be" by Neil Diamond...and the others who were in front of the table moved out of the way and there before me was the most beautiful table setting with a beautiful seagull in between 2 tall candles that were to represent Rick and I. The seagull was you---and I cried...and cried...and so did Marty and others---we were all stopped for a minute or two---and your sweet spirit was present---tender, kind, touching...gentle...present...close. I felt you say---I am still here with you...I love you mom.

I love you Sarah. I miss you so--I wanted more, but didn't get more. I can't wait to see you again. I have to tell you dear girl...I am ok. I am blessed more than I deserve or know what to do with it---so much love poured out on me...the shower last Sunday blew me away--then the continued love and support through all this.

You are present. You are where we will be coming soon---not sure who is next. That always takes me out too---who is next to leave the rest of us? Death is so hard---so final, so exacting. But I try so hard to look to what follows the other side of my last breath here---and that is the first there. I am excited to come there. I also want to stay here now and experience this wonderful love and adventure. I know you see it somehow.

Just know we all love you, we miss you. I do feel you close--like somehow like when you were in utero---

I know this is sick--sorry to those who won't get this next part....but when I had my hysterectomy...because I had worked in the OR at that hospital...they brought me my uterus so I could see it. When I looked at it---they had cut it in half, so I could see the inside where you had lived. I was overcome with extreme wonder and astonishment at this small place had held the seed of you---that had been inpregnated by your dad's seed to mine..and you were the beginning of the biggest miracle in my life...and I was awed that God gave you to me and allowed my body to carry you....to allow me to be the bearer of you. I took that great honor and carried you for those 9 months...and then got the privilege to be your mom for almost 29 years. Wow, what a privilege.

So tonight---I again am amazed that I had this close moment with you again today. Maggie didn't know about the song Be, nor even what the seagull means to me, so there you were...just my girl....present. love you so....mom

beauty of the rose

2008-05-31T10:22:00.002-04:00

The rose is our picture of my new love---opening slowly.

The closed one is the picture of our upcoming wedding.

I am excited to see this rose begin to open-to see the petals and colors of this closed rose.

Such a glorious time has been this engagement period. The pedals on the open rose have been glorious and tender and sweet. I am rich beyond words in what these last months have meant to me. I have seen joy in the land of the living. I have experienced love in a manner never experienced before.

I am blessed by this love. Blessed by the rich fragrance, the glorious tenderness and gentleness of it. I am more because of it. I have loved my singleness, my time of finding myself and finding who I am. I love taking this to this relationship. The fullness of knowing me. The richness of my wholeness and what that brings to love. I am not carrying broken pieces that still have sharp edges, but taking me to present to him, and him to me.

God, I look forward with anticipation to 3 weeks from today--to see the new rose begin to open, to see the mystery of marriage. To smell the mystery of this covenant, the new land before us. To see you Father---bless this new place and to welcome both of us to our new journey together.

How blessed I am. How excited I am, how hopeful I am. Thank you Father. Thank you for this gift. Thank you for Rick.

excitement in the days ahead, carrying the tears

2008-05-29T22:15:00.002-04:00

there is joy in the days ahead. there is excitement at the joy others have for me, for us. I am excited to think that God would bring a dear man along my side at this season in my life, to journey with and discover. even in the season of loss, there is life. how can one hold both. some moments, it seems like these two blur together-and take on their own aroma. an aroma that i have not smelled before-rich, distinct. full of life and full of eternal richness.

i know i appreciate this season like i have no other before because it is so unexpected. i have learned loss and the momentaryness of life..so to savor the moments given...that will sometimes abruptly be taken away. i will not hold hard and fast, but loose and with the freedom to savor and enjoy--and not be afraid. i will not allow the loss of sarah to taint how i live today. she would be furious to learn i began to live in fear. i will not hold on and live carefully or without risk--i will enjoy and be brave, i will embrace the new, try new things, drink fully and completely--i will not take fear with me to this new land. it has not been a friend, but a foe. it has been an unwelcome traveler, one that buys it's own ticket and acts like it is your long lost companion---reminding you of things that make it seem like it belongs. it waits for the moments to sneak in and lean in close--cutting off your breath and diminishing the flame of hope. i will not welcome it--i will not. JESUS, you are my constant-you are my hope, you are the only one welcome to continue with me in this new strange land i have not gone to before. YIPPEEEEE, God i am so excited...and am still carrying tears. they fall freely and splatter sometimes all over the joy--but the colors mix to unusual and beautiful pastels---and extend beyond borders...and make their own markings and designs. i love the way they mix....and they bring a depth to my soul that has not been there ever before. God--you have been kind to teach me these things...in the midst, on this journey...you are kind. you are so my Father.

joy!!!!!

2008-05-28T11:08:00.002-04:00

Amazed that God would allow me to do a marriage. Just amazed at what He does even when we feel bankrupt and empty.

Marriage---I am getting excited to be entering soon into this wonderful land in just 24 days. Blessed to have the most wonderful man chosen for me to walk the journey with.

Wishing Sarah were there in person to celebrate--as I wished she would have been there in person for Ash and Nick's big day too...Ash missed her...but somehow I know Sarah was there in spirit. Don't get that part--just felt her there....smiling, rejoicing....glad!

I too am happy for this new marriage and the life ahead of 2 wonderful people...just thank God for their love and excitement. God bless the 2 of them in their life together.

too long

2008-05-27T22:46:00.000-04:00

Lonely for you tonight.

8 months.

miss you. ache.

empty

quiet

salty sweet days and nights

2008-05-21T23:18:00.002-04:00

just ache tonight-even as i pick a picture out for my blog, it aches. sometimes i look for the picture before i find the words. just miss you sarah. how do i say how hard it is not to be able to pick up the cell phone and call you--anytime...anywhere...we could do that and did. i wonder if i ever will delete your name, even when it is hard to scroll past it...

even in the outlook directory--your name is there. i am sure many of us wonder this too. it makes it more permanent if it gets deleted...maybe we will just thank God for you when we see it--and make it sweet instead of salty.

only 31 days right this moment till i marry. and i am trying to do this without your present help. i hate that part. i know you--oh my..you would have so many things happening if you were here. i am keeping it very simple...and many are helping--thank God---you would be happy about that. i am sure it will be so sweet and perfect. i truly am excited about the wedding...just sad...so sad you will not be there...smiling that wild ass smile that showed those beautiful white teeth!! such a smile i never see...except in my mind and memories now.

so many people miss you--they write and call and tell me. i am so blessed by their words. they help me know how real you were...your voice is quieter and harder to recall...i hate that. i often go to your myspace page just to listen to your laugh. i have 6 messages on my cell phone from you---2 birthday messages 2 years in a row...you would laugh and ask my why i would save this stuff...well...see!!! i am so glad i did....so glad i did.

i miss you my girl. i miss you so. tonight the why is on my lips again. just heard on the news that stephen curtis chapman's 5 year old daughter was killed by her brother when he backed up out of the driveway and ran over her tonight--ugh...it starts, the tragedy..the awfulness of this. i pray so for all of them tonight---from far off. just like so many prayed the moment they heard about you dying...for all of us. tragedies...ugh...so awful, so hard.

God, please hold me tonight....i just have a sore, sore mother's aching heart...needing to hold her girl. i just miss you sarah...my sarah c.

in the hand of God

2008-05-11T22:04:00.002-04:00

Here it is on Mother's day--my first one with you living now in heaven. Such a quiet and odd day today. I am blessed by so many people remembering you today and giving such love and cards and calls. I am blessed by so many wonderful friends and family...you would be so happy about that.

Yesterday was a hard day--anticipating you gone. I have met so many people who have lost someone in the last months--there is a tenderness and look in people's eyes that gives it away. I think so often about heaven and what it is like where you are? What are you doing...what do you see? Did you know Tom, our neighbor just died? Do you get to meet people as they get to heaven? I am intriqued by this thing of life after death..I know we all will find out someday, so think about it more and more now that you are gone.

You would love to meet Rick--he is just a wonderful man...I wish you were here to see how happy I am...and how wonderful he is...I just wish I had both of you. Chris called me today too--and wished me a happy mother's day---just hear it in his voice too...the missing of you.

I love this picture of you Sarah--makes me think of when you were little and that night I found you in your dad's and my bed--and we had been fighting. When I came into our room, you were there laying in our bed, just 6 years old..and I saw a glow about you--a peace was all over you--and I asked you what you were doing and you told me you were "laying in the hand of God" and I could actually see you there--and saw the peace all over you...so I still think of you there--in His hand and cared for. I can't wait to see you. I miss you, miss our memories..miss our times. I have such hope-hope in the greatest eternity...just a wonderful and wild time in the best of all places--our eternal home. It will be just great to see you--feel you, hug you. I miss you fiercely today sweet girl...love you more than words could ever say. Please give my mom a hug too today and tell her I so miss her too....and can't wait to hug her too. Love you so. mom

just goes on and on and on....

2008-04-30T06:54:00.003-04:00

head in my hands...tears fall

ache in my heart

emptyness in my stomach that is struggling to digest it all

my chest that takes small breaths...unable to take in the air of grief

a new land, one I have no map for

there is no title for a mother who has lost her child like for a person who has lost their spouse

how do you say....when they ask, "do you have any children?" sometimes it is easier to just say, "Yes, I have a daughter", and they say, that is nice. if you tell them, you had a daughter--then they look at you with that look of pain...and then you have to try to tell the story. if you tell the story, it becomes more and more painful to watch the sadness in their eyes of pain...and it goes over and over again...a new land...one I have no map for. such a difference between the have and had. we all lose...we all learn to walk this land of loss.

i am learning to walk this land, to hold the hand of the ONE who has carried me and all of us to this place of sorrow and will carry us through and onward. we do trust-with the blindness of faith, that we will press on. grateful for the love and care of the ones around that cheer us on. so many memories recently, so many things to remember her and trigger memories. new sorrow, new roads to learn. always having to trust each new one and turn over to Him who holds our hearts.

missing you, missing you, missing you.

quiet

silent

deep

endless

hard

unfair

unending

wordless

dark

looking for the light-the only light that brings hope...and reaching out to others and to You to keep on. looking forward to heaven, to eternal life. listening to angel wings, seeing and hearing with different ears for glimpses of that hope-all day long--all night long....living in a new land with no map. You are God of heaven, and here I am on earth...and I let my words be true---Jesus, I am so in love with you. And I'll stand in awe of You....and I'll let my words be true...Jesus, I am so in love with you.

Kiss my girl today.

Sweet memories

2008-04-23T14:20:00.003-04:00

Just a dear day--just home from cleaning and sorting at Christopher's house...going through Sarah's books and kitchen stuff. Tears and laughter mixed together...sweet and hard.

Funny how much we are alike--so many of the same things we would buy. Just loved shopping with her, gardening with her...anything with her.

Her spring flowers she planted last year are all up--loads of daffodils and tulips---just gorgeous. Even in the front 2 beds that never had things grow too long as the heat would take them out in the summer.

I just love touching your stuff Sarah-makes me feel close for a bit...just miss you so. Just is so long since you were here with us. So many miss you. We are trying to keep living and not just living, but living well--embracing the day, the moment--loving and living. Can't wait to see you again--love you so much. My girl.

Such a time

2008-04-18T22:57:00.002-04:00

Wow, that is all I can say on some days. Here I am with Rick--putting his house on the market to begin the move to the east for him into a brand new life. Soon I will be his wife.

So much has changed in the last 6 months, so many things that have been new. Newly engaged, newly having lost my dearest daughter and friend Sarah. Newly unemployed at my old job, but newly employed at a new job. Losses and gains....so many things have changed.

Somedays there is nothing left in the well. Nothing left to try to use to navigate how to think or respond to all of this. Sometimes I am doing seemingly ok--then something triggers the inner part of my heart that is still raked raw from the grief of the tragic loss not so long ago. Tears come quickly and hot on my cheeks. The aching is swift to fill in my heart, mixing into the joy of the days I am also in---they swirl together and make a new flavor in my spirit and heart-a taste I have never tasted before.

I wonder how all this will play out in the days and months to come---much to look forward to---looking forward to 63 days till I say "I Do", and yet...my dear Sarah will not be there in person to celebrate this most wonderful love. 63 days will also take me to a land less familiar with where I am leaving. So--in 63 days-some gets better and more joyful, and some of me leaves the land I loved so well further behind. Life is so difficult at times---to live means movement and breathing--not staying and stopping. It tugs at me to keep going. I know I will go on, I know it will never leave this mother's dear heart totally---and all the time, you remind yourself over and over---heaven is coming, you will see her again....it won't be the same, but it will make sense then...you will see her in her glorious body, not broken and decaying as you did at the end. So many images still play before my mind still too often--only not spoken out loud much any more....what to do with them...as they find themselves as reruns when you don't even know you are watching till you have played it through.

Joy--something I pray for. God, I want joy that is not just feeling it...but a well of fullness that comes from the faith of all this is so true and real--and even in the sore losses, we experience a peace that comes only from being settled...settled in to the knowledge of it is all true. I sit down in this right now---and rest my head against your shoulder. Held by you, loved by you. Yes...that is right and good. I am tired. I am going to bed.

Such dear memories

2008-04-15T22:07:00.002-04:00

My heart is tender, missing you.

remembering such sweet memories of times of togetherness, playing-laughing. Telling stories, singing songs. So many times with our feet in the sand. We have spent countless hours on the beach in our lives. Such fun.

There are days that seem to be so empty to me. It gets longer and longer since I have talked to you, yet still often think of you first when I have something new to tell or share. I ache right in the middle of my chest when I realize that you are not here then. I wonder often too what you are doing--how this eternal life really is? Life is so complex. So stretching of my belief system.

Sarah, dear Sarah. I am grateful for you in my life. I have spent so many years with you at the center of my heart. Can't think of too many things ever in the 29 years you were a part of me, that you didn't end up being thought of with all of it. Now---your life is drifting away. No matter how much I want to keep you very present, it just is not possible. I hate that, but know to keep living--I must embrace life. I know deep in my heart, that I will see you again. I so can't wait till that day happens.

Here is a prayer sent to me by Peggy Wheeler on 10/23-just less than one month after Sarah died. I think this prayer has held me fast during all these months since then. It helps me to have wild hope at when I see her again. May it bless all who read it---with fresh hope of heaven. May the salt breeze hit you in the face as your ship too turns its' last turn on your way home. May you have the hope of heaven in your heart!!

Let the stories of Sarah that we bring keep her memory fresh and let them bring healing. Allow Chris to treasure all of these things, and to slip them away for safe keeping in her heart. Let our efforts extended provide true comfort and in your timing. How I wish we all knew how to do this grief thing. Lord... this was never a part of your plan for your children, and we do feel robbed... death truly is a thief here in this place, on this side of eternity.
Grief... it does come in waves... aptly and curiously described in light of this tragedy. At times it seems to come at us from nowhere leaving us floundering in our own sea. Please steady Chris right now on the solid rock where you have placed her. Steady her, hold her fast, and when grief sits heavy on her chest and lodges tightly in her throat, remind her to breathe. Bring peace and bring your comfort. Wrap her in your strong arms where she is safe to rest, and grant her healing and merciful sleep I pray.
Oh Lord, my sister said that waking each morning brings overwhelming grief. I pray that you grant in the place of this suffocating grief a new image of hope that will melt warm over her when her eyes fly open at each new day.
In her minds eye Lord, I pray that you help Chris to imagine that she is aboard some beautiful and magnificent ship, where she is standing at the rail on the upper deck feeling the sun warm on her face, and the balmy sea breeze gently tosses her hair.The sound of sea birds and the smell of the salty air mixed with some sweet flower scent feels exotic yet somehow so familiar. She is filled with peace and excitement for the great ship is turning, ever slowing in the calm and beautiful blue waters. The ship makes its way into the port of call and then comes to a stop. In this place where they planned to meet, there are a sea of faces awaiting loved ones, and as she scans the crowd she catches the first sight of her.. her Sarah! She see her running wildly on the dock along side the ship. Her hair is unruly in the breeze and she pulls it back from her face as she looks up- She points to you as your eyes meet! Your heart pounds madly and at once you feel connected..... finally connected again. She smiles that wide and beautiful smile. She waves furiously, hurrying you in welcome. You cannot descend the stairs and get past the walls of people fast enough.She is jumping up and down, you are moving toward one another and your arms are open wide. You are running toward her open arms, and all the while she is yelling playfully- scolding you for taking so long to finally get home.
Amen

memories

2008-04-04T08:27:00.002-04:00

It is a misty day out today. Yesterday was a difficult day for Christopher, Karalyn and I as we began to sort through the most dear and personal things you had Sarah. Tears mixed with smiles of remembering you in certain things-wearing certain things...loving your stuff. You were so colorful, so beautiful. I loved seeing how you mixed and matched the things you had.

It is such a hard thing to walk out grief. The work of grief is ever present-always in front of you with memories and possessions and empty places where you would be. I miss you so, so many people miss you so. We share the sarah stories--which make us laugh as you did so many things that still crack us all up. You were a unique and wonderful girl. We will never be the same knowing you. I am the most blessed mom to have gotten the assignment of having you for my one and only---oh my!! God blessed me so. I miss our times, our talks, all the fun we had. Your spot is so wide and deep in me. My heart aches sometimes so deep.

Somehow in the midst of the mist of this walk, I see the light ahead-maybe it is just heaven beckoning me to keep hoping. I do hope and hope in me is huge. I look forward to the eternal part still coming, still ahead. I can only imagine the wonders of the kingdom, what you are doing right this minute. Full of life--true life, eternal life. I want to share that life with all I meet--the people who don't know about it yet.

Wish you were here for my selfishness--to share the joy of my upcoming marriage to Rick. You would love him, you probably know more about him that I do!! He is a dear man and God is so kind to bring him alongside of me right now. I am excited for my future--but miss that you don't get to be part of this special time. You would be wild with ideas--I would be having a blast watching you put this all together with the flair of what only you could imagine!! You would stretch me in ways to embrace this new man in my life...."Mother---just get a life!! Don't hold anything back, embrace it, embrace him--go for it!!" I can hear you loud and clear Sarah C. I get it, I will not miss this, I will savor every moment of it and drink long and hard this wonderful cup of love given to me in the midst of deep sorrow and pain. God is kind to me. God is blessing me in the most beautiful way.

just know i miss you---God please hug and kiss my girl today---right in that special spot that she will know it is from me.

6 months

2008-03-27T07:38:00.003-04:00

Just quiet in my heart today. Wondering what you are doing in the new place you live now. God give faith today to us on this side of the veil. Help me, us...to believe in the eternal wonder of your kingdom--no more death, no more sorrow...no more pain. I long to know this place someday.

I long to know that Sarah is there-to believe with this with my full heart today, to trust in you with all my heart. Not to lean on my understanding, which is so limited, so small most days.

God-you know my mother's heart-the sorrow spilling over. You know my weak frame, my limits. Help me to crawl right into your lap today, to rest in you. To know your deep love and care for me, for the ones who miss our girl. What a girl. What a dear and wonderful girl. So much love and joy and life from her. How we have been touched so by her. Her challenges to live-each moment, each day. Let us be about living well today. Help us to press on. Help me to not get lost today, nor tomorrow...to press on. To grieve with hope. Smiling with all my memories. Thankful for her in my life. Oh my--I did have such a wonderful time.

looking

2008-03-26T08:54:00.002-04:00

There are days that it just doesn't seem like it is possible that it is all true to me. I look longingly out to the horizon on my mind, my life...and just see the landscape has been drastically and forever altered. Hardly a thing is the same. My heart even seems to beat differently. I breath differently. I see differently. I hold things close differently. I never will be the same.

I went to bed that night at 10 p.m. Put my head on the pillow, missing you all day Sarah--knowing it was the longest time I had gone without talking to you--just emailing. Just had read your email about wanting the rain to go away and to pray for you guys that day as you wandered through the cinque terra...never knowing....as I laid my head down...you had already left this life....the phone call was still to come and wake me from my sleep. The news of you being gone...to wake to that news. To wake up in a new land. To never be the same again. It will be 6 months tomorrow. I cry with tears of missing you. I cry for all of us who miss you so. Still trying to find shoes that will help us walk out this new land that has only memories of you. How to live with passion and fullness. How to embrace a new love and an upcoming marriage---and not have you to share in this joy. I know somehow in my heart and soul that you know of it, but it is not the same. This challenges me like nothing I have ever been challenged with. How to let you go--how to release you, but keep you tucked in. My mind isn't too level anylonger. My mind fights to stay upright. My mind fights to stay in today and not look too far back or too far forward with you missing...

Grief is something I can not handle. I have to run to Jesus right away--to not even ponder a minute in it right now. Some moments ache like a searing...crushing, agonizing...and those words are mere shadows of what my soul cries out to be explained. Then other moments, I believe and can't wait to see you in all the glory of your new life in heaven. Such schizophrenia of the mind.

My dear girl...my dear girl. so loved, so precious....so loved by so many. May God help us all as we come to the 6 months of your departure from us...hold us Lord close...Christopher, my family, her friends, all of us who have felt the loss so deeply. Can you kiss her and hold her for me, for us?

Resurrection

2008-03-24T21:32:00.004-04:00

So looking forward to heaven. So looking forward to knowing the truth that I only hope in now. Sometimes I wish to see just for one second into heaven to help me press this life out with the passion I feel so much of the time. It would be like being on the high ropes course--knowing if you fall, you will not hit the ground, but be caught by the harness--so you start to leap from tree to tree, knowing you are really safe.

I miss you Sarah. I miss you mom and dad and Nancy--and the others who are gone. The ones of us left here, are beginning to look ahead more and more with an anticipation that yearns for the homeland.

I went away for Easter this year to spend the time with my fiance' and his family. I needed to do a new thing. I missed my family, I missed Sarah, I missed being at my home church. It was ok. It was a new season. I wanted to be with Rick as he begins the transition to a new place. Many of the lasts for him, firsts for us. Time doesn't ever slow down, the second hand doesn't begin to move less purposefully. Life is always moving forward--to the end moment when Jesus does come back for us. So, to press on, press forward with that hope of eternity ahead, that incredible hope--the biggest hope. The one thing that will never disappoint. To be secure in that hope. To have surrendered to Him, all I have, all I hope to have---to trust you Lord. Ah, that is the best.

I am home now. Moved away from the close contact with grief. Made a decision to pursue Jesus and let him handle the grief. He is my hope, my answer. I will look to Him for the help to walk this all out. I sure miss my girl. That is for sure. Many miss her...she would want us to fix our eyes on Jesus--He is the hope she had, I have.

So many new changes coming. New life, a wonderful new man. It is exciting. God is so kind to me. So kind to him. It is a new season. ALmost 6 months this week since Sarah went to heaven. How did the time go by. . . so swiftly.

miss you girl

2008-03-18T22:17:00.002-04:00

Trying to walk through this season. Arms missing holding you. I had the best time being a mom to you. I know I always told you that too. Best job I ever had.

So many times to carry you just like this, still can feel the weight of you. You loved to be small, even as a full grown woman.

You were so unique and special Sarah. I loved your thoughts and your ideas. I loved talking about all the things we talked about. Sometimes we would be pretty passionate, but always loved listening to each other.

I miss you this Easter week dear girl. I miss making chocolate, easter baskets, dinner--going to church, thankful for time together. Loved coloring eggs every year of your life once you could do it. We loved holidays. I will miss it this year. God will help. I pray the Father hold you and kiss you for me tonight.

seeking True North, my dear Father

2008-03-17T21:55:00.004-04:00

I have learned some things in the last days since I wrote. I believe God showed me I was leaning too far into grief and not into Him. He showed me I would perish seeking to understand grief and that I had begun to lean too far into something only He could do. He said again to me, like so many times in my life..."seek me first and my kingdom--and all things will be added to you." I had somehow thought if I leaned far enough into this terrible grief and sadness, I would walk out the other side, not destroyed, but able to somehow conquer it. I realized, it was way too much for me, would definitely take me out, destroy my mind, rob me of joy.

I am thankful for the ones around me who pray for me--who encourage me to press on. I am so thankful to my Father who said---"Enough Christine. Enough, it will take you out--but it can not take me out--I hold the power over death and despair. You will never be able to do this on your own. Lean into me-not your understanding. Hold fast to me and I will manage this grief. I will do it." I believe this Father. I believe you hold the power over death. I believe you will give me all I need to walk out this life and trust you. I love you Father.