How We Heal

In the hours of quiet
When the darkness settles over
and I am covered with my sorrow
and thinking of my little girl

I feel the warmth of arms unseen
wrapped and holding all of me

In this embrace I do not struggle
I do not try to get set free
I lay my head upon strong shoulders
and let His healing wash over me

Though there is pain all around us
and struggles will accompany
I know that I have found my Saviour
with His great mercy, rescues me

I will cry out in bitter mourning
I will scream out at the sharp edge of pain
I will have times of unconsolable weeping
But all of this will be for gain

Remember me not as bitter and hopeless
Not with tears streaming down my face
Remember me as a Warrior for Jesus
For in His love, I found my place

Carry not with you my pain and grief
not like a sadness or bag of weights
but take lifes' trials with a heart of embracing
Until we meet our eternal fate!

We cry out for healing,
we look for the cures
but much of the healing will not come
for sure
Not here on earth but later on
when we reach the Light, the eternal Dawn

Don't push me to say that I'm over this
That I should pretend pain does not exist
I've seen it and felt it and know how it's real
and all of this is part of How We Heal.

God is Faithful

Often times I write in my blog, because the pain I feel is desperate and it comes when I am alone and the house is quiet and still. It comes when I cannot sleep and I need to cry out.
It comes when I have settled down from the tasks of the day that keep me occupied and I am able to clear my mind of mundane things. Then the whole of my daughters death seeps in. Pieces of her are around me all the time and I see her in other little girls, in the pictures we keep of her and in the small things that happen here without her. When I look at my children together eating dinner as I stand in the kitchen, it always strikes me "there should be four". I say this because...

I know some of what I write in this blog is dark and depressing and could even be viewed as hopeless. I am not hopeless, but hopeful. I am hopeful of the eternity ahead with all those I love. I am hopeful that while I am here on earth I will make a difference for Christ.

I have really good days. I have days when I smile all day and laugh and play and work hard and I forget that deep down I am sad. I don't think I will ever not be sad. It just takes different forms from day to day. You just don't get over the sadness that comes from giving a child back to Heaven. You just don't. Sadness will always be a part of who I am now but it won't be all that I am.

I read a great quote today in the book, Choosing to See by Mary Beth Chapman. Mary Beth is the wife of Steven Curtis Chapman and they lost their daughter Maria in May of 2008, just a few months before we lost Gretta. The quote hit home for me and it by one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis.

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." ~ C.S. Lewis

That about sums it up.

Lesley

Cold and Dead

Gretta, I drove past the graveyard today, I stopped.
Begrudgingly, slowly, heavily I walked up to the cold, still bed that holds you. The ground.
Your headboard a stone with words chiseled into the face, a small picture of you.
There was nothing there. It was an empty, lifeless void. A nothing, a cold, grey space of your memory.
I knelt.
I touched the stone, ran my fingers along your picture and touched your cheek.
I felt nothing and left.

This visit is just like my insides now. Dead, lifeless, cold and grey. Untouchable. Unseen and decomposing.

Is there a time when we are left alone to our own pain and self pity? Does God walk away? Has He decided to tend to other things? He has seen it best to leave me cold and empty now for 2 long years. There is no movement and I can't decide if it's my fault or not. I have no strength to lift myself out of this pit of unquenchable sadness and anger and lifelessness. Will He come and lift me out? Why does this have to part of my story and how long will it take???

I go to school now. I have decided to go back to school for my BA in Community Psychology and onto Graduate school for Corporate/Family Crisis Counseling and Intervention. I am doing well in school and have found a renewed passion for standing against the agendas of Satan on a secular college campus. At school I can be "on fire" for God, bold in my speeches against the popular agendas, but my drive home....my time at home....I am just this empty dead person.

I haven't picked up my Bible in weeks, I pray, but for other people or my kids, I work on Sundays, I am not in any spiritually feeding women's or co-ed groups. I can give, but I cannot recieve.

Can someone explain why this is happening to me? How long this will last? If I can change this? Or is God just leaving me to my own demise for a time?

The thing is, in the back of my mind, I just know that even though Gretta is gone, that is just part of my story. I just don't know what to expect anymore.

So this is drawing that was left on our doorstep during the weekend of September 4th, Gretta's "Going Home Day". We still aren't sure who did it or left it on our doorstep, so if anyone knows, please let us know as we really would love to say "thank you" to this person.

We were just amazed at the quality of this pencil drawing, it is like Gretta is alive in the picture, it is that real. The Butterfly that was added into the picture looks like it just barely landed on her hat and is about to take flight again.

What an amazing gift.

The card attached reads:

"Matt and Lesley,

It's true that masterpieces do come in small packages.

I hope this small gift helps you to remember that!

Love and Blessings

From the bottom of our grieving hearts, we thank you, whoever you are!

Prelude to 2 Years

Matt and I were on our way to college early this morning. We spent some time talking about the two year mark of Gretta's death coming on the 4th of September. We reminisced about the last two years, how difficult they have been and if the things people told us would happen were true to us or not.

One of the things people said in the beginning was that the second year was worse. At the time, that didn't seem possible. Nothing could be worse than the raw wholistic pain of death and it's finality, right? Well, we agreed that nothing really was worse than that. But the second year is more difficult in some ways. Matt mentioned that he doesn't want to "do something" on the death anniversary because he would rather not "celebrate" or mark that day especially. I thought that made sense but expressed that I feared she would just dissappear without anything tangible to remember her by and that people would just forget her.

We went to class.

After my first class, which got out early today, I walked outside to see Matt on his phone waiting on me. He immediately handed me the phone and it was our dear friend Eric. He and his wife Christina had just their third child early this morning. They didn't know if it would be a boy or girl, but Christina was pretty sure it was going to be a boy. They have a little girl named Selah, who is a bit younger than Gretta would be now and a little guy named, Ian. Well, it turns out they had another little girl today and they were calling to let us know that all was well and to also ask us a question. "Our other two kids have two middle names", Eric began, "and we were wondering if we could name this little girl after Gretta. Her name would be Mattea (pronounced Matt-ay-ah) Gretta-Claire, after Gretta." (Our Gretta's middle name was Claire.)

There I was wondering if Gretta would have something tangible to be remembered by and not two hours later, God answered in a big way for us. Matt and I were speechless really. We thanked them and shared our love with them and hung up the phone.

All day today I have been smiling and tearing up and praising God for friends so sweet and dear. Friends who would remember our daughter and just two days before the two-year marked day of her death, God brought a life, so small and sweet into Eric and Christina's family and into ours. I am amazed, once again at the love that others have and continue to show for us. I am amazed once again at how God listens in to our whole life and knows our thoughts and words and longings and delivers BEYOND what we can imagine.

Yes, it's just a name, but to us, it rings sweet and beautiful and it lives on!

Thank you Lord! Thank you from deep in our hearts, Eric and Christina Villenue and may God richly bless your family and our new little addition, Mattea Gretta-Claire Villenue.

In the Knowing

Before she knew she was a traveler, the Compass was guiding her steps
Our Compass greater than the North and South,
Farther than the East or West
Had predestined her tiny feet to walk upon the temporary ground below them.

And as I watch the moon come out, or see the dawn again I wonder
If I had held you one more day, or looked upon the sweetness of your face just one more hour,
a little more I would have begged your Guide.
If all the sorrow that was swallowed, instead had spilled around me
Bright and beautiful flowers would have grown up from the tears and butterflies would have danced around them. And since I do not know for sure, I imagine that in Heaven all my tears made gardens grow and butterflies dance around you there.

If not that day, perhaps tomorrow, or years away or never
I could have known so much more of you. So much you might have said to me that my ears were waiting to hear. So much you might have taught me, that I will never know while I am here without you. Only the prelude to your lifesong was revealed to us, the rest is yet to come and I long to hear your story set to music. I imagine myself sitting in your gardens listening to you sing it while you twirl among the flowers and dance and laugh.

If time has spent itself so quickly since you went home and we lost you here,
Imagine how much faster it went in the having, holding and knowing you, precious girl.

I can accept that God designs, He plans, He wills, He knows
You were His little girl before you were mine
You are His still.

I would have never given you up, had He a mind to ask
You would have never stayed, I know, if it was your choice to make. Maybe it was you He asked?

The ground beneath my own traveling feet, grew cold the day you left.
I know it will not warm again until I reach our home and join you there.

When I see you once again, sweet baby, Gretta Claire
Then I will know the reasons all, the tears will stop, the burden lift
Until then I watch the time go by, how much more in the knowing.

The 5 a.m. Slap in the Face

I woke up this morning around 5 a.m. having a splitting headache. I tossed and turned a little trying to get back to sleep. No dice. When I wake up this early I am reminded always of my mom who says, "If God wakes me up that early, He's trying to tell me something!" So I listened.

"Read My Word." He said.
"Right now?" I replied, "It's 5 o'clock in the morning and I'm not even a morning person, whatever I read right now, probably won't sink in anyway." I argued.
"Read My Word." He said.
"Well, what would I even read?" I delayed.
"Romans." was the soft reply.
"I mean if You have something to say to me, can't you just say it while I'm lying here in my bed." My head throbbed, I couldn't get comfortable, couldn't go back to sleep.
"Get up! Read My Word." He ordered again.
"Okay, fine. I'm up. I'm going. See me, getting up..."

It is on the rare occasion that something like what happened next, happens for me. Even at this moment I can't recall this happening to me in particular, but it probably has once or twice before.
I go looking for my Bible. Any Bible will do I figure, at this point. I find my Bible and underneath it is a Student Study Bible. Mine is in a zipped cover carrier, which seems complicated at this hour, so I grab the Student Bible and it falls open. Before I have time to think about it, I look down to read the area in blue (the commentary highlight). It jumps out at me. "Quarrels with God!" It announces! "Quarreling with your Maker goes far beyond the spirited dialogue that Moses, Job and Jeremiah engaged in. Isaiah is describing an insolent assault on God's competence. Not only is it wrong, it is ridiculous-as ridiculous as a pot complaining about the shape the potter gives it." I am in Isaiah but the highlight sites Romans 9:20 hmmmm.....

I stand there, as I haven't even sat down yet, eyes wide open, "Really? No, seriously, really?"
I find the couch where I decide to turn to Romans, hoping this isn't one of those daily 'through the Bible' study things where I will have to go digging around for Romans because it's not where it should be. It's not. (Sigh of relief.)

Romans 9:20-23a "But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump an object for special use and another for ordinary use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory-"

Wow! I mean, wow! Now this is nothing I haven't heard before, of course. But God's timing is always perfect, isn't it? In His mercy, He has allowed my anger to go unmentioned, until now. All of a sudden, He wakes me up and says, "Okay, I've had enough of your anger Lesley. I have been patient with you, and now I am showing you that I am HOLY, I am the POTTER, you don't get to pick, I CHOSE your path, so enough already." (paraphrased)...

By this time now it's 6:30 a.m. and Matt has to go to school in 1/2 hour, so I make him breakfast and a lunch to take along. After seeing him off to school, I ponder my morning slap in the face and decide, I should probably write about this one on my blog. After all Romans 9:23 says, ..."to make known the riches of HIS glory for the objects of mercy, which He has prepared beforehand..." I am an object of His mercy. Knowing this is a gift.

What's that saying? "His mercy is new every morning?" Something like that.

I have to end as honestly as I started however. I have hope that this is the beginning of a turning point for me in my grief, that some change will come with it. Being intimately involved with grief as I have been for almost 2 years now, I admit, I have doubts as well. I have had revelations before in this process. I have had moments of complete clarity and spiritual enlightenment. But the grief remains, it still disables me, overwhelms me, engulfs me, drowns me even. When you are grieving, there is nothing more that you want than to NOT be grieving. It is hard, exhausting, irritating, sometimes hopeless and always trying. I guess I say this because there is always that fear that you have made progress and once you admit that, people will expect you to be moved on, over it, past the hard part, that kind of thing.

This, today, is at least a notch in the road of grief, the process of it all, moving....somewhere. God is good. He is faithful, He is timely, He is Sovereign, He is mighty, He is merciful. I know this. I have no doubts of Him.