Faithful Paradox

I wish grief was different than it is. While there is absolutely a clear starting point, there is no end… at least not one that is in sight. I wish there were milestones. I wish there were clearly defined marks that once passed, gave assurance you would never go back. I wish that grief had a timeline. I wish it was linear.

My third born son, who I always called my middle child, but is not longer the middle child since there is no middle of 4 boys, was in the state soccer play-off games last week. He had two games, both of which were played within 2 miles of Children’s Hospital which required that we drive past the hospital four times… there, back… there, back.

When I saw where the soccer fields were located, my heart sank. Vince and I made that drive nearly 200 times in 14 months. We logged more than 20,000 miles on our car making trips to and from the hospital. As we drove to the soccer game, every exit we took, every highway we transferred brought with it a memory, a routine, a sorrow.

As we drove the familiar journey, feelings I dreaded, ones I’d rather not acknowledge, surfaced within me. I assumed the feelings would surface when I saw the location of the field, yet I hoped that maybe, just maybe we were far enough past our loss that as we drove, I could experience victory in this space of grief.

Yet as we drove past Children’s Hospital, my heart broke all over again. The 9 floor building, standing tall against the skyline. The 4th floor of that building holds the room where my son died. The 7th floor of that building is the last place I saw him alive. That building feels like it stole 14 months of life from us. So much in me hates that place.

Yet that 9 floor building is also the place that gave us 14 extra months with Ezra. It’s the place that helped us fight so hard for his life. Its rooms hold hundreds of hours I got to spend with Ezra alone. So much in me loves that place.

As we drove past, all the feelings collided once again and I cried. If I’m honest, it feels stupid to cry about a drive, about a building, more than 2 years after losing Ezra. Yet that drive was not just a drive. That building is not just a building. They symbolically hold a painful story of loss.

Grief is such a strange thing because it’s so layered and complex. As we drove past, as I saw all 9 floors looming above, memories flooded my mind and it was like a tidal wave of sorrow swallowed me whole. As that tidal wave crashed over me, it opened up wounds that, honestly, I hoped were healing. All the sorrow of loss, all the fear, all the confusion about the character of God, all the questions that lead to doubt, all the grief of dreaming and hoping, all the pieces of life that I let go; they all came bubbling up from deep within once again. Something as simple as driving past a place can open a flood of pain and leave you feeling weary, discouraged and defeated once again. One small action can remind you that you’re not as healed as you hoped; it cruelly whispers, “you have so much further to travel.”

Anyone who has walked the road of grief understands that all you want is to feel normal again; but that also comes with the fear that you will never again feel normal. There is a painful recognition that the “normal” you long for died when your life took its painful turn. The first year, maybe even two years, feel strange and there is no sense of normalcy. As you heal, there are new pockets of what feels somewhat normal, yet that new normal still feels strange; it doesn’t feel quite right. The new normal doesn’t feel as sweet or good as the old normal because it comes with a strangeness. This, in turn, triggers more grief; will there ever be a new normal that is ever as familiar as what I had? Are my best days behind me? You fight against that despair, yet the reality is that even healing itself brings with it more grief.

Knowing that I am beginning to live, to hope and dream again brings grief because I am doing that without my beloved son. It’s a constant dance of one step forward, two steps back. It’s a constant tension of longing for hope, for joy, for normalcy while recognizing that hope, joy and normalcy also require letting go, moving on and those things once again bring grief.

There’s a strangeness in recognizing that as we heal, we also grieve that we are healing. Healing, the very thing we long for, hope for, fight for, is also the thing that opens up more grief. There is confusion in that I long to be okay, and yet being okay without Ezra feels wrong; it feels like a betrayal. Healing feels like I am letting him go.

I recently heard an interview with a man who lost his daughter over a decade ago. He said that healing is not a betrayal to our loved ones, but rather, it’s a way we honor them. Since Ezra was a believer (and is even more of one now), my healing actually connects me to Ezra, rather than separates me from him. It’s not that I am now two years away from having seen Ezra, but rather I am two years closer to seeing him again. 

This reality stirred hope in me and at the same time, it is hard. It’s hard because no matter how much I tell myself that Ezra is with Jesus, no matter how much I remind my heart that he is not suffering, no matter how much I speak the truth that he ran his race well, that what God had intended for him was finished, no matter how much I whisper to my heart that my son was never mine to keep in the first place… I still hurt. My heart is still broken. I desperately want to feel the peace that comes with faith in Jesus, yet most days, truth feels like placations that offer little comfort. It’s a battle to trust God, who promises he is only good and only kind and only loving and yet also allows such pain and loss. It’s confusing and hard.

Many days it feels like a rollercoaster of faith and emotion where you feel moments of great victory; moments where you know with great confidence that God is who he says he is and he is holding you and sustaining you. Then a moment in time happens, a drive past a hospital comes, and all the faith and victory you felt vanishes and you crash down to overwhelming sadness in a moment’s time.

Grief is hard for so many reasons. It’s hard because it’s not linear. It’s hard because there is no timeline. It’s hard because you don’t simply grieve a moment in time. It’s a looking back, a looking forward, a looking at this present moment. I don’t just grieve that I lost Ezra. I grieve that my boys lost their brother. I grieve that my husband lost his son. I grieve that I don’t get to watch him grow up. I grieve all that I lost in relationship with him. I grieve that I am no longer the mom to 5 boys. I grieve that our family lost 14 months together. I grieve that my kids are still hurting deeply and I don’t know how to help them heal. I grieve that Ezra suffered so much. I grieve that my middle son is no longer the middle; his identity has been redefined by loss. I grieve that God was not who I wanted him to be. I grieve that God did not heal Ezra. I grieve that no amount of faith or prayers changed his story. I grieve that faith feels hard and confusing many days. And on and on and on.

Grief is not simply a moment in time, but rather it’s how everything changed with that moment. It’s letting go of a life I loved. It’s learning to trust a God that left me deeply wounded and disappointed. While I know God will keep me and I know I have nowhere else to go, faith feels hard and in that, more grief is born.

I wish grief was linear. I wish its end point was as clearly defined as its starting point. I wish it was different than it is. It’s deeply discouraging to feel like one day you are moving forward with hope and then a simple drive resurfaces the pain all over again. It’s discouraging that it comes so suddenly, with such ferocity, demanding so much energy once again. I have walked this road long enough to know that it will once again depart. But man, I wish grief was different than it is.