The Broken Sinew

As I begin writing this journal entry a whispered prayer escapes my spirit for the courage and wisdom to suffer rightly, and I close my eyes and I am there on that Saint Patrick’s evening bathed in dusk.  19 green birthday balloons tied to my chain link fence, had been there all day through the morning sun and the afternoon tears and the evening when the day was almost put to bed, they were there with one purpose, to be let go, but oh how I wished I didn’t have to.

Letting go becomes very hard in the dog days of suffering, holding on becomes your new purpose in life and you embrace it with vigor.  You hold on to memories cataloging them in the files of your mind, making sure you have the correct dates and times to them.  You start asking questions of loved ones like, “when was that and where were we and do you remember that time we…?”  What you are really asking is, “were we happy, did it matter and did those memories give him comfort on his dark night of death?”  You go through every object of his life like a detective looking for clues or evidence, I remember finding Lucky Strike cigarette butts in his room with about a hundred Pixie Stix wrappers and his teddy bear Sizzle shoved under his bed.  I laughed to myself thinking he was just a little boy trying his hand at the man stuff .  You try like mad to answer the  mysteries of his short life, mysteries that you were not meant to know and things  you don’t have the capacity to understand and my how you weep, you weep and beg and pray.  Each wave of memory, suffering and sadness takes its shot, breaks your heart and sends steaming hot tears rolling down the back of your throat.  You feel like a blow up clown punching bag, you get punched you fall down you rise up.  You start to see the pattern, letting go isn’t the destination it’s just the road trip.

Traveling through the stages of grief one thought often presented itself to me, no matter how dark the road was no matter the black cavern darkness I was motoring through, joy was always on the horizon.  Joy may not have been within my grasp and it still sometimes escapes my grasp but it was ever-present ,even looming at times.  It is as if even in the darkest despair of mourning my soul knew this heart wrenching pain wasn’t the destination it wasn’t my sole purpose, it was but a road trip away from joy.  And like every good trip does it made me long for home.  If JOY was a destination its name would be home and we will spend our entire lives trying to get back there. It would be the place we temporarily leave and yet always long to return.  It will be the place we kick off our shoes, hang up our hat, put up our feet and return to our joy.

I let those balloons go that dusky evening, my husband and I.  We grieved and we watched them travel to the heavens, we watched them travel upwards to the home of our joy and w

 

 

Ten days before the funeral I had my feet firmly planted in the grass in front of the Washoe County Medical Examiners Office.  We had just come out of identifying our son and collecting his belongings, everything that was on his body was now in a simple manila envelope, I held it close to my heart in hopes of feeling some kind of warmth from him, but it was cold, like the photograph we had identified him from.  Standing in the grass I heard my husband come up behind me and say “honey what are you doing?”  I just stood there,  I didn’t  ever want to move, I replied, “my son is in there and I am not leaving him.”   I knew this would be one of the last times I was close to Chile”s body.  I knew this would be the start of the process of saying goodbye over and over again in a million different ways.  Jason sweetly took me to the car where I just kept repeating, “Chile is in there don’t leave!”  I felt the reassuring embrace of both my daughters hands on my shoulders wrapped around me from the back seat.  “Mom Chile is not in there, Mom Chile is in Heaven.” And the Bride was ushered in…

In my faith the body of believers are referred to as the Bride of Christ, now I know to people who are not yet believers this can sound like a weird cult name, I mean it did to me,  but when you think about it, there is nothing more beautiful than a bride and in the christian culture there is nothing as beautiful as the body of believers coming together to administer help and healing to a broken saint.  The minute that the multitude of people in my circle heard that we had lost our son the flood gates of compassion, prayers, food, wine, tissues, lanyard’s, chocolate, flowers, Facebook posts and visitors opened up.  So many people came to our home you would have thought we were having a party, but nothing  could compare to the  supernatural Glory of God that made itself evident on the day of the funeral even in spite of  the Ozzy Osborne music playing in the background.

 

Over 400 people came to the funeral,  they were literally out on the door steps of the Brewery Arts Center.  I remember telling Jason I didn’t think we would need a big venue, I mean Chile was very selective with his friends but I had forgotten that Chile belonged to a body of believers who are called to “rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”  And that is exactly what we did that day!!  The first time in my skepticalhearted, feeble christian walk I began to see the absolute privilege of being called christian.  God with his generous heart lets us be ambassadors of heaven to show the world dim visions of what it will be like.  At the funeral I saw this for the first time in my 25 year-long journey with Christ.  It is as if each person in the receiving line hugged me around my heart and wept tears straight into my spirit.  I felt the strength and warmth of God sent down from Heaven through the people who bore his image and soon this funeral felt like a wedding celebration, where the beauty of the bride makes you weep with brokenhearted joy.  Where your spirit knows  for certain that God is working all things out for those who believe and that He is as near to the brokenhearted, as near as a breath, as a whispered prayer, as a tear soaked cheek.  Could it be that in some of my darkest hours I was actually seeing the pure white beauty of Christ?  Had I been invited to a magical miraculous matrimony where water was turned into wine?  Was the bridal veil being lifted from my eyes to behold the groom of Heaven?  Was suffering an invitation to see the created world through  unveiled eyes?   C.S. Lewis is famous for saying that “God shouts to us in our pain.”  I believe this to be true.  I believe on February 19, 2016 I heard God shouting  with a gloriously booming voice  “Here! Here She Comes!  Here comes the Bride”…..

 

Photo Credit:  Kippy Spilker

I died on February 8th 2016 and everything in my being followed suit.  My preconceived notions of my own strength and dignity died, my ideas about God and His plans for me, died too. To put it in an ancient term I was brought low.  Every thought I had up to that point vanished in one split second.  I stepped out of my morning shower wrapped the towel around my body and ran to the phone recognizing my husbands ringtone.  “Hello!” ” Honey where are you?” ” I’m at home, just getting out of the shower, why?” ” Are you sitting down?”  My heart sank, the words no one wants to hear were being spoken in my ear  by the person I most loved.  “Honey I think Chile was in an accident,  no one will tell me much, there is someone coming to the house to tell us from the Coroners Office . ” “Jason, where was the accident? ” “Washoe Valley.” I howled in agony, “Jason Chile is dead if he was in the accident in Washoe Valley its all over the news.”

 

I remember waking up that morning day after the Superbowl, turning on the local news on my radio, sipping my first cup of coffee in bed, my normal routine.  I heard the newscasters say that a young man had been hit by a car in Washoe Valley, it had been a fatality, the name wasn’t being released because the family hadn’t been informed. ” Oh Lord, I just pray for that young man, I pray for his family, Lord please help them.”  After my prayers I headed into what would be ultimately the worst day of my life, not even knowing I had just been praying for myself and my son.

 

After Jason told me he was on his way to me I hung up the phone.  I fell to my knees and I screamed at the top of my lungs and I wept.  God no!  God no!  This isn’t my story Lord, no!  This can’t be what you have for me.  But it was what He had for me and my soul knew it.  I heard no audible voice but everything in my spirit kept repeating over and over, do you know?  I would answer my spirit, yes I know.  I knew this was happening, I knew God allowed it.  I knew He was good.  I knew this was a temporary circumstance in light of heaven, but I also knew this was awful and I knew the darkness would creep in.  There on the floor of my home I wept, screamed and worshiped.  I always thought in tragedy that all the scripture that I had memorized would flood my heart and comfort me, but I literally couldn’t even remember the 23 Psalm, but my soul knew the song of worship and there I sang the most broken song in all my life, “Oh Lord you’re beautiful your face is all I see and when your eyes are on this child your Grace abounds to me.”  How could my soul know things my heart and my being could not accept, purely by the grace of God I suspect.

 

Darkness, dreams, restless nights and crashing wave-like pain, this would be my existence for now.  Although, little slices of strength and pockets of joy would show up enveloped in my grief.  Great multitudes of  beautiful humankind were always a hidden treasure in a gloomy day and flowers and wine were never wasted on me.  Joy would be so different to me now so contrast to my tragedy so much, much more powerful and tangible, but I knew My Grief Journey, my heart shattering grief journey, had only just begun……

I love  resolutions, new fad diets, cleanses, cleanings, purging and renewed purpose.  I love the fact that you can wake up on a crisp January Morning and start  life all over again with new drive and fury.  I empathize deeply with posts on my F.B. page of a lover scorn and now a deep fire burning in the postie to never be burned again, the drive to get skinny change perception and find a new and improved person all the while convincing self and us that there is no need for a new man.   Sign me up for that beauty cream that will make me look younger or the 1000 squat challenge.  YES I can do the Dr. OZ Juice Fast for three days, give me a new journal and I will rewrite my entire story.  I have the gumption the elbow grease and I certainly know where my bootstraps are and how to pull them up, but all of this is useless nonsense when the God of The Universe enters my story.

 

There is an ancient tale of a fellow that loved resoluteness too, he loved schemes and plans and treasure and his mom, he told a lie to his father to get a blessing and ended up tangling with the Lord.   But here’s the thing about wrestling with God no matter how much youcandoitness you feel like you have, You can do nothing without Him and tapping out is not an option and you better believe you’ll be walking with a limp.  I giggle a little when I see on social media the plans of man.  I chuckle when I get all revved up to go take on the day and fight my own battles, because deep down in me, I know I can do nothing without Christ, and I learned this LIFE CHALLENGING & CHANGING TRUTH through TRAGEDY.  Just like Jacob I cried out “oh yeah God you want a piece of Me, Well you’re gonna have to bless me then…Or I will never let you go.”

 

Stop Lord it hurts!  Please God don’t take me there!  Gracious Father you can not take my child!  Heavenly King if your taking him you’re gonna have to take me too!  Lord I have prayed for this child for his safety for his spirit for his legacy why, why, why?  My heart knows all the pleading in the world can not change the will of God or His purpose for my life or my children’s and when God allowed my  18-year-old only son, six-foot four, handsome apple of my eye to be hit by a car and go on to glory without me in fact while I was sleeping in my bed, you better believe I know I have been invited into a wrestling match with God. So here I am holding on to him exclaiming bless me God and break my sinew.  Learning daily my need to fall down, to be broken, to claim victory in my own weakness, for that’s the place I see His strength.  Learning daily to take my eyes off the world put them on Christ and to not rely on my own understanding.  The world and all it has will try to convince me everyday to ,”Just Do It”, “Change My Destiny” , “Captain My Own Ship” and I daily to the world I will say, ” His Grace is sufficient for me”, “My power is made perfect in weakness” and,” In everything I will give thanks for this is God’s will for me in Christ Jesus.”