Laid Bare

Some days I’m too sad to write.  Other days that’s all I can do – pour my heart out on my keyboard.  Yesterday was one of those “too sad to write” days.  Walking this road of grief is like slowing coming up out of water…..muddy water.  Everyday it feels like more reality hits me.  I realize more everyday that he really is not going to come back.  He really isn’t going to come roaring down the road on his beloved motorcycle and pull into my driveway.  He isn’t going to saunter up the driveway, pet the dog then push her away, come in my back door and tell me hi.  He isn’t coming back.  I hate that fact.  I could live 30 or 40 more years on this earth, and he isn’t going to be here for one moment during those years.  I can’t let myself think that for more than a second.  It hurts too much.  I don’t just love my kids, like any good mom does, but I like them.  They are my sons and daughters, yes, but they are cherished friends, too.  I not only lost a son, I lost someone whose opinion I valued, someone I looked forward to conversation with, someone I deeply respected and wanted to know more.

I also lost hope for him.  Hope for seeing him accomplish his dreams.  I was looking forward to seeing him getting his pilot’s license and “buzzing” our house someday.  I wanted to see him fly.  I wanted him to take me flying.  I wanted to see him continue his studies toward becoming an aeronautical engineer.  I wanted him to explain to me someday, in terms I could understand, what exactly that is, and what exactly he would be doing with that degree!  I was looking forward to another beautiful young woman joining our family someday.  I was looking forward to beautiful little blonde grandbabies coming along someday.  I will miss seeing him age.  He will forever be 25 and under in my thoughts and dreams and imaginings of him.  There are no words sufficient for describing how sad this is.

Yesterday I read one of my favorite portions of scripture, Ps. 73:25-26.  I’ve always loved that passage, and believed I truly believed it.  “Whom have I in heaven, but Thee?  And, there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee?  My heart and my flesh fail, but You are the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”  I see everything differently since Izzy died.  Especially scripture.  I don’t think I truly believed that like I thought I did.  Is there “none upon earth that I desire beside Thee”?  Was there ever?  Have I loved God so much and so deeply that I desired none upon earth besides Him?

This wound has revealed things to me about myself that I didn’t realize were true.  Before Israel died, I felt at times like God would use His heavenly “scalpel” to strategically and gently remove things in my life that needed to be removed.  This – this wound – feels like He employed His heavenly machete’ to lay open my torso from my neck to my pelvis.  I’m laid bare.  Nothing is hidden.  All my flaws, inadequacies, fears and insecurities.  I see them all.  I feel that He sees them all like never before.  In the mid-80s I listened to a Christian music group, Steve and Annie Chapman.  I loved their song, My Heart is Like a House.  It spoke of how we have different “rooms” in our hearts, and how we keep certain rooms locked away from any visitors.  In the song, Jesus wants to go into that secret hidden room of our hearts.  I used to have that secret hidden place in my heart.  But, now I feel like the door has been blasted right off of my whole heart, not just that secret place.  He sees it all.

Psalm 73:21-28

When my heart was embittered
And I was pierced within,
²² Then I was senseless and ignorant;
I was like a beast before You.
²³ Nevertheless I am continually with You;
You have taken hold of my right hand.
²⁴ With Your counsel You will guide me,
And afterward receive me to glory.