Author: maidofcotton
Love, Marriage, and Valentine’s Day
It’s Valentine’s Day today. I see the heart shaped boxes of chocolate. I imagine all of the floral bouquets being assembled and delivered today. Expressions of love will be given and received. Expressions of affection that are sometimes hard to articulate will be printed in cards signed by those who wish they could be so eloquent. It is a lovely day that is set aside as a reminder to tell each other we love them.
My husband and I are sharing our 36th Valentine’s Day together today. It marks the 32nd Valentine’s Day celebrated as a married couple. Valentine’s Day in the early years of courtship and engagement were grand expressions of love. After marriage, the children began to come, so Valentine’s Day was turned into more of a family expression of love. Regardless of how we have celebrated the day, it has always been reflected in a way that represented the depth of the relationship.
I have been thinking about what type of token of affection that I wanted to give for the past week. Over the past week I have reflected on the ways our relationship has changed over the past 36 years. I have been thinking about how the twists and turns of our personal story have had one consistent theme: we have always walked beside each other.
I like a Valentine’s gift as much as anyone but it is the small everyday kindnesses that mean more to me than the Grand Gesture. Everybody who knows me knows that I hate one-ply toilet paper. Every time we go out of town my husband always produces a roll of Charmin three-ply from his suitcase. He knows me so well.
He always calls when he leaves the office to ask if I need him to bring me anything. Do I need anything from Walgreen’s or the grocery store? He never produces the Loud Sigh like I do when asked to make an extra stop. He has so much patience.
I like the way that he has shown our daughter what to expect in a man. She deserves to be treated well and respected. I like the way that he has shown our boys how to be considerate husbands. These are lessons that can only be modeled.
We have had adversity in our lives as most couples do. It has never occurred to me that we would do anything other than face them together. He is strong when I am weak. I am strong when he is weak. I am not trying to pretend that our marriage is perfect. I will freely admit that once or twice when his snoring has kept me awake I have fantasized about covering his face with a pillow. But then it was pointed out to me that I snore as well. So I had to let that annoyance go. I am thankful that I have someone to share the good times with and someone to cry with when things are hard.
I would like to share a poem that is from the book Rivers of Thought by Martin Buxbaum. When my grandmother passed away this was in one of her dresser drawers. I was only 19 years old at the time. I thought this poem was beautiful then, but 38 years later I appreciate it even more.
New Love
They pity us, my own, and think…that we are “settled,” “bored”… for they have just found love themselves…and think it unexplored.
These many years that we’ve been wed…these many children, too… these evenings when we merely sit…if they but only knew.
They’d never dream, we watched the moon…just two and a guitar…or saw the firelight flicker…on the water like a star…or that we’ve knows the holiness of love so new it scared…or kindled fires of ecstasy…that smoldered hot then flared.
No, we won’t tell them anything…for they must learn as we…that passion is a noisy thing…but love lives quietly.
I hope someone tells you they love you today… a spouse, a child, a friend. If not, please know that I care about you and I hope something beautiful happens to you today.
Peace and Love.
Adversity
We all experience adversity in our lives. It can be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the loss of a relationship. It can come in the form of physical, emotional, financial, or spiritual distress. All of us experience adversity. While one is in the throes of adversity it feels like a fog that is so thick you can’t see through it. Having the knowledge that others before you have gone through similar experiences is a small comfort. If only adversity came with an instruction booklet so that we could read how they came through to the other side.
One of my favorite Bible passages is James 1:2-4. “My brothers and sisters, consider it pure joy when you fall into all sorts of trials because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you…
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Adversity
We all experience adversity in our lives. It can be the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or the loss of a relationship. It can come in the form of physical, emotional, financial, or spiritual distress. While one is in the throes of adversity it feels like a fog that is so thick you can’t see through it. Having the knowledge that others before you have gone through similar experiences is a small comfort. If only adversity came with an instruction booklet so that we could read how they came through to the other side.
One of my favorite Bible passages is James 1:2-4. “My brothers and sisters, consider it pure joy when you fall into all sorts of trials because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything.”
James is telling us to expect adversity as a rule, rather than exception. He doesn’t say “if” adversity comes your way. He says “when” adversity comes your way. Trials come as a testing of our faith. Adversity is a type of stress test. It pushes us to what feels like a breaking point so that we can see that we recognize our dependency on God.
I would like to say that at my age that I would have had enough adversity to have completely learned this lesson. Physical adversity, check. Financial adversity, check. Loss of loved ones, check, check, check, check. But you know what? When things are going pretty routine it is easy for me to get into a groove where I think I’ve got this figured out. Then here comes a new challenge that is even bigger than any I have faced before. I have to admit that I have prayed more in the past four months than I have in years. Not that I wasn’t praying at all, but boy, have I picked up the pace. I will say that I have been reading my Bible and setting aside time for devotion on a more frequent basis. I can honestly say that if I didn’t have the belief in something greater than myself I don’t know how I could have come this far. And I still have some more healing to do. This is hard stuff.
So I have asked myself, do I want to merely survive this grief? Or do I want to thrive? Or do I want to let this have a profound change in my depth of character and spirituality? It is in times of challenge that our weakness is exposed. It is through this weakness that we know what part of our character needs to grow. Adversity, once you come out on the other side, can give you an appreciation, sensitivity, and understanding that you didn’t even know you didn’t have. One can use this growth to be a more compassionate, gentle and loving person. We are not born with these traits. Something has to happen for this beauty to grow.
One of the questions that I have been asked is, “Are you mad at God?” Without hesitation the answer is NO. I am mature enough to know that this loss nor any other adversity that I have faced is punishment from God. I think God is looking at me like a loving parent. I ask myself, ” Am I going to let this grief drown me? ” Well, I am trying my very best to find a life preserver in the form of counseling, reading the Bible, and praying. I am letting my friends help me stay afloat. At the minimum, I am going to turn over on my back and try to float until a boat comes by.
The ninth anniversary of my mother’s death was this past Sunday. Until one second before getting the news about my son’s death, the loss of my mother was the most devastating thing that had happened to me. I can see the growth in me in these nine years. The first couple of years were so hard. My heart hurt every time that I thought of her. All I could remember were the details surrounding her death. As time wore on, little by little, those negative memories were replaced with all of the good memories we shared. I still wish she were here but I know that I have been able to be a better friend to others because now I know what it feels like to lose a parent.
As I move forward I have hope that this grief will refine my character and help me move forward in faith as a more complete person. I know from the loss of my mom that I will move two steps forward and one step back as I navigate this new loss. I have to have patience that these baby steps will move me towards healing and growth, not as a sharp incline on a graph, but as a slow incline that sometimes dips before it rises again.
If anyone reading this is going through their own adversity that seems insurmountable, persevere. Rely on your faith. Reconnect with God if you’ve lost touch. You may not see immediate results but when you look back in a year, five years, or ten years you will realize how far you have come. You will be so happy that you don’t recognize the old you and you will be proud of the new you because adversity can make you a person of depth. It can make you a person that God can use.
Peace and love.
Please share this if there is someone in your life who needs encouragement.
Grief and Hope
I like facts. I like to see things written in black and white. I am a visual person. So when I am asked to imagine heaven I am not sure what heaven looks like. Does it look the same to everyone? Or is heaven more of a feeling? I admit that I don’t know much more than the average Sunday School lesson has taught me about heaven. So I guess that is where hope comes in for me.
I have a very limited knowledge about what the Bible has to say about heaven, so I have been doing a lot of reading. I want to know more. Hello, Reverend Google. Let me type my questions to see if I can find out something more. What does the Bible say heaven looks like? Lots of stuff popped up and one of the things that I read were some quotes from C.S. Lewis on Hoping for Something More. I never feel that reading something inspiring is an accident. I feel that God purposely directs us to it. I found it at http://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com. If you have never visited that website, it has a lot of inspirational Bible verses broken down into categories. Here a few of C.S. Lewis’ quotes.
“Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know what they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.”
“At present, we are on the outside…the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the pleasures we see. But all the pages of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Someday, God willing, we shall get “in”…We will put on glory…that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch.”
” We do not want to merely “see” beauty – though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words-to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” – C.S. Lewis
With my very limited knowledge, what I understood from this quote was imagining heaven and seeing heaven are two different things. As a Christian, up to now, I have been content with the hope and promise of heaven. It never really mattered what it looked like or what was waiting for me. But after reading this quote it reminded me of the difference between looking out a window and seeing a beautiful garden ablaze with flowers, watching birds swoop, watching butterflies flutter, and seeing trees blow with the wind is vastly different from actually being in the garden. When we are actually in the garden we can smell the fragrance of the flowers. We notice the texture of the petals and leaves. We hear the birds singing in the trees calling out to their mate. We feel the breeze that makes the trees sway. We are one with the garden. That must be what heaven is like. We spend our lives wanting more, not really sure what more actually is and we try and try to fill up with things on earth. But we will never be truly satisfied on this earth. Maybe we don’t go to heaven; maybe we are in heaven.
As I sit here on earth missing my son and wishing he were still here, I realize how completely selfish it is that I would deny him the beauty of being in heaven just to have him here in the flesh with me. It is through quiet time with God and opening my heart to the perspective of great thinkers that I slowly each day take a tiny step toward letting go and letting God do the planning.
Peace and Love.
Grief and Strength
Today marks the fourth month anniversary of my son’s passing. That is a sentence that I would have never dreamed I would be typing. After I typed it, it looked strange to me. It was as if I were looking at something someone else had written.
Over the past four months I have had so many people say, “You are so strong.” or “Your strength is amazing.”. The funny thing is I don’t feel strong at all. I feel functional. I feel capable. I am able to get dressed every day, feed myself, take care of my home and my family. But I do not feel that I possess any strength that is more than the average woman my age. Nothing before four months ago could have prepared me for this.
I was reading a devotional online the other day and I came across a quote by Charles Spurgeon on the subject of strength. I will share the portion that jumped out at me.
“Are you mourning over your own weakness? Take courage for there must be a consciousness of weakness before the Lord will give thee victory. Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.” – Charles Spurgeon
I am not a theologian so I will not even try to get all fancy with what this means, but I will share what it inspired in me as it has to do with my current situation. I am not supposed to be capable of handling all of this all by myself. I don’t have to pretend I have it figured out. I don’t have to ‘fake it until I make it’. I can completely crumple to the ground, completely drained of ideas and solutions. All I have to do is say , “Lord, I am too weak to do this by myself. I don’t know what to do. Please help me do what I must. Pick me up off the ground and carry me where you want me.” I must be completely drained in order to realize that the only way that I can move forward is to ask for Your strength. Doesn’t that sound like the simplest thing in the world to do? I mean literally, the simplest. “I can’t do it, would You give me strength?”
So, in my situation, the phone rings. My husband and I receive Bad News at 11:15 pm on a Sunday night. We wonder if we just dreamed that. No, we didn’t. This is real. We have no idea what to do. We sat in the bed looking at each other having no idea what to do with this Bad News. I told my husband that we needed adult supervision. In the most literal way possible, we felt like small children, completely helpless. I have a memory of asking, “God, what do we do?” Apparently, God told me to call my little sister because that’s what I did and she sent her husband from Memphis while she stayed on the phone with me.
I feel like God sent angels in the form of family, friends, and strangers to pick us up and carry us the entire first week. They fed us. We slept. They fed us again. They told us what to do and what time we needed to be ready. They drove us. We were like toddlers. Isn’t that the very description of being a child of God?
So anything that I may have been exhibiting that has looked like strength up to now, has been completely coming from Someone Else. I sleep, wake up, get dressed, eat, do what I need to do all day, talk to the people God puts in front of me, and go to bed. I have been doing that every day for four months. Every day I feel a little more capable than the day before but it is only because of the people God has been placing in front of me. It is only because of the encouragement and strength that He gives me.
Just like a child, I don’t need to know why this happened, I don’t need to understand it. I just need to put on my shoes and keep putting one foot in front of the other. I have hope that every day I will walk with a little more confidence than the day before. But for now, He is sending angels and giving me the strength to go one day at a time.
I am so thankful to all of the family, friends, and strangers who have given their gifts of time and service to us and have helped us on this journey.
Peace and Love.
Grief and Counseling
The first two weeks after our loss, we were walking around in shock. I look back and think that this was God’s way of protecting us in the beginning while we were being forced to make so many difficult decisions. Planning a service, finding an officiant, writing an obituary, and even deciding on pall flowers felt like we were walking in slow motion through a dream, or a nightmare to be more accurate.
A couple of weeks later, after everyone had returned to their routines, the reality began to set in. The loss and finality of it all became apparent in a very painful way. I have always been a proactive person. I didn’t want to have too much time to have all of my emotions banging around inside my head without a referee. That’s when I decided that grief counseling would be a tool that would be helpful in guiding me through this difficult process.
I phoned a minister to ask for his advice about the type of grief counseling that he thought would be the most helpful for my husband and me. A Grief Counseling Group? Grief counseling led by a minister? Or perhaps a private therapist? He recommended that a private therapist would be the most helpful at the beginning stage. He said that sometimes when the wound is fresh a group can be overwhelming. Everyone is eager to share their experience and they are a little farther down the road than the newly bereaved. Also, everyone has different coping styles and an individual therapist could help us navigate techniques that would be the most helpful for our style of coping. He suggested a couple of names. Luckily, I was able to make an appointment with one of those therapists.
My husband and I went to the first appointment together. We shared our story. She felt that we each had individual styles so she recommended that we each make separate appointments to best match our style of coping.
At this point, I have had about 10 sessions. I will say that this has been the best thing that I could have done for myself. I keep a journal of things that I find difficult during the week. I go over them at the beginning of the session and ask for her help with coping techniques to manage those particular issues. It has been immensely helpful.
I have plenty of friends who have offered to listen anytime that I need to talk. But I don’t want to make my friends dread seeing my name pop up on caller ID. Some of the things that I want to talk about aren’t lunch conversation either. It helps me to have a dedicated one hour slot that we talk and then it is over. It helps me to stay focused on the task.
I still have sadness and I am not Over It because I think that is a normal part of grief and loss. I think that grief and missing my son will always be there. But I do think that knowing that I have someone to talk to without filter feels hopeful and proactive at a time when I have the least control about my circumstance.
I wanted to share this in the hopes that it might help someone. Sometimes it is easy to feel that getting help from a mental health care professional is a sign of personal weakness or that our faith is weak. I want to encourage you that it is not. We are not innately born with the knowledge of how to navigate difficult life situations. In the same way that we wouldn’t dream of filling a cavity on ourselves but instead would call a dentist, we should feel that finding a professional to help us with times of emotional distress is a sign of strength not a sign of weakness.
Peace and Love.
Dear Me
” If you could write a note to the you from a year ago, to prepare for the year ahead, what would you say?” – Ali Nelson.
I saw this prompt on a blog yesterday and it really struck a chord with me. Here’s my letter to January 2016 Me from January 2017 Me.
Dear January 2016 Me,
This is a very hard letter to write. You have not met me but I know you. On New Year’s Eve 2015, I heard you say, “Well, 2016 has got to be better than 2015 has been.” It really hurt me to hear you say that because I already know what 2016 has in store for you.
I don’t want you to be scared or afraid to start each day anew, but you are going to be challenged physically, emotionally, and spiritually. The good news is that you will make it to meet me in January 2017.
Things will happen that will be completely out of your control. Please try to believe me when I tell you that God is in control. You may not understand it as these events happen, but please try to remain strong in your faith. You will waver and question everything you have ever believed about your faith. Just promise me that you will stay the course. Seek the wisdom of those who are strong in their faith when you begin to falter.
I will give you the promise that you will not be alone through the difficult times. Your friends, acquaintances, and people you haven’t even met yet will surprise you with their kindness and generosity of spirit. You will not be alone.
Enjoy the ordinary days. Try to recognize that each of these days are sacred. Continue to build relationships and memories with your family. Try to let the little things go. Focus on the laughter, the hugs, and the kisses. Focus on the “I love you’s” Love and accept each other without condition.
There will be many wonderful things that will happen along the way. Enjoy those once in a lifetime moments.
Try to be gentle with yourself. Try to move through your trials with dignity and grace. If you need help, ask. You will be surprised at the people you will encounter this year that will show you how much you are loved in a way that you have never experienced. You will discover an inner strength that you would never dream that you possess.
Please trust me when I say that you will meet me in a year. You will be changed, a little banged up and bruised, but you will make it. Neither of us have met January 2018 Us yet, but our greatest strength is our hope that we will meet January 2018 Us and together we will be stronger.
I love you because you try so hard to do the right thing and you have the ability to get up every morning to do the next right thing.
Love,
January 2017 Me
Peace and Love
Maid of Cotton 