Summer Fun!

Minnesota has very few warm months; but when it does finally get warm, it gets REALLY warm. And we have to get outside! So there is a lot of swimming, ice cream, and sprinkler running. Here are some photos from the last month.

Smiles on the 4th of July

Nana & Papa with their little people

waiting for ice cream!

she chose Zanzabar Chocolate--her Daddy's favorite

Hangingout at a friend's cabin (check out that skin! Can you say "peaches and cream"? And those eyes!)

Erika with her little buddy, Carter

ice cream with Carter & Dillon. Chocolate all around! (stains are being treated as I post this)

Life for us has some heavy burdens right now--but many sweet joys too. And I'm striving to focus on the sweetness. The gifts. It's pretty clear what mine are, isn't it?

Purposes

Life is not at all how I imagined it. It’s not the way I planned it. And I am a planner. A pretty good one, I think. And for much of my younger life, things seemed to have fallen into place just how I planned them. Looking back, I suppose I felt sort of like the conductor of an orchestra. 

A successful and beautiful harmony of events produced in me a self-confident, independent, leader mentality. And it has often served me quite well. But it has also produced this ugly, proud streak. After all, who needs God when I am so competent? 

And it stings bitterly to consider that perhaps a predominant purpose of my sufferings of the last several years was to bring me to the very end of myself. Surely not the only reason for them—God is kind and gentle in His dealings. His ways are numerous and past finding out. And I know He speaks through His sufferers to manifest Himself to this dark world. Chris was one of His sufferers. And how he manifested his Savior! But perhaps the only way to make me wholly and completely His mouthpiece was to plunge me into the deepest depths.     

So in 2002, I marry my best friend. And three months into our adventure, the road gets really steep. Cancer. First Christmas together—our last too? I hear a whisper:

Emily, you can’t control this.

Surgery. Treatment. Two years of reprieve. Health? No. Devastation. Recurrence. Metastasis. He’s 33! I’m 24…

Emily, trust me.

Life plans become survival plans. More treatment. No jobs. No house. No future? And then! Four beautiful remission years! Hope restored.








 
We want a baby. For seven years, we pray for a baby. No. No baby.

Emily, you cannot accomplish this.

Loss after painful loss. And then… adoption! Ah yes, our baby girl. Our great gift. Hope restored—yet again.

Oh, Emily! Look!  I have done this!

Baby girl is seven months old. Daddy is 39. Mommy is 29. Daddy has cancer. Again.

Emily, run to Me!

Deep, dark fears surround treatment. The news gets worse. And even worse. And then a wife watches while her beloved—her girl’s Daddy—suffers more profoundly than she could ever imagine. His body is eaten alive in front of her very eyes. She cannot stand. She cannot move—or even talk.

Emily, lean into Me! I will be you’re your Strength and your Song. 

And then there were two. Family is severed. And where is hope? It’s dark, but hope burns still. 


Sanctification has no arrival point here. Yet, somewhere in the baby-less-ness, I was taught surrender. I learned how to throw myself onto a God who not only controlled all of my life’s events, but onto One who loved me with an everlasting love. This I know: sovereignty without love is a fearful thing. Ah, but sovereignty and love… that is supreme comfort!

And daily, I re-learn surrender. Humility. A re-discovering of this Almighty God who pulls me close to Him when I can do nothing but reach desperately for Him. 

I look at my two-person family, my life that is so very different than my friends’ lives (and I often think—in my darker moments—of the many people who must surely say, “I’m so glad I don’t have her life!”), my changed life course. I throw plans out the window. I take the next step.

And those next steps look so glaringly different than my old plans. So different than my friends’ plans and lives. But somehow, they hold hope. They hold promise of beauty from ashes. Joy in the morning. Sweetness. How can this possibly be? Can life go on? Can hope be restored? Again and again…yes.

Emily, I will hold you up. You are My very own.

July 4th

I was looking back at some (very) old pictures. I found these of our first two July Fourth holidays (2000 and 2001). Both were before we were married. We look like such kids—and very unaware of all that our future held. (But I'm very glad we did not know.)


2000--Stillwater fireworks



St. Mary's Point earlier that day



2001--Stillwater fireworks again

And I found this little card...

Chris loved events and celebrations. And he loved to talk about them after the fact. And I loved the way he always made me feel like I was the person he wanted to be with most—for all of life's events. Had I known all the events our life together would hold, I would have done it all over again.

Remembering him and all the fun we had.

Feeble & Broken

About a year ago, I copied this in my journal. And now it gives voice--not so much to my own searing pain (as it did last year), but to the pain of another. Dear friends whose life hold the most daunting unknowns and fears. A great storm.

I am feeble and severely broken; I groan because of the turmoil of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You; and my sighing is not hidden from You. (Psalm 38:8-9)

C.H. Spurgeon, in his Treasury of David, discusses this passage:

Deep, hoarse, inarticulate is the voice of sorrow. The heart learns groanings that cannot be uttered; the voice fails to tone and tune to human speech. When our prayers seem more animal than spiritual, they nonetheless prevail with the pitiful Father of Mercy. He hears the murmur of the heart and the roaring of the soul, and in due time He comes to relieve the afflicted.

Words fail. The heart throbs, but lips are silent. No one--not even our dearest friends--can decifer our groans. We run--with all of our undone-ness--to our Soul Reader. Our Father of Mercy.

Burial

Last night we buried Chris' ashes.

Chris' family and mine, along with Jeff (Chris' very best friend) and Jodi, gathered for an informal ceremony. We buried the last of Chris' earthly existence in the ground on the property of my parents in Afton. Rob, (Chris' brother) and his family were in town, and it was important for to have them present.

I was glad for the time to consider how best do this. In the end, I decided on something very different than I originally planned. And I'm so very happy with it.

I will let the pictures tell the story.



Jeff prayed and read some Scripture

Steve & Rob (Chris' brothers) buried the ashes

Above the ashes, we planted Chris' favorite tree--a Russian Olive

A picture of the grave marker that has been ordered

By Daddy's tree

S'mores all around

yep...Emily even had a s'more--Chris would be SO proud

Separation

As I make plans for Chris' remains--his ashes--I have also been trying to prepare Erika for what will be happening when we bury the last earthly evidence of her daddy. And it seems she is taking it all in.

Yesterday in the car, she told me she was thinking about her daddy and when he could come back.

I told her, "Baby, remember that when someone's body dies, they can't come back. Daddy's soul is with Jesus. He will stay there. But we will see him again when our bodies die."

She wondered, "Mom, maybe our bodies will die soon? Will my body and your body die at the same time?"

"I don't know when, sweetheart. Only God knows. And our bodies probably won't die at the same time."

She hopefully disagreed. "Yeah, I think they will."

How painful it is to me that my daughter knows and understands the awful separation that death brings! She has had this separation with her daddy, and she surely doesn't want it again with her mommy.

And so I pray that God would redeem all this pain. That He would work in my girl in a very powerful way because of all of this loss. And I pray too, that her little heart would be spared--at least for a long time--any more painful separations.

Lincoln

I finally got around to seeing Lincoln, which I missed when it was in theatres (I don't get to a lot of movies lately). I was overcome by a few scenes in particular.

President and Mrs. Lincoln argued bitterly and mourned separately. Their son had died in his childhood three years before. And this husband and wife did not understand each other.

Mr. Lincoln says this to his broken wife--the wife who nearly lost her mind with the pain of it all:
"I couldn't tolerate you grieving so for Willy because I couldn't tolerate it in myself--though I wanted to, Mary. I wanted to crawl under earth. Into the vault with his coffin. And I still do--every day I do. Don't speak to me about grief."

And there is another scene in which the bereaved father--our President Lincoln--finds his other young son asleep on the floor with a picture of his dead brother beside him. And that father curls next to him on the floor for a moment and then tenderly carries the boy to bed.

And finally, we see the utter anguish on the faces of this man's wife and young son when they learn that their principled, broken, exhausted man--the man dearest to them--has been struck down...

The movie is about emancipation. The Civil War.

But, these scenes gripped me most (my history teacher husband would perhaps be sorely disappointed in me). Because grief is so very different in people. BUT it breaks the heart--no matter what.