More Thoughts

The earthly battle with the beast is over for yet another melanoma warrior, Johnny Deep. I find myself even a bit jealous of how he was able to spend his last months, enjoying life in the midst of treatments, going places. He definitely lived life to the fullest. I will miss his candid accounts of fighting melanoma and his will to live. Rest in peace dear Johnny.

And then there is Mae, who has also made her way to Heaven.

And amongst the many blogs I follow, I came upon little Kate McRae who could really use your prayers right now. She went to the hospital on June 29 with tremors, which led to a diagnosis of a brain tumor, believed to be malignant and very aggressive. I am unsure of Kate's age, although she appears to be around 3-4 years old.

Cancer. Again. Everywhere.

I am not much in the celebrating mood this holiday. I miss Brian terribly, and the numbness of my life is starting to wear off. I don't expect anyone to understand. How could you, you were not madly in love with this man. My heart is very heavy. The kids are all where they can at least still celebrate, and I am just listening to the quiet, intermixed with some fireworks in the neighborhood.

I just finished reading The Shack by William P. Young. If you haven't heard of it, check it out here. When I first started to read it, I had a hard time getting into it. I even ditched the book a few times and left it for a while, then started over. The book is about a man who goes camping with his children, and while he is helping his other kids keep from drowning in a capsized canoe, his youngest daughter vanishes. The horror sets in when they realize she has been murdered in a shack in the woods, although her body is never found.

Stop there...so I decided surely this book won't hit home for me, with this loss being so different from my own. Finally one night, I read on.

He has received a note from God. Or is it a note from her killer? He is so lost in his faith that he is willing to chance it to see if God will really show up, because he's got some explaining to do.

I'm pretty sure that is when I got sucked in. I was anxious to see if God would indeed show up, and just how in hell he was going to explain the brutal murder of his daughter. Why was she not protected? What had this family done wrong to be inflicted with this tragedy.



Suddenly, his loss became my loss. While so much was different about losing a child to a murder and losing a husband to cancer, our feelings seemed to parallel each other. So there was no going back. I couldn't put the book down, other than the times I had to make myself stop reading or the times I couldn't see through the tears to be able to keep reading....or the times I was so angry with God that I didn't want to accept what this father was starting to realize was the truth about God.

Without giving away the book, God did show up and he was able to see things from God's eyes, to ask Him those tough questions, to grow in a relationship with God. I guess that would be easy if He would send me a note and invite me to Hawaii so we could chat. Then I could hear it first-hand, what it is He wants me to do with this life, the life that is left after Brian. And it could only be a dream to get to see Brian again, to feel him and hear him.

So what about the book. It has me thinking, I have to admit. It has me questioning a lot, no doubt. But it does have me longing for more, longing to feel like I can be really angry and lonely and sad and still feel close to God. I am not sure those things go together. So the book didn't solve it all for me, but I have spent a lot of time reflecting and trying to wrap my head around what has become of me, what my purpose is, why i am here and what I am to do with my life. And those thoughts are exhausting. Grief is exhausting. Interestingly, lately I've really been feeling the pain, almost like I couldn't or wouldn't allow myself to feel the pain of my loss, and lately the pain is a stinging pain that I can't ignore.

I checked. The mail doesn't come today since it is a holiday...not even from Heaven. Maybe one day I will be able to heal enough to be open to hear whatever it is that God is telling me.