Falling forward

What's important today is not that the year is new, but that God's mercies are new, not just every year, but every morning of your life. --Paul David Tripp

We welcomed in yet another new year on Wednesday, our fourth one without Matt. We hosted it at our church and had a wonderful time. It was an evening spent with many precious friends. It was heart-warming to see so many familiar faces, as well as several new ones. Many times throughout the evening, I caught myself giving thanks for these people and for the gift of friendship.

I thought of the three previous New Year's and gave thanks that each one has been a bit easier to handle. We enjoyed playing our favorite board games and learning new ones. I scanned the room and saw a table full of people playing Blokus. It's moments like that that cause my heart to skip a beat.

Matt was pretty happy to get the game for his 15th birthday. Hosting New Year's Eve game night has been a family tradition for many years. It holds countless memories, memories that make my heart ache and smile at the same time. There is always an undercurrent of grief. With every memory there is always the temptation to wonder, "What if?" or "If only." I saw Matt's best friends at the party, saw how much they've matured and grown, and immediately I had to stop my thoughts, redirect. I firmly believe the "What ifs" and "If onlys" are non-productive and, in fact, harmful to healing. I believe they keep one "stuck" in grief. I refuse to go there.

Instead, I purpose to remember that Matt is alive in heaven and that this life is short, though it definitely doesn't feel that way much of the time. I determine to fill my mind with what is to come, a glorious reunion, an eternal residence of perfection in a place of perfection. Oh, how much better this kind of thinking is for me! I refuse, absolutely refuse, to be one of those who say, "It never gets better." I can't even begin to count how many times I've heard this from other bereaved parents. It is a lie. It is better. But better doesn't necessarily mean what most people, myself included, think it means.

Oftentimes, however, it means it actually gets worse before it gets better. (For us, the second year of grief was worse.) But it does improve. It doesn't mean there will never be grief. I believe it will always be there. As long as I'm living, I will miss my son. I think about him every day, just as I think about the rest of my children every day. I'm not sure why our society has this belief that better means we have somehow forgotten our children who are no longer with us. Again, that's not true. I loved what another bereaved father said to me recently about what he tells others when asked about his loss, especially in reference to the remark, "But you have other children..." To which he replies, "I also have five fingers. And if I lose one, it will hurt, and I will still miss the one that is gone."

Healing doesn't mean that everything looks the way it once did or that things go back to "normal." Do we really think an amputee forgets the loss of their limb? Or that they aren't reminded daily of their loss? But, what they do is learn to live as well as they can with that loss. Recovery from grief is possible, yet it doesn't deny or ignore the damage that has taken place. Recovery involves taking stock of what is. It most assuredly involves bad days, days where we stumble and fall and make little progress. But it also has days of falling forward. There are days in which forward progress is observed.

This "falling forward" is helped along by a push of thankfulness from behind. Our church gym was filled with about sixty people, many of them close friends. I could be bitter about Matt not being there with us, or I could give thanks for the abundance of amazing friends we have. I could be bitter because my family doesn't get to create and experience new memories with Matt, or I can give thanks for the memories and give thanks for the time at hand with the ones I do have. I want to fall forward this year with more thankfulness. I know grief will remain, but cultivated joy will be what makes the wheels of this grief journey move forward. And it's God's grace, for every moment of every day, that make joy possible. A new year has begun, and with it comes grace, peace, and joy. May you fall forward this year, dear friends.

Reframing

I read this blog post today. It was powerful and eye-opening. I mulled about it for a while after reading it and came to the conclusion that I've had some wrong thinking. Wrong about time moving forward and how it relates to grieving. For me, it isn't a matter of stepping into the new year after having tripped messy through the last, to paraphrase Ann Voskamp. It's about reframing my thinking of another year without my son.

You see, with each passing day of 2012 I felt that every day was just one more further and further away from my son. I know that may not seem rational, but for those who have lost a child, you get what I'm saying. In a sense, the closer we are to the day our child died, the closer we are to our child. In a strange way, we think staying close to our grief will keep us close to our loved one. Because that day was the last day they were alive. And who doesn't want to be with the living? Who wants to identify with the dead? Certainly not a bereaved parent. The absolute last thing you want to tell someone is that you have a child, but they died.

Voskamp's post, however, helped me to realize the truth. The truth is this. That moving forward isn't taking me further away from Matt. In fact, it's doing quite the opposite. Every day forward is one step closer on my own journey home and the reunion awaiting me of all my loved ones who trusted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

But grief has a way of putting his fingers over your eyes, obscuring the path, doing his best to lead you astray. And though grief is our companion along the way, he is not to be trusted. There is only one guide we can trust, and that is God. God peeled away grief's fingers and showed me that going forward was o.k.

He showed me that I needed to reframe. As Ramon Presson states, "Psychologists often speak of reframing--the ability to look at an issue or a problem from another perspective, especially a perspective that is more accurate, more complete, or more positive." (p.47 of When Will My Life Not Suck) For me, to reframe means that I need to think about Matt. Not about the loss of Matt.

Much like Voskamp's daughter not wanting to play her recital piece, I didn't want to play the piece given me, either. The score of a bereaved parent. Yet the Teacher patiently instructs and waits. He knows that music will come if the student will only look forward and play the next bar. Trusting the Teacher.