Leaving Nana

December 21, 2018

This will be our 3rd year to have Christmas without my mom. In an odd realization that 3 years have gone by, my heart broke open and I cried harder today than I can remember crying in the past 3 years. It is often that I am so overwhelmed by life that I don't allow myself the opportunity to mourn my mom when the moments come. I try to not sit and cry in the house with my kids here because sometimes I just need permission to not have to stop the tears. However, as I sat in my favorite chair in my small little office, I started to flip the pages of random books and journals. I found the journal that I wrote in during the days following my moms death. I wrote current stories while they were still fresh in my mind. It is odd and I feel guilty even saying that in the past 3 years I feel the details of my moms life getting less vibrant. Not her, just my details of memories. In this journal I wrote about specific details of my last months with her. Things that she said or that she did that I didn't want to forget the small details of.
My daughter is almost 8 and is in 2nd grade. Her Nana passed away when she was five and a half, right before she started kindergarten. It is not uncommon that Madison will still cry at night from time to time from the sadness of missing her Nana. It always happens at bed time after the lights go out and the room is quiet. I often wonder if she uses her Nana as an excuse just to cry or if her Nana is the only real connection to sadness and disappointment that she knows. She is always given permission to feel sad and cry. My sister taught me long ago that no ones has permission to tell you how to FEEL. I am always careful to let her have her own feelings as she  navigates through growing up into her own person.
Today, I found this story and remembered just how deeply connected Madison was to my mom and I all of a sudden gave myself permission to FEEL and cry in my house with my kids around without permission to stop.
7-28-16
The first day that my mom when into the hospital, I got in the car and drove there. As I walked into the room of her bare hospital room she was telling my dad to call me and tell me not to come. No regrets. Jason and I decided that was our new slogan when it came to my mom who was sick: no regrets. Go when you need to go. Show up. I did show up to my moms hospital room where she lay using only oxygen. I slept in a terrible recliner and before she fell asleep that night she asked, "Does Madison think I am dying?" I assume that answer was yes but for some reason I didn't say that. Mom and Madison loved each other so deeply. Nana made Madison's eyes absolutely sparkle. This 5 year old knew her Nana hung the moon. Madison often spoke of living with Nana forever and never wanted to leave after visiting. As soon as we'd leave she'd ask when we could back.
July 4, 2016 was the last time that Madison saw her Nana. That day we left, Madison cried harder than I'd ever seen her cry. She wouldn't let go of Nana. She retuned to her multiple times crying, saying, "I don't want to leave you." Madison was just so sad, completely heartbroken. This little 5 year old was saying goodbye to her Nana with a broken heart. I often wonder if my mom knew that was forever good-bye? Probably. Did Madison know that was the final good-bye? I think so.
Madison once asked me if her Nana loved her more than she loved God. Isn't that a beautiful question from a 5 year old? She knew her Nana loved God so big and without a doubt knew she was loved so big by Nana, and now she was trying to decide how BIG that love was.
About a month later we buried our Nana, had her funeral and then her memorial service. We all said goodbye. At the end of that 4 day span at Nana's house as we all got in the car to drive away. After a few moment of quiet Madison said, "I don't feel so sad leaving Nana's this time."

- The only beauty in tragedy is that Jesus is still on the throne.

 

Why let worries steal my praise?

Lauren Daigle has stayed on  repeat in my life over the last year and now her new album, Look Up Child, has me searching my heart through the pool of tears that I have sat in for the last 24 hours.
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Her song was on when we were ordering  in the local sandwich shop and my 5 year old son said, "shhh... mom, listen. It's your favorite song from our car." I was thrilled at the moment that he made the connection and made me remember in that moment that my two kids were listening and paying attention even when I forget that they are.
In my present life, I am a person that only listens to praise and worship. It is just the person that I have morphed into. It matters to me. I need it. I do it for me and my kids just know it as normal. I remember when I was a teenager riding in my moms car. All she ever listened to was her praise and worship tapes and she was so uncool. I now see that she probably needed that time and music in her car as an escape from 4 ridiculous kids. Then here we came, like, "UGH mom!" She never gave in. It was all she was willing to listen to, to fill her heart and mind with and now, of course, in my late 30's and two kids later, I finally get it.

Through my music and my journaling this morning, I have reflected up my life, my earthly life, and my heavenly savior. In my pity party, I cannot stop thinking about His goodness and how I do not deserve it, how I have taken advantage of it and how I have forgotten how God has always been there for me. He has truly lavished his goodness upon me. However, in the depths of exhaustion and on-going grief,  I choose to give him praise for the all the good in my life, but I try and keep all the bad and the yuck just to myself. I'll deal with. I'll never measure up, I'll never be, I don't deserve ... When through it all, God should be given all the glory for the good, but he's good enough to give all my "bad" stuff too as well.

In the end, I come to the full realization once again, that nothing of today is really about today. All roads point to heaven. It is not about the city I live in or the next job, or my house, my bank account, or any other earthly thing that I worry about every day. In the end, all roads lead to heaven. What a mind shift that is, when I stop my pity party to remind myself that my heart matters to God. Then I realize that in my continued sadness of losing my mom, that I often just want to mask because it's easier, I remember that she left me behind. I am her legacy. Her prayers that she sent to heaven on my behalf, and I know there were many, are not void just because she is not here. I am her legacy. Then I straighten my crown and dry my face because I instantly make a connection that I too will leave behind my legacy one day. I want nothing more than to lead and leave my children in the knowledge that their mom loves the Lord and my house will fully be saturated in the love, truth, and knowledge of his kingdom.

So, I took a drive, rolled down my windows in the rain and I once again belted out the the truth that I find my worth and my identity in Christ. I sang, cried, and then sang (once again on repeat) the words on the Lauren Daigle Song, You Say:

I

Now go out there and change the world.

July 15, 2016 is a night that I will forever hold in the memories of my heart. This is the last night that I ever spoke to my mom.  I knew that my mom was consciously continuing to try to pour her love and wisdom into to me up until her very last second and she indeed did just that.

Prior to this evening, around the 4^th of July, my entire family was gathered at my parents’ house and my mom and my oldest brother and I were discussing the launch of Junior Kindergarten and all the excitement that it caused me to bubble over with. My brother sort of jokingly asked me if I truly believed that I was crazy enough to change the world. I quickly, very seriously, came back with a resounding, “Yes!” I believe that education has the power to change kids, change families, our communities and yes, even the world. People, not even necessarily teachers, are given this opportunity every day and if they choose wisely, their impact will truly never be measured.

The days in 2016 were long. I had driven back and forth and was sleeping in hospital chairs and trying so hard to hang on as long as possible because I knew that I never wanted my heart to hold any regret once my mom was gone. However, in all of my mom’s motherly wisdom, she told me to go home on the evening on July 15, 2016. I basically just told her that I couldn’t. My mom was such a good hostess. Clean sheets were her gift to her company. She loved clean sheets and making a bed for guests. On this night, I just knew she wanted to be alone and she told me that I needed to go sleep in my own bed and be with my family.  Reluctantly, yet knowing I’d be back in the morning, I gathered my things. As I stood over her, she grabbed my hand and we just stared at each other and cried. We both just cried in the silence of her hospice room. Just her and I.  I studied her face. Her eyes were still so blue. I studied her wrinkles as the face of my mom, who could barely be found in the shell that she was leaving behind. Finally she spoke and she said, “You will go home to your own bed and if I should die tonight, you will have no regrets.”  I couldn’t. I just froze. I knew she meant it.  We continued to look at each other with big tears flowing down our face shaking our heads in unison, that we knew I was going to walk out of her room. We said I love you. I remembering saying, “I’m just going to miss you so much.”  In perfect motherly wisdom, my mom spoke her last words to me that I would ever hear from her, “Now go out there and change the world.” “I will,” I said and I turned and walked away.

I called my sister right away as we both knew that this was it. We returned the next morning to our mom who was very unresponsive and she passed away early the following morning on July 17, 2016.

Saturday I will walk the stage in the commencement for my Master’s Degree from UNT. Up until now, I have held my mom’s words all to myself. It is just that special something that I wanted to keep just for me. It’s my story. It’s my mom. It’s my memory. However, as I have waited for this moment to come into reality, I knew that I’d be following the last words of my mom, “Now go out there at change the world.” Yes, mom, I intend to do just that. This one is for you. UNT graduate 2018. I have no regrets. I am filled with hope. In the words of Nancy Black, “Onward and Upward!”

Happy Easter

I love Easter and the promise that it holds. As insignificant as I am in this world, it stretches my thinking to imagine how significant I am to God, who died on the cross for me and awaits the time that I will meet him face to face. What a glorious existence that will be.  The tomb is empty and I have hope in the promise of God as my future.  I always have such a knot in my stomach on Good Friday as I try to contemplate the heaviness of this day and what it must have been like to be Jesus. What is must have been like to be his disciples. What it must have been like to be his followers and know the truth of his majesty and to watch him die such a death as crucifixion on a cross. The mocking, the torment, the blood that he shed. The ending.  It is finished. The darkness. The earth’s shaking ….

And then I am once again I am thrown into a tailspin of how our world could turn this significance into eggs and a bunny.

I have lived most of my existence knowing that God is my savior and my friend. I didn’t always live that way (college… ugh!) but I always knew it. In the past few years, through sadness, I have lived my life in depression and isolation, having no one to really talk to who could ever understand, so instead I tucked it down deep and carried on with life. However, in the past 8 months, I have seen and experienced God’s hand lead me and push me and sustain me as only He could.  I would say in the last 2 months He is restoring my joy as only He can. He is giving me light at the end of the tunnel as only He can. He is saving me in ways as only He can. People often question God and His plan and his timing, or even His existence. I suppose that is faith, the belief in things unseen. However, my life is a living breathing example of God’s grace, love and existence. After you’ve been touched by this truth, love and experience of God’s love in a real, true way, there is no going back.

All of that, I suppose is to say, Happy Easter. Do not let this day pass without recognizing the significance of what God has done for us. He loved us long before he formed us in our mother’s womb. He loves us enough to die for us.  Just as important, He loves us enough to save us a place with him in eternity. That is a promise worth holding on to.