My Story - Bad "B" Movie- Part 2

Four years into my plan, nothing resembled what I had envisioned. But I was still working on keeping my plan alive. The legal process came to a conclusion in July of ’06 after my graduation from seminary and I decided I would go back to work following Christmas. First, I would take some time to rest and clear my head a little.

Our oldest son had graduated Christmas '05 and this year, just before Christmas '06, he had secured the “perfect” job for him. We were all so excited. It was like things were beginning to come together for us. I was eager to get on with my “own” life.

Elliot’s girlfriend was now dating our other son’s very best friend. They had our blessing (“as long as neither one of you hurts the other”). They had come for the weekend. It was a 74 degree January Sunday and they hopped in Elliot’s Jeep, with the top down (something which made them all feel closer to E), to come meet us for lunch, following church. As we pulled in the parking lot of the restaurant, we received a phone call. There had been an accident. We would later find out, they had been run off the road and went down a 130 foot embankment. The man left the scene, stopped to change his flat a few miles down the road, told an officer there had been an accident and was never charged. The DA made that decision...more forgiveness to work on.

Two were life-flighted to the closest trauma center and our precious Allison had not made it. Our son’s friend walked out of the hospital the next day but we would remain there for twenty three days and over 11 surgeries (we lost count at some point). Here it was, January, and I was once again caught in the midst of a horrific, traumatic event. Talk about the walking numb! I kept telling people, we were walking around in a bad “B” movie which no one could ever even think of to write! Twenty three days later, we left the Trauma Burn Unit and brought our son home. Within a few weeks, he had learned to change his own bandages, drive, moved into his own apartment, and was back at work. He was a miracle!

I was done with planning to go back to work. It seemed like every goal I set for returning, something traumatic would get in the way.

How many times, in the last seven years, have I cried out to God, “What do you want from me?” “What is your will for me?” I’ve screamed. I’ve wept. I’ve stomped my feet. I’ve read Job over and over again. But that hasn’t been the sum of my existence!

I have laughed. I have sung. I have rejoiced. I have been encouraged. I have been filled with His love and grace in ways too numerous to count. I have heard over and over, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Today, I’m not making plans to go back to work. I am making myself available. I worry about money, there are things we would like to do that we can’t. Building a house is expensive, but couple that with trauma and sound decision making goes out the window! I would be remiss, if I didn’t say, God has provided all that we have needed when we have needed it throughout the process! Yes, even forgiveness for the one who took my son’s life, realization that had we built our home as scheduled, our son would have lived in it and it would have been a sad reminder of what was lost as opposed to a place of healing, and so, so much more.

As we excitedly prepare for our son, to move , as his career progresses and he begins a new and fresh chapter of his life, we look towards that still small voice that is saying, “you are getting to the other side of this.” I have begun to do small things, small things that He has called me to do. Not my plans, but His plans. My heart begins to lift and there is an excitement brewing. Where it leads, I have no idea, but through it all, I have learned one thing loud and clear, it’s not about what I want, or my plans. It is about listening, depending and obedience. I used to think that was a scary way to live. But the one thing this “bad B movie” has taught me…it’s the only way to live. There are some redeeming qualities to bad "B" movies!

And as always…to GOD be the glory!

Lynn

My Story - Bad "B" Movie- Part 1

Six years ago, I was preparing for our move out of state to the farm which had been in my husband’s family for over 100 years. I had it all planned. I would start seminary in September, we would start construction on our home in January and then in September, once the house was completed, I would return to work. Sounds like a good responsible plan, right? But guess what…those were my plans. There was a whole different plan coming down the pike and I was already on a journey of learning what it is to truly rely on God. We had lost our community of fourteen years because I had not listened when God spoke to me and warned me that there was something unsavory going on and in September, the previous year, I was blindsided by the unsavory shenanigans of church leaders who had more than God’s agenda at heart. The ending result was a year of devastating darkness and pain, not only for me, but for my family.

I was eager to start anew. I knew God had great things in store for me. Once we had settled in and had been living in a tiny rental house for a few months, we began the task of preparing to build. A misreading of the lease on the property where we were to build left us with the shock that the lease was not to end for another year. We went to the lessee and he agreed to sign a release for us to begin. We were rocking along and then two weeks before the bulldozer was to arrive, we get a call. He refused to sign the release. I remember sitting on the sofa, looking out the window, devastated. Tears were streaming down my face as I felt I had been dealt another blow. But I remember saying to my husband, “God has His reasons. We just have to believe it is for the best. But I sure don’t understand.” I felt like we had already been through enough! Little did I know what was to come.

We waited the year and the following January, we celebrated and had a ground breaking. Our time had come. In February, the first earthmover appeared and the process began. It was an exciting time for our entire family. I readjusted my plans a little bit and moved my “back to work” date to the following September.

Elliot was struggling a little bit, wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with life, nor who he was. He was floundering and searching for meaning (so much like his mother). He decided to come home from school after finals in the Spring, to spend time at the farm, helping me paint the house and getting his head straight.

I spent my drive time to school each day, praying for my two boys. I remember one day, as I was driving in, saying to God, “Lord, I have a peace about my oldest, but I just can’t get a peace about Elliot. PLEASE, give me some peace.” It would be two weeks later, the morning after his 21^st birthday, forty five minutes after I had an overwhelming peace in my heart about Elliot, that I would find out he had been shot in the head by a friend of his, someone we had all loved. The day he was to come home, we brought him “home” in the back of a hearse.

Needless to say, my plans were totally disrupted. Plans? What are plans? It was a matter of just trying to get up every day and put one foot in front of the other. There is a whole section of life – survival – that I have little memory of. I do remember vividly, that God called me to forgive the one who did this. That wasn’t part of my plan. I begged Him to not make me. My spirit knew I had to.

I went back to school in the Fall because that was really all I knew to do. I remember wanting to give up and hearing Elliot saying, as only he could, “don’t do it Mom. Don’t do it.” And so I continued. The school was a loving and supportive community.

We had to go through a trial. It was a two year and two month grueling process, but law enforcement where he was shot, were absolutely wonderful to us. Nothing was done or decided without our input. We had homeowners insurance to deal with and because the family of this young man would not cooperate, we had to take legal action, something we did not want to deal with. But in the process, the steps we had to go through, life narratives, photo narratives and letters from people who knew him, as painful as it was, revealed the beauty of the man and the life we were privileged to share with him.

The Beginning...March 9th 2008

If you live long enough and pay attention, you will begin to see that there are “seasons” in life. You find yourself talking about things in reference to a particular “season” in life, “that was when the boys were young,” or “when Momma was sick,” or “when I was in school,” etc. It seems we best remember events in life around other life events. Sometimes that is good and sometimes those past events and memories seem to have a negative effect on the present. And if we are not careful, we can let the past infect the present and miss some very special blessings, gifts from God.

I imagine that my family will define these past seven years as the “season” of loss. What started with a loss of community has spiraled into the loss of an adult child, and later his girlfriend in an accident that led to the close call on the life of our other adult child. There have been so many other losses along the way, minor in comparison, yet magnified because of the long string of significant losses. As the collection grows, you begin to wonder if your heart is growing hard as you mentally toss another loss into the “basket of losses,” just chalking it up as another one, all the while wondering, just what is God doing here?

Saturday night was a night much like the night before the accident that would take Allison’s life and leave our remaining son’s life hanging in the balance. My husband and I sat around the bonfire we had built, the first one of its type since the accident, and I looked up at the stars as I so often do. It was unseasonable weather, much like that time a little over a year ago and the full raw emotion of the season of loss came flooding back in.

Our son’s four wheeler lives at our house and so I knew he would be going four wheeling the next day and I felt the fullness of the fear of what could be around the next corner. The floodgates of the sadness and the fear of all that had been and all that could be, came flying open and I was once again reduced to the deepest, rawest, body shaking kind of sobbing pain.

My husband said in the most compassionate way, as he had so many times heard me “preach” to him, “Lynn, name five things you are grateful for.” I immediately could name him, my son and the security of a home and provision, but in the depth of my brokenness, I had to think hard, because the exercise I had practiced for years was not easy in this moment. And then it came spewing out, with all its pain…Elliot…and Allison…and it seemed at that moment, although wrecked with sorrow and grief, other things began to come to mind.

I went to sleep that night, fearful that it would be another restless one, filled with dreams of those things that were past. I knew the routine. But it wouldn't be my dream that night that would speak to me. It would be my husband’s. And in his dream was something important, and it was something called “Moments of Gratitude.”

I fearfully went to church on the Sunday that was so much like the day of the accident making sure I didn’t wear the same pants I wore the day of the accident(how God must laugh at some of the idiotic things we do). I forced myself to try and live in the moment. The fear and pain of that day a little over a year ago, stayed with me all day as I pushed through it, talking to God and trying to dismiss it as the foolishness I wanted to believe it was.

Dark had settled in and I was back in the bonfire business and as I tended the fire, I just kept asking God to bring my son back safe from the day of trail riding. And then... I heard from the distance, “I see lights on the driveway” and my heart took a deep sigh of relief. He was back. He had made it. I had made it. It was a day so like another, YET, it was so very different. Moments of gratitude…an unseasonably warm day, bonfires and the gift of the presence of two of my three favorite men. And God carried me through these moments.
They weren’t my only gift that day…words spoken by God to me through a friend, and a time in worship to hear God speak…Moments of Gratitude…Moments of Gratitude. And on that day, as I struggled to stay in the present and fought off the infection of the past, a call was born to share with you all, my “Moments of Gratitude.”

“A season of loss” may be what we recall as its name, but we are moving towards the remembrance of another great season of loss, the loss of what people in His day thought was their Savior, only to see Him ridiculed, mocked, beaten and killed as the worst of criminals. How dark that “Friday” must have been for no one knew what was to come. All they knew was that their hope was gone.

And look what happened in what seemed to be the darkest of moments! He lives! Yes, even in what seems so dark and so ordinary…He lives! And, that, my dear friends, is why, even in our own pain and depths of despair we can always find “moments of gratitude” and light in our darkness!

Join me as I live each day, expecting the moments that I see God in all His wonderful glory and am able to take that deep sigh of gratitude. He reveals Himself in the most unexpected places and in the most unexpected ways! And always…

To God be the Glory!

Lynn