Death never comes alone
He brings along a whole crew of friends
Grief& anger
Loneliness
Sadness
How do we keep them from stealing our lives?
Death and all his friends
All of us face it, in one time or another in our lives or even personally, everybody dies.
How do we healthily face death? and make it through and not just get stuck?
Last week we read a scripture in Job 1:21. Here’s job’s response to losing everything. “I came naked from my mother’s womb and I will be naked when I leave. The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!”
Now that is an unbelievable response to loss, and we will find out more in Job that that wasn’t the only response. There was anger, there was confusion, there were questions, all these 39 chapters full of Job pouring his heart out and grieving and wondering all those things.
Well, today, one of my dear friends is going to tell his story, and it is a story of loss but it is also a story of healing. I want you to open your hearts to what God will want to say to you in your situation. We can’t compare situations, every situation matters to God, I promise you, but this one is one that most of us in this room will never face. And I pray that you would open your hearts and we’re going to talk with Mike in just a minute. Mike and his wife, Penny, work on our team here at hope and I am so honored to work with them, but they are going to tell their story, Mike especially, is going to tell his story.
Video opens on Mike, mid- 40s’ man with white blonde hair in a purple shirt sitting in a light brown leather chair.
“When I met Lisa, it was on a volleyball court in college. It was really easy to see that I wanted to talk to her, she was fun loving, pretty, outgoing, bubbly personality. We dated for two years and then got married. Lisa was a first grade teacher. Like any marriage, me and Lisa’s marriage was difficult at times. Most of the time, I was the one to blame for most of the difficulties. Through all of the difficulties I can say the last year of our marriage was by far the best year of our marriage.
We had three boys: Chance was our oldest. Chance was high energy, fun loving. High motor, little sleep.
Brock, he was our middle child. He was dark-headed, blue eyed, big, strong, quiet.
Reed, Reed was our young one. And we figured with an oldest brother like Chance and Brock, he was going to need to be big, long, strong and tough.
On September 20, 2004, my life would change forever.
That day started, not unlike how any other day would start: we were remodeling a house in a small town outside of Sherman, Tx. The reason that day was special: it was the first day that my entire family, including the newborn, Reed, who was about 7 weeks old at the time, was in the house. Chance and Brock had on little work gloves that I had bought from Home Depot, and they were going around the house picking up trash, throwing it in the trashcan. Lisa was showing her mom all the changes on the house and I was holding Reed.
They stayed about an hour, and after that time was up, they were going to go to Sherman to purchase at bikes for Christmas. After Lisa and the kids left to go look at bikes, I continued to work on the house waiting on my brother-in-law and a friend to come help us.
Jay was late, as usual, which is not uncommon. (laughs) To this day, Jay is still late. As he came to the house, I asked Jay, “Hey why are you late?” He said, “Well, there was a wreck on Highway 75 and the road was completely shut down.” I registered that, but didn’t think about it at the time. I just continued to rag on Jay for being late.
We decided that instead of working for an hour and stopping to eat that we would rather eat an early dinner and work straight through the evening. As me and Jay got in the truck to go to a restaurant, all of a sudden a feeling came over me like Lisa was involved. I looked at Jay and said, “Your’e going to laugh at me tomorrow, and you’re probably going to think I’m crazy, but somehow Lisa and the kids are involved.” We kept driving to the restaurant.
After we met Butch at the restaurant and we were going to walk into the restaurant, my hand is literally on the door of the restaurant, and I look at Jay and I say, “Hey I know this sounds crazy, but I’m going to go ahead and go into Sherman. You and Butch eat and Butch can give you a ride home.”
As I turned around to drive to Sherman the first call I made was to the Sherman Police Department. I said, “I heard there was a wreck on 75 and this probably sounds, I’m sure this sounds crazy, but I just wanted to see if my car was involved. So I told the dispatch officer my wife drove a blue expedition: there was my wife, my mother-in-law, Betsy, and Chance, Brock, and Reed in the car.”
The dispatcher had a long pause, and the dispatcher told me, “I can’t confirm that your wife was involved in the accident, but can I get your number to call you back if we have any information.” Immediately, I thought that they were involved.
I asked the dispatcher, “Do you think I should go to the accident site?”
The dispatcher said, “I can’t tell you what to do, but if you went to the accident site, I would understand.”
When I got to the scene, it was almost dark. They had big bright lights to light up the accident site. Multiple fire trucks, multiple police cars, multiple officers. I drove to the shoulder, I got out of my pickup, and I looked across the road and I said, “I think that’s my car.”
An officer came to me and said, “How do you think this is your family?”
I said, “Sir, I don’t know.”
They showed me a license plate and they said, “Sir, is this license plate yours.”
It wasn’t.
They showed me another license plate and said, “Is this license plate yours?”
I said, “Yes, that's the license plate on my wife’s car.”
The reason they couldn’t call me, or call anybody, is because they didn’t know which license plate went to which vehicle. The violence of the wreck knocked the license plate off the vehicles.
When I looked at what was left of our car, they were in the process of cutting my wife, Lisa, out of the car.
I saw paramedics crying. I saw paramedics throwing up. I saw blood all over the highway. I will never forget the smell of burned diesel fuel, rubber, and flesh.
I remember asking, “Did everybody die?” and the officer said, “No, the truck driver had a few broken teeth, but other than that he’s ok.” I remember sitting down and saying, “Isn’t that the way it always is?” The drunk driver, or the impaired driver, is never hurt.
I don't know how long I sat there. It could have been five minutes, it could have been thirty.
We were living with my mother and father in law while our house was being remodeled. By the time I got to the house, family was there, friends were there, pastors from church were there. My brother, his father-in-law is a surgeon, and they had come. And he prescribed a pill for me to get some sleep. I took the pill, and went back to the room where Lisa and I had slept the night before. And I got in the bed. And I can tell you without a doubt, in no uncertain terms, in the most clear way possible, that when I laid on the bed I wanted to die.
I told my brother I wanted to die. I laid in the bed and I remember thinking, “My entire life is gone.” People in the room are praying. My brother looks at me and says, “Just pray something.”
As the medication took effect, I can hear the murmurs of prayer, my brother standing right over the top of me and he says, “Just pray. Pray something.”
And I prayed the most powerful prayer I have ever prayed in my life, and I all prayed, over and over, was “Help me, help me, help me” until I went to sleep.
Video fades out
Opens on John and Mike on the stage in an interview style seating.
Pastor John McKenzie (PJ): Mike, I’ve heard that now five or six times, and I still, emotions rise, and I can’t imagine that. You go to bed that night, knowing, that your whole life is changed. You go to bed wanting to die, what happens the next morning?
Mike: I woke up, ready to fight. I woke up ready to battle what I had to battle. Shakes head.
PJ: After praying those prayers, those few words, “help me”, you felt different the next morning?
Mike: There is no doubt. I was in a house full of friends and family, praying people, and there’s no doubt that the prayers, not only of people in that house but of everybody praying for us, that God worked on me that night. I went from wanting to die to ready to see what I had to do to try to make it.
PJ: Over the years now, you’ve talked to many, many people, grief classes, here at hope you’ve done that and I’m sure at other places, you’ve helped friends of mine, who have gone through devastating loss. There’s five things that you typically have learned through your process; talk to us about those five things… (to audience) You may think you don’t need it right now, but I’m gunna promise you, all of these, no matter what season you’re in, might not be a loss like this, but there’s might be something in your life: a divorce, a loss of some other kind, a business or whatever, that your’e just going to need, there’s some grieving or some pain. I want you to learn from this. The first thing you talk about is timelines:
Mike: The timelines, there are three that I want to talk about: there is the time that you mourn, the grieving time, the living time, you’ll hear that in other ways. “Moving forward, moving on.” Ironically, this is where I made my mistake. I didn’t mourn enough. And my opinion would be that as men, we don’t mourn. We say, “You know what? I’m going to be strong and tough, and we’re going to get through it.” And for me, I think my not-mourning, and just taking that time and just mourning and totally giving in to the emotions, it bled into some of the time and it took me longer to grieve.
Other people, they get stuck in that mourning spot. They get stuck right there and their life stops right there at that mourning time. The thing about timelines is they are different for different people. And this is a critical part of it and I’m going to give an example and I know there are people in the room when I give this example that have been affected by this. If parents lose a child, the timelines can be different. I don’t want to use the word, that parents have to compromise, because it’s not a compromise, but when I say that timelines are different those are very general terms, but what am I talking about when I say timelines? Well, in a timeline, how are you going to do those ‘First times’? How are you going to do the birthdays, christmas, thanksgiving? How are you going to do the day they passed away?
One parent may say, “You know what? On their birthday, I want to be happy, I want to remember the good things, I want to tell stories, I want it to be fun.”
The other parent might say, “I can’t do that. That is too emotionally raw for me, I’m going to go and just get through my day and I'm going to go on my own way.”
Which way is right? Which way is wrong? There’s not one. There’s not one. So, there’s not a compromise there, but you have to talk and you have to work your way through it. You have to say, “This is how I'm going to do it” and “This is how I’m going to do it.” We’re differentt people, we’re wired differently. You can’t be a “right” or “wrong”. and you can’t be, “well I’m doing it this way and so I’m moving faster. Maybe you didn’t love them like I loved them.” or “I’m trying to move on and your'e just stuck in this spot.” You can’t get there. You have to talk and work together.
PJ: Talk to me about that, about the getting stuck. You mentioned that there are guys that, normally we just move on and we hit the weights or you're going to hit the job and you’re gunna just make it busy and you don’t mourn. But then some, get stuck. Talk to me about that.
Mike: I call that “the T in the road.” And for anybody that has been, you know, driving down the road and there’s a T, you’ve got two directions. You can go this way or you can go that way. And the T in the road is very simple: it happens in that spot between mourning and grieving, when they're starting to move forward. The T in the road is when you decide, “Am I going to be the victim?” or “Am I going to try to move through and grieve through an live?”
PJ: So powerful right there, because we all have that decision to make. Especially in something like this. You can stay there, or you can decide to move on.
Mike: The easy thing about staying there is, man you’ve got a bunch of excuses that nobody will touch, right? Because, you know, if you want to be the victim, well you can say, “I’m not going into work today, you know, after going through what I went through, I just can’t do it.” Who’s going to touch that? Or you know, name the excuse.
But, to get through it and not get stuck right there in that mourning period when you become known as “the person who lost… whatever”, you have to move through there. That’s the T in the road. That’s the place where you have decide, “I don’t want to go that way, I want to go this way.”
PJ: And that’s got to be tremendously difficult.
Mike: Its a decision that you will make more than one time. And its a decision that you have to say, ‘how am I going to deal with this situation?” Am I going to go left or right? Am I going to get out the packet of excuses I’m going to throw out, or am I going suck it up and try to get up and try to go right and live?
PJ: Talk about the emotions, though. The third thing you kind of deal with are the emotions, because the emotions are probably really raw there at the beginning but you still have them. I mean, they don’t end. So how do you deal with the emotions?
Mike: The emotions never go away. Birthdays, holidays, they never go away. So you have to learn how to deal with them.
You gotta fake it. You gotta fake it ‘till you make it.
PJ: What do you mean by that?
Mike: Well you know, some people in the room might say, “You know I’m not fake, and I”m definitely not going to come to church and be fake. I’m plain spoken and I say what I mean and I mean what I say, and out of my mouth you’re going to get what you’re going to get.” Well, I’ll give you an example: I don’t know if anybody else have done this,
PJ: Probably not at Hope.
Mike: Probably not at Hope, but at other places. So, let’s throw out a scenario: you’re driving to church with your spouse or the kids are in the car and you start to argue. And, so you have that argument and it can be a small argument or it can be a big argument. It can be about money in the checking account or it can be about the raisin cinnamon bagels when you really wanted plain. Well we all know, no we all don’t know, sorry wait let me back up.
So you’re having this argument and you’re driving to church, fussning, discussing, the whole time. You get out, close the door, and ironically you walk in and you see Pastor John or one of the pastors or one of the teachers and what do you do immediately? (puts on a big grin) “Hey! How’s it going? What’s going on? Blessed to be here! How about them Cowboys? You’re lookin’ good!”
So we fake it, right? We all fake it. Other people fake it, not us. And, it’s a learned response.
PJ: But how did that help you? In this faking- because to some of us that sounds like, “ooh, I could never do that.” But we really do, in a lot of ways. And how did that help you to trick your emotions?
Mike: So, we’re talking about being the victim. One thing about being the victim is, the person that is being the victim, and this is not just with death, this can be, a victim can be a person who’s been divorced. And the victim can say, “Well, (sigh) you know, life hasn’t been the same when I got divorced 23 years ago, and life just hasn’t been the same.”
PJ: That’s when you know somebody’s stuck.
Mike: They’re stuck. That victim, most of the time the victim mentality, the victim person they’re not the funnest to be around. They’re not positive. So, faking your emotions. When you realize that you have the ability to walk into a room and totally destroy the room with an action. Like somebody says, “Well you know, I’m having a hard day with my boss.” And you say, “Oh that’s funny because all my wife and kids died.” (silence) You can destroy it. Boom. Done. Who’s topping that one? That’s a victim mentality.
So for me, faking my emotions, I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to walk into a room and have people go, “Ooh there’s that guy. That’s that guy. You know I feel so sorry for him. He’s kinda gruff and crabby and… Well, here’s what he went through.” Because to be honest with you, if I’m going to be gruff and crabby I want to be gruff and crabby because I’m gruff and crabby not because I’m a victim. I want to be me. I don’t want anybody to ever say, “oh well, look at what he got dealt.” So, you have to fake it ‘till you make it.
Another key thing for me was, just getting outside of myself. I would end up at the mall just walking around because I went from being in a housefull of people to being by myself so I’d just go to the mall and walk around. And I could look around and say, “Oh man, that could be bad, too.” Like a physical problem where I couldn’t run or walk. Boy, that would be hard to have a special needs child, that must take a lot of emotional energy. So I started getting outside of myself. And that was good for me because there was a time when you go through the process where you have to be selfish and you have to look inside and be honest yourself and say, “I have to improve here because I’m not good here.” But when you’re looking inside and you keep focusing on yourself and the “me, me, me” and “I, I, I”, then you get focused on “me” and “I”. So, you’ve gotta get outside of yourself. I would love to tell you that I can do this well, but I still battle with it. It’s a constant work.
J: So then, you move into this idea of sounding boards. Having someone or a small group of people who you can talk to in these times because it’s all raw, it’s all real, and you’ve gotta protect that. Talk to us about sounding boards.
M: This is another place where I made a mistake. I found out that you can’t use friends and you can’t use family members. And I know to some of you, that sounds pretty crazy. And you’ll say to me, “Well, you don’t know my family and we’re super close. We’re super tight. We’re probably the closest family in Texas, maybe in North America. You don’t know. We’re tight, we can talk about anything.”
Well, here’s what happened in our family: If I was having a particularly bad day and I called a family member who was maybe having a good day, immediately what would happen when I would say, “Oh hey, you know I’m just sad I”m just missing them,” is I have taken them from a decent emotional place and I”ve pulled them down with me into my emotional ditch. So then you call the next family member. So what happens, and you’re all well meaning, you’re tight, you’re wanting to help each other, but what happens is everyone is taking their emotions from the family and every one gets stuck down in the chaotic down emotional state.
J: So who’d you talk to?
M: I had a pastor who, basically for six months, he just gave me all of his time. I had friends that, from life group, from years of just getting to know each other we became close. They ate breakfast with me every Tuesday morning for a year, or more. I talked to counselors. But the thing about having a sound board: you have to pick carefully. The question is, “Okay, I”m going through this grieving process. I’m not much of a state to pick a soundboard. How am I going to pick a soundboard? Here’s what I would say: You pick someone that acts, talks, and lives, like you want to live. You pick someone, because with those three you’ve kind of got your bases covers. (J interrupts and asks him to repeat it). You pick someone who acts, talks, and lives, like you want to live. And the thing you tell your soundboard, “You know, I’m going to be honest with you,” because with your family we’ve already talked about you can’t keep pulling them back down into that devastating pain. So you tell your soundboard, “Man, you’ve gotta be tough enough to listen to some stuff. I’m going to be angry and I’m going to be hurt.” And your soundboard has to be tough enough to do that. Now, I’m going to flip it for a second. Let’s say you are a soundboard. Let’s say somebody has come to you and said, “I am going through this and I really value you and I want you to help me through this.” If you are a soundboard, do not write a check that you can’t cash.
J: I love this, you spoke about this last night but I want you to dive into this for a minute. What do you mean by that?
M: Well, soundboards, they want to help. But there are things they can’t do. Because people have lives, we have job, kids, things. So, not writing a check that you can’t cash means this: Saying, “Hey man, you call me, anytime, day or night, I’m there, no problem, give me the word. Here’s my cell number.” There’s no doubt that a soundboard means that. But life gets in the way. Soundboard’s got to go to work. Soundboard’s got 5 year old soccer game, he’s got kids while the wife does bridge night…
J: (laughing) Bridge?
M: Well yeah, okay, ugh. Penuckle?
J: I haven’t heard Bridge since I was a kid.
M: Always gotta zing me… I appreciate you
J: So they have to be willing, but they also have to be real about boundaries.
M: You have to be. If someone is picking you to be a soundboard you have to sit down and say, “I want to help you. Here’s what I can do:” And you gotta be honest. You’ve got to be honest. Some of those people that were my soundboard, I talked to them some. I talk to them regularly. I hadn’t talked to one in a while. I can tell you, those folks, I owe them the quality of everything that I have. And if somebody chooses you to be a soundboard, you’re going to have an affect on them that you can’t even imagine. And you need to take that seriously.
J: That’s good. The last thing you deal with are the “why” questions. There’s no way you can walk through this and not sit there and say why.
M: We all have them. We have “why” questions about everything.
J: How’d you deal with that? Or how DO you deal with that?
M: The why questions… When I realized that the why questions were never going to be answered, they were not going to stop coming. And when do the why questions come? They come at night. They come at night because kids are asleep, TV is off, you’re laying in the bed and your brain is just thinking. So you’ve got the why questions. So what do you do with the why questions?
A guy told me a phrase, “Put them on a shelf.” Take your why questions, put them in a box, and put them on a shelf. You don’t deal with them. You’re not going to answer them, nobody can tell you the secret of how to unlock them. Those are the questions that, on this side of heaven, will not be answered. You put them up. How do you put them up? You get your mind off of them.
For me, I’m a coach’s kid. Dad’s a retired basketball coach so I grew up playing everything, playing sports, sports is an outlet for me. ESPN is a wonderful thing for me. So, in the middle of the night, you know I would flip to ESPN 7 and watch Montana Tech play Oregon State in competitive badminton and I’m okay. You just , you gotta do something that takes your mind away. Now it doesn’t have to be sports or TV. Something that somebody told me very early on was, you know, when you’re struggle at night and you’re wrestling with those why questions, read a Psalm. Just open up the Bible. The Word is calming, strengthening. And I gotta be honest with you, I hate saying this right next to my Pastor, but I was pretty cynical. I was like, “Really? I’ve read the Bible a while, it’s going to comfort me?” Open up those Psalms and start reading and before you know it… But there is power in the Word of God.
Watch sports, read a psalm, it might be listening to worship music, it might be praying. Find a way on those why questions to box them up and put them on a shelf.
J: Right because I don’t have the answer. And that’s what a lot of us want to do, in the church especially, as a pastor, you want to be able to answer that for somebody because you want to try to protect them. I know for me, I’m going to try to protect them from the athiest or protect them from those who are going through hard times who say things like, “If he allowed this to happen, how could he be good?” So I want to answer those questions so that I can protect God. Can I just tell you- God can take care of Himself. God can take care of Himself. And in Job, he does. So your “why” questions, you’re so right, and it sounds counter-intuitive because we want to get those questions answered. “Why did he do this? Why did my family member do this?” and “Why didn’t I do this? Why didn’t I go here?”
I love that man, I think its so good for us to just pack those away and to say, “Lord I’m going to trust you. I’m going to put this in You. I’m going to box this up and give it to you.”
Mike, thank you for your heart to even be willing. And Penny, as well. Let’s show a picture of Penny, and Cade, and Ty. God has given Mike a beautiful family, Penny, who is a Godly woman who loves God with all of her heart. I am so blessed to work with both of these guys.
After the Sunday that Mike gave his testimony, I'm sure everyone at Hope felt like they knew him. Since about a week after Kaitlyn died, Alex had been talking to a lady named Penny at our church about starting an interest group for Military members and their families (this was far along in the planning process, we had talked about it while he was still in Afghanistan 3-4 months ago). Alex decided to go meet with Penny about getting the group put up on the Hope website, and I stayed home to write and do laundry. When Alex got home, he told me all about his meeting, and also told me that Penny was Mike's second wife (I won't use the phrase "new wife" here because that's not fair... just like our future kids won't be our "new kids"), and that she had talked to him quite a bit about our loss since one of the other leaders had given her a book to give to Alex to give to me. I was a little jealous that I hadn't gone with him to the meeting because I think I would have enjoyed meeting her.
We continued our dance of "normalcy" later that afternoon by going up to the McKinney campus of Hope to pick up a book for the ladies Bible study that had started the week before. When we walked into the office, who was there but Mike himself. I didn't know that he was actually on staff at our church, and Alex immediately walked up to him and shook his hand while I headed for the desk to get the book I needed. First off, I was really impressed with my hubby in this situation. I would not have had the nerve to just walk up to someone who I had heard about and strike up a conversation. Secondly, I was raised in the Baptist church and pretty much if you're talking to the leaders there is something wrong, you don't just randomly talk to them, you have to have a purpose in being there. But here goes Alex just walks straight up to the guy and starts bonding. Geez.
Anyways, I finish getting my book and timidly walk over to where they were talking and what are they talking about? Crossfit. Good grief. After a few minutes of talking about how many burpees they can do, Mike brought it back around to what I suppose they had been talking about while I was busy at the counter. He asked how I was doing with the loss, and my default answer these days is "It comes in waves", because its true and its that short concise answer that you can ask a follow-up question to or not. Mike told us that he was so sorry for our loss, and told Alex if he ever needed to just go "kick dirt and yell" that Mike would go with him because he just "gets it".
He also asked us if we had noticed the differences in our mourning process or not yet. It was funny to me that Alex replied "no" and I responded "yes". We talked about this in depth some on the way home, but I am still having periods where I just break down and nearly have an anxiety attack, and Alex hadn't cried in front of me in some time. He shared with me that I'm not with him 24 hours (he tends to get up about 2 hours before I do, plus he was still adjusting to the time change), and that he was having those moments when he was by himself.
We left Mike and the rest of the Hope team and headed back to the house.
**If you have time, listen to the whole series of "Death and all his friends" on the website or through a podcast. The first one starts out with John talking about how he did a funeral for an infant when he first moved to Dallas.
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