Counseling day 1

10.16.13
 
     The counselor I had set up the meeting with was a friend of a friend who had also lost a baby. I didn't know the details of her situation, and to be honest, I wasn't even really good friends with the one who had recommended her. But I looked at her website and figured, what the heck let's just do it.
 
      I went back and forth about counseling and whether I really needed it. Some days were really, really good and I was upbeat and faithful about everything. Other days, I was in a pit. I would cry and ask the why questions. There was one time when something triggered a crying fit and I just went and held Kaitlyn's little urn and cried desperately over her. Alex, of course, came over and hugged me and asked what I was upset about and I couldn't even vocalize what had set me off except to say "I miss her, I miss her." There were some dumb things that had set me off along the way- one time I was flipping channels and wound up on an episode of Keeping up with the Kardasians (which I use to like watching just because their family drama is such a train wreck) and there is flipping Kim Kardasian laying on her back with her big ol' pregnant belly pointing to a spot and saying "Look there's the baby kicking." I wanted to break my TV so badly. What the hell, God? Kim Kardasian gets a healthy baby? REALLY? That crying fit was pretty bad, and another one was over a dang diaper commercial (they play more of them during the day than they do at night, probably to target all the stay-at-homers heartstrings). The commercial had showed a baby on its back (I don't know if it was a boy or girl, so excuse my insensitivity to gender) and had ended with a close up of the baby's hands and fingernails. Oh I cried so hard at that. So. Hard. I wanted to be able to just hold Kaitlyn again and feel her sweet little hands. I wanted to feel something I hadn't got to- feel her hand wrap around my finger and squeeze to say "Hi Mom!"

        Anyways, I decided that I should be serious about going to counseling when the army decided it was going to make Alex go to counseling. I felt like Alex was doing wonderfully considering what he had just been through, so if he was being forced into counseling then I definitely needed to go.
        My counselor's name is Kate, and my mom volunteered to drive me over to my first appointment since Kate's office is about 30 minutes away. I think Mom was just worried about me having an emotional breakdown on the road. I was really nervous about the session because I didn't know what to expect. Kate's office is on the second floor of a condo-like office, meaning that the stairs up to the counselor's offices are inside the building. She came downstairs and asked, "Are you Amy?" and I said, "Yes ma'am" and she said "Come with me!" up the stairs and said as an afterthought, "And don't call me ma'am." I laughed and told her that was just my good West Texas upbringing coming out, and that I do it to everyone (I had one doctor who kinda got on my case about "sir"-ing him all the time when I first started working in Dallas). Kate is this little petite thing with fiery red hair, and she told me in that first meeting, "I'm very direct, and sometimes that's not what people need. So just know that going in that if you don't feel like I'm a good fit for you, you don't have to keep coming just because we have a mutual friend." We are going to get along just fine, Kate. She kind of went over the basics of what sessions would be like (how long, how much, all that good stuff) and then we got started. Or rather, she got started.
      I couldn't talk about anything just yet, and I didn't know where to start, so I just asked her to tell me her story. She started telling me about her baby girl that they had named Piper, and how she had lost Piper and nearly herself. (**disclaimer, I checked with Kate that it was ok that I share this with everyone, and this is only a small snippet of her story as it coincides with mine)
      Kate was 34 weeks along with Piper when she had a week that she just felt bad. She had gone into the doctor a few times that week, and over the course of the week her health had deteriorated. She knew something was wrong and went to the hospital at the end of the week to be told that Piper was in distress and she needed to have a c-section quickly. Kate had a very abnormal c-section because she has an artery where you shouldn't have an artery, so while they are trying to work on Piper they also are trying to save Kate from bleeding out (my response to this was: your poor husband. I can't imagine how scared he was watching all of this.). I can't remember if Piper ever took a breath in this world, but in the end she passed away and Kate was left with the mountain of healing that I faced when Kaitlyn passed. Kate's story happened in August two years before Kaitlyn's story, so it was really helpful to me to have someone who's timeline parallels with ours (holidays right around the corner and all).
     Two things really stuck out to me from our first meeting. The first is that even though Kate's tragedy is not that far away from our own, she already has a beautiful second daughter that is a year old.
      Side track: Alex and I have already started talking about trying again, and I have already heard a lot of people's opinions. First and foremost, we know we are suppose to be parents. I don't know how to explain the fact that God hasn't let us be parents yet, but I also know that He has put it in our hearts to keep trying. We are in no way trying to replace Kaitlyn, that's simply not possible because we knew her personality, and we knew her as our daughter. Kaitlyn wouldn't have wanted us to wait forever to try again because she knows what great parents we will be to the next one God gives us. I have had some people tell me that I'm not ready yet, and I have to tell you that is simply not true. I was ready to be a Mom a year ago, and I was definitely ready to be a Mom on Sept 18th when that dream was shattered. The desire to be a Mom and to see Alex be a Dad to our child is still within me, and I believe that God will fulfill that desire. (Psalm 37:4, "Delight in the Lord your God and He will give you the desires of your heart.") Another thing that has been said to me is that we need to wait and do it "in God's timing", as if there is any other way that we could get pregnant as believers seeking His will. Anyways, as Alex and I have talked about getting pregnant the second time, we've also talked about the fact that I will most likely be a complete nervous wreck when that happens. I'm not sure what I am suppose to expect, but I anticipate having all kinds of feelings over the course of that pregnancy, and that I will need to hear the heartbeat a lot more frequently than once a month at the doctor's office. We already looked at how much a little home Doppler is (not as much as you'd think- amazon rocks), and talked about how that would help me not be a basket case on the day-to-day basis.
    Back to Kate: She is telling me her story of her surgery and I am basically sitting on the couch bawling my eyes out the whole time. It is good for me to hear other people's stories, but even though the stories are all so different we all understand that stomach-dropping pain of losing a baby. I just listened to her, and interjected questions when I could muster them. I asked her about her second pregnancy, and if she was a basket case the whole time. She smiled at me and said, "It was more peaceful than the first one." If you want to see a woman of faith, meet this lady. What a complete inspiration to me to call on God for His peace beyond understanding when we get to do this again (Philippians 4:7 "And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus"). I managed to tell Kate what part I could of our story (I always, always cry when I say we were 39 weeks along... We were so close to being "term" and having a "normal" baby) and she asked what had brought me into the hospital that day in the first place. This is where our story is unique from everyone else's that I've talked to: the fact that we were headed to the hospital to have a c-section in the first place and that, once again, the car seat was literally in the back of the car. We had her outfit (thank goodness!), all kinds of receiving blankets and random things that those bump.com lists tell you to pack for the hospital. We were ready to bring Kaitlyn home. We were ready to be parents.
    One of the things I really struggled with and was able to verbalize to Kate was that I don't feel like a Mom. Okay, don't text me when you read this and give me the lines of "Of course you're a Mom!" "How could you not think you're a Mom?" "You were a great Mom to Kaitlyn" and all that. What I'm saying is that I never changed her diaper. I never heard her cry. I never had to swat her little hand and tell her not to touch the stove. All the things that people write in sappy Mother's Day cards didn't happen with me. I carried Kaitlyn and took care of her the best way I knew how, yes, but I would never presume to be called a Mom. People walking down the street that see me would not say, "Look there's a Mom!" All I have to prove that any of this happened is a cute little pink smiley scar across my stomach. Kate listened to my hesitation with the word Mom and she just smiled at me and said, "We are going to work on that."

     At the end of our session, after I had used about half of her box of Kleenex, it was time for me to leave. I told Kate thank you for sharing so much of her story with me (she definitely didn't have to do that as my "therapist"- I don't like that word, either, so I call her my counselor instead), and she told me it was her pleasure. She told me that when Piper died and she was going through her devastation, there were other women that told her their stories and provided such hope for her. That day, Kate ended our session with, "Now, I get to be that hope for you."

Bible Study Sayings

10.16.13
 
    The church we go to (Hope Fellowship) has a Bible study every Wednesday night for ladies, and I had started going to that study a year ago with one of my friends. We had met a lot of really neat ladies while we were there, and learned some great applications for the Bible in our lives (and so many of those lessons have replayed in my mind over the past week).
     This fall, the study was on Gideon. I'm going to be honest here and tell you that I had no idea what Gideon's story is, and I didn't know where to find it in the Bible at all. I wasn't really planning on doing the study since I was suppose to have my hands full, but once everything settled down with Kaitlyn not being here I realized that Bible study is probably the absolute best thing I could do with my time.
       Quick synopsis: Gideon is found in the book of Judges in the Old Testament, and he was a leader of the tribe of Isreal against the Midianites. The portion of the story that we were focusing on this week was the fact that Gideon had 32,000 men with him and God asked him to whittle it down to 300 through various elimination factors before Gideon was allowed to go into battle. Our Bible study is centered around a video (this particular study is by Priscilla Shriver) and then group discussion around our tables. Our group is quite a talkative bunch, and I love it because nobody is in the same season of life. I'm probably the youngest in the group, but there are a few of our members who had never done a Bible study before the group was formed a year ago. Anyways, we started talking about how God took Gideon's army and shrank it down, and why He might chose to do that.
       One of our members started talking about how people use the saying, "God will never give us more than we can handle." She says, "That's just malarkey", which made me start laughing. I totally agree with her. She said that God gives us more than we can handle all the time because He wants us to turn to Him for our help. He wants us to need Him and seek Him out when we are overwhelmed. I of course, just start crying because I realize that once again, God is using someone that I'm not even particularly close with to speak to me and remind me that He's in control.

Separated by service

10.14.13 (Columbus Day)

      It was time for Alex to leave. I was completely nauseous with the thought of being away from him, both because I didn't want to be without him and because I didn't want him to be without me. My husband is strong (obviously), but I didn't want him to have to be strong. There were a few reasons that I needed to come back to Dallas, the most pressing was having our first post-op visit with Dr. L on Thursday, and I had arranged to see a counselor on Wednesday. Plus, we had decided to leave Kaitlyn's ashes at the house while we were gone- a completely gut wrenching decision to make because it just felt wrong leaving her "by herself" (even though we all know she's not really here), but I also nearly threw-up at the thought of having her in El Paso and something happening to her. Like in the movies where somebody breaks an urn and then vacuums up the ashes, not knowing that they are somebody's remains. So we had decided to leave her in Dallas and let Jenny's bunny guard her while we were gone.

     Being in a long distance marriage is tough. It is not for the faint of heart, or people who are unsure of who they are marrying. I can tell you that everyone who finds out that we don't live together on a daily basis looks at me with complete shock and says, "Isn't that hard?" Of course it is, but Alex is worth it. We had dated when we were 15 years old, and he was always the guy that I compared every other boyfriend to secretly. Nobody could ever match up or exceed him, but we had lost contact after we graduated from high school. When he found me on facebook (Yay social media!) 5 years ago, I knew if he was even half of the man he use to be I was going to marry him. Not only was he the same, he was better. We were engaged before we had even been together a year.

     Alex and I are pros at saying goodbye to each other. Not only have we done it ever Sunday night for our entire relationship, but we've also been through the deployment goodbyes twice. This time was different, though. I was scared of what was going to happen with me emotionally when he left. He had been my buffer through all this, and he was my rock that was available whenever I needed him. I didn't want to sleep without him by my side, and I didn't want him to be lonely in El Paso, either. But this was inevitable. Eventually, I was going to have to get back to work in Dallas, and he was going to have to work out his contract with the army in El Paso. We decided to stick with our plan and not chicken out (there was talk of me going back to El Paso with him and just flying back to Dallas for the appointments, but I wasn't comfortable flying just yet). Plus, Alex was going to be able to come to Dallas 48 hours later to be with me for the OB appt so it was just a little while before I would get to see him again. Kind of like being weaned off of his presence.

     That first night alone was awful. I couldn't sleep. I usually go to bed and pass out, but I just couldn't. The room was too quiet. My dog wasn't snoring next to me. My husband didn't have his arm around my stomach. I cried. I missed Kaitlyn even more at this point. I missed feeling her move inside me when I laid on my side- she was always active when it was time to go to bed. I missed my big pregnant belly; I didn't want the flabby stomach I had been left with. I think I refreshed my facebook page about a bazillion times that night, begging for somebody to write something that was new that I could read. Funny thing is, most people tend to sleep at night and not worry about entertaining other people (dang it). I felt completely alone. I stared at the ceiling. I stared at the curtains. I waited for somebody to say something, anything. I hated being alone.

Midville and hearing it for the first time

10.10.13

     The next weekend, Alex was able to get a 4-day weekend because of Columbus day. For those of you who aren't in the military, this is very common that on a typical 3-day holiday the government tacks on an extra day of vacation. I don't really know why, but I sure did appreciate it.

     We had decided earlier that we would drive to Midland that weekend, and then my Mom would drive me back to Dallas for a doctor's appointment the following week while Alex had to go back to work. The drive from El Paso out to Midland is about 4 hours if Alex is driving, probably closer to 4 1/2 if somebody without a lead foot is behind the wheel.
      All week long I had been dreading going back to Midland because I knew it would be the beginning of the end of our time as a "normal" married couple- meaning that we lived together and got to see each other every day. Alex and I have been together for 4 1/2 years now, and we have never lived in the same city. We are very use to living apart, but we both cherish and protect the weekends since that is the only time we have to spend with each other.

      I'm going to let myself get sidetracked a little here and tell the story of why we decided to try to get pregnant when we did. Like I said, we have never lived together, so you can imagine that actually trying to get pregnant would kind of be like a game- trying to coordinate two events so that magic could happen and we would conceive. We knew since the summer after we got married that we wanted to have our own kids (those of you who know me know that when I moved to Dallas 5 years ago I did not want kids), and we even had Kaitlyn's name picked out since then. I can remember driving down to Austin for the weekend with just Alex and I in the car (we didn't even have a dog at this point) and talking about names and timelines and dreaming about our future family. We talked about naming our kids after one of our family members, and I liked my Dad's middle name of "Lynn". We also had a friend named Kate in high school that was just phenomenal. She was the girl that everyone wanted to be, absolutely gorgeous, talented, and smart. Combine the two and there you go.
       I always test out the names by announcing them in a "graduation voice" to make sure our kid would have a great business name, and then we would talk about short names or nick names. Kaitlyn Sophia Munoz was such a great name, it sounded almost regal to me (you know you just said that in your "graduation voice" in your head and agree with me). Then we realized that we could call her K-So (As in... Queso...), and it just completely put us in stitches because it was SO perfect! A professional sounding name with a kickass nickname built right in. DONE.
     Anyways, we talked about timelines. I knew that I couldn't handle being a "single" Mom in Dallas (for very long, anyways), so we continued to put off starting our family until Alex's active duty contract got closer to being done. Then he got the deployment assignment.
      He was set to leave in February of 2013, and we decided that we would give it a try about 6 months before he left. I wanted to be pregnant, ideally, right before he left so that he wouldn't miss too much of our child's life (we knew it was a 9 month deployment from the get go). We "officially" started trying in October, but like I said it was trying to get two events to fall exactly at the right time and one of those events I wasn't tracking very seriously until about December. I had come to terms at that point with the very real possibility that we were not going to get pregnant before he left, and I was okay with it. The whole time we had been trying I had been praying that we would only get pregnant if it was in God's will for us. So obviously, it was in His divine plan that Kaitlyn was going to be here during this time of our lives.
      We found out we were pregnant in January. To be more accurate, I found out I was pregnant on a Wednesday morning in January by myself. I hadn't really been paying attention because I had been interviewing for my new job, and it was funny because I was talking to one of my friends at work one day and I said "Guess what!" and she said "You're pregnant!" and my response was, "Well... Maybe. I'll check on that tomorrow, though" and continued on with my story. The next day it was "Guess what!" and she said "You got the job!" and I said, "NO, I'm pregnant!" HA!              Anyways, I found out early in the morning that the second pink line was on the stick, and I waited about an hour to call Alex to tell him (just because El Paso is in a different time zone so I didn't want to call him at 4 am, even though I know he would have answered and been just as excited as he was).

       Ok back to present day: On the drive back from El Paso, I was a complete wreck. I had some severe anxiety about going back to Dallas without Alex, and being in the house without him for the first time in nearly a month. Over the past few weeks, I had been keeping myself so busy and I knew that being alone meant falling apart. I was anxious about being alone, I was absolutely dreading the doctors appointment that next week, and all those emotions had started to manifest into physical discomfort. I had stomach cramps and didn't feel like eating. But I mustered through, and Alex, of course, was my rock through all of it.
      That weekend we visited the church my parents go to in Midland and it was there that I heard it.

"Lift up your eyes on high

And see who has created these stars,

The One who leads forth their host by number,

He calls them all by name;

Because of the greatness of His might 

and the strength of His power,

Not one of them is missing."

Isaiah 40:26 NASB

       It was something I can guarantee you nobody else in the auditorium felt. It hit me in the stomach like a gut-punch. The worship leader was the one who read it, arbitrarily, between songs and I lost it. I sat there in the chair and let the tears just stream down my face (once again, waterproof mascara is awesome for Sundays!). Alex rubbed my back while I cried and cried. God had done such an amazing thing for me. He had used this worship leader and this church that I didn't even belong to to remind me of His grace. I have always loved stars. Growing up out in West Texas meant having plenty of opportunity to go star gazing, and it was a regular activity for me. I just loved that no matter your angle they were always there. They were always plentiful, and you could never sit there and count them no matter how much time you have.

      I couldn't tell Alex right then that verse was what I wanted to put on her urn. We had been talking about it for the last few weeks and we could just never pick out something fitting. Do we put her name? Do we make it like a headstone and put her date of birth and death? I knew I didn't want something sad on there, but like Stella said (read previous posts), no matter what we put on there it will always make us sad to think of our missing daughter. But that's the beauty of it. Because Kaitlyn is, was, and always will be a child of God, she is not missing. Because He is mighty and powerful, He calls all of the stars by name to the infinite reaches of space and time. He knows where our daughter is, and because we know Him, so do we.

   

Jealousy hits (the post I'll have to repent for when I post it)

10.8.13-10.9.13

      Let's be real: by absolute biggest struggle right now is with the green monster jealousy. It hits at weird times, but it is nearly debilitating. Up until this week I had been in a cocoon of time stopping, meaning that everyone else's life stopped, too. Sure, I was still getting updates on my facebook page of people resuming their regularly scheduled activities, but until this point I felt like I was still somewhat the center of attention and people were sending messages that they were thinking about us and whatnot.

       Maybe I should back up a little bit: When I found out I was pregnant, I was one of about 5 girls around me that were pregnant. Three of these girls worked in one office, and we all use to joke about not drinking the water since we all spent significant amounts of time in the same place. Elizabeth, that I talked about in an earlier post, had her beautiful baby boy at the beginning of July, my due date was in September, and a girl named Kaitlyn was due a whopping 3 weeks after our Kaitlyn was due (you know where I am going with this). Side note: we had the name Kaitlyn Sophia picked out for our baby girl 2 years before we even talked seriously about starting our family. (More about that at another time.)

     It started with an innocent facebook post on Alex's birthday, the 8th. Kaitlyn was getting close to delivering her baby (which in a cruel twist is also a baby girl, and also a halfsies as I call them- half Hispanic, half white) and she wrote "my biggest fear is pooping on the table when I deliver" or something along those lines. This was the first clue to me that I should have anticipated what was coming up quickly, but instead I just kind of got indignant about it. I know this girl, and she posts that THAT as her biggest fear?? Not that she's going to show up at the hospital and find out that her baby is no longer alive? I mean, I was seriously, SERIOUSLY annoyed with it and wanted to be really snotty and write "Really?" on her post to make her feel bad. I had to vent to Alex for nearly a whole day about it because I was not in a good place and felt pissed that somebody wouldn't think about who was reading their posts before they posted it.
    Ok so now that I have calmed down, I know that she was in no way targeting me and I was severely overreacting. The night before our birth my status could have easily read "I'm really scared about getting an epidural and being paralyzed by somebody who doesn't know what they're doing", not something as morbid as "Hope we both make it out alive." Plus, its her page so she can say whatever she wants to.
    The second thing is that if I start outwardly reacting the way that I feel, then people are going to treat me like they expect that reaction. People won't be able to help me resume "normalcy" if I continually react with snide remarks or sarcastic comments. I have to beg for grace from God to help me not react this way in the first place, and I am still working on that.

   The next day, Kaitlyn had a beautiful little girl in her arms and a picture to document it on facebook. I can honestly tell you that I have never been so overcome with jealousy, and it is a nasty, nasty place to be. I wanted to throw things. I wanted to curl up in a ball and completely ignore the rest of the world and feed my jealousy. I wanted to scream so loud that it would echo off the mountains in El Paso, and that Alex would not have to go to work anymore so that he could just stay home and take care of me. It was just not fair that somebody else had a healthy birth and I didn't. It wasn't fair that I didn't have my 3 week old daughter in my arms that minute. It wasn't fair that I had done everything right in my pregnancy, including going a little O.C.D. about things that were perfectly fine (like cutting out 100% of my caffeine intake from day 1, eating a salad every day the first trimester, walking a mile every day until the last 3 weeks when we knew she was breech).


   And then I got outside of myself, or rather Alex pulled me outside of myself. When I had first seen the happy pictures of Kaitlyn with her daughter, I was by myself in his room and I immediately started crying. I had asked for prayers from some close friends because I was just overwhelmed with such grief and envy. Alex came home from work to find me still in bed and miserable, and I told him what had happened. "Its just not fair," I said to him, and his reply was, "We don't get to decide what's fair." Attitude altered. I'd like to say that that simple sentence from my husband changed my attitude for good, but I'm not going to write like this is easy. I am still battling jealousy every day. Every time I see a baby, I am jealous. Every time I hear a baby cry at a restaurant, I am jealous.
   And every time I am jealous, I am questioning God's plan for us. Every time I am jealous, I am letting doubt creep in. I know where my daughter is, I know that she is sitting with my God, and I know that she is well cared for (better than anything and everything we could have provided for her here). I know that God is using her for His greater purpose. I know that He is shaping me to be glorifying for Him. I know that Kaitlyn's story has touched people that I could never have dreamed of.

I cling to His promise in Romans 8:28- "And we know in all things God works for the good of those who love him."

You go first

10.7.13
   (I had to start dating these again because I keep forgetting where I am in our story. I haven't re-read any of these blogs because I know that most of them will be riddled with run-on sentences and grammatical errors, so trying to remember where I was has been a little difficult!)

    Alex had to return to work in El Paso on the 7th, so we made the drive from Dallas to the west over a few days. We stopped for a night in Midland where our parents live, and saw some family for a little while when we were there.

    The weekend before the 7th was spent trying to find Alex a place to live off base. We looked at a lot of different rooms for rent, and finally found one that was pretty decent (he only has to share a bathroom with one other guy, which for him isn't a big deal but was interesting for me since I stayed out there a week). Sunday evening I can honestly say I had some pretty severe anxiety about Alex going back to work and being by myself for the first time since everything happened. I didn't feel like I was ready to be alone, and I definitely didn't know what I was suppose to do with myself while he was at work. I had brought a big bag of books (I am an avid reader) and was probably a little over ambitious about how much reading I expected to do. The time came on Monday morning for him to leave, and I literally cried for the next 30 minutes by myself. I just felt completely overwhelmed with being alone. I had a lot of friends I could have called, but at this point it was really difficult for me to talk on the phone with people. I would do ok for part of the time but inevitably I would end up in a pile of tears feeling really awkward as I couldn't tell the person what I was feeling and had to rely on them to sit there and listen to me cry for a few minutes.

   Luckily, Alex was able to only work a half day most of the days that week. So I would basically sleep as late as I could, wake up and watch the news, maybe read a little bit, and then wait for him to get home. Every evening he had to go check back in on base to show everyone that he hadn't gone AWOL (this is standard for all the guys in the army, not just Alex), and that first evening I went with him and waited in the car for him to finish. Monday evening was the first time that he had seen most of the guys in his unit since Kaitlyn's passing, so I was curious to know how everything went.

    Remember when you were a little kid and you were scared of something so you would make one of your friends do it first to make sure it wasn't too dangerous? That's pretty much how I felt with Alex going back to work. I felt like I had given him a shove in the back and said, "You go first" and then as soon as he came back I needed to know all the details of how everyone reacted. Did they say something dumb? Did your feelings get hurt? How did they react? Did anyone talk to you? What did they say? We had been talking about how most of the people we had talked to would ask us "How are you doing?" in a whispered tone, like they expected us to break down crying as soon as they brought it up. In all fairness, sometimes I do start crying randomly, but probably 80% of the time I am really ok. I can say that I have approached a lot of people who I know had suffered losses (parents, siblings, whoever) the same way that people were now approaching us, with a soft timidity coupled with a look on their face of pure sorrow. What we were craving at this point was normalcy. We wanted people to act normal, talk normal, just be normal with us so that we could feel normal. The guys that Alex worked with approached him in the whispered tones, and it made me dread going back to my own work even more. The job that I have requires me to travel to about 8 different hospitals, all of which had watched my belly grow and listened to my excited stories about our daughter's arrival. What I dread about my first few weeks back is that I will get to do the "first time seeing people after a loss" 8 times, and probably answer the same questions about a bazillion times. I don't know if its better for people to just act like everything is back to normal or at least ask once how we are doing. I obviously don't really want to rehash the entire episode every time I run into somebody I haven't seen yet, but at the same time I think it would be hard if nobody asked.

 

Death and all his friends

     About a year ago, there was a man named Mike who came and shared his personal story of loss and tragedy with our church. His story is one that stuck with us (and you will see why, if you have cried at all reading this blog be sure to have a box of kleenex ready when you listen to this), and we have talked about it more recently.

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.