| I’d better warn you, this entry is a long one so if you are tired and sleepy or have something in the microwave you may want to come back later. If you have a few minutes . . . read on. July 2—Carrie’s One-Year Anniversary July 2nd marked the one-year anniversary of Carrie’s home going and this past year has been an emotional, psychological and spiritual roller-coaster. I’ve experienced what David wrote in Psalm 88 and 89:
you have put me in the lowest pit, in the darkest depths . . . I am confined and cannot escape; my eyes are dim with grief. I call to you O Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to you . . . But I cry to you for help, O Lord; in the morning my prayer comes before you . . . you have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend. “ (Psalm 88:1-2)
through all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established your faithfulness in heaven itself.” (Psalm 89) Over the past couple of months I’ve often found myself thinking about Carrie’s last weeks. She knew that she was a small part of something much bigger. Many people struggle with meaning and purpose in life, especially as they find themselves unable to be and do what they’ve been used to being and doing. Many try to create meaning where there has been none. The reality is that dying is ugly and when cancer has been eating away at our body how can we still be beautiful or at least enjoy and reflect the beauty of who God is when we are looking ugly and struggling with constant pain and the probability of dying with a boatload of unrealized hopes and dreams? Carrie rarely struggled with meaning and purpose but she did struggle, as I still do at times, with the brevity of life. One year later I still vacillate between having to make myself get up each morning and just wanting to survive to times of great focus, clarity, creativity and sovereign joy . . . and that can happen several times a day. I still get ambushed. Sometimes it’s a mild ambush and sometimes it’s almost immobilizing. One minute I feel like I’m standing on the beach enjoying a beautiful summer day and the next minute there is a huge tsunami crashing down on top of me. But the great thing is that no matter how many waves crash on top of me or how big the waves are . . . by God’s grace I’m still standing! Here is what I wrote on July 3rd:
the day off and spent it with my kids. I woke up early about 5:30, had some good time in the Word and some time to think, reflect and pray. Alivia hadn’t slept much (thus Nathan & Amy hadn’t slept) so from about 6:30 – 8:30 I walked with her and rocked her and both she and her mom and dad got some good sleep. Part of the time I sat holding Alivia on the couch that had been Carrie’s “wardrobe” from this world to the next, where she breathed her last breath of earthly air to breathe her first breath of celestial air and suddenly it struck me that a year ago I was holding my wife on the same couch and in the same room that I’m now holding our granddaughter. Job was right, the Lord gives, the Lord takes away and then he gives again and again and again. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
went out to one of Carrie’s favorite hole-in-the-wall pizza places by her favorite lake, then went down to the lake where we enjoyed the sinful brownies, talked and I read some excerpts from her Journal of Hope, we released 6 different colored balloons which we watched fly across the lake and high into the sky, then drove to the Columbarium at our church where we have a space for some of the remains of Carrie and Matt, I read a few passages of scripture that meant a lot to Carrie and that she had us read to her just one year earlier on her last morning here on earth. At night we watched a couple of hours of home videos with a lot of Carrie scenes and then shared some of our favorite memories of Carrie & Mom. Today is a new day.” All things considered it was a great day and another “Ebenezer” to God’s goodness, grace and mercy. We laughed a lot and we shed some healthy tears but the bulk of the day was primarily rejoicing and giving God thanks for my great wife and a great mom, for 27 years of marriage and ministry, for a gazillion great memories and much more. Anniversaries can be positive and/or painful but each one provides an opportunity to reflect. Here’s what Carrie wrote on the first anniversary of her diagnosis:
“For those who know me I am not a person that anticipates or ruminates on “sad” anniversaries. I love birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and anniversaries of celebrations. For those loved ones that have died I am more likely to think of them not on their day of death but rather on their day of birth and think about them and miss them then. So how do I look at this year anniversary of walking through cancer? Certainly it was a very traumatic day and I do remember it well . . .
finding out that the tumor was inoperable and that I had a positive lymph node in my neck. All of these experiences could add up to trauma, tragedy and crisis. Certainly in my experience of being a human I felt these things but what I know to be true and what I celebrate with this year anniversary is that there was a moment where I came face to face with my Lord Jesus Christ and we talked about my choices and really there were only two. One choice would be to succumb to the trauma and tragedy of it all and sink into a deep dark angry depressed state and perhaps give up and give in to the statistics of the cancer that was growing in my body. The other choice, and I remember it well, was to “choose” to cling tightly to Jesus and to “live” desperately needing Him 24 hours a day and trusting that He would be there for me just as His scriptures have promised for thousands of years. Scriptures that I would have said I believed but didn’t always function like I believed them. So what does this anniversary feel like as I walk through it this week? I celebrate this year anniversary, not necessarily the diagnosis, but I celebrate a year of life, perhaps more living that I have ever lived, I celebrate relationships, my family, my friends and those that I pray for and uphold me in prayer. I celebrate scripture and truth and healing and holiness. I celebrate finding Jesus to be all that He says He is and trusting Him to strengthen me in my loneliest of moments and to believe that His love is really all that I ever need, even while living on this earth. I celebrate the working out of “His purpose in His Kingdom through this experience of cancer. I am in awe of what He has done and am deeply humbled. This anniversary is a “marker” of God’s tremendous love.
me to live in the “here and now.” It is in the here and now that we were designed to live. It is in this here and now that He will supply all my needs, every single one of them and it is in the here and now that we experience the fullness of who our Lord is.
little journal entry. I celebrate life, love, laughter, goodness, healthy moments, new friends, old friends, my family. May 17th is not a day of trauma but rather it has become a day to remember, a day to mark understanding the experience of “hope and healing.” I am grateful." I too am grateful! I really can’t imagine is going through what I’m going through with the Lord, without a loving family by my side, without a boatload of precious, warm and wonderful memories. I can’t imagine what it would be like to going through the loss of a son and a wife with a ton of regrets. I can’t imagine what it would be like to look back with a ton of “If only” or “What if?” or “Why didn’t I?” By God’s grace I don’t have very many regrets. There aren’t many things I’d do differently. But I know many people who in their grief don’t have many precious memories to celebrate and they are haunted by things they wish they’d done differently. That’s one reason why as you are reading this and if someone comes to mind that you need to talk to and let them know you love them, that they are important to you, that you value them OR if there is something you need to apologize for (even if they haven’t apologized to you for what they did wrong) then stop reading this, pick up the phone and give them a call. If some things have come to mind that you’d like to do differently in a relationship then immediately grab a pen or pencil and write it down. That’s right, stop right now and write it down or else you will forget. Many lives are littered with great ideas, good motives, warm thoughts and good intentions that were never expressed, never followed through on and just forgotten. Life is waaaaaaaaaaay to short to have regrets and it doesn’t have to be that way. I no longer try to live tomorrow today. I don’t try to live this afternoon this morning. I feel what comes. I let the tears flow when appropriate. I look for the good that I am missing that is contributing to the pain that I am feeling and I thank God for that good, for those precious memories, for the laughter, the loving glances, the hugs and kisses, the loving (and sometimes not so loving) corrections from someone who knew me and whose heart I could trust and with whom my heart was always safe . . . I choose to thank God and to celebrate. Carrie’s last entry in her “Journal of Hope” was June 13th, 2007. She had less than a month left on this earth. The cancer had ravaged her body, she was in fairly constant pain, she was having to have her stomach drained on a weekly basis, it was hard for her to get comfortable because basically she was just skin and bones. We were both in the wake of the devastation of Matt’s death and felt like deer in the headlights . . . and that’s just what we were. Now, here is the amazing thing. In the midst of all of this Carrie was clear that God was at work, that He hadn’t forgotten and that He still wanted to somehow showcase His faithfulness, goodness, mercy and grace through our faith-story. Carrie’s last two weeks here on earth were fruitful ones. Our friends Eric and Jennifer Garcia had asked us to be the speakers for the opening session of the AMFM annual conference in Charlotte. Carrie didn’t have the strength or energy to make the trip on commercial airlines and we thought we’d have to cancel but Eric arranged for Steve Ulhman, a Christian businessman with a huge servant heart who is committed to strong marriage and families, to fly us on his private plane so that on opening night we were able to with complete candor and transparency share God’s grace and goodness to us in the midst of our dark valley of grief and pain and loss. The next week we had the joy of speaking for the Kanakuk Family Kamp. Twice that week I had to take Carrie to the ER in Branson to have her stomach drained of fluid that was accumulating. We spoke together in the morning and tried to manage her discomfort in the afternoon and evening. Yet, of that event Carrie wrote, “It is hard to put into words the glorious time we have had . . . and we know without a shadow of a doubt we were to be here to share about marriage, difficulties and the power of the Lord.” That’s either massive denial or, and I was there with her, it was a sense of God’s power and presence that surpassed the pain and discomfort of a body that was, unbeknownst to us, only weeks away from becoming a brand new body as she would meet her Lord. “In the first few days after Matt’s death about all I could do spiritually was to repeat ‘Jesus I know that you love me, Jesus I know that you love me, Jesus I know that you love me’ and I would say to Him ‘and Jesus, I love you for you still have not left me or forsaken me.’ Sometimes all of this being said in agonizing, gut- wrenching weeping.” “Waiting is hard, it is tedious and it is something the enemy uses to discourage us because he wants to wear us down and out as we wait. The enemy cannot have us, will not have us. We are in the arms of Jesus, we are confined to His love and His safety. We pray that whatever this day brings for you that you will experience this love and safety as well. Oh, we hope that for you. One does not have to go through cancer and the death of a child to feel in confinement. Be at peace in His arms and allow your heart to beat softly and slowly as you experience the love of Jesus in fresh deep ways.” Now that’s the real deal . . . Nathan & Amy & Alivia In mid-July the kids went to West Palm Beach to be with Amy’s Mom and Dad, her two sisters and Alivia’s two cousins. On July 15th Nathan and Amy celebrated their third wedding anniversary. They were able to find child care for Alivia (Amy’s folks just happened to be available) so they were able to get away for a rare night with just the two of them. There were married in West Palm Beach so it was a special treat to be there with family and then to be able to celebrate their anniversary. Alivia continues to grow and by God’s grace is a healthy and spunky little gal. She is sleeping better (God does answer prayer), is holding her head up, still has big blue eyes, is making sounds that we’re sure are words that we just don’t understand, and more of her personality is coming out. Only those of you who are grandparents will know what a special blessing it is to watch your kids parent their own child, to see the love, compassion, dedication, intensity and constant concern. When I watch Nathan and Amy with Alivia I'm reminded of God’s love for His little children and that He is even more concerned. Gary, Nathan and Andrew in the Grand Tetons While Amy and Alivia stayed a bit longer in Florida, Nathan came home to join Andrew and me on a trip to the Grand Tetons. This is one of my favorite places in the whole wide world and has a lot of memories for me from my childhood up through adolescence, young adulthood to today. I took Nathan and Matt here when they were 13 for their “rites of passage” trip (Andrew got to go to Australia) and Norm Wright and I have had numerous fishing trips there. We hiked, went to a rodeo in Jackson Hole, rode a gondola to the top of the ski area with an amazing view of the entire valley, spend a day in Yellowstone, took a 15 mile hike with a 3,000 foot elevation gain, saw moose and buffalo and other critters, caught some trout in the morning and had them for dinner at night. It was a wonderful time and with Andrew being a college student and Nathan being a dad we may not have a lot more father/son trips in the future. Precious memories. The day after we returned from the Tetons Nathan and I boarded a plane for Denver. Our good friend, Matt Farmer was finally getting married to the classy Jenna Love (they met at Kanakuk—go figure) and they asked me to officiate and Nathan to be a groomsman. Since Matt is a graduate of the Air Force Academy he was able to have the wedding in the academy chapel. If you’ve ever seen pictures of it (if not Google it) you’ll see an amazing piece of architecture both inside and out. It was a wonderful wedding between two people who love Jesus and love each other. It’s always a joy and a special honor to be a part of the miracle of a marriage . . . to see two become one. Gary’s Skydiving Yeah, at the end of the month I did a static line jump which means I got out of the plane (on purpose) and let go and for several seconds prayed that my chute would open . . . and it did. It was an amazing experience. In the few seconds between my jumping out of the plane and my chute opening I sensed God saying to me, “Gary, this is how I want you to live--just trusting me to be faithful.” Sometimes life feels like a freefall and at other time we know we’re covered. Once the chute opened and I checked to make sure everything was working I was able to enjoy an amazing view and a fresh awareness of our God’s majesty and the fact that HE is the chute that always opens. Andrew is going to be doing a “tandem” jump soon and I’m sure this won’t be my last jump. Other Stuff At the end of the month I was able to speak for another week at Kanakuk Family Kamp and had a wonderful time. Kanakuk is an amazing place and has one of the most unique family camps I’ve ever seen with families from all around the country. This was the last place that Carrie and I ever spoke at together so it was especially meaningful for me to come back, this time as a widower and a single parent but still one who loves to talk about the goodness, grace and mercy of a gracious God. In August I’ll take Andrew to Biola and drop him off for his freshman year of college. At some point not too far down the road Nathan and Amy and Alivia will probably be moving to West Palm Beach and I’ll be alone in this lovely large house that once was filled (most of the time) with love, joy, laughter and dreams. Our three-car garage will only have one car and I’ll have sole responsibility for the cats. Now that’s depressing. Will I have times of loneliness, sadness, discouragement, aching, longing and even some depression—probably. Will my faith in my Lord Jesus Christ be the same when I’m alone in an empty house—I think so. Will I still be able to experience love and joy and laughter and maybe even start dreaming again—I know so! Perhaps not 24/7. But I know that it will somehow work together for good. I’ve staked my life on it. Thanks & Praise
Prayer Requests
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| August 8, 2008 |
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