You are brave friend! If you are reading this it likely means that in some capacity you desire to walk next to us (and/or others) in grief and are willing to learn and grow to better love through the shadow of the valley. Alternately, you might be a fellow sojourner through this dark land. This is not easy by far, and we appreciate you more than we could ever express <3 You cannot know what you do not know. Although experience is the most effective teacher, a truly empathetic ear is the best alternative. We would never desire you to truly sit in the depths of understanding that only come from loss of a child(ren). And so, I’d like to share my heart’s journey with you from the beginning of February until about 2/20 to give you additional insight. These are the hardest 2+ weeks of our entire year and are hereafter referred to as “Tunnel Week”.
As January grew to a close, I could feel the weight settling on my shoulders. I saw pictures and visited memories of my family in the weeks leading up to their departure and separation from me. One memory that levels me every year happened about two weeks before the tragedy. We went sneaker skating on the lake at Ballas park off of Kromer Road in Wind Gap. Kathryn, Kaleb, and Kristian were so alive! Their smiles lit their faces as they understood the incredible experience they were having while walking and sliding across the frozen water. Today, when I watch the videos of them laughing and falling, I must acknowledge that I will never get to share a similar memory with our Kasper, nor will I get to show them more of those experiences firsthand… How is it possible that this occurred a mere 14 days before I would never get to see those smiles again?! Memories like this are so special and still so crippling- they start the process of burying me.
While the days are short in January and February, the nights are long. It seems fitting that they have a tendency to stretch on and on in emotional pain. When there is nothing to occupy them with, it feels like torture. We have learned that it is important to decide how to pass the hardest of these dates before we are too weighed down by grief to do so. In the past, a lack of planning left us completely incapacitated and we must be alive and loving to our littles whom God calls us to now. Planning does not stop the pain, nor does it lessen it, it just spreads it out better and makes it possible to carry. As time inched forward, we could feel the weight of the impending storm.
As with any natural disaster, we do not create nor exacerbate this storm. It cannot be prevented by focusing on someone or something else even if that someone is Jesus. It comes WHILE He holds us. We cannot lessen the damage by claiming Bible verses or relocating our hearts to a safer location. We cannot make our pain go away. Grief is an act of nature in the spiritual sense, and we are left with watching the clouds roll in and preparing our hearts to be cradled under the shadow of His wing (PS 91) knowing that our souls are already safe in eternity. Put another way, when we kiss a toddler’s boo boo, it doesn’t make it physically better, it lets them know that they are loved and not alone- His wing shelters us like that. We are loved and NEVER alone even as the storm rages its destructive force. Oh friend, feel Him draw you in for a hug.
In Mark Vroegop’s Dark Clouds Deep Mercy, he writes “We tend to hush the recitation of sorrow. However, restoration doesn’t come to those who live in denial”. On our journey we have found this to be true. There have been those who have tried to walk with us and failed because the denial of their own pain became an obstacle. There have been others who walked hand in hand and step in step with us for a season until they were tripped up by the lie that grief’s discomfort should be hushed when we meet some arbitrary time limit. Still others thought that grief could be cured by receiving a miracle and so shut the door to all pain when they summited the mountain or when they witnessed us on a pinnacle moment followed by grief that to their perspective should no longer be.
The truth is that all suffering gives evidence to the broken world that we live in. It calls us to feel pain so that we remember the contrast of God’s good character which consumes every aspect of our eternity. The hardest of our questions WILL go unanswered whether or not we are Christians, and so our only choice becomes whether to believe in Jesus’ sacrifice and Lordship, God’s sovereignty, and the beauty of eternity (with our loved ones) or, not. If I’m wrong, and there is no one king Yeshua Jesus (I’m sure that I’m not) I will lose nothing and gain peace and joy that pass all understanding (among other things). The consequences of choosing “not” are far worse- I don’t want to spend eternity in physical and emotional pain. Either we will have our questions answered in Heaven or else we will be so content in perfection that we will no longer feel the need to ask them.
As we journey through this alien land, we only have three choices about what to do when the pain of grief and suffering tap us on the shoulder: 1. Welcome it in immediately 2. Deny it entirely or 3. Shelve it temporarily to return at a more convenient time. As stated previously, denial is detrimental and grief can and does serve a purpose when we allow it space. It can draw us closer to Jesus, closer to each other, and it continues the beautiful relationship(s) we were blessed with until we join them again. Shelving is a learned skill. I often shelve my grief when it is too big to visit while caring for my little ones. Sometimes I even shelve it if there is no room for the time or capacity it will need from my day. It does need very intentional and purposeful return though. If we don’t pick it up again it becomes denial in a noncommittal form and might just explode in our faces like a shaken soda.
During “Tunnel week” being self-aware and in tune with Holy Spirit’s directional whisper is more important than any other time of the year. I consistently have to choose what to do with my grief. The anniversary of our family tragedy is really the night of 2/10 with 2/11 being the date of death on their certificates. For the past three years it has felt heaviest for me on the night of 2/10 because I do not want to lie awake wondering what they experienced in those moments of time. I choose to shelve this grief to be visited with a rested heart and mind the next day. Two days later (2/13) is Carlos’ mom’s (Zulma’s) birthday. Although this date is in alignment with the natural order of loss (parents before children), the heaviness remains. She died young, and frankly, that sucks. Among the heavy is the knowledge that our living children will grow up without ever having known her in the way that they “should”. Valentines’ day comes immediately after, and we’re often too beat down to acknowledge it. Still, the memories of celebration of this holiday with our angel babies add additional weight. Then we get two days to breathe before Kaleb’s birthday on 2/17. This day often feels heaviest and hardest of “Tunnel Week” because we are so run down by this point that we are staggering under the weight of it all and need rest in every way imaginable. Still, we cannot allow ourselves to not honor him, so we call out an SOS to God, He scrapes us out of our bed, and we honor the memory of our firstborn boy as best as we can. His celebration is much more solemn than the others’. Arguably it isn’t a celebration at all and more the motions of acknowledging that we want to celebrate him. Time will tell, but I doubt that will change. No, it’s not fair to him, but I believe he understands the intricacies of that better than I do and is not bothered by it at all.
Every year we learn better what works and doesn’t work (for us). I know that as we age closer to eternity it will become less awkward and so alleviate some of the stress that is involved in the learning process. This year we even enjoyed a menu which honored the memories and brought us joy in the sadness. It might be something we do every year. I’ll make a note in my phone so that there is less taxing effort for my brain next year and we’ll decide then.
I believe if I could have a bird’s eye view of our lives after the Christmas season, I’d see a winding road that gets more and more narrow until it funnels into an impossible to avoid tunnel. Before we enter in, it is imperative to plan rest stops along the way while we can still see the route. We fully enter the tunnel on February 1st, and don’t come out of it until sometime on or after February 18th. We’ll need at least an additional week to recover from the exhaustion. In the tunnel, Carlos, grief, and I ride together in the darkness focusing solely on the “true Light” (John 1:9). The veil to the holy of holies is thinnest with our proximity and closeness- praise God for this massive blessing amidst torture!
It reminds me of a beautiful quarantine memory. Our KGRs and I engaged digitally with our children’s ministry 2-3 times per week while we couldn’t meet in person. In one of these efforts, we sang “this little light of mine” in the light of a single candle. I remember the intimacy of this moment as we only had each other and the single light to focus on. The same proves true in “Tunnel Week”. We can only focus on each other and on Light himself. We might hear noise to the side of our forward motion, but we temporarily have no peripheral vision and so our focus cannot be distracted from Jesus. It will only ever be background noise. Grief is the friend that reminds us to make space in our lives for the tunnels of emotion which lead us directly to intimacy with our savior.
Now that we have children to parent on earth again, they are along for the ride and they feel the weight of the darkness pressing in, but as we hold tight to their hands their journey is neither as deep and dark nor as singularly focused. Somehow, they ride on the outside of the tunnel parallel for the entire ride. As they grow in age and understanding on the journey, I wonder whether they’ll join us in the tunnel? This year Klark was clearly aware of the emotion on more than one occasion, but whether he will feel the things himself or only feel that we’re feeling them is still to be determined.
When we emerge on the other side of the darkness, we come out shielding our ears from the noise and our eyes from the light. We miss the clarity of that singular focus and the intimacy of those moments but we’re grateful too, to no longer have to exert that level of emotional energy until the following year. And grief, who cocooned us so tightly in the darkness to keep us in proximity to the Light allows us to experience the world again. We begin to acclimate and recover but even this is experienced over several days. We are not immediately “normal” on 2/18.
And so it is that every year we both love and hate “Tunnel week”. We anticipate its arrival. We lace up our devil stomping boots to remind him with every breath that what he meant for evil, God is using for our good. And we sing for the whole world to hear of God’s goodness despite the world’s brokenness.
From one broken human to another,
It is worth the fight.
So “Keep going, Really!” friend!
Tunnel Week
