It’s intriguing to me how many of us experience a flood of grief during the holidays. The feelings of not being enough, something missing, emptiness, desolation, heartbreak, loneliness, and anxiety overwhelm our minds, and our physical and mental health suffers. A season that is meant to be “jolly” and warm is indeed the opposite for so many people. And it makes sense. We live in a very dark and broken world. When the media, the Christmas movies, the generic songs all sing to us that we are supposed to be merry and bright and we find ourselves in a season of grief and literally aren’t capable of feeling joyous and can hardly muster a real smile, it’s natural to feel even worse.

I sat on the couch this morning eating leftovers from our Christmas get-together last night, a big beautiful tree lit up beside me, gifts and wrapping paper still scattered across the floor, and instead of joy, I felt the heaviness of it all. Another young, recently widowed sister messaged me. I scrolled through facebook and saw another suicide. Another tragic car accident that ended in death. Another family spending their holidays at the hospital with a critically ill family member. I go back to work tomorrow for the net four nights to take care of critically ill and dying children in the PICU. I’ll say ‘Merry Christmas’ to a family who will spend the day in their child’s room, watching the ventilator breathe in and breathe out for them. The reality of life doesn’t mesh with this picture of Christmas our culture has painted.

I glanced to the left and saw my Bible on the end table. I opened it to the Christmas story, and I read. I wept. I flipped through the gospels, I read the notes I’d written, the highlighted verses, and I found in those pages an overwhelming peace.

We celebrate Christmas because of the birth of the Savior we so desperately need. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the entire Old Testament and New Testament… the world inside my own home and outside my front door all beg for a Savior, a divine, perfect Savior to save us from all this broken mess. And we got Him. Praise the Lord, a Savior was born, and He came to this very earth, and lived, and suffered, and was later killed to save us from it all. The gifts, hot cocoa, trees, red, green, lights, food, cards, and candy canes are nothing in comparison to the birth of a Savior who delivered us from living in this pain and dying for eternity. Those pages say nothing about living an easy, carefree, bright life on this earth. They are filled with examples of people who suffered, people who were sick, people who struggled, people who died. And they are filled with examples of a man named Jesus who brought comfort, love, hope, deliverance, peace, and strength. A promise that when our time on this broken earth is done, He will call us home, and we will be healed. A promise that while we still live these lives of ours, He will strengthen, comfort, and carry us through the valley of the shadow of death, and rejoice with us on the sunny, airy mountaintops.

 

“Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned in to joy… These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace, In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” 

-John 16:20, 33

 

“‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated ‘God with us.'”

-Matthew 1:23

 

“And He opened His mouth and taught them, saying: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted….'”

-Matthew 5:3-4

My prayer today is for you, sisters and friends. For your broken, grieving heart. I pray the peace of God Himself would overcome you, I pray you find hope in the promises Jesus Himself preached, and I pray your in your pain this holiday season (and every day), you find joy in the birth of a Savior and the knowledge that the pain won’t last forever. You aren’t alone. He has come, and He has overcome, and we will be restored and whole when He calls us home. Until then, may we be a light to one another, may we be shepherds to the lost sheep of this world and lead them to these truths that have brought us so much comfort. May we keep living and serving our Father.

Until next time,

Julie

Moving forward doesn’t mean hating or blocking out your past. It doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean you ever stop loving. It’s just a different kind of love now. I remember this day three years ago — we went and played miniature golf at Casey Jones and had a blast, even though we both played terribly and sweated our tails off. I loved you with my whole heart while you were here with us, and I wouldn’t change that. I loved my life with you. And I love my life now, too, and the way the Lord has used the pain of losing you to grow me in to a stronger, more compassionate, more faithful follower of Christ. I carry it all to the cross.

Being a widow is hard. Being a widow at 25 adds a really messy twist. You see, it’s messy, picking up the pieces and choosing to keep moving. You can’t be a “normal” 25 year old again because at a very young age, you’ve experienced what most people don’t experience until they’re elderly. People criticize. Some refuse to acknowledge new found love and pretend that you are supposed to live the rest of your existence in the depths of depression. Others refuse to acknowledge your past and pretend it never happened and avoid talking about it at all costs. Or they make it out to be some horrible thing, your entire marriage to someone who decided to kill himself. But my whole marriage wasn’t some terrible thing. He was mentally ill. That doesn’t mean he didn’t love me or treat me well for the majority of our marriage. Regardless, you lose a lot of friends and learn the sad truth that while immediately after you’re widowed people say they’ll “be there” but there turns out to be a place very far from your side, because you haven’t heard from 90% of them since the funeral. And then there’s the internal battle… emotions contradict each other. There’s a weird feeling of having somehow fallen backward yet also leaped forward all at the same time. You can feel an intense love for someone new while still, at the same time, feeling an equal intensity of emptiness from where your last love was ripped from your life. If you’re not careful, anxiety will root itself in every corner of your life because of the trauma you experienced. I carry it all to the cross.

You can be joyous while still feeling somber and grieving. You are allowed to keep living. You are worthy of love, friendship, and fellowship. You are worthy of JOY. And you are also worthy of experiencing grief whenever it strikes without feeling guilty for having loved someone so deeply that the reality of your loss can literally bring you to your knees and strip the wind from your lungs. I carry it all to the cross.

In it all there’s one theme that always shines through — my only answers are found when I carry it to the cross.

The cross is significant. On the cross Jesus, the Son of God, innocent, was sacrificed to pay the debt of the guilty. Three days later, He was resurrected, which showed His incredible power over darkness, thereby giving us, guilty sinners, victory over all of the pain, anxiety, sickness, and darkness in this world. Guaranteeing us eternal healing and life, if only we believe in Him and His power. And so when we carry our junk to the cross, and lay it down and say “Jesus, I know you have all power over this darkness”, it dies there. Our Jesus takes on the burden that we’ve been carrying and frees us from it. He gives us victory. So we keep moving. We keep living. And we keep loving on and reminding each other about the power of Jesus on that cross.

I carry it all to the cross.

Benjamin,
One year ago today I kissed you for the very last time. I was annoyed with you for being so loud getting ready for class while I was trying to sleep for work… I’m not even sure if I said “I love you.” But I did. I still do, in spite of the immense amount of pain your actions have afflicted on my heart. You hurt me in the worst kind of way. But still, I love you, and I wish you had remembered that before you chose to end it all.

I never planned for it to be like this. I never could have prepared myself. But I’m proud. I’m proud that through the Lord’s strength and provision I have survived this first year without you. I’m proud that I haven’t let depression completely rule my life and that I have chosen to seek joy even when my insides want nothing but to sleep for eternity. I’m proud that I found the will to live, though there for a while I had absolutely none. I’m proud that I rediscovered myself and who I am apart from who we were — I gave up a lot for you, including my faith, and I’m learning that it’s GOOD to take it back, its ok to choose to find joy in my passions again and not live a miserable life because I’m still trying to be a dead man’s wife. I’m proud that I have figured out that I am really and truly the bride of Christ and only He can love me with true, perfectly pure love. I’m proud that I decided anyone who wanted to judge my decisions could seek friendship elsewhere, because until you’ve been through this you really have no grounds to judge me.

Today hurts. These weeks hurt. I miss you so much that I have felt hollow inside again for the last couple of weeks, and probably will for the next few. But I have hope, which is something I didn’t have on this night last year. I loved you with all that I was and I believed that I had died with you. I will always love you, though that love looks different now, and I have discovered that I can still be very much so alive. I’m also so angry at you I could punch a wall. I believed in you when no one else did, I rooted for you, and I was always on your team. I worked hard so that you could pursue your dreams, and I invested myself in building a life with you, and you just threw it all away… but you VOWED to keep me safe… it’s hard not to be bitter and filled with anger, though hopefully someday that will dissipate.

I pray that in those last moments you remembered our Father’s goodness that you had given up a few years before. I had been praying for you to find Him again, like I had just 2 months before you died. I pray that you are whole and healed and in His arms. And if you are, I hope you are continually thanking Him for healing you, and for holding me. When man fails, our Father does not.

In the darkest of the dark, He has held me. Praise be to God. Here’s to year two, to deeper healing, to continuing to embrace unexpected change and to live every day to its fullest. Our God is good, and though I’m broken, He is putting me back together, and I KNOW I’m ok.

In the weeks after my husband died I was certain I couldn’t survive the pain, and I scoured the internet for books, blogs, etc… on how to survive the loss of your husband to suicide at a young age. That book/blog didn’t exist (hence my decision to publish this blog several months later). But what I did find was a lot of blogs in which women discussed their “Chapter 2”, referring to their next love. I remember being completely disgusted and feeling very adamantly that I was incapable of loving another man. I voiced my disgust to a handful of friends and they said “you may feel that way now but don’t close yourself off to the plans God has for you.” If you know me at all you probably know that response was even more frustrating. It simply wasn’t an option for me. So I planned to live out the rest of my life as a broken hearted, single dog mom, and I tried to let go of the deep longing in my heart to raise a family with Ben. 

A couple of months in, after moving out of my parents house and back out on my own, I began receiving creepy messages from some of Ben’s “friends” as well as people I distantly worked with— I’m talking 30-50 year old men offering for me to come to their house in the middle of the night to cry on their shoulder *insert vomit emoji here*. I was even more disgusted and closed off to the idea of ever dating again. There are some real creeps in this world, y’all.

So when a friendship with an incredibly respectful and kind man from work began giving me butterflies, I questioned everything. First I questioned myself. I genuinely believed I was a terrible person for having a crush on someone less than 6 months after my husband died, and I also believed if it went anywhere my entire community would disown me. “Am I so messed up that I’m just desperate for attention? What if I deeply wound this man with my baggage?” I also questioned him and his motives — was it possible someone could like another person in such a complex place without sick motives? Spoiler alert: yes, yes it is. 

We hung out a few times. Breakfast after work, hiking with my dogs — the same things I did with all of my friends, but I continued to feel the feeling that Seth wasn’t supposed to be my friend. I had no clue at first if he felt any of the same feelings — he was the most respectful person and although he DID have a crush on me, if it hadn’t been for me speaking up he would have contently partied in the friend zone because he never intended to put me in a difficult place or make me rush in to anything. He wanted me to have space and time to process and grieve.

If you’re in a similar place, I want to encourage you to do two things: pray, and talk to your “people”. I prayed a lot about the confusing feelings I was experiencing and for the Lord to give me clarity in sorting through my feelings. I mean, I was still wearing my wedding rings and deeply grieving the loss of my husband (the rings have since been taken off, but Chapter 2 doesn’t mean you can’t grieve anymore — I grieve every single day, still), how could I possibly have feelings for another man? Would that not be infidelity? I had vows with my husband — How could I break those? 

I also called my Mom. “Hypothetically speaking, if I went on a date, would I be the worst person in the entire world?” “Absolutely not. You should let yourself live and do things like that.” I later told my best friend from college and she said something similar. I chose not to talk to anyone else (ok, I talked to my counselor, too) because I didn’t want the opinions of people that might just give me their emotional judgement instead of setting aside whatever bias they might have because they knew and loved Ben and actually considering my best interest. 

We kept spending time together. And finally, I just threw it out on the table. “I could be completely wrong, but I get the idea that you like me and I don’t know what to do with that because my life is so complicated.” Something like that. And we discussed very honestly and rawly like adults. Crazy stuff, y’all. No games, no secrets, real, raw feelings. We chose not to jump right in, and gave it some more time. I wanted to really evaluate if I liked HIM or I liked the idea of being loved again, because the last thing I wanted to do was wake up one day and realize I had used and subsequently hurt an innocent man.

I had fears. How will I react when another man tries to hold my hand, kiss me, snuggle up on the couch with me, wipe my tears, enter a new covenant with me? Will I freak out? Will that just inflict pain on Seth? How could I do that to him? I felt like a grenade that the pin could accidentally be pulled from at any time. I feared my grief and PTSD would injure a man who didn’t deserve to be injured— and if we’re being completely honest, it has several times. Be prepared for it to be difficult. The first kiss is bittersweet. Fireworks in the middle of a thunderstorm. It felt like home, but how could it be home if my dead husband was my home before? The moment you first interlock your hands with his you feel the difference, you feel the emptiness from your passed parter yet hope and security in the very much so alive person whose hand yours is intertwined with. 

I had my moment of “yes, I can do this and not be cheating on my husband” while standing beside my best friend on her wedding day. I wept, because I remembered how she was beside me on my wedding day, how recent that was, and how much Ben’s death still hurt. I wept because I remembered how much I loved him. I wept because I felt like I would never feel that joy again. And then I heard the pastor say “The only thing that can break the covenant of marriage is death.” 

Death. 

My husband is dead. 

Our marriage covenant was broken in death. 

If I keep trying to be his wife, well, I can’t, because he’s dead. 

That was it for me. Those were the words I needed to hear to free me from the idea that moving forward would be disrespectful to Ben.

The next step was deciding when we were going to “go public with it”. I was terrified to tell Ben’s family because I didn’t want them to think I was “over” Ben’s death (I wasn’t, am not, and probably never will be), but I finally got the courage to do that. They told me they wanted what the Lord wanted for me and seemed happy for me. We dated quietly for a couple of weeks, and then finally I said “I know people are going to judge me. They’ll judge me today, they’ll judge me a year from now. Let’s just be real with the world. You’re too much of a blessing to hide.” 

And you know what? I was right. We were judged harshly by church members, friends, acquaintances, coworkers, town gossips, and my in laws. A lady from church who barely knew me invited me to coffee one day and then told me how inappropriate she thought my dating so soon was. A handful of friends at work straight up stopped talking to me. Some of my closest friendships were strained. People told Seth I was going to rip his heart out. It was painful and still is sometimes. But if you’re in this place, I encourage you to step up and talk to those people. Explain the change you’ve noticed in how you’re being treated and ask why. Let them talk. If they knew your deceased spouse, they likely have some emotional stuff going on that they don’t even realize is straining your friendship. And those who won’t give you an answer or continue to harshly judge you and shut you out — let them go, they don’t need to be in your life. 

I think I’ll save the “here are the struggles we face now, 7 months in to dating with PTSD while grieving” for its own separate post. But I wanted to at least get this out there: you’re allowed to keep living and you deserve happiness. A friend of mine is in a similar boat right now and reached out a few days ago and said “I think I deserve some happiness.” We talked for a while, but the take home was… 

YOU DESERVE JOY. Your life doesn’t have to suck because someone tried to make it suck or something completely terrible happened to you. You get to choose joy and happiness and seize every day for the good in it. 

The truth is, Ben loved me, too. He loved me as best he could in spite of fighting mental illness every day of our 3 years together. We had talked before about what we would do if the other person died. He actually told me he would want me to be happy and if that looked like remarrying, he would want that for me. Though Ben and Seth are very different people I feel confident that if Ben could, he would give Seth a hug and thank him for loving me as well as he does. 

Chapter 2 is allowed. It’s not disgusting. It’s not a sin. It’s not infidelity. It’s difficult at times. But you owe it to yourself to keep writing your story and to allow good things to happen to you, too. Choose joy. 

Til next time,

Julie

Pain has a way of striking at the most unexpected times.

Tonight I was digging through some boxes filled with important documents searching for a book of stamps when I found a card I’d written Ben just a few weeks before he ended his life. It was an apology — I’d been frustrated that he had been unemployed for 2, going on 3 months, and I was exhausted. I’d been especially bitchy and felt like he wasn’t trying and had mentioned that he needed to work harder. Ben was the type of person who didn’t take criticism well at all, and especially not if he felt it was accusatory — so those conversations were always hard, and he usually was far more hurt by them than ever intended. So in this letter I told him how much I loved him, his loyal and caring self, and how blessed I felt to be his wife, even when it was hard. I ended the note with “Everything is going to be OK. Love, Your Wife”.

Reading those words several months later, knowing that just a couple of weeks after I wrote them he killed himself… it’s baffling, honestly. Who are we to even say things like that? Certainly my husband feeling an acute immense amount of depression and ending his life wasn’t ok. And I know that his leaving me and our animals and our families behind wasn’t ok either. I mean, at the end of the day, do you and I even know that everything’s going to be ok?

I think we do. But maybe not in the way we think we do. The truth is, I sit in bed typing this and I really am ok. I’m in pain. I have so many emotions I can’t even begin to weed through them right now. I hurt, I’m stressed, I’m anxious, and I continue to be exhausted by the battle that moving forward has been. But ultimately, I am ok. My story has taken a drastic trajectory change, but it’s not bad — it’s just different. But at the end of the day, I still have so many things to be joyful for. You see, sometimes I think we confused the words “okay” and “alright” with “fairytale” and “perfect”. God never promised us a life that we might consider perfect — but He does promise to take care of and provide for His children. Through His promise we know that we are going to be ok. I knew when I wrote Ben that letter, and I know now, that God has not forsaken me, nor did He forsake Ben. My dead husband is OK, too. I can hear you now… “did she really just say that?” I did. And I meant it. Ben is OK. His body is dead. But I know that his core, his spirit, is alive… whole, restored, and purified. I know this because it’s yet another one of our Father’s promises. I know that he’s been perfected, all of the broken pieces fixed. I don’t believe God ever wants to see His children suffer, and I believe He weeped with Ben in his final moments and He weeps with me to this day, but ultimately I think Ben is better than he has ever been. Ben is OK.

The words seem insensitive sometimes. Other times they seem far too optimistic. I know when people dared say them to me just after Ben’s death I just glared back at them. But they’re true. Everything IS going to be ok. Even with the pain, even with lost dreams, even with grief. I know this because our Father promises it, and He has proved it to me again and again.

 

Until next time,

Julie

 

 

I clearly remember the feeling that my life could never be ok again. I remember sitting in my parents truck wearing athletic shorts and a tank top, a police officer’s jacket wrapped around me, in the below freezing weather. I remember the thoughts racing through my mind… “What if he’s dead? I can’t do this alone. And what if he isn’t? Can we survive this?” Three things make the loss of my spouse really complicated — 1.) I was only 24 years old. 2.) In the moments leading up to his suicide, he assaulted me verbally and  physically — I genuinely believed he was going to shoot me. 3.) Suicide — it’s the worst way to leave someone.

I spent the first month without Ben living in my parents house — in their bedroom floor, to be precise. My precious mother drug my old twin size mattress down the stairs and placed it in her bedroom floor beside her bed — and for an entire month, I slept there, and she woke me up from my nightmares and held me. She’d find me mid-panic attack, shaking, gasping for air, shutting down mentally because the pain I felt was so intense, and she’d patiently talk to me and hold me and help me. I thought “I’m too damaged. I will never get over this.” And it’s true, I will never get over my husband’s death or the events leading up to it that were so uncharacteristic for him. But there’s a difference between getting over something and working through it. I felt like I was 8 years old again. You grow up… you leave home… you graduate college, get married, and are trying to start a family through fostering… and then suddenly everything falls completely apart and you find yourself back in your parents house being taken care of because you can’t take care of yourself. Those were dark, dark days, and I am forever grateful to my parents for taking care of me and my dogs in that time (and still today).

I remember the pain I felt unpacking our apartment into the house we’d signed a lease on with the intent of fostering children. Finding “Mr and Mrs” champagne glasses from our wedding. That travel mug that I hate so much that I kept trying to make him throw away because it was leaky, that to this day sits in my cabinet because I haven’t brought myself to throw away something he insisted we hold on to. I remember the first night I spent completely alone in our bed, almost afraid to touch the side of the bed where he slept. Wishing the sheets hadn’t been washed because I wanted his pillow, I wanted to feel him there with me. I remember coming home from work to an empty house and crying for hours — heck, I still come home and cry for hours.

I remember thinking I would never love again. How could I love another person without feeling like I was cheating on my husband? I also remember my first date after his death, and how I was scared to tell anyone because I was so afraid of the judgement that would be cast on me. I texted my Mom… “Hypothetically speaking, how terrible of a person would I be if I went on a date?” I remember standing beside my best friend at her wedding, listening to the pastor explain “til death do us part”, how death is the only thing that ends the vows… and  I remember the bitterness that overcame me, as well as the peace that followed when I realized I wasn’t betraying Ben by falling in love with another incredible man.

I share this because I want you to know how hard it has been, and I want you to have the same tools that I have at your disposal for your own grief. The last several months have been impossible, but I have survived and even learned to thrive because I’ve learned how to take care of myself.

1. Establish your ‘people’, and realize that you aren’t bothering them by being needy right now. These are people you can text or call at literally any time, the ones who know you well enough to read you without you having to really say much at all. My people are my Mom, and my friend Dassi. Both of them have heard me say some of the scariest things, seen me collapse in the floor crying and believing I could not survive another moment — and neither of them will ever hold my worst moments against me. It was hard for me to come to a place where I realized it was OK to need them, that they weren’t upset with me for needing them. If anything they were glad I needed them, glad I reached out and asked for help, because they knew that meant I was fighting. And when I had no fight left in me, they drug it out of me.
2. Medicine is OK, but not a long term solution. I’ll be completely honest — I spent the first 2 weeks after Ben died taking Xanax pretty much around the clock, and having to take Ambien to get any sleep. As a nurse, I know a lot of these medications can be addictive, so I was hesitant to take them — but sometimes self care involves recognizing when you’re just panicking and spiraling into hopelessness, and deciding to do something about it. I could not have gotten through those first couple of weeks without that tool. I could not have handled his services, or the constant flow of questions without medication to help curb my panic. I want to stress, though, that numbing yourself around the clock for an extended period of time will not help your grief process. There’s a big difference between occasionally needing to take something to help you cope with a panic attack and keeping yourself numb. If you’re constantly numb, you will never process your grief, and you will only inflict damage on your brain causing more problems down the road.
3. Exercise is the best drug. My aunt mailed me a book called “Healthy Healing Book”, which was written by a woman who lost her husband in her 30s. The book encouraged me to go for a walk, which turned in to a run, which became a habit. Literally putting on foot in front of the other helped me do the same thing mentally. I ran to worship music, and I prayed, and I screamed, and I yelled at Ben, and I cried for Ben, and I told him how much I missed him, and I just let the sweat pour out of me, as well as the emotions. Later, I learned about kickboxing and how therapeutic a simple 30 minute kickboxing workout at 9-Round could be for my brain. Kick boxing has been especially helpful in handling the present, almost constant feeling of anger towards Ben and the fact that my life has been so hard. Other people benefit from yoga. Personally, I found it frustrating — I did it almost every day before Ben died, but it doesn’t relax me anymore. Perhaps it will again one day, and perhaps it will help YOU today, but in my case, high energy fitness has been the most beneficial.
4. Allow yourself to explore your faith.  My faith has been the most important part of my healing journey. Allowing myself to dig in to the Word, and figure out what I believe about heaven and hell and where I believe Ben to be in spite of his choice to end his life and his anger towards God. Figuring out what I believe about death and if God chooses to take people from us or Satan tries to hurt us by taking people from us. Through my faith I have found hope in moments so pitch black that I thought I might not make it out of them. Set time aside each day to journal and to dig into your beliefs. It’s not always cut and dry, and it’s not easy, but it’s worth it.
5. Give yourself time goals. On the hardest days I would tell myself “I can do anything for 5 minutes”, and my goal would be to survive the next 5 minutes. That’s all. Just 5 minutes. Focus on inhaling and exhaling, deep, full, slow breaths for 5 minutes, then set a new goal.
6. Make a bucket list. Ben and I had a lot of dreams. And most of them died with him. But I found it so encouraging to find the ones that didn’t and make a list of them. Some things I could do alone, and others I needed someone to come with me. I texted friends who were interested in those things and we made plans. “Will you hike part of the Appalachian Trail with me?” You’d be surprised by how many things you can still do, as well as by how many new dreams you find. These are all things to look forward to and live for. I found races to run and events to go to that were months away and I said “Julie, you can and WILL make it to this.”

Whatever you do, wherever you are, remember… you can do anything for 5 minutes. One foot, then the other. You will survive. You are fierce. You are a warrior. And you are not alone. 

I pray blessings for each and every one of you.

Til next time,

Julie

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I guess you could say I’m fortunate enough to have gone through traumatic loss once before losing Ben. I’ve done the whole PTSD thing. I’ve gone through the grief thing. The catch is, the first time around, I did it in the most unhealthy way — 5 years later I found myself in a counselor’s office begging for answers as to why all of a sudden I was having night terrors every night and panic attacks multiple times a day. What’s interesting is, the person who got me to go to that counselor’s office was Ben. He’d held me through night after night, waking me up to tell me it was all okay as I kicked and punched and screamed in my sleep… he’d held my hand through every panic attack that he could, even when I pushed him away and said hurtful things from a place of fear. He was a good, forgiving, and patient man. But one night, he did a very hard thing and said, “Julie, I love you. I will love you forever. And I want to be strong for you, but I don’t know if I will always be able to. You need a professional, Julie. You need to do this for yourself, and for me.” I respected that he risked upsetting me to be honest with me, so I made an appointment, and I spent the summer of 2016 in trauma counseling.

In short, when I was seventeen, my grandfather, who was pretty much my best friend, was killed in a freak horse accident, and I’m the person that found him — unconscious, barely alive, and almost unrecognizable. He died immediately upon his arrival to the Level 1 Trauma Center nearest our farm. My entire family was devastated. I gave up on my plans of earning a full ride scholarship to my dream university, and spent every single day by the side of my paraplegic grandmother who my mom, stepdad, and I had taken on the care of. She soon grew terminally ill, and died 8 months later. During that time, countless people (attempting to encourage me), said things like “you know you were his favorite grandkid — you’re the reason he got the horse, he wanted to spend time riding with you”… or “you know, you have to be strong for your mom. Let her grieve. You have to keep it together.” I think I let myself cry once in front of my parents after the funeral, and they started crying too, so I felt bad and decided I should just keep it to myself. SO I did. I kept my grief to myself. I became a hermit. And every time the emotions came up, I just tucked them back down. That, friends, is why five whole years later, after teaching horseback riding lessons all summer and watching a sweet little girl being thrown off of a horse and injured, I, all of a sudden, was a complete wreck. So I went through trauma counseling, I was put on an antidepressant for about a year, and in time, I was OK.

The morning Ben died, my parents drove to my apartment in the middle of the night to sit with me on the sidewalk while we waited for SWAT to arrive, clear the apartment, and tell me what I already knew deep down — my husband was gone. I was quiet for the most part. I remember rocking myself, trying so hard to just remain calm until I knew for sure. But I knew. I rocked back and forth and I prayed so hard and I spoke aloud to Ben as though he could hear me, I asked him why he did this, and I waited for answers. I told the police, “it’s silent in there. There is no movement. He has attempted before. He needs medical help if he’s in there and he’s hurt. I’m an ER nurse, my job is to take care of people like Ben. Someone has to go in.” I repeated that, too, probably a dozen times… “someone has to go in, he needs help, this is my job”… but because he had a loaded weapon, had fired it, and was not within sight of the front door, no one could enter until SWAT got there. Aside from the things that I kept repeating, I didn’t say much. All I really managed to get out on the way back to my parent’s farm that morning was “I need my counselor”.

A week later, I found myself in my counselor’s office again. The last time, Ben and I had been together for just over a year and were talking about getting married. This time he was dead. I sat across from my counselor and we wept together. I knew I had to talk about it — which was the opposite of what I did with my grandfather. So I went prepared, and I said “Well. I guess you want to know what happened.” My counselor was surprised that I was so willing to just jump in, but we proceeded. So, I told the story. I poured salt in my wounds and relived that night for the millionth time that week. One of the most important parts of grief in general, especially trauma, though, is talking about it. Every time we share our story we process it. Our brain is given another chance to file things away. Having gone through trauma counseling before, I knew that I had to share my story and share it often. I knew that I had to confront the hardest, most heart shattering parts of it head-on. I had to use very frank words like “Ben is dead”. I had to find the truths in the midst of the web of lies our minds try to spin up to remind myself that this is not my fault, as well as that God is faithful even in the valley of the shadow of death. And finally, I had to start journaling and just let the thoughts pour out onto the pages, even if I didn’t understand them as they spilled out, because I could go back after word vomiting everywhere and read my thoughts and process them one by one. I like to explain PTSD/traumatic grief like this: you have a large glass jar half full of beads. Every single one of those beads is a thought, and the glass jar is your brain. PTSD is when you get triggered and the jar gets shaken for minutes, hours, even days at a time. There’s no way to process all of those thoughts, as they rapidly rush through your mind. You have to patiently reach out and grab them, one at a time, scribble them down somewhere before they disappear, then grab the next one, and so on and so forth. If you do that, the thoughts eventually settle, and you can go back in a more organized manner and assess each individual thought and determine what triggered you and how you can deal with it. But in the throws of PTSD, it’s next to impossible to just stop and process things — hence the necessity of word vomit. (note: One important thing I learned, too, is that you should always try to end your word vomit sessions with a truth or something positive. It’s good for your brain.)

I think as a society we don’t know how to handle death, and we tend to just push away our grief. We also have a huge stigma surrounding mental health and seeking “help”. But if we push our grief away, we never file it away in our brain and we wind up with bigger, worse mental health problems down the road. And counselors, some of the most underrated health professionals that exist, are the most gifted leaders in helping us manage our grief in a healthy way. Grief isn’t a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all thing. Everyone is different. Everyone moves at their own pace. The whole “7 stages of grief” thing is kind of bologna in that they come in no particular order… sometimes you feel numb nothingness, and sometimes you experience all seven stages at once. Personally, I’ve been experiencing the anger stage for about 2 months now with intermittent sadness. I felt guilty for being so angry at first, but the truth is, I’m allowed to be angry. The man who promised to keep me safe and spend his life with me chose to kill himself instead. Some people may never experience much anger, some people may not experience denial, etc… The important thing is, whatever emotions your brain is experiencing, acknowledge them — let them out, talk about them, and give your brain a chance to process them. We often don’t want to burden our living loved ones with our emotions, but fellowship with other humans is one of the most healing gifts God has given us. 

Grief is hard. Trauma is hard. God never promised an easy life for any of us, but He does promise to walk through all of it with us. He does weep with us. He understands grief better than anyone else, and He will not leave us to bear it alone — but in order to bear it with Him and the communities He has given us, we must first face it head on and acknowledge that it’s there.

Til next time,

Julie

 

 

It’s been over six months since Ben left this life on earth. In all honesty, as I gasped for air when his body was returned to the earth back in May, I didn’t think I’d make it this far. I had no hope. I had no drive. I was completely empty, completely shattered, completely shocked, and believed that my life would never be beautiful again. People told me “it will get better, just keep fighting for us”, “we need you, we can’t lose you both”, “don’t give up, just keep breathing”. Truth be told, their encouragement often left me frustrated. How could they tell me to keep fighting or be upset with me for wanting to give up when they had never experienced a loss anything like mine? I recall saying numerous times “is your husband dead? No? Ok then, please stop talking.” If you’re reading this right now, though, and you happen to be experiencing that kind of loss — keep on fighting. It DOES get better. 

I remember how every waking moment I felt like a hollow shell, filled with cold nothingness, like I had been completely stripped of myself. I still feel that way sometimes, but it’s not as often. I remember feeling like the world was merciless — how could people keep moving and going about their lives when my husband was dead? I understand, now, that while my close friends and families had to keep moving, they did so with heavy hearts. I believed I would never experience joy again and I would never love deeply again — I would just go through the motions for my friends and family, and I would live out the remainder of my miserable life until God decided to have mercy and bring me home. Oh, praise our Father for His strong hands, for knowing the depths of our souls, and for providing for needs we are unaware we have. I remember the pain so clearly, because it’s still there. But towards the end of June, something changed; I chose hope.

I’d just moved back out of my parents’ house, where I stayed for a month or so after Ben died. I got off of work (it had been a horrible day, and my PTSD had been triggered) and came home to find that Ben’s dog had completely destroyed a very special piece of furniture that also belonged to Ben. It was just enough to push me over the edge of “I’m sort of keeping it together” to absolute meltdown. I lost it. I screamed, I yelled, I threw stuff, I punched the wall, I collapsed in the floor and I stared at the ceiling wondering how I was going to keep living. I bawled until I had no more tears, and I begged God to just bring me home to Him, “please, God, please just bring me home, I’m so tired, God, I can’t do this, I don’t want to, please just let me die, God.” I called my Mom. We talked until the Xanax and Ambien kicked in. And then she came and spent several days with me. In the following days I was afraid. I was afraid because of how badly I wanted to die. I knew it wasn’t an option, it wasn’t an answer, and that something had to change. I realized that I’d spent every day up until that point still loving Ben as my husband. Actively. The reality is, when you actively love a dead person, trying to keep up your role as their wife, you long to be dead, too. I learned then, that I needed to figure out how to love the memory of Ben, and to respect him in death. It didn’t happen overnight, but I consciously made an effort to re-configure my thoughts, and before long I was able to be thankful for our three years together. I was able to find hope in a Father who I knew would provide for me, and to find joy in each day, even if it was something small.

At first I was confused as to why God would let something like this happen to me. Why did He let me fall in love with a man that would leave me like this? Perhaps because Ben was angry at God and hated Him when we started dating. In his vows spoke of how I reminded Him that God is good. Maybe I was just a tool to bring him back into God’s arms before his death. It could be that my story was meant to help someone else. Or maybe there are reasons I’ve never considered. Regardless, let’s get one thing straight: God didn’t take Ben from me — free will did. Ben made a choice. My pain is merely one of the consequences of his choice. The beauty of our Father, though, is that He weeps with us when free will leads to pain and suffering. It breaks His heart, too. He’s incredible, though, because He takes broken things and rebuilds them. It’s been important, though, to remember that rebuilt things don’t always look the same. One of the hardest parts of this healing journey has been learning that different doesn’t mean bad. Ben and I had an abundance of dreams, plans, goals… all of which died with him. My life looks nothing like I expected it to a year ago. But it’s still beautiful. It’s still good. The world around me is still filled with breathtaking views, adventures to be had, and people to share them with. Different is ok. I can be happy with what today has held, and simultaneously grieve what I have lost. It’s allowed.

I could go on and on about the countless things I have learned in the last six months, but I’d better just stick with an overview for now and break it down a little more in future posts. The big take away here is: I’m glad I’m alive. I’m thankful for life, and I wish that back in those first days I could have believed that I would be ok someday. I hope, in the depths of my heart, that as you read my words, you will heal alongside me. Everyone is broken somehow — perhaps your pain isn’t from losing a spouse, but it’s pain all the same, and our Father longs to rebuild your broken pieces just as much as He longs to rebuild mine.

Til next time,

Julie