total abandon....

Today is another one of those really, really hard days.  Many of you already know it is my sweet Eathan's birthday.  Every year its hard.  Every year I miss him and want to hug him and celebrate the way I do with all of my children.  But this year is even harder because he would have been 13.  It is one of the big milestone moments that we never reached and that opened up a hurt I wasn't fully expecting today. 

It's hard to fathom really, what he would be like.  When his life on this earth ended, so did the understanding of who exactly he would evolve into.  I can imagine and guess, but this side of heaven, those are the things that will forever be unanswered and incomplete.  And on big milestone days like the day he should have become a teen, the emotions are thick and deep as to what he could have been and from my Mom view... should have been. He was remarkable and beautiful and smart and fun and loving and kind and precious.  It is hard every day to know it ended so soon, but on these days, when he should have been hitting a major milestone, it is just flat unfair. 

But the thing is, even in the middle of my emotions, the reality of "fair" is not the issue. God never promised us a life of "fair".  He never promised that if we follow Him we will get everything we want, the way we want.  He never said every earthly viewed dream will come true.  Nope. He didn't say it, nor would He ever be about that.  Why?  God is a God of love, hope, peace.  Why wouldn't He fulfill our every dream when we choose to follow Him? Simple really... because He is about the things we CANNOT see.  To give us all we want, the way we want it on this earth, would lower Him to our earthly pursuit of life as we see it, and therefore sabotage Him being who He says He is...Sovereign. 

The reality is, on this hard milestone day for our family in our remembrance of the birth of that precious son of ours, though He cares deeply for our every hurt and every tear, God is Sovereign and He alone ordained our sons days.  Not one day too soon, according to God, did our son depart for Heaven.  Not one day too soon.  Even though I never saw him hit double digits.  Even though I never saw him become 13.  Even though I won't celebrate his 16th or his 18th.  I want watch him graduate High School.  I would see the career he pursues through college.  I will never see the girl he would have fallen in love with.  I won't witness his joy when she walks down the isle to become his wife.  I will never see him melt when he holds his first born child for the first time.  I won't see his pain when he has to do the hard parenting for the first time.  Still yet, God is sovereign because I know that no matter what my heart aches for in my earthly awareness,  my sweet Eathan did not go home even one day too soon.

So where does that leave me in my sadness of this day?  What can I possibly gain today that I haven't already worked through a thousand times before when it hit like a bullet through my heart that I was missing something I never would have chosen to miss in that little guy's life again today on what would have been his 13th?  Today, a friend wrote to me, "I KNOW our Father will have a precious, personal word for you today. After you ponder His words in your heart for a while, I pray you will be able to share them with us. (((hugs)))"  Karen, you know our God.  He did, I have... and now I am thankful to get to share. 

Yes, I have had many times over these years of grasping life with my Tuffy missing from them, to sort through and grow with Christ.  I have learned to trust in the hard moments.  I have learned to wait and anticipate Him doing something bigger than that moment.  I have experienced healing and hope in so many ways I could never have enough time to blog it all.  But today, yet again, God took me somewhere new. 

The word that has come over and over today is abandon.  "Robin, I am looking today, in this moment of your sadness, for your total abandon."  That was with me starting in church this morning during our praise music time.  I  was singing in that place of hurt, unable to even keep my eyes on the screen, because I was needing to escape into Christ so badly I couldn't handle the distraction of seeing the words on the screen. 

I was trying to think of Jesus and not how sad I felt in the slowness of the worship song, and like a gentle whisper I heard, "Abandon."  "What God?  Abandon what?  I don't know how to leave this pain.  I want to.  I am able to most days.  God you know I have found my joy again from this tragedy, for a long time now!  What are you asking of me?  Today hurts!  I miss him!  I miss not knowing who he would be and what he would look like at 13?  How can I abandon that and not abandon who I am as his mom?"  Silence followed.  I kept singing, kept praying, kept fighting that lump in my throat.  Silence.  Waiting.  Nothing.

The music part of worship ended and a video clip came on introducing the sermon series... "Happy people".  Our pastor came to the stage and looked around and said "I am looking around.  Are you happy people?"  Funny, I usually am.  But today, I felt myself want to say out loud, "NOPE!  HE WOULD HAVE BEEN 13 TODAY!!!"  Instead I looked at Todd and whispered it.  He reached out and touched my hand and gave me that understanding look I needed, and we joined our pastor as he led us in prayer.

The sermon was rich and inviting.  Oh how God has a desire to bless us.  How He has a desire to meet our needs and heal our hurts.  "God?  Answer me!  What do you mean, abandon?"  Nothing.  The pastor begins to wrap up and then he introduces us to a man named Kenneth.  He is a brother in Christ with a provocative testimony that hit me in the gut.  That poor man was taught in a horrid way, at only the age of 5, to hate... and I mean HATE white people.  He was taught that was his only way to survive in the deep south in that day and age and he owned that hate from that day forward until he met Jesus.  The radical change in his life when he found Jesus, led him to the cross, to forgiveness of himself for his hate and for others of whom he had hated.  He was so radically transformed that he said, and I quote, "I am now married to the whitest white woman around and we have four of the most beautiful 'german chocoloate' children."  Transformation. 

But even in that powerful testimony, I wasn't hearing what God was asking of ME.  I am not filled with hate over the death of my son.  I do not resent God or man for what didn't go the way I wanted.  I am able to love others even though that time was harsh.  I feel I am open to being used to minister to others because of my experiences and I am open to and actually crave opportunities to use my hurt in loss and pain to be a part of helping others.  I don't feel stuck in my grief and I completely feel that losing Eathan is not what my life is about today.  It is a part of my today, but it in no way controls my today.  If I feel God can use my story, I tell it.  If I can share the wisdom gained from the ongoing journey of living through it, I share.  But I am not prisoner to the past and the loss.  I just hurt more on days like today and I miss him every day.  I think God is okay with that because I know that is the result of the love we shared... and God says, "But the greatest of these is LOVE." 

So... "WHAT GOD?  What are you trying to say to me?"  Silence.  Waiting. Nothing....Until my rebellious daughter, who just back-peddled again this week, walked into the room.  Right in that moment it hit.  "ABANDON".  My message for today was not about letting go of my hurt today.  His word to me of "abandon" had nothing to do with my sadness.  I had his permission to miss and feel sad about my son turning 13.  I even feel like He rejoices that I do love my children that deep... for I know from my own adopted children's biological start in life... not all parents do, unfortunately.  Nope, "Abandon" had nothing to do with that at all.

Today God was saying to me and I think for any of you that might be in what seems a senseless struggle in comparison to the real pain in the world, "Live abandoned in the middle of WHATEVER you are feeling, so that those who refuse, might see".  Today, through that word,  I was being commissioned back to His cause for me... right in the middle of my saddest moments of grieving fresh what I will never have with my son.  Isn't that so God? 

We talked about in our bible study hour this morning, how God doesn't wait until we are "better" to save us.  He meets us where we are.  That was a reminder again for my adopted teen daughter, as I pray for her... "God meet her where she is."  But the rest of the story today came through that one word "Abandon,"  was God saying to me, He isn't waiting for me to "feel better" today, before He uses me in this fresh new way.  Just like all the times before, God was commanding me today for ministry... right in the midst of my sadness. Even further, He was commanding me in the middle of my sadness, how I am to live it out.  

God was reminding me... there is a REASON for my sadness over Eathan not making it to 13... and it is a FRESH reason for TODAY.  It clicked.  I got it.  And I cried.  We went to see The Lion King in 3D and All the way through, I cried.  I cried and I cried.  And now I share because someone needs to hear this too.

Here is what God cleared up for me today.  We are not to stay stuck in an "old testimony."  Our losses and stories are worth sharing, but if we only have the stories from then, we are totally missing out on what He intended for the nows that started with the thens.  Is that about as clear as mud?  Stick with me... here is the thing....I will always remember what God did in the life of our son and those around us, and us, because of our son and his journey home to heaven.  Always.  I will never stop telling the stories and using those experiences to minister.

But the story did not end then.  Today, what God was telling me, and what I feel each of you need to know, is fresh things still come from what began back then.  "ABANDON!" today from God was Him saying, "Robin, quit trying to figure this thing out.  Go with it, where it is, today.  Trust me in the sadness of not seeing 13 that I am up to something just amazing through this sadness as I was the day I took Eathan home!" 

My new hurt in this new milestone means God is doing something... and it is something new!  Maybe it is with my teen daughter who just can't stay on God's path right now.  Maybe she needed to see my raw clinging to Christ new again today.  Maybe the sadness of missing 13 revealed my weakness and need for Christ in a fresh new way for her today and maybe in that she will find her way back to him.

Maybe someone reading this will.  Maybe it is you.  Maybe you have felt you have to hide the realness of what you are dealing with.  Maybe you are making excuses and blaming others as your try to escape the reality of what it is God is trying to say to you about you, in whatever you are dealing with. 

I don't know.... that is the God view.  What I do know is the word abandon for me today is translated into freedom to feel... raw, real, authentically feel the pain all over again today without shame or guilt in anyway.  It doesn't lessen my testimony of joy... it just authenticates the fact that there is joy even in sadness.  "ABANDON!"  = "FREEDOM!" 

It hurts that my son never saw 13 and never will.  I am not ashamed that I pulled in, cried, and even cried out, "unfair."  Why?  Because God Himself said for me to live "ABANDONED in HIM" and to do that, I have to lay it out as it really is.....  join me.  I am telling you... it's worth it.

Robin