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The holiday season can be so hard, but especially if you have lost - or feel like you are losing someone you love. Early this season, I was invited to share with a hospice group in Texas ways we can SEE GREEN HOPE this brown holiday. Take a listen.
How is HOPE showing up for you this week? I would love to hear what HOPE looks like for you?
Day 1 of 30 DAYS OF GREEN HOPE series
Because sometimes you need to not do it alone. Join me for 30 Days of Green HOPE!
On August 16th, it will be 15 years since our daughter Leisha ran off to heaven. I have been ‘celedreading’ this year for 15 years. The anniversary that marks that she had lived as long as she has been gone.
From past experience, I know that anniversaries and birthdays can throw a grieving momma for a loop. I can go into the depths of the grief tunnel all over again if I’m not careful. Now I know that I will always be a greiving momma! I can’t NOT be a grieving momma just because she was my baby and I will always feel the loss of her different than anyone else in my life. It doesn’t make my loss more or ‘righter’ -
it is just my own.
This year, I really want…
I've dreaded this year - this birthday for nearly 15 years. In a few months Leisha will have lived as long as she has been gone.
I hesitated to share this with my GHC community. But the truth is, I haven't been doing well, emotionally, spiritually, mentally or physically. A huge part of that is that I have had some 'BIG" things going on in my life in a very short amount of time.
But that isn't all of it.
For the last 6 weeks I have been 'stopped" -
I am broken.
I don’t know if I ever truly felt broken before Leisha died.
I think perhaps in my pumping sunshine (Ren’s word for my positive outlook) way of looking at the world, I most often felt like whatever was wrong with the world God would find a way of making it right.
But since losing my child, I am very aware that God has not taken away the pain I have felt, nor would I want him too. It is part of the love relationship I had with my daughter. I miss her in my life because of my deep love for her.
Even if I will forever feel broken.
I'm flawed.
I take it back to Adam and Eve.
Here they were - the perfect couple in the perfect garden.
They had no baggage. They had no past life. They had no history that hurt them.
They were completely free of all of that.
And they still were flawed
You have heard the words “unprecedented’”, “uncertain” and pandemic more times than you care to count at this point. The signs of the times have been stirring up so many emotions within you, and you find yourself reacting to people and circumstances with an edge to say the least. Someone asks you how you are, you say I’m Fine!
But are you? Really?
When I find myself swirling with emotions about what is going on around me, and feeling unable to control what is going on in me, I go to …
For me this is a Significant day - not an ordinary day in any sense of the word! I’ve shared some of this in my last blog post called Five Years Later . But it seems important to include some of it here again because it is such a key part of my journey. Heads up - this is a long one. But I am an author now.
It is the Last day of TRIBE FIVE (a conference for writers and creatives put on my Jeff Goins and his team). It is the last day of the last conference. He's up to something else- we just don't know what - yet.
On the last day of the first conference, I heard Jeff say,
“You are a writer when you say you are a writer.”
So I said I was a writer.
On Friday, August 16th, I spent the day in the DEEP WOODS. It is a spiritual retreat center located in the woods behind my church. In the fall of 2012, our friends and family helped us to build the 3rd cabin that is available for personal, spiritual retreats.
The cabin is called HOPE.
The reason I was there on August 16th was the 13th anniversary of my daughter, Leisha’s home-going.
Something changed March 31st.
I didn’t think much of it at first until it was April 5 and I was still ‘down’ (exhausted, weak, unable to think clearly or make a decision) I’ve had those symptoms happen before. I struggle with them periodically, but I felt like I was doing better.
And then I wasn’t.
And I haven’t been all month.
I’ve done the things I have to do. I take an extra dose of the meds I need to manage ‘stress’ (that’s what you do when you have Addison’s disease, because my body doesn’t do that anymore.) I muster up enough energy to speak or teach or coach or write-
and then I sleep. A lot.
Being the question-asker that I am, I have tried to determine why I am ‘down’ and why for so long. I attributed it to some new meds I’m taking, or the weather change or … I have a rather long list of things I could mention here.
But then my husband says,
Ren and I are part of an apprenticeship class studying Nehemiah. An assignment we have each week is to identify one thing that stands out to us from the study of the scripture.
What I noticed immediately was Nehemiah asks some men who had just arrived from Judah how things were going in Jerusalem for the Jews who had returned there from captivity. The news wasn't good. The walls of Jerusalem had been torn down and the gates destroyed by fire. The people are in great trouble and disgrace. It's in shambles.
Then verse 4 says
4 When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted,
and prayed to the God of heaven.
From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Nehemiah+1&version=NLT>
That thought caused me to ponder. Why was his grief so strong? what made him cry?
