Unexpected

Have you ever been walking along, say in a store, and all of a sudden your feet somehow get tangled, or you trip on a rug and you fall down?  It happens to me a lot.  You feel pain - actual physical pain associated with hitting some part of your person on something on the way down, say a shelf with pointy edges, or the floor which is hard.  Also, there is the possibility that somebody saw it happen.  That's so embarrassing. You laugh and pretend it's no big deal, but, I'm telling you from experience that those feelings stay with you for a while. 

I'm a school bus driver, and one morning somebody got on my bus smelling like Cheerios and bananas.  Wham.  Down I went.  That smell was like so many mornings in my house when my kids were little.  I was immediately in my kitchen, standing by the sink, watching my three eat, their personal blankets wrapped around them, maybe some stuffed animals or some action figures on the table watching as well. 

What happened to that life?  I still feel like the person that cut up bananas for my kid's morning cereal, but I'm really not.  There's Andrew and Emily - they've got jobs, school, lives of their own.  There's my oldest, my Jason who is unavailable to me currently. I miss them, often and intensely.

So what's your plan when you're driving a school bus with tears streaming down your face?  How do you overcome that shooting, debilitating pain and go on with your day?

I guess you just wipe away the tears, and focus on the job at hand.  I have to trust my Father to not put on me more than He is willing to help me walk through.  You have to remember all those hugs and kisses, all the stories you read and experiences you shared, all those Cheerios and bananas very fondly and trust that your little ones remember those things, too.

Made of Dust

We are...we are just made of dust.  These vessels that hold our spirits - our souls - are transitory.  They are going to fail - get old, get crippled, get cancer.   

It's the vessel that we see and fall in love with.  It's that sweet smile and goofy laugh.  It's the way our little boy makes car noises with his lips.  Watching their fingers as they reach for our hands.  The slow smile that spreads over his face when he gets a joke. 

Does that beloved form also translate to eternity?  I worry, because Jesus' friends had a hard time recognizing Him when He rose from the dead.  Is that because He didn't really look like Himself? 

How am I going to know my son?  Will he look like I remember him?  Will his soul shine through his eyes? 

My husband always says that if something isn't in "heaven" - the promised land, the other side, the New Jerusalem - then we won't miss it.  I've got to believe that my Father loves me, that He knows and gives us the best gifts.

I know what I want.  I want to see that silly, goofy slow smile again.

And Then...

The question then becomes what happens next.  It is evident that your life is never going to be the same.  The internal monitor that checks where your kids are and if they are OK is always going to be wrong.  Time doesn't heal all wounds. 

For a while, I didn't do anything other than the brushing the teeth, showering, breathing part of life.  I don't remember much about that first several months, except that I could be counted on to cry unpredictably.  There was no job to go to, and no demands on my time.  So much time to think.  That was probably the mercy of God.  I watched old family videos and looked at pictures.  I read some books.  I suppose it was good that I had uninterrupted grieving time.

Grieving time.  The name seems to imply there is a beginning and end.  "Aren't you over that yet?" Nobody actually said that, but the sentiment was conveyed on several occasions.  I would think to myself, "Is he back?  Can I touch him and look at him and hear him again?  No?  Well then, I guess I'm not over it."   

I didn't want my grief to be fake.  I read in "A Grief Observed" by C.S. Lewis that he was afraid of being too romantic or inaccurate in his memory of his wife.  Making her more angelic or perfect and not remembering how she actually was. 

I wanted to remember every little thing.  I had the last voice message that Jason left for me on my phone.  I played it occasionally and played it for other people so they could see what he sounded like.  "Hey, mom, this is your son...Jason.  I don't have anything new to say...give me a call."

One day, instead of pressing 9 to save the message, I pressed 7, for erase.  How stupid of me. It felt like I lost him all over again.  And it was my own fault.  That bit of him, a proof that he had been thinking about me and made the effort (he didn't have a phone, so it was always tricky getting in touch with him) to contact me, that part that I carried around in my pocket so that I could have it when I wanted was gone. 

Eventually I could add other things to my day. Some visiting with people. Some church. And I got a job being a school bus driver, so I had to get up and get trained. It was a very good thing for me. You can get too much inside your own head and get trapped there, and then you are no good to yourself or anybody else.

My husband still wanted me around.  My other kids seemed to as well.  OK, then, I guess I'll just keep going.

Ode To A Festival

I see my feet walking on a gravel road.  I’m on my way to watch some independent short films, because I’ve discovered that I like them.  So I’m going to go.  Just like that.  I’m not going to ask anybody’s permission.  I tell my kids I’m going, and then I’m off to see maybe some really great films, maybe some really lame ones.  I’m a grown woman and it’s the first time in my whole life that I can do what I want, when I want.  It is intoxicating.  I am so happy.  That was Cornerstone.

Walking around I see some people in a wooded camping spot.  They are having cappuccinos and invite me to join them.  We talk and enjoy each other’s company for a while.  Then I go on with my journey, with some new friends in my quiver. 

I’m in a steaming hot tent, watching some kids play really loud music and watching some more kids throwing themselves at each other.  One of the kids on the stage happens to be a boy who helped me set up my booth in the exhibition tent.  Humbly and helpfully, he found out what I needed to know, and then the next time I see him he’s singing and screaming in front of a bunch of singing and screaming kids.  It was beautiful. 

I have a million pictures in my mind that bring me to that place with that feeling that is uniquely and incomparably Cornerstone.  Driving my grandgirls around in a golf cart, watching the circle pit at a Flatfoot show, listening to Lost Dogs, eating chips and salsa, sipping iced Thai coffee with good friends, my children hot and sticky and dirty and happy and having the time of their lives and not wanting to leave.  Where are the instructions for saying goodbye to that? 

I met and fell in love with my husband there – we married each other before God on the spot where we met.  I brought kids there that got to have their own memories of Cornerstone.  I am forever changed because of a music festival in Bushnell, Illinois. 

The first, the best memory is this: it is our very first Cornerstone experience.  I reluctantly agreed to go with a friend, and then she couldn’t go.  So here I was, with two girls that I barely knew, camping next to a bunch of very smelly hippies (turns out it was Madison Greene).  I was hot and cranky, regretting my acceptance of this particular responsibility, with my boys – my middle child who wasn’t quite a teenager, and my oldest, suffering son, an outcast from every group he’d ever tried to be a part of.  They took off for a walkabout of the grounds.  When they came back, my oldest, my Jason, said, “Mom, I belong here.”

How do you say goodbye to that?

What happened? (part 5)

So, let's get this over with.

Jason was 17 when he left home.  From that point on in his life, I don't know the whole story.  I don't know the people who influenced him.  I don't know what he did with the things he was taught as a child - the truths we instilled in him.  He found them lacking some how, and not sufficient to deal with the pain that was in his heart.

He lived at people's houses, sometimes on the street.  "Couch surfing" is what he called it.  Sometimes he had a job, sometimes he "spanged" for money on street corners.  He traveled a lot - Wyoming, California and lots of places in between.  Sometimes he'd call and tell me about his experiences.  Sometimes he lived with my mom, who had an apartment over our garage.  A lot of the time Sarah was with him. 

At some point - maybe from the first day he was gone, maybe before he left home - he started using drugs.  I don't know about his introduction to that experience.  I do know that he took an acid trip one time that changed what he thought about God.  He would cry when he told me the story.  He said he never knew such love and light and beauty.  It changed him.

I don't know when he started using heroin, but I know when he decided he didn't want to anymore.  He came to stay with me - we were living in a different state than he was at the time, and I got him, brought him home, gave him lots of blankets and orange juice and buckets to puke in.  It wasn't fun, but I was so relieved.  At least that was over, I thought. 

The second time he came to detox at my house, I was no longer married to his father and living in a different house, but the experience was the same.  I didn't have the hope at the end of it anymore, though.  He stayed with us for a little while, got a job, made lots of friends, but he was antsy.  He wanted to go back to where he lived before, where he considered home, back to Columbia, Missouri.

So one day, my oldest son and my middle son and a bunch of their friends got in a car and drove back there.  But before they did, they all posed for a picture on the street in front of my house.  All those boys and my daughter and their friends.  All with big smiles on their faces - happy with each other and with the excitement of a road trip.  I love that picture.

Shortly after he went back, Jason found a friend named Matt.  Matt worked at the same restaurant that Jason did.  Something about Matt gave Jason the ability to face his addiction and try to walk away.  I know they talked a lot, spent a lot of time together, camping, walking in the woods.  I heard a difference in Jason's voice.  He started writing stories and making up songs on his guitar.  About October of that year, Jason stopped using heroin.  

He came to our house for Christmas that year.  I had all 3 of my kids there, and despite the mix-up in airplane tickets and the very short time we were all together, I think of it as a gift to me.  I have pictures of them together, and that is invaluable.

We talked on the phone every couple of weeks - there was an author he thought I'd like and he gave me one of his books for Christmas, but he wanted me to have a different one.  He had it all wrapped in brown paper, with some type-written letters in it, my name and address on the front, all ready for postage. 

On the morning of March 18th, 2010, I got a call from Sarah's mother.  Jason had died in the bathroom of a Jimmy John's restaurant that morning.  He died from an overdose of methadone.

My sister was in the town where we lived and she rode with my husband and I to Columbia.  Andrew and Emily met us there.  My mom got there, too - I don't remember how.  We arranged a memorial service and had Jason cremated. 

The memorial service was in a small room.  They underestimated the number of people who would be attending.  Almost none of the people from the local church - or any of the churches we attended - came, but the seats were filled and the walls were lined with kids that needed baths and some clean clothes.  They just loved my son.  They all hugged me and told me how wonderful he was, what he meant to them.  How gentle and beautiful and loving he was.  That is exactly how I felt about him.

What happened? (part 4)

Jason began to be very depressed.  Fewer things seemed to make him excited.  Sometimes I would find him crying on the couch.  He didn't know what was wrong; he just knew he was very sad. 

I tried medication - he didn't want to take it, and I had to fight him, but it didn't seem to work. He dropped out of high school and took his GED, succeeding with a very high score, without any preparation.  I tried to make a place for him with a missionary friend of ours in Guatemala, but that door closed firmly in our face.  I sent him to my aunt's home, and she had to return him because he refused to follow the household rules.  Back he came, to more strict rules and the same old hopelessness.  Finally we tried seeing a psychologist.  He prescribed more drugs that Jason wouldn't take.  It was during one of these appointments that our lives changed forever.

Sitting in the waiting room was a pretty blond girl.  Jason was smitten and did his "drive-by dating" as we used to call it - he slipped her his phone number.  I don't think it ever worked before, but it did with Sarah.  They talked that first time for hours.  They had so much in common and connected so instantly.  I was happy for him.  I agreed, because he had been working with us on following his regimented life, faithfully going to his job, to allow him to meet Sarah downtown for a date.  He was 17.  He didn't come home for several months.

What happened? (part 3)

Eventually, the house that we were building did get inhabitable.  Eventually we moved in, had another baby (Emily) and lived our lives. 

Because my husband was against public schools, and I wanted to have as much influence as possible on my kids, we decided that I would home school them.  Jason and I did kindergarten and 1st grade together.  It was pleasant occasionally, but often very frustrating.  I had never heard of ADD and so didn't understand that Jason's inability to concentrate was not an intentional behavior. I would see this very bright child who was interested in so many things (nature, airplanes, Batman), had a very impressive vocabulary, but would loose his ability to concentrate halfway through sounding out a word.  I remember praying for complete silence so that he wouldn't be distracted.  I was at my wit's end and often very impatient with him.  For 2nd grade, we enrolled Jason at our church's school.  Thankfully, for that year, he had a lovely teacher who understood how his brain worked and he had a fairly successful year.  We were not so lucky the next year when he had a brand new teacher, fresh out of school with lots of "ideas".  Additionally, Jason never fit in there.  He was not competitive or athletic, and because that school was so intensely cliche-oriented, he was ostracized before he even had a chance.  It was so sad to drive by the school when he was at recess and see him playing all by himself.  I wanted to fix things, and would have parties and "play dates" with other moms, but I was also not really part of the group, and invitations frequently went unanswered. 

Jason did have a very best friend, Josh, and his mother and I were also very good friends.  His social life revolved around Josh and his aunt Libby.  It was this way from the time he was 4 until about his 13th birthday.  Jason's father was against Josh - for some reason that I still don't understand - and he actively prevented them from getting together.  It was the beginning of a very depressing time for Jason.  He was not a part of any group - certainly not even the youth group at our church (those leaders, parents and kids will answer to God for the hurtful things they did and said to him). 

It was not all terrible.  We (during the home school years) did lots of fun things - a trip to Germany to visit Aunt Libby for 5 weeks, lots of field trips to restaurants and events that highlighted cultures we were studying for school.  We kept very busy and I didn't even notice that Jason was feeling lonely.  He seemed happy, enjoyed his brother and sister and had a very active world of make believe, was the same sweet, easy-going, gentle child he had always been.  That was why his teen years caught me by surprise.