We have all heard the saying, "God never closes a door without opening a window," and while that is not a scripture quote, it is inferred all throughout scripture. I have had many a door close in the last year and a half and just this past month, another has slammed and it has felt as if it was way too much to bear. The people around me just continue to go on with their lives doing "normal" everyday things and there are still a great many days where I cannot get my act together. I feel like I am being left behind somehow and it has taken me a great while to figure out just exactly what my problem is.
My children have come through this last 17 months beautifully. Their faith in God is firmly cemented and they often share memories of Samuel with us, and their friends without sorrow. Each child is beginning to find their place in this world and daily learning about who they are inside. It is incredible to watch and exciting to see them finding enjoyment and purpose in life. Everything is new and thrilling to them and they don't cease in the pursuit of having a good time. Mark and I have and continue to fulfill the vows we made to each other just before Samuel died which were to make these kids who were cheated out of so much, our top priority. I see our faithfulness to them over the past 17 months paying off daily and I thank God for giving us the strength to do what needed to be done for them to get them to where they are today. They are well-adjusted happy "normal" kids; you would never guess the tragedy they lived through. It is amazing.
With Daniel, it is most obvious. He has really come out of his shell. He used to be the shy anti-social boy who hardly talked with anyone. Now he is the life of the party and the parents of kids I have never even met invite him to their kid's parties.......and he goes. That is huge! If you need a job done right, ask Daniel. If you show him what you want and how to do it, you will be happy with the result. He still has some annoying personality quirks, but he's only eleven after all, and we don't let him get away with them. I certainly don't "baby" these kids because they lived through a tragedy. That won't do them any favors. I expect certain behavior and I usually get it. With Daniel, I can have a fairly adult conversation these days and I enjoy that a lot.
Anna is Anna. She will always miss Samuel. But she has readily accepted all the neighbor kids as playmates and boy or girl doesn't matter to her. No big surprise, she gets along great with boys about two years older than her. After school, my big kids usually spend the late afternoons with their friends in the neighborhood leaving her and I home alone. A lot of the time, she will have a friend come play for an hour or two but she still feels left out when the big kids leave. I have put doing a whole lot with Bud on hold because she is still too little to do serious horse stuff and she just needs someone here who doesn't leave as soon as they can get out the door. Bud can wait. He is doing fine. God healed his foot and him taking another half a year off won't make a lot of difference at this point. My heart is not really there anyway. He needs hands on work every day, several hours every day, for at least a couple months without long breaks to get him where he needs to be. I just cannot leave Anna for that amount of time each night. If he was on our property, that would be different, but he is not.
Kaysha is also doing great. Just today my neighbor told me how much she noticed she has grown up; not just physically, but also behavior-wise. She acts like a fairly typical girl when her friends are around but when it is just she and you, she is quite mature for her age. I will tell you this; she is not out picking fights with other girls because her life sucks. Most things have seemingly rolled right off her. With her, you can also have a pretty adult conversation and much of it even sinks in. Sadly, she is having a lot more difficult time finding dependable friends than Daniel. There are only a couple girls here who live close and each is a little flaky. Kaysha just wants to play, you know, be a young girl. She thinks boys are mostly dumb so she is absolutely not boy crazy like a few of them here are. She just wants to be a chatterbox, ride bikes, swim, and play kid games. That seems to be a tall order these days so she hangs around me quite a bit more lately, which is fine. She is becoming a friend to me more and more each day.
Mark and I continue to have a lot of fun together. It hasn't mattered really what we have chose to do; whether work or play, we can enjoy it if we are together. Nearly every weekend, Mark's parents take all the kids to spend the night so we have some time alone. They have been the only grandparents that have spent quality and quantity time with the kids for their entire lives so they go there and feel right at home. This alone time has been especially good for us and we look forward to it like two young kids sneaking out on a date. That is exactly how it feels too only nowadays, we don't get into trouble. I am thankful that they realize it is important for us to have this special time alone. It certainly helps us both to have some time where we don't have to be strong for the kids. Many honest conversations have been had without fear of little ears hearing or laying any of our sorrow on them. They know the relocation of Samuel hurts us and that we miss him very much but they also know that we are still a solid family unit and that they are very important to us. Mark and I fully understood the importance and effects of our relationship remaining as solid as it always had been for our kids well-being. God continues to bless our relationship and our children as a result of our faithfulness to each other and to them.
The kids and I remain stranded at home all week and I have taken a major role in making sure they are coping well with Samuel being gone. Making them a top priority has certainly kept me from surrendering to a complete depression. Grief and isolation do not mix well and the sadder you feel, the more isolated you get. So I struggle with this a lot because I am stuck here day after day doing the same things over and over feeling as if I personally am getting nowhere. I am seeing my kids really "coming back to life" in a way they have never been able to anytime in the past. They are daily learning who they are and what their place in this world might be and I feel as if I have lost my identity. Mark and I let go of everything in order to give Samuel the best chance at life here. It was easy for me to do because when he was miserable, nothing else mattered. Friends disappeared, hobbies vanished, aspirations for a future departed because we were living sometimes moment by moment. Now that the kids are gaining more independence, needing me less and enjoying their days, I am finding my days are missing something but I don't know what it is and it is not like I can just go out and find it either.
I feel trapped in this warped reality watching even my own young family picking themselves up and moving on with life while I am most definitely stuck. This is one of those times where you just wish someone would come in and have the magic answer. It would seem this would be something that family members not as innately connected to the tragedy would help with. But my own extended family have been unreliable. This is actually nothing new, but I lament it anyway. My dad hasn't spoken to me for over three years and lives in CA. He has only been a father when it was convenient for him. He has never been interested in being a grandfather to any of the kids at all. When Samuel was first diagnosed in 2004, he really came through for us in an unexpected way and I really thought that would be the event that changed his priorities and brought his heart back to his children and grandchildren. It didn't take but about a year for him to grow cold again. He has never acknowledged Samuel's death at all. I cannot say I am surprised. He has never had any lasting bond with any of us so the death of my son doesn't affect his life at all. I grieve that I have no father on earth who ever truly cared.
My sister decided to stop being a sister over eight years ago. She never met Samuel or Anna and no acknowledgement of his life, or death. Nothing. According to my mom, she read all the updates but never a word. I don't know what kind of person acts like that so I lament that my sister whom I grew up with, has ended up so cold-hearted. Like my dad, Samuel's life, suffering and death never adversely affected her heart or her life. It is shameful to think how many complete strangers prayed, reached out, and loved a boy they never would meet while family hid behind their computers and silently watched the drama unfold as if it was a TV show. Of course they move on when the drama ends. There is nothing either one of them can do to help at this point. There are just some things in life you cannot "take back."
I can pretty much draw you a straight line to the obliteration of my family: my brother's death. That was the last straw for my dysfunctional family and it sent everyone off in different directions. My parents finally divorced. It had been coming for a long time anyway so no big surprise. They had lived in different states for years at a time previous to my brother's death. My sister and I have had our periods of closeness in the past but for whatever reason, within a year of his death, she stopped calling. Later she moved to Arizona. I didn't even know she left until at some point later, my mom let me know. About that time, Samuel was born. We had different priorities and different lives. She chose not to have children or be interested in mine. Tragedy has a way of opening opportunities for people, even those who have been slack in the past, to step up to the plate and "be there." It can be the starting point to mend a relationship or a means to the end of one. The faithfulness that Samuel's tragedy demanded was the death of many of our relationships, both family and friends who just couldn't go the distance with us. IRL People dropped like flies after that first year. It is hard to even want to be around people like that these days and quite frankly, they will never know what they missed. At any rate, I think it is pretty clear which direction these two relationships have gone and I am assured that these people will answer for their behavior...to God.
My dad stayed here for awhile after my brother's death but soon went back to CA leaving just my mom nearby and I lament over her as well. She has never bonded with Mark or the kids in any meaningful way either. She never chose to fully embrace her role as a grandmother which has been an utter disappointment ever since Kaysha was born. We have referred to her as the holiday or major event grandma as she could go months without seeing or even talking to the kids. Now there have been times where she really stepped up to the plate and fulfilled her role especially during Samuel's worst days and for that I will always be grateful. Unfortunately those times did not translate into anything more than exceptions to the norm. I talked to her about it on several occasions and she even admitted that she hasn't been the best grandmother but apparently the words never connected with the heart. We always opened the door to her to walk back into their lives even though we knew we were setting ourselves up for disappointment, but she was never interested in a long-term meaningful relationship with any of them.
Delma was her mother so it is not like she was clueless about grandmotherly things. It wasn't as if she didn't see how much us having a good grandma helped us grow and mature. Without Delma, I would be a completely different person today, of that I am certain. I could depend on Delma and Delma always knew what to do. If she were here, she would have glued herself to my family and most especially to me during this era in my life. She would have taken my children aside and comforted them so Mark and I could comfort ourselves in private. She would have taken Anna most especially under her wing, and loved her, knowing that she was the one who most needed it. No one has done that for Anna at all. She would have understood that the big kids would need some extra attention while we got ourselves together to do what needed to be done. She would have cried right alongside us all while firmly reminding us that Jesus is good and Samuel is with Him. She would have held me up when I wanted to die inside. None of these thoughts ever occurred to my mom. And as I have said in previous posts, actions are an accurate reflection of what is in your heart. Talk is cheap while actions speak volumes. Delma talked the talk and walked the walk and I will appreciate that for as long as I am on this earth.
I actually thought when my brother died; Kaysha and Daniel were 3 and 1 at the time, that both my parents would fully embrace the kids as a source of comfort and finally cultivate a real relationship with them that consisted of more than just bringing gifts a couple times a year. That didn't happen. There was always a convenient excuse as to why they couldn't spend time with them both before my brother's death and after. It became very obvious after many disappointments that they was never going to make the kids a priority. The kids are old enough now that they notice a distinct difference between grandparents and they don't even ask about my parents anymore.
I could see my mom's window of opportunity for a relationship with them was closing especially after Samuel's death. And again, because I am a glutton for punishment, this past spring we opened a door to her again telling her flat out that we wanted to try to find a way that she could "afford" to spend more time with the kids. After the harsh winter she decided that she absolutely needed to move out of her house. That and being alone, there was just too much work to be done to keep it up. We hoped she might buy a more modest home nearer to us since I cannot drive over and help her and she actually entertained the idea. She then suggested that we look for a property with two homes on it and try to go that route. We had a long talk about God's plan for families, helping each other, the coming future crises and the need to be closer because of it. I really thought something was about to finally change but history just repeated itself. About a month later, she informed me that she was just going to move to Arizona which she finally did a few weeks back. She said she couldn't afford to buy anything here but what that really meant is that she cannot afford the lifestyle she wants to live here. With her, it has always come down to money over everything else. If Mark and I can afford to live here, with all the debt we acquired during Samuel's lifetime, believe me, she can. She just doesn't want to. I know the Lord would have opened up a way that she could have had exactly what she wanted here had she ever made our family a priority, but she didn't and her decision to leave has slammed the door on a lot of things. When she stated she was moving to AZ, she acted as if the conversation we had previously had about living closer or finding a property together never happened. I heard the Lord quietly saying, "let it go" so I just nodded and smiled at her future aspirations for her "perfect" life.
Her move has effectively slammed the door on any meaningful relations at this point. She might as well have moved to Mongolia. She mentioned that the kids can just get on a plane and go stay with her there but she never ever invited them to her house when she lived 26 miles away. When Mark and I went to her house after she left it to clean out the things she either could not sell or did not want to take, I grabbed the real estate flier for her house to show the kids the house they never saw when she lived there and she had lived there over ten years. Kaysha and Daniel actually did go there a couple times, when they were babies, so they do not remember. And that was really the kicker of it all that really brought things home for me considering how much time I spent with Delma, at her house, where we were always welcome. I was actually glad we did not take the kids with us when we went to her house to clean out. They will never know she had a gorgeous backyard with tons of room for a play set, a soccer game, and a garden. They will never know that she had a nice pasture and barn for her horse while I boarded mine three hours away in Morton where his foot almost killed him when Samuel was sick. They will never see her cute house and the spare room she could have fixed up for them to come stay. They won't be going to Arizona for a visit because they don't even know her, nor do they want to as the picture becomes clearer and clearer to them. I grieve for my children knowing that they will never have a "Delma." I grieve for her because she will never be a "Delma" to any of them nor has she ever had a "Samuel" kind of love, much less a "Mark" kind of love. Maybe that is the problem but relationships take time and effort and she has never committed to either one. On the flip side, however, I won't have to worry about setting myself up for future disappointments with her and the kids because they will probably never see her again. Also, the kids won't feel the sorrow of yet another loss because they won't miss her absence. I am sure God has a plan in all this, but we have been intentionally cut out for now.
Deep down, I cannot say I am surprised by any of this. I couldn't fully rely on any of these family members to be there when I needed them even when I was younger which is why I clung so tightly to Delma. One of the worst days of my young life was when my dad decided we needed to move from CA to WA and we actually did it. My Delma cried for weeks as did I. It was a pretty horrible experience and for years, I wanted to move back to CA and live with her. When my mom decided early this spring she was moving to AZ, we could hardly believe she'd do it. But she did do it and did it quite easily. When I compare us moving so far from Delma to her moving so far from my family, the lack of any real bond is starkly clear. I asked Mark the weekend she left, "Did she really move? Did she really just move away from her grandchildren? Really?" Mark said, "Yes, she really did."
I am so tired of white-washing their behavior here and I wouldn't even bring it up except that it pertains so closely to what I am about to share with you. It has taken awhile to wrap my mind around what has been going on in my extended family, but now it is quite clear, and suddenly I carry the grief from that as well. Not only have I lost my son, but I have lost my extended family as well. And as I said, this reality is not new, just currently painfully obvious. The load has really brought me to the breaking point, again. I have thought many a time, "God, what are you doing here? I know You are allowing this. This is all okay with You? I feel so suddenly abandoned by people who half the time I could not even depend on. How stupid is that? I have no extended family left on this earth."
There has been a common thread I have noticed numerous times between God and me during Samuel's life and a lot more often now. If I honor Him with my choices and continue to do what is right in His eyes, He always provides help. When I have put someone else's needs before my own, He has never let me down and always satisfied the deepest longings of my heart. I always use the "help" as a sign that I am on the right path with Him. Like a barometer of how I am doing. God knows doing the right thing often calls for self-sacrifice and even that eventually takes a toll on the heart. My heart has just about had it. His help is always above and beyond my imagination. That help also always comes at an hour I least expect. At a point where all hope seems lost. At a place where I start to question myself and whether my heart is right or wrong because it seems like help will never come. It is at the breaking point. That is where the rescue comes in and the timing is always perfect. Interestingly enough, help is always most appreciated when it is received at the breaking point and there is never a question who supplied it.
As I mentioned above, Kaysha has been having trouble finding friends here. I think it is just a girl thing and a lot of the girls here have broken families. She isn't used to the "game-playing" that goes on and always comes home to ask about why such person acts like they do. I tell her what Delma always told me. "Not everyone is going to be a good friend. You only need one good friend." I told her that I didn't even have a longtime friend until I was about 15. Of course she wanted to know all about this friend and ultimately why we weren't friends now. So I told her all about my friend, Cheri, and all the things we used to do together.
We met on our horses. I was riding alone and she was with her mom and brother. I kept my horse in a pretty residential area so I was surprised to run into someone who actually rode there too. We just said hi and went on our way and somehow later on at school, we met again. After that, we started riding together nearly every day. She could never remember my phone number so she wrote it on the wall by the phone in her house which I thought was so hilarious. Her whole family was extremely welcoming and they had a riding arena set up with poles and barrels because they enjoyed gaming. I enjoyed jumping so I would play on their courses and then turn the barrels into jumps and jump them. We had a lot of fun and found we had lots in common. Her mom liked me so much that even when Cheri was "on restriction," if I called, that didn't apply. She told me many years later that she never worried about Cheri when we were together. Our rides often ended by sundown my horse spent more nights at their house than I which is saying a lot because I was always there. I never even knocked when I came over, jsut walked in like family would. We all sat in her living room watching the OJ Simpsom car chase way back when. Cheri and I were the same height, same clothes and shoe size so that was convenient for swapping clothes back and forth. We loved to go shopping together. She also had her own "Delma" who we regularly visited. Life really opened up to us when I got a very restricted driver's licence at age 18 and bought a car. She was just a year younger than I and had a license but no car. So my dad agreed that she could drive mine because I could not drive very far from home. I did not mind buying a cute car and being chauffered around in it at all. She drove us all over the state, we shopped to our heart's content, ate out all the time, and came and went as we pleased in between school and jobs, etc. If there was something fun to do, we did it. Her parents ended up moving to the Spokane area and she stayed on this side of WA in her own place and I was there all hours of the day and night. We often went to visit her parents for the weekends driving 4.5 hours to get there. That was always a blast as well. Her parents were fun and her brother was also very nice and I felt more at home with them than in my own family. My first horse died on a weekend I was with Cheri at her parents home. It was a very long drive back but she was with me and helped me the whole way. Shortly after that, her parents moved back to this side of WA and Bud was born at their house. Cheri became a mother about a year after and she was my first friend to have a baby in which I was a part of their lives. The first baby I ever held was Cher's and that was back when I was certain I was not going to be a mother.....then I held her baby. She was there for me through two ridiculously stupid relationships with men and then Mark came along. Cheri had two more babies but wasn't as lucky with men as I had been. She moved around a lot and either didn't live near enough to me for us to visit all the time, or didn't have a phone. She met Kaysha but that was it. Our lives took different turns and we lost contact. When Mark and I moved to this house, our phone number was unlisted and she did not have a phone. Her parents continued to move back and forth between here and the Spokane area so I never was able to find Cheri after 1998. She seemed to disappear and it just happened. There was no real reason other than life taking us in different directions.
Years passed and life gut busier and busier. I attempted to look for her on several different occasions with no luck. Mark thought he saw her working at a coffee stand in Renton 6-7 years back but couldn't be sure. Then Samuel got sick and nothing else mattered. When we were cleaning out the storage back in August, shortly after I shared Cheri with Kaysha, I found some baby pictures of her first two daughters. I felt my heart long for them. I was their "Aunt Jen" after all. Mark suggested I try to find her again and I really wondered if we would have anything in common anymore anyway that it would even be worth the effort. We had been friends for ten years and shared the absolute most intimate things so I hoped that there was enough history there that I wouldn't be disappointed. Mark suggested I look for her on Facebook and so I did but she wasn't there. I looked up one of her exes and found him right away but he refused to help me. He always was a jerk. Anyway, he just so happened to have his daughter also Cheri's daughter in his list of friends. So, I sent her a note hoping she wasn't living with him. I got no response. I looked through her friends and found her other sister, Cheri's third daughter, and sent her a note. This daughter wasn't the ex's so I hoped she at least lived with Cheri. I never found Cheri's second daughter though and that worried me. I never heard a word from either girl and after a couple weeks, I deleted my Facebook account sending one last note to the younger girl with my contact info assuming she had to be with Cheri and maybe just didn't check it very much. Anyway, as I said, that was way back in August and I figured that if her kids didn't tell her some crazy lady was looking for her, I would never find her. It sure didn't seem like they told her so I was disappointed again. Kaysha and I looked at their pictures. Here were her two gorgeous daughters whom I looked upon as if they were my long lost family and I had no clue where any of them ended up or if their mom was even okay. My heart longed to know them and to also know why one of the daughter's wasn't there. I prayed about it; asked God to help us find each other again. Nothing came out of it until early last week.
Six days ago, I woke up and checked e-mail like I always do. There was one there with a subject line that just said, "Hi" and I figured it was just one of those you open up and it's spam. I opened it anyway. It was from Cheri. I about fell out of my chair because after two months of hearing nothing, I gave up. She left me her contact info saying she was so glad I had contacted the girls and it had been way too long. We connected by phone that day and talked for hours. My kids were mesmerized that I actually had a friend! We laughed and we laughed and it felt so good. I found the "missing part." I have missed having a friend, my old friend. Turns out, she lives in the Spokane area with her family, owns a coffee stand and has found some stability in her life. I was so pleased for her. I found out the daughter I assumed lived with her dad here lives with Cheri and the one I assumed lived with her, lives on this side with her dad. I gave the one who lives here my contact info and apparently wires have been crossed for months so Cheri was never able to connect with me. She said she sent several e-mails but they "somehow" went to the wrong address and she decided to give it one last try before giving up and that was the one that came through........in God's timing. Getting an e-mail address right and sending it to me should not have been that hard, but obviously God had a set time for me to get it and that was last week. I would have been happy to hear from her back in August too but it would not have meant nearly as much as it did this last week when I was trying to pull myself up from the breaking point.
She was equally as happy to find me as I was to find her and said she had been searching for me off and on as well. Our lives continue to take errily similar paths as well. Her second daughter who I never found on Facebook suffered a tramatic brain injury about four years ago. Cheri and her two daughters were in a very bad car accident in which their lives were forever changed. So she has a good grasp on medical drama and how one day can change your whole life forever. I have seriously wondered if I would ever have a friend again after all our drama. I even asked God if there was a friend for me left in this world. I have actually asked Him that for months. Well, I definitely got the answer. Not only is there a friend, but there is also a family....
She called her parents and brother as soon as we had connected and they were also thrilled for us to find each other again and immediately sent their love. I told Cheri that I wanted to come to visit which delighted her greatly. I knew Mark would take me where ever I wanted to go especially if it made me happy even if it is a 285 mile drive. I don't think there is anything Mark would not do to make me happy. I feel the same for him. Her mom suggested we come and spend Thanksgiving with their family and that is just like her to open her arms again, and embrace me and my family just like she embraced me and my horse years back like we were family. I have to say, it is nice to be wanted. It is nice to just have people happy you are back in their lives without all the drama. It is nice to have people who act like.....family. I literally spent my teen years growing up at Cheri's parents home. I was there so much that they had a parrot who learned to laugh the way I laughed. They might still have it too. They loved animals. Her mom has a baby deer that thinks it's a dog name Bambitoe. I know the holiday will be a time to remember and I feel God's handprints all over this. It feels good and reminds me all over again that God always knows what I need and He is always taking care of my heart. Kaysha cannot wait to meet Cheri's girls. Cheri and I are both now counting the days. I feel like I have a little piece of my identity back and I realized I have really missed it. Cheri still has a horse and suggested we take a ride for "old times sake" and let the kids ride for "new times sake." Suddenly, I have a sister again, and a brother, and a family who says we are welcome to come and stay anytime and they just so happen to live in an area where we have considered moving to off and on through the years. It will be interesting to see what God has planned.
I am so pleased to introduce you to my long lost friend Cheri and her family. From left to right, Peri, Paige, Cheri, Mike and Myranda. I knew all the girls as babies and toddlers so I cannot wait to know them again now.The day after we connected, I was thinking how it was all too good to be true. Did God really just give me an extended family again? It is all so perfect and mended my heart in so many ways. I was non-chalantly reading through the Psalms last Wednesday morning and found this, a verse I did not even know was there.
Psalm 68:6 God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.
I absolutely took that as confirmation that God knows exactly what has been going on in my heart and the hearts of others as well. He knew what I was longing for even if I didn't.
Even that scripture was there when I least expected it. God is just like that though! At a time you least expect, He is always there. I cannot help but visualize Samuel standing at God's side reminding Him to help me feel better. I know this is God's work for sure, but I also know my baby wants me to be happy.
Thank you, Lord for taking care of me in such awesome unexpected ways! Now just please let the weather be good for the holidays. I have a feeling it will be perfect.
