A roller coaster ride....

The thing with grief is that it is unpredictable...much like a roller coaster ride. Even though you can see it from a distance you don't really know what the ride is going to feel like until you ride it. Grieving a child is very much the same. Grief over anyone close to us is like a roller coaster ride....you observe it from a distance but until you ride it you won't know what it feels like.

Those that know me well know that when my grandmother passed away it was a life changing event for me and my family. She was my everything at that time in my life, she was a friend, mother, caregiver, provider, all encompassing to me. Her death was not a surprise though, we knew it was coming, it was a long drawn out goodbye and it was still very very hard.

Katherine's death was surprising, one gets past the 15week mark in a pregnancy and we all breath a sigh of relief and go "phew, now I just wait." But what this very sad tragic event has taught me more than ever is that there is no "safe mark". That if we only make it to such and such we'll be good. We are not guaranteed that even the children we have that make it to birth and beyond will be here tomorrow. Katherine's death was not expected, it was sudden, I literally had just seen her on the ultrasound 2days before her death...2days..and in 2days she had died..

The long drawn out goodbye was hard, the tragic sudden death was equally as hard.

The biggest difference other than my first experience with death was my grandmother and not my child is I wasn't fully allowed to grieve my grandmother's loss.

My father was a single parent, and the one person that was helping raise his children had just died on him, he didn't know how to comfort the grieving children that had just lost their friend, caregiver, provider, and that did all the things a mother should do for her children. So he did what he knew to do, which was to push us on, I wasn't allowed to cry about it in his presence after the first week of the funeral. We returned to school right away, and when the school tried to get us grief counseling he canceled it after just 3 sessions. Now this is in no way a criticism of my father. He did the best he could and much of his pushing us out of our grief was that he just couldn't bare it all. I see that now.

However, as a result, I was taught to not fully grieve. to just try to move on as quickly as possible. I noticed this mindset vividly in the week after Katherine's funeral when I found myself reverting back to what I was taught. So I determined to do something different this time and allow myself to grieve. I am in therapy, I allow my kids to cry and talk about Katherine whenever they want to. I allow my husband to be angry and I allow myself to  cry and be angry too if need.

I think I have been very surprised at this roller coaster of grief. How quickly one minute I feel at peacem restful, fully trusting in my God and his sovereignty, relaxing in HIS grace and presence then in the next minute I am completely upside down in turmoil all over again. Grief, unlike the roller coasters at the amusement park, is unending. It's like a roller coaster you never get off but with time you get used to the twists and turns and grow numb. Every now and then, however, it feels like you are stepping back onto that ride for the first time and you have to grow numb all over again.

Right now, I am on an angry part of the roller coaster. I am angry that when I as in labor and saying that something was wrong nobody, and I mean nobody, believed me. I'm angry at myself for buying into the hype of vaginal delivery being the most and the best emotional and physically satisfying way to give birth. I'm angry that I didn't know that .05% chance of uterine rupture for a vbac translated into 1 in 200 for an average size baby and 4 in 200 for a bigger baby. Had the facts been presented to me in that way I wouldn't have "risked it." I am angry at God. I am ashamed to admit that fact, I always thought of myself more highly than i should and so I thought oh I would never be angry at God "he gives and takes away." blah blah blah...but I'm angry. I'm angry because I feel like I deserved better than this and I know how incredibly arrogant it is to say that. I know that i don't deserve anything from God that he does not owe me anything and in my pride I feel like he does and so I'm angry that he let this happen to me instead of picking out someone else to be that 1 in 200.

I am not proud of these above thoughts, so be gentle with me. I only share these because I want people to see that I am no saint, I struggle just as much as the next person does and that the only good anyone sees in me is all because of Christ and really not any of me at all.

So today if you want to pray for me. You can pray that though I'll never get off the roller coaster of grief, you can pray that I will make peace with it. Pray that I will continue to cling to Jesus even when I don't want to, and pray that I will recognize that even when I let go of him he is still clinging to me.

In this exact moment I am humbled by the thought that even though God knows that I am angry with him he is still clinging and loving on me which is a very overwhelming and powerful thought...what a merciful God I serve.

 I told you grief is a roller coaster.  ;-)