A Small Tribute to “the Toughest Woman I Know”

Mama Mavis. There’s an old saying, you are a different person to everyone. This is who you were to me. 

I learned so much from you. One of the first Sundays after I married your son, I walked into your kitchen wondering how to fit myself into the chaos and you told me to make gravy to go with the mashed potatoes and beef roast. It ended up goopy and lumpy. I dont remember your reaction, but I do remember that the next time you asked me to make gravy you gave me instructions on how to do it correctly and saved me from more gravy embarrassment. You taught me more kitchen things. How to efficiently can millions of jars of green beans. How to saute onions on the lowest imaginable heat to carmelized perfection to top a burger. And speaking of making homemade hamburgers. I learned all I know about those from you too. Most of all, I learned about how to treat people. I learned how to feed the proverbial 5000 even when you only cooked for 3000. I’m not sure if there are any specific tricks you taught me about this other than graciousness and faith. You gave what you had, and no one ever went hungry at your table. Somehow, there was always an extra burger or spoonfull of casserole for the unexpected visitor or the straggler that showed up just as supper was about over. And the unexpected visitors. You might’ve internally stressed and whispered in panic in the kitchen, but to the unexpected visitors you were always kind and calm and gracious. I’m not sure I ever heard you apologize for the horse hoof prints on the dining room floor or the shop grease all over the bathroom sink or the loudness of your very loud kid Teddy. You left your work, gave what you had, and then sat down and chatted among the chaos. It didn’t matter if it was a lonely neighbor or a local d**g dealer or  a government social worker or therapist, or some of your kids’ friends that you really wished weren’t your kids’ friends, everyone was welcomed and respected. The people in your life made your life a drama-packed adventure and even though it was very hard at times you did love it.  You regularly wondered, “what do people with normal lives do for fun / entertainment?” Your life was never boring that was something you liked about it.

Your house was a source of chaotic comfort. When I didn’t want to be home I came over and I was never bored. You always had horses in your house or fires by your chicken coop or thousands of green beans to can or updates on friends and relatives to relay. I could always call you for medical help or ask you child-training advice (which you never gave without being asked). You really were a mother to me, especially as I became a mother myself and I am devastated to be left without a mother nearby.

You gave every bit of yourself to caring for others. Even  tired and sick you were busy worrying about little details of your little boys’ lives. Your generosity and endless unconditional love puts me to shame. I also saw how along with the unconditional love you sometimes had to learn to let go of some of the ones you loved in ways you didn’t want to do, and somehow you found a peace in that too. I have long said that I can never live up to your standards of selfless love and giving. 

Right now I’m trying in the smallest way to fill your shoes caring for your Teddy. I told BigB last night that there were so many instructions you never got to give us. The specific care he needs when he’s sick. Which government contact to communicate with about what need. How to keep him from getting heat stroke on these super hot days. What kind of plan to make with the school for next year. How many buns he’s allowed to eat at supper. He’s the best gift you left behind for us, but I feel so inadequate to care for him. 

You had a way of making each person feel important. You knew the exact detail about our life to ask about, the detail that maybe no one else remembered. You knew how to talk about hard things sometimes, for just long enough that we knew you cared but not long enough to make us want to run the other way. 

Reflecting on the 9 years I knew you. I can’t believe it’s only 9. And that’s all I get. 

Grace in the Fog

A month and a half into this particular tribulation the fog finally starts to lift. I see things more clearly, deal with them with my heart and reasoning brain instead of my fight and flight reflexes. And eat half the mars bar little B and I had bought for Oma for the next time she visits. The end of the day leaves me exhausted but not completely overwhelmed. 7 hours of emergency room waiting doesn’t send me into complete PTSD and walking out of ER with a healthy husband and two living children instead of a dead baby in a tiny box is strangely…healing ? 

I’m able to reflect on the past weeks and I’m surprised  at what I see. Change, not only to life as I know it but to who I am. I was ruled by fear for days until a late night conversation with my husband showed me the complete uselessness of fear; the source of the fear really didn’t completely leave, but I’ve had tools to deal with it in a healthy way.  I have talked on the phone to so many people and I haven’t spontaneously combusted (I’ve been fairly “allergic” to talking on the phone in the past.) Same goes with conversations: I’m getting better at asking the right people the right questions at the right time (some conditions apply). I have marginally more acceptance of where I am right now. It’s almost impossible not to live in the moment with a 4 year old and an 18 year old who is also 4. I have a deeper respect for people who take care of other peoples kids. In the last few months we have had 3 different kids of different Ages staying with us at various times for various reasons and for various amounts of time (the current record being 1 1/2 months and counting)  and it’s truly one of the best and also one of the complex and challenging things I’ve ever chosen to do.

As always a disclaimer. Or three. This is not a comprehensive list because it’s 3 hours past my bedtime and I’m losing my train of thought. Also all growth comes with trial and error. I’ve glossed over the error part in this post. 

April Auroras

You’re supposed to be in my arms tonight as I watch the sky. But you’re not. 

What do the auroras look like from heaven, Little One ?

They must pale in comparison to the Light up there. 

But maybe you’re looking down on their dancing green magic tonight and watching them just like I am.

Knowing you’re safe and happy up there is the saddest happiest thing I know.

As your Big Brother likes to say, Take care of God and Jesus. 

And I hope They remember to tell you how much your mama loves you. 

The Malaise in Between

Existing. 

Mostly just Daily routines: Food, dishes, quiet time, outside time, laundry, cleaning the bathroom floor. 

We talk about things we want to or need to do. 

We mostly don’t do any of those things.  

We spend time with family. 

I make it to sewing, once. 

I don’t back out of galentines. 

We start going to church again regularly. 

Neither me or Big B ever really feels healthy and well. 

Little B remembers how to giggle and does it a lot. 

Friends invite us to their homes. Maube they feel sorry for us.

I tell people that my 3 year old  would have lost both of his parents in the last few months if we didn’t have access to modern medicine. 

Cynicism is a coping mechanism. 

I start drawing for the first time in my life. 

The chickens start laying again as the days get longer. 

I play hockey for the first time in 4 years. 

I don’t accomplish anything significant or interesting or visible. 

This is the malaise in between. In between what ? In between loss and healing. In between the heartbroken autumn and the spring that was supposed to be the happiest spring of our lives but now looms empty. In between the darkness of the past and the unknown of the future. In between. 

In between. 

In between. 

These words are important. This has to be a middle, not a forever, this ambivalence where nothing is horrible, and nothing is fantastic, this Malaise in Between. 

worship through p a i n

Isn’t it wild how you’re called to worship the very One that brought you pain? I don’t remember the exact words, but the sentiment is vivid. God could have kept your baby alive, he went on, But He chose not to. And you still choose to trust Him with the rest of your life. Some people just say the right thing.

Somewhere recently I read this about the emptiness or hollowness you feel after losing a child; You feel empty because God asked you for everything and you gave everything. You have nothing left to give. This resonated when I read it, but when I thought about it more I realized that I myself did not find this to be completely true. Even in what I felt was the emptiest of hollownesses I was called to give a little teeny tiny bit more, over and over. And through that giving, the emptiness was filled, a little like the proverbial woman who made bread for a prophet with the last of her food, every day, but always had enough food for tomorrow. 

The Goodness of God

The song The Goodness of God has been my heart off and on in the last year or two and now  particularly through the last few weeks. The writers of this song are apparently controversial in modern churches, but to me their words are still valuable even if their lives are not perfect. There’s so much that resonates. There’s so much that brings tears. As of this week I’m trying to desensitize myself to it so I don’t weep buckets when I hear it sung beautifully at my little  bro’s wedding in a few weeks. 

I love You, Lord

Oh, Your mercy never failed me. 

This is easy enough to say. 

And all my days, I've been held in Your hands

This line makes me cry. The safety it invokes in the middle of trauma and chaos is infinitely comforting. It reminds me to keep believing this, that I am never alone. 

I love Your voice. 

You have led me through the fire. 

He has led me through the fire and I’ve been afraid of a voice that leads through fire. This reminds me of another song.  Thy best, thy heavenly Friend, through thorny ways, leads to a joyful end. (Song: Be Still my Soul ) I know from past experience that the fire or thorny ways, though they may go on much longer or more intensely than I anticipated, have joy on the other side of them in life and from faith that they will have an even more joyful end later in heaven. 

I've known You as a Father

I've known You as a Friend

I know God differently in different seasons. This season I’ve needed a Father to comfort and guide me. 

I have lived in the goodness of God.

I have lived in the goodness of God. When I doubt this, my Bible and journal are full of notes and highlighted parts that witness to this truth throughout my life so far. I have lived in the goodness of God. God’s goodness isn’t sporadic; it exists at all times in all situations. 

Your goodness is running after, it's running after me

I haven’t been sure what these words were referring to until I felt them in my own life. The days that I feel empty, completely empty, void of any emotion and so tired, those days I feel Your goodness …running after me. When I don’t have the energy or will power to seek out God’s goodness, it still finds me. In the small saving routines of daily life. In the beautiful expansive winter outside my door. In a tiny newborn niece to snuggle through multiple hours and multiple bouts of screaming. In the sparkle in LittleB’s eye. In the rough frequent hugs from my overgrown brother-in-law Teddy. 

With my life laid down, I'm surrendered now

I give You everything

In the middle of grief there are days it feels like I have nothing left to give, not even to God. In those moments of utter dejection grief gives me the cynical perspective that nothing is worth holding onto very tightly because anything else could be taken away at any moment. This isn’t laying down my life, it’s not surrender. It’s self preservation, self pity, just plain selfishness. 

All my life You have been faithful

All my life You have been so, so good

He has been. He is. God is so, so good even when life is not. 

With every 

breath that I am able

I will sing of the goodness of God.  

It is Well

They sang one of my long time favourite songs at church last Sunday . When Peace Like a River Attendeth my Way.  And through this last week as I’ve thought about it a little, it’s brought me back 15 years to the first time I remember loving this song. 

I was a 14 year old hanging out with Karilee at her house in Zomba, Malawi. I don’t remember the specifics -did we sing it with her family once when I stayed with them -or maybe it was during workers meeting when we were bored and paging through a Christian Hymnal? What I do remember was that one of us said, “I love this song!” and the rest of us all agreed. But like maybe that wasn’t strictly true. Maybe we hardly even knew the song because we were growing up in Africa and weren’t used to singing English Christian Hymnal songs. Maybe it just resonated because it was something that reminded us all of our little kid days back in various parts of America, a bit of a history we all had in common (and in many ways we didn’t have a lot of commonality, our motley crew of teenagers from various parts of North America growing up in various parts of Africa.). One thing I know for certain sure is that the lyrics weren’t real to us at that point. Because what do a 14 year olds know. Oh they thought they knew. But they didn’t. 

However trite, that day was a small beginning for me, regarding this song. Many times throughout the coming years when we sang this song in my church in Canada I was reminded of this tiny anecdote, but slowly the memory has faded to the point where I’ve lost many of the details and is replaced by newer memories attached to this song. At nearly every crossroads or change in my life, these lyrics have resonated, “Whatever my lot … It is well !”  

Sometimes this has been easy. As a carefree teenager doing all the carefree teenager things, the happy times of so many baby sisters, when we sang this song at our wedding, when my son was born. In  these times when life was easy and happy it’s been easy to say it is well. 

Other times I’ve felt the “sorrows like sea billows roll[ing].” The times that left gaping holes of losing whole sisters to the system, or the times that threw long heavy shadows with years of family dramas and traumas, the hard times. This beautiful and horrible fall when we had to put our perfect and precious teeny tiny baby boy in the ground. 

These hard times are the ones the song refers to in this phrase : 

Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Learning, particularly learning acceptance, learning to say the words it is well even when it doesn’t feel like it is really that well, doesn’t often come in the easy happy times. It can, it does, I desperately wish it would more. But most of the deepest, stay-with-me-for-a-lifetime lessons are the ones learned in a bit of darkness, right in the middle of the sorrows like sea billows. And that’s where I’ve been this last month, deep deep in the sea billows. And there really is nothing more to say than this, it is well with my soul. 

Here is the song in full. Written by Mr. Horatio Spafford. Google the story behind the song sometime when you think your life is hard. 

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, 
It is well, it is well with my soul.

It is well with my soul,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin—oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
-My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

Oh Lord, haste the day when the faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.