A House Upon the Sand

The moment my brother ended his life, the foundational level of safety and security I lived with for 36 years crumbled beneath my very feet.

I felt the innate protection of my big brother growing up. When I started elementary school, I was never picked on on the playground because everyone knew he was also there. In middle school, if a boy broke my heart or wouldn’t take no for an answer, I only had to mention a name in front of my brother and the problem would be mitigated. But even as an adult, that layer of security was steady and sure.

At 25, my first husband secretively walked out on me on a Tuesday afternoon. The first call I made after dialing my boss to let him know I wouldn’t be at work the next day, was to my Dad. I asked that he and my brother be there the next day with his truck and trailer to help me pack up and move my life out of my apartment. They came, no questions asked. My brother, with levity to lighten the shock and sorrow.

When entering my second marriage, I realize now I had a deeply-embedded and confident assurance that if anything ever happened like before, my brother would always be there to help me pack up my furnishings and pick up the pieces.

Us against the world type of thing.

Even after my brother and I’s relationship fell apart and I was forced to put strong boundaries in place with him, I still knew if/when anyone else failed me, if I was ever in a bind and really needed help, my brother’s rescue was only one text message away. No matter what. Even if we hadn’t talked in months. Even if he was on the other side of the country, he would board a plane to come to me within hours.

If something needed fixing, he would do it. He was the master of figuring things out. If I needed help hunting down a particular item, he would find it and ship it to me. For as many problems as my brother caused in my life over the years, he was able to solve just as many. There was comfort in that. Peace. Protection. Stability.

None of this was even a conscious or spoken thought for me. It was just a knowing. Deep and immovable. I didn’t even realize it was there until after he was gone and the very fabric of my confidence started to unravel. It took me a long time, and many soul-searching journal entries, to pinpoint that it was his absence driving those feelings.

I felt untethered.

Like I was free-falling through life with no safety net.

My safety net had been funneled into an urn and buried underneath the earth in southern Kentucky.

And now I felt alone and orphaned in a world where my Dad could no longer come and save me either. His help was lost to me in the tangles of his cerebral cortex, a condition they call Dementia.

Kids Church Songs and Deep Spiritual Truths

It is a strange unfolding to realize how much of your strength and stability is built on the shoulders of another person. How crushing it is to lose those things when they are gone. To realize how misplaced this vital thing had been.

How shaky a process it is to find all new footing, a new place to build upon. And how long and arduous the labor of stacking brick upon brick rebuilding your life once more. I still feel the tremors of aftershock today, threatening to tumble what height I’ve regained. Insecure of my work and the new site for my construction.

There is a song I sing to my son that I used to sing in Children’s Church growing up. It’s based on a story in the book of Matthew, chapter seven, a parable titled The Wise and Foolish Builders. The song comes with fun hand-motions that make it a real crowd-pleaser for toddlers.

The wise man built his house upon a rock
house upon a rock
house upon a rock

The wise man built his house upon a rock
And the rains came tumbling down.

The rains came down and the floods came up
[repeat 2x]
And the house on the rock stood firm.

The second verse is a contrast to the first. It sings of the foolish man who builds his house upon the sand, and at the end, “the house on the sand goes SPLAT!” (Insert riotous laughter and squeals of delight from three year olds.)

The point of the song – and the parable – is that God is The Solid Rock foundation upon which we can build our lives, so that no matter what storm comes, we stand firm.

How did I get this so wrong? I berate myself now, standing in the rubble of The After.

But I don’t know if that’s the right question – or accusation, as it is.

I think mostly, I have spent my life expecting if I was a good Christian girl, who followed the rules, and paid my tithes, and spoke the right confessions in the mirror every morning, I would be spared any “splatting” experiences in life.

But I think what I’m finding is the splatting still comes.

And, even without a brother, I’m never truly left alone to pick up the pieces and rebuild. Though my soul feels this way at times and my enemy wants to tell me it’s the truth. It’s not.

A Hurricane Flattened My House, Now What?

“We say, after we’ve experienced something, ‘Well, it all turned out for the good,” but you weren’t so sure about that while it was happening. When you’re going through it, it feels like death, and you can’t even see any life after this.’” – Steven Furtick

In my first book, Now What? A Story of Broken Dreams and the God Who Restores Them, I tell the story of my divorce and how I was so angry at God for letting it happen. Letting my life and dreams fall apart when I had followed all His rules. But as it turned out, I didn’t even know who God was at that time. And even as I ran fast and far and hard away from Him, He chased me down, to make my acquaintance.

This time, when the Hurricane of Grief following my brother’s suicide came blowing in and flattened the house of my life, I didn’t blame God. I didn’t spend a long time writhing in anger at God. Only because I’d been there and done that and know how futile an exercise this is. He’s not really the one to blame. No, this time, I felt His calm, loving, steady presence next to me. Sitting with me. Crying with me. Aching with me. Never leaving my side.

This was not the life or the outcome he wanted for me, or my brother. He was just as hurt by my brother’s pain, and the pain that my brother’s choice is now bleeding onto my family and I.

He didn’t shy away from my rage or my cursing at my brother. He wasn’t disappointed or appalled at my reaction. He was there. Willing to sit and weep with me for as long as I needed, and ready to take each shaky step after the other, once I got back up again. He isn’t bothered by my lengthy timeline of grieving.

He is there, to show me each thing I need to see as I moved forward in healing – like how I had built a false sense of security on my brother’s protection and presence for starters. My house upon sand. But not one time do these revelations come with condemnation or rebuke. They come with grace and patience. He was, and is, always, only a kind and loving companion. Solid. Firm. Unwavering in his commitment.

Kind of like a rock, I guess.

And a little song I know tells me rock is a good foundation to pick for building your life-house upon.

A Grief Observed

“Losing a beloved is an amputation.” – C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I once listened to a podcast in which a psychiatrist was talking about why it feels like we lose a part of ourselves when we lose a loved one.

He said that, unwittingly, we store information, memories and experiences in the brains of other people we are close to; like an external hard drive. Our own minds have limited capacity to keep all the data we need, so we share mental and emotional data resources with others.

We see this phenomenon to be particularly true when someone loses a spouse and has no idea what the bank password is, or what type of oil the car takes, or where the Tupperware is located in the cupboard… Those pieces of information were stored in the other person for easy access. Just as we store information for them as well.

We never expect to need to know those things ourselves because we expect the other person to always be there.

There was a specific piece, or version, of me that was reserved just for when my brother and I were together. We had a special bond our whole lives.

In his data bank I stored all our inside jokes, movie quotes, random road trips, family history, all the techie/internet answers I needed, car maintenance advice, and much more. He was a fixer, a finder, ever-resourceful. I knew certain things were only one text away if I needed them.

When I got the call that his body was found at the bottom of the canyon, it felt like a very tangible part was cut out of me. Like there’s an empty/missing place inside now.

Pictures and memories and stories will soften the sting I know, but that void will always be there, this side of Heaven.

And that’s just the way it is when we live in close relationship with others. When we love. It’s hard and it hurts, but it’s the cost of this benefit of the human existence.

***

In the weeks following my brother’s death, I listened to C.S. Lewis’ book, A Grief Observed. It was the first book of Lewis’ I ever read, actually. So different than what I imagined from the famed theologian, the book is a collection of his journals following the death of his beloved wife, Joy, opened wide for the world to see.

His pain is visceral. The deepest, rawest places of his soul on display. There are times he questions his faith and shouts at God. C.S. Lewis! It was the most relatable thing I’ve ever read.

By that point, I already had a running notepad in my phone, to which I added bits and pieces every day about all I was thinking and feeling. My own version of a grief journal. It was the only thing I could do at the time, while being physically attached to a newborn breastfeeding for eight hours a day.

The only thing that kept me from going lit-rally insane in that season was the fact I could get words and sentences out of my own soul and onto “paper”. In his book, Lewis stated, “What we work out in our journals, we don’t take out on our loved ones.” I think I was doing both, but I imagine it could have been a lot worse if I’d kept everything inside!

The excerpt at the beginning of this post is from this journal of mine on March 10th, 2021.

Some things I wrote and shared in real time on social media, but most of it, I kept tucked away. Some of it will only ever be for my own eyes, but some of it, I just wasn’t ready to share yet. I have been waiting for the right time and place – and headspace – to bring these words to light.

Mostly I think I had to wait to tell the story without being angry. Well, only angry. Which I was, for the longest time.

White-hot rage was the prominent emotion I could pinpoint after my brother decided to ride his motorcycle off the Grand Canyon. It took me a solid 12 months – and therapy – before I ever got to sad.

I was:
Angry that he made another selfish decision, in a long list of them.
Enraged by the timing – three weeks after I gave birth to my first son, when I needed my parents the most, when I needed it to be all about me.
Incensed he tainted this time that is supposed to be sweet and pure and full of joy.
Irate he would put my parents through that.
Livid he stole years of cognition with my father from me, from us, from my son. I knew the mental toll it would take on both of my parents – particularly my father, who was already diagnosed with Alzheimers, but whose symptoms were mild.
Furious about the fact that I would never get to be the same again – I would be forever altered by his choice.
Seething over the mess he left behind I had to clean up. That he made me an only child. That he abandoned me to struggle with aging parents and Dad’s diagnosis alone.
And on and on.

Even when I did experience moments or days of sadness, it would be overshadowed by my anger that his choice was the reason I had to feel that way.

The rage became its own entity within me. I finally made space for therapy when I was afraid of that rage, of who I was with it churning inside me.

People thought they knew my brother, thought they knew the story. They did not. The “public” didn’t even know it was suicide. My family and I told people we knew, who we’re close with, in one-on-one conversations, but that was it. And I wanted to tell the whole, stark-naked truth of what he had done to us over a loudspeaker.

But about 18 months after John’s death, God whispered a Truth to my heart. It was after I had told one more person the whole story. The one that I’m beginning to unfold here. Her reaction was exactly what I wanted: shock, solidarity, anger alongside me. But the bitterness and burning rage in me didn’t regress for even a minute. If anything, it was prodded and stoked hotter.

And God gently said to me, “You can tell as many people as you want, but it’s not going to make you feel better. Or more free. Relieved from the pain or frustration. It’s not going to make you feel justified.” It was like a veil was removed in my mind and my emotions.

My therapist once asked me what it would take for me to stop being angry at my brother. I listed: “An apology, reconciliation, changed behavior…” She pointed out that even if my brother was alive, I may never have gotten those things. But, since he’s dead, I sure as shit wasn’t getting them now. So I had to figure something else out.

God reminded me of this prior conversation while He was speaking to me then.

That very same weekend in the Fall of 2022, I was sitting in a conference when the speaker stopped the event to pray over a person/persons in the crowd who needed to “let go of something”. Her prayer was vivid, visual: She said [once you decided to let go], it would feel like fresh Spring air. Like when you open the windows of your house on the first warm, Spring day and let the fresh air blow the stale scent of Winter away.

I had been sitting in my stale house of rage for 18 months, but that day I opened the windows and let God breathe something new inside me. I felt a shift. The anger didn’t magically get better or go away overnight, but I felt lighter. Freer. More hopeful. That I could and would feel different moving forward.

It’s been another 18 months. The anger still comes in waves at times. But the waves are few and far between, they aren’t as high or as violent, and they pass back out to sea quickly. Mostly, I just feel an aching longing when I think of my brother now. I wish he weren’t gone. And at last, I feel a release in being able to tell his story. Our story.

It’s true, I don’t ever get to be the same person I was before he chose to end his life, but the person I am now has a depth of knowledge, experience, compassion, and empathy that I can use for myself and others.

I have found immeasurable comfort in being able to write all of this down over the last three years, but my prayer is that I can share it without triggering any of that old bitterness and rage. And that I can tell it in a way that is helpful to others who are also walking through an earth-shattering encounter with grief, and not just as a continued therapeutic exercise for myself.

I hope you stick with me on this journey. But I understand if this content isn’t for you right now. You are loved, and I will still be here sharing all of the #RealTalk if you need me in the future.

***

This post is part 4 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

It’s Got to Be Like Planning a Party, Right?

Confetti, Hope and 3/16

My mom plopped down across from me in the nursery looking hurried and determined as she readied to leave my house. She and my Dad had stayed with us three of the four weeks since my son was born, but today they were rushing back home. It had been less than 12 hours since the phone call that changed our lives. They were trying to beat the news back to my Grandmother – my Memaw – so she could hear about the death of her only grandson from them instead of Channel 12.

They didn’t make it, by the way. The story broke before they could drive the three hours to their house in Southern Kentucky.

“I don’t want a funeral, I want a celebration of life,” She said, “And I want you to do it.”

“Oh! Ok.” I responded, not knowing what else to say, but certain I would do whatever she needed of me in that moment. I had never planned or preached a funeral before, but I had done plenty of public speaking and I reasoned, it’s got to be like planning a party, right? “I’ll figure it out.”

My sister-in-law, Susie, said I was in survival mode. The way I didn’t react at all and could just go about normal duties like my entire world hadn’t just been flipped upside down.

Turns out, it happens often after the loss of a loved one. A normal part of grief. Your mind isn’t able to process the traumatic event, so it shifts into hyper-efficiency as you plan details and arrangements, share the news with relatives, and go about your day-to-day. Once the flourish of activity ends, the numbing and coping mechanism stops and reality sets in. Most of the time.

“And, I want you to read his letter.” she added.

“Oh.” I looked pointedly at my mom, “Are we…….saying it out loud? His letter doesn’t leave much to the imagination, so we are telling everyone he did it on purpose?”

“I don’t have anything to hide.” Her clipped reply caught me off-guard, but filled me with a strange pride. This was not a normal response in my family. We have been hiding things on behalf of my brother for most of my life.

Her final request was that we play the hymn, I’ll Fly Away.

In the following days as I prepared, I prayed God would give me the right words to say and that I would be able to deliver them without my voice shaking on that day.

3.16.21

It would be two weeks before we received my brother’s ashes – there was some back and forth with evidence and autopsies and processing time, etc. Once they were ready, the crematorium in Arizona shipped them – like, FedEx, I’m not kidding – and they ended up getting delayed at a depot, missing the delivery window for the service.

My brother was literally late to his own funeral, which was on par for him. We made a joke of it that day.

His remains would be buried in a second-hand gravesite that had belonged to my Memaw’s family. The cemetery is only one lot over from her house. We walk over there once a year on Memorial Day to put flowers on my Great-Grandparents grave. (They didn’t serve in the military, it’s just tradition in those parts.) I grew up playing in that cemetery anytime we would visit my Memaw and Grandad, riding my bike or running laps around the circular drive. My Memaw already has her headstone fixed on her plot – even though she’s very much alive – and now my brother’s body would be tucked in the earth right beside hers.

My mom requested the event be small – immediate family, and John’s girlfriend, only. There was confetti and balloons, music and singing (I found the Etta James version of I’ll Fly Away), a little crying, and fake, press-on mustaches. (That’s a story for another day.)

The pastor from my parents’ church and I co-led the service. This was my message:

“My brother committed suicide” is not something I ever wanted to be a part of my story. Neither was getting divorced.

But what I’ve learned in the last decade and a half is that God can take the broken, unwanted parts of our story and use them anyway, if we let Him. For our good and His glory.

He even promised it right in His Word through the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans: He causes all things to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

I’ve learned if we share the vulnerable parts of our story out loud, we give other people who are hurting and broken permission to share theirs as well.

It makes them feel less alone.

So that’s what we’re doing today. We are saying the TRUTH out loud so that we can begin to process and heal together. And bringing the truth to light so it cannot stay hidden to fester in the dark.

It’s our secrets that keep us sick. And we want to be healthy and whole and free from the bondage of secrecy.

….

My husband recently pointed out that in just a couple weeks, it will be Sammy’s first Easter. But it will also be our first Easter without John.

I cried when he said that. I hadn’t thought of it yet. I am heartbroken and even angry that now these special moments of joy will be forever entwined with sorrow. Marred. Tainted.

Easter, or, “Resurrection Sunday”, as my brother would call it, has always been a big holiday for my family. We celebrate right here in Somerset every year.

It’s dripping in tradition for us.

We always buy new Easter outfits – most often complete with hats – and wear them to church. We sing hymns about the cross and the blood and Jesus’s triumphant resurrection. We take communion. We hunt eggs in the church yard afterward. We take pictures on Memaw’s back deck. We eat a big lunch and spend the day together, if not the whole weekend.

In recent years, we have played cards for hours, as that’s become our family’s most beloved pastime.

For half of my life, that’s all Easter was for me. A day of religious and familial tradition.

But the last decade or so, I have started studying and meditating on the meaning and significance of Easter and Holy Week.

Easter is earmarked by many themes and symbols: Love, Sacrifice, Blood, Redemption, Forgiveness, Grace, Victory, Freedom, Covenants, the Cross and the Crown, the Lamb and the Lion….

But for me, the strongest resounding theme of the whole holiday (at least this year) is: Hope.

Easter represents the Hope of the Promise for reunion.

After the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, God vowed to make a Way to be reunited with His beloved creation, humans. He set a Plan in motion, a Plan that culminated thousands of years later with the Roman crucifixion of His Son on that old rugged cross.

That Friday, as the sun went dark, all of Israel, all of Jesus’s followers, and all of Heaven (except the Father himself) were hopeless.

If that’s where the story had ended, we too, would be hopeless. Our bodies would die and that would also be our end.

But we all know that three days later, Jesus walked out of Hell and out of His grave, and God’s Plan was completed. His Promise was fulfilled.

And because we have accepted that promise as our own, we now live with the Hope of life after death. And an eternity of union and fellowship with our Father.

And because we know John was also in on that Promise, we get to live with the Hope of being reunited with him again one day as well.

So today, we are celebrating the time we had with him here and the Promise of an eternity of laughter and joy and adventure with him there.

We can rejoice, like John’s letter asked us to.

Miraculously, my voice didn’t quiver one time.

Afterward, we walked back to my Memaw’s house and had lunch on the back deck. We ate fried chicken and lingered in the warmth of the sun and family.

The next week I journaled,

On March 16^th, 2021, we celebrated my brother’s life. The 40 years, 6 months, and 10 days we had with him here on earth.

We celebrated the fact that we know where he is, and that we will get to see him again one day.

The day was perfect and beautiful and Holy in a way that only God could orchestrate. (71 and sunny in mid-March!)

Only after-the-fact did my cousin Kara point out that the celebration was on 3.16.

The 16th verse in the third chapter of the book of {JOHN} is one of the most well-known and well-quoted Bible verses in history. It is the first that most children are taught to memorize in Sunday School. You can probably call it to mind and rattle it off right now without much thought.

It’s the core of the Christian belief system and THE reason we will be reunited with my brother in Heaven.

“For God so loved the world that He gave his only son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Amen. Selah.

See you when we get there, brother.

***

This post is part 3 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

The Call

Wednesday, March 3rd, 2021

It was just after 9pm when the call came. I was in the rocking chair in the nursery, breastfeeding my son. My husband, who had been fielding all of the phone calls for the last week – from investigators, and search parties, and the news reporters – was presently on a flight to Arizona, to join the search for my missing brother.

“Mrs. Neuberger?”

“Yes, this is her,” I answered in a low voice, not wanting to involve my newborn in what was likely to be a life-altering conversation.

She chose her next words carefully and delivered them with a clinical degree of care, “We located John below the rim. He was deceased.” I didn’t respond right away. “I’m sorry.” She added.

“Thank you,” I replied, and then, “I’m sorry you have to make these phone calls.”

“Thank you.” She said with an exhale that demonstrated the exhaustion of it in her bones.

She described the location. Exactly where my husband had predicted, and where he was planning to search first. She told me he fell 464 feet.

“His death would have been instant.”

I asked the only question that mattered to me at the time, “Can I ask, did it look…intentional?”

“Without video footage, there’s no way to know for certain. But,” She continued tentatively, “Based on the location of his body and bike in the canyon, that’s the way it appears.”

We were both silent for a while.

“What happens now?” I asked.

She explained all the next steps for his “remains”. It was jarring to hear my brother being referred to by that word, but that’s all that was left of him, I supposed.

In a haze, I ended the call, placed my baby back in his crib and robotically made my way downstairs. I called my sister (my brother’s ex-wife) and told her I needed her to come over.

I was numb.

It was nearly 10pm. I needed to eat dinner so I would have enough nourishment to pump five more ounces of milk to give my baby in another hour. And, sometime before that, I had to wake my parents and tell them their son was dead.

My brother was missing for one week – from the time of his last social media post to the time the Park Rangers recovered his body – it was a week like no other in my life.

I can’t begin to explain what life is like when a loved one is missing. Everything is suspended in mid-air, but reality goes on around you. You hold your breath. Every text, every message, every phone call could be the one.

Every opening door you expect them to walk through. You can think of virtually nothing else. Your mind reels with what if’s and possibilities. You become a real-life private investigator, trying to piece together clues and information. You go crazy looking for them, for answers, anywhere, everywhere.

It’s still surreal even now.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to go months or years or forever with a loved one still unaccounted for.

Toward the end of that week, my mother was sick with the thoughts of my brother’s body being out there somewhere alone. Broken. Abandoned Among the wild animals. She broke down in tears and in a desperate, guttural plea cried out to my husband, “Just go get him…Please!”

Seeing her so utterly fragmented was harder than my own grief.

The hardest part for me of that week is the fact he was dead for four days before I even knew he was missing. My heart aches at that detail. Somehow it feels like my fault.

Two days before the call, the first thought I had upon waking was, My brother is not alive anymore. I just knew it, in my bones. As plainly as I knew my own name.

Hours later, I’ll never see my brother again, rolled through my head with a fresh, and different, layer of grief. The two sentences carry the same truth but are two distinct losses.

It would be a full year before I would write out a full inventory of my losses from his death.

On the day of the call, I wrote in my journal:

This phone call was just a confirmation of what I already knew. I know more layers of grief will come. In waves over the next few days, months, years…For the rest of life on this side of Heaven.

When you experience such a profound loss, every part of you just wants to shut down. Stop eating, stop getting out of bed, stop caring. But, having a newborn at the time, none of that was an option for me.

I ended that journal entry:

But for now, life goes on. My baby still has to eat. I still have to feed by body for him.

And I’ve been putting one foot in front of the other ever since.

***

This post is part 2 in a series that starts with: http://racheldawnwrites.com/blog/reads-like-fiction/

On Death, Loss and Resurrection

Easter looked different for us this year.

I hesitated to even post this picture because it is so shockingly deceiving.

What you see is the smiling faces that have posed on this same back deck for the last 20+ years.

What you don’t see is the pain, the heaviness, and the deep, deep grief that is carried behind each of those smiles.

At first glance, you might notice my brother is missing. Not uncommon, as there were years in the past he was “too busy” to come to Easter. But, my brother died two years ago, so, of course, he will never be in another Easter photo again. That’s an image I’ve already come to grips with.

What you can’t see through the pixels on this screen is that my Father is also missing.

He is there – physically present – with the same, iconic smile he’s worn his entire life, but my Daddy – his unique personality and identity – left us, realistically, last Fall.

Six, or so, years ago he was diagnosed with some form of Dementia. His mother died from Alzheimers in her 80’s, and his older brother is nearing the end of his battle with the horrid disease presently.

My dad’s progression has been slow. So slow that if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t even have known anything was off. A missed word here or there, a little fogginess on details… Until last Summer.

Within weeks of one another, two events back-to-back effectively stole my father from us.

First, he fell at our house and broke his foot. A minor break that only required wearing a boot for six weeks. And, simultaneously, his doctor told my mother that he could stop taking one of his memory medications as it had “been as effective as it could” to that point.

Within two weeks of those two events, it was like a light switch was turned off in my Father’s brain.

Daylight and dark.

One day he was there and the next he was not.

He went from being able to keep up well enough in a game of Canasta (a strategy-based card game we played as a family) to not being able to dress or groom himself in the correct manner.

He hasn’t shaved in months. And his body looks weak and emaciated. He is unsteady when he walks or sits and rises.

It happens all the time. A common earmark of dementia is fall-injury-decline. The way I understand it, the person’s body diverts all of its energy and resources to the site of the new injury/trauma that it has nothing left to support the preexisting, chronic cognitive trauma. So a significant regression occurs.

I haven’t posted anything on social media about my Father’s diagnosis because, until this Fall, he was still; regularly checking his own Facebook account. And, we are none of us, certain how aware or unaware my father is about his disease and progression. I didn’t want him reading something about himself he may not have even realized yet.

In October, my mom told me my dad was talking in his sleep. She heard him say, “I wonder what I’ll be like six months from now.” It was the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever heard. But, it let’s me know that he’s aware on some level, some of the time.

And also, I have felt almost like not saying it out loud might keep it from being real. Or permanent.

But at this point, my father can’t even use a TV remote without my mother’s assistance.

And as much as I want to pretend this image is the same as all the others we’ve snapped, I also don’t want to be living in – or portraying – a false reality.

Following the second anniversary of my brother’s death in February. I called my mom and told her I was having a strong need for familial/holiday traditions. Things will never look the same again, because a literal quarter of our family is missing, but I am needing to establish new rhythms and traditions for my son and my own healing.

Because of that, on Easter morning, we got up and went to my parents’ small country church – alone. I have never once in my life attended church on Easter without my parents.

They haven’t been able to attend for months due to my father’s physical limitations. My heart breaks over this, as their church was always their strongest form of community and identity.

I read their names in the bulletin on the prayer list under “shut ins”, and felt like I was being punched in the gut. Men “Amen’d” when the Hymns ended, and my eyes stung with tears at the absence of my father’s voice in that chorus.

Samson got to hunt eggs after the service, and we took some sweet family photos in our color-coordinated outfits. Which was one of the parts I needed most, as trivial as that is.

And when we got home, my mom had my dad all dressed up and groomed. The first time I’d seen him that way in months. All so we could snap this photograph. And because that’s what I needed.

Because grief is hard. And we are all drowning in it together. And just trying to hold on to each other in the waves as best we can.

We visited my brother’s grave Sunday afternoon and planted some Easter lilies there. It was the flower my brother brought to my mother every year on the holiday.

My brother’s funeral was two weeks before Easter in 2021. At it, I preached a message on Resurrection and the promise we have to be reunited with my brother again one day. It seems bitterly unfair that just two years later we are grappling with another loss as monumental to our family, but the promise is still the same.

The hard part, of course, is the living without them between now and then.

******

Footnote: I know this blog post is so very different than what you are used to reading here. And maybe not what you signed up for. Me either. Be aware, as I move forward through my grief journey, I will be posting more about it here. If that’s not what you want or need in your inbox right now, I totally understand, and will not be offended if we break up.

I want you to know you are still loved, you are never alone, and your – and my – story is so far from over. You keep telling yours and I’ll be here telling mine.

What to do with the Death of a Dream

Have you ever given up on a dream? Has life ever beaten you up or beaten you down so badly, you felt it was pointless to believe in a better or different future?

In my book Now What? A Story of Broken Dreams and the God Who Restores Them, I talk about how after my divorce in 2011, I felt like my life was ruined. Like I had blown my chance at the dream life I pictured in my head, by mistakenly marrying the wrong person, and would just have to settle for whatever second-rate existence I could get from thereon.

A divorce is not only the death of a relationship, but the death of a dream.

And I have found the mourning process to be much the same as mourning the loss of a human being.

Have you ever found yourself in a place like this? It’s daunting, discouraging…depressing even.

There’s a verse in Proverbs that says,
“Where there is no vision, the people perish…”

My mentors once explained to me that everyone starts out with a big “dream circle” when they are young. We are all going to be astronauts and professional athletes and Broadway stars when we’re 6 – even 16 – but somewhere along the way to becoming an adult, responsibilities and bills and routine take ahold of us, and our dream circle shrinks to fit the reality of the life we are living.

Or, for some of us, a life-altering event shakes us out of the perpetual state of hope and optimism we have always known until all we can do is survive each day.

We stop being able to see more than what is right in front of us. Our dream dies. And we just exist.

That’s where I was.

I share this story in my book:

I have always had “vision boards” up in my bedroom. I was probably sixteen when I pasted together and hung my first one. I’ve moved them to every apartment and house I have ever lived in (and I’ve moved a lot!). I hung them when I was first on my own, living in a low-income apartment. At a time when I would often only have ten dollars left over at the end of the week for groceries, looking at those boards inspired me to keep dreaming.

Right in front of me I saw the pictures of the types of houses I wanted to live in, the cars I wanted to drive, the places I wanted to see, and the intangible things—children to adopt, relationships I would have, the impact I would make. And I was reminded that where I was, was not where I was staying. My circumstances and surroundings were only temporary as long as I kept moving forward.

The first place I lived after my divorce, I didn’t hang my vision boards up. I felt so far removed from those pictures, from ever seeing those dreams come to fruition. I just couldn’t see how that life was possible anymore.

When Barry and I moved into our first house together, I pulled them all out and cried. I still wasn’t sure I believed in them, but I was more disheartened that I had given up on dreaming all together.

When I shared this with Barry, he went out and bought fresh poster board and insisted we make new ones together.

Even though my old ones still had some things on them I liked, they were from a totally different place in my life. I took a couple things from them, but I wanted a new vision board to match the new vision in my life.

That’s the power of vision boards. When you constantly have the images of what you want your life to look like in front of your eyes, your imagination and subconscious mind go to work to make those things manifest in the physical realm. They will find a way, attracting ideas and people and opportunities to you.

While creating my new vision board, I found this one small quote I cut out of a magazine that meant the most to me. I don’t even remember what it was in reference to, but it said,

“Your dreams miss you.”

I get emotional just typing that now. Those four words were such a simple, sweet reminder to me that I was called and created for more than the complacency I was settling for.

I had dreams inside me just waiting to get out, but I had allowed myself to move far away from them. I had forgotten them, left them behind. I’d buried them in my day-to-day routine and busyness to keep my mind off what I had been through and the fact that I was stagnant in life.

My dreams missed me.

And I missed them.

Your dreams miss you.

I give you permission to dream again.

The next chapter of your life hasn’t been written yet and it matters how you finish. Live on purpose and scream to the world, ‘It’s not over till I win!’” – Pastor Gary Newell

So, if you’re in that place where hope seems lost and dreams seem dead, create a vision board for yourself.
When is the last time you let yourself dream? Given yourself permission to imagine life a different way?

I have always heard, if you want to get a big dream, get around big dreamers. Believe it or not, there are people in your life who see your potential more clearly than you do. Find those people. Spend time with them.

Whatever you do, do not lose sight of that vision, that hope – that your life can be better, fuller, more-fulfilling, more-purposeful than it is now.

As cliché as it sounds, you have seeds of greatness inside of you. I beg you, do not let them get buried in busyness and routine and monotony. Or disappointments, heartache and loss. Keep your dreams in the forefront of your mind, put pictures of them in front of you. And you will see them come to pass.

your dreams miss you.jpg

#56

Skydiving is was on my bucket list. It’s number 56, in fact. I kind of had it penciled in for this Summer, and then my best friend turned 40 and decided that’s what he wanted to do to celebrate. BINGO!

Weeks leading up to the event I was pure bottled excitement and eager anticipation.

My husband had a scheduling conflict arise so that he was not able to join us, and I remember having a strange little flutter of uneasiness. Am I going to be able to do this without him? Won’t I need him there? Then I reminded myself, I lived a pretty routine life for 25 years before I met him, eight of which included my best friend who I was going to be with, so I would be just fine.

As the day drew closer, I started to feel my excitement turn slightly to nervousness and the night before, I was progressively overcome by sheer, paralyzing terror.

I took a long shower to try and relax my nerves, but sitting on the floor in the steam the words of the mandatory safety waiver video played through my head on a haunting loop, “Skydiving is dangerous and can cause serious injury, or even DEATH. Nothing about skydiving is guaranteed. No parachute manufacturer is perfect, no parachute packer is perfect, no skydiving company is perfect, no instructor is perfect. Equipment can fail. Instructors can fail. Weather can cause unsafe conditions. Strong winds can cause a parachute to collapse….”

And then this thought went through my mind: Was I going to die the next day? Followed by: What if I did? How badly would my husband be crushed? Would he blame himself? How long would his life be derailed? Is this the last day I’m going to spend with him?

I got out of the shower and the words continued to avalanche. I distinctly remember as I smeared lotion on my legs thinking, what if something worse happens – like we crash and I am paralyzed? I just met a quadriplegic who’s walking her faith journey out with God, and feels closer to God now than she ever has. What if God allows that same thing to happen to me? What if God tries to teach me something through an injury? I like my legs. I like being able to use them. Is this the last time I’m going to be able to move them freely myself?

A movie reel played in my head as it zoomed out on this moment: a bird’s eye view of me lotioning my legs was the foreshadowing of what I didn’t know was coming the next day. It’s actually beautifully cinematic, I darkly narrated to myself. Should I just not go through with it to avoid even the possibility of disaster?

I should pray. But, is this something I am even allowed to pray about? Or am I not allowed to ask for protection for voluntarily jumping out of a plane – literally putting my own life at risk? Am I tempting fate? Tempting the prowling lion looking for lives to devour? Was I moving outside that hedge of supernatural covering I’d so clearly seen and felt protecting me?

I thought about all the things I knew I was created to do that were still undone, and wondered if I was risking letting Satan steal them?

I was almost sick to my stomach with all the thoughts swarming in my head.

I was terrified to say anything out loud, or at least wise enough to know what not to let come out of my mouth. I didn’t want to give life to any of these fears – as statistically improbable or irrational as they were. The seed had been planted and my enemy – the biggest liar in history – was having a field day with it!

I was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling when my husband walked in the room. I’m sure by my deflated body-language alone he could tell I was troubled by something.

“What’s wrong?”

I hesitated to answer. “I think I’m a little bit nervous about tomorrow.”

“Yeah? Are you scared?”

“No, I don’t think I’m scared, I’m just nervous I think.”

“Well, if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.”

A little defensively, “No, I want to go, I want to go skydiving. I’m going to go at some point in my life, so there’s no reason for it not to be tomorrow. I’m just nervous.”

And he said to me again, “I’m just saying, if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to, you can back out. And it’s ok.”

My eyes lingered on his, trying to communicate what I was feeling without saying the words. All that came out was, “I don’t think that’s what I need you to say to me right now.”

“Oh.” He said. “What do you need me to say to you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to pray for you? Would that help?”

Knowing my friend, I said, “Well, I’m sure Keith will pray tomorrow before we all go up, but, yes, I think that would help.”

He grabbed my hand and began his prayer by thanking God for the day, and for our time together, for Keith and our friendship. He prayed over the rest of our plans for the weekend. For himself to get everything he needed out of the men’s retreat he was attending. He prayed that I would have fun the next day, that I would enjoy every moment and that I wouldn’t be nervous. And then, without a peep out of me, he literally started naming every single specific aspect of the jump the next day, eliminating each of those fears, one-by-one as if he was checking them off a list,

“And God, we ask that you watch over Rachel and Keith, and everyone else skydiving tomorrow. That the weather would be clear and perfect, that there would be no wind, that the plane would fly safely, that all the staff and instructors would be alert and focused, that all the equipment would perform as designed, that each harness and safety clip would function properly, and the parachute would deploy without issue, we ask for a safe landing….” Tears streamed down my face as I received his words and a peaceful calm settled over my spirit.

I thanked him for praying, and he hugged me for a long time.

“Feel better?”

“Yes! 100%!”

“Not nervous anymore?”

“Nope. Not one bit. I’m pumped!”

He left the room and then I started to think about how sly the devil can be, how he uses the most strategic offenses to wage the warfare where he knows he can win – in our minds. Not only was he was trying to stop me from living life. From experiencing something new and invigorating. From creating a lasting memory with some of my closest and most special friends. But, from living boldly and confidently.

I thought about how conniving he had been, how he had slowly watered and pruned those thoughts as soon as they had been planted in my mind from that video.

What if I had listened to him and not gone? What if I had let those thoughts overtake me and given life to those fears, given life to death, given it permission to come for me that next day?

The tongue is a “small part of the body” (James 3:5), yet Proverbs 18:21 says it “has the power of life and death.” This holds true whether we’re speaking of spiritual, physical, or emotional “life and death.”

And that’s when I got mad. How dare he?

I have already conquered this area of my life so many times and in so many ways. I have already learned to control my thoughts and mind my words. I mean, this is beginner faith stuff. I learned this a looooong time ago. There is a whole chapter on it in my book for crying out loud!! How dare he work his way back in there? Satan is not welcome in my mind.

You May Have To.jpg

And then I saw how easy it was, how quickly he worked back into that driver’s seat, darting my thoughts all over the place. How rapidly I spiraled down that dark, dangerous rabbit hole. And I was reminded again how vitally important it is to constantly be renewing and guarding my mind. It’s not a one-time thing. It’s an every day thing.

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (- Romans 12:2)

I felt like Vince Lombardi was standing in front of me, pigskin in hand, uttering, “This is a football.” The basics. The basics are the basics for a reason, in sports or faith or any other arena of life. They are building blocks, the foundation on which we build [the rest] upon. And if your foundation starts weakening, it won’t be long until your whole house crumbles.

Now am I saying it was God’s “will” for me to go skydiving? Maybe I am. I don’t know. But I do know it is NOT God’s will for me to live a life of fear and timidity, weak and limited, a life of mediocrity.

God has created and called each and every one of us to a life FULL of adventure, of taking new ground, of winning battles (even if they are just in our minds), and of doing it all for and with and because of Him. Because he has empowered us to do so.
And don’t you forget it. The next time those voices of fear and uncertainty start to creep in, silence them quickly before they paralyze your faith. Because if you don’t, you’ll miss out on awesome stuff like this:

Discernment & Hearing Tim’s Voice

My friend Tim died suddenly. He was 35. I was with him two weeks prior, joking around, pushing, poking. Then his heart stopped beating and he was gone. I will never see him again on this earth.

After his death, I was struggling with the decision of whether or not to attend his funeral or a Christian leadership conference that was coming up the same weekend. We were going to be taking a friend with us to the conference who tried to commit suicide two weeks before. As I contemplated the decision, weighing in my mind were things like being judged by other people for not going, and disappointing others if I decided to go and miss part of the conference instead.

While battling with it in my hotel room, I heard, Tim say as clear as a bell in my head, “Rach, of course you need to go the conference, don’t worry about me.”

And that was that. My decision was made. Other people’s opinion’s aside, I knew what I needed to do.

Because I knew Tim, I knew his heart, I knew his passion, I knew his calling in life. Because I touched him, and heard his voice, and saw his face. Because I knew the inflection he used when he spoke, and the shape his mouth made when it formed words, and the expressions his eyes gave when he told a story…. I knew what he would want me to do in that situation.

And then it dawned on me, that’s how well I need to know and recognize God’s voice. I want it to be that clear and unquestionable. I never want to doubt again when I hear a directive: is this from God, or is this from my head?

So how do I get to hearing His voice that clearly? By getting to know God as intimately as I knew my friend Tim. To know His heart, and his desires for me – which is always what’s best for me.

As I pondered all of this, for the first time in my life “discernment” clicked for me. I made a revelation I can never unmake. Really truly being able to hear from and follow God’s Voice became a little more believable for me, and I have a clear mission and plan on how to get to that place.

Even after he left the earth, my friend Tim is still teaching me new things.

[January 2014]