Its been 10 weeks since I held my son. 10 weeks of missing him. 10 weeks of reliving his day. 10 weeks of remembering, on purpose, so I don’t forget. 10 weeks. It seems like forever but also only a second. February 10, 2017, changed our lives forever. George Mason changed our lives forever.
I really can’t believe its been 10 weeks. Most days it feels like I just held him and I have to pinch myself to see if this is all a really bad dream. Maybe because I’m not sleeping much all the days run together and just seem like the longest day of my life. I close my eyes and see his precious face. I open my eyes and my heart longs to gaze into his eyes again. I want to smell him and kiss him. I want to learn each of his facial expressions. I want to know what each of his little cries are trying to say. I only heard him cry once. It lasted about 3 seconds and was the most beautiful, hope giving, cry. Lying there on the operating table, those precious 3 seconds of baby cries gave me the strength to keep going. To stay awake and pray for my son.
This last 10 weeks has been exhausting. I feel like a newborn baby, fully reliant on God for my everything because this pain and this season of my life is really, really hard. Just as newborn can only communicate through tears and cries, I too am crying before my God. I too am needing to be reminded I need fed the glorious Word and character of God. I want so badly to just be ok. I want to be able to answer honestly when people ask how I’m doing and say I’m good. Every day I wake up thinking, today I’m going to be ok. Today is the day that I’m healed. Except today is never that day.
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
I’m so thankful for the community God has placed around me. I can truly see His wonderful provision in this place, for this season. It sucks that I’m going through this but there are wonderful people who love on me, love on us, and mourn beside us as we figure out where we go from here. Most days I’m not ok and they are ok with that. Most days I find myself needing company and distraction and they are ok with that. They are providing such life giving support and encouragement through simply doing life alongside Adam, Audrey, and me. Even on the worst days, I can always see God’s provision tangibly in my community. What a gift that has been to us.
These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him. I know that I just want to be ok, but at the end of the day, my God is still my God, and that makes me perfectly ok. My emotions are on a rollercoaster and I’m feeling the sting of death much more than I'd like to, but God is still God and that is all that I need to survive until things are made right. Logically, I want a resolution to this pain. I want there to be a cut and dry reason for and answer to this horrible thing. I want God to work in my timeline and within the scope of my understanding. Then I realize how small that makes God and how much that would be the opposite of resolution.
My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me. By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. I say to God, my rock: “Why have you forgotten me? Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?” As with a deadly wound in my bones, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me all the day long, “Where is your God?”
I don’t even really like to admit that I’m still having bad days… that’s crazy. Grief has no timeline. There is no deadline for feeling better. I will only be fully restored when I reach eternity. I have to remind myself of that. I have to be ok with not being “ok” all the time or even yet. I am managing to keep my house clean, my child fed, have actual conversations with my husband, get out of bed; I’m doing fine not being ok. I’m clinging to Jesus with every breath. I’m praising Him with all that I have in me. God is good. God is really, really good. I don’t always feel that, but I know it. My heart knows it. My soul knows it. My head knows it. I just don’t always WANT to know it.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. -Psalm 42
God hasn’t left me to my own devices. He hasn’t said, “Oh, I’m sorry Jillian, just deal with it and figure it out.” He has been at my side, holding my hand, guiding me, providing for me, comforting me this whole time. He is my Rock. He is my Salvation. He is the hope that I cling to. All that He has ever done or ever will do, is everything I have ever needed and will need. He has been a steadfast source of provision for the last 10 weeks, the 9 months before that, and the 29 years before that. He is every bit of who He says he is. Thankful doesn’t even come close to expressing how I feel about that.