I was about eight years old the first time it happened. I was playing outside with my friends when the dog across the street broke loose. He charged, I ran, he attacked. I kicked and screamed as he bit and tore. Finally, my friend Victoria got my parents and my dad was able to get the dog off. I really have every right to fear dogs, but I don’t.

Around nine, my friend Victoria dared me to swim across her pond. Not one to turn down a dare, and feeling pretty confident in my swimming skills, I gladly accepted the challenge. Kicking my shoes off, I stared across the dark water and a memory of nearly drowning in a different pond a few years earlier, flashed through my mind, but, it was a dare, so I jumped in. I made it almost all the way across before I started to cramp up. My logic was to drop deep, kick off the bottom and finish the swim. As my feet sunk into the thick mud at the bottom, panic set in. I was stuck, fully submerged, and fear made logic seem ridiculous. I’m still not certain how I got free, but as I crawled out of the water on the other side, I vowed not to swim in that pond ever again. I really have every right to be scared of the water, but I’m not.

It was September 2001, we had just gotten back from a family vacation, when I woke up unable to feel my legs. Being only 12 weeks pregnant, I knew something was wrong. I woke Jim up and feared the worst. Knowing that what I was experiencing wasn’t normal, we rushed to the ER where they quickly prepped me for surgery.  The baby was gone and my life was hanging in the balance. I really had every right to be angry at God, but I wasn’t.

In January, I sat in a hospital waiting room, surrounded by family and friends, struggling to understand how and why I was chosen to live the life that was laid out before me. I have every right to be bitter, to be selfish, jealous or full of rage, but I’m choosing not to be.

I was thinking about my rights today, as I was evaluating how far I have come in 9 months and how far I still have to go. I wondered about the stages of grief and the fact that, although all those feelings are perfectly normal (believe me, I have gone through all the stages, multiple times), they are not campgrounds for me to pop a tent at and vacation.

As a believer, I have the Spirit of the living God dwelling in me. He has called me to live a life filled with things like love, joy, peace and patience, not hatred, jealousy, envy and strife. Of course, there is room to let feelings come and go, God understands that about us, but I don’t have the right to live in that. If I choose to walk in the Spirit and not the flesh, then I need to deal with any emotion that doesn’t line up with the Word of God as a potential threat. When I begin to believe that God has somehow made concessions for me because of what I’ve been through, I am essentially saying that my flesh has the right to lead my Spirit, His Spirit.

Allow yourself to feel what you feel, especially when your grieving, but don’t set up camp. I heard someone say once that we can’t judge ourselves on what we feel but by how we act, and I agree, but the Bible says that out of the heart the mouth speaks, so how I feel can quickly become how I act if I’m not careful.

Maybe I do have the right to feel and act a certain way right now, but I believe I laid down my rights when I picked up my cross.

Anxiety is something that I’m familiar with. I have battled unwanted, anxious thoughts as far back as I can remember. Some days, weeks, months even, can be worse and there is often no rhyme or reason to why it rears its ugly head, but having dealt with this invisible antagonist for so long, I have learned some tactics to be on the defense when it arrives. That doesn’t mean that it never overwhelms me and that doesn’t mean that I don’t engage in the fight for a while before winning, but it does mean I know what to expect, I have some sort of knowledge of how to combat it.

Grief is no such war…

It brings the enemy, not to your gate, but in your city walls, while you sleep. It plays unfair. It attacks when you’re weak. It plays on your emotions, your imagination, your will. It doesn’t have a game plan, the five stages don’t always apply.

Some people that wage war with grief will find themselves stuck in a hand-to-hand battle with anger. Anger with themselves, anger with the one that left, anger with a God who allowed this to happen. And while fighting this enemy of anger, coming up from behind, will be the rest of the surprise attack…bitterness, guilt and unforgiveness.

Some people will never be angry. They will never take on that foe. They will stay back, unwilling to fight because sadness has become their comrade. These people don’t have the energy or the will to even see the enemy. They shut their eyes tight, pull the armor over their heart to protect it from any more pain and pray that it will all just disappear. Please Lord, let it all just disappear.

And others, most of us, will fight this war on grief from all angles, turning from anger to apathy, from sadness to guilt. Those of us that are in this fight know it can be exhausting. There is no rest from it and it infiltrates every area of your life. It takes hold of your relationships, your job, your free time and the things that you once enjoyed. But unlike anxiety, no matter how many times you have already fought this battle, it will look different each time it attacks. You may know a little of what to expect, but the magnitude to which you war, is impossible to gauge.

I have been reminded this past week that grief takes no prisoners. You either fight or you lose. I tend to fight alone, thinking pridefully that I can manage, as long as I’m honest with my feelings. Or I place family and friends in a position to fight for me, as if I can take a break and they can carry on.

God pointed me, gently, back to His Word. In 2 Chronicles 32:8, King Hezekiah responds to the fear of the imminent battle…”He only has the strength of his own flesh, but the Lord our God is with us to help us and He will fight our battles.”

I only have the strength of my own flesh. Jim only has the strength of his own flesh. Evie, my family, my best friends, all can battle with me, but still only battle in the strength of their own flesh. I need to remind myself gently (taking my cues from the Lord instead of beating myself up) to lay down my battle plan, lay down my ideas on how to fix this for myself and for all that are close to me, and to allow the Lord to fight this battle for me. Does that mean I have to do no work? Absolutely not, there is exhausting work to be done, but why struggle to win a battle that He has already won.

I’m not much of a dreamer, at least not the kind of dreamer that my brother-in-law Heath is. He has woken up from a dream with the ability to tell every detail, like it was reality, and the explanation can take a very long time. Grace and Evelyn have both done the same thing, woken up and relayed every detail of a very complicated dream.

I have dreams, but they are usually broken up stories, almost like commercials. They don’t last long and they are often filled with blurry faces and mumbled voices. Nothing is very clear and they are regularly about things that I choose to forget the minute I wake up.

But…I had a dream.

Before I tell this dream though, first understand that I told a few people that I wanted to see Grace in a dream…so these few people started praying.

Last week Wednesday, at 5:30 in the morning, I woke up completely beside myself in tears. I couldn’t catch my breath and I struggled to be comforted by Jim, who was abruptly woken up by my panicked state.

My dream…

I was standing in my kitchen at the sink and I turned around because I knew she was behind me. And there she stood, sweaty faced, hair pulled up in a pony, with her basketball practice clothes on (exactly what she looked like the day of the accident). I reached for her and began touching her arms and face, asking her if she was real. She assured me that she was, and once I realized she was actually standing in front of me, I reached out to bring her into my arms, something I long for more than I can verbalize.

After holding her for a while, I pulled away to look at her face and ask her the one question I have been wanting to hear an answer to…

“Grace, are you okay?”

And her answer…it’s what I have needed to hear for 7 months. It’s what every parent longs to know after they lose what’s most important to them. It’s what woke me, what made me sit up in bed, tears coating my cheeks and breaths getting caught in my lungs.

With a huge smile on her face, she replied,

“Mom, I love it here!”

I’m not one to look for signs, I never have been. So as I write this story out, it still sounds unreal to me, like something that would happen to someone else, just not me.

We are home from a weekend vacation with Jim’s side of the family. This is a tradition we started when Grace was just a year old, so for 17 years we have all packed up and spent a weekend together, usually up north. This tradition, like so many others now, causes me more sadness than joy. I want to be a part of the fun, I want to enjoy the family time, but it’s all a reminder to me of what isn’t…who isn’t.

This weekend was no exception. As the departure day grew closer, my trepidation grew greater. I wanted to dig my heels in, unpack the bags, crawl into bed and pretend that this life I’m living was someone else’s. But for so many reasons, mainly a 13 year old one, I went along.

As we drove up north, tears filled my eyes, at each expressway exit passed where a memory took place. Frankenmuth, Grace and Evelyn’s favorite place to visit. Grayling, where we took Grace on our first, family of three, vacation. Hartwick Pines, Gaylord, Wolverine. As the exits rolled by, the tears streamed down my face. How was I ever going to make it through this vacation without being a mess of emotions? (And if you know me, you know that emotional is not a word usually used to describe me. I work hard at keeping it together, sometimes so much so, that I think people often wonder if I feel at all. You laugh, but I have actually been asked that very question a time or two in my life.)

Day 1 and day 2 were not without their difficulties, but I kept myself busy with Evelyn, my sweet nieces, with visits to the beach and the giant cross in the woods. I also had a book, a fictional romance, given to me by a friend, a welcome change of pace from the how-to-grieve books that have been my steady diet.

On Saturday, as everyone was resting from the morning activities, I took my book and went outside to sit in the sun and read. I was sitting alone on the picnic table when I heard something in the trees around the side of the house. I got up to check, and around the corner came this beautiful golden retriever. (Here’s the part where I could go into a ton of back story, but I’m trying to keep this simple.) Of course, I called the dog to come by me, because, although I have been attacked twice by dogs and should have a healthy fear of them, I don’t. She came and sat right by me and just received the love that I was willing to give. After a couple of minutes, I told her that we were going to have to return her, so I checked her tags. This is the part that I wouldn’t believe to be true if it hadn’t happened to me…can you guess what her name was? Yeah, it was Gracie.

As I sat there with Gracie, stroking her gorgeous blond/red fur with one hand, and wiping the steady flow of tears from my face with the other hand, I was reminded of how much God really cares. I would’ve felt God’s love for me today with or without this little blessing over the weekend, but God knew how much I was missing my Gracie on this trip, and in His goodness and constant love for me, He provided, for me, a reminder.

 These little “hugs” from my Heavenly Father break up the hard clay of grief and put in its place a workable soil, something that can have life planted in it. Seeds that will grow and produce a harvest. If I allow grief to continue to harden the ground around me, I will see no fruit come of this loss, but if I allow God to break up this ground, I know that He will bring life from this death, because He is the God of living, not the dead.

Grace loved writing notes…she would leave random notes of encouragement, scribbles filled with love, life quotes on binders, and her name, spelled out with a heart to top the i, pretty much anywhere and everywhere she pleased. I know that many of you reading this had received some of these notes, and you could probably tell a story about where she left it. She had mastered the art of encouragement. She would see a look of fear, anger, sadness or unease in a person’s eyes, and write them a note. I know that these notes, often on yellow post-its, have been a source of comfort to many over the last 5 months. 

I could use one of those notes today. Yesterday evening, we received the news that there will be no trial. Although the other driver was speeding and had alcohol in his system, there isn’t enough proof that it was entirely his fault; and there it ends. So it’s our job now, to close the chapter on the accident itself and move on.

As I move onto our next chapter though, I start a paragraph filled with hard words, words like how to forgive and not be angry, how to let go without growing bitter and how to remember without wallowing. I began to wonder though, what children do when they are faced with words that are too difficult to read? They usually ask someone they trust. So I turn to my Rock, my Helper, my Comforter, Jesus, and as He often does, He directs me back to His Word and I can hear Him say…

Sara, you may feel pressed on every side, but you are not crushed, you may be perplexed, but you are not in despair, you may feel persecuted, but you have not been abandoned, and you may have been struck down on January 25^th, but you were not destroyed. (2 Cor.4:8&9)

So after I finish reading that, I understand the next chapter a bit better. I can read the hard words and I can try to work through them. And when I need a break from reading, I will put a bookmark in. My bookmark happens to be a yellow sticky note, from one of my biggest encouragers, and what it says, what she wrote and would say if she was standing right here, gives me the courage to finish strong…

I can almost see her, sitting on the couch, chewing on a pen, scribbling out these words….