Today will be three months since I have written a blog post. The fall/winter is the hardest time of the year for me. All of our birthdays (save one) are between August and December. Throw in the anniversary of that horrible day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas and you have an intensely emotional five months. This year was extremely hard and ridiculously weighty compared to last year. I find myself in a grief-season of anger, which would burst at the slightest mishap. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, and quite frankly I didn't care, until it dawned on me that anger was part of the unpredictable cycle of grief. The knowledge that this was part of the process helped to relieve some of the anxiety and fits of rage that I was experiencing.
I have not written because I was angry and lost and bitter and apathetic and hopeless.
Then yesterday as I was in a store, in another town, making a quick return with the expectation that I would not run into anyone I knew, someone recognized me. My youngest son and I had just come from feeding and watering our 8 weaned calves.
I was in tattered clothes, I had cow manure on my tennis shoes (tennis shoes were not the best choice, I know!), no make-up on, and in need of a shower. The girl in front of me turned around and said, "Hey Kristin! Do you remember me?" PANIC! Oh my gosh...how could anyone even recognize me? I froze.
You see, one of the grief side effects for me is an absolutely horrible memory. I can't hardly even remember what happened yesterday, let alone someone from the past. I stood there slightly shell shocked because I desperately wanted to remember her but, the anxiety I was experiencing from my brain not working was making it even more difficult to place her. You feel absolutely crazy when you can't remember things that should be easily recalled! I timidly said, "Yes....from school?!?" She could clearly see that I was not placing her, so she graciously explained to me who she was. She then began to tell me that she read every one of my blog posts and shared them with her friends. Instantly I was deeply humbled and convicted.
The enemy of my soul comes at me in many different ways and one of the tactics he uses is to shut down my God-given gifts. I have known for years that the Lord was asking me to write and speak, and my enemy knows that too. He cunningly whispers anything he can to me to get me to stop living out my giftings. I knew what I was called to do, but prior to Conner's passing, no one was listening. I was in a waiting room and it was driving me crazy. Now people listen and it just makes me bitter. I am bitter because my life is not going according to my plan, even though it is in line with the small amounts of revelation HE has shown me prior to the accident. HE did not change HIS Plan, I was just not aware all the details. But you see, HE was gracious enough to me to show me part of it, so that I could be confident of it when the opportunity presented itself, whether I like the circumstances or not. Is it about me, or HIM?
....AND, am I even viewing this correctly? HE is willing to take the ashes of the sin and the consequences of a sin-world (death, hate, destruction, etc.) and make something beautiful from it in the life of the believer. What exactly am I trying to attribute to a good God....the evil of the death, or the good out of the death? There is a big difference there!!
So here, the Lord provided this precious girl, in a personally humbling moment, to remind me that HE is using my gifts for HIS Glory. What a better time to do it than when I would be most embarrassed for someone to recognize me?!?! It's not about me!!! It's about HIM and what HE is doing and who HE is!!!! The challenge is to get my eyes off myself and fixed on Christ and eternity.
So today I will begin to tell you a story of what the Lord has been doing in my life since November 2014. A story that I should have been writing down all along, but the weakness of the flesh was shutting me down. HE is writing a beautiful story that is full of mystery and Providence and requires massive amounts of faith. HE is using my pain for HIS Purposes and I want to tell you about it. HE is calling me to a place of utter dependence on HIM and I want to say yes, though it is difficult. So today I will begin the story and write as much as I have time for and continue the story in subsequent posts, with the hope that you discover a miraculous God. And that together we are reminded of the God who comforts all who mourn, gives beauty for ashes, a garment of praise for our heaviness, so that we would be called oaks of righteousness (Isaiah 61).
November 2014:
About three months after Conner passed away I went on a Women's Ministry Training trip to Nashville. This trip was booked in November 2013, so Conner and I were both planning on me getting away. When Conner passed away in August 2014, I clung to my children tightly, as I suspect is normal. I had three solid months of personally taking care of them everyday, with help, but never taking a break from that intense responsibility. I was tired and in need of a break. The trip was already planned and all arrangements had been made, so I went.
Our ministry team had two different legs to our flight to Nashville. On the second leg, I moved to the back of the plane to my middle seat, only to find a man sitting in the window seat next to me. Because I was traveling with five other women I was annoyed to be the only one to have to sit next to anyone I didn't know, especially a man. As I sat down and buckled in, I noticed that he had Conner's favorite book tucked in the pocket in front of him. This book was the one that Conner handed me when we were first married and declared, "If you want to know me, read this book!" I read it and almost every page was spot-on, the man I married! I very matter-of-factly remarked to the man, "That is my husband's favorite book."
The man responded with the information that someone had given him the book and he was just reading it for the first time. From his heavy accent, I could tell that he was not from around here. We did not talk much more than that for the next hour or so. I was escaping from my horrid reality and was not in the mood to engage in meaningless small talk. I put in my ear buds, turned on the worship music (though I most definitely didn't feel like worshipping) and spent most of the flight reading my little Bible that my grandmother gave me the Christmas of my freshman year in college. When I finished reading and closed the pages of my Bible this man inquires, "So, you are a believer?!"
For the remainder of the flight we engaged in Christian small talk. I learned that he was a pastor and church-planter in Kenya. He was in the states, sharing with American churches what he was doing in Kenya. He asked me why we were traveling to Nashville and I explained to him we were all in leadership for Women's Ministry and attending a conference at Lifeway's headquarters. A question was sparked from my response, he asks me, "So, what material do you use for your widows?"
R-E-A-L-L-Y ????????
I was shocked to say the least. Here I was a widow of three months and felt nothing like one. I was broken and beaten and in no position to talk to him about being a widow. I kindly explained to him that my husband had just died three months before and that I had no idea what material we used for our widows. I pointed out my mentor and Women's Pastor, Lesa, who had been widowed five years before I had. I explained to him that he should ask her because I simply did not know. I was frustrated that the "W" word had even come up and itching to get out of the situation. I wanted to run away from running away.
He asked me if he could borrow my phone to text his American contact. He gave me his business card and told me that he would pray for me. I tucked the business card in my pocket, we parted ways and I thought little about it besides my annoyance that the "W" issue had come up through small talk on a plane.
Little did I know that God had something more.....
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