#Blessed

Last month I went back to school. I thought I was ready for it. I thought I was in a good place and would be able to handle being back at school without Evelyn just as well as I was handling being at home with Katherine without Evelyn. But being back at school has been really hard for me. You see, I already knew everyone's lives were moving on while mine was abruptly altered. Facebook told me that right away. The hard part about being back at school is not seeing that other's lives have kept moving, but more that my life has to keep "moving on" too.

When I first went back to school, I began making my to do lists that I ditch during the summer. The Friday before students came back to school I was writing down which loads of laundry I would do each day (trust me, if I don't write it down, it won't get done). It took me all day to write "Katherine" instead of "Girls." I had to take a 20 minute walk outside after I finally wrote "Katherine."

Each step back to normalcy, or a new normalcy, has me wondering what our lives would be like if she were still here. Katherine went back to dance class a few weeks ago. This is something we used to do as a family. We all went. Drew, Evelyn, and I would wait in the waiting area for Katherine to get done. It would be our special time with just Evelyn. It was always jam packed in the waiting area. There were classes in all three rooms, so families were waiting everywhere. We ended up switching days in order to be in class with a friend of Katherine's this year. Drew told me that on her new day, Katherine's was the only class in the studio, and there was so much room in the waiting area. Immediately, I thought of how Evelyn would have toddled around in the waiting area while we waiting for Katherine this year. She would have had so much fun waiting for her sister.

These are the kinds of things that have me missing Evelyn like crazy and being mad that she went to Heaven so early. These feelings bring me back to a time shortly after I finished the Levi Lusko book, when I began to wonder why this happened to my family. What did we do wrong for God to make Evelyn's time on earth so short? As I said in a previous post, I had heard God loud and clear. We were going to church every week, and some how we ended up here without Evelyn. I began to feel as if God was not blessing me anymore, almost as if I had fallen out of His favor. At that time I was reading this book titled And Still She Laughs: Defiant Joy in the Depths of Suffering by Kate Merrick. She has a chapter titled #Blessed that I know God used to tell me that this was not the case.

Kate wrote her book after her daughter lost her battle with cancer. As she was grieving, she began to dive into the stories of some of the women in the Bible as powerful examples of women who have overcome extremes to live gloriously through God. It is a great book for all to read. I highly recommend it!

In the this book Kate wrote about how her life was very "blessed" for the first 11 years of her marriage. She describes this "blessed" life as very Instagrammable. Meaning, her life was what we have come to view as a blessed life, perfect in every way. "No speed bumps, no bruises, no pain. Not even a bad hair day."

Just like Kate, for the first 4.5 years of my marriage, I thanked God many times for my family. I felt so "blessed" to be living this life with a husband that spoils me in ways money could never buy and raising two perfect daughters. Our family was growing in just the way I had pictured all my life. Believe me when I tell you, I stopped to smell the roses many times. I felt like God was blessing me with the greatest life. It was the life I had always imagined I would have. Until, without warning, it had turned into something I had feared since the day I found out I was pregnant with Katherine. Something that felt far from blessed in any sense of the word as I understood it.

In the chapter, Merrick points to the story of Matthew 16:21-23 where Jesus was telling His disciples all that would happen to Him. Peter then pulls Him aside and reprimands Him saying "Heaven forbid Lord. This will never happen to you!" Jesus's rebuke was instant, "Get away from me, Satan! You are a dangerous trap to me. You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not God's." Then Merrick brings us back to present day saying that like Peter, "We've been conditioned to expect ease as a sign of God's blessing, but that's not how Jesus would have us live. That's not how He lived."

As I was reading this, it hit me, I realized that suffering does not mean one is not blessed. With Merrick's help, I began to see that I was still blessed in my mourning. I even began to write a blog about my blessings.

But being back at school has put me smack dab in the middle of the feelings of anger about Evelyn's death. Back to feeling forsaken by God. It has taken me so long to write this post because I have not been feeling blessed. Until today.

I started going to a bible study at my church on the same day as Katherine's dance class because I cannot stomach going to dance class without Evelyn. For the second week in a row during class my mind wandered to my blog, to this post that was sitting half written in the drafts. I knew I should finish it, people have asked about my next post. I just did not know how to finish it. It didn't have a message. It was just me babbling on about being angry at what happened to Evelyn because I have been hurting. The first week I went to the study, the pastor (without prompting from me) affirmed that having a relationship with God does not mean that we will not suffer. He even mentioned the story about Peter reprimanding Jesus. The same one that Merrick points to in her book. It was as if he had read this unfinished post in my drafts folder, or at the least the book Kate Merrick wrote. Then this week, he said something to the effect of: We don't have immunity from suffering because we are friends with God. Our cultural expectation has become that being blessed means all things are good. There is enough money in the bank and everyone is healthy. Delighting in the Lord does not mean that everything feels good all the time.

This hit me in the face with such force that I am proud of myself for being able to control my emotions enough to stay in the study. I nearly had to walk out because I knew that God was speaking to me through the pastor. God was reminding me that a relationship with Him does not ward off suffering. He was telling me that He loves me, even though I am angry at what happened to Evelyn. He is big enough to love me in spite of my anger.

And He loves you too. Through all of it, He loves you too. It's time we let Him love us.

-The Blessed Mourner