Waiting

Jesus went to his death calmly, “like a lamb to the slaughter” (Isaiah 53:7). Peter also faced death with an amazing calmness. I recorded a sermon on John 10 for my church in Antwerp last week (the assistant pastor needed a Sunday off as he and his wife expect a baby at any moment). In the sermon on Jesus the good shepherd, I said that Peter faced death the way he did because he heard the voice of the good shepherd. Peter is now with the shepherd of his soul, full of joy. Seeing his faith strengthened us, but we still have a lot of living still to do and it’s hard to live with joy when we miss our son. Suffering, loss, and grief are difficult, but inevitable, so we are doing our best to do our living and grieving with the same sort of courage we saw in Peter as he was dying.

I wrote before about the physical symptoms of grief and stress that pounced on me without warning. That has calmed down considerably. We are now mostly just waiting. We are staring at a wall. We have no idea what’s happening on the other side of the wall. Attempts to communicate with those on the other side of the wall result in conflicting and confusing pieces of information. But someday we expect our visas to come flying over that opaque wall of bureaucracy. Then we can begin to plan again. A schedule and some work would be good for us. We really hope to be in Belgium before school starts on September 1, but basically we know nothing. Actually, one of the leaders of the church in Antwerp called their home office and found out that the paperwork was submitted June 2, but it has not arrived/been registered with the home office yet. That means more waiting. Our Belgian friends shake their heads at the system they know all too well. We understand a little bit of the maddening wait endured by immigrants and refugees as they try to get legal status in a new country. But they are stuck in a civil war, poverty, or persecution. We are not.

My desires for what I wanted to do during our wait were simple: hike, write, and visit family and friends. We have visited people in Oregon, Washington, Montana, and California. Reconnecting with old friends was especially helpful for me. After anxiety, the next chapter in my grief was sullenness – sometimes I just don’t feel like talking. All I really want to talk about is Peter, but I can’t really announce to every group, “Let’s talk about my grief.” Conversations with people who know and love us from 20 years ago have been much easier; we skip past the small talk altogether and get to the how is your soul type of questions. It has been a blessing to talk with people who aren’t afraid to ask about our sadness or to share it with us. We have shared the grief of others as well. Sharing sorrow doesn’t eliminate it, but it does make it shared. And that is something. Even more important than grieving with others, we share the sufferings of Christ and he shares our sufferings with us. Also, Rebecca’s spiritual director reminded her recently that there is always One who understands about losing a child.

We also shared with some friends the last of the bugs, rattlesnake, and other delights left over from Peter.

As it has been difficult to talk, we depend on others’ initiative of friendship to us, their ability to ask good questions, their understanding when we don’t respond promptly. It is even more difficult than usual to stay in touch because we’re bouncing from place to place. “Are you even in the United States?” people have asked. This is a time when we depend on receiving love and friendship more than we are able to give back. So please, do contact us, but don’t think that a lack of response means we don’t appreciate it.

It has also been difficult to pray. When Peter was sick and dying, my prayers had a burning focus, an intensity born of desperation. To be honest, I miss that a little. What I really miss, of course, is Peter. There are a thousand things that remind me of him. I left my Kindle on a plane, so I adopted Peter’s Kindle Fire as my reading device. I discovered a folder he created for the apps he didn’t use. How I miss him!

The intensity of prayer is gone along with Peter, the constant subject of my prayers. As I find it difficult to pray, I depend on the prayers of others for us.

I haven’t hiked yet as much as I would like, but that would be hard to do. A few days in the Olympic Mountains with my kids and my dad was wonderful. As we climbed Dirty Face Ridge (our six year old loved the name) to the top of Mt Townsend we had a close-up view of the rugged Olympics around us, and to the east the familiar landmarks of the Cascades. As my kids scrambled up a steep, gravelly path around a cornice of snow to a pass above our campsite, my heart was happy. But Peter would have been the first one to the top. So I was also sad. Thoughts of Peter now color everything, so it is hard to just be plain happy. Still, the solitude and beauty of the wilderness is restorative.

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A day hike with Rebecca in the Desolation Wilderness a few days ago was anything but desolate. I look forward to more days of hiking in the weeks of waiting ahead of us. (Look closely to see the man crossing a slack line over the gorge).

If I’m not hiking I hope to be writing. I haven’t written a blog post in a long time. There is plenty I could say and I am filing away possible ideas, but the time and energy I have had for writing (not enough!) has gone mostly towards a book. I have written an outline and a few rough chapters of a book I am calling Unafraid: My Son’s Miraculous Death from Cancer. How’s that for a title? I will share our story of fear and fearlessness, along with reflections on the questions that naturally come up when a child dies of cancer, like If there is a God, why do kids get cancer? Why does God allow people, especially children, to experience such pain? Isn’t heaven just a fairy tale we tell ourselves to feel better? What reasons are there to believe in God, the resurrection, and heaven? And How does a person recover after loss? (I’m still finding our the answer to that last question). I will use real conversations I had with Peter in the responses to those questions. Any suggestions on how to find an agent or a publisher?

So Peter’s death has been difficult. Of course. It has made it hard to pray, hard to talk, hard to just be happy. One thing we haven’t experienced, though, is a crisis of faith. The Bible teaches us to expect suffering. Jesus told those who set out to follow him to take up their cross. Plus, we knew that the world suffers. Why not us? We can say with conviction, “God is good.” We are waiting for his good kingdom to come.