Last Spring my younger son spent a few days at the Disney theme parks with his marching band. Picking him up from the trip and between the grunts attributed to adolescence and mouths full of food, I understood he spent a lot of time on roller coasters while in Florida. Because…he was fifteen. And not sleeping very much because…he was fifteen. And coming home sick because…he was fifteen.
I spend my days on roller coasters as well. It’s called grief. Sudden grief may be exactly like being strapped in. Climbing up at a laborious speed. Plummeting straight down at the tune of 150 miles per hour. Then there are the times in which the ride seems quiet, even pleasant. Like the calm before the really scary parts in a movie lulling us into a false sense of peace.
My older son and I stopped by the cemetery not long after this trip. It was an impromptu visit. We just happened to be in the neighborhood. While my son danced around the adjacent graves planning what to plant around Tony’s stone, I descended down a steep emotional roller coaster ride because someone, not me, had lain a flower at his grave. “I feel like I’m falling down on my job,” I said.
Back home I felt a sense of true peace. Maybe it was spending a few hours with my son. Making plans for the summer. Running errands. Sharing some time at the cemetery. Maybe it was also my moment of courage in which I shared with my son the verities close to my heart. “You and your brother will heal and live good lives. I will also heal and live a good life. Dad wants this, demands it.”
The truth also being that the beach and water we were on the day of Tony’s death was not adequately marked as dangerous. The universal signs of water safety posted in red, white, and black found on so many beaches across the United States were not there. The swimming buoys or lifeguard were not there. Another person died the same day close to the spot which took Tony. Another man died just a few weeks after. A young woman a few weeks before. My son saying the other man was probably a tourist, an unknowing tourist. Me agreeing. “I need to speak out. Children die in the Wisconsin River.”
“Young children can’t survive that river,” my son replying. Knowing this truth because he too had been caught in its grasp along with his brother. “You might just have to do that Mom,”
In seminary, we were asked again and again to tell our call stories as if the retelling would prove our worthiness. Here’s something I wrote in 2017.
My “yes” to ministry constitutes, in traditional ways of thinking, my fourth career. I have been a singing actress, an early childhood teacher, program director, and consultant, and most recently a professional writer. My path or trajectory into “yes” began with a divine encounter experienced while listening to Pachelbel’s Canon in G Major at age seventeen. This chapter of my story, well worthy of exploration, does not belong in this telling.
My current chapter began on a warm, sunny, beautiful day in August when I suddenly lost my husband Tony to a river. One which should have been closed to waders and swimmers that day. But instead swarmed with people and boaters and no safety precautions allowing the river to have its say, taking two lives, and seriously endangering three others–mine and my two sons.
Not part of our plan. Not God’s either.
In the first hours and days grief froze in a truth with no warning. I couldn’t understand how to organize our life: our journey home, Tony’s funeral, and our future. At Tony’s visitation a friend handed me a copy of our current Bishop’s blog post honoring Tony. My husband had served at the ELCA churchwide assembly but was more well known in ELCA circles for his healing work with staff, ushers, and bereaved family members after the Wichita, Kansas shooting of a medical doctor in the narthex of his Lutheran Christian church. The post’s sentiments were nice enough but what woke me up, irked me, and sent me reeling was a mere sentence, written by a man who had never met me, questioning my call’s future.
The question in my head was not if I still felt called to become a pastor but how I could accomplish the coming years of schooling and internship with three of us in grief and trauma recovery and with one of us just beginning his healing journey from Lyme disease. This question, along with the sighs and sobs of grief, were lifted into God, the universe, and the stars in the pain of night or to the air at dawn on our deck overlooking a world which felt full of external objections.
As the days passed, I heard similar rumblings from others. Weeks later my candidacy committee, meeting me for the first time, questioned my call while parading their misplaced pastoral care skills.
I did not question my call.
Ongoing confirmation flowed from other people. My aunt, a survivor of sudden traumatic grief and an ordained pastor herself, acknowledged my pastoral future as we created Tony’s complicated funeral. A former bishop after hearing me eulogize my husband acknowledged my call at the funeral luncheon. My friend who preached at Tony’s funeral shared his congregation’s willingness to help fund my seminary studies. My own pastor, who I temporarily fired in the days after Tony’s death, said “yes” when my candidacy committee said, “hold.” My women’s ministry group assured me of my call during my most pain-filled moments. Friends all over the country did not question but instead declared “of course you are going to seminary.” Long time editors at 1517 Media asked me back to work five weeks after I began grieving. Brought me up to Minneapolis for a two-day meeting. When Dawn, the project developer, met me at the elevators on the first day of meetings I said, “Why did you bring me here? I am so broken.” Dawn merely steered me into the elevator toward the work at hand.
In December of that year, I met my Bishop. During our meeting I shared how I sat in the pew each Sunday and itched, itched to be an active part of conducting worship. Something shifted in his eyes and in his posture and in the room as he also recognized my call although his words could not fully say it yet.
In February my congregation blessed me as I officially began seminary. A sanctuary full of people either with their hands on me or hands stretched toward me meeting me with teary eyes. Weeks later in this same community, a three-year-old child turned to her mother during worship and asked “Where’s Pastor Jennifer? I don’t see her.”
Amazing, ever-present, omnipotent, patient God keeps calling me. And I keep saying “yes” with perseverance despite the obstacles set before my race. I am ever thankful I did not minimize or compartmentalize God during this time in my life. Trusting, as never before, in my journey with God. More tenacious, having walked through the valley of death, knowing there is no evil I need accept. Only abundant love to first receive and then share. My voice, prophetic as I embrace continuing call. Call which does not bypass me in my pain and healing. Knows instead to use me as I publicly proclaim this human experience called grief and trauma recovery.
Seven years ago today, my first husband and father of my sons died in the Wisconsin River. He was not the first person to die in this river. No, Tony was just one of a growing list of preventable deaths. Preventable by proper signage. Preventable by beach closings. Preventable if the state of Wisconsin allowed victims’ families to sue and thereby effect change. But our voices are capped, squashed. And change? Well, people keep dying.
Today I list those people who have died in the year since I last posted names. I am sorry if I have missed a life. They all matter in this world and to God.
September 5, 2022: Jose R. Borbolla Juarez, age 34
How like a widow she has become…she weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks. Lamentations 1:1-2
Reflection
Limbs fall limp. Eyes drop focus. Mind escapes into sleep. Allowing a few moments of respite.
Until roused by repeated visions and racing words. Breaking in with images and their clinging emotions. Bringing tears, sighs, tossings, and turnings.
Yet some nights the moon rises high mid-mind race. Light filters through closed window shades. Asking for breathing in of its essence. And a breathing out of sleeplessness’ broken record. Inhaling in and out once, twice, as long as it takes for buttock muscles to loosen. Cascading into other muscles letting go.
Until morning wakes. Sunlight slipping in after moonlight. Opening another day for what is possible in healing. Through a compassionate word here. A challenging one there. A few questions to think about. Not fully healed. Something though. Enough to keep going.
Healing Practice: Breadcrumbs
What keeps you going? Write down who and what gives you enough to want to do the work of healing.
Start just with one something. Add another something. Maybe two. Over the coming hours and days, collect five. Name them breadcrumbs. Follow them on your path into healing and restoration.
Prayer
“Restore us…” God, “that we may be restored.” In our restoration give us hope in you, in our now, in our future. Amen. (Based on Lamentations 5:21)
Each year during Holy Week and into Easter, I am reminded of how thin this time is. How tears form and fall after many months of dry eyes. How hearts fill with sadnesses assumed transformed into something resembling new life.
My therapist says these times are dips into small pockets of what once was. Not places demanding we stay or get stuck in. Just revisit. For a few hours or days. Until this small opening reseals and the present now invites us back in. Leaving us with another memory. This one, a remembrance that we loved, love, and will continue to love.
For more writings on grief, trauma recovery, and this time of year, visit my post Easter Early in Grief.
