Category: Healing

Grief, Healing, Love, Trauma, Trauma recovery

Unsent Letter

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. Luke 3:22

A few years back I began repeating this biblical text to my sons. Words spilling out when I was at the very end of my patience or beyond tired. Often accompanied by placing my hand on their heads of tangled hair in an unofficial gesture of blessing.

These words calmed me. Diffused any situation. Whatever it was. Reminded me that no matter what I loved them with every connected molecule of my being. Later, I would laugh at my audacity. Knowing  it would take some time for them to realize I was quoting scripture. 

My eldest son asked me on the day of his dad’s one year memorial mass,  “How can you be proud of me when I haven’t done anything with my life yet?”

Through tears, I babbled some sort of response. Praying it was enough for my hurting son on that raw and painful day. Later, I thought of what I could have said, still wanted to say. So, I wrote this letter and found it among my many drafts not so long ago, still unsent. 

                                                                                                               After the 13th of August, 2017 

To my beloved sons,

Did you know the root of the word “believe” finds its way back to the word “beloved?” What a wild play on words! To say we believe in something or someone is to acknowledge our love for them.

After all that has happened, I still believe in us, in our family, and in our love for one another. We loved, Dad and I, by believing in one another and in you. 

Right now you may not believe in anything. Yet you love. You have loved more in the past twelve months than ever before. Loved Dad in loss and grief. Loved me at my absolute worst. Loved one another in the midst of chaos. And most importantly loved your selves–your grieving, traumatized, messy, lost selves. You may not feel you are loving right now. But here’s what I believe (and therefore love): We cannot face adversity without courage. And true courage is born of love.

I am and remain proud of you both. Not just of who you are right now but of who you will become in life. Not that I know or can see or predict the you that you will be. But I believe in you both. 

Love, 

Mom

Grief, Healing, Trauma recovery

Roller Coaster Ride

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

From my journal entries in 2017

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,”

Image by 3345557 from Pixabay

Healing, Trauma recovery

Healing as Living

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

Healing, mine, and my sons, occupies my thoughts most days. What we need. Which modalities works best. Finding new or additional healing ways. Reading another book on trauma recovery or Lyme Disease. Going to therapy. Doing the work–both at home and in the therapy office. Paying the bills.

But I tire of this work being the focus of our family’s life both individually and collectively. As if healing is the only thing that binds us together. I yearn to focus on living. Or what I think living is. Healing seems like the past, living more like the now and future. Yes, we all need to do more healing. I have written elsewhere that the world and its people keep hurting and therefore healing is ongoing. Yet I seem to seek something more, not sure what though. Just know I’ve spent eight years focused on healing first. And I wonder if my focus is sustainable over time.

Yet as I think about it, I am not ready to step away from healing’s many ways. And my unreadiness is not about a lack of courage or living. It is about who I have discovered I am these past eight years. And who I am is someone who in my sensitivity to the world needs places, spaces, and people to work through how life impacts me. I also want to continue peeling away the layers of pain stacked up within me. The ones masquerading as personality and temperament and dictating who am I.

In healing, I find myself in new and fascinating ways. And these incremental discoveries bring me joy! So, what I am really discovering is that healing is life’s nourishment not just its balm. An ongoing focus reminding me of the sentence I composed in magnetic words soon after Tony died. The one staring at us from its place on the refrigerator.

“You can do this life well.”

years later adding a few more words:

“You can do this life well only in ongoing healing.”

Living, for me, is doing this life well through healing.

Image by Tiyo Prasetyo from Pixabay

Faith, Healing, Hope, Prayer

Numbered Days

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

In recent weeks a small snippet of scripture swirls in my mind. Words repeating themselves for days. Demanding acknowledgement. Forcing me to ask if this repetition gets its fuel from my anxiety or if Spirit speaks. The words are from Psalms:

“So, teach us to count our days…”[1]

Gentle words suggesting I wake to each day. Acknowledge my place in it. Plant myself in each hour’s time and space. Even in the too busy days of being a pastor, the chaos of moving and home repair, and the ongoing work of caring for family.

“So, teach us to count our days…”

A thought reflected on first while sitting in the quiet of an inn far away from our unpacked boxes and new unknowns. Vacation morning pulsing with no agenda. A day to rest in, hear the rhythm of. Once home, reflection continues in dawn’s daily quiet.

“So, teach us to count our days…”

Phrase reminding me to offer gratitude for the experiences contained in each day. Yet in my own situation—survivor of deep tragedy, pastor, son with chronic illnesses, new empty nester, partner again—I forget these offered moments of acknowledgement. Do not see them or push them away. And in doing so miss gratitude’s slow reveal of what loosens with change.

“So, teach us to count our days…”

I think in my own insecurities, anxiety, and unhealed wounds I hold tightly to my sons, having done so since conception. Even more since my first husband, Tony, died. Now as they move away from me in distance, I am brought back to the time before they existed on this plane. The stage before I knew and loved their father. An earthly space I occupied holding hope for them along with the despair that they might never exist.

“So, teach us to count our days…”

My sons, now six feet tall, are hope made real. And what connected me to something bigger than myself each day when raising them remains. Joined by the absorbing vocational work of writer and pastor. Past despair turning toward wondering: What comes next in this new iteration of our family’s “we?” Each of us counting our days separately yet with the others’ love and support. Life transforming from one time to the next.

“So, teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart,” the psalmist writes. Action words infusing my prayers.

God, you remain in every time and space. Teach us to live each day traversing change with grace and in doing so growing “the enlightened eyes of our hearts.” [2] Hearts seeing the truths of life together and apart. Truth building wisdom so that sight, gratitude, and compassion teach us to live well within ourselves, live well with others, live in healing, and live in you. Amen.

[1]  Psalm 90:12 NRSVUE

[2]  Ephesians 1:18 NRSVUE

Image by Aleksandra from Pixabay

Faith, Grief, Healing, Healing meditation, Trauma recovery

Night’s Bitterness

Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez

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)

Image by Filip Filipović from Pixabay