The other day I told Dominic that I want to repaint our bedroom. He responded “didn’t you just do that recently?” And he is right. It wasn’t that long ago that I changed things up a bit…

I think this is a part of me grasping at something, anything that I can control. I can’t control what has happened and the what happens next, the moving forward seems scary and uncertain so changing the colors on my bedroom walls makes sense to me.

And I want it to be something crazy and bold like a mix between deep emerald green and dark sapphire blue. I don’t even know what color that is exactly but I want it. I want light or white curtains that hang from the top of my ceiling to make the wall look longer and a fresh white comforter to contrast the dark walls.

We have this bedroom set that is 20 yrs old, it is real wood and beautiful…but getting dated and a lighter oak color than I would prefer. But next to a deep, rich wall….the colors in our dresser and bed would look lovely I think. (Don’t suggest we paint it…Dominic says I am only allowed to paint real wood after he is gone…that is a big no in our home. ha!)

We have a small bedroom and I know that putting dark colors on the wall will make it appear smaller but right now I don’t care. So in these moments when I can’t control anything else around me, I dream of painting my room. Understanding that it is only paint and could always be changed again….not like our reality now. So permanent.

I started reading a new book on what Christian lament looks like. This reality that even in the Psalms we see cries out to God, asking why something has happened and but then there is always a recognizing of who God is and all He has done.

We are in that place, lamenting the why. Why God allowed this to be filtered through His hand. Why it had to happen at all and yet even when those questions are not being answered, praying that God would show us what to do now. Remembering all He has done for us in the past and hoping that He will be faithful again.

So I am grasping, grasping for control and understanding, praying for peace and finding a bit of strange comfort in the thoughts of deep colors of paint and crisp new sheets

Yesterday a woman stopped in the office to see us. She was from another company that we had worked with in the past and knew about what happened with Isaac.

She wanted to personally stop and tell us how much she appreciated how open we were with what happened. Apparently in her extended family there had been suicide, and in some cases, family just never spoke of that individual again. It is so sad isn’t it?

Dominic shared with her, and even said it in his eulogy, that in those initial moments after we found out he wanted to hold it all in and keep it secret. Right away I told him we needed to call our pastor, initially he wondered why we would tell anyone. He said he selfishly worried what everyone would think if they knew the truth.

I think in those moments, those feelings are normal.

We worry about what we look like, what we wear, if the pictures we are posting on FB or Instagram are “perfect” enough….admitting that your child has taken their own life invites a level of judgement that is unmatched.

I remember we were sitting at the dining room table in the middle of the night, we were shocked and numb and angry and sick. I remember telling Dominic that I don’t believe Isaac was being selfish, I believe he was hopeless.

Somewhere in the last few years I heard that dialogue. A person dealing with depression and anxiety in that way sees suicide as the only way out of their pain. They see themselves as a burden to their family and friends. The reality is none of that is true…but they can’t see past their hopelessness.

Seeing Isaac from this perspective gave me such compassion for him. We know only a little of what he struggled with, but I believe there was a hopelessness that followed him like a heavy blanket. Despite how well his job was going or that he had the truck he always dreamed of, or had great friends….the heaviness remained.

We have been so blessed. If there has been judgement of us as parents, or of Isaac…you haven’t spoken it to us directly. I thank you for that. In fact you have done just the opposite. This community has shown up over and over again and reminded us of how much we are loved, how much Isaac was loved. We can’t thank you enough for walking with us in this way.

Dominic said yesterday that before this happened he saw life marked by many moments, marriage, kids being born, moving, starting the business etc. But now it is as though our life is now marked as life before Isaac died and life after Isaac died. It has just been so traumatic, it has absolutely changed us.

We are in this unknown space of figuring out what life after Isaac’s death looks like. A few weeks ago Gindi reached out to me with an idea, an invitation really. Knowing that holidays will be hard, especially this year, she put out an invitation for our family to come join them at the farm in Texas over Easter.

Dominic and I were supposed to go to AZ right after Christmas and that trip was cancelled. I had purchased flight insurance and last week they sent me our full refund. I looked online and was able to get 5 tickets to Houston for almost as much as our 2 tickets to AZ would have been.

So over Easter break our family is going to Houston, and then out to their family farm. And it is something to look forward to, and something different. Last year we had family, including Isaac at our house for Easter….this year I couldn’t bear the thought of being at home.

Life after Isaac, we don’t like it but we don’t have a choice. So we are trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. We remain grateful for your grace as we limp along and continue to covet your prayers.

It has been a long weekend. I guess getting through that 4 week mark was hard for me.

This morning the thought of being at church, hearing the worship and seeing people, was overwhelming to me. I just couldn’t do it.

Thankfully Dominic understood and took the kids on his own. I don’t feel like I was isolating as much as maybe I was practicing a little self care in the best way I could. I just couldn’t handle sobbing through another worship set….music seems to do that to me now.

I spent the majority of the afternoon and into the evening working on more thank-you’s. I am getting close…not quite there, but made some much needed headway again.

I am a words of affirmation person. When I turned 40, Gindi contacted several people in our friend circle and my family and encouraged them to send me cards for my birthday. She wanted me to be showered with my love language. It was so wonderful.

Never have I wished though that my mailbox would be empty….while I am incredibly humbled and blessed by each and every card I am just so sad that they have to come because of this.

Each card that I read has been filled with such sincere expressions of sympathy. We have received cards from people we don’t know even. People who understand our type of loss who want to send encouragement, people who want to remind us we are not alone. Hundreds of cards. I can’t believe it really.

A friend sent me a link to a news story about this study done years ago. Where this man started sending letters to patients that had recently left the hospital after suicide attempts. The idea was simple really…the patients that received the letters of encouragement generally felt less lonely, they had less relapse than the patients that didn’t receive the letters. An interesting idea isn’t it?

Our words matter and more than ever I am convinced that we can and should use them for good. When someone has come to my mind these last few weeks, instead of just either praying for them or brushing it off, because let’s be real we all get busy and it happens…I am sending them a message.

What if we all did that? Not just to people that are suffering the hard, but to anyone that comes to mind. Maybe someone who is suffering in silence and we just don’t know. Maybe someone who needs to be reminded that they matter and they are not alone.

But there is another side to this too…

Something I think Isaac struggled with, we all do I believe, and that is being real with how we are doing. I think it is important to have “safe” people to share those things with….I am grateful that I have several people that I can say just about anything to and they don’t judge me. I can be honest with how I am really doing. We all need people like that in our lives.

We are a “I’m fine” society. We want people to think we are fine and also I think we often are uncomfortable if someone isn’t “fine.” We don’t really know what to do with the “I am not ok” responses.

But if we want to see the overwhelmingly large number of suicides that happen each year decrease….something needs to change. And maybe a part of that is getting comfortable with people who are hurting or angry and struggling and loving them through it. Being an encouragement and a light, asking the hard questions and not being afraid of hard responses.

I don’t have all the answers….I am certainly not equipped in this area. Suicide prevention was never on my radar. But it isn’t ok, I don’t want another family to walk this path. It is way too painful. So what can I do to change that? Something, anything……I guess it must start with me.

This was never a website I wanted to create. Writing to process my thoughts and feelings has long been something I have done. I have been blogging since 2008, I started a family blog shortly after a miscarriage I had as a way of processing my grief.

That led to years of writing and sharing my story, God’s story really. A record of all the ways He has worked in my life, in the life of our family.

I suppose now, this is no different. Brought here by grief and pressing forward with hope. Hope that I might share our experience with someone else, show all the ways God has been faithful in the journey and making a record for the days to come.

Until this point I have been sharing my real and raw grief journey on my personal Facebook page (At some point I hope to add some of those old posts here as well…if you see those show up later, that is why!) This blog will also be that place that I can journal and remember and share our story going forward.

If you are here and understand the gravity of this kind of loss, I am so very sorry. My heart aches for you. It is true that there are no words adequate to console this pain. We have been so very blessed by our friends and family, by our community and even the clients that we work with. So many people coming alongside of us to pray for us and encourage us.

It is the way it should be I suppose.

None of this “should be” but because it is, we have seen how tangibly the Body of Christ surrounds and upholds the broken. We are so incredibly grateful.

So thank you for being here. For taking the time to read my words, however inadequate they may feel and for getting to know our son.

4 weeks ago it was about 9:30pm when Dominic answered a knock on our front door. 4 weeks ago that our lives changed forever. I wrote in my journal today that I know that life goes on but it feels like for me everything is measured by the next hard thing.

Waiting for the death certificate, turning his truck into his lender, getting to the 30 day mark so that we can finalize the rest of his “affairs”…

That night 4 weeks ago, I had fallen asleep on the couch. I had been watching a Netflix series about people handcrafting blown glass. You know where they take these glass rods and then melt them and shape them into works of art. It takes incredible skill to manipulate the glass, shape it into something beautiful. At times in the show you would hear that awful sound….the glass reaching its breaking point and shattering into a thousand pieces onto the floor.

In many ways I feel like that is a picture of our lives now.

Back in November when I spoke at the Never So Broken conference, I shared my “vase” story. Years ago author Angie Smith blogged about losing her daughter Audrey. Her therapist told her that sometimes when people are grieving it is cathartic to break something. She decided to do that and broke this pitcher but felt God calling her to spend time with Him and put the pieces of her pitcher back together again. In 2008 I resonated with that story after our miscarriage. I bought a vase at Walmart and broke it and spent time praying and putting it back together again.

I shared at the conference that the vase represented my journey to the feet of Jesus. In many ways I was a broken individual when I came to know God and by His grace He put me back together again. But there are some pieces in that vase that were shattered and unable to be fixed, once the vase was put back together there were holes in it.

I said that it was in those places that I believed light could shine through. God’s light.

I still believe those things. I do.

But yesterday all I wanted to do was scream and break all the things. If it would have been appropriate to take a baseball bat to everything in my home, I might have done it. I got upset with one of my kids about their e-learning homework and their attitude and just started slamming cupboard doors. And then the sound, the wailing sound, that came from the depths of my spirit….. 

This is so unfair.

I told one friend that I was thankful for grace. That I was able to apologize and ask for forgiveness and tell my kids that their mom is just hurting so bad. And later I reached out to a friend of Isaac’s to see how she was doing and admitted my desire to destroy all the things and she reminded me of the reality of this situation….”breaking things would feel so good, but it won’t bring him back….”

I just want him back so damn much.

I know it is probably too soon. Too soon to see how this awful hurt could transform into something good. It just feels like I will always be like those shattered pieces of glass on the ground. Too broken to be put back together. I know that isn’t true, but right now it feels like that.

I guess I am learning in this process that even if just for a time, it is ok for me to sit in this place. I don’t want to stay here long. I don’t want to allow hopelessness to creep in. But I won’t always be able to be the “strong” one, the “hopeful” one….some days I guess I just need to sit amongst the broken pieces and lament because my heart is shattered and it is just not ok.