10 weeks and it still seems like a bad dream. I wonder at what point I will stop marking my days by how much time has passed since Isaac died.

People ask how we are doing and it is a hard question to answer. “Fine” seems to be the response that comes out most often. But what do you say really?

Our son is gone and that won’t ever be “fine.” But we have 3 other children we need to care and provide for, a business and clients to serve. Laundry to do, floors to wash, toilets to scrub, waffles to make….and this just in a Saturday morning.

A day that will forever be marked as hard day for me now. Each new Saturday is just another week gone by. There is nothing fine about that.

We have to be intentional about seeing the good, being grateful. So we write down a memory for our 2020 jar even if it feel trivial and trite. Sometimes is all we know to do.

God has been so good to us. Still so good. A woman I have never met, but is familiar with the pain of losing a daughter herself sent me a card this week. She sent one after Isaac died, but marked specifically the anniversary of his dedication to God, February 23rd, from his obituary and honored him, and us by remembering. I hadn’t even recognized the significance of the day and yet she blessed me.

Another friend from FB offered to send me a book on grief she felt prompted to give me. A yard of peanut M&Ms shipped with love from a bff in Texas…so many ways like this and more that God has used His people to show us we are loved.

I am grateful, and continue to be humbled by the prayers and encouragement. I don’t take any of it for granted and yet I will continue to struggle with the wish that none of it was ever necessary and it was all a bad dream.

So today, another Saturday, I still in the delicate balance between grief and gratitude. I miss my son and I am not fine but the sun is shining and I have so much to thank God for.

2 Corinthians 4:16-17 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”

This past weekend I had the opportunity to get away with my dear friend Kami. We made a little road trip down to Newton, IA to attend a women’s conference where Angie Smith was speaking.

I have long followed Angie’s writing. In 2008 she started blogging as a way to communicate with family and friends as she carried her daughter Audrey. A baby that doctors said was “incompatible with life.” Angie and her husband Todd (from the band Selah) made the brave choice to carry Audrey even though her doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy.

It wasn’t too many months later I would find myself losing my own pregnancy. A baby we desperately wanted and lost so early on. I was so angry with God during that time. Fully aware that He had the power to stop my miscarriage and yet didn’t. Why Lord?

I wrestled with my faith and found myself in a dark place. But there was something that continued to draw me to Angie’s story. A woman full of hurt and questions and loss and yet trusting God with everything. If she could carry her baby and have to let her go and still trust God….why couldn’t I?

Angie’s transparency compelled me to seek God myself. To ask those hard questions and fight for my faith in a way I hadn’t before. It would be the beginning of a journey that would lead me to this season.

It is one of the reasons that I feel called to share my heart and my stories now. Not that I am doing this all right along the way, but if even the smallest thing can bring someone else hope, can point to Jesus….then the sharing was worth it.

When I saw Angie was speaking a mere 5 1/2 hours away I knew I needed to go. Initially I just bought a ticket for myself and then on a whim messaged Kami and asked if she would be willing to join me for a girls weekend. I was so excited when she said yes!

As we approached the weekend I started to have second thoughts. I knew leaving my family was going to be hard. Karlena especially is struggling when I am away from her. Things are different now, we all struggle with fears of something terrible happening to another one of us. I guess because the worst did happen….it just opened up the reality that it can, and it could again.

Even Thursday night when I heard Kami share how hard her week had been I thought maybe we should stay home. But her husband, a man familiar to grief himself, wisely encouraged us to go. I am so glad that we did.

We met at a middle point for both of us and drove the remaining way together. We laughed when we realized that having frozen hotel pizza in our PJ’s at 8pm sounded like a perfect evening in. We both brought our own blankets and settled in for a few episodes of HGTV.

On Saturday we went to the conference. The theme was “Overcoming.” I had purchased VIP tickets so we got to sit in the front row and have a meet and greet before lunch. The day started out with worship, claiming victory through Christ. I wept as we sung those words, believing them so much in my spirit, but also still so wounded from the hurt of Isaac’s loss.

Angie shared about her family and then we looked at the story of Lazurus. She also walked us through the story of how Jesus calmed the storm. What is it that the disciples were afraid of?

As we broke for lunch we headed out to the place where we would get an opportunity to meet Angie in person. She is every bit as lovely in person as you would expect. I had an opportunity to share a bit of my story and just thank her for all she has done in encouraging me over the years.

“What you are doing is making a difference” I told her. Sometimes we just need to remember to tell people that don’t we? Has someone been an encouragement to you? Tell them! Has someone been brave and shared their hard story? Thank them and then go be brave yourself….your story matters too!

At lunch we ran over to a Mexican restaurant and met another friend of mine, Janelle. She and I met years ago at a blogging conference and have kept in contact through FB. I happened to see that she lived in Newton and while she couldn’t attend the conference, she volunteered to grab us a table early and wait for us so we could have lunch!

It was so much fun seeing her in person, hearing about some of the things she is doing to encourage women in her community through her own church! She had some great ideas that they do at conferences she leads that I have already shared with my NSB team! Janelle, our visit was super short, but meant so much to me – thank you for making time for us and making lunch possible!!

The rest of the conference was a Q&A with Angie and then the MC’s did something I wasn’t expecting. They said that they knew there were women there that day who had experienced the loss of a child (at any point) and they wanted us to stand and be prayed over.

Kami and I both stood, she having had a miscarriage herself, we hugged and I sobbed. I didn’t expect to cry so much, I guess the sorrow of it all just came to the surface.

Then the MC asked us to take these cards and they wanted us to have some time for reflection. To write down something we were overcoming and how we have been an overcomer. I just wrote out a prayer to God and I want to share here.

“Lord I guess it is and will continue to be my deepest heart cry that you take my broken heart over Isaac and use it. Right now it feels like an impossible thing to overcome. I don’t know how to move forward, I don’t know how to walk this path well but I will continue to put my trust in you Lord. I don’t like this and I don’t agree with it but I submit to you. I don’t know any other thing than to lay it at your feet and humbly pray you will use it. How and in what way I can’t possibly know – but I trust You. I feel a lot like the disciples in the boat, in the middle of the storm and they just want Jesus to wake up and calm the storm. I also realize that even if You calm the current storm in my heart, I still won’t have my son. I can’t place my faith and my trust in my circumstances. I won’t ever find peace. Instead in the storm and in the calm, with or without my son I must put my hope in You alone God. Help me to do that. Help me to come to You with every moment. Even the ones that hurt and give me Your peace Lord. Please just give me Your peace.”

One of the questions that Angie asked us to take home and consider was this: “Am I searching for the absence of the storm of the presence of the Lord in the middle of it?”

While I absolutely wish this wasn’t our storm, it is. And the only thing I know to do now that we are in it is seek God in it all. I just cannot imagine walking through this and not having the assurance of His hope and peace.

I am so grateful that Kami and I had this time away. She is a treasure of a friend and was such an encouragement to me the entire weekend. Having trusted friends to walk with us in times like this is crucial. Thank you Kami for loving me so well this weekend.

Kami and I joked (ok it wasn’t a joke we were totally serious) that we wished we could have just hung out with Angie and her assistant Audrey after the conference was over. They were both awesome and I am pretty sure pizza in our PJ’s would have been totally appropriate! ha!

God was so good to me this weekend and this time felt like a gift. I am grateful for the people that put on this conference, for Angie coming and giving of her time away from her family and for my family and Kami’s who encouraged and let us go away for a time to connect and recharge. So so grateful.

Some of you may already know parts of this story….but I was reflecting on these beautiful women and how they became such an integral part of my life and it felt important to share it again here. I can see so clearly how God was placing specific people in my life for this very time and I am just so grateful.

This weekend Elijah, Karlena and I made the 4 hour drive to Eau Claire, WI. A few weeks after Isaac passed away Rachel texted me and just put the offer out there to have our family come stay at her home for a weekend. A change of scenery might be nice….

Because of our schedules Dominic and Gabe stayed behind and the youngest two and I ventured out for an adventure. School was out at noon on Friday so by 1pm we were on the road. We arrived in time for a shared meal with Rachel’s family. Her sister Melissa had also come over to join us for the weekend! And as a surprise a few hours later our friend Hannah and one of the co-founders of the Never So Broken ministry showed up for a “sleepover.”

That night we just sat and visited. Sometimes we talked about Isaac and how I was doing and sometimes we talked about ministry things or stories about our dogs. There was laughter and honesty and I was so grateful for it.

Saturday we had tickets to attend a women’s conference that was being held at a local church. By noon I unfortunately was on overload. The interesting thing about grief, at least for me, is that so many things seem/feel trivial right now. So I am reading books, but if they don’t speak to my deepest need….I can’t seem to focus on them. I have read several books on grief but give me any other topic and it feels like Greek right now.

So while the conference was filled with great information, mentally I was shutting down and the girls could see it. I felt guilty for leaving but they reassured me that they wanted to support me and do what felt best for me. So we went to TJMaxx instead and bought some supplies for our upcoming Never So Broken conferences and it lifted my spirits.

It is incredible that they chose to support me in this tangible way. They could see how I was doing, but also recognized that the Enneagram 2 in me had a hard time expressing my own needs and they took care of me.

That brings me to the story of how these women became such close friends…in such a short time.

Years ago when my brother and his now wife Mindi got married, they hired a team to photograph and video their wedding. Their actual wedding date is escaping me but it is 12-14 years ago, I believe. Melissa and her sister Rachel were the girls for the job and their mom Barb was also there as their “helper.”

Watching these 3 women work together amazed me way back then. I remember wishing I had a job that would allow me to have as much fun as it seemed like they were having. They were magnetic.

Several years later our family was in California visiting Mark and Mindi and Mindi starts telling me about this blog that her old videographer Rachel had. Rachel was walking through infertility and was writing about it. At that time Dominic and I were also walking through infertility and Rachel’s blog brought me such comfort.

In 2009 Facebook became a “thing” for me and I found Melissa and Rachel and we became friends. Over the years I watched online as they both separately walked out their faith in a fairly public way. They were honest about their struggles and their reliance on God.

Two years ago when Rachel posted that she and her best friend Hannah were going to be starting a women’s conference in Eau Claire, WI I was SO excited. We don’t have much for larger women’s conferences in the Midwest and having seen Rachel’s faith grow over the years…I knew this was a ministry I could get behind.

I bought a ticket and planned to attend their first conference all by myself. I was terrified but I knew I needed to go!

As the story goes, I ended up signing up to volunteer at that first conference and it was AMAZING. I left that weekend on fire. I also felt deep in my spirit that I needed to be involved somehow in this ministry and called to speak (which seemed CRAZY) to me!

Fast forward another year and I found myself as the Volunteer and Communications Coordinator AND asked to be on the leadership team for the ministry. It was such an honor. To get in on the ground level and see what God was doing with this ministry….it was incredible to be a part of that!

And when Hannah had to step down from speaking last November, Rachel asked if I would take her place. It was for that weekend that God would lead me to the story of Job. Where I would write a 15,000 word talk on thankfulness…words that would speak to me just weeks later in the midst of my greatest grief.

In November, after the conference, we traveled as leadership team to Arizona. We spent hours talking and sharing honestly and several women had these HUGE breakthroughs. I remember feeling frustrated because I knew God was working on some things with me but I wasn’t sure what He was doing.

Six weeks later our boy would be gone. Everything that we knew would be turned up on its head.

These beautiful women were one of the reasons that I survived. They surrounded me with prayer and encouragement. They honored our family and Isaac in so many ways. They were such a gift.

I seriously could write a book about all of the different people that have shown up for us in this season. It is humbling and incredible. I don’t want this post to discount any other way that someone has served us SO well.

But what is so incredible to me is that most of these women weren’t in my life at all even 2 years ago. And yet God brought together this team of women that would become sisters, that would become a life support to me.

I needed these women, I needed a ministry of brokenness to be a part of. Beautiful things are being birthed from this ministry and I am in awe that I have an inside view of it. Imagine what God sees knowing even more than we do?!

I still hate this loss is a part of my story. Every day we say losing Isaac is so so wrong. It won’t ever be ok. But God knew in 2018, a year when my son was so angry with me, that I would need this team of women. Women that would not only celebrate his return in 2019, but then show up and serve us after his death.

None of us expected this when we sat in the sun in Arizona 3 months ago. Things in my life are now radically changed forever. But God surrounded me with people that make the brokenness beautiful, and I am so grateful.

2 years ago things were really really hard for Isaac. We spent that next year+ warring on our knees on his behalf. I remember praying daily, hourly for God to rescue him. There were nights we didn’t sleep because I wasn’t sure he would make it through. The depths of his depression and anxiety became clear to us and we were desperate to save him.

We will never say we were “ready” for news like this. No parent could ever prepare themselves for something like this but it may not have been such a shock I guess if it had happened then.

This past year he has thrived it seems. He had a job he really loved, he was talking about taking classes again, he had an apartment with roommates he liked, a truck and a motorcycle he always wanted. was looking at houses. So many people felt like for the first time in several years he was planning for a future.

So why now? It is a question we will never have the answer to. That is the hardest part about this and the most difficult part of mental illness. It doesn’t make sense, and as much as we thought we understood how he was doing….he was battling an internal war that we didn’t see.

In many ways we all do this to some degree….we wear masks. We put on the mask that we believe the outside world wants to see. Sure there may be parts of our true personality shining through, but we believe the lie that if we share our WHOLE self, even the ugly parts, the scary parts, that we won’t be loved and accepted.

We believe that what people want is the “I’m fine, I’ve got it all together” answers. Because that is what our society is comfortable with. In the darkness and when we are alone we sit with the person behind the mask. The person that is hurting, doesn’t feel good enough, is full of fear but doesn’t want to look weak. As though being afraid makes us look weak. So we suffer in silence.

There are little things I am learning about my son’s character that are so much like my own, his servant’s heart and goofy note writing, his want to encourage others….it brings me great joy to know that part of me was in him.

But I have long struggled with fear and doubt. Worried what the world thinks of me, how I look, what I say, did I do enough…and maybe he carried some of those struggles too.

It is time to take off the masks. It is ok to not be ok. We do not have to be “enough” we have a God that IS enough. If you are struggling you do not need to be ashamed. Please please reach out to a trusted friend. Message me…this tragedy doesn’t have to be for nothing. You are loved, scars and all. God sent His Son to save the broken….that is me, that was Isaac…that is each of us.

The elephant is back.

The one that visits time and again. That sits on my chest and reminds me of the reality of our lives “after”…

I had been given a reprieve and while I didn’t feel great, the constant weight of the elephant wasn’t there. But it came back.

It has been a hard few days. The whole e-learning/snow day, while nice for the simple fact we don’t have to make up the day, caused stress yesterday. I got angry and frustrated and wasn’t super grace-filled.

This morning some news, details we suspected…but the knowing doesn’t make it better or worse really. It is just another thing, a weight, a piece of reality that sits with me.

I went to put Elijah’s Valentine’s box in a bag so he could take it to school and saw once again Isaac’s urn that sits in the corner on our shelf. No parent should have their child’s remains on a shelf, or in a cemetery….there will always be something so wrong with the order of things in that.

And we have one last chance to try to recover details from his phone. Likely a dead end. Just days left on the backup and then any chance is erased. I am coming to terms with the reality that we will never know the “why,” and that is hard.

And yet amidst all the hard are moments of goodness.

Yesterday we got a letter from a woman we don’t know. Somehow she had seen Isaac’s obituary in the Sioux Falls paper (she lives in St Paul, MN…) and she took the time to hand write us a letter to tell us we were brave for our honesty. Who she is and why now, I do not know…but the letter arrived when my heart needed it most.

This morning I was alone in the car for a moment and I turned up the radio. The song that came on was “Raise a Hallelujah.” I turned the volume up as loud as I could make it and sang along to these lyrics…

I’m gonna sing, in the middle of the storm
Louder and louder, you’re gonna hear my praises roar
Up from the ashes, hope will arise
Death is defeated, the King is alive!

The elephant is back today but it won’t stay forever. And even though things feel heavy I can still sing. I am grateful for that.

Thank you Lord for meeting me, in small ways, in the middle of the hard. I am realizing that this journey is one that may take my entire lifetime. As long as you are with me I will be ok.