---------------
BEGINNING NOTE
---------------
I am unsure why I am posting. I have read several heartbreaking threads and I suppose I have found it helpful knowing that (and I'm sorry) others have been swallowed by the same storm I am in. Still, I wonder if this will be a mistake. I dont want to talk to anyone right now, I think. I dont want to respond to anyone right now, I think. I just want to scream and so I think that is what I'm doing. I cant do that outside my house or at the job or in the mall. No one understands, except maybe you. And so I suppose I am aiming my agony in this direction with some consolation that on the end of these words is someone who gets it - and maybe can simply pray for me as a like-minded, child of God crushed under this weight.
I also serve a God who makes all things work together for the good to those that love Him - and I do - though admittedly I am a little hot under the collar at the moment and dont see how there is any fix for this gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be. But I have been journaling through this whole ordeal and have brought out and dusted off an old hobby of mine that my wife so enjoyed. I am a writer of, well, just a bunch of poetry until this. But those who followed our journey had said that our journaling had taken them to new levels of examining their own marriages and not being so complacent with their time. I continued because it was the only way I could vent and hopefully glorify The Lord at the same time. They claim that it did.
With that in mind, I also post here the intensity of a grief I feel unable to bear. Words always fail, but if I might be able to come alongside of another grieving brother or sister who find their storm parallel enough with mine and give them an anonymous camaraderie in my story, then maybe that will serve to glorify God yet again and help them (possibly you) in this time of un-helpability. (I just made that word up, but the truth of it exists - I'm living it) So here goes.
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My Loss, My Grief
------------------
May 22, 2013 goes uncontested as the most horrible day of my existence. My beautiful bride, my princess, soul mate and best friend died that day ... rather finished dying. Truth is her disease began much further back than the 7 months that I witnessed it slowly take her. Those seven months were two things. First, a gift of merciful pause, allowing us to minimize regrets and confirm the fullness of a love that was always there and had practiced almost perfectly, except for this final exercise that ought to have been many years further out. But second, (to me - in my little world) it was like being forced to watch an enemy slowly torture my wife; something worse than an assassination.
I have a hope beyond the grave, it is true. Just as I expect my house to be there when I show up; just as real as that, I expect my wife to be in glory when I get there. But that does not help me much now. My soul is bleeding out. I feel cast down from a high place of honor, having a love envious of the whole world taken from me as if I had done someone a wrong worthy of such hot retribution.
I am suffocating. Her love gave me my ability to live but now I am sunk in an ocean void of all I need. I am something less than living. I feel as a helpless babe in perpetual tears over the still corpse of its mother, still loving a cold bosom, able only to languish a loss he is incapable of measuring.
I feel I have been ripped in half. I dont want anything or to do anything in this world anymore. Only to exit. I still am crushed by the fact that I will never kiss her face again, her lips or pull her close to me. This just cant be happening! And why? Why now? We tried to do everything by Gods word. I just dont understand. Should we not be rewarded for serving Him? Yes, we were rewarded. Twenty-three years of blissful matrimony, but I feel like I was a king over a righteous and harmonious kingdom and then asked to step down mid term.
Does He not say that if we honor Him, he will protect us? Were we doing something wrong? A horrible dark cloud of loss engulfs me. The joy that began and ended all my days, her precious face - my sun and moon - has been removed from my skies. Without question a great evil has fallen upon us and our great love. I know that I had my own bag of sin but I have concluded that He would not punish her with death because of my sin. That would be unjust. So what is the deal? I have been feeling a bit angry and have been trying to make sure I dont direct that anger at The Lord. I know He is good and just and perfect. I feel like Ive been given a bucket of answers that has no bottom in it. O how the color has been removed from this blasted world. The tears come again.
---------
My Love
---------
My princess - that's what I've called her since we fell in love and were married in our late teens. But our story begins before we met for even as children, God was shaping both her and I into an exact fit. He causes all things to work together for the good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. Both of us witnessed the implosion and destruction of our parents marraige(s) as children. Altogether with the fallout from that, our childhoods were excruciatingly painful. But He used that to show us now NOT to do it and birthed in us a dream of true love, successful marriage and family.
We both gave our lives to Christ shortly after being married which fixed many things that day in 1991. From then till now is a story of blissful marriage, contented lovers on a peasants income, having raised and homeschooled two wonderful children, sacrificing everything necessary to raise the kids and honor God in our marriage. Sure we were both still imperfect sinners and were tripped up occasionally by our own selfishness, pride or complacency, but these are only minor blemishes that speckle an otherwise grand and successful relationship.
We found out she had stomach cancer in Oct of 2012. Stage IV. Inoperable. Chemo would only buy time. We chose alternative medicine and after a 7 month battle, she passed away 4 days before our 23rd anniversary.
Through the sickness I was her caretaker and we drew closer in every way. As it began to unfold how this would end, our talks were quite spiritually mature about her going home. In early May, I sang the long version of "3 Times A Lady" to her better than I've sung any song and somehow without breaking down.
It took several days for people to go away and then that Tsunami of grief to engulf me. I'm just coming up for air and my whole existance continues to tumble out of control. Sorrow and regret accompany me. I am two times sorrowful, once in a general way, compassionate and heartbroken about what she had to live through for 7 months. The other is more nasty. A sorry for things I feel I am responsible for; my mistakes and erroneous and complacent ways.
---------
My Praise
---------
I was meditating on how precious and polished our love was ... not in the world's way, but in Christs way that he intended for a marriage to be. Oh and it brings me to my knees, even in her loss, in thanksgiving for such a bountiful and pure love, overflowing with kindness, understanding and forgiveness.
I am wise enough to thank The Lord, God for an abundance of blessing. It all depends on which "lens" I look through. When I look with my spiritual eyes, I see how blessed we were finding each other young, having children young so she was able to carry her children to adulthood. I am so glad now that we made those hard sacrifices to enable her to be home with her children for those precious years of homeschooling which was The Lord's idea. The list of thanksgiving is a long one.
She completed me fully; performed her motherly duties with excellence and those of a wife perfectly.
---------
My Hope
---------
I hope to cross through the threshold between here and heaven soon. The sooner the better. And I wish I had the guts to accelerate things but actually, my fear is that I would then be given a lesser place in The Kingdom - a place where she will not be. I'm anchored by more than that, but that's what I think of when I want to end my life deliberately.
So what now? I have no clue. The prospect of living another 40 years without my help meet is not hope at all. It seems rather like solitary confinement. The thought of the possibility that The Lord would prepare another help meet seems preposterous to me. Though admittedly 40 years is a long road.
I'm fighting it. But I can feel time depositing scar tissue around this wound in my soul. I dont like it because is seems to cloud the full remembrance of the caliber of love we shared. It was so sweet and altogether precious. Yes, the only hope I have is that The Lord shall see fit to call me home quickly. That would be plenty fine.
BEGINNING NOTE
---------------
I am unsure why I am posting. I have read several heartbreaking threads and I suppose I have found it helpful knowing that (and I'm sorry) others have been swallowed by the same storm I am in. Still, I wonder if this will be a mistake. I dont want to talk to anyone right now, I think. I dont want to respond to anyone right now, I think. I just want to scream and so I think that is what I'm doing. I cant do that outside my house or at the job or in the mall. No one understands, except maybe you. And so I suppose I am aiming my agony in this direction with some consolation that on the end of these words is someone who gets it - and maybe can simply pray for me as a like-minded, child of God crushed under this weight.
I also serve a God who makes all things work together for the good to those that love Him - and I do - though admittedly I am a little hot under the collar at the moment and dont see how there is any fix for this gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be. But I have been journaling through this whole ordeal and have brought out and dusted off an old hobby of mine that my wife so enjoyed. I am a writer of, well, just a bunch of poetry until this. But those who followed our journey had said that our journaling had taken them to new levels of examining their own marriages and not being so complacent with their time. I continued because it was the only way I could vent and hopefully glorify The Lord at the same time. They claim that it did.
With that in mind, I also post here the intensity of a grief I feel unable to bear. Words always fail, but if I might be able to come alongside of another grieving brother or sister who find their storm parallel enough with mine and give them an anonymous camaraderie in my story, then maybe that will serve to glorify God yet again and help them (possibly you) in this time of un-helpability. (I just made that word up, but the truth of it exists - I'm living it) So here goes.
------------------
My Loss, My Grief
------------------
May 22, 2013 goes uncontested as the most horrible day of my existence. My beautiful bride, my princess, soul mate and best friend died that day ... rather finished dying. Truth is her disease began much further back than the 7 months that I witnessed it slowly take her. Those seven months were two things. First, a gift of merciful pause, allowing us to minimize regrets and confirm the fullness of a love that was always there and had practiced almost perfectly, except for this final exercise that ought to have been many years further out. But second, (to me - in my little world) it was like being forced to watch an enemy slowly torture my wife; something worse than an assassination.
I have a hope beyond the grave, it is true. Just as I expect my house to be there when I show up; just as real as that, I expect my wife to be in glory when I get there. But that does not help me much now. My soul is bleeding out. I feel cast down from a high place of honor, having a love envious of the whole world taken from me as if I had done someone a wrong worthy of such hot retribution.
I am suffocating. Her love gave me my ability to live but now I am sunk in an ocean void of all I need. I am something less than living. I feel as a helpless babe in perpetual tears over the still corpse of its mother, still loving a cold bosom, able only to languish a loss he is incapable of measuring.
I feel I have been ripped in half. I dont want anything or to do anything in this world anymore. Only to exit. I still am crushed by the fact that I will never kiss her face again, her lips or pull her close to me. This just cant be happening! And why? Why now? We tried to do everything by Gods word. I just dont understand. Should we not be rewarded for serving Him? Yes, we were rewarded. Twenty-three years of blissful matrimony, but I feel like I was a king over a righteous and harmonious kingdom and then asked to step down mid term.
Does He not say that if we honor Him, he will protect us? Were we doing something wrong? A horrible dark cloud of loss engulfs me. The joy that began and ended all my days, her precious face - my sun and moon - has been removed from my skies. Without question a great evil has fallen upon us and our great love. I know that I had my own bag of sin but I have concluded that He would not punish her with death because of my sin. That would be unjust. So what is the deal? I have been feeling a bit angry and have been trying to make sure I dont direct that anger at The Lord. I know He is good and just and perfect. I feel like Ive been given a bucket of answers that has no bottom in it. O how the color has been removed from this blasted world. The tears come again.
---------
My Love
---------
My princess - that's what I've called her since we fell in love and were married in our late teens. But our story begins before we met for even as children, God was shaping both her and I into an exact fit. He causes all things to work together for the good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. Both of us witnessed the implosion and destruction of our parents marraige(s) as children. Altogether with the fallout from that, our childhoods were excruciatingly painful. But He used that to show us now NOT to do it and birthed in us a dream of true love, successful marriage and family.
We both gave our lives to Christ shortly after being married which fixed many things that day in 1991. From then till now is a story of blissful marriage, contented lovers on a peasants income, having raised and homeschooled two wonderful children, sacrificing everything necessary to raise the kids and honor God in our marriage. Sure we were both still imperfect sinners and were tripped up occasionally by our own selfishness, pride or complacency, but these are only minor blemishes that speckle an otherwise grand and successful relationship.
We found out she had stomach cancer in Oct of 2012. Stage IV. Inoperable. Chemo would only buy time. We chose alternative medicine and after a 7 month battle, she passed away 4 days before our 23rd anniversary.
Through the sickness I was her caretaker and we drew closer in every way. As it began to unfold how this would end, our talks were quite spiritually mature about her going home. In early May, I sang the long version of "3 Times A Lady" to her better than I've sung any song and somehow without breaking down.
It took several days for people to go away and then that Tsunami of grief to engulf me. I'm just coming up for air and my whole existance continues to tumble out of control. Sorrow and regret accompany me. I am two times sorrowful, once in a general way, compassionate and heartbroken about what she had to live through for 7 months. The other is more nasty. A sorry for things I feel I am responsible for; my mistakes and erroneous and complacent ways.
---------
My Praise
---------
I was meditating on how precious and polished our love was ... not in the world's way, but in Christs way that he intended for a marriage to be. Oh and it brings me to my knees, even in her loss, in thanksgiving for such a bountiful and pure love, overflowing with kindness, understanding and forgiveness.
I am wise enough to thank The Lord, God for an abundance of blessing. It all depends on which "lens" I look through. When I look with my spiritual eyes, I see how blessed we were finding each other young, having children young so she was able to carry her children to adulthood. I am so glad now that we made those hard sacrifices to enable her to be home with her children for those precious years of homeschooling which was The Lord's idea. The list of thanksgiving is a long one.
She completed me fully; performed her motherly duties with excellence and those of a wife perfectly.
---------
My Hope
---------
I hope to cross through the threshold between here and heaven soon. The sooner the better. And I wish I had the guts to accelerate things but actually, my fear is that I would then be given a lesser place in The Kingdom - a place where she will not be. I'm anchored by more than that, but that's what I think of when I want to end my life deliberately.
So what now? I have no clue. The prospect of living another 40 years without my help meet is not hope at all. It seems rather like solitary confinement. The thought of the possibility that The Lord would prepare another help meet seems preposterous to me. Though admittedly 40 years is a long road.
I'm fighting it. But I can feel time depositing scar tissue around this wound in my soul. I dont like it because is seems to cloud the full remembrance of the caliber of love we shared. It was so sweet and altogether precious. Yes, the only hope I have is that The Lord shall see fit to call me home quickly. That would be plenty fine.
