Weddings and memories

Dear Friends,

I know its been a while - life has been busy, and I've had less time for reflection than I would like...but things are finally slowing down, and some things I'd love to share with you.  Honestly, this past week has been a pretty challenging one...it took me a while to put it all together, but here are some of what has been happening recently.

Last weekend, I had the wonderful and incredible privilege of officiating at the wedding of David and Katherine, a couple who have been friends since 2008 when we spend a year together in ministry overseas.  Brandi and I were leading a team they were on when they started dating, and have been cheering them on in their relationship and walking together with them for the past 9 years.  The kids came with me, we made it a mini-adventure (thank you, Lego Discovery Center and hotel pool!), and we got to see some old friends.  But Brandi's absence was very present, if that makes sense, during the whole weekend - feeling it in catching up with old friends we knew together, feeling it as I wrangled the kids all weekend by myself, feeling it when talking with David and Katherine and missing her gentle wisdom and love.  They gave a very kind, and moving for me, recognition of her and us and our relationship with them during the reception as well.  I had a few people ask how hard it was - and in the moment, honestly, my thought was that it wasn't different from any other day, when she is no longer there and I continue to try to figure out how to live without her.

But as I reflected on it this week, it was harder on me than I thought - and with what would have been our 10th anniversary yesterday, and Mother's day tomorrow, I find myself back in a trough where it is harder to get out of bed with a spring in my step, harder to get on top of things enough to make plans or look further ahead than next week, harder to hope for a future that will look like more than survival.  I have collapsed into bed each night, or just wandered the house after the kid sleep, with a restlessness that can't be satisfied.  Friends have asked how I am doing - and in the day to day, it all works, but in times like this I continue to wonder if this is really the life the Lord has for me, is just making it through each day what my life will look like? 

I don't have answers to these questions - there is not a neat tidy final sentence.  I was reminded this week of the truth that I am in the hands of a Sovereign Lord, in whose fatherly hands my life is held.  I am still here, and I know that every day He has called me to faithful service, fatherhood and pastoring, and even though I wake up many days wondering if I will make it through, in fact I have, for the last 28 months.

So I'd ask for your prayers - for renewed hope, for a sense of the Lord's sufficiency, for the weight that seems to have descended on my heart and mind.  Pray for our daily rhythms to be filled with a knowledge of our Father's love, and his grace.  Pray for me to keep seeking Him, and finding space and time to just be with Him, to listen to Him,

Thank you for your prayers!

Signs of life...

Dear friends,

I thought I would give you an update.  Last week we were home almost all the week - the first three days because the kids were sick, and I was fighting something, so I was home for some of those days, and then we had two snow days on top of that.  But I look back and think, maybe the Lord knew the Coburns needed a breather after two very full months - and since I wasn't going to make it happen, He did!  I'm thankful for the rest, though I'm still getting caught up at church.

Along with the week with more rest than expected, there have also been some hopeful signs of life.  I realize that my last few posts may have seemed pretty down - and, well, that is not inaccurate to describe my own state of being for much of the last two months.  But not all is lost!

First of all, we went out a few weeks ago, and found a wonderful pet store with the vision for replacing our fishbowl with an upgrade - and what a treasure we found.  "We are going to build you an ecosystem!", he boasted, and he has.  We now have 15 fish, 3 frogs, 4 snails (and a few babies!), live plants, and a fish tank that hopefully takes care of itself apart from feeding and some weekly maintenance!  We have had a lot of fun watching the fish make a home, and it has felt redemptive for me as well - something lost, but something good and new in its place as well.  Amen to that (plus, Dad got something right, that it was worth it!)

Secondly, I am feeling a little bit rejuvenated personally.  Tonight was valentines day - and though I

Valentines Dinner

failed to bring out the tiny toy mailboxes we had used in the past to send many notes to one another, Dad decided that my little ones would be the best date ever and I decided to pull out the stops and cook something nice - Surf (shrimp sauteed in butter) and Turf (rib-eye trimmed into heart shapes and stove-top grilled, plus steamed asparagus, special drinks (no, not wine, but locally made root beer and ginger ale), and to top it off, strawberries dipped in chocolate.  We turned down the lights, lit the candles and had a joyful dinner together.  On a day that has not been easy in the past two years, it was a good night together.  I'm thankful for that.

And deeper down, the sense of hopeful anticipation continues to slowly but surely rise.  We have been preaching through Luke at our church, and week after week being reminded that when Jesus comes into our lives, He brings all that He is and take the center place in our lives, reorienting our affections toward him while assuring us that He is for us, to rescue us and be with us.  This is the foundation of any hopeful anticipation - not that my life circumstances might change or improve (though I hope they might), not that my loneliness will disappear (though I hope it might), nor that things will become easy or simple (though maybe a day or two would be nice) - but that with Jesus, I have all that I every really wanted or needed, and that I can pursue Him with all my heart knowing that He will be for me in this life, no matter what form that might take.  

It leaves me looking ahead to the spring, hoping for more of Jesus in my life - but also wondering what is around the next corner of this life journey that He is leading me on.  I still have days when I don't think I can keep going, days when I feel all my limitations and feel stuck in a pattern of just surviving - but I believe it can be better than that with Jesus, and I am hoping for that as I look ahead.  I don't know if there are changes ahead, and whether they are a circumstantial shift or an internal reorientation that allows me to move from surviving to thriving.  But I know Who I am following, and that has given me renewed hope, and some anticipation about this spring. 

Please pray for me for all of this!  I often lose sight during the day, and feel overwhelmed, unable, weak, and I can slip into despairing or resignation - but there is something else, there, too, and I hope that the Lord will fan it into flame.  Thank you friends for listening and praying from far and near.

Mary (the fish) died last Friday

So, last Friday morning we got up and as we went into the kitchen the kids went to check in on Mary, our blue (and male ?!?) Beta fish...and found her floating in her bowl.

Now, to understand why I am sharing this, I need to share Mary's story.  We first obtained Mary as a fulfillment, very late, to Katie to get her a birthday present as I remember it. But it was November - and if I remember it correctly, it was the day that we found out from the oncologist overseeing Brandi's trial treatment that the effect of the trial treatment had faltered, and that we needed to regroup and decide with our local oncologist what would be the next step in the treatment.  It came as some what of a surprise to me, though I think Brandi had sensed some things and was concerned, and it ended a season of almost 8 months when, after facing metastasized cancer the winter before, we had had a season of respite, of joy in living somewhat normal lives.  And all of that was thrown up in the air that day.  

2014 when we got Mary
Eli and Katie with drawings of Mary
her bowl (but not her yet) in background

When we got back from that trip (over an hour away), we picked up the kids, and as I remember it, Brandi suggested we just go out and do it - let's get the fish we had been talking about!  So we went to our local Petsmart, picked out this blue fish, some rocks and a fake plant, and came home.  We had been reading Little House on the Priarie with the kids, so the fish despite its gender was names Mary. And despite our very basic bowl, being ignored far more than is likely good for any fish, she lived these past two years, a living reminder of Brandi and her love and care for the kids and the way she brought life to our house (the houseplants still seem to be thriving, too, despite my almost complete neglect of them).  

I will admit - it hit me harder than I thought, as it did Eli as well (Katie tends to be very matter of fact about it, which is not always comforting to her brother).  It tapped into the sadness of death - and that pool is close to the surface in this season.  It was hard because she came from Brandi - and though we can get another fish, we cannot replace the one which we got when she was still alive.  We went to school late after we processed it some.  When we got home, I buried her in the yard under Brandi's bench, marked by a rock that the kids decorated.  They moved on...me not so quickly.  

There is a hopefulness, as I just posted, but competing with it is the ongoing loss of what had been.  The more change that happens - and it is good change, as we move on and make our lives not about the past but the present and the future - there is more mourning that comes with it.  The loss is never forgotten, just more woven into life.  It reminds me a bit of a passage in the Return of the King, when Gandalf is talking with Frodo after all the drama (well, almost, except the scouring of the shire) has happened - good has triumphed over evil, the new age has dawned, life is returning to middle earth and it seems that the future is bright - and yet:

“Are you in pain, Frodo?” said Gandalf quietly as he rode by Frodo’s side.

“Well, yes, I am,” said Frodo. “It is my shoulder.  The wound aches, and the memory of darkness is heavy on me.  It was a year ago today.”

“Alas? There are some wounds that cannot be wholly cured,” said Gandalf.

“I fear it may be so with mine,” said Frodo.  “there is no real going back.  Thought I may come to the shire, it will not seem the same; for I shall not be the same.  I am wounded with knife, sting and tooth, and a long burden.  Where shall I find rest?”

Gandalf did not answer.

The One who came to save us all from the ravages of sickness, sin, and death - He still carries the scars of our redemption in eternity, yet with Him there will be rest, forever.  But in this life...still a question for me.  Thanks for your prayers.

Reflections on the two years’ anniversary of Brandi’s death

I was deleting photos and videos from the Ipad the other night – viewing Brandi alive, loving, her creative and engaging ways with the kids, the creativity that was a part of our home.  And it made me smile – not without pain, for I miss her and all that she brought to our house, and I feel the gap as I realize what is missing from our life now, what I can’t fix, can’t replace, can’t do anything but remember it and miss it – but there was also a smile, a recognition of what a blessing she was to us and that we have been so enriched and shaped by the time with her.  It was a time of recalling God’s goodness to us – a past goodness, but wonderful beyond calculation.

It tapped into something else that has been a part of the past few weeks – I’m not sure quite why.  But I have sensed in my own heart something that I have not felt for a while – hopefulness.  Now biblical hope does not need my feelings for it to be true, and for the last two years (maybe more?) I’ve clung to that hope despite precious little feeling.  That is clinging to the hope connected to the truth of God – his faithfulness will not fail, his promises will come true, and his love is real, even when I don’t feel any of that.  But this hopefulness is engaging my heart in new ways – a new expectancy, a thaw in the damp cloud covering that has weighed on my heart.  Some spark that, after a long winter that spring may be coming.

Some of it is connected, I think (oddly to my mind), to my mom’s death.  I have shared before that Brandi’s death left me feeling like I don’t know who I am in some ways – I lost not only the present partnership but the future that we envisioned together.  And it has left me wondering who I am and how I begin to pursue a future path on my own.  Family is one of the places that we can tend to retreat in these times – though I didn’t actively think about that a lot, my mom’s death made me realize how important family has been, and the role of son to her has shaped me as well.  And now she is gone, I feel both more unmoored in a bad way, with more uncertainty, but also with a newfound sense of freedom, of being ready to move ahead with whatever the next step in the journey would hold. 

I have had a number of notes and letters recently – one in particular that I want to quote:

"Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning."

We don't often know how long our particular "nights" will be, nor when our "mornings" will dawn, but the timeline of eternity makes this promise, and for that reason we can have hope and persevere. That said, I do pray whatever your current "night," that it will end and your morning will come, with a joy and peace that surpasses your wildest expectations.

Then from Spurgeon:  There is One who careth for you. His eye is fixed on you, his heart beats with pity for your woe, and his hand omnipotent shall yet bring you the needed help. The darkest cloud shall scatter itself in showers of mercy. The blackest gloom shall give place to the morning. He, if thou art one of his family, will bind up thy wounds, and heal thy broken heart. Doubt not his grace because of thy tribulation, but believe that he loveth thee as much in seasons of trouble as in times of happiness. 

(thanks, James, for these!)

So if you would, join with me in praying for this – for a season of renewal, a season of resurrection, of life springing up in my heart toward the Lord, and then from that to the kids and others.  Pray for a season of joy after the night.  I know my last post was pretty raw – and there are moments, and days, that are mostly colored by that…but there has also been this new stirring, and I would ask you to join with me that it might come to pass, and be real.

Brief kids update:

 

Kids at winter school show

Many of you ask me how the kids are doing.  Generally, they are doing great – I just today received an email from their Sunday School teacher sharing of their engagement with spiritual things, and their teachers share that they are a joy to have in school.  I am thankful for all of this. This past week they have shown some signs of the emotional stress that I have come to expect on these anniversaries – though they don’t talk about it (I have to do that to them), I think that my mom’s death on top of this season has made them both a bit more “on edge” emotionally.  Pray for them, for God’s comfort to be theirs.  Pray for me, for patience and grace, for wisdom and discernment on when to help them with boundaries and discipline and when to give them a place to feel and grieve even if they don’t know what it is about. 

Thank you all, friends, for your prayers!

Walking with a limp

Almost three weeks ago, about, my mother died.  She had lived a rich 80 years, and though her death was unexpected in many ways, she went as she had most hoped (though I had tried for years to warn her we don’t get to choose, in the end, she did!), quietly in bed, not waking up from a night of sleep.  I have entrusted her to the arms of the Father.

But it leaves me with another part of the scaffolding of life now taken away.  Though I did not talk with her on a daily basis, I have found myself thinking of her nightly – after the kids are in bed, when the house is quiet except for the noise I make to fill it.  She alone in my family understood by experience that quietness, and the sorrow that comes with it – and I would call her at times, knowing that she would want to talk as much as I needed to (it was never a short conversation with mom…)  I feel more alone than ever in this world…

It just came out of my mouth yesterday, “I guess I feel like the Lord wants me to walk with more of a limp than I am comfortable with…”  Grief taps into deeper grief, and I find myself back in the valley rather than working on moving ahead and rebuilding a life.  Hope for the distant future is clear, but present hope, hope for the next year to be better than this, hope that I will actually see and taste that the Lord is good in this life – what I had been working towards and hoping in – seems to have slipped through my grasp again, evaporating to be found only on the far horizons. 

I preached a Christmas eve sermon about Immanuel, God with us.  I know it is true.  I can see how it is a wonderful truth – but it was hard to preach with conviction, when I feel so alone.  Even the best days are shaded with this truth.  And the worst days – well, I just go to bed early and hope that the next day will be better.  And they usually are. 

I want to be able to finish this on a solid note – that God has come to be with us.  That He is with me, now, even as I write this post about how alone I feel.  And I assent to this truth, but it brings not comfort but tears, not assurance but more sorrow.  I trust He is there…but I don’t feel Him there.  

I read a blog post today – a friend of a friend of a friend who knew a woman who had lost her husband to cancer in the past two years.  She posted about not writing – not since August – and why that was, and giving an update.  I found it comforting, oddly familiar.  Life is working.  God is still true.  But it is small, and it is so hard to hope for more when the loss has been compounded by loss after loss – the loss of the life we had worked to build, the loss of hopes and dreams of life and ministry together, the loss of companionship and daily partnership, the loss of affection and the knowledge that to one person I am loved and cherished, the loss of my mom, the loss of identity and a sense of purpose, the loss of clarity for a future direction and calling.  The loss of joy at Christmas…

Birthday reflections again

Today is Brandi's birthday - she would have been 42 today.  I'm not sure if it means anything to her now - in eternity, do you remember things like how long you have lived, or when you were born?  Does it cross your mind that you had a beginning, when you will live forever in the bliss of being with your beloved Savior?  I don't know the answers to that - I know that today, for those of us left in time, that it matters.  I'm with her family today - many of us took time to go visit her grave site.  I'm not sure I've ever posted pictures of it - but here is what you would see:

The flowers you see were given by Brandi's beloved friend Sarah - thanks Sarah! - who grew up with her, and who cut her teeth in her flower business by doing them for our wedding, which was a huge blessing for us and she did, and continues to do a wonderful job.  The planting in front and the care of the site has been under the care of her mother, and she has made it a beautiful place to be.  It is in Brandi's hometown of Newville, PA, if you are interested, right off 641.

On the back, if you can't see it clearly, are words taking from Psalm 16, verses 5, 6, 11:

The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. 

The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

I've been thinking quite a bit about these ideas recently as I've been reflecting some on my life.  In many ways, life is manageable - barely at times, and I have found myself both very weary in just keeping up, even with a month leave from work, and also at times wondering if I can really bear the burdens of the church and my family well - in that we are not completely falling apart, and life is working.  But I feel like a shell of myself, and the idea that my soul can find the kind of satisfaction, and joy, in the life that the Lord has given me at this point is something I struggle to believe.  I believe that Brandi has found the path of life, that she is full of joy, and that she is pleased and satisfied forever more.  I am confident of that hope for me as well, in eternity.  But what about now?  Life seems pretty barren, and I feel like more of a shell, even as life "normalizes" and in some ways the pain of the loss is integrated more into the every day reality of life.  I am more used to that reality - but I don't know who I am or what any life beyond surviving and managing could really look like.  

The thought process I have is something like this.  Everything I do right now feels accompanied by a huge vacuum in my life - there is an emptiness that comes with the loss that I carry around, and is a part of both the greatest joys and deepest sorrows and griefs.  I miss my partner, my friend, my co-parent and my co-laborer in the Kingdom of God.  I feel like I CAN make life work - but at times I just don't want to keep going like this.

Honestly, for the first time it makes me ponder the question of whether trying to continue to do this alone is actually God's plan.  I've wondered if perhaps doing this life without a partner is not something I'm able to do. But then I wonder if I have given God the chance to be the one who is able to satisfy my soul, and for me to not only survive but thrive, flourish, in this new season of single parenting.  Do I have more to grieve and work through with God?  Do I have more to learn about community at a whole other level, and I've been trying to do it all myself?  Am I seeking to dig a cistern to quench my thirst when there is a spring of water welling up to eternal life (see Jeremiah 2)?  

So those are things for your prayers.  You can pray as well for the kids - they are doing well in many ways, but this summer has been hard for Katie and I'm still not sure why exactly, though at least to my eyes a little girl growing up without her mom is struggling to make sense of it all, and I have seen my own inadequacies in being all that she might need.  Pray for the next few weeks as we adjust to my returning to work at the church and the kids have a few more weeks before school begins.

Thanks, friends, for your prayers and well wishes.  I'm sorry I've not blogged more - The past few months have been overwhelming in many ways, and it has taken me this long to have something more to say than, "I'm tired, we're hanging in there, pray for us".

 Matt

 

Anniversary #2

 This picture comes from May 12 2014 - our seventh anniversary celebration, we spent a special day together, an anniversary we didn't know if we would celebrate.  Last Thursday I spent my second anniversary after her death visiting as a day of reflection, of rest, of mourning, of celebrating, of remembering. 

It was a special day in many ways.  A friend had given me a book, "Colors of Goodbye" a memoir of a mother who lost a daughter, and how she and her family experienced the loss.  It touched me/reached me in a way that, clearly, I needed a lot - I wept through, probably, 1/3 of the book as I read her story.  It was, as they say, a "good cry", a chance for me to feel, and express, how much I miss Brandi.  I was reminded that, though many mourn her, how lonely the mourning process can be.  One thought that I have had many times in the past few months is that, though Eli and Katie and I are doing just fine, I just don't want to do this life alone, without her.  Life at home is going fine, ministry at church, it is all going basically well - but I hate doing it without my partner, my companion, my other half.  I miss her every day.  I know she isn't coming back.  I know that life will go on.  But I'm struggling right now to like it, to become accustomed to it.

The author of the book also shared her struggle with a question, "How can life ever be good after she is gone?"  I think this is something I feel often - it is just so difficult to see how life going forward will be sweet, rich, full when daily I miss the endless ways that our life was enriched by Brandi's love and contribution.  Even in her illness, she made the moments special.  Now, even the times that are special are tinged with the sadness of her not being here to join in.  We hosted some visiting missionaries at our home this weekend - it was great to have them here, I loved being able to use our home to bless this family - but it was something Brandi would have loved, and I missed her a thousand times during the weekend.   Just the most recent example of it. The author, more than 5 years out from her loss, shared that she found that as she leaned into the pain of her loss, as she pursued grieving well, there were breakthrough moments that eventually saw her emerge from the sense that life cannot be good again.  It gave me hope that it may be true for me one day as well.

That is a brief update on me.  The kids are doing great - a highlight of the spring was their school show, where I knew that Katie was going to sing a solo and we had practiced a lot, but then on top of that Eli surprised me by singing a solo of his own - I was so proud of the boy who would not even stand up and sing at a parents meeting a year and a half ago, had a major solo.  I'm trying to upload the movies to my google drive so you can see it...I've been foiled by the technology so far, but this is my new attempt - I've not yet made it work, so I'll post a link in the future if I can get it to work.  Here is a photo - the costumes were derived from imagining what was worn by the ancestors who immigrated to the US. 

I love them and are so proud of them.  We are looking forward to the summer coming up, with some time off for the kids from school and me from work as well.  Thanks for your prayers and care.