What I shared at our church this morning...

Dear friends,

I shared at my church this morning, and thought I would post this to share with you as well.  All the information referred to at the end of the time is on this blog, particularly the last post, if you are looking for that.  Thanks for praying.

Matt

If you are visiting today – I am Matt Coburn, one of the pastors here.  My wife Brandi went home to be with the Lord in mid-January after battling cancer for 3 ½ years.  After some time off, I am returning to work at the church, and want to give you an update on our family and share a few words.

How are you doing?  It is the most natural question – the answer is, we are doing OK.  Every day there are reminders of Brandi, holes in our lives where she once was but is no longer there.  But we are making it through each day.  The kids have returned to school, providing some structure and daily routine for them.  They talk about mommy regularly, but don’t cry or talk about missing her, but rather just have oversized emotional reactions to other things of life.  Some of you have asked about talking about her with them – I think it is OK when done naturally, as long as you don’t expect or pressure them to share – particularly Katie does not respond well right now to that.  But it is OK to mention her when it would be natural for you to do so.

As for me – I am not always even sure how to answer the question.  The days have been fairly full of life responsibilities, the evenings have been harder – tired, restless, feeling the emptiness a lot.  I’m still pretty numb, though just recently there has been some more thawing in my heart.  Much of life still feels flat, colorless, in the midst of our grief – I miss her every day.

God – he is the same God, and this had not changed – his faithfulness, his goodness, his mercy, his salvation, his sovereignty, his love, all are the same.  I have been reading slowly through Psalm 40 and been encouraged by it, but am struggling with it as well.  I affirm all that he says – God is our salvation and in this hope we have great comfort, for Brandi is now free from pain, sorrow, sadness, cancer, and is filled with joy that is expressible as she is with her Lord.  In God’s sovereign goodness we are still here, and he is still the same glorious savior and loving father.  He is the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our afflictions, as Paul in 2^nd Corinthians 1 says.

But my heart does not exult in those things yet.  I am afraid of facing the pain of loss head on, and find myself running from it.  I want to protect my heart from pain - but I know that facing the pain is a necessary part of knowing God’s comfort.  It is the way to have a heart that is alive.   Without facing the pain of losing Brandi, I cannot know the real comfort of God in that with me – and that comfort is something I long for.  But the pain seems overwhelming at times, and I want to try to avoid it – so you can pray for me about that.

This leads me to something that has been on my heart in the past week. I have found it is in the company of friends, when talking about lots of things, where Brandi comes up naturally in conversation, and particularly when we talk together about who she was in our lives, how we saw God in her, and even explicitly processing the end of her life here on earth – it is in those times when I am able face the pain and my heart connects, and I feel it.  It is in those times when I begin to feel God’s comfort as well.  Brandi’s death, while not unexpected, came on very fast.  Christmas eve, she was here, in some pain but we were still looking ahead in hope and faith to more time together.  Three weeks later, she died.  For me, that was very quick.  For many of you, it was out of the blue – and there was no time to share together, to be together, to share and cry and express love to one another.  Death stole that from us, and in God’s mercy I think to her it was a blessing to her – but a loss for us.  And it has been hard to know what to do with that.  It has been in talking with others that I have been helped.  I wonder if I am not the only one who works like that.

So this is my thought – and my invitation.  I know that the elders have been shepherding you all through this, but I want in on that.  I want to invite you to enter into a process of grieving together – remembering, mourning what has been lost, facing regret, disappointment, sadness that overwhelms.  I want to let you know that I want you to come and share with me about these things.  My guess is that we tend to grieve in private rather than in community, but I think we need to do it in community as well – with me, with one another

I also recognize that my loss is not the only one, that some of you have losses that have overwhelmed you – some very raw and present, some in the past.  Maybe those have been kept in private, and maybe God has brought us in this season as a church to share those things together.  For when we face the pain of the things we grieve in this life – then the comfort of God, both in this life as well as our future hope may be ours as well.  Only a community of brokenness, who share from these vulnerable places, can also know the depths of the hope of the gospel of God.  And I invite you today to do this.

Some have asked – what can we do?  Well, my hope is that my words above may be the best thing – love those around you, connect and share with others, and point one another to the hope of life in Jesus.  But beyond that, let me say that I have felt so overwhelmingly supplied by the Lord, through family, the church, that our needs are not dire nor daily.  So what can you do?

First, love one another – take your desire to help my family, and find others who do have daily and present needs, and dive in.  If you don’t know how, talk with the deacons and elders about opportunities to do so.  There will likely be ways to help my family as well – meals, rides, some help with our home – you can keep in touch with the office about that – but in the meantime look for those around you and love them well.

Second – pray – keep praying for me and the kids.  This is a long process, not a bump in the road to get past but something that requires rebuilding almost every aspect of life.  Pray for the Lord to be at work in us as we do that.  I have set up a new blog to share on an ongoing basis, you can see the information in the bulletin about that.

Third, if you would like to contribute we are putting together a book of remembrance for Eli and Katie, so that they may have a bunch of snapshots of who Brandi was for their reading as they grow older and can treasure that more.  There is information about this as well, but you can send to my trinity email anything you would want to share. 

Thank you – your prayers, your notes, your support in so many ways, I have felt loved and cared for so much by you, our church.  My hope and prayer is that we will continue to walk through this together, and as we do so, we will be able to see God’s gracious hand at work in our lives, in our church, and through our church in this world for His glory and for our good.