Mary is Steve’s stepmom. She and Steve’s father were married in the early 1980’s; they were quite happy until his sudden death in 1996. When she remarried in 2002 – much to her surprise, as she had claimed she would never marry again – we were beyond delighted. Tom was the perfect partner. His relatively sudden death from cancer in late 2014 rocked all our boats hard. To lose another grandchild (Mark is actually the second, following our nephew, John, who died at 7 years of age in 2001 due to complications from leukemia) on the heels of that profound loss was and is devastating.

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The week after Mark’s birthday was good, bad, wonderful, awful, emotional, meaningful, and 50 more adjectives. Sarah and I were involved with Vacation Bible School at our church – something I really love, something both kids grew up doing every single summer. For 12 years, in fact (from 1999 to 2011), I was the co-coordinator and I have SO MANY happy memories of carting a van-load of kids to VBS, with trips to the pool or home for a play-date afterward. Such sweetness. Those kids are now grown people, who say it is a fond, fond memory as well.

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Today is Mark’s birthday. He would have been 20…he is 20. I guess. (Do you get to age in heaven, if you want? Or just pick the age you like?)

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Bailey’s haunting film — his catharsis, his way to work through so many emotions after Mark, one of his best friends, died – won most of the prizes at the high school’s IB film festival last night. He was given Jury Prize, Audience Choice Runner-Up, and Best Screenwriting. If you want to watch it, click here.

Bailey interviewed Steve and I extensively about our experience the day Mark died, and I worked with him a little bit on the script. It’s not the same as ours, his story. He took our words, his thoughts, his feelings and emotions, and wove something new. Ultimately we must each tell our own story, to make sense of it all.

You may not want to read this one.  Really.

I hate this.

I. HATE. IT.

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Just because your child dies doesn’t exempt you from other crap; life continues in all its incredible messiness. There are still challenges that can feel absolutely overwhelming, and in my soul-depleted state, turn my heart back to the cliff’s edge, overlooking that dark valley of despair and hopelessness.

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Normally I like my birthday, I like celebrating another year on this planet.  I like cake. Just not this year. Meh.

I deeply appreciated all the good wishes I received, I just didn’t feel like celebrating.

Fortunately, some other people did.  Words cannot express how much I love this video, made with the usual incredible creativity of Jessica Riddle (with Andy and Steve, of course).

To watch, click here.

I really want to encourage you to take the time to review your personal history, especially if you’ve ever felt like God hasn’t heard you.

As I mentioned before, I’ve decided to go through all my old calendars, journal entries, photos and credit card records in order to create a “family history”…a record of our years together. This takes a lot of time — I’ve only gotten to 2012 and I still haven’t looked at photos and card charges for any year.

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As noted before: I read a lot of books, several of which I’ve already mentioned. And I have wonderful resources in friends who are way down the road ahead of me, theologically speaking; they are excellent guides and mentors as I seek to understand God.

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While I was in Sanibel, Mark was in my dreams twice.

The first dream was short and weird. Mark and I were standing in the front yard of someone’s house. We were visiting; possibly preparing to leave. I looked up at the sky – it was twilight, the sun was preparing to set – and a single white cloud hung, suspended, but the cloud was a specific shape, sort of like a skinny oak leaf. I thought “that’s really, really odd” and then my attention was distracted for a bit, perhaps by  Continue reading →