Temporary Identity

Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at 9:40 pm. 0 comments

It’s been 5 months since I last blogged here. I feel bad about not having blogged about alot of stuff I’ve thought over that time, but one of the things I’m learning is that most things are temporary, especially when you have a baby!

It was around 5 months ago that I had a bit of an identity crisis. The root of this clearly stem from losing my daughter Amy over 2 years ago, and coincided with my son Toby being born. His birth threw up a few things for me including who I am. I’m now Toby’s Dad, and I’m Amy’s grieving Dad. The joy and delight I have in Toby has left little emotional time to dwell on my grief and the tension between a grieving and joyful Dad has left me a bit confused.

It was around this time that I realised that I didn’t feel I belonged to the group of Christians I’ve known for the last 8 years. This was because after losing Amy, the dawning realisation that I had new and unique needs met a dawning realisation that these needs were not being met by this community of Christians I was part of. This group is fairly homogeneous since we all met at University and are of similar ages. Since we are all still young, and nobody had lost a child, we didn’t have any experience to know how to care for Mary-Lou and myself so we were were not able to be carried by the group. This wasn’t helped by not knowing myself how I could be helped. The pain and confusion of not having been carried by our Christian community left me feeling I didn’t belong. 

So I began getting busy, not knowing at the time that I was searching for an identity, something I could point to and say “This is what Ben is about, this is what he does”. I started Guerrilla Gardening in Moss Side. I started helping a project collecting fruit from Manchester gardens to distribute to the poor and hungry. I got funding for a High Definition Camcorder to record Asylum Seekers telling their stories. I started a podcast exploring the implications of Shane Claiborne’s book “The Irresistible Revolution”. I became co-ordinator of my street’s Home Watch. I started planning the Parliament Protest. I got pretty busy all of a sudden and had less and less time for Mary-Lou and Toby.

In the end I gave some of that up, cut back on others, and finished the rest. I’m not as busy as I was (outside of work) and I’m looking forward to discovering routines and patterns (temporary of course) of time and activity with Mary-Lou and Toby.

I’ve not discovered my identity, I’m sure I’ll be figuring it out the rest of my life. But for now it feels good and proper that I rest and invest in the place I have as Mary-Lou’s husband and Amy and Toby’s Dad.

The Healthy And Pain-Full Body

Posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:25 pm. 3 comments

I have now finished reading the book Where Is God When It Hurts and it has been very thought provoking. Although it deals largely with physical pain and things like terminal illness, it still helped me think through the pain of my grief in different ways.

The last section of the book is about what Christianity uniquely offers to those in pain. One of the things it talks about is how the concept of the Body Of Christ points to how Christians need to share and carry each others pain and suffering. Philip Yancey quotes a doctor called Paul Brand who says this about the human body:

Individual cells had to give up their autonomy and learn to suffer with one another before effective multicellular organisms could be produced and survive.

He suggests that the way in which cells in the body work should be the same way we humans work. The key to successful relationships lies in the sensation of pain.

In human society we are suffering because we do not suffer enough.

So much of the sorrow in the world is due to the selfishness of one living organism that simply doesn’t care when the next one suffers. In the body if one cell or group of cells grows and flourishes at the expense of the rest, we call it cancer and know that if it is allowed to spread the body is doomed And yet, the only alternative to the cancer is absolute loyalty of every cell to the body, the head.

I am struck that the image of the Body Of Christ is one which means we need to know and share each others pain for it to be healthy. Before reading this, I thought that it just meant we Christians ought to just get along and work together, but now I see a deeper and more meaningful application.

In my grief I have not felt that many share my pain. I know that many of my friends grieved the loss of Amy and have suffered because she is not here. And sometimes I don’t want to spend time grieving with my friends, I’d rather have fun! I know that they haven’t a clue how I feel, and that they couldn’t know how I feel unless they lost their daughter. But I also know that I would feel carried and less isolated if friends asked more often and gave me time and space to answer honestly and to grieve in their presence.

Philip Yancey goes on to point out the we Christians are Christ in this suffering world and should respond to those suffering or in pain with love, tenderness, and by sharing their pain and sorrows. He says his response to the question “Where is God when it hurts?” would be another question: “Where is the Church when it hurts?”

Often the Church is looking the other way, focussing on the personal gain of the Gospel, avoiding the questions surrounding pain and suffering and therefore avoiding those who hurt and struggle.

Junebug

Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 9:59 pm. 0 comments

A couple of weeks ago I was getting very angry. Not about anything in particular, just in general. Small things which annoyed me would send me into a rage and I didn’t know why and found it hard to control myself. I swore and smacked a cupboard door at one point over fumbling with a tea spoon.

I was a bit scared too becuase I didn’t like who I was or who I was becoming because of this anger. I slowly realised that it was probably due to a wave of grief over Amy, plus anxiety about Toby arriving and about needing to make more money through my web business to support him and Mary-Lou.

One evening during this time I sat down and watched a film called Junebug. It’s about an art collector from Chicago who goes to meet her new husband’s family who live in the southern states. The film has a unique style and shows the clash between her liberal tactile ways and the conservative, christian family in a humerous way. The reason the film is called Junebug is because her Husband’s brother’s wife is expecting a baby imminently and wants to call it Junebug.

As I was enjoying the film, I was intrigued by the husbands brother, the father of the unborn child. He obviously had issues, one of which was anger. In one scene he tries to record a TV program for his wife while she is having her baby shower upstairs but the video recorder kept ejecting the video. He gets so angry that he starts shouting and swearing which makes the ladies upstairs hush in embarrassment. His wife comes down to see what’s wrong but he rejects her help and throws the video against the wall. I was interested and glad to see somebody else dealing with anger issues.

A bit later in the film, his wife goes into labour, rushes off to the hospital all excited, then loses the baby.

At this point I literally sat forward in my chair. I couldn’t believe this baby had been stillborn. I couldn’t believe that such a movie would deal with stillbirth. I was positively shocked. All of a sudden the film took on a whole new meaning for me.

The most amazing scene in the film was in the hospital after the baby had died. The mum and her husbands brother were talking together and the mum (played by Amy Adams who was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for her role) went beck and forth between talking about normal things and crying so desperately about her lost baby and her husband. It reminded me of our weekedn in the hospital after Amy died. We too would go from talking normally about something to crying together then back to chatting casually. It was a very strange time.

One of the things the mum said in the hospital scene was that she felt so scared because shes didn’t know what her husband was thinking. He had left the hospital without saying a word. I felt even more that I related to this character, this angry dad who had lost his first baby. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that I could relate to a character so intimately. It was reassuring but sad.

God Explodes

Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago at 7:55 pm. 1 comment

I recently blogged about Job and his suffering and how he chose to still love and honour God throughout. I was inspired by the book Where Is God When It Hurts to realise that Job didn’t deserve the suffering he endured and that God does not punish people with suffering.

Further on in the book, Philip Yancey explains his confusion at God’s response once he does eventually decide to speak to Job. Instead of comforting Job with “there, there, well done for enduring, you’ve matured and proved me right to Satan, thanks!” he launches into one of his longest speeches in the Bible all about what an awesome creator he is! He pretty much ignores the previous 35 chapters worth of questions about pain and suffering!

So does this mean that God has no answers? Or does it mean he has a huge self-centred ego? Yancey suggests that God’s message to Job is

“Stop whining, you have no idea what you’re talking about”. Or as Frederick Buechner puts it:

“God doesn’t explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explaining would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam… God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals Himself.”

I swing from being intensely angry that I don’t know why Amy died and why this happened to me, to feeling OK about not knowing since it’s something I’ll never get an answer to.

But I do like the idea that God would rather simply reveal himself and his love to those who suffer than give pat answers which sum up the purpose for peoples pain. I like that idea because it points to God’s compassion.

Yet I feel distant from God.

My Mum gave us a copy of a Nooma video about grief a few months after Amy died. In it Rob Bell explains the Jewish tradition of Sitting Shivah where people coming to see those who are mourning, . They don’t crowd them with activity or conversation, they simply sit and wait for the mourner to make the first move. Rob Bell suggests that this tradition comes from the Jewish understanding about how God relates to those who mourn. He sits close by waiting for the mourner to come to Him. He doesn’t pressure them to keep praying or reading the bible everyday, He just waits near by.

When Mary-Lou and I watched the Nooma video, the Sitting Shivah idea really helped us relax about us and God. We both have got a struggle on our hands in terms of feeling secure and safe in Gods arms.

We’ve only just started facing Him again from time to time.Which is probably why I feel distant from Him. I do believe He wants to reveal Himself to me in new and unexpected ways, but for now, I’m still working things through in my heart

Stop This Train

Posted 10 months, 3 weeks ago at 6:03 pm. 1 comment

I recently came across a song by John Mayer called Stop This Train (lyrics here) which is beautiful.

I have listened to it over and over again over the last week or so, each time finding myself connect with his lyrics. It gives me a feeling of nostalgia and a longing for a different version of my life.

I finally expressed how I connected with the song to Mary-Lou last night when talking about feeling sad about losing Amy. If this is the train I’m on, the one where Amy has died, then yeah, stop this train because I want to be on the one where Amy didn’t die.

In his lyrics, John Mayer sings about the advice his Dad gives him. He says wait until you’re older, then you’ll realise that you can’t stop this train, you can’t change the place you’re in.

I really like the idea that age brings wisdom. I really loved the Proverbs about wisdom when I was younger. And perhaps I’ve idolised wisdom at points.

But if I’m to grow wise through losing Amy, I don’t want it. I want her.

The Pain Blame Game

Posted 11 months ago at 11:08 pm. 1 comment

I have asked many times why Amy died. I’m not asking how she died, her stillbirth was one of the 50% that are unexplained. I want to know why.

Mary-Lou particularly has battled with the idea that Amy died because of something she did or didn’t do. No matter how much doctors, midwives and friends reassure her that she didn’t cause Amy’s stillbirth, she still wonders. All she wants is for God himself to tell her that it wasn’t her fault, but he hasn’t.

I knew this was a broken world long before Amy died. I grew up in an evangelical family and was aware that bad things happen to good people as a result of The Fall. I also believed that God was totally good, and this confused me a bit. But I had never experienced any major suffering to have to really figure it out, it was just another confusing tension which I could easily put to the back of my mind. I was also aware of my own sins and pride and never believed that I was one of those good people who didn’t deserve bad things.

When we suffer pain, or a loss, we humans often question why it has happened to us. I wondered whether Amy died as a punishment to me. I couldn’t think of a single sin that might have caused the punishment, afterall, there are many to choose from.

I have also been angry with God and wanted to blame him. WTF was he doing when she died? I believe he had the power to save her, so why, why, why didn’t he?

Reading “Where Is God When It Hurts” recently helped me think through the idea that Amy died as a punishment to me. Philip Yancey points to Job and Jesus to show that it is not a valid conclusion.

Job was blameless, that’s why Satan wanted to ruin him to prove to God that mankind will only freely love him whenthings are good. So Jobs suffering was not because he deserved it or as a punishment and even though Jobs friends urged him to repent of whatever sin broughthim his suffering, he disagreed that this was the reason and still chose to love and honour God.

Then there was Jesus who relieved many individuals of their suffering put never inflicted pain or suffering as a punishment. If God regularly punishes people, you’d have thought Jesus would have broken a few bones!

There are of course plenty of examples of God punishing Israel and others (after repeated warnings) but Yancey argues that this is not how God operates this side of Jesus.

Great. For me. But non of this helps Mary-Lou who is desperate to hear God tell her it wasn’t her fault.

Losing Discipline

Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 11:27 pm. 0 comments

When I was a teen I found self discipline fairly easy.

I never had a rebelious period in my youth. I put that down to the fact that when I was 14 I learned alot more about my heart condition and what God said to Mum & Dad during my first few weeks. It left me with a clear and strong sense of spiritual purpose and thinking that if God had both saved me physically when I was a baby and spiritually by dying on the cross, the least I could do is give him everything in return.

My zeal and determination with self-discipline was helped by great youth leaders and being challenged and inspired by books like “Celebration Of Discipline” by Richard Foster and “The Pursuit Of God” by A. W. Tozer.

Before Amy died I went on a made-up Soup diet to lose weight and I did well, I lost 1 1/2 stone in 6 weeks. Since finding out we’re pregnant again I committed to another diet with a friend, except we call this one a “lifestyle change”. Initially I lost quite a few pounds but then we both plateaued and over Christmas I put on some weight.

Even with the accountability of disciplining myself I’m finding I just can’t be bothered. I think I’m going through a wave of grief over losing Amy and that might be a factor. But frankly, I don’t care about disciplining my eating habits - it just doesn’t seem to matter.

Yet something tugs at me inside and tells me that I’m failing and it is important and I’m being childish and just sort yourself out and the tension makes me miserable.

If being undisciplined is not doing something you know it’s right to do (something the Bible says is sin), are we allowed to be undisciplined at times?

Does grief excuse lack of discipline?

I hope so.

A Broken Heart

Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago at 11:17 pm. 0 comments

Mary-Lou and I were at our favourite restaurant on the Curry Mile this evening - Fatoosh. Over the speakers Damien Rice was singing and we agreed that his music was quite sad. I really liked what I was hearing, having never really heard his stuff, and wondered why there aren’t equally talented Christians writing this kind of sad, melancholic music.

I remembered listening to a CD of Peter Mayhew talking about the Lament in the Bible and noting that very few popular worship songs sung today are laments. Most of them are praise or adoration songs, often based on Psalms yet most of the Psalms were laments.

It dawned on me that many popular secular songs are laments talking about lost love, painful experiences or broken hearts.

I wondered whether God had broken my heart.

I feel that God has broken my heart by allowing Amy to die. He had the power to save her but didn’t resulting in all this pain and suffering I have felt, do feel and will feel. My heart for Amy was broken since I am not able to express my love for her to her int he million ways I wanted to. And my heart for God was broken since he didn’t stop something from happening which damaged me immensly.

He has allowed me to suffer and feel deep, aching pain, most of which I have yet to face and it has broken me and my heart, or love, for God.

How can you mend a broken heart?