Erin Ulerich

Choosing Hope in New Beginnings

It’s August and that’s got me thinking about beginnings.

Of course, because it’s August, my kiddos are thinking about new pencils and backpacks and class schedules. They have had time to squeeze all the fun out of summer and are alternating between anxiety and anticipation as they imagine what this school year may hold.

But I’m thinking about the way beginnings are not all created equal.

A beginning signals the start of something. It also marks the end of something.

For my fellow hope writer Niki Hardy, the launch of her new book, Breathe Again marks the end of pouring over her manuscript and editing phrases for the 10 zillionth time. It means holding the finished product in her hands. It means celebrating with all the streamers and balloons. It also signals the beginning of a speaking tour to promote her book.

But not all beginnings mark pleasant endings or exciting beginnings.

Sometimes a beginning holds grief, such as figuring out a new normal for your life after a break-up, a miscarriage, the death of a loved one, or a diagnosis.

Some beginnings naturally bring hope. The difficult beginnings give us an opportunity us to choose between hope and despair.

Choosing hope in new beginnings changes everything.

We were created for hope, because we were created by the God of hope. We are loved deeply by the One who offers us hope that never wavers in a world where nothing stays the same.

Choosing hope requires us to trust what God says about Himself, what He says about His love for us, and what He says about living in this broken world. This isn’t blind trust, it is a trust that grows as we get to know the God of hope.

What kind of beginning are you in right now? A new school year? A new job? Figuring out a new normal for your life?

Do the words hope and trust feel impossible right now? It’s okay. Choosing hope is a process. Getting to know God enough to trust Him takes time. If you are looking toward Him, even with questions and doubts, you are looking in the right direction.

If you are reading this, wondering if hope really is a choice in your situation, I you encourage you to hop over to amazon and order Breathe Again: How to live well when life falls apart by Niki Hardy. Niki includes her own story in her book, as well as the stories of others who have chosen hope in all kinds of situations. Visit nikihardy.com and download the first chapter for free!

The Path of Grief, the Way of Hope

The January wind blew harsh on my face as I studied the line of trees stretching across the parking lot. Their branches had no leaves, but were loaded with small, hard, dark brown balls.

The trees matched the weather – bare, stark, hard. And the weather matched my heart as it trudged along the winding path of grief.

Grief is like a raging storm scattered with lightning bolts. These short bursts of light in the darkness momentarily reveal the deepest parts of our soul. These short bursts of light shake us to our core and let us know if what we are holding onto is strong enough to stretch into eternity. Like a lightning bolt slicing a mighty oak, grief splits through the distractions and barriers in our lives and brings us face to face with the reality that if we are without God then we are without hope.

But in the hands of God, grief mingles with hope. Loss and life intertwine.

In the midst of grief, hope reminds us that we were created with eternity in our hearts. We were created for more than this life could ever offer.

Hope comforts our hearts with the truth that our loved ones are with the Lord.
But even that comfort reminds us of our loss because if they are with the Lord, they are not with us. At the same time, there is also great encouragement. If they are with the Lord, we will see them again. The loss, though painful, is not permanent.

And what are we to do as we live in this in-between?

We are to walk the path of grief, so that hope can have its way in us.

God uses grief to touch places of our hearts that would otherwise remain unchanged. Grief is messy and uncomfortable, and the path of grief takes time. If we try to rush through grief, we will miss the hope.

“In western Christian culture, we’ve been conditioned to hide sadness, cover up weakness, and put a strong and cheerful face forward. We hide our grief for fear that others will mistake it for ingratitude. We bury our lament before it’s finished because we’ve been told there’s an open window somewhere that we should be focusing on instead.
And yet, when I look at Scripture, I see welcomed space for these things. There are no time limits or cut-off dates placed over them. Jeremiah does this beautifully in Lamentations 3. While the chapter ends with hope, there’s nothing of platitude in his writing.” Tasha Jun
In God’s hands, grief builds our trust in Him, strengthens our faith, and teaches us to walk in hope through this broken world because we know that a time is coming when all things will be made right.
The harsh January wind won’t always blow. Eventually, the warmth of the sun and the gentle spring breeze will coax the hard balls on the trees to reveal the delicate buds hidden inside. These buds will open, covering the trees with a explosion of white flowers, as if to celebrate being made new.
Loss and life. Grief and hope.

Not the Way It’s Supposed To Be

When it comes to dealing with grief, God doesn’t leave us to our own strength or resources. He walks through it with us. Jesus felt the same “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be” feeling that we feel when He stood in front of Lazarus’ grave.

“This just feels wrong. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

I’ve said this many times in my life.

I said it in 8th grade when a friend committed suicide.

I said it when I watched Grandma sobbing beside the body of the man she’d loved her whole life, clutching his wedding band in her delicate hands.

I said it in 10th grade when I stood beside Pappaw’s grave, staring at the trees in the distance as the pastor spoke, clinching my fists to keep the tears from falling.

This time I was in my early 30’s sitting with my Daddy outside King Daughter’s Hospital in Yazoo City, MS where Grandma was losing her battle with Leukemia.

The familiar mixture of sorrow and anger welled up as I spit out the words.

Daddy put his arm around me while I sobbed. He waited until I was quiet, and in his deep gentle voice, he said, “Nothing about death is right. Death didn’t exist until sin entered the world. It doesn’t feel right because we weren’t made to experience death.”

Through the years I’ve often thought of Daddy’s statement. And now, as I am walking through another time of grief, the words come back to me. We weren’t made for this.

We weren’t made for this, yet we still experience it. What are we supposed to do since we don’t have the resources or strength within ourselves to walk through these shadows?

In His mercy, God doesn’t leave us to our own resources or strength. He walks through it with us. He put on our flesh, He put on our feelings, in order to be with us. And He felt this exact feeling as He stood in front of the grave of His friend Lazarus.

Jesus got mad, like we do when death strikes our loved ones. But He didn’t get angry at God, like we often do. He directed His anger at the source of the problem. He was angry at death and sin. And when He wept, He didn’t leak out a few tears or get a lump in His throat. He burst into tears.

He felt angry that the people He loved had to undergo such pain. He was indignant that sin dared to wreak such havoc. And He grieved. Rev. Wally Bumpus puts it this way. “Jesus was grieved at what death had done to the crown of God’s creation.”

Jesus was saying “This is not the way it is supposed to be.” He acknowledged the pain-filled reality.

Then He called His friend out of the grave.

Jesus felt the anger, the soul-deep turbulence that we feel when death invades our space. He is qualified to walk through grief with us. As the One who destroyed death by rising from the dead, He has the power to comfort us like no other.

Knowing that my Jesus felt this same “this isn’t right” feeling changes the way I handle my grief. Instead of trying to push it aside and ignore it, I can follow His example and acknowledge this pain-filled reality. My grief can be mingled with hope because the way things are now is not the way things will always be.

Because of Jesus, one day death will be fully dead, we will be fully alive, and things will be the way they are supposed to be for all eternity.

The Unfolding of the Ultimate Story

There has been a great wrestling going on in my soul.

Truth vs. feelings, hope vs. grief.

Even after writing such a hope-filled post, Restored Before the Face of God, there are moments when the grief and loss drown out hope.

My brain is still trying to wrap around the tragedy while my heart feels the great loss. Last week I sat in my home in Mississippi and watched the procession and funeral taking place in India. It was dark here while India had already moved on to the next day.

I watched men place their caskets into ambulance-type vehicles while people around them sang in their language. The video showed huge banners with their pictures covering each vehicle. As I read the quote on each banner, the wrestling within me intensified.

“My purpose in life is to serve the Lord by serving among His people and taking care of their health needs (in India).” – Sharron Naik

“I want to be a minister back in my country (India), like my dad and serve my Nation.” – Aaron Naik

“I want to go back to India and be involved with the law/politics and I want to spend my time defending the truth of Christianity and the Bible.” – Joy Naik

The wrestling grows stronger because I desperately want this tragedy to make sense. But nothing about this adds up. These three loved the Lord and had plans to go back to India to serve Him. They were part of the Banjara people group, a group where less than 1% are Christians. If we are talking about progress in spreading the Gospel, doesn’t it make more sense to have them alive, telling others about Christ? Were their hopes and dreams just a waste?

I know that I’m not the only one who is wrestling deep within. We live in a broken world and we all have circumstances in our lives where things don’t makes sense. Where 1+1=3 no matter how much we try to figure it out. In all the tears, the heart-wrenching wails, the fists clenched in anger, our soul wrestling comes down to one question:

What kind of God are You?

There.

I said it.

This is a question we might whisper over a coffee conversation with our closest friend, but we’d never ask it out loud at church. People typically don’t like questions like this, because it feels wrong to question God.

But I think God loves it when we ask this question.

When we get down to the rock-bottom, nitty-gritty and finally ask this question it is because all the things we’ve been leaning on, all the ideas we’ve created about God, have FAILED. It means that the god we’ve created in our image, the god that we work to please in hopes that he will love us or at least answer our prayers is POWERLESS. It means that, maybe for the first time, we are actually seeking God for who He says He is.

As we seek Him we can ask ALL the questions we need to ask. I have found that God doesn’t really match my “whys” with reasons. Instead He shows me more of who He is. Through my grief He shows me that He is the God of all comfort, that He really is near to the brokenhearted and is gentle with those who are hurting. He meets my needs, showing me that He provides for His children.

How do we seek God? Where can we find a clear picture of who He is and what He is like? We can find Him in the Word, because it contains His words to us about Himself. And through the Word made flesh, because Jesus shows us what God is like.

At Sharron, Aaron, and Joy’s funeral, Ravi Zacharias described God’s compassion through Jesus when He raised Lazarus from the dead.

“Jesus knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet He stood in front of that tomb and wept. Why? Why did the Lord of Glory and the Lord of hope shed those tears? Because He knew what you and I would feel at the loss of a loved one, having to wait over a period of time before we would see the ultimate story revealed. He knew the pain that you and I would endure.”

Because of His compassion, God can strengthen and sustain us in our grief. “We have a suffering Savior, a wounded Savior, and for the wounded heart, the wounded Savior is the best answer, the best source of sustenance” (Ravi Zacharias)

Dr. Zacharias goes on to describe Jesus feeling abandoned by God when He was on the cross. “At the very moment He thought He was abandoned and forsaken, He was actually in the center of His Father’s Will, providing for you and for me, so that the greater death – which is spiritual death – would not be that which we endure.”

The very depth of Christ’s sufferings was the way that the Ultimate Story could happen. His suffering opened the way for our redemption and our eternal life with God, instead of eternal death removed from God.

“His Word abides forever and pulls the whole story together and all of the threads that may look desperate- it brings them together to a perfect design that He had in mind. Your young, precious children, Sharron, Joy, and Aaron. The threads were in God’s Hand, every day designed for them was already written in the Book before it ever came to be. He gave you the joy of having them for those few years. Three precious gems. They are now in the Presence of the Lord laying their treasures at His feet.” (Ravi Zacharias)

Hearing the truth proclaimed at the funeral service didn’t answer all my questions, but it did calm some of the wrestling as it brought my eyes back to God’s character, His love, and His perspective. His Ultimate Story is written in love with one goal in mind – bringing people into relationship with Himself. This tragedy, this loss, will be redeemed into a powerful, beautiful chapter as His story unfolds.

Restored Before the Face of God

Reconciliation means to restore before the face of God. This word is hitting me hard right now. Our family and community are grieving the tragic deaths of three of our students and friends. These dear friends are face-to-face with God, still serving the Lord they loved. Death touched their bodies, but could not separate them from God’s love.

The greatest rescue mission in the world didn’t end with the rescue. It marked the beginning of God’s ultimate plan for His beloved creation: Reconciliation.

Reconciliation means to restore before the face of God. We are rescued in order to be reconciled with God. We are reconciled so that we can experience what our hearts were created for- intimacy with Him.

Reconciliation flows from God’s heart. Throughout the Old Testament we see His desire to be in relationship with His people. Over and over He said, “I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Our salvation through Jesus makes the way so that we can follow Him, love Him, feel His love for us, and one day, come before Him face-to-face.

The word reconciliation is hitting me hard during this season. Our family and community are walking through grief following the tragic deaths of three of our students and friends. This sudden loss impacts the dorms they lived in, the church they worshipped in, and the school they attended. It impacts churches and communities around the world who knew and loved them.

This sudden loss creates a vacuum for all the plans they had for the future. Sharron, Aaron, and Joy Naik loved the Lord and wanted to serve Him with their lives.

And all those plans are gone.

Or are they?

God’s desire to be reconciled with His people was so great that He sent His Son to pay for their sins, so that we could be in relationship with Him.

If God’s heart desire is to bring us face-to-face with Him, does He long for His children to be with Him? Is that why Psalm 116:15 says Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints? The word used for precious can also be translated as valuable. Is the death of His saints of great value because it marks the completion of the work He began in them? Is it of great value because it means that they can finally experience life as He intended it to be?

The enemy cannot tempt Sharron, Aaron, and Joy any more, he cannot whisper lies into their ears. He cannot touch them at all because they are in God’s presence. They are fully at peace with God. And they are worshipping Him with a nature made whole and a heart set free.

They are still serving the God they loved. Even death could not bring that to an end. Is this what it means in 1 Corinthians when it says death is swallowed up in victory?

And what about us? The ones grieving this great loss on this side of heaven?

The work God began in you and me is not yet complete. Is it possible that their death is a part of the process of God working deep within our hearts? Is it possible that these events could unlock parts of our hearts that we have kept closed off to God? Is it possible that God could bring beauty and joy from this tragedy?

I believe it is.

Our three dear friends came to us from Hyderabad, India, a city of 6.81 million. They had to adjust to our small community in French Camp, Mississippi with a population of less than 200. And many of the cultural differences between the two places were confusing. Today they are in the culture they were made for, no need for adjusting, no culture shock, because they are finally home.

Who Needs Jesus? The Ones Needing Rescue

Light broke into the darkness with an impossibility, a virgin with child. Its beacon was a bright star, and the Rescuer was a baby.

The Navy SEAL team crept through the woods with one goal in mind.

Rescue the hostage.

They slipped into the water of the swamp surrounding the enemy’s camp. One shot the guard on the pier while another caught his body and carefully lowered it into the murky water without a single splash.

They moved closer into enemy territory, searching for the CIA operative, hoping she was still alive.

Enemy soldiers rushed toward them, around corners, shooting through windows. And still they pressed forward, their goal in sight.

As one team member gently reassured her and picked up her beaten and bruised body, other team members pushed the enemy back.

The SEAL team got out of camp with the enemy’s gunfire zinging all around them. The enemy wasn’t going to give her up without a fight.

And neither was the SEAL team, because she was worth rescuing.

This rescue scene in Act of Valor always leaves me tense and breathless, even though I’ve seen it a thousand times. Honestly, it’s the only part of the movie I’ve seen because my husband (who LOVES this movie) calls me in to watch it every time he watches the movie. The last 5 minutes are glorious because it ends with the enemy’s truck looking like huge chunks of Swiss cheese.

But it also leaves me breathless because it is an example of how God rescues us from darkness. Before we ever whisper God, please save me, before we see that we need to be rescued, an intricate back story has taken place. A back story that involved the greatest rescue mission ever.

It’s a back story that sounds like a movie plot. A war between good and evil, between the Creator of the Universe and His enemy who desperately wants to rule that same Universe. But it’s better than any movie plot because it’s real.

God created this beautiful world, and created man and woman, made in His image. He put in the human race a need for relationship, connection, belonging.

Then God’s enemy turned His people against Him.

And even in the messy, sorrowful aftermath, God promised to send One who would crush the head of evil. With those words God breathed a whisper of hope, a promise of a rescue.

Through all the years God reminded His people. He whispered words of hope, words of Someone who was coming to save them.

He planned the greatest rescue mission ever.

Light broke into the darkness with an impossibility, a virgin with child. Its beacon was a bright star, and the Rescuer was a baby. God didn’t go in with guns blazing, but as the most vulnerable of all creatures.

Everything changed when the light broke into the darkness. The people who were looking for Jesus to come saw the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s whisper of hope. The greatest rescue began with His birth that night in Bethlehem and progressed in His death on the cross, and was complete when He rose from the dead, bringing peace.

Not peace between good and evil, but peace between God and the people He created. This rescue mission was to get His creation, His beloved, out of the enemy’s hold.

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Where are you today? Does the thought of being rescued and having peace with God seem far-fetched? Do you feel you are too far gone, out of God’s reach?

Let this crazy truth sink in. Jesus left the perfection of heaven, stepped into time and history to carry out this rescue mission with you in mind.

You are loved by God, made in His image, made for connection, belonging, and love.

You are worth fighting for and you were made to live in the light.

The Weight of Guilt, the Need of a Savior

The Reagan family on Blue Bloods are my people, my almost-family. When Jamie worked undercover, I worried like a big sister. I celebrated when he and Edie got engaged, and I’m still mad at the writers for the tragic death of Danny’s wife, Linda.

And the daughter’s name is Erin, so that makes us practically family, right?

Now,they are very different from my real family. We live in Mississippi, they live in New York. We have relatively safe jobs, they are in law enforcement. But the bond between them reminds me of my family, the way the siblings are all so different, and the way they love each other deep down, even when they don’t agree.

I also love how this show uses the power of story to show both sides of real situations that can’t always be solved before the end credits.

In Season 8, episode 9, a man was released after serving his time in jail. He moved into an apartment building, ready to re-start his life, but no one wanted him there.

You see, he had been in prison for molesting children, and the apartment building he moved into had many children. He ends up being severely beaten by one of the dads in the building, and at the end of the episode he tells Erin and Danny, “I did my time, but I’m still guilty. There’s no absolution for what I’ve done.”

The years he spent in jail fulfilled the consequences the justice system deemed appropriate. But those years did not replace what he had taken from those children. It didn’t free him from guilt in other people’s eyes, or even his own. The court said he was free, but he was more trapped outside of jail than he had ever been inside.

The law uses the words guilty and free, but our hearts carry the weight of those words. In reality, the world offered him no hope, no solution. He was ruined, stuck, and helpless to change that status.

And this is exactlywhere the enemy of our soul wants us. He dangles temptation in front of us, promises that we will be liked, respected, found worthy if we listen to him. He is called the deceiver of the whole world because he gets us to this stuck place and offers no way out from the weight of our sin.

Satan deceives us, traps us, and leaves us there.

There is a weight to sin. Guilt feels heavy on our shoulders and in our gut. We want to feel clean again. We want to erase the guilt, to undo the things we’ve done. But we can’t. We are like a kid with muddy hands trying to wipe mud off of a clean sheet. No matter how hard we try, we just keep spreading the mud around.

We need a refuge from the weight, we need a safe place, protection from our accuser.

The world can’t offer us refuge.

But God can because He is our refuge.

The world can’t offer us a way to erase our guilt.

But God can, because He sent a Person to remove our guilt.

The world can’t offer forgiveness or redemption.

But God can, because he sent a Redeemer.

The character in Blue Bloods was right. There is no absolution apart from Christ. In Christ there is forgiveness, there is absolution, there is moving forward.

The Gospel is called the Good News because it breaks the sin cycle we are stuck in. The only action that offers forgiveness and accomplishes absolution is the work of Jesus – His perfect life, His death on the cross that paid for our sins. The Gospel is the answer to our entrapment. It is Good News because it sets us free – the way we were meant to live.

“Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He came into history from the outside of history; He did not evolve out of history. Our Lord’s birth was an advent; He did not come from the human race, He came into it from above. Jesus Christ is not the best human being; He is a Being Who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is God incarnate; not man becoming God, but God coming into human flesh, coming into it from the outside. ” – – Oswald Chambers, The Psychology of Redemption

Who Needs Jesus?

So who in this broken world needed Jesus to come?
The hurting, the broken, the running, the far away, the pretenders, the wounded, the helpless, the guilty, the trapped, the ones needing to be rescued. The baby in the manger makes it possible for every heart to have peace with God.

Stefani Carmichael got me thinking about the world Jesus stepped into on that first Christmas in her post The World Jesus Enters.

It was a broken world, like ours.

What about the people? What were they like? Did they need Jesus to come?

They were a lot like you and me, like the people we see at Walmart, in the line at the bank, and the ones we work out next to in the gym. People looking to rules, religion, or relationships for purpose.

This broken world has been filled with hurting, broken people for a very long time.

Let’s scoot back to the beginning where the story really begins.

The backdrop of the manger scene is the Garden of Eden. That is where our need for a Savior began.

God created this beautiful world, and created man and woman in His image. As part of His image, He wove into our DNA a need for relationship, connection, belonging.

Satan didn’t bring an army in and confront God head-on. Instead, he slithered in and convinced Eve that the face-to-face relationship she had with God wasn’t enough. His words cast a shadow in her mind about the goodness, love, and intention of God.

O how he must have celebrated as she and Adam bit into that fruit. The precious souls God created and loved had rejected Him. With that bite the beautiful world God spoke into being became enemy territory.

“The serpent told the human race that disobeying God was the only way to realize their fullest happiness and potential, and this delusion has sunk deep into every human heart.” – TIm Keller

The world God made grew dark, the people He loved grew blind. His people became deaf to His words and the enemy’s hold on them grew stronger and stronger.

The people made in God’s image, made for connection, belonging, and love, knew, even while sitting in the darkness that something was missing.

They yearned deeply for what they were made for, even though they had been in the darkness for so long that they didn’t know what to call it. They only knew something was missing and they couldn’t find it in themselves.

Some turned to worshipping idols, literally turning pieces of wood and stone into objects of worship. Some turned to worshipping life in this world, living in the moment, keeping busy, or filling their lives with pleasure. Some turned to worshipping control with rigid rule keeping.

All this worship was an effort to stop the yearning and longing. But only one Person could fulfill that longing for connection, belonging, and love.

Because God is the only one who can answer this longing, He is the only one who can set His people free.

That freedom began with a baby. Jesus, who takes away the sins of the world.

He saves us from our sins. Not just the ones we think are really bad, but our daily sins, our daily hurts, our daily messes. He is with us.

The baby in the manger makes it possible for every heart to have peace with God.

So who in this broken world needed Jesus to come?

The hurting, the broken, the running, the far away, the pretenders, the wounded, the helpless, the guilty, the trapped, the ones needing to be rescued.

We need Jesus. And we are the reason He came.

Surviving a Southern Family Get-Together

In the South, holidays mean family gatherings. They may last for an entire day, a weekend, or even a week. No matter the duration, there are sure to be certain ingredients.

At any Southern family gathering there will be food. The best food you have ever tasted.

There are also likely to be a healthy supply of fireworks.

There will also be football, which means a game will actually be playing on a TV somewhere in the house or people will spend a good amount of time talking about football, or both.

And there will be talking. Lots of talking.

If you are new to the family, you may get trapped in a corner by a well meaning relative who wants to show you the scar from her recent surgery, or to tell you a random detail about a relative you’ve never met. Just smile, nod, and use your manners. (Yes Ma’m and No Ma’m)

Where a family gathers, there will be storytelling.

Whether your family sits on chairs scattered around the porch, around a formal dining room table, or on 5 gallon buckets around a bonfire, story swapping is going to happen. It is important to know two important rules of storytelling in the South.

Rule Number 1: Embellishing is allowed, as long as you keep a few of the key details intact. For example: It really was Bubba’s pond that you caught that fish on, but the size of the fish and the fury of the fight may differ each time you tell it, depending on your audience and beverage you are consuming. If you are drinking anything stronger than sweet tea, the sky’s the limit!

If anyone asks “Did it really happen like that?” it is perfectly acceptable to smile and say “Sure it did,” “Dang straight!”, or a similar variation. Everyone knows a least one part of your story isn’t accurate; they just don’t know which part. And that is exactly the point.

Rule Number 2: The second rule, often learned through painful trial and error, is Do not interrupt the storyteller or suddenly become overly concerned with the accuracy of the facts. This will ruin the flow of the story and Uncle Jim will begin his story again from the beginning. Or, worse, alter the ending so that it lasts longer. A lot longer.

Meeting the Grandmother

If you are being introduced into a Southern family, this is important! Southern Grandmothers have the ability to size you up and decide if you are worth your weight in salt in one glance. You will know immediately if you have been placed on the scales and found wanting. And it is nearly impossible to reverse this decision unless you bless her with beautiful grandbabies down the road.

Besides your own worth, where you are from is also very important. Therefore, it is vital that you know as much as you can about your family history. It is best if you can trace your heritage back before the Mayflower. A true Southern grandmother will spend no less than 15 minutes trying to connect you with someone she knows. It’s an intense game of 6 degrees of separation, and your acceptance into the family is at stake.

Be sure to say Yes Ma’m and No ma’m. If you fail at the family history game, this may save your hide.

I grew up going to Southern family gatherings, so I think they are awesome. They are the only place you can be simultaneously interrogated and hugged to death. It’s one of the few places where you are surrounded by people who have known you your whole life and still love you. They are the place where family stories come to life, and new memories are made.

I would love to hear your family stories, embellished or not. Leave a comment below and we can raise a glass of sweet tea (or whatever is in that container behind Granny’s kitchen door) together in honor of our families!

Y’all have a great day!

Fighting For Hope Through Waves of Grief

Missing Robert

Grief is a tricky beast. It hides and makes you think you’ve “dealt”, you’ve “moved on”, and then it hits out of nowhere like a tsunami on a sunny day.

We don’t talk about him very much, but we miss him.

I miss the way he said “Well, hello there!” when he called around this time each year to get ideas for the kids’ Christmas presents.

Over the past 2 years, there have been plenty of What ifs, plenty of What could have been done conversations, but the bottom line is that while he didn’t he make the choice to die from his drug use, he made the decision to use drugs.

He made the decision to refuse help. “No program is going to help me,” he said, and that is when I knew he had decided to stop fighting for hope.

It was a decision that defied logic. He had been clean for years, so many years that my children only knew the fun Uncle Robert.

The Uncle Robert who helped them catch fireflies in the summer and who shot a zillion fireworks with them on New Year’s Eve.

It was a decision that led down a dark path, a path filled with cover-ups, half truths, and out right lies.

It was a decision that robbed us of our brother, friend, uncle, and son.

It was also a decision borne out of a daily battle to stay on the right path, a million unseen, un-applauded decisions made over the years of being sober. A battle he fought on his own.

He didn’t have to fight alone. We, his family, would have loved to celebrate victories with him. We would have loved to applaud his successes.

But we didn’t see the burden he carried until it was too late.

By the time we saw, his mind had already been turned upside down. By then, he had bought the lie that our words of hope and encouragement hid ulterior motives and that his drug dealer friends were the only ones who could be trusted.

Isn’t that the biggest twist of irony?

The people cooking the poison that killed him had convinced him that he was no longer alone because they had rescued him when no one else would.

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That is the game plan he followed with Robert, and the story he seeks to write for all of us through all kinds of addictions. If our enemy can keep our focus on numbing the pain in our life, he keeps our focus off of living the life we were meant to live.

Life that gives hope, that looks forward to the future, that believes that change is possible.

So many of Robert’s years were marked by his struggle, but that struggle was not who he was. He was self-less to a fault, fun to be around, and he loved his kids. That’s the legacy I choose to remember.

At the same time, I can’t ignore his last months and days. They are filled with somber warning. They remind me that when I listen to the lies of the dark, when I give in to my own struggles and try to numb out, I am one decision away from stepping on the same path that stole him from us.