Tasked to Endure

(Baby Kalea, three days old)

What does grief feel like lately?

• It feels like not knowing how to answer the question “How are you doing?”

• It feels like oscillating between either hyper productive or hyper withdrawn.

• It’s Christmas music triggering tears. Not sad tears or happy tears— just tears.

• It’s finding anything spiritual or religious really hard to talk about. It feels like my mouth is clumsy— like I’ve lost my voice— and lost a part of who I am.

• It’s trauma nightmares. Kalea dying many different ways, always accompanied by the last image when I found her. Nightmares aren’t supposed to be real. You’re supposed to wake up and feel relived because it was “just a dream.” But this was real, it wasn’t just a dream, and it actually happened. And I somehow have to reconcile myself with that, pull myself out of bed, and get on with the day— minus my child.

• It feels like hardening up again. The walls that were shattered and down for so many months are slowly coming back.

• And most perplexing of all— despite the hard days, the nightmares, the trauma— life is (I say cautiously) good. Things are going well. We are happy. And maybe that’s a bit confusing. Because I can’t help but feel on edge. Like, alright, it’s been good and quiet for too long— what’s coming next?

• Grief lately feels like… waiting, existing, enduring.

I wrote this in my journal October 15th—

"I’ve been in tears the last two days over Kalea. …The grief is swallowing me again. …I miss her. I ache for her. I think about her everywhere I go— because everywhere I go— she isn’t there. Isn’t there and she should be. I’m hurting. I’m aching. I cry until I have a headache and can’t see.

What I hate the most— looking back at pictures from March 2020… We didn’t know. We were so blissfully unaware of how precious those days were. We didn’t know those were her last days. I wish the pictures of her continued past March 28th, 2020. But they don’t. The camera roll is forever frozen on March 28th. Her last picture.

…Today it feels like I can’t live with this pain. There is no balm for this. How do you live with this pain?”

The grief has been heavy this week. It’s like I’ve been thrown back in time and am stuck reliving that first week after loss. I’m full of sadness and grief and anger and “what-ifs”. It’s the kind of pain that steals my breath and exposes my heart to the sharpness of blade it rests against. One movement and I feel it will take my heartbeat too. I’m surprised to discover that much of living through grief is spent selfishly wishing for death— waiting for relief, wanting the suffering to end.

The waves of grief hit so unpredictably. The sea is calm— and then it isn’t. I’m fine— and then I’m drowning. The intensity of the waves never fail to reveal my fragility, the vast emptiness of losing her, and the total inability to escape it all. I am powerless to do anything but ride it out and take my beating. In the quiet moments of recovery I wonder how I can possibly live the rest of my life like this— endlessly locked between the crushing weight of the wave and the exhaustion of dragging my heavy water-logged body back to shore.

“There is no balm for this— how do you live with the pain?”

That question is always floating ahead of me— taunting me like the glare of an orange life jacket bobbing just out reach.

I look again at that last picture— her little face frozen between a nose scrunch and a squeal, a funny expression, dark hair contrasting against her sea green headband and matching onesie. My own tired smile, not knowing how different our lives would be tomorrow. I look like a different person. March 28th, 2020.

One day before her death.

David walks in expecting to see me painting— not crying— and not like this. Slumped against the towel rack in the bathroom with silent tears staring at that last picture on his phone.

All I want is a blessing.

He scoops me up like he’s done so many times over the last six months and gives me a blessing. I don’t believe any comfort can come right now, but I do believe in God. I need Him right now more than I need comfort. The unspoken shadow in my grieving heart is nothing but a wish for it to all end.

The blessing comes— “Always be ready and prepared to stand before the Savior, but know that there is a time is appointed to all men, and you are tasked to endure.”

The moment he said those words, it hit my heart with a powerful force— “You are tasked to endure.”

Somehow those words filled me with hope and peace and comfort I didn’t expect. They were the tiniest speck on the horizon, but something I desperately needed to orientate myself after completely losing my bearings in the waves.

I mean, isn’t enduring what everyone is tasked to do? Isn’t that the whole task of life—to endure it?

I found this amazing talk called “Enduring the End” by Stephen E. Robinson. He says “For some people, the term endure calls up images of tar and feathers or other forms of persecution. But few Saints actually face such suffering today. Are we therefore less tested than the Saints of former times? I think not.

The fact is that enduring affliction is only a small part of what “enduring to the end” means. Most frequently, the scriptures use the term endure to mean “to last,” “to continue,” or “to remain,” rather than “to suffer.” …Thus, to endure is to continue in the path we adopted at baptism by keeping our commitments to Christ, until the end of our mortal life.”

I envision this concept of enduring best in the lyrics of a song. “Broken” by Lifehouse.

“I'm falling apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
Is there healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on (I’m still holding)
I'm barely holding on to you

I’m hanging on another day,
just to see what you will throw my way.
And I'm hanging on to the words you say,
you said that I will, will be OK.”

This is the place between the waves. The place where nothing awful is happening (it’s already happened) but nothing imminently wonderful is happening either. It’s place of deciding when you wake up in the morning if you’re going to hold onto the nightmare of yesterday or embrace the dawn of today. It’s waiting on the Lord when His presence feels far away. It’s the decision to keep going when nothing is going for you. It’s continuing to show up for Christ again and again with outstretched hands asking with hope (and not with anxiety), “What next, Lord?”

It’s the hope of better things still to come and the resolve to simply remain in existence through the hard things.

It’s the promise to Christ that we will stay with Him though oscillating emotions, change, grief, disappointment, uncertainty, tears, and trauma.

It’s holding on— even if it’s just barely. Lucky for us, “barely” counts with Christ.