I have pondered sharing my heart here on a blog.Perhaps it is too personal or too depressing or too boring or perhaps people will think I have ulterior motives but perhaps, just perhaps someone may read it and realize that joy can return even when you are faced with your deepest darkest heart aches.
When I was 27 years old,I had a missed miscarriage (the first of 3 that would occur in my life).I had to have surgery to remove the baby that had ceased to thrive and explain to my little children why there was no more baby in Mommy's tummy.
But I thought it was best to wait until after Christmas until the next week when surgery was scheduled. I never realized that I would need 14 blood transfusions in 4 hours from an amniotic embolism that caused my blood to not clot. I prayed all night to survive so that I could stay and raise my children. People who are D.I.C. (medical term for bleeding out) don't usually survive. People who have an amniotic embolism go through their heart don't usually survive. But a miracle happened and my prayers were answered! But that was the beginning of Christmas dramas to come.
In 1990, I had 2 more missed miscarriages and 1 complete miscarriage.The last surgery was 12 days before Christmas. I would never have any more children but as painful as that was at the time, I now see the wisdom of God. In 2000, my 2 year old grandchild had his eye removed because of cancer and got extremely sick from the chemotherapy. But he survived and God is merciful!
In 2002, my only son went to prison as a first-time youthful offender 4 days before Christmas. And my heart was broken. I sat in the bathroom floor screaming "Why,Why,Why? "banging the back of my head against the wall with each "why." It was a year of a thousand prayers...but he was home the next year in time for Christmas! And life got better.
In 2004,on April 1st,the most horrendous April Fool's Day "joke" occurred. The phone rang and a young man who worked with my husband told me that they were rushing my husband to the hospital. He had been in an accident and they weren't sure if he would make it through surgery because he had lost so much blood. A huge piece of machinery had almost ripped his arm off. But it was no joke! He had to have 19 surgeries over the next 8 months to save his arm. He had skin grafts, artery grafts, bone grafts, and much pain but he still has his arm. It will never look or function the same as before but it was a miracle that it was saved! We had to sell a lot of our furniture, a car, our home, and many of our possessions but we managed to survive those months until we could get through the medical settlement with Workmen's Compensation. (In our state, you can't sue your employer even if it is their fault that a serious accident occurred) But we said many prayers and became stronger through it all. Six days before Christmas, my husband had the last surgery and I literally said "Thank you God! Now all that is behind us! We made it! Now we can move on and get a new home! It is all over!""
Six days later, on Christmas Eve morning, someone called and said that someone from our family needed to get to the hospital because my son was there. My mind knew or feared what it meant but my heart cried out to God ,"PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE! Don't let him be dead. Let him be in trouble because he is drunk and under arrest. Please don't let him have hurt anyone in a car wreck but please don't let him be dead!" I used to work at that hospital so usually if one of our family members are in the emergency room, I just walk around the desk and go to the back where they are. I had driven alone to the hospital. I ran up the sidewalk and to the police car in front of the door. We are from a small town so I knew the officer. He turned around and hung up his cell phone but he didn't tell me what was going on. He went to find the doctor and left me standing outside. I ran through the main entrance because the door had shut behind him and locked. I ran around the desk but suddenly it was if an invisible wall had sprung up in front of me. I stopped in the doorway as if someone was literally holding me there. My feet would not move forward nor backward. I scanned the faces of the nurses in the room. Their expressions spoke volumes but my mind refused to see the truth. I ran to the phone in the lobby and called my mother at work. I could not speak what my heart feared. I could only say that my child was in the hospital and that the nurse had just appeared to take me to a room. I hung up the phone and followed the nurse but when she tried to usher me into the room, I stopped and explained that I knew what the room was for so just take me to the doctor. They sat me in a chair in the waiting area in the back and two men came into the tiny closet-size room. I could not look at them because the doctor looked like he was going to cry. I hurt for him. I said "It's okay. You don't have to say anything." He lowered his gaze. I asked,"Is my son dead?" He nodded. I screamed,"But IT"S CHRISTMAS!" I know that they must have thought I was some shallow,heartless mother to only be worried about Christmas when I had a son laying on a gurney across the room behind a closed door who had frozen to death.But I couldn't understand how I would ever be able to survive Christmas,the time we celebrate the birth of a baby, without mine.
It hasn't been easy.That Christmas was more painful than anything that I have ever experienced or want to face again.But I survived. At times, I didn't want to. The night that he was buried, I had to keep telling myself that I could not go lay on his grave the way that my heart kept wanting to do. Then I would really be as crazy as I felt in my mind. My poor grand-babies (I had 4 at that time) had no Christmas that year. Their mommies were forced to put their Santa gifts together by themselves (they were single moms) but none of us could smile,even for the sake of the children.But we survived.
The next year, we moved into a new house in October in another small town 20 miles away. I decided that we would leave at Christmas that year on the first anniversary of his death and go to Disneyland. I wanted a "make-believe Christmas." The real one was still too painful. It was beautifully decorated but very stressful.
My two daughters were still grieving and got nervous and stressed out by the huge crowds. I wanted everything to be perfect. My husband kept making negative comments and saying how he wished he had stayed at home. The daughters were saying similar things. I began to feel the same way. The daughters started fussing at the children and saying "MawMaw might let you do that, but I won't," until I finally snapped at the oldest daughter right there in the line in Animal Kingdom. I said exactly what I felt and hurt everyone's feelings. We walked through the endless line for the safari ride with tears running down our faces and sniffing so loud that people started staring at us.We were all heartbroken.I had wanted this to be a special memory for the children to make up for the year before when the sorrow of my son's death robbed all joy from Christmas.Now here we were again on Christmas Eve.....more tears!
But a miracle happened! I don't believe in coincidence. I don't believe in luck. I believe in the power of God! We sent the children with their mothers to the Magic Kingdom and my husband and I went to look at the lobbies of all the hotels to see how they were decorated until time to go to eat.My husband and I weren't planning on going to the Magic Kingdom but somehow we ended up there. I wanted to cry just thinking about the argument from that afternoon. Just knowing that my daughters were somewhere in the park made me cry. My husband decided that we should sit on a bench in the front entrance in the center of Town Hall. I glanced around and there was nowhere to sit. My husband pointed at a bench where a woman was sitting and said that he was going to go sit beside her.I followed behind thinking "Great, I bet he'll start talking to her. I don't want to talk. I want to be alone and I do mean A-L-O-N-E. Here I am in what is advertised as "The Happiest Place On Earth" all beautifully decorated for the "Happiest Time of the Year" surrounded by happy,smiling people listening to happy music with stupid smiling Disney characters and I just want to cry (die)! The last thing that I wanted to do was sit on a bench with some stranger and listen to what a "wonderful place" this was....but a miracle was about to happen!
Well, sure enough,just as I thought,the husband has to start chatting with the stranger. Normally, I chat with total strangers too but I was not in the mood at that moment. I was on one end of the bench,the woman was on the other end of the bench and my husband was in the middle. I turned my back to them and shut them out of my pity party. My heart hurt so badly and I was choking back the tears that puddled in my eyes. Any minute they would spill over and people would stare at me bawling my eyes out and anyway, who cries at "The Happiest Place on Earth!" I knew that was where I was because there was a huge banner strung across the street that declared it to be so.
Suddenly, in the midst of my misery, I heard the woman's voice for the first time since I had tuned her out."what was that she just said?, I thought to myself." Did she just say something about having an argument with her older daughter this afternoon?" I slowly looked around and at the woman for the first time since I sat down. And for the first time, I listened to what she was saying. She said,"I feel so horrible. I wanted to make Christmas special for my two daughters and three grandchildren and instead I snapped at my daughter. We got in an argument and here I sit in "The Happiest Place in the World" and all I want to do is cry."
My mind reeled in disbelief at the irony of this situation! She continued to say,"What kind of idiot cries in Disney World at the happiest time of year?" I wondered if the woman had psychic powers! She was quoting the very exact conversation that I had just had with myself...to myself! (Ok, so if I admit that I'm crazy does that mean that I'm not since everyone knows that real crazy people don't admit that they are crazy? I digress, anyhow back to the story, She continued with her tale of how this was the "first Christmas since he had died. (her husband had just recently died on his way to run a marathon. He had a heart attack in the car before he got there.)
The weirdest thing started happening. I kept having an OVERWHELMING prompting, "Tell her that Jesus loves her" but I kept "debating" the prompting in my head so I knew it wasn't "my thought." (Ok, so that sounds crazy, I know because I thought so at the time) I thought, "she'll think I'm being condescending." The prompting came again,"Tell her that Jesus loves her." Again, I "argued,"she'll think I'm a nut!" Again, for the third time, I "felt" the prompting, "Tell her that Jesus loves her!" " Hey, I thought to myself, I don't feel like having another stressful contentious moment!" I ignored the prompting and tuned back in to what the woman was telling my husband and how alone she felt. The prompting returned! "Tell her!" SO I explained that she was not "alone." I knew the pain she felt, the embarrassment at tears shed in "The Happiest Place on Earth", the sense of failure and of not being understood by the unfortunate daughter who broke that proverbial "final straw on the camel's back." I understood the desire to sacrifice personal sorrow for the sake of everyone else's happiness and the anger at that "sacrifice" not being recognized or appreciated. And, I continued, The Holy Spirit has continuously pushed me to tell you that Jesus loves you and that families are eternal."
She looked at me in amazement and said, "I met my husband at BYU.(Brigham Young University). He was a professor there and I worked in the office. We are LDS.(Latter Day Saints). I know families are forever. It just hurts so bad until we are together again." I said,"but do you know that the odds of two LDS women, who just got in an argument with one of their two daughters,their eldest daughter, in front of their three grandchildren, while in this huge place consisting of several "kingdoms" with millions of people around, and who are in tears in "The Happiest Place on Earth" because it is the first Christmas since losing their beloved family member and both of these women came here to try to return joy to Christmas.(Yes, I know, but sometimes I talk in "run-on sentences!") What are the odds that one of the two women did not want to stop in this park, actually planned to go to a different place, and definitely did not want to sit down on this particular occupied bench would actually be here at the very moment when all of these people of many various cultures and religions are here and yet we are both LDS has to be just miraculous! And by the way, Jesus loves you! and He loves me! And He is aware of our pain, aware of our exact location on this planet and aware of what we need to focus on at this moment.....He LOVES US.
So why am I sharing this? So that you realize that everyone has problems.I found myself realizing this as I read how another LDS family lost several of their children in a horrible car accident. I have only lost one. I have been blessed with two beautiful daughters and grandchildren.
My son died on his little 8 month old baby girl's first Christmas. This photo was made a few days before he died.
Four years later, my youngest daughter's 30 year old husband,(3rd generation Law Enforcement Officer) had a heart attack and died on Nov. 11th right before his 10 month old baby boy's first Christmas. ( I think that is why I am writing this. Monday is the anniversary of his death. I am watching his 4 year old little boy while I am writing this. He looks just like his daddy. My son's little girl is working on her homework beside me.She looks just like her daddy. Ain't God Awesome! We look at the babies left behind and we see their father's faces, their smiles and life is worth living.
Life is hard but God is Great!!!! I have many things to be thankful for and I name them one by one many times a day. I am so thankful for even the adversity in life because it has made me stronger than I ever realized that I could possibly be. I know that I can do all things with Christ which strengtheneth me. I know that even though my soul is missing 1/3 with one of my 3 children missing that it will be restored one day. I know that even when we think that life is too hard to endure that if we just focus on making it through a few minutes at a time that eventually the minutes will turn into years and the darkness will turn to light. I know this because I have lived through it.....even though there have been times that I wasn't sure that I wanted to. I see the beauty in life. I see the joy in Christmas. I changed how we celebrate the holiday season. I make it fun for the children.Christmas is not about me! It isn't about my son! It isn't about either of our sons in law that have died and left children behind the way my son did! (my husband's son in law committed suicide a couple of years ago and left 3 children behind)
Christmas is not about presents.Christmas is about the birth of Jesus and in spite of all the sorrow that has happened to our family at Christmas, it is joyful to the children and to me. It is joyful because people try to be kinder and more charitable and in spite chaos, it can be joyful.
So when sorrow comes and the tears start to fall, I remember that Jesus suffered the most of all and I get my self up and I say "Merry Christmas! And Jesus LOVES YOU!!!"
"Why are you downcast,O my soul? why so disturbed within me?Put your hope in God,for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God." Psalm 43:5
Resting in His Way
When my weary body fails me,
and my mind is filled with strife,
When the world is pressing 'round me,
And I cannot deal with life,
When I've taken on the burdens,
Far more than I should share,
I cry with broken spirit,
"Lord, don't others even care?"
In my darkest midnight hours,
I hear You calmly say,
"You must take My yoke upon you.
You must rest within My way."
Then my many cares I gather,
And I lay them at Your feet.
Where I let Your love surround me,
As my every need You meet.
...."the Lord simultaneously tries the patience of his people even as He tries their faith. One is not only to endure- but to endure well and gracefully those things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon us"---Neal A. Maxwell
I named this blog DeLaffin Times because that is what gets you through life.....laughing when all you want to do is cry. You can find something to be grateful for. You can laugh again. It may take time and no one can tell you how you should grieve or for how long. But life is short.Why should you be miserable for what little time that we are here on this earth? There is always going to be someone who is suffering more than you are at any given moment. Seek them out and serve them. That is the cure for depression.Self pity is called "SELF pity" because when we are sad or depressed all we can focus on is ourselves, our own problems and our own sorrows. It is not a sin to cry. It is not a sin to grieve. It is not a sin but there comes a time when you just have to say "enough is enough" and move forward toward finding the joy again. Why not at Christmas? Focus on the Savior. Do what we did and make all new family traditions to put the sorrow of the past behind or just to refresh your focus on the true reason for the season. The Happiest Place on Earth may be advertised as being in DisneyWorld..... but it can be in your home.
One day we will celebrate our Savior's life in His presence in The Happiest Place where there is no sorrow and no tears!
My journey in search of the Christmas Spirit and finding peace,happiness and joy.....
I hope that this personal journey will bring hope and encouragement because that is the spirit in which it was written.
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