Home and He Is Here.

" Home is not places, it is love." - Apache Relay

" Home is wherever I'm with you.
Ah, home, home is wherever I'm alone with you"- Edward Sharp & the Magnetic Zeroes


I was upstairs folding the boys' laundry , thinking about how life use to be and a horrible realization hit me once again. I've struggled with being in this house the last months, not because it's overrun with memories...Frank was only in this house for 6 weeks before he died. It's now been 32 weeks without him. Hunter has been gone for 5 months. I found one of his bottles under the guestroom bed the other day. I find his things popping up all over. Hurtful reminders of how life was. Chaotic. Hard.Exhausting. But worth it.
This house doesn't feel like home because it's not HOME. It's where my dreams have died. It's where everything seemed to be coming together, even in very hard, life changing ways, and then WHAM! ripped away in a 3 second crash to the ground. Quite literally. 7:42 pm on December 12 turned my life into a nightmare and turned this house into a place no one wants to be anymore.
I bought a new house just around the corner. We move in there in a few weeks. Will it feel better there? To live somewhere he's never set foot? I cringe at the thought of it. The day I went to the closing I cried all the way there. I said I'd rather be living in a van down by the river with my husband and 4 kids than that new house. This world has no hold on me.  At Frank's memorial service I got up and spoke and one thing I said was " I've never been so impatient for Heaven." I had heard people saying that for my whole adult Christian life... "Jesus, come quickly", and never understood the rush. Oh buddy, do I understand now. Do.I.Ever. Most the time I feel like the only thing holding me here is gravity. Jesus, I beg You, come quickly. Come now.

Today marked one year to the day since Hunter Michael was placed in our arms and we were entrusted to be his parents. FOREVER. His forever family. Oh, how the world rejoiced that our special little guy was going HOME with us.

And July 26, 2011 started a new, hard, weird, wonderful, awful phase of our life. Struggle like we'd never known. Heartache we weren't prepared for. Grief we'd never been exposed to. In those months afterwards I thought life couldn't get harder. That we couldn't possibly be stretched by faith more. I felt we were living our calling, living the hard path we'd prayed for. Because we had prayed "Jesus, don't give us EASY, we want to do hard things for You."  July 26 started a lesson about love not being just a feeling. Love is a verb. Love is doing hard things when we want to give up. Love is putting your all into taking care of someone despite your reservations, love is being covered in vomit & tears. Love is advocating,fighting for, opening yourself up to judgement,condemnation, loneliness, public opinion,losing friendships, powering through when family members don't support your decision. Love is crying and rocking a baby who won't look you in the eyes. Love is cheering like a maniac when he finally did, when he did ANYTHING. Love is singing him praise songs and praying over him when you put him to bed. Love is storming the gates of Heaven with prayers for miraculous healing & protection from the Enemy. Love is being so exhausted you can't see straight. Love is doing things that will take you out of your comfort zone. Love is saying "yes" when all you really want to do is scream "No, I can't do this!". Love is not just the primal, motherly feelings that don't always necessarily come right away. Love is still DOING the right thing even when it hurts. Love is being there. Love is holding a child that is not biologically yours and promising them you'll take care of them. Love is what I did. And in those horrible weeks after losing Frank, it's what I thought I didn't have for Hunter. Love was making the worst decision of my life to give him up, but it felt so selfish at the time. Everyone was so supportive with "It's the right thing to do for all of you." I never felt comforted by it. I still felt like I was making the most selfish decision of all time. Give him up, so YOU & your kids can have an easier life.  That was never suppose to be the point of our lives. I am caught up in a spiral of shame, guilt, regret, hurt, anger & grief, and I don't know how to get out of it.  What's the fix? Seeing him thrive his new family? Sweet & bitter. Seeing Hunter get a wonderful daddy when, because of his mental disabilities he's very much an "out of sight, out of my mind" child? He never grieved for Frank. He was the luckiest person in this house..... safe in his mind, oblivious to the loss. And HE was the one who got a new daddy,an amazing one. HE was the one who got to leave this Grief House and escape.My head was such a fog even to the very minute I buckled him in his carseat, handed him his favorite giraffe and his blankie and watched Jason & Dawn drive away with him. His actual forever family.
 None of this is fair. I could scream it at the top of my lungs, God, this is not fair and I'm so mad!  I prayed and prayed to You for protection. I prayed you'd keep us from the plans of the Enemy. I prayed. I knew we had a target on our backs for following Your will in this, but Lord, please tell me this was a mistake. In all my life I never prayed so much as those few months before Frank died. WHY? WHY? 
 I don't pray as much now. I just don't have the words. It's like every beat of my heart is a loud shout to God for mercy, to keep me going. Show me hope, Lord. Show me our new path. Show me the light at the end of this horrible long tunnel.  And this week in particular I've gotten very angry. Wrestling with my belief that He is here, His hand in everything. Why couldn't that Hand just moved that helicopter 20 feet out of the way? Why couldn't they have all just been injured? I KNOW people who have survived "unsurvivable" crashes. WHY couldn't that have been our story? Why couldn't Frank have been paralyzed? I would have taken care of him. He would have been an ornery prick, grumpy to have lost his legs, but he would have pushed through.... he would have skydived in a friggin wheelchair. He would have. Anyone that knew him knows he was THAT kind of guy.  Dammit! He was even robbed of the honor of dying in combat, instead in a stupid avoidable accident.
WHERE WERE YOU!?!
  Thankfully I never dwell in doubt too long. Can I explain Him? No. Can I describe the power of redemption, healing and grace? I can't. But I feel it and I hope I'm a living testimony to it.  As long as I live I'll never understand why this happened, I might not ever be able to completely even believe it. But I believe it when He said " I will be with you always, even until the end of the age" ( Matt 28:20). Even in our grief. Even in our doubt. Even in the mind numbing fog, stillness & haunting loneliness. Even when the helicopters are circling this house relentlessly some days. He's there just as much as when hope is shining in my face, when a run feels victorious, when a sunset seems magical, when the kids & I are laughing and grief isn't hurting our moments. Can't have one flipside without the other, life just isn't like that. If I believe He's here, then I'll believe it no matter what comes. He's the same today, tomorrow and yesterday.


On this day......

 and this day.....

 this day.......

 this one......

 He was here, even on this day......

 He was here on this day.......

 And on this day.....

 And every day since........

"This Is Home"( Switchfoot)

I've got my memories
Always inside of me
But I can't go back
Back to how it was
I believe you now
I've come too far
No I can't go back
Back to how it was

Created for a place I've never known

This is home
Now I'm finally where I belong
Where I Belong
Yeah, this is home
I've been searching for a place of my own
Now I've found it
Maybe this is home
This is home

Belief over misery
I've seen the enemy
And I won't go back
Back to how it was
And I got my heart set on what happens next
I got my eyes wide it's not over yet
We are miracles and we're not alone

And now after all my searching
After all my questions
I'm gonna call it home
I've got a brand new mindset
I can finally see the sunset
I'm gonna call it home

Now I know
Yeah, this is home
I've come too far
And I won't go back
Yeah, this is home