What Went Away: Processing Our Grief

By Ann Stewart-Porter

If you have ever asked God Why? or if you have ever thought God made a mistake, maybe this is your book. If you are feeling wounded and shuttled between life abundant and life abandoned, then maybe What Went Away is written for you.
Our children die. Our dreams shatter. Loved ones walk away. Chronic days of illness steal our joys. One mistake lives with us forever. The unthinkable becomes the I cant quit thinking about it.
Grief is Gods mentor. In that appetite for anger, the exploration of truth and the lessons we grab in the storm we find valuable breathe of grace. God said, Blessed are those who mourn. How can that be true?
When my son died, I told Him he had made a mistake. When He took my daughter, I knew the time was right, even in my pain. I found that falling apart is usually the best way to get to putting yourself together. I am learning secrets that have given me the ability to not only survive, but thrive. To reckon with ones self is to reckon with eternity. May you be free as you discover the secrets of mourning blessings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781465329721

Ann Stewart-Porter

Ann Stewart Porter is an author, speaker, and Christian Counselor with Serenity Life. She lives with her husband of 41 years, Daniel, in her beloved mountains of Colorado. From there, she serves others with her JoySong. Look for Ann’s other books online: Where Children Fly (Inspirational Parenting) What Went Away (Processing Our Grief) Have You No Scar? (The Magnificent Intimacy)

Book preview

Copyright © 2010 by Ann Stewart-Porter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

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Contents

Acknowledgements

User Page

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Contact Page

I remembered His song in the night.

Dedication Page

What Went Away is dedicated to my children, Matthew Daniel and Rachel Suzanne and to my mother, Clara Gaynelle Stewart. These are they who have taught me much in the most personal ways of pain.

—   to Daniel, the love of my life for sharing my processing and for growing with me,

—   to Suzanne Nicole, the daughter God left with me to enrich, bless and inspire me to live all the days of my life,

—   to those in pain and trust the Healer in process,

—   and to those human sunflowers who turn my face upward even when the rain is falling.

Acknowledgements

God gives so many people to process His work here on earth. As with any published birthing, there are those who truly make the difference. With great thanksgiving, I praise:

My Savior, Jesus Christ, who most of all gave me Heart Healing and then continues to teach me the conformation.

My husband, Daniel Paul, who is my Burden Bearer, my Heart and Soul Mate. Thank you for never saying Stop that writing and go to sleep! You make my ordinary, extraordinary. To know we have shared so much grief together has also brought me much joy.

My daughter, Suzanne Nicole, for being able to continually bring celebrations into our lives.

My parents, James and Gaynelle Stewart, for sharing their own walks of pain so openly. Thank you for teaching me the value of listening to the Healer.

Diane Newton—Who knew where you would be at the writing of this book on healing? Amazing. Thank you for your diligent, endless hours of pursuing the perfect text. Couldn’t do it without you!

Xlibris—Thanks for the engine steam that gave me the ride of my life.

Reader—Thanks for listening with your heart and processing your grief for God’s glory.

User Page

As with any book, my first effort is to get it out. Next, I want it to be read from cover to cover. Then, I hope you will go back and mark your thoughts with mine, for then I suspect you will keep some inspiration within reach. Lastly, I hope you will find yourself teaching yourself with the questions at the chapters end, sharing your heart lessons with the next person and allowing the cycle to continue as God permits.

However, you might know a whole group of professors who could benefit from each other, as I believe we all do. That is why I threw in this Users Page. Why not gather together and bring your gifts of faith, light, hope and inspiration to one another? Use the Discussion Guide at the end of the book to facilitate profitable conversations.

Don’t let yourself be surprised should certain concepts elude you or puzzle you. There is great strength in the mystery. Depending on your plate of processing, you will find what is needful to you in season. Each practicum can be a catalyst for growth or just the end of a chapter. Unsung heroes, join together and share. Search together some of the questions that need another’s graceful heart. Book Club, Sunday School, Bible study teams, families or girlfriends, may you find a connection of inspiration as you read and share What Went Away.

Preface

I’m not a big fan of prefaces which is a true word because it prepares you for the face. I’m more inclined to just say it. In this case, I think I feel I should prepare you for what will face you because it is so deeply ingrained in our beings. Wherever your grief has come from, it is with great certainty that it has done several things in your life. Some of which you see. Some of which you feel. All of which changes the landscape of your life.

I kicked awhile against the brick wall of grief. I believe you fall down and then you get up. All in all, that is just life. When I couldn’t get back up, I realized maybe there was a bed made up in my name. I didn’t want to write about grief because I didn’t want to feel it. Spiritual platitudes weren’t buying me healing, but I felt too powerless to think beyond them. Watching grief is overwhelming. So little seems profitable or so you think.

When my son died, I blamed myself, God and whatever I could find to take the blame. When my daughter died, the mixed emotions gave me a false sense of urgency and emergency. I could not relax. Everything was difficult from thinking to working. A powerful disconnect called me to ponder what had left. What Went Away didn’t come to me in a neatly wrapped package. It’s been like your own journey of jagged growth.

This book will take you to some hard, familiar places. You will experience many emotions, nodding with tears to acknowledge that you are my fellow traveler in this path of pain and truth. The softest edges of grief still cut the heart. Never let go of its natural ability to pursue your soul. It is there you will embrace its powerful arms of eternal value. I was impressed to write this book because of a prayer I heard during an intense grieving in my life.

"Lord, You say Blessed are those who mourn.

Help us understand that

for . . .

they shall be comforted."

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Our daughter, Rachel Suzanne Porter—

November 6, 1980 to November 21, 2005

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My Mother, Clara Gaynelle Stewart teaching shortly after her amputation at age 75 from a lifetime of Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Our son, Matthew Daniel Porter—

May 21, 1984 to September 7, 1984

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My parents: James and Gaynelle Stewart sharing their life of joy and pain together since 1956

Chapter One

I remember the day my first child was born. The night before, I had played the piano at our little Texas church. We had eaten a sandwich and gone to bed, but I was up by midnight. My stomach felt hard and pushy. I was certain the meat in the sandwich was bad. Nothing I did gave me the feeling I was okay. By morning I decided that maybe a baby was coming. I know that sounds like I’m a slow thinker, but as a general rule I am rather witty. It’s just that pain has a way of blocking out one thing to let another thing in, so to speak.

I remember the green hospital walls, the delusory flowers our neighbor planted in the winter and the nurse who followed us to the hospital. I remember a man whose wife had a long labor with too much enthusiasm for my contractions! I remember blaming my doctor. I didn’t have a thing to do with it, he smiled. Guess he’d seen and heard this stuff before. By 11:30 am, Thursday, November 6, 1980, Rachel Suzanne had entered the world in all the usual ways. I remember it like it was yesterday stuck to my shoe.

In great contrast, when my son, Matthew was born, I was in a coma. I do not remember much of anything at all. What I do remember is blotchy and scratchy. This is not what you dream about when you consider child-birthing.

For months afterward, I didn’t even care that I had children at all. I lay in a bed with machines telling my story. I felt no emotion. I saw no colors. My life hung questionably in the balance. When I began to wake up, it was something like watching the butterfly emergence. It was slow, cracky and sketchy. I looked at people who knew me, but I didn’t know them. I saw familiar things but it felt like the first time I was—in my best recollections—terrified to live

and breathe.

Some people think this is the first stage of the grief cycle. I do not. I don’t even think all grief is definable by stages and cycles although I do believe in life patterns. Somewhere in our life pattern, the dotted line gives way to the dark, thickness of the cut itself. Creating something is taking whatever is available and changing its form or structure or purpose. As you see the beginning, you are wondering, more with anxiety than wonder, how this will turn out when finished. In grief, you simply can’t see the forest for the trees. Like the Texas plains cowboy who told the Colorado high country cowboy that he couldn’t see anything for the mountains, we are on the other side of grief. Seeing well will mean more than new glasses. In grief, there is no laser surgery to correct and be done with it.

People you know will be like strangers in a coffee shop. Everyone trying to make it familiar and life like, but you are at the window of your mind, face pressed hard to see. Frustrated with urgency you try to hit it with your heart’s cry. It doesn’t budge. For a long time, all you feel is a drowning kind of swim. You know you’re flailing and gagging and spitting air, but everyone else just keeps jumping and diving and yelling Try this!

Grief is busy at work. Bulldozers of the most immense emotions are pushing into your old ground, breaking up the clods of hard, desolate thoughts. It’s dark underground. It’s cold and cavernous and dense with a stench meant for growing all kinds of things.

Not too long ago, I was driving home from a late meeting and ran into a sea smoke. It was so intrusive that I could not see the cars around me. My only view was a twinkly Christmas light show bobbing precariously through the haze. I became overcome with the fear of what could happen. I slowed to a crawl and then slipped off the road to let braver souls pass. After what seemed like longer than it was, I tried to get back on the asphalt. Nothing had changed in my circumstances aside from the observation I had made it worse. It took a while, but I made it safely beyond the bridge where clarity was given my applause.

At home, I described my drive home to my husband, Dan, who warned me not to stop and pull off.

When you get off the road, it becomes even more distorted and you lose valuable, perceptive skill." So it is with grieving. While it’s intrusive and overpowering, don’t get off on the dark sidelines. Keep moving, but by all means, slow down, stay alert and you won’t lose your place altogether. Others are watching out for you, too. You can’t see them. Their lights may be almost tinkerbellish but they are there. We are all fellow travelers with one fog or another. I know it all depends on where you are, but the truth is there

are other travelers.

Talking to a dear old friend whose husband had died several years before, I was saddened by her lack. She insisted she could not go on, that he was all she knew or wanted. She herself would choose to die if she could. I got off the phone and immediately asked God to give me the ability to keep going onward. While my grief was relatively new and hers relatively older, time was not the question or the answer.

She said she had moved in town. Do you have any church friends? (She’s been at the same church for over fifteen years.) Not really. A lady picks me up and takes me places and . . . She stops. I ask if she sees her grandkids. Oh, my son moved in next door but he works a lot. I don’t see Erin that often—maybe once a week.

Every positive was a negative. I gave her my address nine times. She simply couldn’t get it and she isn’t senile or 103 or medically incompetent. She’s just stuck in the grip of grief. She’s pulled off to the side and can’t get back on. She can’t see the forest of her good life for the trees of pain so close. Stay on the side of the road and you’ll never go anywhere you really want and need to go. Before you say Duh, think of the people you know who have let at least one painful moment in their past make all their decisions about their future. An old pastor I knew was kicked out of his church in his younger days. From that time forward, he never became a pastor again. He was held captive by a perspective that kept his future at the mercy of his pain.

I also know a beautiful lady who married an abusive alcoholic at a young age. Eventually she ended up with six children and living out of a car to keep her family intact. Her first husband was killed in a fatal car crash. She remarried and nursed her second husband until he died of cancer. Fourteen months after he died, her home burned down and her daughter, Rebekah, died in the fire.

Norma Porter has married a third time. She’s been my sister-in-law for a few years now. She loves to go on Russian mission trips. She loves the Word. She loves her family. She is so full of strength and grace that it makes her face light up. She’s honest about her pain and knows some of her children may never recover, but she lives free from the life that could disable many. She has made hard, life defining choices and that has made all the difference. It is the road less traveled, but it makes the life true and noble.

While it is hard to comprehend, we really do have to make a conscience choice to go on. Nobody else can do that for us. Nothing anyone can give us will do for us what one simple (okay, not so simple) one garlic tasting full strength choice can do. All I need to make sure you know, is that, if you are to ever go on—and maybe right now you sincerely don’t want to go on living, crying, hurting and rationalizing—you will at some point have to say I choose.

Dare I say it? Having had my own deep and jarring pain, I do say it. I don’t say it to make you think I’ve got it all together enough to write a book. I didn’t want to write about grief. However, I have purposely chosen to give God the time to show me His purpose and His plan. Whatever your experience or comparing we do, it is of no consequence to the directness required of us. Try walking away, being angry, bitter, argumentative, whatever. Just know it’s the choice you are making. By not saying I choose, you are saying I choose. It’s all about eternity. It isn’t about how smart we are or how much weight we lose or what we do to make money. If the temporal was all there was, would anything matter at all?

The wonder of life is that it is a kaleidoscope of the eternal. Live it with your eye on the many facets of changing versicolor. It’s like we are our own fireworks. Broken open, God sends us out, small explosions of comforting lights blasting through the dark universe. People are staring upwards. The applause gives way to squeals of joy. That’s it. You’re there. The world is watching, anticipating something beyond the ordinary. The colors are bold and the light, quiet and loud, always making a show the watchers remember when the night has settled and the day is done.

Grief. It’s the explosion of the eternal broken into light that allows us to stop in wonder. It lets us choose to be who God intended us to be. Aw, dear traveler of the painful journey, do not let the fog cloud the fireworks. Somewhere, someone is waiting to see the glimpse of the eternal kaleidoscope that has been given to you.

In 1980, I gave birth to a gorgeous little girl we named Rachel Suzanne. While there were a few common mishaps in the birth process, all the tests revealed we were taking home a perfect baby. Four months later, we sat in a tiny cluttered Doctor’s office and listened as he listed her imperfections. Rachel was blind and hearing impaired. Rachel had cerebral palsy and scoliosis. Rachel’s brain had stopped growing. Rachel would remain on a four-month old infant level until her death which would be from two to four years from that day. Rachel would not talk or walk, crawl or swim or even really know us as parents. Rachel was profoundly retarded. Rachel was medically fragile, tagged as microcephalic. Rachel was experiencing seizures that would multiply with age and did, up to fifty a day, more if she was sick.

I do not believe I really understood grief until that day. I cannot, even today, twenty seven years past that day, put anything in words that would bear a resemblance to that pain. I simply cannot. What I saw in Rachel was a beautiful heavenly wholeness. Today, when I remember Rachel, I think of this petite, long silky dusty hair girl with olive skin, a heart-shaped mouth and the bright eyes that never saw my face. I will never stop wishing I could hold her one more day and I will always be thankful for the twenty-five years she was with us. She changed my life. She changed me. While few understood, I know she was my eternal gift. It never took away the pain, but it changed the pain.

I so well remember my saintly, almost human husband grabbing the rails of the baby bed and crying out I don’t feel so special, God! as we watched helplessly the horrific seizures our baby girl endured.

Another time, I remember him standing at the top of the stairs saying I don’t want to be a testimony. I don’t want any more character. I don’t want to be an example! I can’t say I didn’t feel the same way on any given day. Grief is never easy and we will pray I want to be this or that, but fall apart when God answers that prayer in such a way hard to bear. While people thought my husband and I were special or glowing testimonies or amazing examples, we did not see ourselves that way. We thought we had done something wrong. We forgot (for a while) that God only uses imperfect people. They indeed make the best fireworks!

I know you thought you had to be perfect to be God’s fire rocket. I know you’ve been embarrassed at your lack of faith, your anger, your need to hide. That’s all the normal side of grief. God has called us to extraordinary experiences. Life on earth is never meant to overshadow life eternal. Grief is never a small price to pay. It is a costly, aching, spastic process.

Looking back is a daunting task and takes on many forms in grief. While grief takes some processing to actually scan the clearing, it is almost a given that you will see differently. The way you look at just about everything will change in some way. Since I used the story of my sea fog and how I felt the need to pull off the side, I will continue that thought. The road did not change. The bridge was there ten years ago, yesterday and was there the day I crept underneath its cover. Even the gravel and grass on the side was not changing. However, things around me were changing. This caused a great deal of anxiety, especially because I could only see in limited dimensions. Limited dimensions are part of this growing process in our pain. I think there are a lot of us inaccurately looking at the whole of things through a limited dimension. We are human beings who accomplish some amazing feats. We struggle with any sort of limitation. We don’t appreciate its value. We don’t seek its refuge. We don’t see how a budget will give us financial freedom. We don’t see how a food limitation might make us healthier.

We seek extravagance in love. We rarely understand only God’s love is in fullness, quality and quantity, simply extravagant. On our best day of imitation, we are incapable of such dimension. We seek extravagance in giving but we are limited. The values of limitations are rarely a subject we embrace. We have to get much older to even understand how important limitations are in parenting. We have to become parents to see why we weren’t allowed to climb Mt. Evans and jump from the top. We see things differently when we are given a higher plane of growth. We see the wider picture of why our parents couldn’t buy certain things or why they chose things for us we would not have chosen.

Grief will not always allow us to look back or look around with clear sight. You may find your actions disturbing, your thoughts muddled, your ability to do life as usual awfully bristling. I’m always in awe of our Colorado winters. Depending on where you are, you will be housebound or you will be skiing or you will be trying to keep your SUV from hitting a tree. Depending on how you feel about being housebound will determine whether you enjoy our winter snows. If you are a kid and had a test and it snowed and you were saved from an F, then you’ll be mighty glad it’s a snow day. If you’re a mom needing to get a sick child to the doctor, you won’t be nearly as thrilled about the snow.

If, per chance, you’ve never seen snow before, well, I’d say you’re in for a treat! That is, if you’re inside with a fire burning or outside skiing down the mountain with glee. Still, while incredibly breathtaking, snow can always be as dangerous as it is divine. Snow can bring delight, joy, laughter, appreciation, hope, a host of fascinations. Much of what we believe is formed by our experiences, our circumstances, and our environment. Because these