Nicole K. Twedt

Being Brave When Life Is Hard

A Time to Mourn

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Someone I know lost a parent over the weekend.  Her father’s death was unexpected.  I can’t say I’m super close to this person, but my heart aches for her and her sweet family.   The Bible teaches that in Jesus’s resurrection, death has lost its sting.  Yet as I write, someone I care about is experiencing loss like nothing she has ever known.

This can’t be happening.

I don’t know what it’s like to lose a parent unexpectedly.  But I know grief, I know it well.  I find it next to impossible to untangle what I’ve tasted and seen from what she’s experiencing today.  After all, I’m an INFJ in the realm of Meyer-Briggs, heavy on the F which stands for feeling.  I’m starting to think I lack the skills needed to set my feelings aside, at least for a while.  I can’t seem to remove myself from the situation and focus on something other than grief, hers or mine.

Knowing that another family is experiencing grief is like an emotional tidal wave, as suffocating today as it was twenty-something years ago.  I’m drowning in it as I fold clothes, unload the dishwasher and prepare an afternoon snack for the Tiniest Tiny.

I can’t stop thinking about dad.

Dad suffered six years.  When his life came to an end we knew it was happening.  There were no surprises.  We had more than enough time to say good-by, everyone did.  Sanguine to the end, his life wasn’t over until practically every one of his neighbors, friends and family members stopped by for one last visit.

The song If You Could See Me Now, not Eminem’s version or the 1980s cruise jingle, but the one by Truth, was playing on the CD player in the living room when he died.  It was rather loud because these hard-of-hearing ears of mine needed help unraveling the lyrics from instrumentals.  It was the middle of the night.

The song speaks of walking the streets of gold, of no longer being broken, of no more pain.  It is a song about releasing a loved one from a place of suffering to come face-to-face with Jesus, strong and whole.  I was seated next to dad, but almost missed that splendid moment when he took his last breath and slipped from his cancerous shell of a body into Jesus’ arms, victorious and cancer-free at last.

I’m thankful dad is with Jesus, I really am.  But I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t want him back for a little while.

Dad knew I loved children and wanted to be a teacher.  I would’ve given anything for him to see me graduate from college and set up my first kindergarten classroom.  I wish he’d been the one to walk me to meet Greg at the end of the aisle on our wedding day, though I will always cherish the moment I spent with Dave.  He was dad’s best friend.

And our three babies, his grand-babies.  It kills me that our kids will never meet their Grandpa Steve.  They will never hear his hearty laughter or sit through one of the many tall-tales from his childhood on the farm near Mt. Spokane.  On this side of heaven, our son Steven will never know the one he was named for.

One Father’s Day, when Greg and I were newly dating, our pastor preached a moving sermon.  He charged the fathers of our congregation to rise up, to be strong in the Lord and lead their families well.  That’s the kind of dad I had.  He loved the Lord with all of his heart and all of  his soul, and oh, how he loved his family.

I’m a private person by nature.  But even I could not contain the desire after church to ask Greg, my then boyfriend, to take me to the cemetery.  Greg was as distant as any one of his Norwegian ancestors would have been.  He kept his Oakley shades on and stood aside while I had myself a little moment.  I’m not used to breaking down in front of others.  The vulnerability of that afternoon was as new to me as our relationship.

Even though I shouldn’t have, I remember turning to Greg afterward and apologizing for the awkwardness of my crying fit, the grief that came out of nowhere.

“Yeah, that was awkward,” was Greg’s response.  The cruelty of his statement was out of character with the man I knew so swell, or as well as I could after only a few months dating.

He then removed his sunglasses and revealed a face streaked with tears, tears for a man he’d never met and for a woman who really missed her dad.  I knew for sure that afternoon that Greg loved me, and in his arms I could grieve.

I started a blog last June.  I love to write.  It’s the most tangible way I know to praise God and better understand my world.   In my mind’s eye, I saw my blog as a place to write about life and to bring the hope of Jesus to others.  An encourager by nature, it’s what I do best.  I didn’t really want a mommy blog, but I knew I was going to sprinkle a few kid stories into my writing from time to time to keep things light and entertaining.

The thing is, I’ve been running from writing lately.  I’ve been running because he (and by he I mean God) is prompting me to explore grief and write about the hard things in life.  It’s not a fun subject to tackle.  But I have to say, this little corner of the internet is serving its purpose.  I’m learning to be brave in this place.  I’m learning to air out some of the grief I’ve kept hidden all these years, grief I didn’t realize I had in me because everything was fine except it wasn’t.

I’m starting to think maybe, just maybe, I’m honoring God and giving him glory as I learn to take his hand and let him unpack the beautiful mess that’s called mothering in the midst of grief.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

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Today’s my blog’s birthday.  Kind of.  Eight months have come and gone since I first payed the fees and did all I needed to snatch a domain and launch a little place on the internet where I can go to gather my thoughts.  Except the launching part never happened.  I didn’t know what to do to make this place look like a living, breathing, functioning blog.  So I didn’t do anything.  How do you create something out of nothing?  Writing is all I care about!  Not the techno-junk that comes with blogging.  Plugins, tags, widgets!  Oh my!

This place has become such a spot, ever so slowly and just for me.   It’s still new to me, this blog, but I’m starting to use it regularly as a place to pour out my heart and soul through writing, my words under lock and key, for my eyes alone.

But today, by mistake, this baby went live and a blog was born.  For the whole wide world to see.  The birth was premature, just a bit, but she’s here to stay.

Here’s what happened.  I met Jody at a Panera in Renton.  She’s a seasoned blogger and willing to help.  But a mistake was made when we fiddled behind the scenes with the dashboard.  All of the sudden the blog went live.  We tried to get it un-live, but neither of us knew what to do.  Jody sent a message to her tech-y friend to see if she could kill it.  We tried creating a new Coming Soon plugin.  Not sure what happened to it.

Normally I would freak out.  Maybe not in front of Jody, but alone in a bathroom stall or on the car ride home from Renton.  You see, I like things just so.  My work doesn’t have to be perfect as perfect doesn’t exist.  But anything worth doing is worth doing well.  Can I hear an Amen from you melancholies?  I know you’re out there.

But something Kimberlee and Emily mentioned a few nights ago came to mind.  And what they said slipped from my brain and fell smack into this tender heart of mine.  You see, my writer friends told me about G. K. Chesterton and how he wrote, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”    So there you have it.  Take that, perfectionism!  I’m going to be brave and let this blog be what it is.  It’s nowhere near ready.  It’s not even functioning properly.  But it will be someday.   Hopefully someday soon, very soon.  And until I get my blog’s act together, or pay the big bucks to have someone make it pretty, I’m going to start publishing my work, bit by bit.

Happy Birthday, Blog!

New Year, New Word

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Originally from January 2017

Sometimes I have a word for the year.  You?  I started this practice in college.  Before choosing a word was a thing.  Maybe it was a thing but I didn’t know it then.  Come to think of it, I never really choose a word.  The word always chooses me.   Not in  a whoo-whoo way.   A word settles deep in my soul and I can’t shake it.  Like a fleeting thought that comes to stay, invading my heart and mind.  Sometimes it’s a word of encouragement, a guiding principle, even a cautionary word.  Sometimes this little word is for the entire year.  Quite often my word is for a specific season, for a time when needed.  Then a new word finds me.

My very first word was balance.  That’s a story for another day.  I was in college, living in the duplex townhouse on Superior Street and my life was out of whack.  It was on it’s way to being less whacked out but it was a long process and I wasn’t there yet.  Not even close.  Balance was my reminder to basically chill out and not fall to one extreme or another.

Some of the other words were Hope, Challenge, Quiet and Brave.  I was up at 3-something this morning, and too tired to think of the others.

Sometimes I get a phrase and not a word.  Sing a New Song was a biggie from the end of 2015 and stayed with me into the first part of 2016.  I wrote about it briefly.

I decided not to “choose” a word this year.   Not that I do the choosing, but a word didn’t fall into my lap by the time it usually did.  I simply forgot all about the practice of getting a word until the last days of 2016.  I was listening to the Sorta Awesome Podcast, or maybe it came to me while reading the first few chapters of Annie F. Down’s Looking For Lovely.   I don’t remember exactly where I was when the word for 2017 came.   But I’ll never forget the way I felt.  It came like a ton of bricks and settled like a pit in my stomach, much like indigestion.

Write.

No Bueno.

I don’t like this one.

I’d like another word, please.

Write.

Write, or the practice of writing, is what I’ve been running from.  But it’s hardly a new word or a theme.  Summer and fall of 2016 was supposed to be the time to write.  I was supposed to write while the kids were in school.  I was supposed to wear frumpy wool sweaters, black leggings (better yet, LuluRoe leggings), and type for hours at the computer desk in my family room with my Starbucks travel mug and my little dog, Chloe, by my side and bring hope through the written word, all in the comfort of my own home.  The truth is, I’ve never not written as much in my life as I have since June.  Even my prayer journal has sat neglected, hidden under my Bible.  I know it’s there.  But I can’t see it.  I’m not about to write in it.

Sure, I’ve been busy with other commitments, some legit like helping at school and mentoring through MOPS.   And there’s the basic time suckers like dishes and grocery shopping and always laundry, which will be the death of me.  Why do I feel like Jonah mounting the next ship to Tarshish, running from my calling?  Why, oh why, do I run from the very thing that brings me hope and joy and what I hope brings a little brightness and truth to others?

I don’t want to start writing again.  Why?  It’s in my blood to write.  Writing brings life, clarity, joy.  The very practice of putting pen to paper, even tapping the keyboard and seeing words illuminated on the screen before me, revives my soul.  But what usually brings life to me is kind of sucking the life out of me.  What’s my problem?  Don’t tell me, I know.  It hurts to write because to write is to process.  And it hurts to process.  It hurts to hurt, plain and true.

Here I am, the one running from my calling.  The one writing about not writing.   A walking contradiction, that’s me.  It occurs to me that for once in a long while I’m clearheaded, fire in my soul, alive and well.  And it occurs to me that while writing about not wanting to write, I’m actually doing it.  I’m writing.