Life Without Mother

Dear Friend,

Do you ever pause to wonder what the LORD is doing in your life? Not just now, but how what is now will impact your life much further down this road of life?

If you haven’t heard the song “Whatever You’re Doing” by Sanctus Real, I highly recommend a listen (see below for full lyrics).¹ If there was one song to characterize the overarching trajectory of my journey these past eight years, this is it.

For the longest time I sang the first verse as a prayer, and now I can sing it as my testimony. Because I’ve arrived at the bridge:

I’m facing up, cleaning this old house. I think back to Christmas — literally cleaning out boxes and boxes of memories and mementos. Remembering, enjoying, letting go, moving on. Some things I kept, many I didn’t. Physically removing the clutter as I went from over 20 boxes (of varying sizes) to under 10. But, it took me nearly eight years to do so. Perhaps this is where you are, or maybe you need another year or two. Maybe just clean out one box a year, get the process started.

I’m breathing in, letting everything out. 2024 New Years brought more than simple annual resolutions — it brought a fresh breath of life. I spoke with a friend recently who went through a similar loss in a similar timeframe within her own life (a year ahead of me). I asked where she felt she was at in her journey, wondering if she’d reached that fresh breath herself yet. She said she was moving forward from “just surviving to actually living.” I was shook with excitement — I’d said nearly the exact thing to a friend of mine mere days before! It gave me hope and joy — the validation of healing in the shared experience. To feel the fresh breath of desiring to live and not simply biding my time until my own death.

For so many years, there are so many things I’ve wanted to say. And said. Praise God, there are few regrets I have in what I’ve said and haven’t said. Much of what’s left is still piecing together the past. Understanding the foundations of who I am now from what happened then. I’m grateful — as I believe I may have said before — for the LORD has often held my tongue (or, in the case of my blog, my fingers) from saying things at the wrong time. Especially where my blog is concerned, I look back at the many unpublished drafts and can say with confidence that every published entry carries absolute authenticity. Because I wrote what I felt, what I thought, and the LORD simply said “not that one” if those words were needing to be said to Him alone. Sometimes the things we’ve “wanted to say for so many years” need only be said to Him.

And especially as of late, I’ve been releasing all these held back tears. Well, relatively held back… We know I’ve cried a few (or more like an ocean) over the past eight years. But, it’s the “held back” ones that heal the most when released. As I shared in my last letter — there are many qualifiers to my grief that I’ve not acknowledged and grieved — repressed emotions over facts I deemed “insignificant” to the circumstance, not realizing they were the circumstance. The LORD keeps bringing these facts to the forefront and, almost systematically, I’m grieving them. And releasing them.

My favorite lyric of the song is the second line of the chorus: “It feels like chaos but somehow there’s peace.” What a true description of grief. Grief with God. Because, as Philippians 4 says, He provides our peace and He is our peace.² For eight years, I’ve felt absolute bonkers at times, wondering if in all my “cosmic” over-thinking at some point I lost touch with reality. Often in those moments I would play this song to remind me of the truths of scripture in Philippians 1, Ephesians 2, Romans 5 & 8 — and more.³

Friend, with refreshed joy and peace I leave this song and my testimony to you as the evidence of God’s work in me. And I hope it brings encouragement to your soul and hope to your heart no matter what path you may be traversing.

From the midst of peaceful chaos,
Hannah

1. “Whatever You’re Doing (Something Heavenly)” by Sanctus Real
   (V1) It’s time for healing, time to move on
   It’s time to fix what’s been broken too long
   Time to make right what has been wrong
   It’s time to find my way to where I belong
   There’s a wave that’s crashing over me
   And all I can do is surrender
   
   (C1) Whatever You’re doing inside of me
   It feels like chaos but somehow there’s peace
   It’s hard to surrender to what I can’t see
   But I’m giving in to something Heavenly
   
   (V2) Time for a milestone, time to begin again
   Re-evaluate who I really am
   Am I doing everything to follow Your will
   Or just climbing aimlessly over these hills?
   So show me what it is You want from me
   I give everything, I surrender
   
   (B) Time to face up, clean this old house
   Time to breathe in and let everything out
   That I wanted to say for so many years
   Time to release all my held back tears
   
   (C2) Whatever You’re doing inside of me
   It feels like chaos but I believe
   You’re up to something bigger than me
   Larger than life, something Heavenly
   Whatever You’re doing inside of me
   It feels like chaos but now I can see
   This is something bigger than me
   Larger than life, something Heavenly, something Heavenly
   
   (E) It’s time to face up, clean this old house
   Time to breathe in and let everything out
   ↩︎
2. Philippians 4:4-9
   ^“4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The LORD is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
   ⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹ Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” ↩︎
3. Philippians 1:6
   “… ⁶ being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
   Ephesians 2:4-10
   “⁴ But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, ⁵ made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. ⁶ And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, ⁷ in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. ⁸ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— ⁹ not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰ For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
   Romans 5:1-5
   “¹ Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. ³ Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵ And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to us.”
   Romans 8:18-28
   “¹⁸ I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the One who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
   ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴ For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? ²⁵ But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
   ²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. ²⁷ And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
   ²⁸ And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. ” ↩︎