Mourning—The Second Time Around

Grief is a process, and not an easy one.  This morning I learned that my father-in-law died.  This is the second time I’ve mourned his loss.  And I can tell you that it hurts just as badly the second time.

Let me explain: I was divorced in 2008.  I noted at that time that divorce is like a death in the family—multiple deaths in my case, since my ex-husband’s family has been cut off from all contact with me.  We had been married 33 years—all my adult life.  I had embraced my husband’s family and loved them as my own, so losing them made divorce all the more painful.  At that time I mourned the loss of each member of his family, including my father-in-law.  Now I ache at the thought of how these people I loved (in truth still love) are suffering the loss of this sweet man.  But they are as dead to me as he is, and that makes it very hard to endure.

My sons, although grown at the time of the divorce, have been caught in the middle.  We are all doing our best to learn how to live with the fact of divorce.  They’ve been told not to talk to me about my ex or any of his family.  At first, I had also asked them not to talk to their dad or his family about me.  But when I saw the difficult position it had put them in, I relented.  It has been said that to truly love, you’ve got to be willing to be vulnerable.  For my sons, I am willing to be vulnerable.  I would rather suffer than cause my sons to suffer.  But I can’t do anything about what they’re going through now.  I can only stand by and watch them in their pain.

When my younger son called this past winter to tell me of his dad’s impending heart surgery, I could only listen sympathetically.  His voice was constricted with pain at the possibility of losing his dad.  At the same time there was another worry: he told me that he had gotten his dad’s permission to call me only after promising to make me promise not to try and contact his family.  Of course I assured him that I wouldn’t try to contact any of them, while also trying to reassure him that his dad would be fine (which he was).

But there’s more to my pain than all this: I was the one who initiated divorce proceedings.  That’s a fact that I don’t share with everyone because Christians can be very judgmental about the issue of divorce.  My sons know that I divorced their dad, and not the other way around.  No doubt his family all know that, too.  At times like this I sometimes wonder: if I had known the pain it would cause my sons, would I still have divorced their dad?  But I know the answer.  I had to divorce him.  Knowing that doesn’t make all this any easier.  This is the path I’ve got to walk, and unfortunately my sons share the suffering.

Most of the time I live my life in the present, facing the future, and busily focusing on the tasks God has for me this day.  But when something like this comes it’s an emotional blast from the past—in the explosive sense.  And the pain, self-doubt, and loss are fresh and new.  And yet in the midst of all the suffering (mine, my sons’, my ex-family’s), I know that God is good.

The Scars of Communism

Greetings from southern Hungary!

I came here at the suggestion of a friend who is a pastor in Romania.  I am here to help with a children’s summer camp program, so I was prepared to rough it, maybe sleep in a barracks with lots of giggling girls.  Instead I’ve found myself welcomed into their home, and tucked into a very cozy room with my own private bathroom, and a door to the beautiful courtyard garden.  And in the garden I saw three kittens.  As many of you know, my kitty, Boo-Boo died in January, so the sight of kittens in the garden was especially welcoming.

The summer camp is sort of a vacation Bible school day camp at the church.  There are probably about 75 children involved and about 30 adults and teens.  I was asked to speak to the entire group about who I am and what I do (with translation).  So I put together a slide show presentation of simple words and pictures to introduce myself and my ministry.  I also brought Prayer Bear, my traveling companion/pillow, and let the children play with him while I spoke.

This is Me

Just before leaving Milan, I had just finished the book I was reading, and wanted to bring something to read on the plane to Budapest.  So I grabbed the book that was at the top of the box marked “books” that I had finally gotten out of storage after a year.  It was a book I’ve been meaning to read for a couple of years, but simply never had the time.  But, as I’ve noted before, God has a way of putting just the right book in your hand at just the right time.  This book is “Tortured for Christ” by Richard Wurmbrand.  He wrote it in 1967 about being imprisoned and tortured for 14 years because of his Christian belief—in Communist Romania.

I think I had avoided it before because I didn’t really want to read details about torture.  But the book actually has very few details about torture because Pastor Wurmbrand wrote:

The tortures were sometimes horrible.  I prefer not to speak too much about those through which I have passed; it is too painful.  When I do, I cannot sleep at night.

So what is the book about, if not torture?  It’s about the Underground Church behind the Iron Curtain, when atheism was forced upon the population.  The Underground Church actually thrived on some of the very tactics used to quench the Christian faith, which makes this a very good read, indeed.

And as I spend these days with the precious Hungarian children, I find myself thanking God over and over again that they are allowed to learn about Jesus.  Their grandparents were not allowed to “infect” their children with Christianity, though their own faith was sometimes tolerated.  At age nine, Pastor Wurmbrand’s son was essentially “orphaned” by his parents’ imprisonment.  He was homeless and alone.  The people who dared to help him or take him in were eventually found out and thrown into prison, too.

I think the knowledge that his son was on his own in the world at such a young age probably was as bad as any physical torture he suffered at the time.  His son eventually became the first director of Voice of the Martyrs.  You can find out more about the organization, and how you can help persecuted Christians around the world at: www.persecution.com.

Talk about non-conformists!