Health and Beauty

    

 I ended my post last week by saying that I wanted to daily take steps toward healing and watch God make something beautiful out of this tragedy.  That is the thing I have focused on this week. 

   I continue to struggle emotionally, I long for the day when I can talk about Roderick and all the things that happen without crying all the time.  Many times I will choose to just say nothing rather then risk loosing it again.  One of the struggles that I’ve had right from the start is how to tell someone who doesn’t know it yet.  I have no problem talking about it to someone who knows what happened but when I need to tell someone who hasn’t heard it’s like my whole body tenses up and the tears threaten to come before I even start.  I also find it awkward when I don’t know if people know, meaning people that I see on a weekly basis like new parents in school or hockey parents that weren’t on the team last year.  I’ve had a few parents come to me after Christmas saying that they had no idea and I feel bad because I want them to know and it’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, I do but at the same time how and when do I tell them.  It’s not like we sit and visit its more just meeting and chatting while we wait for our kids or for a meeting to start.  I would find it easier if, like I said before, I didn’t risk bursting into tears as soon as I say something.

   We went to the bank to open a college fund for Tyler and Angeline this week, since both of them received a scholarship last year.  Obviously they ask for how many children and we have to answer two.  It just doesn’t seem right that this lady now believes that we have two kids only but that’s the kind of life we have to get use to now. 

   So these are the reasons that my prayer is for healing from the pain.  I know that this will be a part of our life but I believe the Lord can heal the wound and it can become a scar rather then a bleeding open wound. 

   The thing that I meditate on most though for 2017 is that we will see God turn this tragedy into something beautiful.  I am especially thinking of all the dear ones that have been most affected by this tragedy.  The four of us and all the wonderful friends and relatives that are so close to Roderick.  I have had a few special and meaningful discussions with Angeline this week and I can feel a deeper bond forming between us and I’m praying it will also help Angeline form a deeper and stronger relationship with the Savior.  I believe we will continue to see beauty from ashes as the saying goes.  With the beauty, healing will come also.  At times when things are hard and it seems that the loss of Roderick is causing mostly doubts and struggles, I have to just believe in faith but I will continue to walk in faith, I know it is God’s will for us to see the tragedy turn into something beautiful. 

   I have spent the last few days reading Melanie Penner’s blog.  She went to be with the Lord in August of 2015.  The last two years of her life she fought cancer and blogged her journey, I’m going to quote a paragraph that she wrote which touched me and made me determined not to be quiet just because I might cry.  She wrote: I think most of us prefer to look like we have it all together.  We like to appear well (and healthy).  But the reality is most of the time, we all have something messed up in our lives.  We tend to keep our messes hidden, unless we can't.  I don't have the option of hiding my suffering, but being real isn't so bad.  In fact, it allows people to care and show their concern.  My challenge to each of you is to be real.  Let people in your life know what your life is really like.  Let people close to you know when something in your life is hard, or causing fear, or hurting your heart.  Most people will not like you less; they want to help.  I have learned that there is healing in letting others in to the secret parts of your lives.

   

Much to be Grateful For

Much to be Grateful For

  

 

Roderick, his last summer here, on a canoe
trip down the Manigotagan River.
Roderick's dad and him took this trip together
with some other dad's with their sons

 A new year has started and the kids are back in school.  We are back in a routine and ready to make the most of the year.  Monday I had another pity party for myself but even though I’m selfish enough to have those once in a awhile I’m also smart enough to shake myself and say that’s enough it’s time to stop the party and move on.  We have so much to be thankful for.  I’ve mentioned before in my blogs that I believe God can heal us in a real way.  And I am so thankful for that.  I’m not only praying for healing from the pain but also that God will make something incredibly beautiful out of this tragedy.  One time when I was crying in pain, so longing for some relief, I thought of Roderick in heaven, how happy he is, very much real and alive and I thought, I can accept the fact that we have a son in heaven, I can move on but is it to much to ask God in return for an exceptionally tight bond between the four of us that are still here?  Would it be selfish to ask that all the love we cannot physically give Roderick would just be divided amongst us and that we would just be drawn closer to each other in an exceptional way all through life here on earth.  Also all of Roderick’s amazing friends who have suffered with us through this journey, can I ask to see them all succeed and prosper in every way but especially in their soul and in their relationships?  I pray that this will make them stronger and help them make wiser decisions that will help them have real meaning in their lives.  So many people look like they have great lives but feel so empty, please not these wonderful friends.  I pray that to all of us heaven will become a very real place and we will live life knowing that we are on our way to our true home which is heaven where we will all see Roderick again.

   I was asked a question this week that led me to think how wonderful it is that I can have a personal relationship with the Lord and that I can go to Him with all my questions and He will actually provide me with answers.  Now I know there are a lot of why questions that we might never get answers for, those are questions we don’t really need answers for but when we have honest questions that we need answers for God will give us answers.  For example:  I prayed at the scene of the accident that God would send us some answers and later He gave me a clear and specific answer, or when Jake was having a hard time and God provided him with a dream that Roderick was alive and well.  All these to me are gifts from God and I realize again we are truly fortunate.  I cannot even imagine how people do it who cannot go to God in their grief and who look to so many other sources to find some comfort and some closure. 

   So as we start this new year I have not made a lot of specific new years resolution but just aim to look everyday for steps I can take towards our healing, make a difference to the people God brings across my path and watch the Lord make something beautiful out of this tragedy.  Watch with me and we will see it together.

The one and only time we went to West Edmonton Mall with all
three of our children, we went there again over the holidays this
year.

Put Action to Your Grief

Put Action to Your Grief

  

Just recently we had a meeting to plan the Roderick Rempel Street Hockey Tournament for this year and Sheila made the expression it helps to put action to grief, which stuck with me.  I remembered how in the past putting action to grief had helped and since hearing that it has helped me when things get hard to put some action to grief.

   Not long after the accident Angeline was having a rough week.  She missed Roderick and had a hard time overcoming.  I was wondering what I could do for her.  The following morning during my devotions it hit me, I need to take Angeline to the cemetery.  When I think of Roderick I never think of him, as being at the cemetery so it took me a while to realize that going to the cemetery would help.  That morning I told Angeline that after school we would go to Roderick’s grave, we’d first buy some flowers to bring Roderick and then we’d go.  Her face lit up, she could do something about her grief. 

   Before Christmas I was thinking about whether we should do something at Christmas in memory of Roderick but everything I could think of seemed to just be too painful.  Until I talked to the hairdresser as I mentioned in a previous post and so we ordered some wristbands that said, “we miss you Roderick, Merry Christmas” to hand out at the gatherings as a small way to include Roderick.

   Getting ready for Christmas was hard.  It seemed everything we did was a reminder of Roderick.  Not being able to buy him gifts and having to leave him out of the lists was hard.     Then on the 27^th Christmas was over, now it should become easier but it seemed now the whole weight of the season came bearing down on me and I just sensed I needed to go to the grave.  I needed to do something, I could not continue like this.  So I went to the cemetery by myself and just cried my heart out. 

   A friend has posted a beautiful poem about heaven on Facebook and I thought that we should have read something like that in memory of Roderick but I knew that would have been just to much pain although it would have probably still been soothing after.  I think to myself, how can I be so weak now at Christmas when I had so much strength during Roderick’s funeral service.  I know God still gives me strength and I know He will heal us.  Maybe next year I can read a poem but this year part of my action to grief was just forcing myself to control my thoughts and not allow them to go to Roderick too often so that I could at last most of the time keep it together.

   I feel this is not the most encouraging post but I guess part of being real is also coming out with my weaknesses.  I do feel a lot better already then what I did a week ago.