Questions

I ask myself how was I sleeping peacefully while my son was taking his life?  I know I have a relationship with God, He could have so easily given me the intuition to go check on Tyler.  A lot of moms will talk about how they already had this awful or heavy feeling before they heard their son had died but not me.  I had nights where I felt I needed to go check on Tyler and I did, he was fine every time but this night I slept peacefully.    Also, what about all those weeks of fasting and praying and trusting God.  I had believed for 2017 that God would make something beautiful out of the tragedy we had experienced.  This is what I said in the blog I posted in June of 2017 and I quote “I did not make a lot of resolutions for 2017; however, I made one.  I decided that in 2017, I wanted to see something beautiful come out of this tragedy.  I saw this beautiful back yard, in it was a tree that looked like the trunk had split in half and half of it had fallen over.  Half of it was still growing the other half had become this beautiful table for flowers and greenery.  It was beautiful, I wish I had a photo of it, but it reminds me of this storm that has ripped through our family.  It’s not the normal thing to turn a fallen tree into something beautiful. Usually, it is cut up for firewood. All you see is a broken tree that looks so damaged, but it is possible to make something beautiful from it, and that is what I’m believing for.”   I could see this coming to pass as Tyler became this happy son and him and Angeline became close.  Then the year ended with him taking his life.

I remember years ago I was told about this woman of God who had lost her son through suicide that Spring.  Although I did not know this mother my friends who told me about this knew her personally and I remember them remarking, that if this mom did not see it coming, being so sold out for Christ then any mom could miss it.  I thought that was scary and told God, that I didn’t know this woman and would not judge her but I trusted Him that if my children would be hurting that deeply He would let me know and now I’m in the very same boat. 

Those months prior to Tyler’s death when I was fasting and praying for him, taking him to the therapist (I wrote about this in the post before last) I truly trusted God to work in Tyler’s life. I could see him working in Tyler and although Tyler dealt with many doubts and questions about God and the Bible, I could tell he was searching and I was convinced that together with our prayers and his searching once he would find the answers he would be the stronger for it and he would own his faith; no longer would it be just what mom and dad had taught him.  I felt God’s guidance and I felt Tyler was getting some clarity to his questions.  That doesn’t mean that I didn’t have my moments of fear and anxiety, but I overcame that with a strong faith.

I remember the first summer after Roderick went to heaven, I was in the backyard working and crying.  We seemed to be stuck in our grief.  Jake was really struggling every morning, you could just see the pain in his eyes and he could hardly smile, he’d usually snap out of it by lunch time but it was hard to watch, Tyler was dealing with a lot of doubts and I felt like my strength was running out.  I remember this thought came to me and I felt it came directly from God.  There is no rush, take time to grieve but I have a purpose for you all and this includes Tyler, he will come with you on this journey towards your purpose. 

So how do I now deal with all these unanswered questions.  Did I not hear God’s voice, or did I interpret it wrong?  Was my faith not as strong as I thought it was.  I don’t have all the answers, but I do feel through the way God has spoken to me that in some unknown, totally not how we see it, way he has answered my prayer. I don’t for a single second believe that God told Tyler to take his life but I believe that for some reason God decided that he would let Tyler come home and end his pain and maybe it was our prayers that made that possible.  Allowing Angeline Jake and I to deal with the pain of separation instead knowing that we could do it and it would still turn into something beautiful eventually. 

I have always been the kind of person that had to walk by faith and not by sight.  Now I know that’s true for all of us but I often envied people who could talk about some supernatural miracle or experience or how they felt the peace of God coming over them etc.  One time when I questioned Tyler about his relationship with God while he was dealing with so many doubts, he said that God didn’t answer his prayer when he prayed and if He did answer it, it would have happened anyway and I thought that’s just so much like me.  I had to train myself to look for those answers to prayer because they never seemed obvious now I did have times like I mentioned earlier where I had a thought that I felt came directly from God but there to I had trained my self over the years to notice a thought like that and then receive it as from God. 

After Roderick went to heaven I really dug deeper and searched earnestly, I felt God close by and felt my faith come alive.  I studied heaven and the love of God which the Bible says we cannot fully comprehend here.  I had three healthy children and had never expected to lose one so young and now I needed to make sense of the loss and the pain.  In my search I found that I had not lost a child but rather had seen my son’s dreams become a reality early and heaven became such a real place where we all want to be someday.  I realized that I had far overrated our life on earth and far underrated heaven but still there was no supernatural dream or vision or experience it was just feeding on God’s word allowing it to take root in my heart and it became real and alive.  After Tyler went to heaven, I have had quite a few supernatural dreams where I know they come from God.  I believe that God sent me these to help me understand that even though in our humanity this looked like a slap in the face and felt like the opposite of what I had believed for and fully trusted Him to accomplish, He wanted me to know that even though I don’t have all the answers (I will get those when I get to heaven) for now I just trust that He answered my prayers and in some unknown way I was not wrong in what I believed for.  I do not doubt God’s love for me, nor do I doubt heaven or whether I will see my sons again.  I often say I live with one foot already in heaven.

I would also like to take this opportunity to encourage those of you who wish your faith would be more alive or that you would have supernatural miracles or dreams and visions etc. Take heart, keep believing and searching just because you don’t feel it doesn’t mean your faith isn’t alive.  One day those experiences will come if not here on earth then in heaven and trust me you don’t want to go through what I had to go through in order to get those, not that I believe that you have to go through that in order to experience this but I’m just saying faith is called faith for a reason and don’t ever give up because you aren’t experiencing enough just keep believing.