grief Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Gina Brenna Butz

Our Inside Out Moment

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 7, 2016
Post category:grief loved parenting

It started out rough, but it ended well, that day on the field. In fact, it called to mind a moment from Inside Out.

If you’ve seen the movie, you know there was a pivotal moment that formed one of the main character, Riley’s, core memories. It was the memory of her hockey team gathered around her cheering. What we learned later in the movie is that the moment happened because there were coming to cheer her up after a loss that crushed her. Here’s how it happened for us:

Our daughter’s soccer team played in the first of a series of three weekend tournaments a week ago. In order to progress to the next weekend, her team had to win their group of 4. I wrote the details of their weekend in my previous post. Suffice to say, they didn’t win.

My sweet girl met me after the game and promptly burst into tears. As I hugged her, she cried about how she had played poorly (not true) and how this meant they were out. I tried to remind her that everyone makes mistakes, it was a team effort, they played well, but she was, in a word, inconsolable.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that both her coaches had stopped and turned back, as had her teammates. Soon, one of her coaches stepped in to take her from me. He pulled her in for a hug and talked quietly to her for the next few minutes, telling her, “It’s good that you are sad. It means you love it, it’s important to you. That makes you play hard.” When he was done, her team gathered around her for a huge group hug.

Meanwhile, one of the girls who plays goalie on her high school team happened to be watching the game because she’d played earlier. When I told her Megan was disappointed with how she’d played, she asked if it would be ok if she talked to her for a minute. After her team dispersed, Sarah stepped in and encouraged Megan as well.

Watching it all, I was so grateful for the loss.

Sure, it was painful to watch her be sad. We were all disappointed – they’re a good team and could have continued. But in the world of youth sports where there is often so much criticism and pressure on kids, to see our daughter loved so well by her coaches and teammates, was a rare gift.

Sometimes the best memories are formed when someone loves us well in a hard place. I’m so thankful our daughter has one of those because of this team.

Promises to My Children

Hope in a Broken World

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 22, 2015
Post category:faith grief hope

A friend’s father loses his battle with cancer. News of an impending divorce. The unexpected death of a young man. Abusive words spoken and then rationalized as biblical. One after another, over the span of a week.

Broken.

We live in a broken world.

I desperately don’t want it to be. I want to have a world where fathers don’t die so young, and people keep loving one another, and children stay with us and people bless and don’t curse. I want families intact and relationships strong. I want safe, trusted, constant, faithful.

But we live in a broken world.

So I take this reality to God and say, “What do I do? How do I pray? How do I live in this?”

And He reminds me that he promises to be close to the brokenhearted and to heal them and bind them up. He tells me that He weeps with us and endures with us and walks the hard roads with us, that His compassion is endless and overflowing and His mercy starts all over again every morning. He tells me to trust in this.

So I say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Come into our brokenness. Come and be all that you promised to be so we have a solid place to stand in it.

We live in brokenness but we are not without hope.

My hope is not that the world will stop being broken, but that we will meet the lover of broken hearts in the midst of it. We will experience Him healing and binding us, bringing beauty from ashes, redeeming the darkness. We will cling to the hope that one day there will be no more brokenness, and every tear will be wiped away. All will be right.

So we keep walking through the brokenness, not in defeat but in hope. Hope in the one who is close to the brokenhearted.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” Psalm 43:5

Sinking In

Post author:Gina B
Post published:August 25, 2013
Post category:grief transition

It wasn’t until three months into our life overseas that I realized I lived there.

Up until then, we had lived in one room in a foreign student dormitory, our two twin beds shoved together, the five suitcases we brought stacked up to the ceiling. We washed dishes in the bathtub. We turned away the maids who came to “clean” everyday (which consisted of sweeping the floor and then hosing down the entire bathroom). It felt like a long vacation in a cheap hotel.

But once it was legal for students to live off campus, we found an apartment and moved in. The first night I tried to collapse into bed (which is difficult to do on a traditional Asian bed because they have the give of a sidewalk) and I thought, “What have we done? We live in Asia.”

I had the same realization when we picked up my brother from the airport that Christmas. As I oriented him on our drive home, I was aware that I hadn’t been lying to my family all that time when I told them I’d moved overseas. Here was proof!

It’s surprising what brings those realizations to light. Getting the Florida driver’s license. Seeing hurricane alternative plans on our kids’ school schedules. Writing our address. It happened again for me yesterday as we sat next to the intracoastal waterway, looking at palm trees and boats, and I said, “Erik? We live in Orlando.”

Ethan’s been struggling with this fact slowly sinking in. Going back to school, getting involved in activities – each thing cements the truth that we live here and not there anymore. It’s an interesting part of transition, this forming of a new home, defining our new lives. It feels like each realization makes a deeper impression in the ground, marks our territory, while forcing us to let go of part of what was true before. We’re here now.

Waves

Post author:Gina B
Post published:August 11, 2013
Post category:grief transition

We’re not accustomed to this new normal, when leaving this house doesn’t mean enduring 24 hours of traveling hurtling through the air in a pressurized metal tube and landing on the other side of the ocean. Now it means enduring 24 hours in a car and ending up at “home.”

On the packing and shopping side, this is a relief, even if it means my “I can pack this suitcase to within 1-2 pounds of 50 without using a scale out of sheer practice” skills will go to waste. But last night, Ethan reminded me that it’s not just on the surface level that this requires some adjustment.

Right before bed, Ethan tends to evaluate how he’s feeling and give me an update (he is currently vying for “most emotionally cognizant and articulate teenage boy on the planet”). Generally, he finds he’s feeling some anxiety about the upcoming school year. This time he became aware that part of his anxiety stems from the fact that all this packing and preparing makes him feel like he really IS getting ready for that long haul to China, and it’s sad that we aren’t. I’m sad too.

Grief. It comes in waves, like you’re standing at the edge of the ocean and you don’t know when the water will come up and cover your toes, or when it will surprise you by washing up to your knees. You could stand there all day and not have it touch you, and then in a moment it soaks you.

But I feel like the tide is going out. The waves are smaller. We sometimes see them coming. They don’t knock us down anymore, just get us a little wet.

So that’s how we’re feeling as we prepare again to head back. I’m off to make one more trip to Walmart. Until we get to Florida, that is.

Practically Perfect

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 20, 2013
Post category:grief parenting transition

“It was practically perfect!” he sobbed.

The “it” to which Ethan was referring was life in Asia. Yes, life in the country where pollution levels make LA look clean, where people stared and laughed and spoke at him in a language he could barely understand, where we lived in concrete high rises and fought to stay alive on the lawless roads, where we were thousands of miles from family, was practically perfect. That place, in his mind, was about as good as it gets.

In many ways, it truly was. Those last few years we had about 60 school age kids, mostly homeschooled, living within about a 2 mile radius of each other. They played together or had activities together nearly every day. Many of them were kids he’d known most of his life. China might not have been the most beautiful, convenient, easy place, but it was his place. It was his home.

The grief comes at unexpected moments, like a few nights ago, when he cried himself to sleep remembering this practically perfect place. It’s not that he doesn’t enjoy life here; he does, but it is a harder season. We all have them. As I look back on our life in Asia, I can mark the seasons like a roller coaster of ups and downs, “loving life” chapters, and “God please help us” years.

I told Ethan that this is part of his story. It’s a tougher part – maybe a part he wouldn’t have written. A story can’t be all perfect; it has to have conflict, struggle, even tragedy, for it to be a really good story. And God’s writing a really story for him. For us.

Do you miss Asia?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 30, 2013
Post category:culture grief transition

People often ask me if I miss living in Asia. I really don’t know how to answer this question, because what comes to mind is the pollution this year that has been so high it’s unmeasurable by the current systems. Obviously I can live without that. I miss friends terribly, but several of them have also left in the last year as well, so I know that life there would be very different now. I confess I find America a little boring at times – I go to the store and nothing weird happens, ever. Is that enough to make me miss being an expat? No. I can make my own weird.

We spent time recently with friends we knew in Singapore. We talked about how, initially, my friend missed it so much after moving back here that she just wanted to go back to Singapore, but the reality was, it wouldn’t be the same. We agreed that what we miss wasn’t necessarily the place itself, it’s the intangibles.

It’s things like community. I miss meeting people for the first time and being dear friends with them a month later, because that’s how things work overseas. I miss bonding like soldiers during war time, hunkering down together when the waves of living cross-culturally are too rough.

It’s feeling competent, knowing how to be an adult in the place where you are. I don’t know how to own a house. I don’t know the norms of being a parent in America. One day I will figure out this DVR thing.

It’s being known and understood, having routine, being more comfortable being the only white face than looking like everyone else. These are the things I miss, because they are the things I think we all desire from anywhere we live (except maybe the white face thing. That was just our normal).

I had those things. I miss having them. I know I’ll gradually get them back, over time, for the most part. So do I miss Asia? Let’s just say “I miss that life.”

Acquainted with grief

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 28, 2013
Post category:grief

This past year, through a variety of means, I have become more acquainted with grief.

A song on the radio brings me to tears. A gracious comment from a friend chokes me up. Conversing with a loved one is so precious I get emotional. Pondering all that we have been through this year raises emotion.

This reminds me of a couple things: first, of Much Afraid from Hind’s Feet on High Places. Her two companions are Sorrow and Suffering. When I first read that book, I was in college and I can’t say I was much acquainted with sorrow or suffering. I really don’t know them now either. I would say I am coming to know them.

That’s what “acquainted” means, after all. It’s from the Latin, “to come to know.”

Most of us want to avoid sorrow and suffering. We believe that as Christians we should avoid them, not experience them, and that if we do we are somehow lacking faith. Me, I just want to avoid them because they aren’t much fun.

But my other thought about coming to know grief is this: Jesus did too.

In Isaiah 53:3, it says he was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”

Of all that we are told about Him, we know that. I don’t doubt that Jesus was a man who exuded joy, who threw His head back and laughed. But it says specifically that He was no stranger to sorrow and grief. Why?

To tell us, “It’s ok. This is part of the journey.”

It’s hard to wrap my mind around this knowledge completely, beyond, “This is a good thing.” If Jesus knew it, He knows what it is like for me. He knows it is working something necessary and good in my heart.

Most of the time, when I rub up against grief I am grateful (although I confess when it comes in the presence of others it throws me. I’m still not particularly comfortable with falling apart unexpectedly).

I am grateful because I know my heart is being opened by this. It’s growing in me a greater capacity to enter into the grief of others and to say, “I am coming to know this too.”

Better Things Ahead

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 25, 2013
Post category:faith grief

This week has left me a little speechless. On top of the emotional roller coaster of starting our kids in school and Erik being gone, death came twice: a dear family friend, and my sweet grandma. The first was wholly unexpected, the kind of death where you say, “But I just saw him . . . but he just . . .” It’s stunning.

The second was a long time coming. My grandma was nearing 100 years old, and in recent years has been in a slow decline physically and mentally. This last week she’d stopped eating and wasn’t responding much to people. She’s finally free.

All this brings into sharp focus the frailty of life, the fact that at any moment things could change. So I find myself delighting more in things I could easily miss – the sound of my son’s voice from the back seat of the car, the new blossoms on our lemon tree, the sun rising through hues of pink, breath in my lungs.

But it also makes me realize how far we are from Eden, how this world is nothing compared to the next. I think of our friend, who had a beautiful voice, and I imagine him singing praises to his God in a way he never has before. I think of my grandma whole, restored, full of joy. I think about how all that we enjoy and love here is but a poor substitute for what is to come.

So let’s love well and be people of gratitude and wonder for the gifts we are given, but let us put our hope in eternity where all will be made new.

“There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” C.S. Lewis

Week One of Transition

Post author:Gina B
Post published:January 24, 2013
Post category:grief parenting transition

It’s been a week. I haven’t even been sure what to write. The kids started school, which I hope will be the last major hurdle of “adjusting to life back in the U.S.” I’m not saying there will be no more hurdles, just hopefully none so high as this one that threatens to pull some muscles.

Pull it has. Monday was our first at home day, and since we were jumping in to the middle of things, we didn’t have quite as much as the other kids. We wrestled with feelings of anxiety throughout the day. I was trying to keep a positive outlook, but when we put the kids’ books into their fresh new backpacks right before bedtime and they didn’t all fit, all the wind got knocked out of my sails. Unfortunately, the kids were sailing in my boat, so we all sank a little bit.

By the morning, after a quick online order to L.L. Bean for larger backpacks, we were back on track. We were ready 1/2 hour early, God be praised! I am expected to help in each of their classrooms 2-3 times per semester and the only open day for Megan’s class was Tuesday. No, I don’t sit by the side of the pool and acclamate. I jump in!

It turned out to be just what Megan needed to calm her nerves. I sat in the corner and graded papers while her teachers amazed me. I saw Ethan at lunch and he was happily sitting with his best friend and some other 7th graders. All seemed well.

And then Wednesday happened, when they had to face the reality of what days at home entail, except we got to throw in things like “daddy’s gone” and “we’re still in major transition” to make it more interesting. Lets just say there were a lot of tears and a mom who needed a bath and a stiff drink by the end of the day. Not pretty people, not pretty.

Today was another school day, and they loved it. I dropped them off, ran some errands, came home and thought, “Wow. Now what?” then proceeded to do a little work and a little fun (hello OPI Samoan Sand on my finger and toenails). The kids came home and decided they love school and hate the work they have to do at home. I hope that evens out a little as time goes on.

Stretching emotional muscles. So often this week I just had to sit and cry with the kids and say, “Yeah, I get it. This is really hard. I think it’s going to get easier. Let’s remember that we’re in process here ok?” But there were plenty of times I wanted to say, “I can’t do this any more. I have my own mess. I don’t know that I have anything to give you in yours.”

Even as I type that I am reminded that His compassions are new every morning. That’s what I need to remind us each day – that He sees us in our process, He cares for our hearts, He will carry us through.

Stirred

Post author:Gina B
Post published:November 4, 2012
Post category:grief transition

Transition is a bit like someone coming into your life with a giant paint stir stick and swirling it around in your heart. It brings to the surface a whole lot of emotions that might normally stay hidden. If you’ve ever stirred a paint can, you know that vigorous stirring can result in overflow.

That’s how we feel these days – like it’s all right at the surface, and it takes little for it to overflow. A few days ago I made a picture montage from China set to a funny song, and I found myself tearing up as I made it. It doesn’t take much. A song. A commercial. Prayer. Hearing someone’s story. Sharing my passions. The mention of the word “China.” I am brought to tears. It reminds me that there is more grieving to be done. I’m not super excited about that, honestly. There’s a point at which you want to not cry and just move on, but the problem with tears is that they aren’t meant to stay inside you. Letting them out always feels better in the end.

But there’s an upside to all this stirring. It’s evidence to me that I’ve made it through with a soft heart. It’s difficult to stir a heart that is hard, that refuses to be touched by pain or sadness. It doesn’t always look hard on the outside – sometimes we coat it with a thick candy shell and pretend all is good. Whatever we do, I’m learning that the best route is to stay open, to be vulnerable, to let the stirring happen because good things come to the surface too. Things like being able to recognize when others are being stirred, and to enter in with them and catch their overflow; being able to give others a more authentic you; being as in touch with joy and laughter as you are with sadness and pain. That’s the fun part – the fact that it opens me to being quicker to laugh as well!

I’m sure it will be awhile before the swirling settles down. In the meantime, I hope to make the most of what it does in my heart. And don’t be surprised if you see me cry. Or laugh! It’s all there, and it’s all good.