To Honor and To Grieve

Growing up I remember asking my mom why things hurt me so bad, she would respond with, “You love deep so you hurt deep.” For years I would try to just not love as much, I didn’t know how to handle the pain. I figured it would be better not to fully love if it would help manage the heartache. While in Oxford, New Zealand in 2009 God began a process of softening my heart in a vision when He welcomed me home as a Father, that fall He gave me a vision of a heart transplant, with my marriage and each child layers of barriers have slowly flaked away. Since the beginning of last year my heart has been at war trying to shield me from pain that had built up over the years. Pain from offenses and people that I thought I had forgiven and moved past. Pain that I had tried to explain away and justify. Pain that I had convinced myself was foolish, selfish or unwarranted.

The Father has been faithful to woo me and my heart to Him and just under 2 weeks ago I began to fully see my poor attempt to keep my heart together and chose to unrelentingly go after a whole heart, the heart He intended me to have, one that fully felt and fully loved. I went into this week with words from Him, words of encouragement and hope, there was an excitement knowing that on Saturday I would celebrate 6 years of being married to the man of my dreams. We have both been in awe that we made it to this point; the last year almost destroyed us. I had begun the process of acknowledging the pain but having joy in the midst. Well Tuesday night came like a sucker punch to the gut, the kind that knocks the wind out of you and all you can do is lie there writhing in pain.

Ann was a woman I had really only just begun to know along with her daughter but my love for them quickly grew deep and took root in my soul. Before I would have told myself to feel this way was dumb possibly even selfish, how could I grieve so deeply for a woman I really didn’t even know by comparison yet I sit here not even 48 hours out from her passing riding the roller coaster of emotions. Sure there is joy in knowing she is with the Creator of the Universe but there is a sadness that runs so deep that there are no words. So instead of trying to minimize it, I am ruminating in it, I am absorbing the emotions and being who it is I was created to be. There will be time to learn balance but in this moment I want to make sure that I don’t hide from who I am called to be. The loss of Ann was followed by news of a sweet boy who never got to feel the kiss of his mother against his cheek because he was gone before he was placed in her arms. Oliver Sze is honestly a child I probably never would have met personally but I loved his momma and the time we had together in YWAM, I was there the first year she lead and loved the moments we shared. I was ecstatic when I saw her fall in love and marry the man of her dreams, Wilfred, joy multiplied the day I learned their family was going to grow. There are a lot of things that annoy me about Facebook but I am grateful I get to follow the lives of those I have once crossed paths with. To learn that after carrying her sweet boy 10 days past her due date only to have him placed in her arms lifeless is something unimaginable. As I sat there in bed after reading her brave, vulnerable post about her loss all I could do was lie back down and be completely consumed in tears. She is facing a loss I cannot fathom and honestly my deepest fears as I prepare for my 4^th son’s arrival.

I don’t know how this is going to look, this journey of becoming a woman who fully feels and fully loves but I am not willing to give it up now I will honor the lives that were taken too soon by fully loving and fully grieving them. Ann Crowell you are and will be greatly missed the lives you have touched are too numerous to count. Oliver Sze your story although cut far too prematurely your legacy is only beginning as your parents vulnerability as they walk through this will be a testimony that changes lives, you precious one will change lives from the arms of our Father.