One of the oddest things for me about losing a child is how we as bereaved parents obsess over the lost one… doesn’t matter how many surviving children we have… the lost one is the one on our minds and hearts 24/7.  I’ve struggled with it… fought it.  I’ve tried to honor and enjoy the kids I still have here while I can… and yet the obsession hasn’t gone away.

When my kids were really little (I had 4 in under 6 years) and I took them all to the grocery store with me, I would continually count them… 1, 2, 3, 4… to make sure one hadn’t wondered away.  Often when one had wondered off, Joel was the one who was missing.

As my four grew into young adults they chose to live at home, work and go to college locally (happy me). Counting grew a little more challenging: Josh is doing a lab, James is on his way home from work, Joel has to leave for work in an hour and Judi is teaching swim lessons.

1, 2, 3, 4.. all accounted for.

I had this 1, 2, 3, 4 thing so much in my mamma heart that I always hated pictures of only three of my kids …now all I can take are pictures of three. In those pictures one was missing.  Two kids in a picture was okay because the missing one wasn’t by themselves.

This is the last picture I have of the three boys together.  Josh and James are glad to be home with Joel and are telling him all their news.  Judi is teaching swim lessons at the Y.  I was so caught up in the joy of the boys enjoying each other that this photo never bothered me

I want to see the joy on His face and rest on His shoulders.

I felt like God was saying to me through the story, “It’s okay.  You don’t have to feel guilty about obsessing over your lost lamb.  I AM like that, too.  I’d leave 99 at home and search for the one.  You are created in My image. And it’s okay.”

Some bereaved parents find comfort in the fact that their children aren’t really lost. They know their child is Heaven and refuse to use the word lost when referring to them.  I understand, but my heart counts 1, 2, 3, and then comes the terror … FOUR!!  Where is FOUR?  He is lost to me… no longer in my possession..  for now.  My heart searches endlessly for him even though my head knows that I am powerless to recover him… and that if I could, it would be wrong to take him from his happy joy in Heaven.

Until the day I join him there and the terror is washed away, I will ever be teaching my heart to rest in my search secure in my hope in Heaven, in His joy and upon His strong shoulders.

Love,

Jenny

In the early mornings as I study the Word and worship, the Lord gently reveals places in my heart that are still broken; places that need healing that only He can give.  I journal them through quiet tears in an exercise of placing Brown Paper Packages (older post) all wrapped in string at His beautiful feet.

Once everything is journaled out, I am released to go about my day accomplishing the things I have the grace to do while continuing to worship with IHOP.  There were many months where the devastation of my heart was so wide and so deep that I spent whole days journaling and searching the Word for comfort, understanding and healing.  Not journaling meant leaving all those anguishes circling in my head like buzzards picking away at my brain and heart.

When I am in the solitude and privacy of my car, the true intensity of my suffering often shows itself. At home, I am rarely alone and even the brick walls are too thin for the piercing cries of my heart.  There are times when I am afraid to be alone in my car because I know somewhere deep inside that the pain is going to be overwhelming.  There have been times when I thought I was okay, focused on things ahead, and once down the road in my car the grief has jumped out in ambush.

Driving alone to church has been especially difficult.  There is the dreadful desolation of my heart lurking; waiting in the car for me, and then the “How are you?” greetings once I am there. It’s crazy how a casual greeting can pierce a grieving heart.  How do you answer a casual, “How are you?” in the normal 5 second allowance with red swollen eyes after just having an emotional meltdown in the car?  “Trying to hold it together long enough to get through the service.  Thank you?” When another grieving parent asks, it’s different because they understand that “Okay” means “Not falling apart at the moment.”

It has been important for me to not to pretend that I am something I am not.  When you are grieving, you feel a million emotions at once and not one of them is “Fine.” My desire has been to communicate honestly so that when others suffer they know that I can relate and I am willing to love them through it.  How can we help heal each other when concealing our suffering?

There were a few times when I was putting so much effort into just attending a service that I was caught off guard by the casual greetings. I would find myself trying to self evaluate and come up with an honest answer, my 5 seconds way past up, and think, “I was doing better before asked.”  Just recently, there was a day when it was all I could do to smile and nod.  It was awkward, but opening my mouth would have opened the floodgate of sobs. Once someone greeted me with, “It’s so good to see you.” and I thought, “Really?” and so wanted to just melt into their arms.

What does “Fine” mean anyway?  When anyone asked before losing Joel, I would mentally think through each of my four kids… if they were all healthy and doing okay, I was actually “Good.”  It didn’t matter that I’d lost my breasts to cancer and was still dealing with residual pain, or that I was having another allergic reaction to some unknown something, or that I was in that wonderful time of life where pre-menopause and PMS meet.  I was “Good” as long as my four were good.  Now I get halfway through my list and one is dead (has moved to Heaven).  I don’t even know how to evaluate any more.

At one point, I wished I could just hand out a picture of what my heart looked like in answer to the casual greetings and actually googled “broken heart.”  To my dismay, I basically found pictures that look like this:

Is that what most people think a broken heart looks like?!

It doesn’t even begin to describe the brokenness of my heart.  Torn paper doesn’t express the shatteredness; the shards of what was left of my heart with their sharp, painful edges; the muck and the mire of it; the literal breaking we felt in our hearts wave after wave.

 He shot his arrows deep into my heart.
The thought of my suffering and
hopelessness is bitter beyond words.
Lamentations 3:13

I have had to learn a whole new set of terminology in order to describe the state my own heart.

mire   mīr/
noun
1. a stretch of swampy or boggy ground.
soft and slushy mud or dirt.
synonyms:  mud, slime, dirt, filth, muck
2. a situation or state of difficulty, distress, or embarrassment from which it is hard to extricate oneself.

When we first lost Joel, Mike asked me how my hope was?  I answered, “What hope?” I didn’t even know what the word meant anymore.  At that point, I was still holding on to the fact that God loved me and thankfulness was pouring out of my heart.  I was thankful that Joel was the only one that died at the birthday party.  Josh had been shot at 4-5 times with only a scratch.  Judi had been invited but decided not to go.  I could have easily lost all three that night. Hope had been deferred till Heaven and my heart was close to death (Proverbs 13:12).  Along the way, questions about “Love always protects… Love never fails” from 1 Corinthians 13 found their way into my heart; akin to the devil’s “Is God really good?” questions in the garden.  I am sure.

Thoughts like: “This was not loving.  This was not protecting.  How can God be love and allow things like this?” were my constant companions.  The pain of my own inability to protect Joel was deafening.  My heart was so, so broken it could no longer produce even it’s essence; the thankfulness which had been it’s fragrance when first broken.  I so wanted to “give thanks in everything,” but how can you squeeze thanksgiving out of a heart that no longer feels loved?  How can you feel loved when you feel so unprotected?

My heart before was filled with the fragrant joy I found in Him:
“Life is good!  God loves me!  God has good plans for our lives. I have a hope and a future. I am so thankful!”

My heart after:
“Life is hard; crushing; unbearable!  This does not feel like love.  ‘Hope,”good,’ and ‘plan’ are all four letter words tearing into my heart.  My only hope for a future is in Heaven. Why am I still here?”

From my journal on February 6th, 2014:

“I am in a very dark place near where Joel died.  Part of who I’ve been.. part of what I have believed.. part of what keeps me from remembering and believing this awful truth is also part of the reason Joel lost his life.  I trusted God implicitly with the lives of my family.  My whole life was a prayer of faith and trust and intercession for my husband and kids.  I basked in God’s love for me; lived a life of thanksgiving and praise and adoration for all He had given me and I taught my kids to live a life trusting that God in His goodness would lead and direct their paths and show them what to do and give them a good, abundant, long, meaningful life.

They believed me.  Joel believed me.  They believed God.  Joel believed God.  He trusted God.  He lived a life listening to and submitted to the Spirit.  When the young man came to the birthday party with a mask and an AK47 and shot at everyone at the party, Joel didn’t run because he wasn’t afraid.. because he was so full of God’s love for him that he didn’t believe that someone could be so hateful and irreverent of life.  He thought the shooter was playing a practical joke that he wasn’t using real bullets.  He didn’t run even just in case.. he believed implicitly.

The truth that I believed and trusted and taught.. that Joel believed and trusted and died is too unbelievable.. too horrible to believe.”

I still wonder if I had taught Joel to be more cunning and less trusting …if it would have saved his life.  We don’t know if there was a moment before he moved towards the shooter that he realized that he was using real bullets and had to be stopped.

    God’s way is perfect.
All the Lord’s promises prove true.
He is a shield for all who look to him for protection. 2 Samuel 22:3

The one good that I have hoped would come out of my suffering was that I could be honest about my struggles and learn how to offer comfort and encouragement to others who are going through hard things. I wanted to learn how to persevere and have hope, peace and joy while going though trials …how to love and feel loved in the midst of suffering.  And I was failing miserably on the feeling loved part.

O thou who dry’st the mourner’s tear,
How dark this world would be,
If, when deceived and wounded here,
We could not fly to Thee!

The friends, who in our sunshine live,
When winter comes are flown’
And he who has but tears to give
Must weep those tears alone.

But Thou wilt heal that broken heart,
Which, like the plants that throw
Their fragrance from the wounded part,
Breathes sweetness out of woe.

When joy no longer soothes or cheers,
And e’en the hope that threw
A moment’s sparkle o’er our tears
Is dimmed and vanished too;

Oh! who would bear life’s stormy doom,
Did not thy wing of love
Come, brightly wafting through the gloom
Our peace-branch from above?

Then sorrow, touched by Thee, grows bright
With more than rapture’s ray’
As darkness shows us worlds of light
We never saw by day!

~ Thomas Moore, 1779-1852

We learned to transfer our hope from this world to the next and choose “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job 13:15.  Our choices were to choose to be content and trust Him where we are, or choose a very dark place of not trusting.  Choosing to trust, to believe we are loved when it doesn’t feel like love, and to keep an eternal perspective, has been our battle… And I believe it is the battle we all face in this world.

We have to choose to believe:

Our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.  …We hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.  Romans 8:18, 25

The constant cry of my heart has been that God would be my Good Samaritan, bind up my wounds and pour in the oil of His Holy Spirit into the broken places in my heart.

   The Lord gives healing to the brokenhearted and binds up their griefs.  Psalm 147:3

In the midst of my brokenness, God has continually reminded me that He is a wounded healer, that He understands our pain and suffering, and that our suffering is not ours alone but apart of the fellowship of His.  It so encourages me that when Jesus faced His time of suffering that He said things like, ”My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death.” and “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” And that the one who said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” also said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

    The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; He rescues those whose spirits are crushed.  Psalm 34:18

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet he did not sin. Hebrews 4:15

He will give a crown of beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.  Isaiah 61:3

It took REALLY long time before I started feeling like God was healing me. I have so much more healing to go, but I am encouraged by even the smallest progress worked in me and thankful that He is walking with me through my hard days.

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6

I’ve learned that it is really important to stay “rooted and grounded” in God’s love; feel it or not, to keep an eternal perspective, and to hold the Word up to the devil’s, “Is God really good?” questions because:

    Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. 1 Corinthians 13:12

I pray that from His glorious, unlimited resources He will empower you with inner strength through His Spirit. Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep His love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Ephesians 3:16-19

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Colossians 2:6-7

Still “Finding Joy in Him” (Really.),

Love,

Jenny

I’ve been stunned by Jesus’ humility this Passover/Lent season.  I think I am just beginning to understand that the Creator of the Universe put aside all of His majesty and glory to suffer along side of us… to die the horrible death of the cross for us… to really love us.  He couldn’t demonstrate His love towards us while sitting on His throne in glory.  He had to humble Himself… to draw near to us… to suffer.. in order to really love us.  LOVE could do nothing less.

One of the first things I learned after losing Joel was that we grieve deeply because we love deeply.

Isaiah 53:3 He was despised and rejected by others, and a man of sorrows, intimately familiar with suffering; and like one from whom people hide their faces; and we despised him and did not value him.

Love requires humility and suffering.  When God asks us to love Him with all of our hearts, all of our souls and all of our strength and to love others as ourselves, He is inviting us to enter into His suffering heart.  He is asking us to abide in His love which was humble and lowly and which willing suffered the death of the cross for us.

His love is truly stunning.

Philippians 2:3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,
4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

7 rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!

Hebrews 2:17 For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Jesus asked us to partake of Passover in “remembrance of Me.”  When we drink the wine, we are to remember the blood that He poured out for us.  When we eat the bread, we are to remember His flesh given for us.  The flesh that He took on so that He could draw near to us.  His flesh that was despised and rejected, beaten and spit upon and yet carried that heavy cross up to the mount of the skull for us and suffered and died for us.  When we eat and drink of Him we are communing with His suffering and we are to remember that He is communing with ours.

Then comes Easter Sunday when we celebrate His Resurrection.  We are celebrating not only our new life in Him but also our future resurrection with Him and the death of death.  All things will be made new!  How I long for that day!

1 Corinthians 15:54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

A couple of weeks ago, the plea bargain agreement that the young man who murdered Joel asked for was presented to Mike and I.  Although Joel was the only one killed that night, the case was much larger than just us because he (Tim) had shot into a crowd of kids; injuring several others, also.

We decided that for our part that we were willing to agree to the plea bargain as an act of mercy towards Tim.  God has given us so much grace this whole time to forgive.  Our only hearts desire has been to:

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”  Ephesians 4:32

Last Thursday afternoon, we were told that he would be sentenced the next morning.  A good friend asked if we had written a Victim Impact Statement.  No one had really talked to us about one.  It was our opportunity to honor Joel; to show that he was more than a case number and a name on a sheet of paper.

God gave me grace to sit and write the things on my heart that afternoon.  When Mike came home from work, he was able to write what was in his heart; completing what I was unable to put into words.  It was truly a miracle of grace that we were able to write it so quickly.

Two of my girl friends dropped everything to meet us at the court house the next morning.  I am so thankful for them.  Their presence gave me so much strength and courage.

The court room was loud and busy; twenty or so inmates had just been seated to wait for their motions, plus their lawyers and others signing papers, walking in and out and back and forth across the room.  We were unintentionally seated just one row directly behind Tim.  It was Mike and I’s first time to see him in person (Josh’s second).  We watched as he signed papers and read our Victim Impact Statement.  He looked young and vulnerable next to other inmates in the room and I felt for him; so much loss that night.

Judge Smith put our case at the top of his agenda so that we wouldn’t have to wait long.  The noise and busyness of the court room made it difficult to hear, but when the District Attorney began reading our Victim Impact Statement before the judge for us, the room was quiet for just a moment.  I pray that it has some small effect on everyone that heard.

Tim pleaded guilty to four Class A Felonies: one murder and three attempted murders, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.  He will be eligible for a parole hearing in 15 years from the date of his arrest according to current Alabama state laws.

Our Victim Impact Statement will be included on his record:

Victim Impact Statement
from Joel Manuel Coleman’s parents
Thursday, April 10, 2014

Your Honorable Judge Smith,

It would be impossible for us to describe to you the depth of the pain and heartbreak that we have experienced since losing our precious son, Joel Manuel Coleman, on the 7th of December, 2012.  It would be as impossible as it would be to explain the joy we felt the first day that we held him in our arms, or as impossible as it would be to explain the depths of our love for him through the 20 years that we were given with him on this earth, or as impossible to explain as the great pride we felt about the young man he was growing to be.  The only thing that comes close to the depths of our heartbreak is the depths and the heights and the widths of God’s love demonstrated towards us when His Son, Jesus, took on human form and died on the cross for us.

Joel had started college and was just promoted to a shift manager at his work.  He was beginning to realize some of his hopes and dreams and was becoming a prolific guitar player.  Joel was a best friend to each of his siblings and a loving and devoted son to us.  He was loved deeply by his grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends.  He lived his life humbly, honorably, and to the fullest.  He worked hard, studied hard, and played hard.  He loved hiking, nature, making people laugh, playing his classical guitar, and playing with our pets.  He treated everyone he met (young and old) with love and respect, listened to their joys and sorrows, put his arm around them, and made them feel like they were his best friend.  We miss him terribly each and every day.  The pain we feel will never completely go away as we continue to realize the lost opportunities of Joel’s life on this earth and miss his fun and joyful presence.

The night of the 7th of December is a nightmare that we sometimes cannot believe really happened.  We wouldn’t want any parent to experience the depths of pain and heartbreak that we now feel.  Our only hope is that those who’s life’s were spared on that awful night, including Timothy Goldsmith, will turn their hearts towards God and live in such a way as to honor God and share His love with others. Nothing can change what was done to our son Joel or the pain we have endured.  Only God’s grace and the expectation of being reunited with Joel in God’s Kingdom can help us to get through the great loss we are experiencing.  It is not for us to determine what anyone’s fate should be, so we trust God and this court to ensure whatever justice is required is delivered.

Sincerely,

Joel’s parents

My prayer for all of us this season:

Ephesians 3:14-21 For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.  I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Love,

Jenny

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