FYI-My husband knows what I have written below and has approved it:)
My husband is the youngest of 5 sons. Twenty-nine years ago today, in a single vehicle accident, the 3rd of those sons (18) was killed in a drinking and driving car accident, the 4th son (16) was critically injured and told he would never walk again (he can), and a 3rd person broke his neck but fully recovered. My husband was 12 years old when this happened. However, that was not the beginning of the loss for my husband's family. That was 22 or so years before when his father woke up one morning and put his hand out to touch his 1 month old firstborn son who was to be baptized that day and discovered he had died in his sleep. Because of my husband's family of origin's belief that baptism is necessary for salvation, the effects were long lasting and severe. There are not words to describe the grief of the loss of a child. But to believe that your child is in hell is worse.
My husband's family did not grieve the loss of their 1st son well (given how poorly I grieved losing Rose I cannot imagine what they went through). What was not healthy in the first place deteriorated even more as 4 additional sons were born. I don't want to embarrass my husband by talking about specifics but suffice it to say that it was not pleasant; it was extremely unhealthy. The habits and patterns that his father set in place as the head of the family were adopted by the sons and utter dysfunction reigned. Then came that day in 1984 when my husband, at age 12, was informed by his father "your brother is no longer with us" before his father walked out the door to deal with the critical medical condition of the other son (who had been helicoptered 3 hours away) and left my husband alone in the house. His father never said another word about it. Ever. My husband had people come around him making comments that were not helpful. In fact, they created deeper wounds and the dysfunction of the family perpetuated.
Eight years later I met my husband. I was very touched by the things that he had lived through and was surprised at how much of a survivor he was despite growing up in less than pleasant (if we are to be really honest, downright hostile) conditions. I was also thankful to have a person who understood the grief of losing someone to a drunk driver, as I had lost a close friend when I was 16 also in a single car drunk driving accident.
While the sting of deaths had wreaked havoc on us, the grief that both of us have been through and by experiencing the impact of the fallout was something God used to knit our hearts together. While I won't go into the details of the circumstances, the death of my husband's brother 29 years ago was really a culmination of all of the dysfunction that ensued from the death of his first brother some 22 years before that. It was a chaotic cycle of extreme proportions that God in His sovereignty has stopped in our family. While both of us had been raised attending church and learning "religion," God used our questioning and grief from our losses to (eventually) take us to a place where we learned about having a "relationship" with Christ and we were saved. He drew us to Him and set us on a totally different trajectory. That is not to say that both of us don't have "baggage" from our losses that shows up every day. For example, we don't drive after dark on weekends or holidays where people are likely to be drinking, we stay in very close contact with each other and Beautiful when one of us are out driving. When someone doesn't answer the phone we never wonder about indiscretions, it is always a worry that the person has been in an accident. Having Beautiful driving now has been very, very hard on us (I am tearing up just writing that. We are working on trusting Him who has every one of her days numbered...). That is probably why we have not been too quick to get her her own car;) We are also both very sensitive to loss of babies (I dare say we were (and are) much more vigilant about checking to see if the kids are still breathing at night than we probably need to be). Having JJ in our room for 3 years really was calming to us in some ways since his breathing was always such a problem and we wanted to be sure he was still breathing. The other kids were always checked several times a night as well for the first couple of years. Just thinking about that, I wonder if I have slept well at all in the past 16 years lol! There are many other ways we are affected fundamentally as well but that is not the purpose of this post.
This date is one of reflection for us every year (actually, the "official" date is tomorrow but that was when they were found and his brother pronounced dead. My husband believes the accident was actually before midnight so observes today as the day his brother died). Mostly we reflect on how much in awe of Him we are for his sovereignty, power, mercy, and grace to have plucked my husband out of that cycle. How he wove the two of us together initially, despite us being about as different as a couple can be, due to our experiences with death. We marvel that we are one more living example of what Satan intended to be long reaching tendrils of destruction, despair, and dysfunction yet God used it to cement the hearts of two people that few thought would make it two years much less 2 decades and counting.
So, the funeral of the 2 year old we attended last week was hard in many ways. We, of course, grieve for her family's loss. However, it is also reminding us in a very emotional way at how the tendrils of death have affected my husband's family, him, and now our family 5 decades after the event. We grieve for the realities of sin and death along with all of the chaos it brings while we rejoice in the hope of Jesus Christ and all that He promises.
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”
56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.57But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Corinthians 15: 54-58
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