My Great Tragedy

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.”

- Vicki Harrison 

My Past

I have narrated the tragedies of my life on so many occasions that it almost wearies me to talk of them now.

There was being evicted from our home at nine. That was the first time CPS tried to actively remove us kids from our parents' custody. They failed. Then there was the actual removal, which happened five months later. There was a visit from two social workers in the morning and then twenty-seven police officers that night and the sound of my siblings sobbing.

Fifty-three days later we were returned home. Sick. Reeling. Forever scarred.

Five months after that, my eight year old brother died.

Our story hit the press. There were cameramen and reporters at our gate and horrible stories in the newspapers. Every day we faced the fear that they would take us again. Two more babies came along. The sickness that had come home with us (impetigo) had infected my "step" mother while she was pregnant.

Her baby - my brother - died at five weeks old, only three months after we lost Matthew.

Two months later - after repeated attempts - CPS came and took me and my siblings once more.
We were taken to a group home ("the institution," as we called it) on the other side of the island. We spent ten months there.

They tried to charge my father and step mother with negligent homicide - this for not taking the baby to the ER soon enough. They were eventually proven not guilty.

There was the rise and fall of brief fame. The shocking exposure and then the inevitable obscurity. The putting back of our family was documented but not followed. The pieces of our life had been thrown into the air and when the pieces fell, we found them jagged, broken, and misfitted.

Nothing is the same. This was ten years ago but in some ways, we're still recovering.

This was the Great Tragedy of my life, and yet tragedy has followed us through the passing of the years - some just as severe as the original.

Why Do We Suffer?

I have come to the conclusion that although our experiences seem strange and jarring - and were inexplicably painful to undergo - this is the life of a Christian. This is the walk we were called to.

To suffer for Christ's sake is our ministry. It is the life to which we should be accustomed. His grace proves sufficient in the gravest and darkest of times and He always sees us through. Although I would never wish to relive the things we were made to undergo, I understand that there was a purpose for them, a purpose that will one day be made clear to me.

A Successive Heartbreak

In recent months, I have had to experience a different kind of heartbreak. The kind I thought couldn't touch my family - the kind rooted in estrangement, betrayal, abandonment, and accusations. It is a totally different kind of brokenness.

It wakes up with me every day. It follows me into bed at night. It's darkness - a soul darkness in which I clutch blindly at Jesus, wondering if there can even be relief. The doubt that tears at me - dear God, do I even know You? Would this have happened if we had done something different - if we were different?

It was a successive heartbreak. Every day. Every moment. My faith - that which had not been touched before - was beaten with what felt like iron rods. I was crumbling - dying, it felt like - and it didn't stop. It wouldn't stop.

What could I do? Succumb to it? No! I clung all the tighter to Jesus. Lord, deliver me lest I fall! was my cry. The darkness was bewildering - overwhelming. I was reeling, and felt like I was being dragged through the valley of the shadow of death by my hair. Every new accusation - every rumor - was a fresh stab through my already bleeding chest.

Have the accusations stopped? No, they reached a horrifying peak before the Lord gently pulled us over the hurdle. Have they become fewer and less shocking? Yes... But the weight of these months presses on me. It's a burden almost too great too bear.

Jesus, help us, Jesus, help us, I have pleaded.

And He does.

Moment by moment. Bit by bit. A little extra grace and strength. The comfort of His presence. The proof of little prayers being answered. The long, uneventful days that slowly wash away the pain.

"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience..." 

Romans 5:3

I think that a true man or woman of God is one acquainted with much suffering. You may know a few of them. They are the broken ones with heads bowed, faces creased with grief, and yet alive with the truth. They are the trusting, the meek, and the faithful.

When the dust has settled, I can almost kiss the cross that weighs so heavily on my back. I may be bleeding from my wounds, but if it His hands that will tend me, then I will bleed gladly.  If this cross will draw me closer to the One who carried the Cross of all crosses, then I will not cast it to the side.

Though He slay me, yet will I praise Him.