Bo Stern

 

I am cooking tonight.

 

Cooking isn’t unusual for me – I try to cook dinner for my kids several nights each week, and we have our big family dinner every Sunday, so cooking is regular. But tonight, I’m cooking alone. Tori and Tess have things going that adult kids tend to have.  Josiah is at church.  I am alone.  And I don’t mind being alone – in fact, after a busy, people-filled day, the introvert in me is happy to sink into an evening filled with solitude and good food.

 

But, the thing is, I can’t stop my mind from running ahead.  It keeps racing out of the here-and-now, to a day not so far away, when this will be my normal.  Tess gets married in January. Tori moves into her own place in February.  Josiah goes to college in 2 & 1/2 years and is gone a whole lot even now.

 

I look at the six, fat bratwurst browning in the skillet and remember how my grandmother squirreled so many leftovers away in her fridge.  She just couldn’t learn to cook for one and I’m not sure she ever really tried.

 

I try unsuccessfully to deflect the feelings I’m unprepared to process.  I am fifteen years younger than my grandmother was when she was widowed. It seems I have a long road ahead, and that road is apparently filled with a lot of leftovers, which makes me wonder if I’ll hate being really and truly alone.  Almost as soon as that thought bubbles up to the surface, my mind starts racing for solutions which include, but are not limited to:  1) Have friends over for dinner  2) Have homeless people over for dinner 3) Stop eating dinner.

 

But I love to cook. It’s therapy for me.  And Steve loved to eat what I cooked.  It was therapy for him. I would give about anything for the chance to  keep making moussaka and curry and shepherd’s pie for that guy for the next thirty years. But plans change and people go and then we have decisions to make about why we do the things we do and what it would mean if we stopped.To stop cooking would be to hand more of my life over to the greedy abyss that is ALS and I just will not, cannot do it.  It doesn’t get to win this one.

 

Dinner is ready. Sausage, maple glazed butternut squash, roasted broccoli, and way too much of it.  But it is delicious and I feel warmed and fed in a world where so many will go to bed tonight alone and hungry.  The minute I lose sight of that, I’ve become the very thing I swore I would never become (starts with a v and ends with ictum.)  Again I’ll say: ALS doesn’t get to win this.  It doesn’t get to slap labels on lapels. Not without a fight.

 

So, cook I shall. For many or for me.  For life.  For love.  For Steve.

 

It’s just the right thing to do.

 

With hope,

 

Bo

 

Two months today.

 

Two months since Steve went home.

 

Two months of the deepest, darkest heartache I have ever known.  It has been a wonder and terror to me.  (Dramatic words, I know, but I mean them.)

 

Two months of groping through inky black nights of fear and strangely dim summer days.

 

Two months of miracles.

 

Two months of surprising discoveries, both internal and peripheral, that have awakened me to new angles on the character of God and the ways He has woven my heart together.

 

Two months of wondering if He would, again, today, be enough.  Be real enough.  Be peace enough.  Be provision enough.  Be close enough.

 

Two months of finding that He is the Yes to all questions of want.  He is always the Yes, even when my heart is no, or maybe, or prove Yourself first and then I’ll trust.

 

Two months and I am still standing and still astounded. In awe. Undone by His ways.

 

I ran into this prayer today and it sang my heart:

 

God of all our times:

We have known since the day of our birth

that our primal task is to grow to basic trust in You, 

to rely on You in every circumstance,

to know that You would return when You are away, 

to trust that in Your absence You will soon be present, 

to be assured that Your silence bespeaks attentiveness and not neglect, 

to know that in Your abiding faithfulness, “all will be well and all will be well.”  

 

We do trust in You: 

we are named by  Your name,

and bonded in Your service.

We are among those who sing Your praise

and who know of Your deep faithfulness. 

You, you however, are not easy to trust:

We pray against a closed sky; 

our hopes reduced to auto-suggestion; 

our petitions are more habit than hope;

our intercessions are kindly gestures of well-being. 

 

Sometimes,

because Your silence and absence, 

Your indifference and tardiness are glaring among us. 

We are drawn to find lesser gods, 

easier loyalties,

many forms of self-trust…

that do not even fool us. 

 

On this Friday of remembered pain and echoing deathliness, 

We pray for new measures of passion, 

for fresh waves of resolve, 

for courage, energy, and freedom to be our true selves…

waiting in confidence, 

and while waiting, acting our life toward You

in Your ways of forgiving generosity. 

 

We pray in the name of Jesus who trusted fully, and 

who is Himself fully worthy of our trust.  

Amen.     {Walter Bruggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth}

 

 

With hope,

 

Bo

 

 

I have had a remarkable week.  It has been as full and beautiful as the preceding six weeks were desperate and ugly.  Some of the reasons are easy to identify –  I survived a minefield of paperwork and red tape, the administrative necessities that accompany death.  The headaches have finally been relenting. I went back to work, which I love. All good things, but not good enough to account for this stunning increase of peace.

 

Peace, I’ve discovered, doesn’t actually diminish grief and that’s okay because I’m not looking to be free of grief.  I think the Bible is clear that sorrow tethers us to the presence of God in a way that few other things can.  Grief is my journey right now.  It’s the weight that reminds me that I was the luckiest girl in all the world for 30 years, 5 months and 16 days. Healthy grief is good for me; I’m not going to pray it away.  I am, however, quite desperate to be free of fear – and that’s the power of His promise of peace.

 

Today I feel peace.  I feel beauty in the season and the weather and in the switch to a fall wardrobe and in my heart.  I’m not going to worry about how I’ll feel tomorrow. Today is enough for today.

 

 

With hope,

 

 

Bo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night was my longest night since Steve went home. Just the longest, hardest night.

 

Tossing and turning, reminding myself at 12:23 and 1:37 and 2:15 that the sun would rise, that morning would be faithful to break through mourning, that it could not be otherwise because it is the law of nature and the law of God’s mercy.

 

I’ve read a lot about people in grief who want to stay in bed indefinitely, but that’s not me. The dark silence is deafening, suffocating.  Not every night, just a few nights. But on those nights, the long term reality of Steve’s absence is palpable and powerful.

 

I keep looking for a strategy to avoid moments like this so that I can get on with this process and make some progress.  Then I remember: this is the process and this is progress.

 

This is grief.

 

It is weighty and consuming and it isn’t heavier than the love of God, but it’s the second-heaviest thing I’ve experienced.  I know that it can’t separate me from His love, but I do feel it pulling at my ankles sometimes with a strength that is surprising, wanting to drag me away with my hope. And if it were up to my muscles or intellect or emotional fortitude, grief would win without even breaking a sweat.

 

But, God.

 

He is strong and stronger still.  And every time I am rescued from the deep abyss, I am stronger, too – not necessarily in my ability to strategize and fight, but in my ability to rest and trust.

 

This is a big week ahead. I have a long list of things that need to be done and decisions that need to be made, and on Friday – the ALS Fancy Dance!  It’s too early to declare that it will be a great week, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that I’ll be stronger at the end of it than I am today.  That’s the ground in which I’m planting my flag on this Monday.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

With hope,

 

Bo

 

Every day, I am faced with a choice to see life as beautiful and full or empty and unfair. I don’t think that will ever change (I don’t actually think it changes for any of us, no matter what our circumstances.) The only thing that changes is how easy or difficult it is to make the choice and how willing I am to make it, regardless of how capable I feel.

 

This morning, it’s easy. I feel peace and wholeness nipping at my heels. I feel held and sustained and excited about what the day holds. Tomorrow, it might be hard again. Or in two hours it might be hard again.  All I know for sure is it will be hard again.  I have no control over that.

 

The choice, however, she’s always mine to make.

 

 

 

I Praise Your name, for Your unfailing love and Your truth;

for You have placed Your name and Your word over all things and all times. 

On the day I needed You, I called, and You responded 

and infused my soul with strength.  

Psalm 138:2-3 The Voice