I remember when the paramedics arrived and I knew then. I knew that they knew it was too late. Hooking her up to the heart monitor was just a formality, just to be sure. They knew the moment they walked in that she had already been gone for a long time. I hit my head against the door frame between her room and her sister's and I cried out a panicked, desperate prayer, saying the same thing over and over again. "Please Jesus, please Jesus."
I have a very firm belief that the name of Jesus holds power. I have nightmares and I speak the name of Jesus to the monsters to get them to go away. I wonder, what if I had gathered that same amount of faith and courage and threw myself on the floor to lay hands on her? What if I had spoken with authority, like Jesus did when he told the little girl - the sweet girl who appeared dead to the rest of the world - "Talitha Koum," meaning "Little girl, I say to you arise."
Would she have lived? Would she have come back to life?
It's easy to get lost in the what-ifs. What if I had spoken with authority or prayed fervently in Jesus' name? What if I hadn't had a complete mental breakdown a year after my husband's stroke? What if the trauma in my life hadn't precipitated the autoimmune diseases that are now likely part of me forever? What if I hadn't been such a selfish mother? What if I had gotten help for her sooner?
I don't know the answer to any of those things because there is no way I can know. All I do know is that I could easily drive myself insane by chasing the answers to those questions because there. are. no. answers. It's over. I can neither control nor change the past, so it's a completely useless endeavor. And I have to make peace with that.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I truly believe God gave me a tremendous gift by allowing me to wrestle with some of these questions - and self-accusations - in the weeks and months before her death. She had said to me, only a week before she died, that it was my fault she was an addict. But God gave me this sudden heartening so I could say to myself, and to her, that I had been her advocate for years. No, I wasn't perfect, by any means. But I tried my best to understand her needs and her mental illness. I worked hard to let her know that I was supportive of her journey to understand her sexual identity. I tried my damnedest to just understand her.
So when Father Steve came to the house shortly after she died, he blessed her body as we all held each other and sobbed. And the one thing he told us, that he really wanted to impress upon us, was to not give in to the what-ifs. There was nothing we could do to change the outcome in that moment. There was no way to bring her back, and it was no one's fault.
I think I've come a long way in not blaming myself. Something I say to myself (and to other people) often is, "You did the best you could at the time." Something I don't say to others, but to myself, once in a while is, "I didn't do the best I could. I made selfish choices sometimes. I was too lazy, too tired, too distracted, too self-focused to be completely available to my children for each and every moment of their lives. And I handled some situations badly, with yelling, nagging, swearing, or just not making an effort to understand where they were coming from or what they needed.
I've brought all of these to the Lord. I've asked forgiveness. I've asked my children to forgive me. I've asked Joy to forgive a number of things even since she's been gone. There were things I wanted to do better but I just didn't. What I'm trying to say here is that there's a paradox in looking at our past actions. While we can confidently say we did the best we could in a situation, we can just as easily say that we could have done better. I don't want to make excuses for my behavior, but I also don't want to spend my life berating myself for my mistakes.
For example, Joy loved having a bedtime routine during which I would sit and talk with her and pray with her before bed. As she and the other kids got older, it felt less and less necessary and the other kids didn't mind, but Joy still found it a treat when I would go up to her room and say good-night. I did it less and less until I just didn't do it anymore, even though she would have loved it, probably all the way through high school. I can look back and see that I was legitimately wiped out at the end of most days, suffering more pain and fatigue from autoimmune disease as the years went on. But I still could have climbed the stairs. I still could have given her a good-night kiss and talked to her for 5 minutes. Sadly, I no longer have the opportunity to make it right. It's done. So I apologize to her now and I ask God's forgiveness for the times that my actions were dictated more by selfishness than by a true inability to move my tired and achy body.
When I look back, I wish I could have done so, so many things differently. I don't beat myself up over them, but I also don't just brush them off, thinking, "Oh well, nothing I can do about that now." I want to take responsibility for my actions and my lack thereof when my children needed me.
I think God has given me a lot of grace to do that thus far. There are things I've realized about Joy and my other kids that I wish I could have seen back then. I have to own up to my weakness and the ways I've hurt my kids, but I also have to trust God's complete forgiveness and let the past stay in the past.
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