I’ve read several accounts of being lost at sea, and the description of the doldrums never fails to alarm me. Can you imagine being stuck in a sun burned ocean?

The moment when a breeze starts to pick up the crew brightens and the vessel begins to show life.

I have had my sails trimmed into an induced doldrums for the past few months.

This week marks the one year point for Brian to be in heaven.

I remember my dad saying to me one week after Brian died: “It’s been a week. Next week it will be two, then three.”

I didn’t know how I survived the first week—but I did, and his words were a gentle reminder that I could possibly survive time I couldn’t even imagine.

It’s been a year.

I remind myself that time must pass. My heart has developed a direct link to my tears, and the heaviness is truly physically painful. Sorrow is stifling. I’ve known sorrow, but the layers of it have given me a different experience.

The doldrums have given me time to process and manage the pain.

I’m thankful to trim my sails and my life down to just a few people right now, Ed and Cherie, primarily, my mom and dad. Anyone else dealing with this shared grief has been more of a balm to my spirit than whom I can help. I trust that people can understand that. I’m thankful for words of encouragement, for prayers, for thoughtful words.

I’m still in pain.

Pain changes things.

Don’t expect anyone at Corgi Hollows to be the same again. We’re changed. Different. We’re not the people we were.

For me, it seems that things I loved to do with Brian are especially sad and painful. I seek things completely different. My taste in music has changed, media, even the places we went I avoid for the most part. “Firsts” are important, and I’ve interspersed these things throughout the year, but the pain is unpredictable, and I prefer to avoid them.

New things. Different things.

Don’t judge me! Grief should never be judged. Those of us who are living it are simply trying to manage existence.

I know God allowed this pain. Jesus mourned too. He experienced emotions and pain. Why in the world did God created emotion?

Perhaps to give God glory—-

Philip Yancey wrote a book about pain years ago. I read it, and I haven’t forgotten the “blessing” of pain that he wrote of. Pain, something we avoid mostly, is a blessing of warning to the body’s stress. Perhaps I should see emotion like that. It is a blessing of expression.

These are thoughts from the doldrums.

The sun is shining. I’m listening to “Hitchville” today, a local group who has ties to some of my friends. Country music—Corgi Hollows???

Coping. Change. Time passing.

Waiting for the breeze.

Last weekend my cousin from Arizona came to visit and cheer this household. She always does, whenever she comes, but I needed her good medicine and cheerful ways more than ever. I’m so glad she came.

We cut rhubarb so she could make a pie for her mom. It turned out great, I hear. (Millie’s Recipe, find it on the old site!)

She always makes me laugh, gives me sound advice, and helps me regain the hope that I lose. It is her gift. I am glad to have a person like her in my close circle. We worked together at a department store called “Donaldson’s” back in the 1980’s, and I remember those shifts fondly.

I cried when she left, but there are promises of another visit soon.

I keep wondering if my air-travel plans will be thwarted by my health decisions. The New World Order seeks to control the flow of humans, and I am staying out of the global stuff as much as I can.

Globalism is really a thing these days, even as we find the hidden agendas and their devastating effects.

I’m being quiet again.

I thought I was quitting the hotel, but my manager begged me to come back. I’ll be back there sporadically. I guess that is a positive thing. I get to meet all kinds of people there.

As summer begins I see the changes in all of us connected to Corgi Hollows. We are just short of the anniversary of my husband’s death today, it will be a year soon. Memorial Day was filled with his memory, as we visited his grave, and his name was read out loud at the service in our city.

I feel raw. I still cannot believe he is gone, with Jesus, of course.

I think we will all be going soon. Look around! Where is hope? In Christ alone.

As someone who is thoughtfully pulling back from a frenzied life-pace I can understand my non-believing friends better than ever.

I am a believer, but I can see the tactics used to ignore Christ.

It’s pretty effective.

That is why I am praying so diligently for these dear ones to be snatched from the fire, as it says in Jude.

My list isn’t long. You might be on it if I know you, and you haven’t come to faith. There are a few “big” names on it, too, as I pray for the influence of conversion hope to reach thousands, if not millions!

You need Jesus.

He will help you.

Open your spiritual eyes, and let the Holy Spirit reveal truth to you.

Time is so short. We prophecy people understand! This is the season, and we are not unaware!

Maranatha!

I am surrounded by blue, green, deafening birdsong, sunshine, lilacs and sweetness.

And my heart is aching because this was the time of year that my husband really came to life, loving the yard, seeing the new growth, inhaling freshness.

Everywhere I look I can picture him hard at work.

And my loss is keen.

I feel like the beauty and the sorrow just don’t go together.

It is a conundrum.

I have to figure this out, but the heaviness in my heart is something I seek to distract myself from. It’s just too heavy. This is what grief looks like for me almost a year after my loss.

I am still remembering the moment I learned my husband had died, still wondering if it is really true. Why can’t our minds accept our shock?

I go on with the mundane things about me, subbing, mowing, shopping, driving, swimming at the Y, answering texts, paying the bills. I love the mundane. I’m so unexciting.

I’m healing.

I am thankful for each promise you have made me of praying. I need prayer. I need understanding.

My life journey has been raw lately, and because I am a writer/blogger I share it. It’s who I am right now, who I have become. I am simply the beggar telling other beggars where to find hope.

I like that metaphor.

Today I have the impetus to crawl out of my hole and take a look around. I’ve been in fetal position for a few weeks, and I’m giving myself some slack to see the darker side of my grief and let my guard down. My head hurts from crying, I snap irritably at little things. I’m not pleasant to be around.

Fetal position is becoming to me these days. You’d rather not encounter me.

God understands that I am dust. He knows my need and my weakness. He is always there. I’m seeing His merciful side lately. God, the righteous judge, is gentle and lowly of heart. I need Him to see me with that heart right now.

All I can do is pray for others right now.

Focus is a real thing, and I have defined my focus through these difficult months. I seek gentleness and lowliness, I seek to reflect the heart of Jesus.

Off to subbing for the rest of the day.

My dear cousin, precious friend, is arriving tonight to lift my spirits and connect for a week. She has sacrificed a week in her Arizona home to be with me. She always does me good. I’m so grateful for her.

Expect me to come back to life. I need to.

This was one of my husband’s favorite quotes. In our crazy life we reminded each other that “normal” was really impossible. How can you be normal with five above-average kids running around?

Brian was a genius, too, so that is hardly normal.

As I try to find a level of normalcy in my current existence I become weary, exhausted, trying to figure out a road map to the Rapture.

As a Pre-trib Rapture adherent I have a focal point, and that is a moment/twinkling that can occur at any time, perhaps today.

That focal point tends to ground me, forces me to find stability in a life that seems out of control.

God is in control, it just seems a bit crazy to me for now.

I guess I’m asking for your prayers.

I don’t like this stage of loss, this unpredictable emotion and pain. It’s hard on the soul.

It’s beyond my power to change it, but I ask for the One Who can help me to do so.

Thanks for praying.

My son, Ed, tells me I have a stream-of-conscious style of writing, and that is true. I rarely edit, I rarely fix, I just let it out.

In the watches of the night an idea will come to me, something I have concern about, an incident to share, something mundane perhaps. As an evangelist my concern is for people to find the truth of Jesus, and to accept His offer of salvation.

His creation, His terms.

I have been quiet these past weeks, with rare surfacing for social oxygen. I have virtually quit my job at the hotel. I’ve subbed a couple of days each week. I take walks and I swim. Corwyn is at my hand, looking to me, watching my eyes, listening for my every movement.

This dog adores me.

I’m thankful for her. It’s unusual and sort of nice. I think about how I should be acting toward God and what adoration really looks like.

She watches me cry.

I’ve been crying, and I think it is probably a good thing. This quiet season is my thoughts of loss manifesting in tears. I wondered if it would come, truthfully. Numbness is survival. Could I let myself emote again?

I think I was afraid of crumbling.

I didn’t want to crumble.

Grief crumbling is okay.

I still don’t know if I am going to get through it, but I know it is okay, because I am in the middle of it and I can still function. I still have hope in the middle of the dark.

I am changed. I’m not the person I was. You shouldn’t expect it, either.

Loss changes people.

______________

I know it is unscandinavian to brag about my family. I apologize. My Swedish/Norwegian heritage prohibits bragging. I must mention this, though. I have extremely talented family. (Fact). Some of you know this, have followed us, kept an eye on them.

Grief has changed my family, too, and I ask you to pray for ALL of my family—parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, children, in-laws.

As you know, my older brother and his wife were killed in California by a drunk driver October 2019. They left seven adult (or almost adult) children. My brother and his first wife (who died of a brain tumor) had four children. My second sister-in-law had three.

My brother’s younger daughter is a musician, and her work brings joy to many, many people. Her style is “indie,” so there is a very select audience for her music.

After my husband died in June last summer I spent some time with her briefly, and we talked about heaven, about faith, about hope. What else did we have? She wants to see her dad again. I want to see her dad and my husband again. We shared our pain.

This Friday her new album is coming out, “Mercy.”

I have followed her production of this album. I see a spiritual transformation, and I am thrilled. I believe she has grounded her faith in Jesus to handle her loss. This is the ONLY way to handle loss.

I warmly recommend this new work “Mercy” by Natalie Bergman. There is grace and hope in this music. The path toward true spiritual power and transformation by the Holy Spirit was chosen.

I’m comforted, I’m thrilled.

___________

Another great tragedy occurred this past weekend in my family circle. I cannot give any details, but God can take care of this. I hope that my dear one who is most affected can also trust His timing, His plan. Please pray for this situation. Thank you.

___________

Maranatha, Jesus! We need you.

Perhaps today?

Who can truly predict the heart and its leanings?

As shock and adrenaline wear off I am faced with a bitter void in my chest.

It is okay to weep, shake, and sink into reverie.

I am not bereft, as I have a foundation of God’s Word. Jesus is my rock, my solid footing. I may fall to the darts of evil, but I have this foundation under me that’s immovable.

This existence wears heavy on me, I look to the millennial kingdom more and more each day.

But I must live the appointed days despite my heartache.

For the past few weeks I’ve been quiet. I have so many things to process in my heart and mind. My soul has reached a different stage of grief and loss. I am learning to let go of everything but my faith in Christ, cost what it may.

Do people really realize how fragile they are?

I can begin to understand loss without God, but I would never want to experience that. The mind seeks solid footing like water. It flows downward to find that stable footing. My mind has toyed with God’s existence.

He is, after all, beyond our senses.

I see the kingdom of evil flourishing all around me and I must trust that God is really in control.

He is.

God is the sovereign power of my knowledge. I must submit my will and mind to Him alone. His rules.

My ideas are nothing. Satan would like for me to believe that I can manufacture a truth within myself, but it is pointless. I must submit to the One who Created All.

—Whether I like it or not.

I’m so tired of the attacks, the conjecture, the rebellion. I’m exhausted.

So I know that in these last days the only thing that I can do is pray and trust, read my Bible and speak it.

The Word is powerful, a two-edged sword.

Let its power do the drawing, the wooing. The Word alone (one little word) can smite the devil.

As I hear reports of people “falling away” I know within myself that they never accepted the Truth. They held a piece of their own idolatry within their spirits, and never let it go.

One must accept the truth.

One meets that in loss with more poignant clarity. I know now deeper.

The cost is great, the sorrow is painful, the waiting is exhausting.

It is time to reject the old self, dear one, the one that died with Christ. It is time to be born again.

When we are gone from this earth, with the Lord, our dear ones who never submitted to the Creator will mourn us. They will begin to know this pain.

Or will they be temporarily relieved?

My grief seems to be never-ending, I see no end in sight for it today. It just feels like a darkness, therefore I call it infinity, a ceaseless cycle. Stages are for psychiatrists, but today it is infinity.

Bear the pain.

Preach the Word.

Embrace the rejection.

Hope in Christ.

It is all that we have when everything is stripped away.

Hope. In Christ.

Maranatha

Ed is learning Japanese. He has dabbled in Russian, Esperanto, and German. He loves language (he should be a linguist!) but he is studying computer engineering. His interest in languages is purely recreational.

It is interesting to dabble in a language. I, too, dabble. I have a pretty good ability to communicate in German. I’m reading the Bible in Spanish right now (and learning a lot!) and I studied Turkish over the years.

I love it that my kids are also interested in languages. We talk about the Tower of Babel around Corgi Hollows. We talk about cultures and tribes, the dispersion of peoples after Noah’s flood. We like that sort of thing.

We talk about culture, the nations, diversity—all things that God has made. We talk of how cultures develop philosophies and ethics. We talk about climate and how it affects culture.

This week we have been chatting about Japanese and Protestant work ethics. They are based on different premises, but they result in productive society as far as work is concerned.

Japanese work ethic seems to derive from a concern about personal reputation and bringing honor to one’s family. The Protestant work ethic seems to come from a different focus.

Recently I read somewhere that the reason socialism works in Scandinavian countries is the deeply ingrained Protestant work ethic established there during the Reformation.

The bitter climate is a good work motivator, too. One must prepare for cold weather.

I would also surmise that the expectation of the Rapture, the coming of Christ suddenly, is also a factor in work ethic. We believers in Jesus are admonished to get our house in order, to be ready for His return at any moment.

This translated into an obsession with keeping your house CLEAN.

How many protestant housewives keep a squeaky clean house?

I know that my Scandinavian heritage demanded I keep a house “perfectly” and I have failed there. I do keep house, just not perfectly.

My work ethic has forced me to keep my schedule with my jobs throughout my life adjustments. It has made me get to the YMCA to swim. It has made me get up from bed in the morning and start the dishwasher when I feel like staying in fetal position.

It’s a good thing, overall.

I am convicted about being ready, getting my house in order, and encouraging my children to do the same. The work ethic is real, and it is a good thing. It has a hopefulness.

Jesus is coming. The King is coming.

Rapture ready!

I have been brought to a season of quiet.

This type of quiet spirit is coveted in believers, and it is interesting to observe. My mother talks about it all the time, as she recognizes her own lack of it. When we do not have a quiet spirit it torments us.

We project that torment onto others, too.

What is a quiet spirit? Is it serene? Is it smiling? Is it at rest?

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is having no expectations, no striving, no malice toward others. As I grieve my own losses I am aware that my spirit can still be quiet. My countenance has nothing to do with my spirit, yet it reveals the pain of suffering.

In acceptance lies peace. (Hannah Hurnard)

When we accept God’s lot for us we have peace—-quiet.

When we stand on the promises in God’s Word we come to a place of quiet.

Last fall in one of my classes my professor probed me about my hopes and dreams. He is one of those scholars who puts much stock in the touchy/feely/relational sort of teaching. I looked at him through the computer camera and wept. I could honestly say that all my dreams were gone, that my only hope was in Jesus.

Do you know what it is like to lose all your dreams?

I do.

It is a place of quiet.

Elisabeth Elliot had a phrase, “Do the next thing.”

That ran through my mind the very day my cell phone rang with the New Hampshire Officer telling me that my husband had passed away on the Appalachian Trail. “Do the next thing.” In shock, I did that.

Even now, as I remember that horrific moment, I felt a peace and quiet in my heart that only comes from Christ.

I’ll confess that I was still hopeful that the Lord would just bring my husband back to life miraculously. I do believe in the supernatural. Coping mechanism? Why not?

The Holy Spirit is a presence in my life, and He is the reason I could “calmly” do the next thing. I take no credit. My spirit did not factor in.

A quiet spirit only comes from God. When you are seeking a quiet spirit you cannot look within yourself. You are unable to manufacture one. How can quiet come from within your sinful self? The Buddhists strive for Nirvana, but it is all just an illusion.

Reality is peace in Christ alone.

In the grasping for inner peace humans try all sorts of fake solutions.

There is only one true solution: Jesus Christ.

As Jesus says: the way is narrow and few find it.

Are you on the way?