Celebrate Life

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.Isaiah 41:10

One of our families favorite movie was watching 'Finding Nemo'. We watched it when we were a family of four and we watched it as a family of three. The movie took on a different meaning after our daughter's sudden loss. Why? After losing his entire brood Marlin vowed to watch over Nemo to keep him from being a victim. He was very overprotected when it came to protecting Nemo. When Marlin watches a deep sea diver capturing Nemo in a net he vows to go out and find him.

The film takes on comical dimensions when the Marlin meets Dory, who is the fish with the short term memory problems. You might remember Dory as always enjoying the moment while Marlin is always serious is to the point where Dory refers to Marlin as 'Mr. Grumpy face'. Dory becomes his partner in search of his son.

I identified with 'Mr. grumpy face' because for the first few years after we lost Maria I found myself in a perpetual state of fear trying to protect my remaining child. I realized as I traveled my grief journey that I wasn't alone. Fear and anxiety are often the companions of dads who suffered the loss of a child. As dads we carry a lot of weight on our shoulders trying to protect our family that when one of our own dies we are tormented with guilt as we wrestle with the 'what if's' and the 'why's. 

Getting through that process to true healing takes time. One foot in front of the other time. Allowing God to walk with you as you wrestle with these emotions time. There is no magic cure-all for getting through the grief process and at times it may seem like a painstaking slow process.

Recently, our family turned a new chapter in our lives. We chose to embrace life by decluttering 25 years worth of paper work that we have never looked at, nor do we have the time to look at nor is their a need to look at it. We had paperwork for appliances that have long sense been gone. We had loan paperwork for old cars long sense trashed. We cleared out the entire metal file cabinet of stuff we no longer needed and filled up 1/2 of the recycle container in the garage. When we were done we moved our son's bedroom into the bedroom that use to be the den. I was able to get a new den. We celebrated his independence.

There are so many things in life that cause us to want to celebrate. The beauty of the outdoors, birds chirping, the squirrels jumping from branch to branch, the road trips to Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone are some of the examples and boating on one of the many lakes we have in Minnesota are just some of the ways of celebrating life.

The beauty of truly understanding what Christ did for each of us and his promise that He has gone to prepare a place for us is the assurance that when our lives end they will continue in the beautiful place we call heaven. Heaven will simply be eye candy for us to enjoy for all eternity.

Embrace life and enjoy it to your hearts content. Life is not as dangerous as the media wants us to believe.

Embracing fear by holding on tightly to our kids will only instill fear in our kids. Fearful kids will have a harder time navigating the world they live in than fearless kids. Fearful kids will have a harder time making decisions about what to pursue in college, who to marry, what job they should accept. Because of what God did for us in providing Christ we have nothing to fear in this life. Embrace life and remember that as you celebrate each day here on this earth our loved ones are experiencing heaven in all of it's high definition color!