Martha

June 6, 2016

“We just returned from a weekend together at Dollywood Dreammore Resort. We spent three nights and it was great. We went to Splash Country twice and Dollywood once. The kids had a blast! We had sitters come along to help. It was much needed. With all four, Brian and I got little to no sleep at all. That is par for the course. Having these little ones so close together can be a little chaotic. Extra hands are always welcome. 

I used to enjoy that people said, “I don’t know how she does it, or, You’re supermom.” I have learned that while it takes great stamina and a “go getter” personality to achieve being able to do things alone, what’s the payout? I had accumulated physical, emotional, and psychological exhaustion. Being placed in a mental health facility. It takes courage and humility to admit you need help. I am learning there is nothing wrong with it. I know God designed us for community and raising our families should be in community.”

This was one of the bigger lessons I learned from being sick. I am grateful that the Lord let me hit rock bottom, so I would no squander the rest of my life. I had bought into the lie that so many women do. “You have to do it all, do it alone, and look good doing it.” Almost all of the women in the facility with me had the same problem, we were overachievers. This is not biblical, it is from the enemy. Without margin in our lives, Satan traps us. He isolates us, takes our time away from focusing on the Lord, and leaves us utterly exhausted. Unfortunately, with social media, it is easier than ever before to believe that this is what normal should look like, believing we are not fulfilling our duty as a woman unless we are maxed out.

Luke 10: 38-42 is a beautiful picture of this. It is the biblical history of Jesus meeting with Mary and Martha. Martha was busy preparing the house, cleaning, cooking, etc. She was doing it all on her own. She even believed that what she was doing was the best choice. Performance was the stick with which she measured her success. She, however, was tired. She needed help. She was so consumed with what she was doing she didn’t stop to rest with Jesus, she wanted to push through and for Mary to join her. At the feet of Jesus she found her truth. 

 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Don’t we often do what Martha did? We are overwhelmed and weary. We are consuming ourselves with doing. When we need help, we don’t ask for help so we can take a step back, we ask for help to bring someone else into our overwhelming circumstances. 

The Lord showed me what he revealed to Martha. What Mary already knew. If we consume ourselves with the doing, and the island mentality, we will miss out on the Savior of the universe. We will push through our days. We will not stop and cling to him in every moment of our lives, we will not be surrendering to him. We will begin to believe that we need him less than we do. We will begin to slide ourselves onto the throne of our lives and push Christ aside. Martha was in Jesus’s presence and all she could think of was duty. The next thing. She was more concerned with impressing the Savior of the world than learning from him, than resting in him. 

I wonder what happened next. The Bible doesn’t tell us. Did Martha fall at Jesus’s feet? Did she change her ways? Did she repent? We don’t know. But the question is not as much about Martha as it is about us. What will you do? Will you hear the call of your Savior to created margin in your life? Will you say “no” to more and “yes” to less? Will you sit and snuggle with your kids, turn off the TV, listen to the silence, enjoy your child’s birthday rather than trying to impress the guests, play more games, throw away the “to-do” list, observe the beauty God created? When people ask what you are doing, will you be content to say, “nothing?” Will you stop today and rest at the feet of your Savior. Not just for ten minutes during your quiet time, but as a discipline? There is a more full, better life waiting at the feet of Jesus, waiting in the margin, the quiet still moments. It is filled with rest, peace, and joy. When did you last feel these things? If you don’t know, maybe you are being like Martha. Pray and ask God to reveal to you what resting at his feet looks like. Don’t miss it.

Forgiveness

June 1, 2016

“This journey is so long and tiring. I am overwhelmed at times but my mood is stable. My medications are helping so much. I think we finally found a great combination of medication. My fatigue comes and goes. I am finally spending more time with the kids. I am so glad.

Hunter’s autopsy report came back. I only read the summary. I decided to wait on reading the full report. It was traumatizing for Brian and my family to read. I don’t want to retraumatize myself. On Sunday, at church, I finally got to the place where I forgive the doctors and nurses who were responsible for Hunter’s death. The reason being a report from one of our missionaries in the Philippines. The missionary shared that little girls who had been sold by their parents to do sexual favors for men in the Philippines. The very men who were supposed to be helping them. These girls were forgiving these men. If these precious girls could forgive someone that brutalized them, I can forgive the people that killed my brother. I suspected, however, I may change my mind after reading the autopsy. So, I decided not to read it.”

Learning more details about Hunter’s death was what I believed held the key to my healing. I thought the more facts I had, the better off I would be. The more time that passed, I realized that the answers weren’t the key to my recovery. It was my forgiveness of these people and the forgiveness of God that would lead to that freedom. Others have forgiven people for far worse. Forgiveness, I also realized, wasn’t something that would happen all at once. Forgiveness would be more progressive. It would come in bits and pieces. Honestly, it wasn’t based on others at all. I used to think I could forgive, if I knew that these people were sorry. In the end, it wasn’t true, it was me. My ability to forgive was intrinsic. It was a letting go, a trusting.  It was ultimately between me and the Lord. I had to trust him that his plan was perfect and better than my own. As well, I was forgiven. I received my salvation and freedom through forgiveness. My sins were blotted out as far as the East is from the West. It wasn’t based on how well I performed or a list of qualifications. My forgiveness was based totally on my heavenly father’s unconditional love for me. If I was forgiven much, I must forgive others much. Someday, I hope to see some of the people that killed my brother and to be able to forgive them to their faces. I want them to walk in freedom and to experiences the peace that comes with that. If they ever read these, I want them to know they are forgiven completely. 

My Puzzle Piece

May 19, 2016

“Another time in the Ingles parking lot with a Starbucks Caramel Macchiato. Today is Maddox’s Creek Stomp field trip.  I am so grateful I feel well enough to go today. Praise be to God! I hope and pray that this continues and that Latuda continues to work well. I am so thankful for the time to spend with the Lord. Time for healing that my husband and family has been a part of. I am worried about Judah. He has been fussy compared to usual. Two days ago he vomited three times. He fusses with his formula but drinks lots of pedialyte. It leads me to think he may be intolerant. I want him to feel well again and I am praying for healing. 

I am grateful, today, for life and the love of my Savior.”

May 23, 2016

“Dear Hunter,

I miss you more than I have missed anything in my whole life. I feel like I fell asleep and woke up to half of my body missing. It is traumatizing, hard to understand, painful. I am loosing you. I can’t feel you. It is like the movie, Back to the Future. I feel like Marty McFly looking at the picture of his siblings in childhood and they are slowly fading away. You feel just beyond reach. My love for you is just as big as ever. 

I love you everyday, every moment. Everything reminds me of you. I am scared of the future without you. I wish you were here so we could grow old together. I love you so deeply, in a way I see others don’t understand. I am torn between being grateful for that love and aching from the pain of that love. I hate that getting to see you again means never being a part of this world again. The trade is not right. I am still needed here. But, so are you. What do you think about what is happening? Do you agree with the trial over medical malpractice? How can we gain from your loss? I wish I could understand God’s plan the way you do now. I wish I could embrace you one last time. I know I will recover but not seeing you one last time will haunt me until the end of my days. 

I wear you now. You travel with me. I have to be your now. I represent you to our family. We are like two puzzle pieces. I cant be you but my edges match you. You are seen because I am marked with your form.”

Getting better and improving on my medication was a breath of fresh air. It gave me hope that there was a future for me. Transitioning away from breastfeeding to formula was hard. It was emotionally hard on me and physically hard on Judah. My kids all have significant dairy intolerance. I felt robbed. I felt angry. It was another way the doctor’s and medical staffs mistakes took from me. In their mind it was a singular mistake. They couldn’t see the ripple. The way their mistakes spread like a toxin, hurting everything in its path. It would take forever to come to grips with my grief and anger. I knew I had to forgive the people that contributed to his death, but I was not yet there. I will say the anger gained me nothing. Forgiveness would be freedom, freedom to move forward and heal. That still, however, felt like a betrayal of Hunter. I owed him that anger, as irrational as it sounds because he wasn’t here to be angry for what was taken from him. I was trapped by my pain, I would have to let it go.

The abyss inside my soul was still there. I wasn’t carrying his memory. I was consumed with it. My life drastically changed. I felt like I took on a  new roll with his death. I was, now, an only child. All of my parents hopes, dreams, and fears fell on me. I longed for another sibling to confide in. People often forget about the sibling. Everyone was consumed with my parents grief and my sister-in-laws grief. People note it, address it. Rarely do people think about the siblings. They sit on the side, in the shadows. Broken, never the same. They take on the weight of their lost siblings identity. It is such a pressure. Their grief hurts their parents. So, they feel the burden of needing to act like everything is okay. They feel the need to put on a brave face, when they are breaking inside. The stress and pressure to be all things to all people to fill in the void left by their sibling is suffocating. 

I am glad I chose to feel my pain. So many push their pain aside. They try to move forward because others think that they should. They feel pressure to be okay or to grieve the right way. I grieved terribly. It was all consuming and life taking but it was my way. I didn’t act how I believed I should, but I felt every aching moment. I am not glad for all that I went through but I am glad I grieved my best way. I can look back at the journey and see the fingerprints of God, sitting with in my pain all along the way.

A Starbucks Employee

May 12, 2016

 “I am doing horribly. My mood has dipped from anxiety into depression. Brian has become short with me and I can not take it. I don’t want to do this to my family again. I don’t want to go through inpatient again.  The thought literally takes my breath from my lungs. The pain and darkness sneaks up so quickly. I really thought I was going to be healed. Now I feel hopeless. I don’t want to go through this again. I am upset because I was doing well, then we changed my meds. Now, I am worse. I am angry. Why wont God heal me now?”

May 18, 2016 

“I am just sitting here and writing in the Ingles parking lot. I got myself Starbucks. It is so crazy that the Starbucks employee named Hunter is gone. I first noticed him on my first night of Grief Share, when I stopped going to Grief Share, he was no longer an employee. 

I have switched to a new medicine called Latuda. I feel a lot better and more like myself. I started it on Saturday night. My taste has returned. I can taste sweet things again. My body feels more calm again. I don’t feel as anxious. My weight gain is under control again. 

I am able to pray and begin growing in my relationship with God again. I am so glad. I am in a place where I feel God molding me into a better version of myself. I feel more peaceful, emotionally invested, and desiring to focus on others. It is a good place.”

What a difference a week and some new medication can make. It demonstrates the effect of being on the wrong medications. Trust yourself, when your medications aren’t making you feel the way you know you should. There are different drugs and better ones. No one can predict what medication will work for what person and how. Only time and trial and error will help. Make sure you are with a psychiatrist who understands this and is willing to work with you.  Latuda was such a great medication for me. I knew I needed a mood stabilizing medicine after such an improvement when starting Risperdal. Saphris was an absolute disaster. Latuda became my drug of choice. I would remain on it for the duration of my treatment.

Grief Share was such a great experience. The first night was so scary for me. I drove to the church and turned around. I decided I wasn’t ready and went to Starbucks for a coffee. My barista’s name was Hunter. He even looked like a high school version of my brother. I don’t believe in coincidence. So, I took it as a sign that Hunter was with me and drove back to Grief Share. Grief Share is a program that can be found in many churches across the country. The curriculum was written by a couple that lost three of their children.  The now run retreats across the country to help parents that have lost a child. I didn’t fit in well at Grief Share. It was mostly widows with a few parents who lost older children. However, my story gripped these people. A few precious widows drew around me and gave me such great support. It was such a blessing. However, as my mental illness developed I found  that I couldn’t keep going. I wanted to withdraw from social situations. So, I stopped going. The last night I went, Hunter was no longer an employee of Starbucks. He had worked every shift during my time at Grief Share. It felt like my journey with Grief Share was over, at least for a season. So, I said goodbye and moved along on my journey. 

A Misplaced Zero

May 11, 2016

“The past few days have gone well. I feel like I am starting to get back to myself. We went to church on Sunday. It was wonderful. I do feel healing is coming. It will take time. My heart aches over Hunter’s death. I still cant believe he is gone. It feels more tangible now that I am recovering. It makes me want to push back. The void is too great. 

We found out there was a mistake in Hunter’s chart. Hunter was receiving 2 mg of Dilaudid instead of 0.2mg. The doctor didn’t write the “0” first. They, also, pushed it all at once, instead of over 5-10 minutes. His BP was dropping in the hours before he died, but they ignored it. Heartbreaking.

Symptoms: 

10lbs. weight gain since starting Saphris

loss of taste (as it dissolves orally)

memory trouble

constantly thinking of new projects

racing thoughts

increased anxiety

wanting to work out for hours

wanting to buy everything

I am stressed out, anxious, and not doing well. After I got home from the Griffith’s (dropping off the kids), I was not doing well. All day, I had been working on tasks around the house, moving busily from one thing to the next, not wanting to think obsessively about projects, vacations, or financial needs. Right before Brian got home I weighed myself. I had gained almost 10 lbs. in a week and a half. I tipped my mood. I was anxious and wanting to stop eating and go exercise. I don’t want to stay on a medicine that damages my ability to taste and causes weight gain. I decided to use the elliptical for 30 minutes, after an hour and a half of yoga. Then, I went to take care of the baby. I can feel my mood tipping from anxiety to depression. I am fearing going back to UNC. I am afraid I might not get better, though I feel like the Lord revealed to me heal me.”

Changing medications and finding the right combinations is incredibly stressful and anxiety provoking. Each one giving hope of feeling better than on the last but also waiting until it reveals what side effects it will give you. Psychiatric medication prescribing is not a science. It is not as cut and dry as other specialties. There is so much trial and error. As well, the medication is chemically changing your brain. This leads to your entire body reacting. The side effects are sometimes tolerable and other times distressing. Saphris was horrible for me. It was more distressing than tremors and not being able to walk. Uncontrolled weight gain with loss of taste and not enjoying food was terrifying. I couldn’t wait to get off of it. Luckily, my psychiatrist saw how it was affecting me and changed my medication immediately.  To anyone trying to find the right combination of medications. Be patient, document symptoms and side effects so you can really see how things are affecting you. Be honest with your psychiatrist or medical provider about how these medications make you feel. Their job is to help you find the right combination so you can begin healing. I know it can feel so distressing that you actually feel worse than before you started, but the right combination will give you the life you dream of, push through.

Finding out some of the truth about Hunter was both refreshing and crippling. In the months to come, we would find out details that would let us know that the perfect storm of events had taken place to lead to Hunter’s death, However, it was sickening to find out the misplaced zero was all it took to take my brother’s life. As a nurse, they give you tests where all you have to do is write in a zero to remind you how important it is. That someone could be so careless when writing the prescription and reading the results led me to such frustration. As well, his blood pressure was decreasing and they ignored it. It confirmed what we had thought, his death was preventable. If you still have more questions about what happened, you should. It would take months for us to find out all of the details. 

The Canaanite Woman

May 8, 2016

“Today was Mother’s Day! My gift was some friends of ours coming over and giving our back deck a makeover. They put pads on our chairs and bench, added flowers and planters, and an outdoor rug. It is gorgeous! This morning we went to church and dedicated Judah. It was wonderful. Church was on the Cannanite woman. She begged Jesus to just give her the tinniest amount of attention, though she did not deserve it. I have been her. I have begged God for help and desired just the scraps of his healing love. I felt the pull on my heart, as I approached the altar to weep and pray. I felt God say, “That is why the journey had to be so long and so painful. I needed the pain and severity to be so great that event the greatest doubter wouldn’t be able to explain the restoration of your life. It is complete and now begins the healing.” I believe. I believe that now restoration will come.”

It was such a blessing to have friends draw around me and give me something I couldn’t give myself. Having this gift of a nice outdoor space to go and get away was wonderful. So many people, during this season, just abandon us. They didn’t call and check in. They weren’t in the messy days. They simply went back to their own lives, when our lives became messy. It really broke my heart and made me angry with The Church as a whole. Christians were supposed to emulate Christ and get down in the trenches with the broken and hurting. However, we so often want to stay in the comfortable. We don’t want to be inconvenienced by other people’s struggles. We want to stay in our ivory towers where things look easier and prettier. Those, however, weren’t the people that brought healing to my life. They weren’t the people who showed me the love of Christ. The people who saw my pain and responded with authentic love. Those were the hands and feet of Christ that reached into the dark places of my heart and shined light. They were the ones that gave me hope that I wasn’t broken beyond repair. They were the ones who helped bring me out of the pit. To them, I am grateful.

Mother’s Day was, also, a hard day. I felt like such a failure. I was sick and making life harder for my own mother and my children. I felt unbelievable guilt. But I tried to push it aside, to go to church and truly hear the message that day. I could relate to the Canaanite woman. She believed in Jesus’s power. She didn’t come front and center demanding it. She was humble, begging for even the crumbs. She knew that anything Jesus could give would heal her demon possessed daughter. I have been there. In the hopeless state of illness, believing there would never be healing. However, the crumbs gave me hope. I knew it wouldn’t take a lot to heal me, even Jesus crumbs would be enough. I would sit and wait for the crumbs of his light and love to fall down upon me. He gave them to me that day. Hope. I would forget about this day, overtime. As he didn’t tell me he had healed me that day. That day was later. Much later. There would be more struggle to come before being released from my pain. It would be almost two years to the day before the healing came. But that day, I was given hope that this might now last forever. I held onto my crumbs, grateful for every one.

A Hole In My Heart

May 6, 2016

“There is a hole that cant be filled. It resides in my heart and my soul. It is Hunter’s place. All I have left are my memories, pictures, and movies. I can’t fathom that I don’t get to see him again until I die. What a joyous day that will be. Suicide is hard to let go of. The pain is there. There is no escape. I know I am needed here and I want to stay, just without the pain. God has a purpose to all of this. However, I still feel blind. I can not see.”

In the early days after coming home, things were such a roller coaster. I never knew, when I woke up, whether today would be a good day or bad. It was so hard to surrender to the fact Hunter was gone. I fought against it with every bone in my body. I didn’t want to accept it because it made it real, true. I held onto the pain so I wasn’t moving on. I felt that to be a betrayal of my brother. I felt that, if I didn’t get better, I was betraying my family on Earth. I felt that if I let go and moved forward, I was betraying my brother. The not getting to say goodbye was what haunted me most. I never got to say those final words. I never got to know that he was aware he was dying and was okay. I didn’t know what his last moments were like. It haunted me not knowing if he was in pain or scared. I blamed myself for not knowing what was going on with his medical care and not intervening. The words “If I had only known….” haunted me. That and the fact that days before he died I begged him not to have the surgery. I told him that he didn’t really need his tonsils removed. I reminded him of the risks of anesthesia. As usual, he reminded me that I was over reacting and he would be fine. If we had only known.

Suicide was something that was so hard to give up. It was like an addiction, it was something I cringed to for dear life. Ironic, I know. Knowing it was an option kept me going. I knew that if things got too bad, I could make it all stop. It was a source of control. After the hospital, it was used against me. I knew that if I tried again, it was likely I would go back to the psychiatric hospital. I knew if I cut, I would loose my family’s trust and they would continue to view me as broken. So there was this inner turmoil, always at the back of my mind. The back and forth and stress was maddening. My mind was a whir of thought at all moments of the day. I had started to loose track of what was sane and what was not. The days ahead would be long and hard.

May the Fourth Be With You

May 3, 2016

“The morning has been really hard. We changed my medicine last night. I doubled my Saphris (which I had changed to eliminate my symptoms on Risperdal). I dropped my morning Lithium. I was doing well and then started becoming agitated. I, then, became tired and went back to sleep. I am feeling a bit better now. I am journaling, did yoga, and prayed. I am feeling a bit foggy. 

Hunter’s birthday is tomorrow. I am a little nervous about how the day will be. I miss him so much. I want to hug him tomorrow. I hate the firsts we have to go through without him. It reminds me that I will keep aging and he will not. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to get older without a sibling. It takes my breath away to think about it. I want a moment for us on his birthday. To feel our bond and know he is okay. 

Psalm 139:11-12 – “If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me, and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

Reminds me of how limited my perception is to God. He doesn’t see my circumstances as I do. He sees the whole picture. I may feel I am in such pain and darkness but he sees through it all.

Psalm 135:3-4 – “Praise the Lord, for the Lord is good; sing praise to his name, for that is pleasant. For the Lord has chosen Jacob to be his own, Israel to be his treasured possession.”

The Lord chose Jacob. He knew Essau would trade his birthright for food. He knew Jacob would capitalize on his brother’s weakness. He knows what will happen to me. The Lord vindicates us and has compassion on us.

May 5, 2016

“Today has been a good day. Yesterday was harder. It was Hunter’s Birthday. We went to yoga class. I bit off too much with the class I chose. Brian and I kept looking at each others with each new pose. We all wore Star Wars shirts, released white balloons with letters tied to them, and ate dirt dessert. To cap it off we watched Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

Changing medications to try and reduce side effects was exhausting. Each one would change how I felt, possibly bringing on new or worse side effects. It was a constant rollercoaster. Each change gave me hope we were about to find the right combination. However, I had no understanding of how long this would take. 

Hunter’s Birthday was May 4. It was so hard to face that day. I couldn’t handle the fact that I was aging and he had stopped. I kept seeing visions of myself looking in the mirror as an old woman and his picture sitting there with his twenty five year old image. Never getting a single day older, never getting wrinkles, never having more children or growing a family. I mourned aging, not for myself but knowing he couldn’t.

I wanted to do things, that day,  that reminded me of him, but had to be careful not to overwhelm myself with grief. Yoga was super helpful, but I decided to increase our intensity level. That is a pitfall of my personality, when something is enjoyable, I have to crank it up a level. Sometimes this gets me in trouble. 

We went to Disney Store to get everyone Star Wars shirts. It was so fitting, as Hunter loved Star Wars. He was born on May the Fourth, so what can you expect. Reaching back for good memories from happier times was a positive experience. It was great to write him a letter and explain how I was feeling. The kids and I tied the letters to the balloons and took them outside to release them. When we let them go, a huge gust of wind came. The balloons we lifted up along the roofline and went down the backside of the house. When we got to the back of the house to see them float away, they were gone. We never found a single one of the balloons. It was as if they really did go directly to him. The Lord was faithful to provide me comfort during these days and to remind me that he saw me right where I was, in the midst of my suffering. I was not there by accident. He had placed in that exact moment at that exact time. 

Memorial Day

Memorial Day

What is today?

Is it friends, burgers, beer

Is it an extra day off work

Is it flags, songs, tv specials

Is it clothes, decor, or facebook posts

Is it red, white, and blue

Is it eagles and airplanes

Is it parades and celebration

Should it be taken for granted

No

Today is tireless fighting into the night

Today is bombs and sniper fire

Today is bunkers muddy and cold

Today is fear that today may be your last

Today is loss, grief, pain

 

Today is a father, brother, sister, mom, wife gone too soon

Today is arms filled with a folded flag instead of the one you love

Today is taps and gun salutes

Today is the celebration of the ultimate sacrifice

Today is freedom

Today is a gift, even if its cost is unknown to most

Today is for freedom but it wasn’t free

Today is Memorial Day, a day to be honored and respected

Thank a veteran today. Go to the cemetery with flowers to lay on graves of service men and women. Call your marine, soldier, airman, and shipman. If nothing else, remember the sacrifice of those that were taken to soon. Be grateful for your freedom that wasn’t free. Sleep well tonight knowing all sacrificed, but some sacrificed all.

The Shack

I read the book while I was in inpatient treatment. The Shack was a wonderfully helpful book. It allowed me to breach the subject of God for the first time in a long time. I had really pushed God out of my mind. The only time I thought about my faith was to become angry and resentful. I no longer felt love and joy from my faith. Instead, I felt deceived and robbed of the faith I previously had. I no longer could relate to worship music. It felt fake to sing songs of praise and the songs about difficulty made me angry. I couldn’t believe people would sing these worship songs, as I myself had done so many times before. They sang of being willing to suffer, and still rejoice. They talked of hope despite pain. They talked of walking through the valley of the shadow of death and God meeting you there. I just couldn’t relate or I didn’t want to sing such words, as they may come true and things would get worse. I wanted to look God in the face and scream at him. I wanted to physically wrestle with him, hitting him with all my might and crying out. But I couldn’t feel it either way. I had become numb as a form of self preservation.

The Shack, however, opened the door back to my faith. It was non threatening, as it was fiction. It is a story written by a man who was a missionary kid and experienced horrible abuse and suffering as a child. He had written the story, The Shack, due to encouragement from his family. His story telling made God and suffering relatable. Mackenzie Phillips is a father whose daughter, Missy, is kidnapped and murdered by a serial killer, while they are on a camping trip. The death threatens the superficial faith his does posses and threatens to tear his family apart. The Great Sadness overtakes him and he can’t see anything else besides his pain. One day, he gets a letter in the mail to return to The Shack where his daughters body was found. He believes it may be from the killer and he sneaks off to The Shack for the weekend, while his family is away. While at The Shack, he encounters God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus. Each of them play a different role in his healing.

God appears to Mac as a middle aged back woman. God decides to appear this way because he is neither male nor female. However, Macknezie grew up with an abusive father and God meets him as a woman to take on a nonthreatening form that will bring him comfort. As well, it is to show Mackenzie that he only thinks he knows who God really is. He view of God has been warped and skewed by his life experiences. Mac spends time with the Holy Spirit, gardening and realizing that though the garden appears a mess, from above, it is been turned into a beautiful pattern. He just cant see it because it is not his design. Jesus spends time carving in the woodshed and then takes Mac to see The Judge. She helps Mac to see that he is angry because he believes his own ways are right and good. However, he is biased and selfish. She shows him that Mac needs to forgive the killer for what he has done. Mac disagrees and wants to tell God to judge this man harshly. As an example, He asks Mac to choose which of his own children should go to hell, as they have sinned against Mac through lying, anger, withholding love, amongst other things. Mac resists the choice, finding the suggestion bogus. The Judge forces him to decide, since Mac seems to want to tell God what to do in his own life. Mac, finally, decides that he would rather go to hell himself than allow his children to pay the penalty of their own sin, because he loves them all. The Judge helps Mac to see God in the same light. Both Mac and the killer are God’s children. God wants redemption for all, he wishes that none should perish. That is why he gave his own life instead. Mac realizes that when we hold onto pain, hold it against God, and think our ways are better, we become trapped. We get bogged down in our grief. We have to learn to trust that the Lord loves us and everyone else. When we forgive others and ourselves, we walk into freedom.

At the end of the weekend, God takes Mac on a walk to find Missy’s body. They bring her back and bury her in the wooden box Jesus had carved and place her in the middle of the beautiful garden the Holy Spirit has created. Mac is able to forgive the killer and trust that God is for him.

Mac returns home and on the way back is in a car accident. When he wakes up in the hospital, he finds out that the car accident occurred on a Friday night and he never made it to The Shack. He, however, refutes this story and shares what happened with his family. In the end, he follows the markings God showed him in the woods. They lead to Missy. As a result, the police find the other girls whose bodies the killer had hidden. The killer is caught as well. In the end, Mac is able to forgive the killer and rest knowing that his child is safe with the Lord. He realizes that God never left him and his faith is changed forever. He becomes a free man and walks in a lighter spirit, as a result of his time at The Shack.

This story was so life bringing to me. I had spent so much time being angry at God. I was determined that his way was wrong, and was showing him to be unloving toward me. I had decided to be the judge in my situation, as well. I didn’t want to forgive the hospital staff for killing my brother and I didn’t want to trust the Lord that he was doing what was best for my life. That anger had separated my heart from embracing the love of Christ. It had drawn me deeper into a place of darkness, where I could no loner hear from the Lord. The destruction my anger had caused threatened my very life. After surrendering to God’s will and trusting in his love for me. I began to have a renewed spirit. A peace returned to my heart and mind, and I was able to begin seeking the Lord again.