I have said a lot about Nick over the past two years. I have written a lot articles and done quite a number of interviews and even published a book. And I have been aware all the while that I can only speak to a small part of our loss, for there were many people who loved Nick and many who lost him. Today is the second anniversary of his death and I asked Aileen if she felt ready to write something. She said she did, and so today I am turning things over to her.

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When I was in Nashville for the Seasons of Sorrow book launch, Tim was asked several times “how are your wife and daughters doing?” It was asked often enough that, upon reflection, I think people understand that Tim has been nuancing the way he talks about my experience with grief as well as that of our girls. He has been very careful to only give voice to his experience of the last few years, and to word it in such a way that people don’t assume that the rest of the family’s experience necessarily matches his. I love him for this, and appreciate it very much. After all, Tim’s story is only part of the story. That’s because a dad’s grief is different from a mom’s grief. This makes sense. God has created each person to be unique which means each person’s experience of grief is unique. Each person’s relationship with the deceased is different as well, and this lends itself to differences in how each person grieves him. Adding another layer of complexity, each circumstance of loss is different as well. As we hear from people who have lost loved ones, I am continually struck by how different and unique each situation is, how grief shows differently in each person and each circumstance. This must be another example of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Tim recently asked if for the second anniversary of Nick’s death I would be willing to write something about it—something that may help answer the question of how I am doing.
I was told it would probably take about two years before I felt anything close to back to normal, and it very much feels like the end of year two is the beginning of a new season. Because of this, it feels appropriate to look back and ponder what I am thankful for.
I am thankful for God preparing me.
God has been kind. He gave us one of the hardest things and yet he also gave so much to help us survive. Looking back, I now see how he prepared me years ago to weather such a storm. He blessed me by giving me a bedrock of theology that in my weakest moment I had to simply deploy. I can see how he gave us what we needed moment by moment to continue to walk in faith through such suffering. When nothing felt true, when God didn’t feel kind, when he didn’t feel good, when he didn’t feel just, I had a choice: I could choose to believe what my heart and my emotions were telling me—that God was cruel, unkind and unjust—or I could choose to believe what my mind knew to be true of God’s character and trust that eventually my emotions would catch up to my brain. There are days when this is still a struggle, but I have learned not to trust my feelings. Emotions cannot inform truth. Rather, truth must inform emotions. God didn’t abandon us, he walked with us and prepared us.  I had to choose to see his presence, but he was there.  I am so thankful in his mercy he prepared me.
I am thankful for God’s sovereignty.
God’s sovereignty is both comforting and terrifying at the same time. I think in the abstract I knew the Lord could choose to do anything he wanted in our lives. But suddenly, on November 3, I learned dramatically that he actually will do anything. Even so, I am so thankful God is in control. This situation would be only worse if God had no control over it. God had every right to chose this for us. I may not much like it, but I know he has purpose in it. As humans we seem to have a driving need to understand why things are happening. It makes us feel better if we can attribute a specific purpose to the hardships we are experiencing. But the reality is that in our human weakness and frailty, God has not given us that ability. We can guess, we can suspect, but we cannot know. God instead gives us knowledge of his sovereignty, and asks us to trust, by faith, that all things work together for our good and his glory. How this is true in Nick’s death I do not know. I don’t expect to ever know, on this earth, the full purpose of this suffering in our lives. But, I do know one day it will all make sense. I can wait, patiently, trusting in God’s character. I am thankful he sees the big picture, that he is in control of all things, and that nothing happens outside his will. I am thankful that God is sovereign.
I am thankful this is temporary.
I also know that as hard as this is, it is all temporary. Initially we divided the days up by doing the next hard thing. That might have been the call to the coroner or the call to the funeral home. It might have been picking out clothing or packing up belongings. But for a long while our life was divided into segments, defined by the next hard thing we had to do. As time has gone on those hard things have grown further apart. Even so, the reality is we will always have the next hard thing we have to do. Life in this fallen world dictates it. But one day, there will no longer be the next hard thing. I am so thankful that this world is not our home. Until that day, when the Lord calls me home, my job on this earth is not yet done. So I will wait patiently, enduring what I need to until one day there will be no more mourning, no more crying or pain, and every tear will be wiped away and death shall be no more. I am so thankful this is temporary.
Lastly, I am thankful I got to be Nick’s mom.
I have wanted to tell you all about Nick, but as I began to write this out I found that I still can’t. Another time perhaps, when the pain is a little less raw, when my heart hurts just little bit less, I’ll be able to share a bit more about my firstborn, the one who first made me a mom. God in his mercy gave me a son who brought light and joy to my life for 20 years. Despite all the sadness, I am so very thankful I got to be a mom to my Nick.
A few days after Nick’s death I wrote to a friend of mine and I expressed my longing for the day joy would return. I knew logically that one day it would come, but looking forward all I could see was heartache and sorrow. These have been hard, hard days. But God in his kindness and mercy has sustained us. We have grieved and mourned and wept. But as the two-year mark draws to a close, I am seeing that joy return—joy that is less tainted by sorrow. I am thankful. God has been present. And I think I will end here as I have ended every note I have written in the last two years: God is still good.
This is a special photo as it captured the first moment Nick began to respond to Aileen and ‘talk’ back to her.

It was a tremendous honor to learn that Seasons of Sorrow has received the annual Christian Book Award for biography & memoir (from the The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association). You can see the winners in other categories here.

There are a few new Kindle deals that are worth considering.
The Inner Circle
“It’s all who you know,” they say. Yet, as Seth Lewis says, “the trouble is that most of us were not born into powerful families. We don’t naturally rub shoulders with people in influential positions. Which means that if you want to get ahead professionally, socially, or any other way, you have to start with the people you already know, and work from their circles of influence into the more powerful circles above them.”
A Response to an Employer’s Request for Pronouns
This aptly shows one way employees can respond to requests for pronouns. Unfortunately I don’t expect that all will meet with the same level of success, though.
Confronting those who sin against us
We know there are times when we must confront other people for their sin. Yet we all learn that “we can ‘go and tell’ or ‘rebuke’ others and end up making the situation far worse than it was before by doing these things in an unhelpful way. We can further damage the relationship, and we can even make the prospect of reconciliation less likely than ever by ‘telling’ and ‘rebuking’ in ways that hurt rather than heal.”
We may need to re-learn the basics
“There are some basic things in churches that we can neglect to do for a whole host of reasons. Not doing them for some time can lead us to forget how to do them altogether. Worse, as we forget how to do some of these basic things, they may have a knock on impact on everything else we might hope to do.”
In Secret
Derek Thomas reminds us that “according to Jesus, it is what we do in secret that matters most.”
The Valley of Humiliation is Green
“Few things strike our sensibilities quite as harshly as humiliation. To be brought low, to fall down, to struggle, to run out of answers, to become weak and poor—this is a hard place to fall into. But what if I told you the ‘valley of humiliation’ is really green?”
Flashback: The One Sure Mark of Christian Maturity
…spiritual maturity is better displayed in acts than in facts. You can know everything there is to know about theology, you can be a walking systematic theology, you can spend a lifetime training others in seminary, and still be desperately immature.

Not going to God because your faith is weak is like not going to the doctor because you feel sick. —Steve Fuller

A few months ago I stood upon the rocky shores of Malta and gazed out to sea. I pondered what it must have been like nearly 2,000 years ago as the Apostle Paul leapt from a battered, broken ship and made his way ashore. There are a number of spots on Malta that claim the historic pedigree as the place he landed. The most widely accepted candidate is the aptly named Saint Paul’s Bay. It has shoals and reefs capable of causing a ship to run aground and beaches capable of receiving shipwrecked passengers. If it is not that specific location it is certainly one nearby.

I have never been aboard a ship that was so blown and tossed by the wind that the crew had lost all control of her. I have never been aboard a ship that was in such a precarious situation that all hope had been abandoned and all thoughts of rescue set aside. I have never been in a situation in which I could only count down the hours and minutes to my demise. But if I ever am, I hope I will react like Paul did.
While the expert sailors frantically tried to save themselves by undergirding the ship and securing its boat, by lowering the gear and throwing the tackle overboard, Paul took a different approach to the emergency—he turned to the Lord. While the sailors carried out their responsibility, he carried out his. And then something remarkable happened: An angel appeared before Paul and told him “Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar” (Acts 27:23). God had a plan for Paul that involved him getting to Rome and appealing his case before Caesar himself. That being the case, the storm could not possibly claim him. He, like each of us, was immortal until God was ready to call him home.
But there was more to the angel’s message than this. He also said, “God has granted you all those who sail with you.” Though it was Paul alone who was meant to stand before Caesar, God’s grace toward Paul was extended to everyone else on the ship. It was extended to his fellow missionaries and to the soldiers and sailors, to the Christians aboard and to the pagans. Paul had prayed for each of them and God would grant the same blessing to each of them. Little wonder, then, that Paul could stand before them and say “Take heart, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.” Though they must still be shipwrecked, they would escape with their lives. And all because Paul had prayed.
And this makes me wonder how many times God has blessed the people around us because of our prayers. Just because he doesn’t send angels to tell us that he has answered our prayers doesn’t mean he doesn’t answer them just as freely. Just because he doesn’t communicate so explicitly, doesn’t mean he doesn’t deliver just as dramatically. Paul’s God is our God, and he who answered two millennia ago has lost none of his ability and none of his willingness to answer today.
Are you in the habit of praying not only for yourself and your family, and not only for your friends and your church, but also for the people around you? Are you in the habit of praying that God would bless and deliver not only you but also others? As modern Western society teeters and groans at what seems like it must be the beginning of its end, do you pray that God would intervene and deliver not only you and not only his people, but also everyone round and about? Do you plead that his blessings would extend far and wide?
Aileen is an avid gardener and, through the hot summer months, waters our lawn and garden with great care. The other day I noticed just how burnt and brown our neighborhood is in mid-August. But I also noticed just how green and lush our lawn is by comparison. Then I noticed something else as well: As Aileen waters our grass, the water sprays and flows to some of the nearby grass as well so there is a fringe of green beyond our own lawn and outside the boundaries of our own property. And just like that, this little story from the book of Acts tells us that God’s blessings flow not only to his people but also beyond them. It is God’s good pleasure to answer our prayers and to grant his blessings not just to us, but also to others. And who but God can know what blessings they hold, what pleasures they enjoy, that flow from your prayers and mine.