Paradox

There is a saying that truth is found in paradox and contradiction. I first heard this saying from my sister Teri. She was always wrestling with the darkness as she was longing for light. In fact she wrote about the dance of joy and sorrow in her book Next Bright Thing.

“Be still, and know that joy and sorrow are dance partners

When one leads the other follows

Each knows the steps of the divine being human

Do not attempt to force one to take the lead when it’s the others turn

When the music ends be joyful

You did not miss the dance.”

Teri understood paradox. She understood we cannot comprehend joy without sorrow, sorrow without joy. She was familiar with paradox because she was paradoxical.

My sister, Teri, was 7 years 4 months and 10 days older than me. From my youngest years I remember thinking she was both beautiful and scary. Even as a young child I felt how volatile her emotions were and I learned how to tip toe and tap dance in our relationship. She could sing. She could act. She was gorgeous. I worshiped her. I wanted to be just like her. For some reason she never thought she was beautiful enough. She was Miss Indiana 1980 and in my eyes she was Miss America. Shortly after her reign she didn’t like cameras and started hiding her face whenever pictures were taken.

I do remember she gave really good, thoughtful gifts. We shared a love of all things Fall and Halloween, and of everything related to Christmas.

She also challenged religious norms and rules. She wrestled with her faith and asked hard questions, never settling for trite easy answers. She inspired me to think, which stirred my soul and started my searching for truth beyond conventional thinking. She often called me her “theological sparring partner.”

She caused a lot of heartache in our family, and in me.

I was afraid of her.

I loved her deeply.

She was a complex person and my feelings for her and about her are complex.

There is no duality in my relationship with her.

No either or.

She was both beautiful and ugly, fun and frightening, kind and cruel. She was quite simply a paradox.

We all are to some degree, yet she had a burning intensity. We were estranged for decades.

My sister, Teri Kardatzke Estes has let go of her physical body and mind and I hope she is finally truly at peace and completely immersed in joy! I hope she is laughing with my dad and singing at the top of her lungs with her beautiful voice. She no longer feels fear, rage, or insecurities. She has no need to lash out at anyone. She finally knows herself as beloved, and I have nothing but love in my heart for her.

I forgive you Teri.

Thank you for forgiving me too. I have missed you for a very long time.

I love you always and you will forever be my sister.

I Remember

Today is what would have been my Dad’s 87th birthday. I’m so glad he’s not here in his shriveled up Alzheimer’s form. I do wish he was here as his 1999 63 year old self. I miss that version so much.

Last week our family celebrated life together in one of my Dad’s favorite places, Alberta, Canada. We had beautiful weather and even our 6 and 4 year old grandsons hiked the 4.6 mile, 1500 ft elevation trail. I was so proud of them and I know my Dad was too.

Dad took us there for the first time in June of 1999, and again in June of 2003. The sparkle in his eye every time he saw mountains or waterfalls was captivating. He would point out car windows and sunroofs just making sure everyone could see what he saw! “Don’t miss it!” He would yell. I’m not missing the mountains and the waterfalls Dad. I’m seeking them out wherever I am. I am missing you. Every. Single. Day.

Thank you Dad for the memories. I’m the luckiest of people that I got to be your daughter. Not because you were perfect and humble and a king as you claimed, but because you loved life and you wanted me to love it too. You loved your family and I was so privileged to be in it. I don’t know where you are, but I believe with every fiber of my being you are. Sometimes I still feel your presence and I can barely breathe for fear that I won’t feel it again. Thank you Daddy. I am trying to live boldly and joyfully.

I am singing as you would wish.

I love you Daddy. Happy 87th birthday.

I remember.

Worthy

I know we’ve all felt this way.

That feeling when you meet someone and even spend some time around them and you just feel out of place, out of sync. No matter what you say or do, no matter how hard you try to sound relaxed and chill, they just seem to, not like you.

I HATE not being liked. I’ve spent years tap dancing and hoop jumping just to make people like me…sometimes for people I don’t even like. That’s some serious codependency. Sheesh.

I guess the way I need to look at it now is, I must be becoming my real self since I’m experiencing more rejection. None of us can please everyone at once. The more authentic we become, the more moments like the above we’ll have. So I guess at 54 I’m finally more me which means more people won’t like me because I’m not trying to be someone they like. That’s a good spin on something that makes me feel uncomfortable. To be honest, my feelings are hurt. I remember feeling this way clear back in preschool when Susan and her best friend didn’t want to play with me. I was confused, sad, wounded, and all of that turned into anger. I found another friend and the two of us formed our own clique and pretended Susan didn’t matter and we were cooler than her.

Except it still hurts. I want to be liked. I want to be loved. I want to be heard and understood. I want to be worth the time and effort to get to know. Don’t we all?

Funny thing is, I can almost guarantee others have felt the same kind of judgment from me, and I am so sorry. I will try to be more conscious of how I treat others. I don’t want to ever contribute to someone else’s feelings of insignificance. I am no more or less special than any one. We are all equally important and valuable. We are all worthy.

Happy Death Day

I physically lost my dad February 25,2022, but had watched Alzheimer’s take him from us little by little for over a decade.

His last week of life was one of the longest I’ve ever experienced. Each morning felt like the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. We would get up and meet around his bedside singing, sitting, praying, laughing, crying while he lay unconscious. We would say goodnight around 11pm, and meet the next morning to do it all over again.

Six days in, on Friday, I woke at 3am and began praying again for him to pass. My brother Scott called me at 3:22 and said he had passed at 3:04am with no one at his side. I left my house at 3:30 to meet Scott and his wife to view dad’s body at the rest home.

My dearest friend had sent me her Apple Music praise and worship list earlier in the week but I had not listened. It automatically came on as the road curved toward southeast and the moon was huge and orange, hanging like an aging sun over the darkened city. it looked unreal, like a movie scene. I’ve never seen one like it. A song I’d never heard was playing, Love Has Won by Citizen Way.

As I’m trying to take all of this in, my phone rings and it’s my brother as he was just ahead of me on the road seeing the same surreal sky. He acted liked our dad always did when viewing an amazing waterfall or majestic mountain on family trips. “Did you see that moon? Did you see it? Look look don’t miss this moment!”

It was very profound. I was overwhelmed with laughter as tears streamed down my face.

Fast forward to May of the same year. Wichita’s Museum of World Treasures (my dad was the founder) had a “ghost hunter” overnight experience. The guide told me my dad was in the room and asked if I wanted to see his presence and hear his voice with her equipment. I skeptically said I would, and I saw some sort of light lines jumping around on the screen and heard a voice say “yes it’s me…sing!” (For a good six months before his death, I had sung at his bedside every day) I began singing his favorite song Edelweiss from The Sound of Music and the lights on the screen began jumping excitedly. Our guide began crying, she was so moved. Later she came up to me and said dad would contact me somehow in the next few weeks and he would make sure to show me it was not just a dream.

Three weeks later we took an incredible Alaskan cruise (May 28-June 4) and Covid delayed us in Seattle, Washington. The last night there, I had a dream about Daddy. My brother Scott and I were in a car, I was driving and Scott was in the front passenger seat. All of the sudden we heard Dad in the back seat, I think he was talking or singing, and I said to Scott, “Do you hear him?” He said that he did. I think we sang together and told him how much we love and miss him.

I woke up feeling sad the dream was over, and wanted to remember what was said. I laid on my back in bed and focused on Daddy in my thoughts. I think sleep paralysis (common for me)came on, and suddenly Dad was talking to me in my mind. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him mentally. There was some sort of code given that told me it wasn’t a dream like the one I had before. He said to remember it but now I can’t recall it! He also told me he knew I had a dream about him earlier and wanted to make sure I knew this wasn’t a dream. There was a song I’d never heard but seemed familiar to me because it was about being happy together as a family. I babbled quickly about how much I love him and miss him and asked him if he’s happy and he said “Oh yes, very!” He assured me he’s fine and of his love. And suddenly I felt him leave as I returned to full consciousness and opened my eyes. The whole experience was like a static filled overseas phone call from the 1970’s. I wish I had immediately written everything down, but I mulled over it for awhile before drifting off to sleep again.

After waking in the morning and telling Mike what had happened, I realized it was June 7, 2023, his 86th birthday.

There are some who would say all of this was my own psyche trying to comfort myself during a difficult time. There are others who would say it’s wrong to consult a medium. My heart and soul know I was given reassurance from my dad. We had had many discussions through the years concerning the afterlife and our doubts and fears. He knew I shared his skepticism and I believe he gave me these special moments to let me know, all is well. Whenever I feel hopeless, I listen to Love Has Won. Find it here https://youtube.com/watch?v=l-tzgWrxM2Q&feature=shares

Love Has Won

“This is a song for the hurting

I hope that it helps you to heal

This is a song when the worst of the worst

Is all that you can feel

And this is a song for the lonely

If you’ve lost someone you can’t live without

A song for the souls that are searching

And hearts that are broken down

Sing with me now

Sing with me now

Hallelujah love has won

Hallelujah love has won

God is with us, thank You Jesus

Though the battle rages on

Hallelujah love has won

Yeah

Sometimes it feels like it’s hopeless

It’s a war just to hang by a thread

Sometimes on this side of heaven

Oh, it just doesn’t make sense

And that’s why He gave us this family

With a promise that nothing can break

That one day we’ll all be together

And the devil can’t take that away

Oh, so don’t be afraid

He’s already conquered the grave

So sing

Hallelujah love has won

Hallelujah love has won

God is with us, thank You Jesus

Though the battle rages on

Hallelujah love has won

Oh, can you hear the angels sing

Death is dead, we’re finally free

How sweet the sound

How sweet, how sweet

All creation will bow

And we’ll sing

Hallelujah love has won

Hallelujah love has won

God is with us, thank You Jesus

Though the battle rages on

Hallelujah love has won

This is a song for the hurting

I hope that it helps you to heal.”

The Path of Least Resistance

The path of least resistance…I’ve been hearing this phrase in my head a lot the past few weeks. I think it’s because I’ve had a lot of anger built up inside ever since Covid hit in 2020. Anger and frustration which at the core are truly helplessness and grief.

There is the stark realization that I have very little control over anyone or anything.

Being in control is an illusion, a lie I tell myself in order to feel safe and be able to function during the day and sleep at night. Sometimes I’m really good at it, lying and storytelling, I often believe myself, until a worldwide pandemic hits, my dad gets Alzheimer’s and dies, my kids grow up and make choices I don’t agree with, etc. etc. etc.

Lately, during this hurried holiday season as I feel the frustration, the rage, bubbling up in my gut to my chest when I’m trying to carry too much both literally and figuratively, those words pop into my consciousness.

The path of least resistance…it’s a reminder to stop trying to do everything at once. Whether dragging in props from a music program or bags of groceries, I’ll hear the words in my head and grab the easiest to reach instead of trying to get whatever is on the bottom of the pile. If I’m upset about people or events that are out of my control, the words come into my thoughts and I stop trying to manipulate the outcome.

Just breathe. Breathe in and out. Breathe in love and grace and serenity and breathe out fear and anger.

Let the sadness rise to the surface…because let’s face it, grief is often the root of anger. Tears are honest and cleansing. I can cry over all the changes happening in my life, and I can feel the sadness at the same time as I feel the joy of being so lucky to have had such wonderful relationships and moments. Resistance is hard, rigid, unmoving. The healthiest trees are the ones that bend and sway through the strong windstorms. People can learn a lot from nature.

When I choose the path of least resistance, I relax and allow life’s winds and waves to wash over me as they create a gentle rocking back and forth, envisioning God holding me, cradling and soothing me in their arms as I cry myself to sleep.

Beloved Always

Nobody can prepare you for how you’re going to feel when transitions occur. Plenty of us talk about them and may even make plans for handling such changes but there’s no guidebook for how to handle the feelings that arise.

I once had a very noisy house full of boys and all of their friends, with two or more dogs, and I loved it. There were scratches and water spots on tables, spills on carpets, dings and gashes on doors left from rowdy plastic sword fights and thrown toys, and it didn’t matter. At that time I knew one day there would be peace and quiet and I might miss the mayhem. But I had no idea how lonely and depressed I would feel.

Add some aging and dying parents to that and you have a full welcome to your fifties!

I had an epiphany today. My recurring frustration with God has been that They(God) don’t do as good of a job at protecting their kids (us) as I think they should. We’re called to be like little children but then life is positively brutal.

I would never treat my kids like this. Tell them to be open and vulnerable and then allow tornadoes, floods, and predators to randomly attack. I’ve cried so many tears, yelling at God, why? Why do you leave us like this?

So I parented differently.

I played and sang and told stories and encouraged. I baked cookies and kept the house clean with good smells and comforting music. I tried to wrap my kids up in love and safety and joy and family like a cuddly blanket.

But somehow pain entered their hearts anyway. Somehow life hurt them and I was incapable of protecting them from its harsh blows. Today I felt comforted by Mother God, who knew all along I had set myself up for failure. Like a defiant teenager I had declared I could do it better than my Parents.

And I couldn’t.

I did not and could not protect my kids from pain.

And the lesson for me is, pain is the best teacher. We learn more through suffering than we could ever learn through safety. The people I love most on this earth are Mike and my boys, and love wants loved ones to learn and grow.

I guess that means God is right.

Life has to be painful for us to learn and grow…and They weep with us in our pain, They cheer for us in our learning, They love us every second, through it all.

Beloved.

That is my name.

That is your name.

No matter your choices, your scars, your pain, your successes, your joys…

Beloved yesterday, today, tomorrow.

Beloved always.

Planks and Splinters

I’ve had a lot of years, even decades, filled with joy and life.

The past twelve months have been more about difficulties and death, such as finally losing my dad in February after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, almost losing Mike’s mom in the spring of ‘21, having her move in with us and now her passing on June 24, 2022, just a couple of weeks after taking her on her dream cruise to Alaska.

It’s been quite a year.

As I’ve been reflecting on death, I’ve been examining my own heart. I have heard a lot of Christians through the years talk about how fearful they are of their loved ones not going to heaven because they haven’t gone to church or prayed the sinner’s prayer.

I used to have that same fear, until I started scratching the surface of learning just how big God’s love is.

Knowing how much I love my own kids and grandkids, and that I would do anything, absolutely anything to ensure their safety and salvation, and then coming to the understanding that my love is a drop in a bucket compared to God’s ocean of love.

This week I’ve been asking myself, “Who do I really want in heaven?” And the answer made me realize I have a long way to go before I love like God loves.

How much time do we spend deciding who is worthy of salvation? Hitler is usually where most of us draw the line…surely you can’t torture and kill millions and still be forgiven! Yet as I get older and think more about my own expiration date, I remember Jesus’s words more often.

““Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

Matthew 7:1-2

Do I want to be judged according to how I judge? I better quit judging then! In fact, if I am to be more like Jesus, shouldn’t I want everyone, every one, to experience salvation? If I am holding even an ounce of hate in my heart for another, I am not loving like Jesus does. He who hung on a cross and begged, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Do I always know what I’m doing and why? Will I want to try to justify my actions when I stand before God or will I fall to my knees weeping, or just simply run into his arms?

Back to the previous question, who do I really WANT in heaven? If the answer is anything but “everything and everyone,” I am not loving enough.

I am not loving like God loves.

So maybe I need to read the next few verses of Matthew 7 and make them my focus instead of worrying about anyone else’s salvation.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Matthew 7:3-5

Remember, if we feel afraid for our loved ones, fear is never of God. We must pray, for them and for ourselves. We must focus on loving ourselves and others better each day.

There will never come a day in this lifetime when I love as perfectly as God does…so that means the plank in my eye will always be there as I live and breathe, which means I will never have time to worry about someone else’s splinter!

Big Shoes to Fill

A few days after daddy died my brother Scott, his wife, Cindy, and I went back to his room and picked up the rest of his things. His black leather loafers were still in the closet by his bed. Before his death, many times during my visits he would point to the closet and say “Are they in there? Come on, let’s go!“ I would open the closet and show him the shoes and tell him we didn’t need them just yet.

I don’t know how old the shoes are, but they look just like the ones he wore over twenty years ago when we hiked to the tea house at Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada. It would be fitting indeed if they were the very shoes he wore as he laughingly and fearlessly led us up the steep incline. Our oldest boys were five and seven and loved each minute of the exploration, only too ready to follow King Jon’s every step!

The day I brought his shoes home I put them on and felt the bigness of them. My feet slid around much like they did when I was a child. I felt the weight and size of them…big shoes to fill, too big for me, so I put them in my closet next to my own shoes. Day after day I felt the stinging loss of him when I would see the shoes that once marched up mountains collecting dust next to my Sperrys.

Our twenty-seven year old son, Keenan, had always been a kindred spirit to his Papa Jon. They loved to talk of wars and weapons, ancient civilizations and kings and generals. In the 4th grade Keenan wrote an essay about his hero, Papa Jon, describing all the things he admired about him.

Flash forward to this evening. We had family dinner and Keenan and his lovely partner Jen stayed a little later than the others. As we were talking I suddenly remembered the shoes. I asked Keenan if he thought they might fit and he said he’d like to try them on. I ran to the closet, dusted them off and he slipped them on like Cinderella’s glass slippers!

The joy I felt at that moment took me by surprise! I’d been ignoring how bothered I was that my dad’s shoes were empty, sitting in my closet. They was a constant reminder that he is gone and I can’t see him, hold his hand, kiss his forehead, or sing to him ever again in this lifetime. But now, they are filled with someone who loves adventure and life as much as King Jon did. Someone who called him Papa and cherished him, someone who King Jon was especially fond of.

My heart is full…and so are daddy’s shoes!

The Shadow

I started this blog in April of 2017 in order to write down some of my favorite memories of my dad and to help me process losing him to Alzheimer’s.

On February 25th 2022 at 3:04 am, daddy finally left his earthly body. I’ve wanted him to be released from here for so many years that I didn’t really think about how much I would grieve when he finally was gone. The pain hits me right through my core and I can’t explain how deep it hurts. He was my hero.

I’m so glad he’s not hurting or confused any longer. I believe he still exists, that somehow he is with YHWH, though I can’t see or hear him.

I hope.

I hope in my God of love and redemption, my God of miracles and healing. I hope for a reunion of great joy when my faith is reality. I’m so thankful for CS Lewis’s creative ideas concerning heaven expressed in his book The Great Divorce. It’s hard to imagine heaven as anything but cloudy haze as my reality is living day to day in this physical world, yet Lewis entertains our bodies there will be more real, more solid. Even every blade of heavenly grass is so solid and so real, it hurts the feet of one who is from the earthly world, they can barely walk on it. Ah what an incredible concept! To think that what we know in the here and now is truly just a shadow of what is to come, that is a lovely thought! As the narrator is taken on a tour of both heaven and hell, he is told by his guide, Scottish author and Christian minister, George MacDonald,

“Son, ye cannot in your present state understand eternity…That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say “Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences”: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why…the Blessed will say “We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, : and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.

There is nothing normal about death. We try to make it so, because it has always been and it is our destiny, yet to experience it seem ludicrous. My dad who protected me, who loved me, who seemed invincible, the same dad whose lap I crawled up in when I was scared of the abominable snow monster in the stop motion Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, is now buried in the ground lifeless cold and decomposing.

That’s not normal. That’s not even ok. Yet we make casseroles and gather and tell stories and try to accept it for what it is. I don’t have any answers. I only have hope. And that has to be enough. But the grief that I feel over the past 15 years of Alzheimer’s and now the death of my dad, that grief can’t be consoled in this lifetime. We are told to become like little children (Matthew 18:3) yet who would ever treat a child like this? But I’ll trust God anyway because I’d rather do that than be an atheist. I hope God has things under control and that our lives now are just a shadow of what is to come.

“These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.”
‭‭Colossians‬ ‭2:17‬

The Least of These

No matter who you are or how great your parents were, at some point you were somehow traumatized or compromised as a child and it still affects how you perceive yourself and the world around you.

From the moment of your birth, there is no escaping trauma in the human life. Birth itself is traumatic for both baby and mama, no matter how many Lamaze classes were attended.

Many of us who grew up in loving homes may even cringe at the word trauma. Just hearing the phrase childhood trauma can send us into nervous laughter, downplaying any negative experiences we had growing up. This comes again from our dualistic, either/or mentality. “If I had a good childhood there can’t be any bad memories” or “my parents loved me so what do I have to complain about.”

My friends, you and I had both good and bad experiences growing up in our families, and one doesn’t negate the other. We can acknowledge the failures and the brokenness as we also acknowledge the triumphs and joy.

This is more painful for me to admit as a mother than as a child. I can readily find the shortcomings of my own parents and still love and admire them, but knowing my own three adult sons are recognizing my parenting flops that actually hurt their inner spirits kills me inside. My heart aches. I wanted to be perfect for them. I remember holding each of them for the very first time and thinking they were clean slates…more perfect than they would ever be again. And I contributed to their lifelong pain…their trauma. It’s enough to send us to therapy…I hope!😊

There is no escaping the human condition. No matter how much we read, study, philosophize, pray, etc. we are making mistakes relationally, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, as well as physically. Our intentions can be as amazing as Mother Theresa’s and we will still fail those we love, including ourselves. Perfection is not an option. Trauma is inevitable.

So when we finally come to terms with our imperfections what do we do with this awareness? Consciousness, not perfection is the goal. The only way for our trauma to become useful is through recognition, acknowledgement, acceptance, and humility.

Cry cry cry! Cry over your brokenness…when you were five and your dad said to quit crying because tears were for babies, or when you were seven, got lost in the grocery store and thought your parents had forgotten you existed. We laugh about such things now without giving full reverence to the fear and abandonment our child-self experienced. That’s trauma. And these are just two very common examples. Some of you have had some incredibly uncommon ones but have been downplaying them and laughing over them to avoid the grief they deserve.

Authentic adulting is about seeking the truth and accepting it no matter how much it hurts and learning how to heal. Healing is a lifelong process, and I personally think, it’s the reason there is no such thing as perfection. Pain and discomfort force us to grow. Vulnerability teaches us empathy.

As much as I struggle with understanding how a loving God allows such trauma and tragedy to happen, I must reluctantly admit my own personal growth has always happened in the dark times, when I felt uncertain, when I was filled with questions, and faced my own fears. Pain has its purpose in our lives, and it’s a good thing it does because we can’t escape it. It is synonymous with living, and being, and loving, and learning. So the sooner we accept it’s presence from birth on, the sooner we will ask the questions needed for growing and feel the sorrow needed for healing.

As CS Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Our trauma is a part of our unique selves. Our experiences and how we’ve learned through them help us reach out to others who are suffering. But we must stop denying the existence of our pain. Your inner child needs your adult self to acknowledge the grief and brokenness within. My inner child needs me to hold her broken heart and cry with her. No matter how old we are, we are God’s beloved children, and our childlike hearts need hope, love, understanding, and grace from ourselves. Be the parent to yourself you wanted as a child. Treat yourself as the “least of these,” the youngest, weakest, most defenseless in our midst, and show yourself the compassion and forgiveness you have never dared to dream of.