The Journey Always Moves Forward

The photo above was created just 1 Month shy of 4 years before “LaLa” died of a fentanyl-laced heroin overdose. The sign in the image says, “Road Work Ahead”, as a family none of us realized how rough the road ahead would become, and how much work on our part, and mercy on Gods would be required. I am certain Nereida, Evan, and myself would say, “The sign is still up.”

I used this image for this week’s post because it popped up on one of the memory notifications on Facebook. Seeing the notification reminded me that life is a journey. We have lots of terms to mark the changes in that journey: mile markers, chapters, turning points, detours, you get the point.

In fact, this image was taken at a significant turning point in our lives, our children were heading off to college. This week our family celebrated a very big, milestone, Laurens (LaLa) twin brother Evan got married yesterday to a wonderful gal. For lots of different reasons, Evan and his bride chose to have their wedding in Florida at Disney. The last time our family was at Disney was on another chapter change in our journey, Evan graduated college. That trip was not an easy trip. By this point, we all knew that along with her struggles with anxiety and anorexia LaLa was heavily addicted to heroin. Regarding Evan’s graduation, Lauren had determined that nothing would keep her from seeing her brother, her A1 from Day 1, graduate. Of course, that meant she was kept from her sources of heroin, and the outcomes of that started showing up very fast. As withdrawal always does it started introducing lots of chaos for all of us, but we made it work and, I think, we would all say “When it was all over we were happy for the milestone, and we knew as a family we had challenges but that was not going to get in the way of our constant love for one another”.

Several months before Lauren passed away, I had heard Rick Warren say in a message that when we face a crisis in life, in his case it was the loss of his son, we can do 3 things. We can allow that crisis to “Destroy” us. We can allow that crisis to “Define” us. Or, we can allow the crisis to “Develop” us.

It has been over 4 plus years since Lauren died. Every year is different, and as I have said here in the past, this year seems to be the hardest, but I think we are doing what we can to allow God to use this painful experience in our lives to develop us as human beings.

I am a Pastor and in the past several years I have learned that three of the Wisdom books from the Bible: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, reveal some helpful perspectives on life when we consider the message of each book. Proverbs teach us that life is often fair, if I do right it all goes right. That’s true . . . MOST of the time. Ecclesiastes reminds us that life is finite, we all will one day die. Finally, Job reminds us that life is often very random. When I use all three of those views it tends to keep things in balance, and, it helps.

Although we never really spoke about it, I think all of us tried to make yesterday about Evan and his wife because that is who it is all about, it’s their day. I am sure that each of us chose to honor Laurens’s memory in some way. I chose, with Evans’s permission to wear a pink (Laurens favorite color) tie, I know my wife wore pineapple earrings, and I am sure Evan did the same in the way that worked for him.

That is what Lauren would want. She would want her brother to have the happiest wedding possible. I think he did. This image of one of Laurens memorial cards truly typifies what I know she would want, “When I come to the end of the road and the sun has set for me. I want no tears in a gloom-filled room. Why cry for a soul set free? Miss me a little but not too much.” She would have laughed with a sly little smile at the last sentence. I know Lauren would be pleased to see how happy her brother’s wedding day was.

When we are going through the long uphill struggle of helping someone, we love overcome addiction or navigate a mental health issue, or have lost somebody we love very deeply it can be easy to focus on all we lost, WE CAN’T DO THAT, because there is still so much that we have. Thankfully 1 Thessalonians 4:13 says that through Christ we can mourn but not without hope. This article explains why we can know this regarding Lauren, Why We Know Lauren is Safe. Yes of course, we always want to honor the loss or pain of our loved one, but always while we are continually moving forward in our journey. If we don’t then we lose it all, and that is probably not what our loved one would want.