Last summer, around the June time frame, I was praying for my daughter. I have found since she has died just how silent my prayer life really is. I hadn’t before realized how my prayer life was about 95% of me begging God to help my daughter, literally all day long and even in my sleep. One of the adjustments that I’ve had to make is the interior silence that has resonated within me. My prayer life has become a cavernous empty place. But I digress…
Last June, I was in prayer and in a spiritual sense handing my daughter, Tara over to God. I felt this inner thought…do I really trust God? Do I really trust giving my daughter 100% in faith to God to look after and take care of? In that moment, I answered myself a resounding ‘no.’ I’m being honest here. I asked myself, ‘why?’ And I replied to God, I’m afraid to fully give her over to you because you may take her life. After having this internal dialogue in my prayers, and even arguing a bit with God, I came to the conclusion that I could do nothing for my daughter. I had tried everything humanly possible to save her. So, I fully gave my situation to God. I fully surrendered. Four months later, my daughter was found dead. She was a drug addict, her death was deemed accidental, the drug she was taking had been laced with fentanyl.
Two days after her death, I awoke one morning and immediately burst into tears. As Tara was my only child, it hit me with a forceful emotional blow, I would never in this lifetime hear myself be called mom. I literally sobbed a soul wrenching cry, this was something that until that moment, had never occurred to me. I wouldn’t be called mom again. After my tears subsided I thought of my grandson, Cuylar. And something beautiful washed over me as I considered his situation. A couple of months after he was born, my daughter gave Culyar to his father to care for. There are many addicted moms across the country who have children and raise them, themselves. These children are exposed to the drug lifestyle. My daughter did something I am extremely proud of, she loved my grandson enough to do the right thing for him, in spite of how she personally felt about it. She loved him enough to entrust his father with Cuylar. She loved Cuylar beyond her own selfish wishes; that was, to have him with her and use drugs anyway. She knew that was no way in which to raise a child. So she looked past her own desire, and she chose to do the right thing. It was in this moment that I realized my daughter demonstrated exactly what God was asking me to do. Just as Tara had surrendered her son to his father, so too had I surrendered my daughter to her heavenly father.
Who would I be if I didn’t ask myself, why this tragedy happened? God gives us free will, you know this. I don’t believe that evil had taken over my daughter, not in the least. I don’t believe what was/is happening has anything to do with the ‘dark side of the force.’ My daughter was extremely sick. I invite you to take a different perspective on this one and follow along, just humor me for a moment. Ultimately you may accept or discard my thoughts but I’d like to weigh in on this. My daughter died on October 24, 2014. I’ve asked myself the ‘why’ question on numerous occasions. It wasn’t until I obtained the perspective of watching my daughter crossover from life to death that the answer was revealed to me.
I believe that God gives us free will. And God gave us Christ (the Christmas story) to redeem the world. In John 3:17 it says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” The heart of God is to reveal his true character to us, the way he chose to do that, is through the gift of his son, Christ. Ultimately, Christ came not simply to redeem, but also to be in relationship with us. In fact, we are called “friends of God.” God is love, and love cannot be love unless it is shared. Love, to exist, must be exchanged. Christ’s mission was not only redemption, but to share love through us. In other words, we are called to be the conduit of Christ’s love and integrity for people in the world (and in my personal belief this includes the animal kingdom).
Here is where the ‘why’ comes in. My daughter lived apart from God. She believed in God, but she didn’t know how to apply God’s teachings in her daily life. Her addiction and mental illness got in the way. Instead, she lived a life filled with self-contempt, suffering, torment, and she struggled. While she did turn to God and ask to be cured, she did not know how to truly surrender her addiction to God. In fact, I find the idea of surrender to almost be too philosophical, the practical nature of surrender is difficult for most to truly navigate. One might confess they are out of control, but then know little about the practical application of truly being sick and tired of their life and really not know what to do next.
Therefore, the application of surrender begins this second, within each moment we breathe. The power of the moment is right now. Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not yet within reach. Therefore, the power of surrender is this exact moment. We have no control over anything in life other than perhaps ourselves and our own choices, yet for many, some people may have little to no control over even themselves. So how does one surrender their problems in life? By making a good choice. By making a decision to do the right thing, in spite of the emotional feelings one may have. Within each moment we live, within each breath we take, we decide to pursue either integrity, or disharmony. To surrender is to recognize that we have isolated ourselves from God, that in fact we have played God within our own life and relationships. A form of idolatry?…Perhaps for some, but not all. To me, surrender means acceptance. Accepting myself, my own shortcomings, and the shortcomings of those around me, and just expressing love to others, without expectation, without condition, and certainly without trying to change the other person. It also means accepting the mission of Christ, surrendering my helplessness over my life and my situation and asking God on a moment-by-moment basis to help me make the right decisions, in spite of how I may feel about it. Through these “right” decisions, we find patterns emerge until finally, our decisional consequences become minimized. Through these actions we become vessels of honor or dishonor (2 Timothy 2:21).
Understand that the brain is an organ, subject to chemical changes and emotions. Emotions are a chemical response to stimulation. We cannot allow ourselves to be fully governed by how things make us feel. When we die, our brain dies, as it is an organ. The brain is not who we are, the spirit is who we are. Our brains give us many gifts, they run our bodies, they stimulate our senses and make life enjoyable to name and greatly minimize all the marvelous things the brain gives us. Yet it is important that we learn how to detach ourselves, at least at times, from our emotional responses to things and make the right decisions, even if this conflicts with how we feel about something.
But I digress, God did not take my daughter’s life to condemn her, but to redeem her, to save her, to be in relationship with her. She had to learn in this lifetime that there is no living apart from God and finding any kind of meaningful true happiness. So when she faced God, she could finally be in an intellectual place to fully appreciate and accept God. She lived in her own personal hell and I watched her, and suffered with her, as she went through it. Then she died. She went to heaven. But the story does not end there. She met with God, the savior of the entire world. Together they took an inventory of her life. The looked at what she did in her life with the struggles that she had. God took into consideration her shortcomings, her gifts and talents, her mental illness and addiction. And she finally recognized that what she had struggled with all along, was isolation from God. My daughter learned that there is no life apart from God. And finally, my ultimate prayer was answered.
When all your dreams are stripped away…that is, the dreams we have for success for our children, there is one dream every mother never loses hope for, and that is joy. All I ever really wanted for my daughter was joy. My daughter is in heaven…she now has joy.
Pastor Gael Orr