Helping on your way to healthy
Sometimes, when it comes to helping your neighbor, I think we need to look inward. Before we can help our neighbor, we need to be healthy and make sure our marriage and families are healthy. I’m not saying don’t help, I’m saying we need to be in the habit of giving from spiritual and emotional health. Are we looking inward before looking outward? This is how I feel you can truly be effective.
After Ashlie, my first wife passed away, I didn’t know how to “feel” my grief, let alone process it. I didn’t feel like helping anyone and don’t know that I could have. I went from a focused husband, father and friend, to a soul that was lost, wandering, looking for answers. I not only struggled with not knowing how or what to feel, I struggled with finding reasons to live. I struggled with reasons to wake up anymore. Simply put, I didn’t want to be here anymore. If Ashlie couldn’t be here, I didn’t want to be here either… Helping anyone was the furthest thing from my mind.
I struggled and wrestled with those feelings religiously. I had them every day. I would look at my kids and feel immense guilt for how I was feeling. How can I feel this way when they are right here in front of me? They needed a father, and I needed to find a way to come through for them, but I didn’t even know what that looked like.
Back then I was working in the training division in the fire department. Everyday I would be busy training recruits with no time to think. But, on the way home thinking took over… I’d be lying if I said I had a “healthy mindset” on the way home. Honestly, most days, I was fighting my hands on the steering wheel. Fighting them from steering my truck head on into a guard rail to take away the pain…
Some days I couldn’t even go home right away to face my kids. Another day I’d have to face without their mom… I would stop at a local coffee shop for a coffee and a cookie and stare at the wall until I was ready to face them again. Some days it was everything I could do to go home and face reality.
Most days when I arrived home, they would be outside playing in the neighborhood after school. Laughing, joking and getting along with their friends. It was those little moments that brought me joy and hope. How could they smile after all that had happened? They would wave as I pulled in the drive way and I would smile and wave back. I was usually greeted with a hug from at least one of them. Maybe I could do this? I knew I had always been called to help people. To bring a message of hope to the world, in this case it needed to start at home.
They needed me and I want to be here for them. So, this is what I held on to. They were my “something to live for” until I gathered the strength and built up the trust to live for God again.
We needed each other and that’s what I held on to for a long time. They were my motivation to “make it through.” Honestly, having them is what gave me hope for a bright future. I don’t know that I’d be here if it wasn’t for them. Now, to see them growing up, processing their grief in healthy ways, and getting to be here for them during the process, I’m thankful I found something that gave me hope for a better life. A life still with grief, but grief that is manageable and doesn’t hurt everyday.
At the end of the day I knew I had a purpose. I knew I was created for something. In that season, my purpose was being there for my kids. I had to learn to grow emotionally and spiritually before God could use me in some areas.
Learning to lean on my creator, even when it was hard to trust him continually gave me hope. I always knew there was more… and now I’m living in the more, with many good things to come. Now, that I’ve had time to look inward, I believe I am in a place to effectively help those around me with a message of hope.
