Detour to Heaven: “Recalculating Your Route”
When you are using the GPS and you miss the turn… and that annoying voice just keeps saying ‘recalculating’ reminding you that you messed up. You didn’t do what you should have. Life has been feeling like that annoying voice is saying ‘recalculating’ for a lot of people this week. Remind yourself of God’s Grace and know that even if you don’t believe in Him. He still believes in you. This week we were reminded to stand together and be the light in this dark time for these families. While the road is back open, in light of this week’s tragedy many of us are recalculating our route in our daily lives to do everything we possibly can. Buckle Up & God Bless.
If you think this was just to remember the score, you probably don’t know my purpose behind my photography. I want you to feel my work in your soul.
Pause, let me say this. . . I don’t know what is happening but I promise I woke up, I took Maddie to the bus for an FFA event and my drive home I listened to ‘Nobody’ by Casting Crowns…. And this was on my heart after this week.
. 🎢 Warning : this is the rollercoaster you are scared to go on, you will be terrified, you may puke, but in the end,… it will be worth it.
So, here it is…………..
Baseball season is when ‘all my kids’ (even Maddie) are ‘living their best life’ as I call it. (I can hear a specific boy say ‘thought you didn’t like baseball, Kayla?’ & I would rather let him think it’s ’baseball’ that I’m there for not that the kids in uniforms who were placed in my life to save my soul and they didn’t even know it because said boy doesn’t need his head to swell anymore than it already does by being a ‘favorite’.) Summer is a good time but Baseball Season is where it’s at for our crew. Season Opener happened last night, we started like all ball games.. the playing of our national anthem. ‘Business’ isn’t ’as usual’ in our community right now. Emotions are high for many people.
A familiar voice came on the loud speaker. (I say a familiar voice because have you ever noticed when we are scared or hurting.. our voice changes.. to me I heard the voice of a fellow classmate from Kindergarten.. it wasn’t the grown man he is today who I talk to pretty often so I know his voice.) That once Kindergarten classmate, who might have gotten hurt at recess but ‘the boys’ were watching. So, as bad as he wanted to cry like a baby.. he just told Mrs. Crane something along the lines of “I’m okay, it didn’t hurt.” ……
That, … that is the voice that came over the loud speaker. (For perspective, it’s like when you answer the phone and you can tell by the person’s voice if something is wrong.)
Gathering himself, he asked that we take a moment of silence for the families of this week’s tragedy that has shook our small community to its core. The flag you would face won’t be flying as high. In Rushville, the flags are flying at half-staff out of respect for our families who have experienced catastrophic loss. Then, we continued.
^ That.
There is a lot to be said there, in continuing.
The boys went on to win the game.
There’s a picture above, to me… it shows the strength of our school district and the strength of our high school students who unlike the younger kiddos are capable of processing this. A spunky little blonde gal who is always a spitfire at school… lost her Grandpa and the halls were quieter in her absence. Their teachers lost a coworker (seeing teachers cry sticks with you for a lifetime) and three little babies who were just headed to school took a detour.. to Heaven.
For those of you who didn’t know if you could make it through this week, I’m proud of you. I need our community to know something, this next step of this process… where we all try to find a way to ‘go back to normal’.. ‘normal’ is gone for these families. ‘New normal’ can take years to find. (Trust me) And none of them will ever be the person you knew last weekend or any time before. Monday’s tragedy took a part of them they will never get back. Now you can think that is negativity but I’ll call you privileged & naive BUT blessed because you haven’t experienced catastrophic loss that shakes your daily life.
KEEP PRAYING.
Keep supporting every single fundraiser for these families. Everyone grieves differently. If one of these family members needs to take time off work, through the funds being raised WE can give them that time. There’s so much that is hard for everyone to realize. Having that time they need taken care of financially can be exactly what they need to absolutely focus on their healing.
For perspective from my personal experience, the day you have to tote up your deceased family member’s belongings is a day that sits in a week of a month that no human should ever have to go to work on. Also, the totes you temporarily store it in until you are able to process what you keep… are expensive. I could go on with details that will absolutely wreck what is left of some of you that are feeling so unbelievably helpless but I’m hoping you understand how important it is that we keep raising money. We keep rallying and fighting for these families.
🖤
The people in your life, God knows you need them. When you try to push people away and they give you space but they are THERE. They will push you when you are angry. They will pray when you don’t want to be prayed for you know what I’m talking about. When you lost faith in God and yourself… there’s a person that didn’t lose faith in you. There’s no one reason for this, even if they want to be upset with you. God continues to show who is meant to be in your life. I have A LOT of past trauma that I thought made me hateful & angry. The hours I have spent asking God at what point have you/I filled my trauma bucket and you do ‘your work’ through some other poor soul?
My Lord, how that perspective has changed.
The amount of people who would tell you as much as it hurt .. I said the things that needed to be heard.
No matter how uncomfortable it’s makes you. Let me ask you something, when someone says something that ‘hurts your feelings’ … can you honestly say you didn’t need to hear it? Did they really hurt your feelings or did they hit you where you needed hit to pull out the fight you needed to survive and possibly make the greatest comeback of your life to that moment? I talked this week about ‘don’t put your grief on me’ (referencing when people think they are helping a grieving family but they make it worst most of the time) … guess what - ‘don’t put your self disappointment on others’ .. yeah, I said it!
I’ll close with this.. or at least that’s my intentions… (If you haven’t ever read my blog this is usually a half way point)
This week, has shook you.
You now sit at a stop sign in your life.
You can sit there at the stop sign scared & indecisive for a brief time. You are allowed.
But when cars start lining up behind you, you gotta move.
You see familiar license plates like you are on your way to a ball game with your community, everyone you know you should trust… turns right. But you don’t get to be like them anymore. So pain makes you take a left, that’s the road where you isolate from everyone you know and love.
The traffic is at a minimum, you can enjoy the quiet, but when you need a wave or to laugh at the person passing by that was definitely picking their nose while driving …(personal perspective: because you were just screaming broken halos by Chris Stapleton at the top of your lungs in a bawling mess..)
……………… they won’t come.
(That laugh,… at that moment could be a turning point in a moment that makes or breaks the next few months.)
Keep driving, you will get comfortable alone. You will learn that isolating isn’t as bad as people say until you start isolating from yourself. This is about the time in your ‘travel’ that the headlights kick on.. because even if you don’t want it light is necessary in darkness without it …. the death of your soul is inevitable. Your physical body may stick around but your soul.. dies.
Trust.
Ready? … I hope.. if you know me at all I’m not really a ‘gut check’ person .. I’m more of a ‘knock the wind out of you’ type of person.. so that’s coming. . . .
You prayed for God’s guidance in all this right? …. Are you watching for him?
A grieving mother who lost both her babies is showing you she is turning to God.. she’s sharing scripture. If SHE can trust God, I would drop everything right here, right now … to hear why you cant trust God… but you would have to take a turn at listening to what I have to say in response.
You prayed for God’s guidance… my story above… he put alllllll those familiar license plates turning right.. at the stop sign. He showed you the direction.
YOU DIDN’T TRUST. YOU KNEW WHERE TO GO. YOU WANTED CONTROL. So, God said turn right and YOU said … I’m going LEFT.
Turn Left… leaves you alone, with no laughter, isolation, no trust, and endless pain to guarantee the continuation of the previously mentioned feelings. And it makes you vulnerable for awful people to take advantage of your pain for their gain. You’ll be okay… but you won’t find your purpose. God isn’t going to leave you if you go left… in fact he will give hundreds of ‘alternative routes’ but unfortunately you will be going so fast you won’t we able to slow down to turn even when you finally want to.
Turn Right…. is protected by God and the army of community members who have walked a path that has prepared them in ways that their perspective and their hand that will be there to hold, and guide you… they may be people that have been in your life for years.. like back when you were just a little girl (chewing on a gumball at the cop shop while PaPa dealt with business, right gal?) God puts people in your life for guidance .. good and bad. Choose the good… you will be protected. Choose the bad… you will be punished (& as bad as you don’t want to accept it they won’t be) . Because where is the lesson in that.
While you won’t find this exact version in the Old or New Testament it most definitely can be biblically supported in many ways (trust me Preacher Mike is probably one of the only men I have ever lost an argument to time and time again so I remember ).
I would have given anything to have this perspective in May of 2021 when I needed it. But for fear of ‘hurting feelings’ or ‘making things worse’ or ‘not being able to go back there for my own sake’ … the things that were shared weren’t RAW enough to impact change in me. They weren’t realistic enough that I felt it like I hope you feel right now.
God has extremely different purposes for all of us! Some of you are put on this earth to tell people about how there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and there’s beauty after every storm. Good for those people, preach on folks. Mickayla (that’s me), will tell you the rainbows don’t have to be pretty to you just because someone important to you told you they are. You don’t have to be happy when you see a rainbow. In fact, if in the very moment when your child passed away … the rain stopped, the sun began to shine directly in her window as her daddy laid her on her bed one final time, and as you walked out to say the hardest words that ever came out of your mouth “she’s gone” …. A rainbow was painted beautifully in the sky. What is great for one person is hell for another. Now, in time when you get to know your purpose and you find your way … the same things you hated and that filled your soul will anger… two years or maybe ten years from now… your angel may say it’s ok to let things be good again and they will do so in ways of things that before caused excruciating pain.
Remember to breathe and grieve for however long you need. But if you are gonna pray, at least be present in the moment and pay attention to opportunities. God guides you. You are expected to do the work. The devil is going to tell you it’s too much work and that’s just your grief is playing tricks on you. Be strong enough and love yourself enough … to know the difference.
Emma’s second birthday in Heaven we were eating birthday cake with Miss Tonie and just like the day she passed away… but this time she used numbers (which I absolutely believe in) the rain stopped as we were talking about how much we missed her…. We went outside to a double rainbow (2) representing her 2nd birthday in Heaven.
