Choosing to SEE

by Mary Beth Chapman

  Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

  We all gathered in the driveway. We prayed. Then I threw the pitcher onto the pavement . . . where it broke into not hundreds of pieces, but about a million. Actually, some of the pieces smashed into a fine, white powder. There would be no physical way to glue our brokenness back together again.

  In theory it was a great idea. But like so many other things in my life, it didn’t quite work out according to my plan.

  Sometimes Steven would go up to his home studio, which is soundproof, and scream as loud as he could, “Blessed be the name of the Lord! He gives and takes away! Blessed be the name of the Lord! ”

  And like the rest of us, sometimes he’d just collapse at the foot of the back stairs, praying and crying out to God.

  One day the rest of us were gone somewhere, and Steven was alone in the house. He took an extension cord and a pair of electric hair clippers out to the driveway, and buzzed his hair at the accident spot. In that time of deep grieving, the thought of just continuing on like normal, fixing his hair each morning, seemed like a travesty. He felt like Job; he wanted to do something as a visual representation of his mourning, like tearing his clothes and shearing his head.

  When we came home, the hair was already cleaned up from the driveway. So it wasn’t until we walked into the house that we came eye to eye with the buzz-headed Steven Curtis Chapman.

  He decided to stop shaving as well, and grew a beard, though much, much later he shaved it off.

  “Daddy,” said Stevey Joy. “I liked your beard. Can you please put your beard back on?”

  So he did.

  30

  “We Can Do Hard”

  I’ve walked the valley of death’s shadow

  So deep and dark that I could barely breathe

  I’ve had to let go of more than I could bear

  And questioned everything that I believe

  But still even here in this great darkness

  A comfort and hope come breaking through

  As I can say in life or death, God we belong to you.

  “Yours,” verse added after Maria’s death

  Words and music by

  Steven Curtis Chapman and Jonas Myrin

  Endurance is not just the ability to bear a

  hard thing, but to turn it into glory.

  William Barclay

  On the night of the accident our pastor, Scotty Smith, had gotten in touch with a trusted counselor who could walk with Will through the tragedy and the hard months to come. Another doctor prescribed medication to help Will sleep, as well as an antidepressant. Meanwhile, my doctor had advised me to switch from my usual antidepressant to a more powerful one. He also prescribed additional medication to help me through the days immediately following Maria’s death.

  We got in touch with a trauma therapist who works with children. I’ll call her Dr. Lois.

  Dr. Lois specialized in working with children who had experienced trauma of various kinds. Right from the start, she was incredibly insightful and tender toward us. She asked us about our plans for Shaoey and Stevey Joy during the memorial service. Sometimes adults want to keep children away from funerals, she told us, but little people need to be able to say goodbye too. It’s really important for closure.

  She also gave us some great insights into how children grieve. Even though children’s grief can seem almost schizophrenic, it’s actually healthier than the way most adults deal with their feelings of loss and sadness.

  She was right: I would see Stevey Joy, for example, go into a really deep place of sadness, crying in her room and holding a picture of Maria. I would sit and hold her. Then about ten minutes later, she’d be outside skipping and playing. She would fully enter into her sorrow and then move fully into her play.

  Dr. Lois began seeing the little girls regularly. I learned a lot through her work. With Shaoey, she used a therapy called EMDR. In simple – believe me, very simple – terms, I would describe it like this: when you see a tragic loss, your brain can’t handle it. This is just how the brain is designed.

  So for a child who witnesses her sister’s death in the driveway, or a soldier who sees a friend step on a bomb in Afghanistan, the brain takes in the catastrophic event and then the experience explodes into thousands of pieces, like shrapnel, in the mind. It’s an instinctive survival response.

  The problem is, of course, that these pieces of traumatic memories are all over the place in one’s mind, almost like land mines. You can be doing fine, and then a chance association will detonate one of those memories, triggering a panic attack, a flashback, or worse.

  The idea of the EMDR – in my layman’s terms – is to bring all the pieces of traumatic shrapnel together in one place. Then you can put them in a mental file cabinet and access them when you want to . . . rather than the flashbacks coming when you least expect them.

  Because of the way the brain is designed, repetitive motor movements crossing the midline of the brain, combined with mental imaging, can pull together one’s mental shrapnel. Dr. Lois would have Shaoey sit with her, tapping her open hands first on Shaoey’s right leg, then the left, back and forth, in a pattern.

  While she would tap – left, right, left, right, tap, tap, tap – Dr. Lois would ask Shaoey to remember Maria as she saw her right after the accident. Then she would redirect by saying something like, “Okay, Shaoey, now instead of seeing Maria all bloody and lying on the ground, I want you to see her in your mind all clean and laughing in Jesus’ arms.”

  Shaoey would replace the awful memory with a beautiful picture in her mind, which also had the distinct advantage of being true. This wasn’t just wishful thinking; it was replacing what was visible to human eyes with the reality of what was actually occurring in spiritual reality. For Shaoey, and for the rest of us, it meant choosing to SEE how Maria really was.

  This kind of therapy was – and is – immensely helpful, particularly because Dr. Lois is a believer and uses it in a Christ-centered way. These techniques don’t erase what happened. But hopefully they can give the girls – and the rest of us – psychological and spiritual tools we can use for the rest of our lives in this broken world.

  Another, deeper issue we have all had to deal with in varying degrees is guilt. Will feels it: he was driving the car. I feel it: I should have been outside with my children. Steven feels it: ditto. The rest of our family – and even friends who weren’t connected at all with the events of May 21 – feel guilt in one way or another.

  I didn’t realize how deeply it was affecting Shaoey, though, until we visited the cemetery a few months after Maria’s death. She was mad and just didn’t want to be there. She didn’t want to pray with us and wasn’t acting like herself.

  Finally I asked Shaoey what she was feeling inside.

  “I don’t want to be here,” said my broken, insightful Shaoey, at that time eight going on about thirty-five, “because this is where guilt finds me.”

  Shaoey felt like she was responsible for the accident . . . because she had told Maria to go get Will, that Will would lift her up on the monkey bars.

  I said to her, “Shaoey, is it a true statement that Maria was too heavy for you to lift to the monkey bars?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Is it a true statement,” I continued, “that you told her, ‘Here comes Will, he’ll help you get on the monkey bars’?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Will would always play with us.”

  “Is it a true statement that you yelled for Maria to stop running toward Will’s car?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And is it a true statement that Maria was little Miss Stubborn and she just kept running toward the car anyway?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

  But guilt is not easily defeated by mere logic.<
br />
  Dr. Lois brought Shaoey into her office and asked her to pick a figure that represented her guilt from one of the shelves. Dr. Lois’s shelves have everything from fairy princesses to lions, tigers, bears, crowns, swords, monsters, good guys, bad guys, you name it.

  Shaoey reluctantly began to look at all the figures, not sure of what she was about to do. Finally she chose a gnarly old grim reaper skeleton guy. “This is my guilt,” she said. “This is what it would look like.”

  “Okay,” said Dr. Lois. “This is the devil. I want to tell you something, Shaoey. In these rooms with me you’re allowed to say things that you shouldn’t say at home or school or church. You can tell him to shut up, or whatever you want.”

  Shaoey was surprised and decided this might just be a fun thing after all.

  But as she dealt with the gnarly devil guy, she began to get upset. “You shut up!” she yelled. “You get away from me and leave me alone! Stop saying things to me! Shut up! ”

  Together, Shaoey and Dr. Lois beat up the devil guy some more, and then they put him in a coffin in a box. They buried the box in the sand.

  “When did your guilt begin?” Dr. Lois asked.

  “May 21, 2008,” said Shaoey. They wrote that date on a note they put in the box.

  “And when does your guilt end?” Dr. Lois asked.

  “Today!” Shaoey yelled. They put the date on a note and placed that in the box. Then they closed the lid and wrote Romans 8:1 on the top: “There is therefore now no guilt for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

  “Okay, Shaoey,” Dr. Lois said. “Now find something on the shelves that represents Jesus.”

  Shaoey looked around for a while and then chose a crown that had diamonds on it. Together, they put the crown on top of the box, and Dr. Lois stored it high on a shelf. That way, just in case the devil guy of guilt started bugging Shaoey again, they could get him out, yell at him, and then re-bury him, reclaiming Jesus’ absolute victory over him.

  Jesus’ victory is absolute, but many of our days are still difficult. One day both Shaoey and Stevey Joy were very sad, both of them crying for Maria.

  “Mom, why is it just so hard living without Maria?” Stevey Joy asked.

  I sat down with them.

  “Yes,” I said. “This is so hard! It stinks! It’s the worst! It’s so hard to live without Maria’s giggles, snorts, slobber, and all the funny stuff she used to say!”

  Tears rolled down my cheeks as my little girls continued to cry.“ It’s not fair, I know!” I said. “There are lots of things that don’t seem to be fair, and they’re so hard. But girls, God has asked us to do hard. It really stinks and I wish we didn’t have to, but this is what our family has been called to. If we all stick together, we can do hard.”

  31

  The Unhappiest Place

  on Earth

  Christianity doesn’t deny the reality of suffering and evil.

  . . . Our hope . . . is not based on the idea that we are

  going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based

  on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.

  Brennan Manning

  What if we all got brave?

  Enough to take away

  All we’re hiding behind even just for a day

  And let the scars show even a little

  But I know the honesty will show us all to be

  Broken, we’re all broken

  And we all need a Savior

  Broken, we’re all broken

  And we all need a Savior

  We all have a Savior

  We all need Jesus

  “Broken”

  Words and music by Steven Curtis Chapman

  As the sad, numb summer of 2008 unrolled, our various counselors told us it would be a good idea to make some new memories as a family. I could hardly get myself up in the morning, and the thought of a trip without Maria didn’t help my deep grief.

  But again, I was willing to do hard, as I’ve said, and it seemed like it would be good for our girls to make some new memories with us that would be helpful in their healing.

  We decided to go to Disney World. The happiest place on earth, right?

  Wrong.

  Our make-new-memories group was Karen, Reggie, their daughter Julia (our daughter-in-law-to-be), their son David (Will’s best buddy), Steven, Shaoey, Stevey Joy, and me. The rest of the family had other commitments, and we would all be back at Christmastime when Steven would sing, as he does each year, at Disney’s annual candlelight processional at Epcot Center.

  I won’t go into all the disastrous details, but the trip was doomed from start to finish. We decided to stay at a Disney resort we hadn’t been to before. We thought that might help, but it didn’t. It was still Disney without our Tinker Bell, who had actually been with us to Disney World eight times over the course of her little life. We kept getting smacked with memories of Maria, the ultimate Goofy, everywhere we went. That set the stage for tension throughout our trip.

  At one point Steven and I had gone in separate directions, agreeing to meet at the huge Wall-E statue at a certain time. He had Shaoey with him, I had Stevey Joy, and as we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited at the appointed spot, I got madder . . . and madder . . . and madder.

  So I did what any mom would do – went into the gift store right beside the giant Wall-E. I felt myself spinning out of control as Stevey Joy was picking out a souvenir. She chose a “High School Musical” outfit. I was so in the habit of buying two of such things . . . one for Maria, one for Stevey Joy. Holding only one outfit to buy brought Maria’s death to the forefront of my mind. My friend Karen found me crying on the floor in the corner.

  I tried to pull it together. I bought Stevey’s outfit and left the store sniffling. When I got back to the giant Wall-E – where earlier I had already waited for my consistently late husband – Steven still had not shown up!

  For his part, Steven had made a wrong turn and innocently missed the sign, but I wasn’t having any of it. When he finally appeared, I was yelling at him from the time I could see him coming: “How does anyone miss a forty-foot Wall-E? ”

  We eventually settled down (sort of) and even took a few pictures with fake happy smiles. Then we headed to a crab restaurant (appropriate) for dinner.

  As you can imagine, the short walk to the restaurant was a complete fuss fest. I was mad at Steven for missing the biggest Wall-E in the world. Steven was mad at me because I was mad. Karen was telling Steven what had happened to me in the gift shop, which started me crying again.

  It was as tense and miserable as it could be. We were all close friends, and family, and we were stuck in a grief that seemed like it would never change. Nothing would ever be the same, and we were all realizing it by how the evening was playing out.

  When we finally got seated at the table and ordered our food, Steven decided to take a little break.

  He excused himself and went for a walk, crying and praying, feeling hopeless. The restaurant was built like a big paddleboat next to a large lake, with various levels sticking out over the water.

  Steven was standing on the second level from the top, staring at the water, praying, “Lord, when are You coming back? If it’s not in the next half hour, I’m not gonna make it. This is so hard, and we’re all at odds with each other because we’re hurting so bad.”

  Just then a little girl came skipping up to Steven. She was by herself – no parents anywhere nearby. She looked like she’d been to the Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique, a place where little girls go and get glammed up with glittery hairdos and sashes. She grinned at Steven and said, “You know, the best view’s from the top!”

  Then she skipped away.

  It was like God was saying, “SEE!” to my hurting, angry husband. The best view on everything we were going through was from the top. A heavenly view. The eternal perspective we had to cling to with all we had in us.

  Steven came back to the table. He apologized to everyone for his attitu
de, and we all apologized to him and to each other for our own stinky attitudes. Then, since the food still hadn’t arrived – the restaurant was busy that night – Steven took Shaoey and Stevey Joy up to the top of the boat so they could look across the water.

  The three of them were looking at the lake when they felt someone approach from behind. It was the same little girl, still with no parents in sight. “I told you the best view was from the top!” she said. And then she skipped away . . . and they never saw her again.

  32

  October 4, 2008

  Emily’s Smile

  Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.

  For our heart is glad in him,

  because we trust in his holy name.

  Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,

  even as we hope in you.

  Psalm 33:20–22 ESV

  (Scripture on the front of Emily’s wedding program)

  It was a beautiful, warm fall day. I couldn’t believe it: my firstborn girl was getting married! We had prayed from the time she was little that God would bring her the right man at the right time. And He had.

  But then what we never could have imagined happened, and Maria died in the spring of the year we had thought would be so happy.

  From the time Maria left us, Steven and I had said privately that we thought it would be healing for Tanner and Emily to proceed with plans to marry on October 4. But it wasn’t our decision to make.

  On May 21, even as he wept and prayed and anguished, Will had told Emily and Tanner, “You have to promise me that you will still get married on October 4!” Will did not want Emily’s wedding to change . . . despite the tragedy of losing Maria.

  As time went by, Emily and Tanner felt that our home was indeed the place to begin their union, and October 4 was the day to do it. They wanted to establish their new life together on that same holy ground where Maria had been taken to her eternal home.