I will never be able to forget the worst night of my entire life. The night before my daughter was killed in a roll over automobile accident. It was the night from Hell June 10, 1990.
Why is this coming up now, December 15, 2013? I must have been working on it during my sleep last night because here it is before 7am and I am awake finding the need to think about this deeply, this thing of great importance and quickly before my brain leaves that place where the answers are.
That night (June 10, 1990) my Daughter was staying at her Fathers house (we had been divorced for many years) and we spoke before she went to bed for a little bit on the phone. She told me of the date she was going on the next day and I asked her to reconsider going because I did not like that boy but she assured me that it was fine and he had changed and she was going so as a loving parent, I did not give her many problems after this about it. It is what she wanted and I always wanted her to have what she wanted.
For the next 6 hours my mind writhed in pain, tears, anguish, turmoil and every vision of a non physical pain you could imagine. I screamed at God to tell me what was wrong because nothing appeared to be wrong that I could see. I knew it was bad... whatever was coming was very, very bad yet I could not figure out what it was. I also knew that whatever it was, God was trying to warn me, so I could fix it because this was a life changing and horrifying event coming. This night would haunt me for the next 22 years, 187 days and 10 hours. Why could I not hear God? It was obvious to me (tears fall like rain in remembrance of the intense ongoing emotions) that it was a warning. Whatever was coming, I could not handle and God knew it because I was being warned ahead of time. Yes, God does allow things more than we can handle and it was this night that I understood this completely and in a way that only another who experienced this would be able to understand. Whatever it was, I was not allowed to change it. I was instead tortured by advance knowledge of an event coming in which my life would be horribly altered by a God that would only tease me with the information but not tell me so I could change it. I smoke a cigarette which helps numb my brain from the intensity... lack of oxygen will do this and brings me comfort at not remembering so intensely this night of emotional terror. Having a compartmentalized mind which remembers not only in pictures but also emotions (how people describe ptsd) is not always a good thing.
I screamed during this night at God demanding to know what was coming. I begged God to change it. I begged God to just tell me so I could change it. I screamed at God that I understood what Jesus must have felt like that night in the garden of Gethsemane. I feverishly told God that I knew what it must have felt like to sweat Blood as my own sweat dripped on the sheets and begging him to take this away from me. I got out a magazine and found the phone number for a psychic reader to call... perhaps she could tell me then decided that with my relationship with God, if he would not tell me then he certainly would not tell her and beat on my bed pillows for a while out of pure anger and frustration.
At 4am, it was time to get ready for work and no answer had come. A resolve came over me. It was quiet. It was not an agreement. It was simply resolve. What was coming was coming and there was nothing I could do about it. The day began and I put it completely away from me.. until my phone at work rang right around noon. It was my Son telling me that my Daughter had been in an accident and I needed to go to the hospital.
Many therapists attempted to help me with this but all failed. Why? This was between me and God and the therapists had no idea what my relationship with God was. This must be the truth because of the wracking tears that fall now as I write this to you. How can a therapist even begin to help me when the issue was far beyond losing my Daughter. I lost my connection with God that night because God failed me. For the first time in my life, God failed me. The therapists could not even begin to relate the fact that it was the night before her death that grieved me so much more than the event itself. The event by its self had more love in it than I will write in this letter and so many periods of peace within in. It was the night before... advanced knowledge, advanced terror, hands completely tied with not knowing what it was that was coming. What was coming that would change the path of my life so completely as to derail it completely? Every therapist dismissed the night before, if I even told them, as hysteria related to losing a child. It was not that. It was losing my relationship to God that night.
Coffee is ready. Would you like a cup? Cream? Sugar? Breathe, just breathe. This is important my brain whispers. Another cigarette which deprives my tormented brain of oxygen and dulls it... thankfully, gratefully, dulls the pain. The small thought within whispers, this is the demon that comes when you try to quit. I have known for years there was a demon within which raged when I tried to quit. The small whisper says, here it is. My body reacts to this knowledge of the morning with tremors.
I had a dream that I was dreaming when I awoke this morning. The dream is not important but in that instant of awakening, I understood. I understood it all.
We can not interfere with any other persons decisions regarding their own lives. After a certain age (my daughter was 17) we make our own decisions. In this case, without going into the specifics, it was not possible to physically alter this decision of my sweet girl, to go on that date the next day. When I asked her not to go, she responded with how this boy had changed and was so nice and different now. She responded with how I was over reacting. There was no proof that I was not over reacting. There was no proof that I was not just having a tantrum because she was going to do something that I did not want her to do. After hanging up the phone, I knew that the proof would be AFTER THE FACT and when it was too late. The event was far too horrendous for my mind to admit it as even a possibility. There was absolutely no possibility which included living the rest of my life without both of my children with me.
What if, rhetorical question, the event was so clear but so far above my ability to grasp it that it would take many years to understand it?
In the decisions of man, God does not interfere. God simply watches and then assists as necessary. I think God must have created the phrase "when given lemons in life, make lemonade". Here in this decision there are two women and one has made a decision which will alter the other woman's life as to completely and utterly destroy the path which she was on due to the emotional pain of it. If God is as loving as I believe then S/He (I see God as gender neutral) is, S/He can not or will not stop the woman from doing what she wants even though God also sees that it is going to destroy the second woman's life.
Now, what if the woman with the soon to be destroyed life has a very close connection to God? This connection is so deep that every moment of her life is in connection with her higher power, listening and attempting to live a life that co exists with her higher power not simply that the higher power is out there somewhere to be spoken with occasionally? This connection is so complete that she understands that God is not something out there, it is something in here, inside of each of us and is experiencing life as we experience it through us.
What if this event is going to be so horrendous to this woman that she blames God for not telling her so she could prevent it in some way even if that meant destroying her relationship with the first woman, her own beloved child? See it does not matter to me, it never will, what my daughter would have thought or if she would have hated me for the rest of my life because I would have stopped her from getting into that car. I would have gone out to her Fathers house and only the police being called to drag me away would have prevented my stopping that boy from picking her up for lunch that day. This is a truth that I know with every fiber of my being. It does not matter to me if you believe me or not, God does.
From God's point of view this would not be allowing the first woman to make her own decisions regarding her life regardless of how it affected the second woman. What all encompassing and loving God could make this type of decision between two persons who s/he equally loved? Perhaps the answer is to try to prepare the second woman? Maybe that will help? I don't think even God was ready for how I reacted to this. I know that I was not ready for it but never would I have been ready for it, in truth. In a matter of moments, from the moment I walked into that hospital completely secure in my knowledge of God's power to the moment of being told my Daughters true physical condition I was alone. For the first time in my life, God abandoned me and allowed something to happen which I could not handle. Because God would not tell me the night before so I could change it, I felt betrayed. I did not feel that God was lovingly attempting to prepare me, I felt BETRAYED by the one person in my life which had never let me down.
How am I feeling about it this morning? I think God was in a pretty tough position here. If I see God (as I do) as a person and a deity equal with all individual persons, this had to be a pretty tough spot to be in. God knows that I am still pretty pissed off about this but perhaps that is ok? Did God not know the night before that this was going to be very bad for me and try to prepare me?
See, I know that God has continued watching over me. There is far too much evidence not to believe this. Not a guessing or a wishing but if I were to write it down, the proof is there in having a higher power's hand in far too many things not to see it as scientific proof that unseen assistance has been near every day of my life. Perhaps God is such a personal God as to be what S/He is to me equally to all others.
I've made some pretty stupid decisions in my life. Did my Daughter not make a really stupid decision that day on June 11, 1990? From her perspective and that of most others, no it was not a stupid decision, it was just a decision to go to lunch with nothing further to be read into it. BUT I KNOW this is not the case because of the night before the event. Even with my forewarning her not to do this, she was determined to do it anyway. How often have I also done this with God?
I remember so clearly not wanting to marry my third husband and everything inside of me said, "just live with him but do not marry". This went on for over 2 years before I finally gave in and did what he wanted which was to marry. Was this not God telling me... don't do it, don't do it? I did not listen, I went anyway and the consequences have been far beyond the subject of this letter today. Is this not exactly what my Sweet Little Girl did?
Why should God forgive me for railing against Him/Her as I have. Oh what I've said about it is very little compared to what I have thought about it and God knows... yes God knows. If I were face to face with my Daughter today would there be any question of forgiving her for getting into that car even after I told her it was a horrible idea? No there is no question to this at all... I would bundle her into my arms and tell her, "there is nothing to forgive. I love you." When my Baby asked me to forgive her for the pain she caused me what would I say? "There is nothing to forgive. I love you."
If I, a mere childish human being, feels this and knows the truth of what my response would be then why should I believe that God would feel any differently about me?
There is nothing to forgive. Come close to me. I love you.
http://www.geocities.ws/myangelheather/heather.htm
