When God Says NO ...

Never in my life had I been pushed down like this. This time, I was stuck. Really, truly stuck. And it wasn’t just in a small way. I was so lost, I couldn’t even make a phone call. At least, after Frank’s death, I was able to go through the mechanics. Certain rituals were expected of me. A service had to be planned. As soon as morning dawned, I had begun making calls to all the people involved. I called Frank’s place of work; I tracked down family. And I phoned our friends to tell them that John’s birthday dinner slated for the evening was canceled. Each and every call was painful. All those questions that my calls generated compounded our hurts, pains, and fears. And then I waited for the dreaded phone call from the searchers.

But this time, I was paralyzed. For someone on the outside looking in, being misled and cheated in a business venture may seem trivial in comparison to the loss of my two children, but somehow, this was my catastrophic event—my breaking point.

In living color, my work, a creative project that I had spent years developing, was being destroyed before my very eyes. Another child was dying. Worse yet, I couldn’t believe that the death blows were delivered by someone I had trusted, respected, even defended. It was more than I could bear to realize that I had been lied to by representatives of the company. I believed that contracts had been altered after my signature had been obtained. Promised reimbursements of expenses amounting to many thousands of dollars were brushed aside. To me, everything was done to destroy my project— my baby. The personal devastation was so total that I couldn’t make a simple phone call. I couldn’t work; I was paralyzed. I didn’t think I could even live. I was a mess!

I had learned to develop a great façade—to pretend when things were not going well.