YES!!!  And…

Trusting God while Experiencing Both Joy and Grief in Life’s Transitions

Ten years ago in 2008, I wrote a little book entitled  “Trash, Treasure and Wisdom to Know the Difference, Twenty-five things I have learned in my first 50 years.”  At that time, my father had just passed away, my firstborn child Will had graduated from high school, and my fiftieth birthday was approaching.  My husband Doug and I were in our third year living in Baltimore, leading the Greater Baltimore Church of Christ.  Baltimore was our sixth church leadership position in six cities, and two countries between 1990 and 2008.  Our son Will chose to go to college locally (Loyola University, Baltimore) so I had not yet accepted that he had moved out of the house and into a dorm.  Thus most of the Trash and Treasure I was processing in 2008 had to do with my own growth as an adult, a wife, a mother, and experiencing the first really big loss in my life, that being my father’s death.  The title “Trash, Treasure…” came from lessons learned during my own internal searching and sorting, as well lessons learned while helping my parents sort through forty years of physical trash and treasures in 2007 as they moved from my childhood home into a Continuing Care Retirement Community in Connecticut.

Over the last ten years, I have experienced a lot of Joy and Grief in major life transitions.

2008

• my son Will graduated from high school and entered Loyola University in Baltimore
• in August, my father passed away

2011

• Victoria my daughter graduated high school and left for Emmanuel College in Boston (and quickly met and fell in love with Adam Henry)

2012

• Doug and I transitioned my Mom from Independent Living into Assisted Living due to concerns about her memory, and a very serious DVT the length of her left leg
• Will graduated from Loyola University and moved to Connecticut to be near his girlfriend Kristen Cruz and together to train for the ministry
• Doug and I moved from Maryland to Ohio to lead the Cincinnati Church of Christ.  That move added eight hours of driving time between us and our children, and my Mom.

2014

• January, Will and Kristen got married
• May, Victoria graduated from Emmanuel College
• August, Victoria married Adam Henry

2015

• Doug and I spent a week transitioning my Mom into Assisted Living - Memory Care

2017

• Will and Kristen moved to Madrid, Spain as the new church leaders
• my siblings and I completed emptying and sorting the storage units from my parents 2007 move
• With re-discovered treasures of puppets, paintings, and 50 years of handmade Christmas cards, I published a book about my artistic mother, The Creative Life of Margot Allison.
• Adam and Victoria moved to Nashville for Victoria to earn a Masters at Vanderbilt

2018

• September, our first grandchild, Weston William Lambert was born in Spain

Other changes, events and challenges have happened in the past ten years in our church.  Yet I’ve especially felt both joy and grief from the more personal transitions listed above.  I have deeply felt, “YES I am grateful!  And…I am grieving!”

YES!!!

SO MANY WONDERFUL, ANSWER-TO-PRAYER EVENTS!   Yes, Yes, Yes!!!  I am incredibly proud of my children.  I admire them and praise God for their strong faith and commitment to God.  I couldn’t be more grateful for the spouses God chose for them, Kristen (for Will) and Adam (for Victoria).  Yes!  I am sure God moved us to Cincinnati to lead the Cincinnati Church, as well as oversee the Ohio Valley Region of the ACR family of churches.   YES I am really proud of accomplishing sorting through my parents storage units, and creating the book of my mother’s artistic talent.  YES I am grateful that my mother is overall healthy, not in pain, content, and in an incredible facility for the rest of her life.  YES I am grateful that Doug’s parents at 87 and 84 years old are doing rather well mentally and physically.  YES I am “over the moon” about our new grandson just born in Madrid.  YES I praise God for my wonderful husband Doug and am excited to celebrate out 30th anniversary in December.

And…

My mother does not remember any new information for more than a few minutes.  My grandson (and his parents) live in Spain and I will see him a few times a year.  My children are truly launched and I am truly an EMPTY NESTER.  Doug and I will both be in our 60’s by January, and our energy levels are definitely lower than they used to be.  Doug is an only child, and we will be responsible to help with the transitions which will come as his parents age.

As I write this, I realize that I’m mostly in a place of peace, acceptance, gratitude, awe and adjustment to all the changes in my life, my children’s lives, and my mother’s life.  I am now in a place where I think “so what could I possibly complain about??”  However, I also realize that the current trust I feel, the current peace I feel has come only after many, many hours of anguish, prayer, processing, work, wise counsel and God’s Amazing Grace.

How about that?  So what is my take-away?  What might I offer to someone else experiencing BOTH Joy and Grief through life’s transitions?  Hold on.  Hang on tight.  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”  (Proverbs 3:5-6)

God is the only constant in life.  I want to help more people know that.  Heaven is my home, this world is not my home.  There is and always will be suffering in this life.  So in the meantime, before I get to heaven, how shall I live?  I shall be gentle with myself when I am grieving life’s losses…even when, and especially when, the losses come from blessings and answered prayers.  ENJOY GOD.  He is the great I AM.  He will never leave me nor forsake me.  Wow.  I really need to make sure that I love the Lord my God with ALL my heart, soul, mind and strength.  I need to “hate” mother, father, spouse, brothers, sisters, children, even my own life in order to keep Jesus on the throne of my heart.  I want to be very patient with myself and others who are experiencing transition and loss in their lives.  Yes I am very grateful, and…without a doubt there will be many more highs and lows in my life before I get to heaven. 

“God help me to trust you with both Joy and Grief in my life.

Please use me to help others find you.  I pray through Jesus, Amen.”

Jennifer Lambert, October 2018

More Joy and Grief

I wrote “YES!!!…And…” just over a year ago, summarizing my previous ten years.  There have been two major events to add to my journey since last October.  My mother’s death, and my pancreatic cancer.

My mother, Margot Rusch Allison, passed away on January 16, 2019. She was 85.  She experienced a couple of health challenges in her last two months and ultimately passed away from pneumonia.  Honestly, God’s timing was full of grace and mercy.  She still had her wit and sense of humor; she knew me.  I spent four very special days with her, and also prepared her belongings to be moved into long term care (which was our plan for her, had she lived).  She was weak, but able to enjoy moments of levity and life.  I returned home to Cincinnati, and she passed seven hours after I got home.  Her doctor, two nurses, and the social worker all said to me, “She waited for you to leave.”  Truly being back home with Doug when I received the news was a huge kiss from God.  Also, having prepared and sorted all her belongings for the intended move to long term care, meant that when my siblings went the next day, it only took them an hour to completely empty her Assisted Living room.  That had been my goal for when she passed, only the belongings in her room would need to be sorted.  The journey of my Mom’s short-term memory loss, was certainly a journey for me.  I may at some point write an entire book about that, but for this piece, suffice it to say that God carried me, guided me, loved me, comforted me and as always, His timing was perfect.

We chose to wait a few months to hold her Celebration of Life, which we did in Hartford, Connecticut on April 6, 2019.  It was absolutely perfect.  A true reunion of family and friends.  I have the extraordinary blessing of having the house I grew up in, now inhabited by my best friend since third grade.  My friend Peggy bought my parents’ house when they moved into the Retirement Community.  An extra gift was having a brunch the day after Mom’s service at “our” (now Peggy’s) house.  For all of my siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles to be able to be “back at the house” for yet another monumental event in our family history is truly beyond words.  Absolutely a YES, it is sad that Mom is gone, AND how wonderful she went peacefully, and we were able to honor and remember her in such a full, loving, unifying and joyful way.

The other major event in this year of 2019, is my pancreatic cancer.  While traveling in Italy in September as a belated 30th anniversary trip with Doug, I had what I now know were symptoms of high bilirubin.  But I felt OK, and even climbed the Tower of Pisa.  We then went to Madrid to celebrate our grandson’s first birthday.  The day after Weston’s party, while at church, a brother came up to me and said, “Jennifer you are yellow and your eyes are yellow.  You need to go to the hospital now.”  So I did.  I was examined and admitted for a block in my bile duct causing me to become jaundiced.  The following day an ultrasound revealed a tumor in my pancreas which was blocking the bile duct.  I had two stents put in to drain the bile sufficiently for me to fly home to the States.  We acted quickly and on October 3, I underwent the very complex and painful “Whipple Surgery.”  Part of my stomach, pancreas, bile duct, duodenum and my gall bladder were removed.  I have a nine-inch abdominal incision.  While they felt they achieved clear margins, and no cancer was found in lymph nodes, chemotherapy is required.

I began my chemotherapy on November 18.  I will receive a treatment every two weeks for the next six months.  My goodness, life surely can change quickly!  There is absolutely no cancer in my family tree, and the last time I was hospitalized was to deliver our daughter in 1993.  I am an incredibly healthy person…oh, except for this small matter of pancreatic cancer.

This is the beginning of my journey with cancer.  I’m sure I will learn a lot and my faith will grow.  I’m sure I will be writing more about that as well.  But for now I will close with, YES I am grateful that my cancer was found in time to be treated, YES I have full confidence in the doctors caring for me, YES Doug has been the very best caregiver…AND I am not looking forward to six months of chemo and needing to be quarantined for most of that time for my own protection.  God is good all the time.  God has not gone anywhere, he will never leave me nor forsake me.  My prayer is to bring glory to God, to see God in all of this and to take One Day at a Time.

With much love, hope and desire to bring honor to our great and perfect Father.

November 2019