The Amputation of Self

Little Update-- Please forgive my oops!! I combined the titles of two books I have read. I guess that's what happens when you read so many. So sorry. The now correct title is below.
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It is taking me a while to get through Jerry Sitser's book A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss. It's a book I have picked up and put down many times... not because I don't like it or find it boring, but because I find Sitser's words so deep and so true that I need time to just savor what he has said. I have mentioned his story briefly here before, but in case you missed that post or may have forgotten, Jerry Sitser lost his mother, his wife, and his youngest daughter all in the same fatal car crash.

Yesterday I picked his book back up and started chapter 6: The Amputation of the Familiar Self. I don't know that my "self" as a mother was familiar to me; after all, Isaac was my first born son. Sitser refers to a catastrophic loss being like an amputation throughout his book, and in this particular chapter, calls to mind that it's like an amputation of your self... your very identity. That is something I can definitely identify with.

He talks about how the very people who defined him as a son, a husband, and as a father, were no longer here. He mentions how loss leads to a confusion of identity. Boy, is that something I can relate with. How in the world do you define yourself as a mother, or a father, when your child isn't here? Mother's Day and the upcoming Father's Day are times where Spencer and I have found ourselves asking those very questions.

Sitser goes on to say, "I am not quite sure what to do with me." I love the honesty in that... and I can certainly relate. For months, I had no idea what to do with my "mom" energy. I don't have any other children to nurture that part of my identity, and Isaac isn't here. I know I am particularly grateful for this blog, for Isaac's golf tournament, and for the connections I have made with other grieving moms that allow me to talk about Isaac and feel affirmed as his mother.

It's a hard thing, feeling like part of you has been "amputated." In many ways, I will never be able to care for Isaac in the ways I would like. I'll never get to rock him to sleep, but a Band-Aid on his "boo-boos," take him to sports practice, or anything like that. Yet this morning, God brought to mind the fact that in other ways, I have had the gift of having the most pure and the most loving relationship a mother could ever have with her son. All there has ever been is love.

So while I'm feeling as though I am adjusting to this "new normal," there's still that part of my "self" that feels like it has been cut off. I don't know that there's any remedy for that, but to take it before the Lord for all that it is, and ask Him to affirm my motherhood and Spencer's fatherhood. And He has been gracious in that.

If you are someone who has experienced a loss, I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is gripping. It will touch your soul. And most of all, it will lead you to the One who can comfort you in the midst of your heartache.