In each person’s life there are many monumental moments: those moments in life that mark major moments, whether good or bad. Moments of celebration such as a marriage, birth, a moment of victory, a major accomplishment. And moments of loss, death, tragedy, and devastation. Pivotal moments that changed the trajectory of our life forever. Monumental means massive or significant. Dictionary.com1 defines it as being of “historical or enduring significance”. The monumental moments in our lives leave a lasting impression. The past few months have been mile markers of several monumental moments in my life. April brought with it the first anniversary of my ex-husband’s suicide. May ushered in birthdays for my aunt and mother who we have lost last year and four years ago along with Mother’s Day. June brought reminders of when my life completely shattered in 2017 and Father’s Day which brings pain for my children.
Today memories came up on Facebook of the trip across country my sister and I took 2 years ago at the end of June 2019. The trip itself was extremely challenging and painful for a myriad of reasons. I encountered many mile markers of monumental moments from my marriage and the life that no longer was. There was the town where my ex-husband and I met and where his family still lived. The places we would stop as a family when my children were young. So very many haunting memories rose up on that trip. But it was also two weeks of quality time spent with my oldest sister who died three months later. We went to the Grand Canyon for the first time together, stopped and visited our uncle we had not seen in over a decade, and made the most of our time together. We talked about so many things, and she read the first nine chapters of “O God Where Art Thou” that was in draft stage. She was the first person to read all that I had written. She was not sick or in pain on our trip and we had no idea that a month later she would be in excruciating pain, unable to move from her couch or that she would be gone soon after. My sister’s death in October marked the fifth year in a row we lost a family member in the same month. Another monumental moment for my family.
When I think of monumental moments and the mile markers they leave in our lives, it reminds me of Joshua 3-4 which tells how God parted the Jordan River and brought the Israelites safely through to dry ground. After they safely crossed, God told Joshua that they were to build a memorial from twelve stones they had taken from the riverbed as they crossed in remembrance of what God had done for them. So often in life, God will bring us back to a mile marker of a monumental moment in our life to remind us of what He has done for us. I experienced this both on my way to California and on the trip from there to Oklahoma as I passed through places in this new season of life that I had crossed in a different season in my life with my ex-husband. God showed me the dry bones in those places as well as how He was healing the wounds. It was extremely painful facing the past, the disappointment, the things I needed to release and grieve; but God was faithful to go through it with me.
Over the past few months, I have witnessed two of my friends being taken back to Monumental Moments from their past in a new season of life to face the past and to be released from those things. One friend went back to where she and her husband had lived more than two decades of their life together, where they raised their daughters; also, where he battled illness and she became a widow. She went back for the funeral of a man who deeply impacted her husband’s life and to show her support for his widow. My friend had recently remarried and was going back to face a place of pain. It was hard, but it was needed for her to fully heal. Another friend recently went back to the town where she grew up to celebrate the release of her new book “Survivor List” which was birthed from the painful past of her childhood growing up in that town. God took her back to a place of pain, full of monumental moments and mile markers in a new season of life as well. It was a reconciling with the past and being fully released and freed from it.
So often we try to avoid the pain of the past and the monumental moments in our lives. We just want to ignore the day until it is over, pretending like life is the same although it will never be the same again. We repress our feelings. Shove back the painful thoughts. Thinking “out of sight, out of mind”. Unfortunately, the truth is although it is ‘out of sight’, it is deeply imbedded in our minds. I watched my ex-husband struggle with facing his past and the loss of his father for years. Ultimately, the pain he could not face eventually cost him his life. Not facing our past prevents us from ever healing from it. We have to face the pain to feel it to heal from it. Avoiding it just causes it to haunt us.
My counselor recently asked me how I memorialize my monumental moments: the anniversaries of my loved ones’ passing, the birthdays that we no longer celebrate, the holidays with the lost traditions and empty seats. I did not choose many of the monumental moments in my life or the pain that came with them, but I can choose how I memorialize them. I can forever memorialize them in my painful thoughts and memories, causing more damage or I can find healthy ways to acknowledge these monumental moments. For Memorial Day this year, I bought some rose moss and planted some carnations from seed. My mom always had rose moss on her porch for as long as I can remember and there were carnations in our yard when I was little. This was a way for me to memorialize my mom this year. When we don’t deal with our monumental moments, the stones we carry from them will cause us to sink and drown. Don’t carry the weight of your monumental moments through life with you. Find a way for you to memorialize them and release them. God will fight our battles for us, but often He calls us to stand up in the fight and face our giants as well as our past and pain
Photos taken in Groom, TX - Cross Monument and Stages of the Crucifixion
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