This life without Vance, all of it is hard. But right now the hardest part is parenting alone. Even on the hardest of days, when I didn’t know if our marriage would make it, I never once saw myself parenting alone. Vance was always in the picture. He was a dad who was present and involved. That’s a big part of what attracted me to him in the first place, knowing that he would be an amazing dad.
My kids are generally good kids, but like their parents, they’re human. They mess up. We’re doing our best to keep the life altering mistakes to a minimum, because, hey, that’s really what parenting is, isn’t it?
That said, as humans, we struggle. The kids. Me. We mess up. We fight. We yell. We stand our ground when we should back down and vice-versa. It’s hard. This parenting thing, it’s not for the weak. It’s meant to be a tag-team and it’s all the harder when you’re doing it solo.
I miss having Vance to bounce ideas off of. To hold me accountable and to act as the school principal when needed. I miss being able to lay in bed at the end of a hard day and cry while he told me it was going to be okay. I miss having someone else on this earth who loves these kids just as much as I do. Don’t get me wrong, they are so very loved by so very many, but no one loves quite like a parent.
Being the only one to go to parent-teacher conferences, the one who gets all the calls from the school, the one who chooses the punishments and rewards, who decides the curfew…all of that is now solely on me. It’s a big load and I’m not sure I can carry it.
So to all you single parents out there, I salute you. I knew you were amazing before but now that I’m in the trenches with you, I see it even more. I see you. I applaud you. I’m cheering you on. And if you’ve got any tips, please pass them on. I could really use them.
I love that my little town has a hospital. Three of my kids were born there. So was I, actually. It’s a great addition to our community and I’m thankful for it.
Today I had a routine procedure done but I had to go in thorough the ER entrance. That same door I’d had to walk through the day Vance died. Not gonna lie. It totally sucked.
I barely held it together in the first room but I was glad to have a friend at the registration desk who acknowledged with me that today was hard. She later told me that she’d been praying for me all day, since she’d first seen my name on her list. ❤
Then I had to walk by the room where we waited while they tried to save Vance and where the doctor had come in to tell us he didn’t make it.
I put my head down and refused to look at the wall I’d slid down after getting that news. I made it past.
But a minute later, I started shaking in the hallway. A dear friend who works in the lab came down the hallway. I just hugged her and told her that I hadn’t been in there since the day Vance died. I cried while she hugged me and held me there in the hall.
After a few minutes she gently and kindly steered the conversation in a different direction, for which I am so thankful.
When the radiology tech came out the get me, she was also a friend. As we entered the mammography room (Because life after 40 means getting your boobs squeezed by a machine once a year. Good times!) she asked me how my day was. I answered honestly and told her that it was really hard to walk down that hallway. She, too, hugged me and let me cry.
Can I just say that there are some real perks to a small town? I mean, how many medical professionals can hug you right before arranging your naked boob and squeezing it to death and not have it be totally weird? Only in a small town.
When we were done, she walked me out through a different door, avoiding the ER and the difficult memories. May God bless her for that.
Some days, it’s the little things. Today it was three friends in just the places I needed them to be.
I know. It’s just a door, newly painted black against a little white house in a slightly run-down neighborhood in a small town in the middle of the Midwest. It’s just a door.
Except that it’s not. It’s so much more than just a door.
It’s hope. It’s moving forward. It’s life continuing after loss.
It’s a symbol of friends and family who are willing to give up evenings and weekends to make our house just a little more homey. Because without Vance here, coming home is hard. Walking in, I sometimes have to take a deep breath before crossing the threshold. With one of us missing, this house feels just that much less like home.
Everyone kept asking what they could to help when Vance died. So I told them that I needed help with the house. It’s kind of been falling apart for a while. Nothing huge but lots of little things that add up to chaos for a girl who’s only used actual power tools about five times in her whole life.
And these friends of mine, they’ve showed up. To paint the shed. To paint and rehang the door. To put up shutters. To plant the rose bushes we were gifted in Vance’s memory. To patch holes. To build a whole new room in the garage for my oldest so that he can get out of his brothers’ way and finally have a little space of his own. I know I’ve asked a lot and I’m honestly overwhelmed by how generously they have given their time and talents to us.
It might seem silly or frivolous that I’m choosing to do these things now. I guess I’ll just say this: It’s part of my grief process. All of the things that Vance and I talked about but never got around to, I want to complete those. I need to finish those projects because I can’t move forward when everywhere I look keeps reminding me of what we didn’t do. What he will never get to do. I can’t move forward while constantly looking over my shoulder.
And so this door, this freshly painted, welcome-into-my-home door, it’s so, so much more than a door. It’s love.
And I can hear the ground shake beneath us as the prison walls cave in
Another in the Fire, Bethel Worship
Paul was quite a guy. He’d had what you might call a radical conversion to Christianity where he went from enemy number one to the author of most of the New Testament. It’s a pretty crazy story, but I’m not telling that one today. (You can find it in Acts 9, if you’re interested.)
Anyway, a few years later he was traveling the known world, telling people about Jesus, when this poor possessed slave girl just wouldn’t leave him alone. She, or rather, the spirit inside of her, kept yelling at him. For days. He eventually got fed up with all the yelling, as I’m sure it was more than a little bit distracting and detracting from his message. So he commanded the spirit in the name of Jesus to shut up and dance err, to leave. It did.
As you can imagine, her masters were more than a little ticked off when they found out that their fortune-telling, money-making slave girl had been silenced and the cash had stopped flowing.
They were pretty big wigs in their town and got everyone riled up against Paul and his buddy, Silas. So much so, in fact, that they had them thrown into the darkest pit of the prison, complete with leg shackles.
If this happened to me and one of my besties, I’m pretty sure we’d be lying in the corners crying. But not these guys. Nope. They spent the night praying and singing hymns to God.
Did you catch that? Their circumstances were horrible. They’d been stripped naked, beaten and chained to dungeon walls. They were probably going to die awful, painful deaths in the morning. But instead of giving up, they gave up only praise.
And God delivered. About midnight a massive earthquake hit the prison. The doors flew open and the chains of every prisoner fell off.
The guard was so distraught, thinking his prisoners had escaped that he was ready to kill himself. But just as he reached for his sword, a voice rang out, “Stop! We’re all here! We’re all here!”
Paul and Silas hadn’t taken the chance to run away from their problem. Instead they took the chance to share the good news of Jesus with their jailer.
Ya’ll, this is so what I want to do. What I’m hoping I’m doing. What is so hard but so good. What keeps me kickin’ on the worst of days.
This is hard. There are a lot of days I’d rather just curl up in a ball and cry. Sometimes I do. But almost every day I sing. I sing because laying down and dying isn’t an option. Because God is still good, even when I’m chained to a wall and don’t feel like I can go another minute. Because when I sing praises, the walls fall and the chains break and I am free.
I hadn’t been down that road since he died. It’s a busy one, but not one you drive very often if you don’t work at the plant.
Tonight I had to go to a different town for a cross country meet and that was the fastest route there. And so I drove over the bridge. The guard rails are still messed up. Or at least, I’m assuming the dents are from his wreck. I guess I don’t really know. Someone else may have had an accident there. I never asked exactly where it was. I don’t even know if I ever got an official report on what happened. I just know that someone, somewhere along the way, told me that his car veered into the right side guard rail and then into the left.
Exact place or not, I couldn’t stop myself from tearing up as I looked through my windshield, seeing the same things Vance had seen in the last few minutes of his life. Mostly it’s just road and fields. A few random trees. Nothing too exciting or memorable.
In my head, I kept hearing his voice as he talked to me that day.
“I’m sick. I’m coming home. I’ve been throwing up and have the worst heartburn.
I’m not having a heart attack. I had an EKG this morning for my routine physical and it was fine.
I just got through security.
Don’t come get me. Just stay on the phone with me.
I don’t want to die on the way home.
I’m almost at the training center.
Ok. Come get me!”
And then he was just gone. I waited a few seconds but there was only silence on his end. I thought he had pulled over to puke and I didn’t want to listen to that, so I hung up. He was dying and I hung up the phone because I didn’t want to listen to him puke. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself for that.
I tried twice to call him back but he never picked up the phone. He was already gone. I mean, no, they didn’t pronounce him dead until a couple hours later at the hospital, but I know he was gone then. They brought him back a couple times but they were never able to stabilize him. When I think about Vance dying, it wasn’t in the hospital, it was in that moment when I hung up on him.
We were on the phone maybe five minutes. I was annoyed that he was sick because I didn’t want him to get the rest of us sick.
Sobbing, I admitted that to a friend a couple weeks after the funeral. She was so kind. She simply asked if she could reframe those moments for me. Then she told me that even though I was annoyed, Vance knew I was coming to get him. That his last words were for me to come get him. In his distress, he called me. And I was on my way to go pick him up from the side of the road when the ambulance passed me. The last thing he knew on this earth was that I was coming for him.
God, how I wish I had been able to get there in time.
I’d do anything to have those moments back. To tell him that he was having a heart attack and to pull over at security and tell someone. To dial 911 and send help that much sooner. To tell him that I love him and need him and that I didn’t want him to die on the way home either.
If you’ve been reading this blog or went to the funeral, you’ve read or heard a lot of words about how great of a man Vance was. Every single one of them is true. Every. single. one.
But that doesn’t mean that he was perfect. He wasn’t. He was just as human as the rest of us.
I’m certainly not perfect either. I mean, like not even close. Very, very, frustratingly human.
And so, our marriage wasn’t perfect either. In fact, it was often a great mess.
We got married a couple weeks after I turned 23. At the time I thought I was so mature and grown up. Now I think I was just a baby. Awfully young to make such a huge decision as to who to spend the rest of my life with, for sure.
But I did. I chose Vance. And he chose me.
Over the years I often asked him why he would chose me. In all my insecurities and imperfections. In all my sins. All of my anger. All my impossible standards and frustration when they weren’t met. He always just told me that he loved me. That I was who God had for him. He’d had his heart broken before and really didn’t think he’d ever again find a woman he could trust with his heart.
But he did. He found me. Chose me. And loved me through all of those imperfections and more. Through things you probably wouldn’t even believe and things that would make you cry, laugh and nod your head. Vance was fierce in his love and he chose me to love.
But love doesn’t always mean that you live a life full of smiles and sunshine. I mean, yes, there were a lot of smiles and a whole lot of sunshine but there were plenty of tears and dark days. We fought like Spartans. Screaming, yelling, the occasional thrown object. Okay, that was mostly me doing the screaming, yelling and occasional throwing.
Vance was more passive aggressive than confrontational. He didn’t necessarily take me head-on, he just didn’t answer me and then did whatever he wanted.
You might be surprised by this, but I did not always respond well to that. I know, right? But seriously, it could drive me nuts.
And I know I drove him nuts. Often. All the freaking time. Because we were different human beings who came at things from different perspectives. Life was not perfect. Sometimes I wouldn’t have even called it good. We fought over kids, money, all the sets of in-laws, him not tying his shoelaces and which way the hangers in the closet should face. All the regular stuff and all the quirky stuff.
I thought about leaving. Or kicking him out.
I know he thought about giving up, too.
I’m a yeller. Always have been. Vance was not. But every once in a while, I’d cross a line and he’d very loudly let me know it. There were a few big fights that ended with screaming, doors slamming and eventually one of us driving off angry.
Those were the worst. The waiting to see if he would come back. The waiting to calm down and see things clearly before I could come home.
He always came back. I always came home.
And that made all the difference.
It wasn’t always pretty. If Vance had lived another twenty years, I know we would have had a million more knock-down drag-outs. But I also know that we would have made it through every single one of them.
Because love – marriage – it’s not about butterflies and roses. As my friend Casey put it, it’s about trudging through the shit storm together. About choosing each other when you’re neck-deep and angry. Forgiving when it’s so freaking hard. Staying when culture tells you to just walk away.
Charlie Peacock wrote a song in 1990 called “Almost Thew It All Away.” The album came out almost a decade before we got married. I had the words memorized in high school because The Secret of Time was one of my favorite CDs ever. That old song on Track 5 probably describes my marriage better than any other. The chorus goes like this:
“We never gave up. We never gave in. We didn’t say, “No, I can’t take any more of this.” You never gave up on me. You never gave in. You refused to believe that love had come to an end.“
That’s what love is. Refusing to give up. Patience at the end of your rope. Kindness when you just want to throw jabs. Not keeping track of all his wrongs in a little black notebook. Celebrating each others’ victories, not being jealous of them. Not saying “I told you so” when your beloved messes up. Not being rude or selfish but putting another person above yourself. Love stays. (See I Corinthians 13.)
There was another in the waters Holding back the seas
Another in the Fire, Hillsong UNITED
This part of the song takes me to the Book of Exodus. Moses and the Israelites had just left Egypt after hundreds of years in slavery. Their leaving was nothing less than epic. Plagues of blood, flies, locusts, frogs and more.
The Lord had just set his hand against the gods of Egypt, proving to everyone in the land that he was the one in charge. The final plague had brought horror to Egypt as the Angel of Death swept over the land, saving only those households whose doorposts were “covered by the blood of the lamb.” It had been terrifying. Awe inspiring. And without a doubt, definitive. They had won.
The Hebrews finally left Egypt. And they left with gold, livestock and more. They were on their way to the Promised Land. Life was good.
Of course it didn’t stay that way. Does it ever?
Pharaoh quit feeling sad and moved into the anger stage of grief, where he sent his armies out to kill all the former slaves, especially their leader, Moses. The army caught up with them at the Red Sea. They were trapped between the water and the approaching army. There looked to be no way out. I mean, it’s not like there was a bridge they could cross or anything. Nope. Just the sea in front of them with no foreseeable way to escape.
But God… so many of the best parts of the stories start with those words.
But God wasn’t having it. He hadn’t brought his people into the desert just to have Pharaoh kill them there. No way. He had a plan. He had Moses talk to the people.
13 But Moses told the people, “Don’t be afraid. Just stand still and watch the Lord rescue you today. …14 The Lord himself will fight for you. Just stay calm.”
And then Moses raised his hands as God had commanded and waters were held back.
The hand of God held the waters in place and the entire nation of Israel walked across on dry land. The water stood tall around them, looking like it could at any minute crash down and drown them. But the waters were held back until every man, woman, child and animal had crossed. Only then did the waters begin to flow again.
Right now, the waters on each side of me are high. I don’t know how I’m going to cross this sea. I look out and all I can see are waves. Waves of sorrow, of grief, of pain, of what was and of what will never be. The waves are unyielding. There seems to be no way to cross them.
But God… God simply parts the waters in front of me, allowing just a small section of dry land for me to walk on. It might not be a lot and the waters on each side are still imposing, but there is always just enough dry ground. He always holds back the seas. I am never alone.
A lot of you know that we chose to sing Hillsong UNITED’s Another in the Fire at Vance’s memorial service. It was Asa’s idea. We were in the car, heading out of town to buy the kids and I funeral clothes and Abby had control of the playlist for the drive. This song came on and Asa immediately said he wanted to sing it the next day. When I asked him why, he said because “It reminds me that I’m not alone.”
He’s so right.
This song was good for me before Vance’s heart attack. It’s been life changing since. Every single time I hear it, I’m moved by it.
But I got to thinking, it might not make sense to everyone. If you don’t know the Bible stories behind the song, and a lot of people don’t, it might not mean as much to you. So I thought I’d take a minute and tell you what the stories are and why they mean so much to me.
Let’s just start with the first lines of the chorus for now.
There was another in the fire Standing next to me
Hillsong UNITED
Let’s start with the fire. In the Book of Daniel, we are told the story of three Hebrews who were taken into captivity in Babylon. They were forced to move miles and miles from their homes and their holy places. They were given new names, names that honored the gods of their conquerors rather than their God, Jehovah. Because these three were among Israel’s best and brightest, they were given access to the riches of King Nebuchadnezzar. They could have eaten the richest foods and the best wines. But they didn’t.
Instead, these young men, along with their friend, Daniel, chose to eat only vegetables and water. The reasons there are a little complicated, but let’s just say that the food the king ate was credited to the pagan gods. Likely, some of it wouldn’t have been kosher, which was kind of a big thing to ancient Israel. Eating it would have defiled the young men in the eyes of God. So they didn’t eat it.
God honored them for choosing to honor him. They grew stronger than the others who were eating from the king’s own table. They saw God’s hand and his favor.
Some time passed and the king decided that he was all that and a really big bag of chips. He had a ginormous golden statue of himself erected and required every person in the kingdom to bow down and worship it. The alternative was to be thrown immediately into the fiery furnace. (Don’t take my word for it. If you want to read the story for yourself, which I highly recommend, it’s found in Daniel 3.)
Of course our fellas didn’t bow. They knew better. They also knew the consequences. The king had decreed it and it had to be done. They would be thrown into the fire.
This is what they told the king:
16 …“King Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us[c] from Your Majesty’s hand. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”
Did you catch that last part? I put it in bold for you. These guys knew that God could save them. They didn’t know if he would. But even if he didn’t, they were still going to serve only him.
And so they were thrown into a furnace so hot it killed the guards who tossed them in.
The king watched from a distance. Confused, he asked his advisors how many men they had thrown in. It was only three, right? But there were four. There was another in the fire. Standing next to the men in the flames was what many believe was God himself, come to earth in the flesh. If not that, at minimum, it was an angel of the Lord, sent by the Creator of the Universe to stand with his people.
They didn’t burn up in the fire.
They didn’t even smell like smoke when they came out.
The fire was still there. It was raging all around them. But they were never alone in it. There was always another in the fire, standing next to them.
For me, I love this song because, like Asa, it reminds me that I’m not alone. The fire is burning all around. It’s hot. So hot. Sometimes it feels like it’s about to consume me, to burn me up and leave nothing but ashes. This song reminds me that even if God chooses not to rescue me, even if my husband died, even if …. I am not alone. There is one who stands beside me and I will never be alone.
Most people in our small town know that Vance died. But every once in a while…
Our local bakery is owned by the sweetest couple. They have never greeted me with anything less than a giant smile and a warm hello. They are some of the friendliest people I know. I say “know,” but I don’t really know them. I don’t know their names or if they have children. But I do know their smiles.
I stop for donuts regularly enough that they recognize me, my kids and my husband. For years they have asked me how he’s doing or or told me that they saw him drive through with one of the kids a few days earlier.
A few weeks ago I stopped to get smokies for the kids and the man asked me, “How is your husband?” It took me a minute and I had to ask him to repeat the question. He’d been turned towards the cash register and I thought maybe I had misunderstood him. But I hadn’t.
When I told him about Vance, his poor face went from lit up with a smile to instant and genuine sadness. He told his wife, who was around the corner. She came to the window and gave her condolences. They are such a kind couple. I hated having to give them that terrible news.
Then yesterday I had to run into the hardware store to get Eli some hinges for his shop class project. I didn’t know the man who helped me find them in the store. As I was checking out, he noticed the last name on my card and asked if I was the Crutchfield family that lived close to the pool. I told him I was. He asked if my husband had been an electrician. Again, I told him yes. He went on the explain that Vance had done some work at his old place of business. He spoke of him with fondness then asked what Vance was up to these days. Sigh. I had to tell another person that my husband had died.
People don’t know how to respond to that surprise. I could tell the man felt awful for bringing it up. I didn’t want him to feel that way. There’s no way he could have known about Vance. He wasn’t purposely bringing me pain. He was actually bringing me joy in letting me know that Vance had done a good job for him. I tried to reassure him that I was okay but we were both just really awkward and I just kind of left when he handed me back my card.
Ninety-four days in, it’s not any easier to admit that he’s gone.
Last night he drove into the driveway and got out of his car. He was wearing jeans, work boots and a black t-shirt with a pocket over the left breast. His glasses were on, his beard and hair were trimmed short, just the way I like them. His smile was so warm and inviting.
I ran to him. I kept touching him, not believing he was really there. His face. His hair. His heart beating in his chest. His blue eyes twinkling.
He was there. He kept smiling at me. I wrapped my arms around him, still not believing he was really there. How could he be? He was dead. I watched him die. He couldn’t really be here. But he was. He was real. He was alive. It had all just been a horrible nightmare. Vance was home.
But the nightmare hadn’t come when I was sleeping. It comes every day when I’m awake. I’ve only seen him once in the last three months, and that was in last night’s dream. Then I woke up and once again, he was gone.
Grace in the Grief 