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Is It a Sin?

from Dance Again by Nathan Peterson

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    I wrote this book during the months following Olivia’s passing—it starts from the day she died and ends the day our 5th child, Benjamin, was born (about 14 months later).

    This book is not about what happened on the outside (although I did include some journal entries to help fill in the story). This book is about what was happening inside me during these moments, and a condensing of the lessons I learned about grief and healing.

    The theme of this book is *rest in the midst of pain*.

    On one hand, we had known since before she was born that Olivia would not live long—she was deemed “incompatible with life” due to a chromosomal defect called Trisomy 18. On the other hand, she had lived for 14 months. Around month five, we stopped expecting her to die at any moment. We learned to be with her while she was live. With that decision came the risk—the certainty—of much greater pain whenever it was her time to go.

    On March 11, 2016—a beautiful, warm, spring day—Olivia died, unexpectedly. I’m still processing that day. I remember the weather. I remember the way Olivia felt heavy in my arms. I remember the tears of our friends. I remember the blood-red sunset.

    I remember the basket—I had been dreading that basket for a year and a half.

    I remember praying as a family over Olivia. I remember knowing there was no good prayer to pray, but trying anyway. I remember the feeling after the basket left our front door and the door was closed: like the biggest wave had come and gone… the emptiness of its wake. It was peace… and it was sadness. It was heartbreak… and it was victory.

    It was grief… and it was healing.

    The following months were possibly even more difficult than the previous ones. My wife and I were slowly deconstructed until all that remained was a pile of parts on the floor.

    All I wanted was to get up—to put myself back together. But I could feel a quiet presence (I still feel it now) of a physician, working. Just as my wife was stitched together 14 months earlier after delivering Olivia, just as my daughter was stitched together in her mother’s womb before that, someone was stitching me back together. Quietly. Patiently. Working. Healing.

    My battle during these months—and the main focus of this book—was to allow myself to be healed. Even as I type this, I’m overwhelmed by the pain of staying on that operating table—of not jumping up and becoming occupied for the sake of my sanity and sense of whole-person-ness.

    My wife and I had a very difficult decision to make on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute, basis: will I settle for an external image of wholeness, or will I wait for real healing to happen inside? The first path was faster. Saner. But the second was intimately tied to the same posture/mindset we had learned from Olivia during her life. “In repentance and rest is your salvation; In quiet and trust is your strength.”

    The statistic is something like: 95% of marriages of parents who have lost a child end in divorce. We were right there. We had the conversation more than once.

    I become a person I was embarrassed to be. I did and said things which brought debilitating shame, which snowballed into more things I did and said, which brought more shame…

    We had four other kids—kids who had been through hell… kids who lost their sister, and in many ways their parents. My heart still breaks to think about them during all of this. We failed them so many times in so many ways.

    The urge to jump off that operating table… It was a minute-by-minute battle to stay—to trust that the physician was still working… to trust that there even *was* a physician.

    Even during this period of—when death had had its way, when I had become someone I hated, when even smiling started to feel foreign—we knew that, even here, there was life.

    Olivia taught us to live life, life the way it is, in the midst of uncertainty. Now, in her absence, she was teaching us to live life, life the way it is, in the midst of our pain. And in the midst of that pain, in the midst of that fumbling to try to let go and to live these moments, we found healing. Not just healing from our loss of Olivia—we were being healed deeper and much farther back than that.

    The pain of loss is inseparable from healing.

    Grief is not a series of necessary steps to “get over” a loss.

    Grief is being open. Grief is being *receptive*.

    Grief is the absence of certain comforts which give us only the impression of healing.

    Grief is the door which leads to healing. Grief and healing are inseparable.

    Grief *is* healing.

    This book is my best attempt at sharing my grief, and in doing so my healing, with you.

    What I couldn’t fit into words, I poured into music.

    As you read this book and listen to the music, please let yourself breathe. Notice your breath. A common translation for the word “breath” is “spirit”—let the spirit travel in and out. Let it go where it wants. And as you breathe—as you let the common parts of my journey resonate with you—see if you notice a physician working on you as well.

    This is a hard path to want to walk down, but I believe that deep down many of us are ready and excited to walk it. We are no longer satisfied with an external image of wholeness—we are ready for real healing inside.

    THANK YOU for traveling 14 more months with me.

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about

I’ve never written a song like this. I’ve never written anything like this.

A friend of mine asked me six months or so after Olivia died if I had experienced any anger. I recoiled. “No, I understand why this happened… Things like this happen… It’s okay… It’s no one’s fault…” I felt so defensive. This friend obviously did’t know me. I don’t get angry at people. I’m good at forgiving. And who would I blame, anyway. God? This was nobody’s fault.

Shortly after, I was finishing one of my daily walks a couple blocks from home. I was at the intersection, waiting to cross, and I had this image in my head—of choking Jesus Christ. It was vivid and disturbing. I was filled with guilt, and these words came into my head:

*Is it a sin to want to choke the life out of the lungs of Jesus Christ—to watch his last breath since I missed when my daughter closed her eyes?*

The day Olivia died, we had no idea it was going to happen. She had a cold. We were all tired and crabby from being up all night with her. Heather suggested I take the kids on a bike ride and I begrudgingly loaded the three kids up and went. We rode far from our house, stopped at a coupe parks, and decided to go all the way to an ice cream shop before heading home. A few minutes before the ice cream shop, Heather called. She said Olivia was in a lot of pain and that the nurse recommended morphine. We’d had this morphine in a box in the back of our fridge since Olivia was born—having to use it felt serious. I told her to go ahead—the nurse knows what she’s doing. She asked if I wanted to come home. I said we were almost to the ice cream shop and that we would head back right after. I wasn’t worried.

I wasn’t worried, but there was a growing, uneasy feeling as we sat and ate our ice cream. It kept growing as we headed back.

About a mile from home I got another call. It was Heather’s friend who had stopped by to visit. She said Olivia had stopped breathing. She said to come back fast.

My oldest son immediately knew something was wrong. He asked if Olivia was dying. “I don’t know. It’ll be okay. But we need to ride fast.”

I had spent the previous 14 months **making sure** I was always there. I stopped performing outside of Peoria. I was always within a few minutes from home. I had rushed home after calls from Heather for scares before. This was surely just another scare… but I knew this was different. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t there. *Please wait for me.*

We rode so fast. I had a trailer for my 3-year-old and the two young boys were on bikes. I could feel my oldest son’s mind spinning. I could feel tears streaming across my face. I could feel the wind.

We pulled up to the house and our friend was waiting to take the kids. I jumped off my bike and ran around the back porch, where I’d left Heather and Olivia a few hours before.

I opened the door. Heather was standing there with Olivia. Olivia was still.

I missed it.

We spent hours crying and holding Olivia. We prayed over her and said goodbye. We played a board game as a family. It was a painful, but beautiful night. It was not evil. It felt purposeful. Good, even. And that’s how I pictured that day for six months, until I stood at this intersection and thought these words.

*Is it a sin to want to choke the life out of the lungs of Jesus Christ—to watch his last breath since I missed when my daughter closed her eyes?*

How much is it to ask? We knew she was going to die. We did everything we could to be good parents for her. I just wanted to be there—to see her off… to say, “It’s okay to go.” Is that unreasonable?

I walked home and wrote the words down. I was filled with rage and hate, mixed with guilt and compassion toward God. I know it must have hurt him—what happened with Olivia, watching my pain, and now hearing these words from me.

*Who are you to take her away? Just because you’re God... just because I’m not.*

I spent a year working on this recording... and this song spent a year working on me. During that time I struggled about whether or not to share the song. “This isn’t art. People will hate it.”

This particular recording happened as my wife pulled up the driveway with our kids. If you listen carefully you can hear one of the kids knock on my door toward the beginning, and at the very end you can hear my oldest son throwing a fit upstairs. :) I knew this was the take though. It’s not nearly as overtly angry as many other takes. But it has this beautiful balance to it—you can feel me oscillating between anger and gentleness. I love this recording.

I love this song. I know it’s a strange song to love.

It took me six months of intense grief-work to even sense that there was anger under the layers of “maturity”. If this song helps shine light on what is really there, inside another person, I will be forever pleased that I decided to share it.

lyrics

Is it a sin to want to choke the life
Out of the lungs of Jesus Christ
To watch his last breath
Since I missed when my daughter closed her eyes

God forgive me for the things I've said
And the things I'm gonna do
But God help me if I ever see your face
And don't say these things to you

Who are you to take her away
Just because you're God
Just because I'm not
With your arms around her now
Is that supposed to feel like something that's good

I ran so fast I could hardly see
I needed to be there
But I was too slow and she was gone
And I'll never get that back

I tried and I tried and I tried
To be there for her
But I guess you're her father now
And I can go back to whatever the hell I was doing before

Who are you to take her away
Just because you're God
Just because I'm not
With your arms around her now
Is that supposed to feel like something that's good

God forgive me for the things I've said
And the things I'm gonna do
But God help me if I ever see your face
And don't say these things to you

credits

from Dance Again, track released November 17, 2017
Written, performed, produced by Nathan Peterson
Mixed by Matt Rausch, Nashville
Mastered by Tom Baker, LA

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