I’m Not Mad

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People have asked me if I got mad at God when Davey was killed.  My son, David Glasser, was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016.

Looking back, I cannot remember a moment when I was mad at God.  I know many people have that reaction when tragedy strikes because we know that God is in total control of what happens on earth and now this horrible thing has happened to us.

That is not my response.

After thinking about it, I figured out that I didn’t get mad at God because I learned the truth more than 25 years ago that God is not Santa Claus.  He doesn’t exist to grant all of my wishes.

God is not here to do what I want him to do.  I am here to do what God wants me to do.

That’s a very important difference.

God is perfect, he is all-knowing and all-powerful.  He is the Uncreated One – eternal.  It’s all about him, not about me.

I also know that God is good, all the time.  He loves me, he wants the best for me and he is working all things out for my good.  My current circumstances don’t change these facts.

We spent the night Davey was shot in the hospital praying for a miracle. In the midst of praying and asking everyone I saw to pray for a miracle, I was thinking about the great story we would get to tell when Davey miraculously got better. As the night progressed, more tests were done and it became painfully obvious that Davey had already left us. There was no miracle for us that night.

I remember thinking in the midst of my black swirling cloud of grief, “Well, that’s not the story God is writing right now.  There is something else going on.  God is doing something different.”

Faith is about trusting in God even when we don’t understand.  Faith is about trusting in God even when we’re struggling with too much pain, too much loss, too much sorrow.  Faith is about trusting God even when tomorrow looks dark and it’s not a place we want to go.

The fact is that I’m still here because God has things he wants me to do.  That gives me purpose and helps me focus my eyes above instead of what’s behind me.  God is training my eyes to see beyond what is right in front of me.

I’m not mad. I’m grateful to God for his love and guidance through this worst time in my life. I’m grateful for all the blessings I have in my life right now. I’m grateful for all of the kindness and grace and love so many people have shown me and my family in these last 8 1/2 years.

And I’m extremely grateful for the 34 1/2 years on earth that I got to spend with Davey.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

It All Connected

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happened2 Comments

I remember the moment I realized that everything in my world had changed. All of the horrible things that had happened to me in the last 12 hours connected in my brain for the first time and I knew that my life as I knew it was gone – blown up – smashed.

Nothing would ever be the same.

It was the moment when I was holding my son, David Glasser’s hand in his hospital room early in the morning after he had been shot the day before in the line of duty as a Phoenix Police Officer. The doctors had just announced their final report.

Davey was officially gone. A machine was still making his lungs breath and drugs were making his heart beat so that he could fulfill his wish of being an organ donor.

But the Davey I had loved and cherished from before he was ever born was not in this ravaged body laying in this hospital bed any longer.

I wanted to crawl in a corner and never leave. I didn’t want to know what a world without without Davey felt like. I didn’t want to face the avalanche of pain and loss that had already started to come crashing down on me and my family.

I didn’t want to.

I told God I didn’t want to.

I remember feeling a torrent of tears dripping down off of my face, soaking the front of my shirt. And I didn’t care. It was all too devastating.

Then, as Police Chaplain Bob Fesmire prayed over all of us standing around Davey’s hospital bed that morning, I felt God’s strong arms of love wrap around me. My Abba Father reminded me that, even though Davey was gone, God is always with me and he was going to walk down this very dark road right beside me, all the way to the end. He reminded me that he had always been beside me during all the tough times in my life – loving me and comforting me. He promised me that he was going to do that again.

And I knew he would. He had done it before, he would do it again.

And he has. God has been my Rock and my shelter as this hurricane of pain and loss decimated my life. He has given me strength and confidence as I have watched him start to put my life back together – piece by piece – making a much different picture than before Davey died. God has given me hope as he reminds me I have been left behind because he has a purpose for me here.

As I remember that moment in the hospital, I am thankful for how faithful God has been in my life these last almost 9 years since Davey died.

And I know he’ll be walking closely next to me the rest of this journey, until I see Davey again in our forever home.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

_______________

If you want to know more of this story, I published a book on Amazon, “Then I Looked Up: Losing a Child, Finding His Legacy of Love.”

A Very Long Season

I am in a very long season.

My son, David Glasser, was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016.  My world turned upside down and then crumbled before it exploded.  You get the picture.  It caused an earthquake in my life that was 10.0 on the Richter scale and the after shocks just keep coming.  There has been a domino-effect in all areas of my life these last 8 1/2 years and the dominos just keep falling.

The fall-out hasn’t stopped.  And now I realize that it never will.  My life here on earth will always be missing Davey.  Every holiday, his birthday along with every person’s birthday in my family, every family and friend gathering and every anniversary will have a hole – a 6’5″ hole.

Before Davey’s death, I often would write something like “praying that God will give you peace and strength during this season of grief’ on sympathy cards to people who had lost someone they loved.  I don’t write that anymore because grief is not a season that will have an end for people like me.  Grief is now a permanent part of my life here on earth.  I will be feeling the affects of losing Davey until the day I walk into my forever home in heaven, hand in hand with Jesus.  Only then will my grieving be over.

 I am gradually getting used to the pain and loss of Davey’s death.  I’m growing used to watching my hopes and dreams for my life with Davey continue to be blown away in the cruel wind of reality.

I’m getting used to missing Davey.

But that doesn’t stop the tears as my long season of grief continues year after year.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

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You’ll Get Through This

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens2 Comments

No, I won’t.

One of the many things people have said to me since the death of my son, David Glasser, is ‘you’ll get through this’. Davey was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016.

Not long ago, I was talking with a friend who said, “It’s great that you had God walking beside you to help you get through this.” The first part of that comment is very true- God has been awesome – he is my Rock and Comforter. But the last words in that statement are not correct. I replied, “I have realized that I’m not ‘getting through’ this.”

I have figured out that we don’t ‘get through’ the death of one of our children. There is no ‘other side’ of this situation where we breathe a sigh of relief because we are ‘through’ it.

When our child dies, we never move out of it. We have to move forward but we take our broken hearts with us. We live in it. Every day.

Why is this so different from when my mother, father and all 3 of my brothers passed away?

I know what it is. I always knew that there would be a time in my life when my parents would pass away. My brothers were all older than me and, although I thought they would be here longer, I always expected that I would live a portion of my life without the rest of my family.

Not so with Davey.

Davey is supposed to be here, right now. He was supposed to be making my husband and me smile as we grow old. He should be filling our calendars with the next fun thing. Making jokes. Surrounding himself with friends and family – helping everyone have a good time.

There were times in Davey’s life where I felt like his social director. I would be organizing and helping with details in the background while Davey was the front man – gathering people together and having a great time with them. He always appreciated my help and I loved seeing him living life to the full. He was such a great person to be around.

I know you feel like this if you have lost a child – I should have gone first. That’s the right order. What happened is not the right order. And the pain of this reality does not go away. I’m not going to ‘get over’ this because the fact that he is gone from this earth when he should be here is not going to change.

The hole he left doesn’t get smaller, it actually gets bigger as he misses more Mother’s Days, Father’s days, birthdays and more Christmases.

Davey was a huge family man. He was always a part of what was going on. He flew to Maryland for his sister’s graduation with her masters degree, he flew to Pennsylvania several times to spend time with his last living grandmother and grandfather. He flew to Denver when his sister moved there to check out her new place. He kept track of his dad and I, making sure we were taken care of. If something was happening with our family, he was right in the middle of it.

All of that was lost the day a bullet took his life. Wiped away. It isn’t happening, it’s not going to happen, it will never happen again.

So, no….

I’m not going to ‘get through’ this.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

It’s Impossible

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens6 Comments

Have you ever said something was impossible?

Have you ever done something that you thought was impossible? I have.

I have a terrible memory and I’ve been like this for quite a while. Go ahead and shake your head ‘yes’ if you are with me on this. I don’t know my husband’s telephone number that he’s had for 25 years. I get confused about the address of my house where I have lived for almost 5 years. I was making cookies for Christmas the other day and stopped in the middle, looked down, and had no idea if I had already put in the baking soda or not. For you non-bakers, baking soda is VERY important. And don’t get me started on names. I forget names of people I have known for 40 years. If you know me and see me, I probably won’t use your name because…I can’t remember it. Sorry! Nothing personal, I’m like that with everyone.

So when God challenged me to memorize the entire first chapter of James many years ago, I laughed. Ha, ha! That was impossible. I had some success memorizing scripture earlier in my life but the older I get, the harder it has become. Not just hard, impossible from my point of view.

God told me he was serious and that he would help me. I’ve told you before that I have learned the hard way to obey God. Just obey. Don’t question. Don’t ‘pray about it’. Just obey.

So I told him I would try but that I thought it was impossible. He reminded me of Mark 10:27. It’s one of the few I could still remember from my early years. Look it up 🙂

I started with James 1. One verse at a time. I wrote them on index cards and added a card as soon as I could say the last one from memory. I took out my index cards every day – sometimes multiple times a day. I had told God I would do my part – get out my cards and say the verse a hundred times but he was going to have to do the rest. The actual etching of the words on my memory was his job. We were a team.

Imagine my amazement when the verses started to stick and I started moving through the chapter. I also researched and studied each verse as I memorized it which added a depth of understanding for this scripture that I had never had before. As I worked through it, I started to ‘feel’ the truth in James 1, not just say it. It buried itself deep in my soul. When I actually could say the whole chapter from memory, I was totally amazed at how awesome it was to see God work like that in my life. He did the impossible!

I realize now that God was writing the whole chapter of James 1 on my heart and mind for a couple of reasons –

  • My life shattered into small, painful pieces on May 18, 2016 which was the year after I finished memorizing the chapter. My son, David Glasser, was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty on that day and my world went very dark. My life continued to crumble around me as I experienced the reality of life without Davey and God constantly spoke to me through the truth I had cemented into my mind. He comforted me and guided me down the long, difficult path of losing a child. He was my Rock then and he is still my Rock today. When God told me to memorize James 1, he was preparing me so I could hear him clearly and know exactly what he was talking about when I experienced the most devastating thing that can happen to a parent.
  • He was also teaching me and showing me what it means to partner with him. I do my part, he does his part and impossible things happen. This has eliminated my list of things that I think are impossible. Nothing is on that list. Since I have learned this, I have watched God do many impossible things in my life. I do my part and he does his. Partnering with him on the first chapter of James was so awesome that I have also memorized the entire 2d chapter – with God’s help – and I’m starting on Chapter 3.

I still have a bad memory when it comes to telephone numbers, addresses and names. But I can memorize scripture because I’ve got a supernatural, powerful God working with me.

I challenge you to get rid of your impossible list and start a very tangible working relationship with all-mighty God. You obey and do your part. Then watch him do his.

Nothing is Impossible with God.

What Do I Really Believe?

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens4 Comments

Do I really believe God loves me unconditionally?

Do I really believe God is all-powerful and that nothing is impossible for him?

Do I really believe that God wants the best for me and is working everything out for my good?

I bet some of these same thoughts and questions have gone through your mind in the past. I bet some of these same questions must have been going through Mary’s mind as the Angel Gabriel told her she was going to give birth to a son who would be a great king and whose kingdom would never end.

Mary was a virgin.  She was unmarried.

What did she really believe?  Was she willing to accept this immense, supernatural assignment for her life with the calm assurance that God would keep all of his promises to her?

Mary’s faith was strong and sure.  “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered, “May your word to me be fulfilled.”  Luke 1:38. Right answer, Mary!

Does Mary’s response to God challenge you?  It definitely challenges me.

God has given me an extremely painful road to travel following the death of my son, David Glasser, a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty May 18, 2016.

It’s a very dark, grief-filled road with lots of hazards.

Do I believe that God can work even this evil and horrible event out for my good?  That’s a tough question. After many conversations with God,  my answer is yes.

But the good that will come from this will be based on God’s point of view, not mine.   You can probably imagine my perspective – I want my son, Davey, to still be here on earth, living less than 2 miles from me, dropping by later with his son to pick up my husband so they can all go to Home Depot like they used to do at least once a week.

That will never happen again.

God’s perspective is focused on eternity and he is teaching me some lessons I never wanted to learn about focusing myself on eternity as well.  I am realizing that people getting the chance to hear the messages of Davey’s legacy of love is a win for God because Davey loved God and shared his faith regularly.  The opportunities I am getting to share God’s love with others because of what happened to me is a win for God.  Any chance I get to tell my story of God’s faithfulness to me and to my family through this tragedy is a win for God.  A book I published a book on Amazon with the rest of this story, “Then I Looked Up: Losing a Child, Finding His Legacy of Love”, is a win for God.

As long as God is winning – I’m good.  I’ll submit.  I’ll trust.

“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” Luke 1: 46 – 47.

It All Shook

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happened2 Comments

May 18, 2016.

David Glasser, my son, a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty on that day.

And everything in my world shook.

You cannot imagine what that feels like until it happens to you.  And it wasn’t just my life – the tsunami of his death hit everyone who was close to Davey. My two grandchildren’s world exploded.  My daughter-in-law’s world crashed. My daughter’s world flipped upside down as all of her dreams and plans with her big brother crumbled.

My husband’s world shattered into tiny pieces.  Davey was his best friend and my husband’s father had just passed away 10 days before Davey was killed.  Too much. How do we deal with this much devastating loss in such a short time?

Davey’s close friend’s and squad member’s worlds spiraled in various directions as each person felt the blow of Davey’s death.

The world shook.  It twisted.  It filled with unimaginable grief.  It emptied of joy and light.

I needed something solid to hold onto while everything around me smashed and rocked.  And I found the one thing that didn’t shatter, didn’t tilt, didn’t explode.  He was right beside me and he was Rock Solid – my Father God.  Always there, always loving me, always caring for me.

God has been with us every step of the way as we have each had to pick our way through the devastation Davey’s death had on our lives.  I am completely convinced that God is good and nothing that has happened to me changes that.

When my world gradually stopped shaking, I realized I was in this new place, a new reality.  It’s somewhere I never, ever wanted to be. My head recognizes this place and I know I have been left behind for a purpose. I have to keep moving forward. 

My heart is still regularly tugged back to a time when Davey was here, making me laugh and filling my life with his special kind of love. My husband and I just spent 10 days in the Phoenix area making new memories with Davey’s two children, having fun with old friends and making new friends. I had to stop my heart from focusing on how empty Phoenix feels without Davey. It’s hard. It hurts. People and places just kept touching the broken parts of my heart, the parts that will remain like that until I go to my forever home. So many precious memories of a different time……

my life before my whole world shook.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

The Most Difficult Time of the Year

Each day, as we get closer to Christmas, the hole in my heart grows a little bigger…and a little darker.  The pain becomes a little stronger.

It becomes increasingly harder not to focus on what I have lost.  What my family has lost.

David Glasser, my son, was a Phoenix Police Officer who was killed in the line of duty May 18, 2016.  My journey since then has been a uphill struggle.  And this struggle intensifies during the holidays when happy memories haunt my days.  Davey is 7 in this picture and our daughter, Katie, is 3.  They were both so excited about Christmas!  Davey had actually received the Teddy Ruxspin bear that Katie is holding from a family member for his birthday in November but his little sister loved it so much that he let her have it.  That’s who he was already at 7 years-old.

Sometimes I just wish the holidays were over.

I know many of you share my feelings.  Since I’ve had this very public and tragic loss in my life, more people have been telling me about their own heartbreaks and the losses they have experienced.  And others haven’t talked about it but I can see the private pain in your eyes when we talk about my tragedy.

We both know the struggle, we share the struggle – especially at Christmas.

So I force my attention away from my loss and focus on all the blessings God is giving me right now –  my four granddarlings are at the top of that list.  They are so precious and they distract me from thinking about who is NOT here.

One of the several life-changing lessons I have learned from this tragedy is just how short our lives can be and how quickly someone can be gone.  The painful grief I feel reminds me that I need to make the most of the time I have now with the people that are still here.  This is not the time to get stuck in yesterday.  I have new memories to make because there is no guarantee that we’ll have tomorrow together here on earth.

My heartache also reminds me that you and I shouldn’t ignore the difficult days that so many people around us are experiencing this time of year.  I read that the Christmas season has the highest rate of suicide across our nation.

That is so wrong.

So I pray for those of us who are feeling additional pain and loss during these tough weeks.  And I am trying to be extra patient and kind to people in my world this week – on the freeway, at the store, in the parking lots.  Many of them are going through hard times and I don’t want to add to the difficulties they have in their lives.

Can each of us think of a way we can reach out helping hands to others who are not enjoying ‘the most wonderful time of the year’?

And please join me in praying for a little more peace on earth during this holiday season.  We need it.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.

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It’s Happening Again

On By Judy GlasserIn When the Worst Happens7 Comments

This will be my 9th Christmas without my son, David Glasser.  He was a Phoenix Police Officer killed in the line of duty on May 18, 2016.

If you have experienced loss, you have probably heard this many times – “the first year without them is the worst”. Crowds of people told me this during that first Christmas season after Davey’s death.  And, yes, it was very tough.   The Christmas season lasted forever.  It was hard to be around so many smiling people who were celebrating and having a fun time.  I was not having a fun time.  My smiles were few and far between.  I felt a huge amount of relief when that first holiday season was finally over.

So I was hoping that what people told me was true and the coming years would be better.  It surprised me when the second Christmas was even more painful than the first as the permanence of the situation started to become a reality.  The permanence of the pain has become increasingly real during the 3rd,  4th , 5th 6th, 7th and 8th years of living with the growing hole where Davey should be.

This is my 9th Christmas without Davey – and it’s happening again.  It’s my Quadruple Whammy. One punch, two punches, three punches and then – the final punch.

The first punch is Davey’s son, Micah’s, birthday in the beginning of November.  I still don’t want to believe that Davey will never be at any of Micah’s birthdays, graduations, wedding, or hold his own grandchildren.  We have lost so much.

Next comes Davey’s birthday in November – a couple of weeks after Micah’s.  It was his 43rd birthday this year – full of great memories laced with the pain.  He should have had 60 more birthdays.  We have all been robbed.

The third punch is Thanksgiving.  There are times when I struggle to say, “Happy Thanksgiving” to people.  For me, it’s compounded by the fact that my father died on Thanksgiving 46 years ago.  Last year my brother, Marlow, passed away 3 days after Thanksgiving. He was the last of my 3 older brothers and I’m the only member of my immediate family left. It’s not surprising that I ride an emotional roller coaster up and down during November.

And then the final whammy – Christmas.  So many great Christmas’ with Davey!  He was a light in my life and now it’s hard to ignore the darkness.  So I focus on how grateful I am for the birth of God’s son, Jesus, my Savior.  Jesus is the light of the world and the hope he gives me lights up the dark places in my life.

I’ll just say this right out loud for me and for people like me – I’ll be glad when New Years Eve is over and another holiday season is past.  I feel pretty beat up by the time January rolls around.

In the Law Enforcement world, people like me are called Survivors.  I’ve spent over 8 years learning just how much surviving we have to do when we lose a child.  Every year, we have to ‘survive’ the holidays and birthdays and other special days.  We never know when something is going to reach out of a perfectly normal celebration and punch us in the gut.  It comes out of nowhere and spins us into the dark hole of grief we had hoped we left behind.

You have heard this from me before and you are hearing it again because it’s still true.  I have discovered that the best way for me to survive and deal with the whammies is to focus on all the good I had in my life before Davey was killed and all the good I still have.  When I focus on all I have lost, the pain intensifies.

I have also decided to get as close to God as I can and he comforts me each time my heart breaks a little more.

Because my quadruple whammy is not going away.  It’s happening again this year.

Miss you, Davey. 

Love you.

Irreplaceable

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I thought it was irreplaceable.

About 4 years ago, my wedding ring had a loose stone so a major jewelry store sent it in to be fixed.

And my ring disappeared.

Somewhere between the jewelry store and the shop that fixes jewelry, my ring along with a whole box of other people’s jewelry was stolen.  Gone!

For almost 40 years at that time, my husband I had an ‘every 5 years’ anniversary tradition of changing or adding something to my ring. This made my ring very unique with a lot of sentimental memories attached to it. Eight years ago we added blue sapphires to my ring after our son, David Glasser, who was a Phoenix Police Officer, was killed in the line of duty. It’s the only piece of jewelry I usually wear other than Davey’s memorial bracelet.

This ring was precious to me so I never took it off except at night and then it always went the same place.  I didn’t want to lose it.

Now the jewelry store lost it.  Unbelievable!

Of course I cried.  So much has been lost and now I’m adding my wedding ring to that list.  The jewelry store tried to do their best to replace it with something comparable and they did a good job.  But my original ring was irreplaceable.

Well, on second thought, my perspective these last 8 years since Davey was killed has definitely changed. There is a new standard in my mind that I measure  everything here on earth by to determine whether it’s irreplaceable.  And my ring actually isn’t even on that list.

Because, at the top of the irreplaceable list is my son, Davey.  In an instant, he was gone.  He went to work on May 18, 2016 and never came back.  And he is truly irreplaceable.  He defines irreplaceable.  He was such a huge personality and so special.  Nothing and no one can fill the hole he left on this earth.

When I think about it, it’s people in my life who are irreplaceable.  None of the ‘stuff’ in life means much when it’s stacked up against the people that mean the most to me.

Those of you who follow my blog know that last year my ring disappeared again. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I only take it off at night and I always put it in the same place…..but, one day, it wasn’t there in the morning. To say that I looked for it everywhere is an understatement. I’m glad I had already figured out what it was not irreplaceable but losing it still stung. I had three older brothers and the last one passed away around the same time that I lost my ring. More loss. It was piling up.

So I prayed. I knew God knew exactly where my ring was and I asked him to bring it back to me. Every time it bothered me, I prayed. And 4 months later, it showed up in a place where I had looked many times. Thank you, God.

I lost Davey, too, but I know where he is and God is going to give him back to me someday when I get to my forever home.

One of the things that is important to me about my relationship with God is that he has promised nothing could make him stop loving me.  Nothing.  Ever.  I don’t have to be concerned about ever losing my relationship with him.  My life is built on the Solid Rock.  I might lose everything else here on earth, but not God.

Having this new standard of irreplaceable has helped me focus on the most precious things in my life – my relationship with God and with the people who have been left behind on this planet with me. It has helped me put ‘stuff’ and possessions in the right place on my list of what is important – at the bottom.  It has helped me be okay with losing my original ring.  It was just a thing.  It is replaceable.

Because I now clearly understand what is truly irreplaceable.

Miss you, Davey.

Love you.