Author Archives: Keith Hudson

About Keith Hudson

Living with a passion for the Lord Jesus Christ and His church, Dr. Keith currently is the pastor at Riverview Baptist Church in Washington, NC. For seven wonderful years he was married to Dr. Anna Hudson (30), who passed away after a battle with cancer. Dr. Keith received his Master of Divinity and Doctor of Ministry degrees from Southeastern Baptist Theological.

Spiraling Up or Down?

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Here is a piece I wrote close to a year and a half ago after Anna’s death. I hope it is a help to you.

I am one of those who wants things to happen and happen now. I don’t have the time or the patience to wait 2 years, 2 months, or even 2 weeks for that matter. I confess I am impatient. I believe if you are honest with me, you at least have tendencies of impatience. Unfortunately, I am learning the grieving process is just that, a process. No matter how quickly I want things to ‘get better’ I can’t speed things up any further than what the process will allow me. I can try to short-circuit the process, yet I fear that doing that will both complicate things even further and lengthen the grieving process out beyond what it would have been.

My personality is one were I want to bounce back quickly. I want to get beyond the point of having some good days and some not so good days. I don’t want a process I want an event. It doesn’t matter what I want or how much I want it, this grieving process is a process. Life is full of processes. We crawl before we walk and we walk before we run. In math we learn how to add and subtract before we can multiply and divide. In the sphere of love and marriage there is a process as well. Boy meets girl, boy and girl develop a friendship, boy and girl begin dating or courtship, then marriage, then children, and hopefully grandchildren. Life is a process. In A Grief Observed C.S. Lewis states, “And then one or other dies. And we think of this as love cut short; like a dance stopped in mid career or a flower with its head unluckily snapped off–something truncated and therefore, lacking its due shape…for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love. It follows marriage as normally as marriage follows courtship or as autumn follows summer. It’s not a truncation of the process but one of its phases; not the interruption of the dance but the next figure.” But with this continuing process comes the process of grieving the loss of the loved one. C.S. Lewis also states of this process, “For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?  But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?”

Nothing stays put. What a true statement. There are good days and bad days. There are times where you see positive progress just to sink back from where you came. It is funny that it is the things you don’t expect that sends you sinking back down. For instance, other than Monday (Monday marked one month since Anna’s passing) it has been a good week, yet Thursday morning I saw a video on the internet that just broke me. Truthfully it is Friday and I still have not gotten myself back fully together.  Lewis states again, “How often––will it be always?––how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, ‘I never realized my loss till this moment’? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again.” How long will it be before everything is ‘okay’? How long until the agony of grief last? It feels as if there is progress being made and then it is back from where you came from. If you live in the moment it is as if there is no progress being made. Yet, I can’t say this because I can see the progress from one week to the next. There is a real and tangible progress, even if it seems at times to be at a snails pace.

The more relevant question is as Lewis puts it, “Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?  But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?” Because the grief process is a process it can’t be a circle though it at times feel like it. So if it is not a circle it must be a spiral. Like a circle a spiral goes round and round, yet unlike a circle a spiral is either going up or down. So that is the question, am I spiraling up or down? To spiral up would be to progress in a positive manner. To spiral down would be to progress in a negative manner. As I have observed people, a person is in the process of one or the other. Some remain in a state of self-pity that will inevitably lead a person into a depression. Eventually a person can spiral down to the point of wondering is there any hope? Where they once saw a light at the end of the tunnel has now disappeared long ago. This person has reached a point of despair with no hope in sight.

Some are able to navigate the grieving process in a healthy manner and spiral up. Though this is the case it must be stated that spiraling up or down can oftentimes feel strangely alike. Hope ebbs and flows through the good days and the not so good days. With the person who is able to spiral up, glimpses of that light at the end of the tunnel grow closer and closer.

So the question is where am I? Am I spiraling up or spiraling down? While as illustrated above I still have not to good days, yet to this question I answer with trepidation that I believe myself to be spiraling up. Here is why I say that. First, the number of good days are increasing compared to the not so good days. Second, the distance between not so good days are increasing. Third, my repetitively listening to her voicemail greeting or watching home videos is decreasing. Forth, the flashbacks because of various sights, sounds, or smells are decreasing.

You ask another question, what do attribute my spiraling up to as opposed to spiraling down? Faith, I attribute my faith in Christ to being able to face each day whether it be good or bad. I attribute my faith to being able to keep my head held high and continue to have a positive view on life. I attribute my faith to the knowledge that I have been left here on this earth for a reason and that the Lord still has a purpose and a plan for me. I attribute my faith to the knowledge that while not today, I will one day see my beautiful wife again.

So here is my question for you if you are in the process of grieving. Are you spiraling up or down and why?

Marriage Amendment

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I came across this piece of propaganda. Let’s take a look at it and critic it.

This is a constitutional amendment that solidifies the definition of marriage. Marriage is to be defined, by this constitutional amendment set for a public vote on May 8 in North Carolina, “between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.” This is far more binding and harder to overturn than a law and hence a central piece of who we are in the culture we live. Simply put this amendment if passed will all but cease any attempts at redefining marriage. This is a process that is already being attempted with some success in parts of the US on behave of LGBT. At issue is the possible dismissal of a bedrock piece of our culture. To put it bluntly the family is the building block of society. If the building block of the family is ‘redefined’ society as we know it will crumble, i.e. several of the great empires of history.

Before we tackle these ‘factual’ reasons let’s take a look at discrimination and my ‘defending discrimination’. Discrimination in an of itself is not inherently bad because there is both good and bad discrimination.  We discriminate everyday on the clothes we buy, the shoes we wear, the food we eat, and the decisions we make over the course of a day. These discriminations are not bad. Discriminations can also be negative. For instance slavery was and is a bad discrimination. This was seeing an individual for less than who they are and simply as a piece of property. We as humanity are far to special to be seen simply as property. To say I am being unfair in discrimination or I’m being a  homophobe is unjust.

Now let’s take a look at each of the ten ‘factual‘ reasons.

  1. It is not needed. There is already an NC law forbidding gay marriage.
    1. There is a law in NC forbidding gay marriage, YET to compare a law with a constitutional amendment is to compare an apple with an orange. A law and a constitutional amendment are not even in the same category. Laws are made, changed, and removed everyday. Constitutional amendments are not.
  2. It bars recognizing any legal domestic union other than marriage, including unmarried men and women partnerships.
    1. I’m gonna have to be harsh here but really…. Do we want to cry about not getting all the legal benefits of marriage without being married. I’m widowed and I want all the legal benefits of being married, I think I should be able to have all those benefits or to put it another way I have a pet dog that lives under my roof, I think because he lives under my roof that I should get all the benefits of marriage. If an unmarried man and an unmarried woman want to belly ache and complain about wanting the benefits, let them get married. Really…. Cry me a freaking river.
  3. NC will face substantial legal cost to defend it in courts if it passes.
    1. Well let’s go crawl up in a corner in the fetal position and suck our thumbs because ‘maybe we will be sued.’
    2. In the words of Aristotle, “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
  4. It would take away legal protections for the children of unmarried people.  And 5. A child could be taken away from a parent who has taken care of them their entire life if something happens to the other parent.
    1. Is it possible for us to get anymore absurd. Do you really think the courts are going to take away legal protections or guardianship of parents without due diligence whether they are married or not? This is simply a scare tactic. If the child is your biological child then it is absurd to think that your parental rights or guardianship would be taken away.

 

More later, out of time.

Your Legacy…: Part 2

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Another issue I see when it comes to leaving a legacy for your children is the lack of quality time with the child. The Bureau of Labor states, “Mothers spent more time providing this care than did fathers–1.2 hours per day verses 0.8 hour (49 minutes) per day.” This is an atrocity!!!! There is 24 hours in a day and all the time a parent can devote to their child is averaged to 90 minutes for a mother and 49 minutes for a father.  How can a parent leave a legacy if they so little time with their children? Now the reasons for this lack of time are many so let me explore a few of these reasons.

First is work. Work takes a good part of a person’s day. The reality is having is job is essential to living a productive life in society.  While having a job is essential to living a productive life in society, is this an adequate enough reason to spend such a dismal amount of time with your children? I know people work hard and put in long hours, but I don’t think this is the number one culprit of why parent’s spend so little quality time with their children.

If I may be so bold and say what I believe is the number one culprit of why parent spend such little time with their children and that is lack of time management.  My guess is that you kill enough time during the course of the day that if you used your time more wisely that the amount of time you spend with your child would go up significantly. Some of the things we kill our time with is mindless staring at the TV when we are not looking at something specific. I would add that there is a time to watch TV but should we watch TV to the exclusion of spending quality time with your child. I think this hits close to fathers because they are more apt to come home and plop down in front of the TV until bed time, watching nothing and wasting valuable opportunities.  Another thing that kills our time is Facebook. Now there is nothing wrong with Facebook but do we really need to spend hours each day looking at what other people are doing? A third thing that kills our time is playing of games. Games on the computer, games on a game console, and games on other electronic devices including our cell phones. If you add up the minutes how much does it sum up to?

If you are going to leave a legacy that is both helpful and remembered you have to spend quality time with your children as you both train and teach them the skills and knowledge needed to be a productive individual in the world we live in.

Your Legacy….: Part 1

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This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching on leaving a legacy. This has got me thinking, what kind of legacy I am leaving? What about you what kind of legacy are you leaving? Further, how do you know you are leaving a ‘good’ legacy? Often times when we think of leaving a legacy we think of leaving a legacy with our children so let’s talk about this for a few moments.

While, I am not a parent and I am not foolish enough to tell a parent how to parent, yet I am observant. Here are a few things that I observe about our culture when it comes to leaving a legacy to a person’s children.

First, I am afraid we are leaving a legacy of being a child’s best friend and not their parent. A child doesn’t need another friend, they need their parents. In fact, I observe parent’s with their children and I wonder who is in charge of who?

When are parent’s going to stand up and be ‘the’ parent? That means you need to make the decisions. While a child may think they know everything except how to tie their shoes, they don’t. Oftentimes the child is making the decisions and dictating the calendar and they don’t’ know enough to make the decision. They don’t know that a diet consisting solely of candy, pizza, hotdogs, and chicken nuggets isn’t all that good for your health. They don’t know why certain things are done at certain times. They mustn’t be allowed to make the decision on what time they go to bed. They mustn’t be allowed to make the decision on whether they want to go to church or not go to church. They simply don’t know enough to make all the decisions that so many parents are allowing their children to make.

Being a parent means that means you are going to have to say, ‘no.’ I know it is hard to believe if not an anathema, but saying that ‘n’ word is okay and oftentimes necessary. I’m sure there is some ‘expert’ out their that say that parent’s shouldn’t use the ‘no’ word, but I say really…. Is it really that bad to be told no? I get told no all the time: I can’t jump in line at the local super market, I can’t not pay my taxes or bills, I can’t just not show up at the office, and the list can go on. No is a part of life, it’s really not going to damage them for the rest of their life. Parent’s must step up be the parent and willing and able to say no.

Being a parent means keeping adult conversations with adults. My jaw drops in disgust and amazement when a parent in the absence of other adult support go to the their child and talk about adult matters. Really….. Ready does one parent need to talk how bad the other parent is with the child? Does a parent need to talk to their child about the stress of their job? Does a parent need to talk to their children about their financial strain? Be the parent and leave a legacy that will be both helpful and remembered by your children.