Will "The Body" Doederlein

I do not know how to write this blog. In every way, my words defeat me.


I watched men put my best friend's body in the back of a truck on Christmas. I watched his kids scream, his wife fall apart, his mother in hysterics, his father nearly collapse. He was my brother in every way. I slept beside his 10 foot long, skinny bed most of high school. I called him "The Body" on this blog.

Right this moment I cannot even breathe. Every corner of my house, my neighborhood, my heart holds his ghost. I walk by the wash tub and there is his deep hand soap hanging in a zip lock bag he was so particular about. I look at my garage and I see him laying under a car covered in grease determined to fix it. I pick up my guitar and I see him standing behind me playing the bass, singing back-up. We both looked up to each other. He refused to move away from Michigan for a better job, just because he refused to move away from me. I loved him for that. My wife loved him for that. Now she is juggling grief for me and grief for the loss of her friend Will too. My kids loved their uncle will. The below picture is when Caeden broke his femur and wanted so bad to jump on the trampoline with the rest of the kids. His uncle Will scooped him up and held him and jumped for him. He saw beauty in kids he did not see in this world...he had the heart of Jesus.

We could speak to each other in looks alone, there were no need for words. Last Saturday his look told me he was going away, but he said nothing. He said goodbye in his own way, telling me he called just to hear my voice. The next day he hung himself by the neck. I have no idea how to say goodbye. He is part of me and I am deflated and empty.

Just before I tried to kill myself, I drank until I would pass out every night. Will worked the night shift and would come over every day after work and pick me up off the floor and help me to my bed. He would sit in the recliner until I was sleeping or he would sleep at my house in that chair like a watch dog, guarding me from myself. Will was selfless, though most can only shout about how selfish he was. And he was. He didn't see it that way though. He saw himself without hope of life and needed to leave to allow his family and friends to be happy. Oh my God, he could not have made a bigger mistake. But as my pastor said through tears at his funeral. Nothing we can do is more powerful than the cross. I believe Heaven gets him now, and he can smile again.

Tonight I was escaping upstairs, staring out the window. Tears started to fall and run down the glass as I stared at the Christmas lights that have lost all beauty to me. My little girl came up to me holding a little plastic heart and gave it to me, telling me she had one too. She then told me again that Uncle Will was with Jesus. She knew I needed a new heart right now, mine has been shattered into shards. Jesus speaks to me through my little girl who seems to be able to hear Him more than I ever could.

My praise for God is broken and silent. I cannot sit and pray for long periods of time, because I cannot stop myself from anger, even though I know that God is perfect all the time. I get so mad because He saved me when I wanted to die, and can't understand why He didn't save Will. I am angered because He didn't give me insight into what was really happening in Will's eyes. I was such a fool. I could do nothing and can do nothing. Yet I still know He is perfect and is with me and Will's family.

Will came over on his birthday because he was so down that evening at the CMB party. We wanted to get him into a smaller crowd so he could relax. We had so much fun that night. He was like he was normally. Nearing the end of the night, he sat by my desk taking picture after picture. He knew that night and wanted to leave me with those memories.

God I miss him so much. I never knew a person could hurt this much. I have no idea how to be the same man my wife married. I can say nothing more today.











Sing.
Migrate.


™Zombiehaven 2008. All ideas and photos are copyrighted under Zombiehaven. Anything used from this site, must have written permission.

True Christmas

I came across this tree while exploring in the hills by my house. Under the tree, was all of the belongings of a homeless man. This is what Christmas is about. He didn't have money, he didn't wait in lines for a Wii, and didn't overpay for a zu zu pal or whatever it is called. He laided under that tree and relied on Jesus. Made a Christmas tree out of what he could find and celebrated. Under that tree we found an empty bottle of whiskey, maybe he drank to old times, maybe he remembered when he was a kid and waited eagerly to rip open that wrapping paper...or maybe he never got that luxury. But he did celebrate Christmas the way it should be celebrated, with an empty pocket, looking up at the same sky Jesus did. He found a way, without charging everything. This wrecked me. I worried so much about getting a Wii for my son and was so excited to see him open it, while this guy is excited if he can see another day. It is cold in Michigan, yet he digs up his blankets from the snow covered hill and lays down on them every night, probably wishing his life were completely different, wishing he were us. Me. I believe today, Jesus smiles more on that guy than He does on me.

We fight so hard to fight off the awful feelings we have when we encounter a person who lives the life we have nightmares about. We try to tell ourselves, they deserve it for eating drugs or drinking themselves poor, but sometimes it is us who are in poverty of the heart. Maybe we need to feel for them and do what God says to do for them...love them more than you love yourself. What would you do if you were them? Fix everything, right? Why not try, even if they do not want help?

I am not preaching because I fail at the same thing I am writing about every day. My dream is to care for them as Jesus would, no matter what it meant.















Sing.
Migrate.


™Zombiehaven 2008. All ideas and photos are copyrighted under Zombiehaven. Anything used from this site, must have written permission.

The Middle Of The Night

I have always wanted to make something beautiful out of something ugly. I feel like that is what it really means to follow Christ. To do as He did. To make ugly things beautiful. He took a moment when we all would seek revenge and gave Peter the keys to His church, gave him His Bride. The prodigal son came home nasty and stinking of filth and sin and his father embraced every ugly bone on the kids body. I like that God embraces every ugly bone on my body, especially when I have come home filthy with rot. I want to do that too. I will never fully understand my own brokenness but He embraces me broken and slowly repairs. Then I fall in love with my brokenness and He tears me down more so He can rebuild again.

Pooft

So I wake up and it was gone. As if it was never here. I have recovering to do and I have restoration coming, but pooft...gone. It is the weirdest thing when this happens. I fully expected after being on this depression bender for 3 months that gradually it would leave. Not to be so. I popped open my eyes and wanted to get up today. No coaxing myself that there are really good reasons to face the world, none of that stuff. Just got up, smiled and had a good day. The wife is happy, I know that.

I have missed writing so I will be doing more of that. I even thought about finishing that zombie script I was working on.

God is good even when everything else is lousy and you got nothing. Christ will never lose on of the sheep given by His Father. That is comforting.








Sing.
Migrate.


™Zombiehaven 2008. All ideas and photos are copyrighted under Zombiehaven. Anything used from this site, must have written permission.

Snow, Then Rain

Everyone has expectations of who you should be or who you are. They create them in part the moment you meet. It really isn't a fair thing to do; to make this image of a person in your mind and expect them to be what you have wrapped them up to be. When you prove you can never be that person, they walk away citing that you weren't the person they thought you were. This makes that person try harder to live up to what others want them to be instead of being who they really are. Human. So full of flaws you cannot even decipher the idea of where to start. It makes the person want to forget who they are for a while and be who everyone else sees, but this isn't transparency, this is a lie that the Father of Lies uses to ruin a person.

I am tired of always trying so hard to live up to what people and myself expect. I am underachieving. I should be more. I should have accomplished more, and I should be a different person than who I am.

I yell at God for this, not because He did it, but because I have no idea how to change it or what the problem really is. I really would love for a person who has done the same lonely and strange things to show me a different way to think. I have everything a person could ever want out of life and I love it with more words than English can muster, but I am missing something and have no idea what it is. Maybe I have more issues to deal with that I have put aside all my life. Maybe I am just broken and sad and grieving for the world, like the Bible said we may do. I do not know.But what I know is that I can't remember the last time I cried or showed some kind of feeling at all. I just plod through.

Rom. 8:22   We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.









Sing.
Migrate.


™Zombiehaven 2008. All ideas and photos are copyrighted under Zombiehaven. Anything used from this site, must have written permission.

Seeing Me

"What I have means nothing at all, compared to Your glory." The Glorious Unseen

It isn't enough to let people see what you want them to see. Show them your entire hand. Play the cards with everyone knowing what you are exactly. This is real fear. Letting everyone see the person you hate the most, which when being honest is usually ourselves. Pretending your not broken will glorify no one. It is how we handle ourselves during suffering that glorify God. Do we crumble or do we fight? Do we allow our brokenness to define us or do we allow our failures to shine in the light of what God is doing in us? I will choose the latter.






Sing.
Migrate.


™Zombiehaven 2008. All ideas and photos are copyrighted under Zombiehaven. Anything used from this site, must have written permission.