Under Heaven Podcast: Lena Paulauskas - Journey through the Valley Grief

Under Heaven Podcast host, Trish, shares a deeply personal conversation with Lena to explore how grief became the unexpected doorway to healing, creativity, and ministry. This episode is a tender companion for anyone grieving, anyone loving someone who grieves, or anyone longing to see how God can bring beauty from the hardest seasons. You may feel lonely, but you are not alone. God walks with you, and healing doesn’t have to be rushed.

Lena is a poet, playwright, performer, and longtime theater educator who began writing poems as private prayers and journal entries after losing her father in 2017.  What started as personal processing soon became a lifeline for others, as God nudged her to share her words with people walking through their own valleys. Those poems eventually became her book, Chasing Time: A Journey Through Grief.

Lena:  https://www.lenapaulbooks.com

Trish: patricia@lookingup24.org

Faith Journey, Grief Healing, Poetry and Grief, Spiritual Encouragement, Loss and Hope, God’s Comfort, Christian testimonies, Emotional Healing, Resilience, Grief

Under Heaven Podcast, Faith, Trish Hodges, Testimony, Christian Women, Encouragement, Testimony

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Welcome to Under Heaven, the podcast where we glorify God and celebrate the beautiful stories of women whose lives have been transformed by his goodness and grace. I'm your host, Trish, and each week we share real conversations about faith, hope, and purpose. This is a place for encouragement and truth where every story matters and every listener is welcome. No matter where you are in your journey, let's grow together Under Heaven. Hello and welcome to Under Heaven Podcast. I'm your host, Trish, and today we are joined by Lena. Lena is a poet, a playwright, a performer, and she is a beloved theater educator of young people. Her work has been seen from New York City to Hawaii. And having lived in a lot of different places, which she may tell us about, she is bringing a rich cultural lens to everything that she creates. Lena is a proud military wife and mom of three, she says, spirited kids. And if we've ever met her, you know, you will know that she doesn't know a stranger. Today she's going to open up about grieving the loss of her father while raising her children, working full-time, and navigating having a husband overseas in the military. If you've ever felt alone in grief or wondered how to keep going when life keeps moving, this conversation will remind you that grief can feel lonely, but you're not alone. God walks with you and He sends people just like Lena to shine a little light along the way. So let's welcome her. Hi Lena. Hi. Good to have you on Under Heaven. And I did enjoy our talk we had last week, and I'm so glad you're back today to share your story with us. You uh began ministering to yourself by writing poetry after you lost your father. Would you like to share a little bit about that story and how you started reaching out?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Sure. Thank you so much for having me on this Under Heaven podcast here, Trish. This is amazing. Um, and for the opportunity to just share about loss and grief.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

There's women who need to hear it. There's women who are out there in that same position that you were in.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Yeah. So my dad passed away in the summer of 2017, and my husband was actually away at military uh training camp preparing to go overseas. We knew he was going to be deployed soon. And so my dad passed away. My husband came home for the funeral, and then we went up to Kansas to see him off the next week. And it was all really, really fast and sudden. And so then I returned home and I had three kids, um, junior high and elementary kids. And, you know, there's not a lot of time to just kind of grieve and do what you need to do when you're trying to run a household. And I had a lot of support here. I did have family and friends here, but my family was all grieving as well. So that makes it difficult. And I couldn't really afford therapy or or take the time to go to therapy. So I just began to write. Uh, I process a lot of things through writing, and poetry is the form that just poured out. I feel like poetry is sort of the language of grief. And if you've never understood poetry or liked poetry, when you meet a deep loss, typically poetry comes alive to you. And the psalms, you know, are very poetic. And those begin to really jump out at you and speak to you. So I would have a thought about my dad, sometimes sad, you know, sometimes angry, uh, sometimes a good, happy thought. And I would just make a little note in my phone if I couldn't write it out and process it right then. And then when I had a chance, uh typically I would come home and just, you know, the kids would have the TV on and I would just come home, sit in my closet and just write, just kind of pour out and sob and cry and and and sometimes laugh. That sometimes there were great memories that I was revisiting, but there was always tears. And I just wrote and wrote and wrote, and I I wasn't writing a book. I wasn't writing for anybody else. I was just writing to process and sort of journal my prayers um to God and and just put it all on the page. Um so about I would say maybe two, two years later, I started to feel like the Lord was saying, Hey, send this poem that you wrote, send it to this person. And and then I would see something on Facebook maybe about somebody that had lost their parent or um another loss. And I would feel like the Lord would say, Okay, send them that poem. And what began to happen was they would immediately respond back with, This is exactly what I'm feeling right now. This resonated so much with me, or how did you know that that was what I was feeling? Uh, the one story that comes to mind is one of my friends whose dad had passed several years before. I felt like I was supposed to send her a poem called Headstone, which is about when we were um trying to get my dad's headstone finished and all of that, what goes into it, you know, when you're grieving, it's not just you can't just sit and cry, you have to do like business things. So we were working on my dad's headstone, and and I wrote this poem about his headstone, and I sent it to uh one of my friends, and she responded back, Oh my gosh, we just drove past my dad's headstone, like the graveyard that my dad is buried in when I opened this up. Uh, we had just driven past. And so it was like the Lord began to do these small miracles um to kind of show me that this work was not just for me. It was not just for my healing, it was for others that maybe didn't have the language to put their grief and their loss and their sorrow and to process it. So um I started to go, oh, I I think, I think this is a book. And I just started to kind of look into different avenues. I'd never written a book before. Um, I didn't know anything about producing it. And so I I reached out to some author friends and um had read a book of one of my uh favorite poets that I was sort of following and reading, and looked at where she published her book and then contacted them. And um, and it's and yeah, so then we kind of went forward from there, and now there's a book about journeying through grief.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Isn't that that is the way God works, and his word says that he takes what we've gone through to minister to others, and that's exactly what you've done. I read through some of that first book that you wrote. You have two books now, correct? What are their titles? No, this is just one book.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Oh, just one book. Okay. Okay. The first set of poems was originally I had submitted to a contest, actually. There was a poetry contest, and that kind of got me in the mode of, okay, let me start to put this together. So that first section of poems, um, I would say the first 12 to 13 was originally in what they call a chat book. It's a short poetry book, but I didn't win the contest, but it it um it motivated me to have a deadline and to put something together. And so that was the original was just those 12 to 13 poems. And honestly, originally when I contacted the publisher, I was like, oh, I'm just gonna do these 13 poems. And then I thought, no, if I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And I have way more than 13 poems, so let me sort of um figure out how many things, and that's kind of a cool story about how many poems there are. Okay. Um how many? So my there are 45 poems in the book, and I was 45 the year that the book was coming out. I was gonna turn 45. And uh my dad had um moved to Hawaii, which that was one of our big transitions in our lives, a really life-changing thing for our whole family. And he moved to Hawaii when he was 45, and he was also born in 1945, so it sort of just kind of was like, okay, 45 is the number. And I had more than 45. So I think maybe you're speaking um prophetically that I will have a second book because I do have more books.

SPEAKER_01 10:14

Yes, yes. Oh, and I absolutely love poetry too. I wrote, I I've gone back and looked at some of the poems I wrote as a teenager, and it is so so much easier, I think, to get your feelings out there and put it on paper, and then you can always go back and read it and allow God to minister to you. There's one poem that I mean, I love your poems, absolutely. In fact, there was something uh up uh um, let me see if I could find that one I wanted to share. Oh, goodness. I don't have it here in front of me, but I wanted to share something from the first poem in your book. But that one that talks about your mission, would you please read that one to us?

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Yeah, I'm gonna uh let me get it open here. Mission statement.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

Yes. Oh, I love that one.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Mission statement. Ask me about my mission, my purpose in life. That's a loaded question. I mean, of course, it's to serve God, love others. I remember at my dad's memorial service, one of his former students noticed two things my dad did. He prayed and he obeyed. That was so powerful for me because my dad did many great things. So to narrow it down to two, he prayed and he obeyed. Because of that, he did many great things. The impossible became reality. In fact, my father lived in the impossible, which sometimes frustrated those of us closest to him. But he lived in the impossible as a reality. The vision in his mind's eye was stronger than the world he saw with his physical eyes. Almost as if he didn't see reality as we saw it or even as it existed. He saw his version of reality. Maybe that's why he could look at someone who was broken and beaten down, angry and struggling, an outcast with no hope, no future, and he would see the beautiful, whole, worthy, happy, fulfilled, successful, contributing member of society. Where did this vision of reality come from? He prayed and he obeyed. You see, what he saw, he didn't imagine or create. It was given to him by the Creator, who sees us as who we are and knows us as who we will be. He looks with compassion and expectation, not demanding or commanding us to be better, but loving and reminding us of who we are and who we can be. If we could rise above the muck and mire and the weight of the ugliness that drags us down, he reaches down into the pit and pulls us out and shows us his reality. If we grasp onto his hand and hold tight, we can rise to the reality of his vision. It's all a matter of frame of reference and what we see in ourselves, in others, in our circumstances, in our future. Whose reality will we believe the one we can see in front of us, blaring, blinding, unforgiving, or will we choose to see beyond our physical eyes, into the eyes of our Creator who holds up a mirror of his reality?

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Oh, thank you so much for sharing that. Absolutely beautiful. And as you paint the picture of your father, what a blessing to have one who obeyed, who believed in God, listened to God, and obeyed what the word said and what God told him. You are one blessed woman because he was a reflection of our Father God.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Amen. Wonderful. Wonderful. And I love your wording, how I can see now you've traveled all over the world. Well, you lived in England for a while and you've been all over the United States and Hawaii. And I can see how how the Lord has given you in each place something that you can speak forth and minister to people. That was absolutely beautiful. And and at the end, um, I was thinking it's just, was it worth it? It's worth it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah, that's very different poem. That's poem. That's the one. That's I think the one you were wanting to talk about.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Um yes, I absolutely loved that first poem. Was it worth it? Yes, you can share that if you would like to, that first poem.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Well, the the first poem, um, I started writing, we knew it was pretty close to the end. Um the Lord was so kind to prepare our hearts and to kind of prep us that you know it was coming. And one of the things I think that was really hard was I saw this man of faith who, like we just talked about, believed the unbelievable. And he asked questions like, was it worth it? You know, and I think that was one of the things that I really wrestled with was here's this man who's given his whole life to you. And in the end, he's wondering, was it worth it? And so I started to to pen that poem uh in the hospital, and then uh I went I didn't tell anybody that I was writing it, and then uh they did a memorial service for my dad in Maui because he was a principal there, and a lot of the students, you know, still lived there. They were grown and had kids of their own, but they wanted to honor him. So they they did a memorial service, and my mom and I actually were able to fly out and go to the memorial service, and so on the plane, um, I finished the poem and I let my mom read it, and she said, You have to, you have to read this at the service. And it's just that question of, you know, is what we're doing when we face hardship, when we face adversity, when we don't understand, you know, when we're being obedient and we're still struggling. Um, I think we all ask that question is was it worth it? And I'll just read the ending. Yes, uh I oh please do.

SPEAKER_01 17:50

Um probably the part you wrote while you were on the plane because you you just worded it so well.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Um, I said uh I said winning is easy. Losing, that's when you know what you're made of, or more importantly, what you're not made of. You realize you don't have what it takes. You never had what it took, you were never good enough, strong enough, fast enough. It humbles you and puts you face to face with the fact that without the creator, it is all for nothing. It is not worth it. But as you now stand face to face with the Creator and you look down on the ripple effect your life had on his creation, you know, as I suspect you always knew, it wasn't about your name, your glory, your success. Your life was spent fighting giants, protecting the weak, and leading generations into the promise of victory forever. Was it worth it?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yes, leading the generations on and that ripple effect. How wonderful! What a legacy he left for you and your family and those students that he knew. Yes. Amazing. Yes. So what has grief you grew up knowing the Lord because of your dad? Um what have you learned about God since you've gone through this process on your own?

SPEAKER_00 19:43

I mean, I think I've always known that God's faithful. You know, I've we've we've had adversity and struggles throughout our life, and I've always known that God is faithful, but it was, you know, the word when it says, you know, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I always thought of that as like I'm dying, I'm facing death, you know, because like David was being chased or whatever. And so like I thought about it in the sense of, oh, I'm dying or I'm sick, or death is looming over me. But after going through this process of grief, it's like I'm in the shadow of death. Like it's this shadow that's cast over you, and you really can't see out of that fog and out of that shadow, and everything is sort of tainted, right? It's all kind of um gloomy and dark, but I think that word just really came alive, you know, that even though I walk through the shadow valley of the shadow of death, you are with me and your rod and your staff, they comfort me. And I think so often we try to push away the feelings and the emotions that God has given us to recognize our need for Him. And we try to numb out, or we try to just push away, or we try to play the I'm a happy Christian and I don't have any problems. And that doesn't serve us, and it doesn't serve the unbeliever, and it doesn't serve serve other believers. Um, and so I think it was this overwhelming sense that God is like, I accept you for who you are and what you feel, and it's okay that you're angry, it's okay that you're upset, it's okay that you you have doubts, it's okay that you're afraid, but I'm here, and if you'll just come to me, if you'll just come and share yourself with me and allow me to just comfort you, I'll do that and I'll be with you. And so I think just that tangible. The presence of the Lord sitting with you, not rushing you to get over it, or bless God, I'm gonna do a great work, or any of that kind of thing, right? Just like it's okay. I'm gonna teach you something in this, but right now, just be like, just be. Don't worry about, you know. Uh you don't have to look on the bright side all the time, right? Like, it's okay to be down in the dumps. And I I think that's kind of been the overwhelming message to people is like, it's okay that this is terrible and awful. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

It's okay. Yes. God will wrap his arms around us and give us time for our hearts to to grieve and to be restored in his presence. And I thank you so much for your vulnerability and sharing with us today. Can you tell us one of the funny stories you talked about? Sometimes you would have a happy memory.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Can you tell me share something about that? Well, I think so. We have a lot of um uh car issues in our family. We had a lot a lot of clunkers in in Hawaii. They're called uh on Maui, they we call them Maui cruisers. They're just like, you know, the junky car that's rusted and whatever. And we had a series of just really awful cars grow growing up. And so I think just those memories of, you know, and my dad was he was I remember I was telling my kid this story the other day. We there was a mountain that we drove down every morning, and we didn't have AC in the car, and the window that my the driver's side window didn't roll down all the way. And so my dad wanted to shave in the car with the like electric shaver. Kids don't try this at home. So he so he was driving and he, you know, and we wanted his face to be cool, so he would drive with the one knee, you know, and the other leg had the foot on the gas, and then he would hold the door open so that the wind could come in just slightly, you know. This is he's dried up, and then he would shave with the other hand. So, I mean, really his knee is controlling the wheel of the car. So just things like that, you know, of just kind of the crazy stuff that he would do. Um, because he wanted, you know, he would go get up and go to early morning prayer, and then he would come back, and then you know, he wanted to save time, so he would shave in the car. But so it is those memories, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

Yeah, those those fun, happy memories. Oh my goodness, that is that is that's precious. Well, I'm I thank you so much for sharing with us today, and I would like for you to speak to the woman who perhaps is where you were when your father passed. Um, she doesn't know, you know, she like you mentioned about you didn't have the money to go to therapy and that. How would you minister to a woman who comes to you and says, I just don't know if I can go on. You know she can.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yeah. Um I think I would first ask her, you know, if there are any people around her that can support her and lift her up. I also did a lot, I have a lot of really, really close friends that don't live anywhere near me. And I would text different ones of them at different points and say, I'm just really struggling today. I'm really it's this is really hard, you know. And I I could feel their prayers. So I think that would be the one is, you know, ask for prayer. And we as women, I think, have a hard time asking for help. We like to manage it all. So if somebody says, How can I help you? You know, it that's also hard because you're trying to do so much and so trying to come up with another thing. But, you know, just ask them to send pizza to your house, like, or come and do your dishes, you know, like let people in, let them see your mess. You know, most of us have messy houses. We're not walking around with super clean, pristine houses. It all looks great on social media, but um so I think asking for help and being willing to accept others' help and and you know, if you don't have that village, that's really, really hard. But if people reach out and say, How can I help or what can I do, maybe have a list and just say, you know, or you know, when you're when you're overwhelmed, right? Like, I'm so overwhelmed because I have to do this, this, this, and this, like just start writing, making a list, like writing it down, getting it out of your brain, out of that loop of rumination and just putting it on paper will help. Um so that those are just like some of the practical things is you know, asking for prayer, asking for help, being willing to be vulnerable and let people, you know, see you in your mess. And sometimes it's um just go take a walk. You know, if your kids are little, throw them in the stroller and just go take a walk outside. I think being in nature and um not being in front of a screen really allows us to kind of process our thoughts. Um and then write. You know, just write. It doesn't have to be pretty, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to have great grammar. I think a lot of people get hung up on I can't write, I'm not a writer. If you can think, you can write. If you can tell a story, you can write. And I think just writing it out, you know, um, I did all of mine was on my phone just because that was what was accessible to me and I could immediately pick it up and start typing. Uh my notes app is full of poems. But that's what I would say is get help, ask for prayer, and if you can, get outside and then walk. And and then just know that like everything that you're experiencing, you're not alone in the sense that God is with you, but also you're not alone in that this is literally what all humans go through. We are all you know, you live long enough, you're gonna experience a major loss, and you're gonna experience grief and pain, and reach out to those who you know have already experienced it, and they'll just listen. They're not gonna judge you. Um so you're not alone because other people are walking through it right now at the same time, and other people have walked this path before. And I think there's a lot of making it normal, right? Like you feel like you're going crazy. You feel like I'm so overwhelmed and I can't think straight, and you know, I put the keys in my refrigerator or whatever, and you're like, nothing is ever gonna be normal again, nothing will ever be the same again, but but you will begin, it will begin to level out and you will begin to feel like you can breathe again, you know.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Oh, that's a good way to put it. Yes, yes. Wonderful advice, wonderful. And and the you know, it is so important to reach out to others, and like you said, even if it's just can you come wash my dishes? The kids have made every dish dirty, you know. It's okay because you know what I found is that those friends appreciate you allowing them into your life and to help you. Yeah, it's a blessing to them as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

That's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Yeah, yes, absolutely. And then I think it's important that we remember not everybody grieves in the same way or for the same length of time. And like you said, no judgment because we're each an individual. God created us each as individuals, and he will work with us, and like you said, it's it's gonna come out in the wash, he's gonna help you come back, like you said, it won't be the same, but he's gonna help you come back to balance, and we grow through those situations so much. We absolutely and we learn, like you said, we learn to lean on him. I absolutely love talking with you, Lena. How can someone get your book and be blessed?

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Well, I have a website, it's Lena L E N A Paul P A U L Books.com. So Lena Paulbooks.com. And then I'm also on Amazon, so you can look up Chasing Time, a journey through grief. And I'm on Amazon, I'm on Barnes and Noble online, I'm on Walmart online, so you can get at all of those places. And my social media will links to all of my web to my website. So, but yeah, um, I really appreciated being on here. Oh, I'm so glad you are with me.

SPEAKER_01 32:15

And do you ever go speak to churches or groups or anything like that?

SPEAKER_00 32:21

I do. Um, I have done that uh a few times, just you know, through friends and their acquaintances in churches. I would love the opportunity uh to minister to more people because I think it's something that we don't we tend to shy away from in the church um because nobody wants to talk about grief. But um, you know, I it's biblical.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

Yeah, it's needed. It is absolutely needed. Yes. Well, reach out. I encourage you to reach out to Lena if you would like her to come speak with a group or you know, even over the internet, she can talk with you and share some of her poems and share her story of what she's gone through. So, Lena, I thank you so much for sharing your heart today, and I thank you for showing us that uh grief isn't a straight line, it's not something we just get over, it's something we walk through, like you said, though we walk through that shadow. And um, I love that analogy that that you helped us with today. So, for my friends out there today, I just say if if God has spoken to you, reach out and take those long walks that she talked about because he tends to speak to us when we're quiet before him. And he will comfort us and carry us, and he will bring people into your lives that will help you breathe again, just like she said. So, until the next time we meet, I encourage you to continue to choose life, speak hope, and remember that you're loved. So, thank you for being with me today. Thank you, Lena, for being here with us today and sharing. And I hope you'll come back sometime. Perhaps you'll write that second book and you can share something from that with us. That would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

All right, it's a it's a date.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Okay, sounds great. Have a great day, everyone. Love you all. Bye-bye. Thank you for being with us today on Under Heaven. I trust this conversation encouraged your heart and reminded you of God's faithfulness. If today's episode blessed you, please click like, subscribe, and share the hope with others. Until next time, blessings.