I wrote this less than six months after Dominic ran ahead to heaven.
My heart had not yet fully grasped his absence and there was a lovely moment each morning when my sleepy eyes opened to a world where he was still in it.
Read the rest here: Today’s Gift
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Author: Melanie
I am a shepherd, wife and mother of four amazing children, three that walk the earth with me and one who lives with Jesus. This is a record of my grief journey and a look into the life I didn't choose. If you are interested in joining a community of bereaved parents leaning on the promises of God in Christ, please like the public Facebook page, "Heartache and Hope: Life After Losing a Child" and join the conversation.
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thelifeididntchoose 
This resonates with me
This is a piece I journaled about acceptance only a few months after my daughter died
*Accepting the unacceptable*
12 May 2017
Acceptance; an awful word when it is intended to suggest that I should accept that my child has died.
There is nothing acceptable about death, particular the death of a child.
No, this should never become acceptable to us.
Yet, there is something to be said about acceptance if I am ever to move forward in my grief.
Not move out of grief as though that were simply an act of the will, but to move forward in it and with it.
The cessation of anguish, yearning, tears, heartache and sorrow is not the goal of this acceptance nor the result of it.
Rather, it is to accept that these emotions have become life-long companions around which I need to live, despite not wanting them.
It is to accept the necessity for integrating these emotions into my life and understanding that they are not going anywhere.
It is to accept the inevitable presence of these emotions born out of unacceptable events.
This is part of my story now. This has happened. It cannot be reversed.
I cannot return to how things were.
I cannot will my child back to life no matter how deeply my heart yearns for her or how much I weep.
It has happened. And life will never be be same.
That is what needs to be accepted, even as I stumble around in the debris of the dreams I had.
This means, my mourning includes not only the loss of my beloved daughter, but of Life as I knew it and of the person I knew myself to be.
Not that my wish would be to return to who I once was, nor that I desire that my heart should not be significantly altered. But to be altered through a path of pain is to mourn a life of ease. The latter is not what is good for us, but it is none the less what we crave.
This kind of acceptance is necessary but it will take time and around every corner will be a new challenge for my heart.
But as long as I stay bent on fighting against what has happened, screaming ‘I don’t want this!’, the longer I will be debilitated by an inability to accept that this _has_ happened and it _is_ my story whether I wanted it or not.
What I do from here is what makes the difference. In one sense even that feels burdensome – to have to actively make choices every day to move in the right direction in my grief and not allow it to destroy even more. It feels like a laborious task to take on at a time when capacity for even the basic of functioning is at an all time low. But those choices, big and small ones every day, are the difference between survival and despair.
It will be a hard journey of survival.
This is a new life, and it is harder than the life before this.
It is harder because pieces of me are missing; ‘When your child dies you not only lose a precious treasure but part of your heart dies. We are left with holes in our souls fabric’.
It is harder because I have to learn to accept that things are different – Different from what I hoped for, different from what I wanted, different from the story I would have written.
A story that was never mine to write, but none the less one I thought I was entitled to.
My story is still being written but surrendering the pen is harder than I thought it would be.
Will it be easy? no. to live with these wounds in my heart will take the hardest fight of my life.
Will it be good? I don’t know. I’m still figuring out what good looks like.
Will it matter for eternity? I can only pray.
Will I accept it? I must.
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