acceptance – Page 4 – thelifeididntchoose

Faith

Part of our homeschooling routine was Bible reading.

I’ll never forget the first time I came to Hebrews chapter 11, often referred to as the “Hall of Faith”.

It begins:

Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for, it means being certain of things we cannot see. It was this kind of faith that won their reputation for the saints of old. And it is after all only by faith that our minds accept as fact that the whole scheme of time and space was created by God’s command—that the world which we can see has come into being through principles which are invisible.

Hebrews 11:1-3 PHILLIP

From there the writer lists those who followed God even when the path was dark, even when the promise was beyond sight and even when it cost them their lives.

I cried.

I remember thinking that maybe one day the children looking at me around that table might face a crisis of faith and I prayed that they would always choose to believe.

I never dreamed that it would be ME that had to wake up each morning and make that choice over and over again.

I’m not talking about the single, life-changing commitment to receive forgiveness through Christ’s blood.

But rather obedience to keep following His lead and strength to walk in His footsteps day after day regardless of how I feel or what I can or cannot see.

The choice I have to make is whether or not to turn my heart toward His, to open my ears to His voice, and to bend my will to accept whatever storms He allows in my life.

Suffering is NOT a choice, but faith is.

Navigating Treacherous Terrain

One of the things I’ve been forced to embrace in the wake of child loss is that there are very few questions, experiences or feelings that are simple anymore.

Read the rest here: It’s Complicated

Loving the Wounded

God bless the inventor of Band Aids!

That little tacky plaster has soothed more fears and tears than almost any other invention in the world.

Skinned knee? Put a BandAid on it.

Bee sting? BandAid.

Tiny bump that no one can even see? Oh, sweetie, let me give you a BandAid.

Simply acknowledging pain and woundedness is so often all that is needed to encourage a heart and point it toward healing.

It’s the same in the world of emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds.

But we have yet to invent the BandAid for those.

Instead, frequently we ignore, refute, minimize and pass over the one in our midst who holds out a hand or a heart saying, “I have a boo boo.”

Believe me, I understand-so many of these wounds are incurable, they are uncomfortable to think about, hard to look at.

But often the only thing the hurting heart wants is acknowledgement, a moment of time, a face turned full into theirs, eye-to-eye and unafraid to remain alongside through the pain.

Just as a BandAid bears witness to the wound underneath, our compassionate presence can bear witness to the deeper wounds no one can see.

When we choose to lean in and love, to listen and learn, to walk with the wounded we give a great gift.

June Challenge From Kathleen Duncan

I have met a number of amazing women on this journey I would never have chosen for myself.

They encourage me, love me and give me a safe place to bare my pain, my questions and my prayer requests.

One of these women is Kathleen Duncan, a fellow homeschool veteran and also a bereaved mother. She blogs at Kathleenbduncan and I highly recommend you check out her site.

This month she’s posting a daily challenge and has invited others to join in.

I’m pretty sure that I won’t manage to do it every day, but today’s prompt was too good to pass up, and I had the time to write something.

The prompt is: ” One Piece of Advice”

My response:

Make peace with yourself-your body, your hair, your personality and all the things that make you, “you”.

Don’t wait until things are “better”, “perfect” or somehow different to jump in and savor the life you have and the people God gives you.

Be yourself, no one is better qualified!

Bill of Rights for Grieving Mamas

One of our family’s inside jokes comes from a movie about the Civil War. A young soldier questioned about why he’s fighting declares, “I’m fightin’ for my rights!”-except is sounds like he’s saying, “I’m fightin’ for my rats!”

So we often laugh back and forth when faced with combative situations by using that line.

You wouldn’t think that grieving would be one of them. But it can be.

I’m kind of a touchy-feely person. One who will hug strangers, pat puppies and offer a hand whenever I see someone struggling.

So it has been a bit of a surprise to find out that some people really want me to keep my grief in the closet.

They would rather I hide my tears. They have decided on an appropriate number of days, weeks, months for my grief to run its course and then it should be “over”.

Now, let me just say that I do not think I have the right to ruin someone else’s day.

I make appropriate arrangements when asked to participate in special events. If I can go and be certain I won’t draw attention away from the celebration, I do. If I can’t, then I’m honest about it and find another way to contribute.

But I can’t spend my life in a bubble.

I’m inevitably going to be around others when a wave of grief hits me. Sometimes I will not be able to control my reaction.

And that’s OK…

So here’s what I believe to be my rights as a grieving mom (other grieving parents may disagree-and that’s o.k.):

I have a right to my feelings. I am open to someone who has demonstrated sincere compassion to help me work through them or to share their concerns if they see me heading toward destructive expression of them. But it is not up to someone else to validate my feelings about burying my son.

I have a right to draw boundaries. So much of my energy is being sapped by working through grief that I just do not have the resources to deal with everyday drama. I care deeply about the other people in my life and I will absolutely be there for them when they really need me. But I can’t be a sounding board for every little thing.

I have a right to talk about my son. He is still my child. He is still part of my life and my family’s life. Most mamas talk about their children all the time. I talk about my living children and I will continue to talk about the child I miss.

I have a right to cry. Tears make most folks a little uncomfortable. I acknowledge that and believe me, I try to hold them back. But when they fall-I won’t hide them as if it’s shameful. I won’t draw attention to myself, but I won’t always slink away either.

I have a right to laugh. Humor still moves me. And a belly laugh is good medicine. But don’t mistake a moment of laughter as a signal that I’m “better”. I am healing, slowly, but I am not whole.

I have a right to NOT talk about how I feel. Life still happens and every emotion I experience is not necessarily tied to missing my son. I don’t always need to “talk about it”. Sometimes, like everyone, I just need time to process and get over something.

I have a right to celebrate or not celebrate, participate or not participate in holidays, birthdays, remembrance days or any other special day or occasion however I am able-even if it means changing long-standing traditions or routines. I do my very best to live up to the expectations and needs of the people that are close to me. I want to have birthday parties, exchange gifts, celebrate graduations and weddings and other major milestones. But sometimes I might have to attack these gatherings in a slightly different way. I’m not the same person I was before Dominic left us and I can’t always do things the way I used to.

I have a right to be heard. I don’t expect nor do I want to be the center of every decision or every event. But I have a right to express my opinion, I’m not invisible. And no one knows what is best for me except ME. It’s easiest if people just ask me what will be most helpful instead of assuming that I would or wouldn’t like this or that.

Navigating the death of a child is a treacherous journey. I understand that those who have not travelled this path may not think about how hard it is and some of the little things that can make it easier or harder.

I am so thankful for the ones who try.

I’m Listening

I was reminded recently by another bereaved mother that my child loss experience is not universal.

I appreciate her honesty and bravery.

And I would just like to take a moment to say:

“I hear you. I see you. I acknowledge that you have a unique perspective that I do not share by experience.”

It’s hard to put myself in someone else’s shoes when I’ve never had to wear them myself.

We are all limited in many ways by the trials, temptations, joys and triumphs we have known in our lives.

But I don’t want to sit satisfied in the silo of my own experience.

I want to enlarge my understanding of what others are going through, how they are coping, how they are hurting.

So I begin by sharing MY story because it’s the only one I know from the inside.

But it is not the only one I want to know.

Tell me your story.

I promise to listen.

We buy tickets to movies, purchase books and cruise the Internet gobbling up other people’s stories. Yet we often make it difficult for those we know to tell us theirs.

We jockey for attention at gatherings, or worse, give all our attention to electronic devices. We think we KNOW other people’s stories so we don’t want to bore ourselves with listening again.

The truth is, we know less than we think about the folks we rub shoulders with every day.

It’s Complicated

One of the things I’ve been forced to embrace in the wake of child loss is that there are very few questions, experiences or feelings that are simple anymore.

“How many children do you have?”

A common, get-to-know-you question lobbed across tables, down pews and in the check-out line at the grocery store. But for many bereaved parents, it can be a complex question that gets a different answer depending on who is asking and where we are.

I decided from the beginning that I would say, “four” in answer to that query.

But that doesn’t always get me off the hook. A follow-up of, “Oh, what do they do?” means that I have to make a decision: do I go down the line, including Dominic in any kind of detail or do I gloss over the fact that one of my children now lives in heaven?

I try to gauge whether or not the person is deeply interested or just being polite. No sense making them feel uncomfortable if they are really only making chitchat.

All of these calculations flash through my mind in an instant but they are distracting and draining.

“Want to go to a movie?”

Maybe.

First I have to look up the plot (something I never did before because I didn’t want to ruin it). I can’t be stuck in a dark theater in the middle of a row full of people with no way out if larger-than-life there will be anything that sends me back to Dominic’s accident.

Same standards for television shows or books-but it’s easier to turn those off or set them down.

Sitting in church can be excruciating.

A hymn or chorus, a Bible text, a random statement from the pulpit-any or all of those things can lead my thoughts down a path that takes me to a dark place where sorrow is overwhelming.

No matter how much I long to listen and participate, I find myself literally biting my tongue so that I don’t burst into loud sobs.

It doesn’t happen every Sunday, but I never know when it might.

Social media is an emotional minefield.

I confess that in the first days after Dominic left us, I had to limit the posts that showed up in my Facebook newsfeed. It was too difficult to see complaints about children growing up or graduating and how hard it was to “let them go”. I could not take whiny status updates that included having to wait in line for the new iPhone.

It’s easier now that my grief isn’t so raw but there are days…

Making a meal, I reach for his favorite ingredient or leave something out because “Dominic doesn’t like it that way” and then I remember he won’t be here to eat it.

Music can transport me to a moment of joy or pain with a single note.

Sometimes I walk in a store and smell coffee-he loved coffee-and I have to turn around and leave. Other times the fragrance draws my mind to sweet memories of shared Starbucks runs for a caffeine infusion.

If you ask me to do something next week or next month, I might say, “yes” and then find on that day I just. can’t. go.

I used to be a woman who lived by her calendar and commitments, but now I’m someone who never knows what a day will bring.

Learning to live with this changed me is an ongoing process and exhausting at times.

So much energy is used up negotiating what used to be simple things that there’s not enough left for pursuing new interests or delving deeper into old ones.

I’m trying to reach equilibrium.

I long for a time when simple things are simple again.

But I don’t think it will be today.

Running Ahead–I’m Coming!

My first post on this blog.

Now it has been two years since the morning the deputy brought the news to my front door. Two years since I heard my son’s voice. Two years since my life was turned upside down.

It seems unbelievably long ago–like a dream. Yet also like yesterday–like that bad feeling you get when you wake from a nightmare and it just won’t go away.

I am not as fragile as I was on that day. But I am just as broken. The pieces of a shattered heart never fit back together to make a perfect whole.

The burden is not lighter. But I am stronger.

The pain is no less but I have learned to endure it.

“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don’t know why things happen as they do, but we don’t give up and quit. ⁹We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.”

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 TLB

“From the start, if you didn’t want Dominic to do something, you couldn’t let him see you do it.” Read the rest: Running Ahead

Making Space for Brokenness at the Table of the LORD

As we enter the week on the Christian calendar when most churches celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am reminded that often we race past the road that lead to Calvary and linger at the empty tomb.

But to understand the beauty of forgiveness and the blessing of redemption, we MUST acknowledge the sorrow of sin and the burden of brokenness.

When our sacred spaces draw boundaries around what we can bring to the Lord’s Table, we exclude the very ones who are desperate for the bread and cup. When we treat the path as unimportant and only acknowledge the destination, we discourage those that are struggling to keep up. When we welcome only the triumphant, we exclude those that are trying.

Let’s throw open the doors to the church and

Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness [remove the obstacles]; Make straight and smooth in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:3 AMP)

Let’s invite the outcasts, the limping, the hurting and the broken to the table.

Let’s declare to the wounded that in Christ there is healing!

As I’ve written before: “The truth is that none of us escape hardship in life. All of us have hidden heartache. We all have cracks in our polished persona.”

Goodness of God

“God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.” ~popular church saying.

I’ve never been comfortable with direction from the pulpit instructing people in the congregation to “repeat after me”. Maybe I’m a little rebellious, but it always seemed disingenuous to appropriate someone else’s sentiment for my own.

And I think there is danger in adopting pet phrases to explain God (as if He can be explained) and creating shorthand for concepts that require so much more discussion to even begin to understand.

In fact, I think these bumper sticker mantras and t-shirt worthy slogans often push genuine seekers to the fringe because they cannot embrace simplistic explanations for complex issues.

I admit that there are times they slip from my mouth. I might be too lazy to engage with someone or too hurried to take time to really listen to their heart.

But in the wake of losing my son, I’ve become much more aware of how simply repeating one-liners falls so very short in meeting the needs of those around me.

“God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.”

When spoken to someone whose life is going well seems like a benediction, an affirmation–a confirmation that God’s seal of approval rests on them and results in physical blessing.

“God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good.”

When spoken to someone whose world is crumbling sounds like a rebuke or reproof–adjust your attitude because it can’t really be as bad as all that!

I think we misunderstand God’s goodness in each case.

I want to think of God’s goodness in terms of concrete benefits that I can point to in the physical world. I want to see tidy endings to messy stories that wrap things up so I can wrap my mind around them. I like stories of miraculous healing, safety in the midst of storms, provision from out of nowhere.

But so many who love Jesus die. And there are Christ followers around the world who starve and who have no place to lay their head. Are they unfaithful? Are they unworthy?

I am beginning to embrace the truth that I have no idea, really, of what “good” is when I try to use the word to describe God. I cannot limit God’s goodness to only what I can see, feel, taste or touch.

I am learning that “good”, when speaking of God, is higher and bigger and different than anything I know. My mind is not capable of comprehending the goodness of God in all its aspects and manifestations.

I have experienced the faithfulness of God, the provision of God and the Presence of God in the midst of this pain-but I had also experienced those things before my son left us.

I do not see the “good” in burying my son.

But right now I walk in half-light, in shadows and in partial revelation. I cannot wrap my ongoing experience in the shadow of the valley of death into a tidy chapter book with a happy ending.

And I refuse to adopt simple explanations of the mystery of this pain.

I am living the story, leaning on God, trusting in His character and waiting for His revelation of how this apparent defeat will ultimately be victorious.

So I trust the truth of Scripture that tells me goodness is the character of God. And I rest in my past experience that in Christ all God’s promises are “yes” and “amen”.

And I long desperately,like a drowning man gasping for air, for the day when I will know fully even as I am fully known.

For now we are looking in a mirror that gives only a dim (blurred) reflection [of reality as in a riddle or enigma], but then [when perfection comes] we shall see in reality and face to face! Now I know in part (imperfectly), but then I shall know andunderstand fully and clearly, even in the same manner as I have been fully and clearly known and understood [by God]. I Corinthians 13:12 AMPC

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