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.
Read the rest here: Loving the Wounded
I’ve never been really big on fear.
I jumped from the high dive at three years old-that belly flop hurt but I survived and it fueled my adventurous spirit.
I rode horses other people didn’t like-was bucked off a time or two but no broken bones so that didn’t slow me down.
My dad had an open cockpit biplane and we flew aerobatics over Colorado Springs-fanny pack parachute strapped to my butt “just in case”-upside down and round and round. We never needed to jump and landed safely every time.
Never been afraid of speaking in public.
Never been afraid of strangers.
Never been afraid of heights.
UNTIL.
Until I had children and then I was afraid of nearly EVERYTHING for them.
I didn’t want any harm to befall these tiny humans carrying my heart outside my body. I wanted to protect them, to cushion them, to wrap them in a bubble so that nothing bad ever happened to them.
As they grew, I learned to let go- a little at a time. I learned you can’t prevent the scrapes and bruises and heartaches and disappointments of life. And I learned that a little “harm” made them stronger.
I forgot most of my fears and was again unafraid.
UNTIL Dominic was killed.
And all the old fears came rushing back. I wanted to lock my surviving children in a room and slip food under the door. I HAD to keep them safe.
Only I can’t. It is not possible for me to keep. them. safe.
All I could possibly do is make them afraid. I could make them afraid of choosing their hearts’ desires in an attempt to prevent more pain for mine.
I won’t do that.
I will not allow part of Dominic’s legacy to be that our family lives afraid.
NO.
I choose to release my children to make the best choices they can and to live boldly and unafraid.
It took me nearly two years to hang a wall calendar again. It took that long, plus some, to add anything to it besides close family birthdays and doctor’s appointments.
I would record what I did AFTER the fact, but I just couldn’t let my heart make plans.
Because I had made plans–lots and lots of plans-before Dominic ran ahead to heaven unexpectedly and wrecked them all.
There’s another reason looking forward is hard on my heart:
No matter how wonderful the event, no matter how anticipated the birth, or wedding, or graduation, or party-there will always, always, always be one person missing.
I still find making plans difficult.
I don’t make many and the ones I do make I hold lightly. I warn friends that I may get up the “morning of” and decide that I just cannot do it. The closest ones (the only ones I really have left) totally understand and never pressure me otherwise.
But as I have rounded the corner of three years, I am beginning to be able to look a little bit further in the distance.
I am able to pencil in some fun things more than a week in advance. I’ve even started looking up ideas on Pinterest again-ideas for birthday gifts months in advance, for dinner table decorations and for craft projects to occupy the hottest parts of summer days.
And I’m learning to take Dominic WITH me as I walk into tomorrow after tomorrow without his physical presence. I’m finding ways to keep him close, to have him near, to share him with others so that the vibrant man he was (and still IS-in heaven) is remembered and honored.
The fact is that tomorrow comes whether I am dragged kicking and screaming into the new day or whether I go willingly, with purpose and with grace.
I am trying to choose purpose and grace.
Sometimes it’s really, really hard.
But when I do-it’s worth it.
This was one of the first posts I wrote. It hadn’t been long since I was introduced to an online community of bereaved parents and began to see that I wasn’t the only one who had friends and family that misunderstood child loss.
I was spending a lot of time in my life trying to help others comprehend, just a little, what it felt like to bury a child.
Trying to give them a tiny taste of how this pain is so, so different than any other I had experienced. Begging them to toss the popular ideas bandied around that grief followed “stages” and was “predictable”.
I re-share every so often because it seems to help, a little. ❤
People say, “I can’t imagine.“
But then they do.
They think that missing a dead child is like missing your kid at college or on the mission field but harder and longer.
That’s not it at all.
It isn’t nostalgia for a time when things were different or better or you talked more: it’s a gut-wrenching, breath-robbing, knee-buckling, aching groan that lives inside you begging to be released.
Read the rest here: What Grieving Parents Want Others to Know
I don’t know just when I figured it out, but somewhere in this Valley it dawned on me-NO day lasts forever.
Many feel like they do.
The day I got the news stretched impossibly long in front of me as calls were made and people came to be wtih us.
But even THAT day ended. Night fell, the earth turned, and another sunrise showed up on cue.
Remembering that truth is how I manage to keep going most of the time. I remind my heart that no matter how hard today is, it will end. I recite the mantra, “No day lasts forever. No day lasts forever” over and over if I have to. I refuse to look at the clock and count the minutes-instead I occupy my mind and hands until they pass of their own accord.
Some days are good. I’m with people I love and doing things that bring joy.
Some days are unbearably hard. The sorrow and missing that I manage to keep in check most of the time bubble up like lava and consume me with their red-hot pain.
It doesn’t matter.
Night falls,
the earth turns
and another sunrise will show up on cue.
All the fears I thought I knew
All the what-ifs I pondered during inky nights-
None of them-none. of. them. prepared me for this reality.
Read the rest here: Unnatural
It’s oh, so hard to know what to do when you are watching a heart break.
You want to reach out and make it better, make the pain go away, make a difference. But it seems like nothing you can do will matter much in the face of such a huge loss.
While it’s true that you cannot “fix” the brokenness in a bereaved parent’s life, there are some very important and practical ways you can support them in their grief-especially as the weeks turn into months and then to years.
Here are five practical ways to support grieving parents:
You may be surprised how often I get discouraged and feel alone.
An outstretched hand at just the moment when my strength is fading makes all the difference.
It’s so easy to take Bible verses out of context. Our modern rendering of the Word of God broken into chapter and verse lends itself to lifting a sentence or two and ignoring the surrounding words.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter much-the verse CAN stand on its own.
But sometimes it is devastating. Especially to those who find themselves in a situation that seems to clearly contradict the promise.
Jeremiah 29:11 is a popular verse plastered on posters, coffee cups, graduation cards and lovely Christian wall hangings.
It’s a hard one for me to swallow the way it’s usually dished out.
Death feels pretty much like harm to me.
I can spiritualize the verse and say, “Well, God’s ultimate plan is to give me and Dominic a hope and a future”.
That is absolutely true.
But that’s not what Jeremiah was talking about. He was speaking to a specific people at a specific point in time.
The original context of the Scripture was just for Israel-a promise that the nation would not be utterly destroyed or left bereft in exile. A promise that God would fulfill His covenant with Abraham and keep for Himself a people to declare His faithful love to the nations.
I think we moderns take it out of context when we apply it to individual lives.
Many Jews died in exile and not all who could return, chose to return when Cyrus issued the order.
The Scripture that speaks to my heart in this Valley of the Shadow of Death is this:
And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you.
Philippians 1:6 AMP
Here is my HOPE. Here is MY promise of ultimate redemption and restoration.
God is still working to bring about His purpose in and through Dominic and in and through me “until the day of Jesus Christ”.
I don’t know how it works but He’s doing it.
He Who is Faithful and True has promised.
It happens when I least expect it.
I try hard to manage life so that I’m not blindsided by grief-that I don’t find myself in the middle of people when I can be sure some trigger will start the flow of tears
But you can’t prepare for what you have no way to predict.
So even three years down the path of child loss, there are times I am overwhelmed by a wave of grief and cannot stop the tears.
I used to try to hide them. I don’t anymore.
I will not be ashamed of my tears.
They are proof of my love.
They are evidence of a heart that refuses to grow cold, hard or bitter even though the frost of death has blown hard across it.
They are testimony to the promise that God is collecting them in His bottle and that one day all this will be redeemed and restored.
I will wear them as a badge of honor until I see Dominic again.
“The worst conceivable thing has happened, and it has been mended…All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” ~Julian of Norwich
I’m not sure when I first read this quote, but it came to my mind that awful morning. And I played it over and over in my head, reassuring my broken heart that indeed, the worst had already happened, and been mended.
Read the rest here: Resurrection: Reality and Reassurance
thelifeididntchoose 