Category: bereaved parent

The Wrecking Ball of Grace

In the aftermath of loss, relationships suffer.

Sometimes it’s because of harsh words exchanged in the heat of emotional moments.

Sometimes it’s due to disagreements about how to deal with ongoing issues.  Often, it’s because most people just don’t know what to say and don’t know what to do in the presence of great pain and suffering.

Days and weeks and months pass and one day we wake up and realize that a previously close relationship is now distant and strained.

I know that in my grief I have felt abandoned by people I felt sure would stand with me, would never leave me, would be my most stalwart encouragers.

And I know, too, that I have shut some people out.  Some were too chipper or too quick to offer platitudes and others just seemed intolerant of my ongoing pain and sorrow.

Walls have been erected.

My heart sectioned off and my world divided into “us” and “them”.

I’m sorry for that.  That’s not the way I want it to be.

Walls between people are built brick by brick.

A word spoken or not spoken.  A call,  text  or message misinterpreted or mistimed.

But they can be brought down with one blow.

wrecking ball

Grace is a wrecking ball that breaks through walls and stone cold hearts.

Grace given and grace received.  

A call, a text, an email or message that says, “I’m thinking of you.  I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

Or a card sent the old fashioned way filled with love to assure a wounded heart that it is not abandoned or forgotten.

Image result for image letter

“”I’m sorry.”

“I miss you.”

“I love you.”

It may not be easy and it might take several attempts.

 

 

 

But in the end, who can refuse extended arms and an open heart?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

The End of the Story?

I have to keep telling myself that no matter how it looks right now, this is not the end of the story.  

Every morning I’m reminded by the “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” of my early rising roosters, that the light is coming….

Read the rest here:  Crowing in the Dark

Keep On Keeping On

The months roll by, the calendar pages turn, soon school will be back in session and you are still not here.

Sometimes I think I have figured out how to do these days that remain between now and when we will be together again.  

And sometimes I realize that I haven’t.

Today is one of those days.

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I miss you.

I love you.

 

 

I can’t round a corner without thinking of you and wishing this was not my life.

But it is.  

So I’ll keep on keeping on.  Just like you would want me to.

Just like you would do.

Even when it’s hard.  

And some days it is so very hard.

When Will You Be Over This?

Think back on the most awful thing that has ever happened to you.

Does it still hurt?  Do you still carry scars from where it pierced your soul and broke your heart?

Can you forget it? Really, really forget it?  

Has it shaped the way you think about life and how you conduct yourself today?

Are you a different person NOW because that happened THEN?

Now magnify that to an impossibly greater degree and you might have an inkling of how child loss impacts parents and their families.

I will never “get over”, “move on”, “cease feeling sorrow” or “forget what happened”.

My son is my son as long as my heart still beats.  If he were living, he would be part of my life.  Death hasn’t changed that.

I am learning to live with loss, learning to bear up under its unceasing pressure and learning to carry on and keep going.  

I am different than I was and different than I would have been if Dominic hadn’t left us.

But only heaven can undo this injury, only Christ in eternity can fully redeem this pain.

Cfamily never gets over the death of a loved one

Astonished. Again.

For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

No matter how tightly I strap on my armor, grief sends arrows through the tiniest unprotected chink and pierces my heart.

Read the rest of this post here:  Not as Strong as I Look

 

Fear

C. S. Lewis wrote:

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

A Grief Observed

It DOES feel like fear, and if I’m not diligent in resistance, that feeling can spread over my world like a dark blanket, blocking out the sun.   

I have never been a fearful person-as a three year old, I climbed what seemed a countless number of steps up the high dive and plunged (belly first!) into the deep end of the pool.

A little older and I flew upside down in an open cockpit biplane next to the mountains in Colorado-fanny pack parachute strapped on just in case we needed to abandon the aircraft.

I have traveled to countries where I didn’t speak the language.  Ridden less-than-cooperative horses, spoken in front of thousands and trudged through snakey woods-always confident that things would be OK.

But now I know by experience that things are not always OK.

Sometimes they are very, very bad.  

And they are bad in ways that cannot be undone this side of Heaven.

So I must continually remind my heart of truth:

that my Father loves me,

that He is in control even when things feel out of control,

and that He will carry me when I cannot carry myself.  

carry you old age

Ask Away!

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard or read bereaved parents second-guessing themselves.  They say or write:  “I know you’re not supposed to ask ‘why?'”

Baloney!  The Psalms are FILLED with “Why God?”

Questions are where the rubber meets the road in the Christian life.  

Questions are where I learn to submit my heart to the lordship of a God Who loves me and Who has a perfect plan even when all I can see is pain.  

Questions are the way I weed my garden of faith-they force me to choose between trust and doubt.

“There are those who say faith means you never doubt.  Those who live by the creed, ‘Don’t ask questions!’

But I say faith is exactly what you cling to in the margins of doubt–when you have exhausted all the possibilities that exist in the physical, you-can-touch-it world and yet you KNOW there is MORE”

Read the rest of this post here:Debate and Faith

Inseparable!

In the first days and months after Dominic left us I copied this verse dozens of times-in my journal, on notecards, on posterboard to plaster across the refrigerator and stick on mirrors and doorposts.

I had to remind my heart that even death could not separate my son from Him.  

That even the most wily schemes of the enemy could not rip me from the hand of my Savior and that even my own doubts or fears or questions were not stronger than God’s love through Christ to hem me in and keep me safe within the confines of His protection from eternal damnation.  

God’s Word is living and active.  

It is part of my inheritance in Christ Jesus and I can appropriate it for my own life.  When I am afraid and when I doubt, I try to repeat truth until my heart can hear it:   

“If God is for [Melanie and Dominic] who can be against us?

32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for [Melanie and Dominic]—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give [Melanie and Dominic] all things?

33 Who will bring any charge against [Melanie and Dominic] whom God has chosen?

It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

35 Who shall separate [Melanie or Dominic] from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 

37 No, in all these things [Melanie and Dominic] are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate [Melanie or Dominic] from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8: 31b-35,37-39 NIV

nothing can separate1

Words Matter

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” ~Jesus

Have you ever had a moment when words “slipped out” before you could stop them?  

I have.  

Standing amidst the wreckage of hasty speech I would do almost anything to stuff them back inside.

I like to pretend that I didn’t mean what I said.  I like to imagine that the words don’t reflect what I really feel.

And in the wake of burying a child, I find that I am ill-prepared to keep my mouth shut. Words tumble out because my emotions are almost always close to the surface.

The truth is, a glass only spills what’s already inside and my mouth only spews what’s hiding in my heart.

I am trying hard to fill my heart with grace, love and mercy so that what comes out heals rather than hurts.

I’m not always successful-the heart is deep and my wound is great.

But being wounded myself, I long to be an instrument of healing and peace in this broken world.  

st francis prayer