Category: Dominic

I Must Decrease-Making Room For Jesus. Lent As Invitation, Not Obligation.

Although I have observed Lent off and on for many, many years, it’s different for me now in a profound way.

Some of you know but may have forgotten that Dominic was killed the Saturday before Palm Sunday and buried the Monday after Resurrection Sunday, 2014.

Each year since then I’ve felt like I had to endure two sets of “anniversaries” because his death date and burial date are not only days of the month but also marked by moveable church celebrations.

It has been very, very hard.

As the sun rises earlier each morning in spring, the weather turns brighter and the flowers bloom, my heart grows heavier and heavier. I want to crawl in a hole and wait for the time to slide by-as if not noticing will make a difference.

But I can’t. Life must be lived, not only endured.

So I am choosing this year to try to guide my heart gently through this hard season with purposeful action that will force me to engage with God’s Word, with God’s people and with God Himself.

I know that if I don’t create space and place to prioritize my time with Jesus, to reflect on my life, to purpose to re-align my choices with ones that are more consistent with what I say I believe, then it won’t happen.

Life is full of distractions, temptations and I’m just plain lazy.

There are so many ways to observe Lent! Most of us are familiar with fasting a favorite food or beverage or giving up some entertainment or habit. That’s a fine way to focus on denying our flesh and meditating on Christ.

But this Lenten season I’ll be doing something different.

Last year I was introduced to a book, FORTY DAYS OF DECREASE by Alicia Britt Chole. It’s focus is more on fasting attitudes and actions rather than tangible things.

It was challenging but I loved it so I’m doing it again.

It helped change my approach to the whole season from one of obligation (almost of penance) to thinking of it as an invitation to sit at the feet of my Shepherd King.

If I’m honest, I need to learn this holy habit more than any other-listening instead of always doing, doing, doing.

I’d really like some company and some comments if any of you would join me on this journey! I’ll be sharing my own insights and reflections one day behind so those who want to participate won’t be influenced by my opinion.

If you’ve read the blog for very long, you know full well that God and I have wrestled more than a few rounds.

I don’t have it “figured out”.

But I’m willing to stay in the ring.

Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday-What a Contrast!

I think I will post this link as long as I maintain the blog because I will always be a voice for those whose lives look more like Ash Wednesday than Mardi Gras.

I will continue to speak out for space in our congregations and fellowships that acknowledge life is often hard, often unfair and often more like a broken hallelujah than a high note.

I am not a member of the Church of the Perpetually Cheerful. 

I am a member of the Broken Body of Christ, limping through this world, holding on to hope with both hands.

Read the rest here: Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday: A Study in Contrasts

What Does “Safe” Really Mean?

I remember as a  young mother of four working hard to keep my kids safe. 

dominic and siblings little children at nannys

Next to fed and dry (two still in diapers!) that was each day’s goal:  No one got hurt.  

It never occurred to me THEN to add:  No one got killed. 

Read the rest here: What is Safe?

Oh, How I Need Friends! Two ARE Better Than One.

I’ve thought a great deal about friendship since losing Dominic.  I’ve been blessed by those who have chosen to walk with me and dismayed by some who have walked away.

It takes great courage to sit in silence with those who suffer. We must fight the urge to ward off their pain with chatter.

Quiet companionship requires that we allow our hearts to suffer too.

❤ Melanie

For fifty years I was on the “other side”-the one where I looked on, sad and sometimes horror-stricken- at the pain and sorrow friends or family had to bear.

Read the rest here: Loving Well: Being a Friend

How We Can Make Church a Safe Haven For The Brokenhearted

f you have lived a blessed life where the greatest challenge to your faith has been disappointment and not destruction then I am so, so happy for you. Really.

Some of us have dragged our broken hearts through the church doors out of habit with little hope we might find the genuine comfort we need to survive inside.

Because experience taught us that while it is perfectly acceptable to raise a hand and ask for prayer one or two weeks in a row, it better not become a predictable pattern. Patience with unsolvable and messy ongoing situations runs thin as leaders turn the discussion toward “victory in Jesus”.

But that isn’t what Christ came for-not that we don’t have ultimate and even some temporal victory through Him.

He came for the broken and breathless. He came in the flesh because our flesh is weak and life is hard and bad things happen.

We’ve got to do a better job welcoming and ministering to hurting hearts.

We have to.

❤  Melanie

I am a shepherd.  My goats and sheep depend on me for food, for guidance and for their security.

And every day I am reminded that a shepherd’s heart is revealed by the way he or she cares for the weakest and most vulnerable of the flock.

But most of us are far removed from the daily reminder of pastoral life that was commonly accessible to the authors and readers of the Bible thousands of years ago.  So it’s no surprise that we tend to forget the connection between a shepherd’s life and a pastor’s calling.

Read the rest here: Loving Well: How the Church Can Serve Grieving Parents and Other Hurting People

“Acceptance” Isn’t a Stage. It’s a Lifetime.

In all fairness, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross had no idea her research would be taken out of context and plastered across professional literature and media outlets as a definitive explanation for the grief experience.

But she didn’t mind the notoriety.

And ever since, counselors, pastors, laypersons and the general public have come to expect folks to politely follow the five (sometimes described as six) stages of grief up and out of brokenness like a ladder to success.

It doesn’t work that way.

❤

Sometimes those that walk alongside the bereaved are biding time, waiting for that “final” stage of grief: Acceptance.

And some therapists, counselors and armchair psychiatrists are certain that if the grieving mother or father can simply accept the death of a child, he or she can move on–they can get back to a more “normal” life.

But this notion is as ridiculous as imagining that welcoming a new baby into a household doesn’t change everything.

And new parents have months to prepare.

Read the rest here: Loving well: Understanding “Acceptance”

How to Transition from “Good-bye” to Grief

A funeral or memorial service seems like a final chapter.  We close the coffin, close the doors and everyone goes home.

But for bereaved parents and their surviving children, it’s not an end, it is a beginning.

Much like a wedding or birth serves as the threshold to a new way of life, a new commitment, a new understanding of who you are, burying a child does the same.

Read the rest here: Loving Well: Transitioning From “Good-bye” to Grief

I Grieve Because I STILL Love

I confess-until it was MY son who left for Heaven before me I had NO idea that grief was really just love.

But when the person you love more than the breath in your body leaves you, the love remains.

And you have to find something to do with it.

So you sigh and you moan and you find ways to keep that person relevant despite the days, weeks, months and years (!) of experiences that interpose themselves between the last time you were able to hug his neck and the date on the current calendar.

❤

” If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them.” ~James O’Barr

I grieve because I love.

My tears are a gift to the son I miss.  My sorrow honors his memory.  My broken heart gives evidence to the ones walking with me that my love is fierce and timeless.

Read the rest here: Love: The Reason I Grieve

The Greatest Gift: Say His Name!

It’s nearly impossible for anyone who has not lost the earthly companionship of a child to know how desperately I long to hear Dominic’s name spoken aloud.

There are days I walk around my home and think silently and even whisper quietly, “You existed! You exist!” just to remind my heart he is real.

You may hesitate to bring him up because you fear my tears. But any tears his name might evoke will be tears of gratitude as well as those of longing.

Please say his name!

❤

I know you are afraid.

You think that speaking his name or sharing a memory or sending me a photo will add to my sorrow.

I understand.

But even when it costs me a split second of sharp pain, it is truly a gift to know that Dominic lives on in the hearts and minds of others.

Read the rest here: Loving Well: Just Say His Name

Some Things Just Hurt, No Matter How Bravely a Broken Heart May Bear Them.

In the first days, weeks and months after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I was a giant walking nerve-it didn’t take much to bruise my already grievously wounded heart.

As time progressed, I learned to accept the intention behind a comment or action even when it fell flat or hurt instead of helped.

But there are some things that simply shouldn’t be said and some things that shouldn’t be done no matter how bravely a broken heart may bear them.

❤

Before I lost Dominic, I know that I, like others who had never experienced the death of a child, undoubtedly said and did things that were hurtful instead of helpful.

Loss will enter everyone’s life at some point–there is no escape.

We educate ourselves (as we should) on so many issues–work hard not to offend, to understand, to reach out. Bereaved parents don’t want pity, they would like to be better understood.  

We did not choose this journey, it was thrust upon us.

Read the rest here: Loving Well: Some Things Hurt