Category: faith

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

The Hard Question of Prayer

In the wake of burying Dominic, the most difficult spiritual discipline for me to recover has been prayer.

In part because my heart just doesn’t know what to ask for or how to talk to a God Who has allowed this pain in my life.  

In part because I don’t really have a framework for placing the prayers I want to pray inside my ongoing struggle to commit my future and the future of my family to the hands of a Father Who didn’t step in to prevent Dominic’s death.

I still struggle with this.  

“When it’s not your kid you can think of all kinds of lofty, theologically correct arguments or reasons for why God answers one prayer and not another–for why one person is healed and not another–for why one person survives a devastating-should-have-killed-him accident but not another.

But when it is your child that doesn’t survive or isn’t healed or is stolen through the violent actions of someone else…well, that’s a different matter entirely.”

Read the rest of this post here: The Problem of [Un]Answered Prayer

 

Monday Musings

It’s my habit to watch the sun rise.

Even on Monday mornings.

Even when I might rather stay in bed.  

Because every time the sky lightens from black night to bright day I’m reminded of two things:  

loved by the one in control

 

 

I am not in control.  

But God IS.

I can’t stop the world turning and I can’t make the sun rise.  

 

But I don’t have to-I am not responsible for the big picture.  I am not in charge of making all the pieces fit just-so.

My duty is to be the piece I was made to be.  

To go where God sends me.  

To do what God has for me to do.

 And to leave the rest in His hands.  

There are times I want to be in control, but it doesn’t last long.  I quickly realize that I can barely keep myself in line, much less anyone else.

you are more

 

And when I let go, I am free.  

I am free to be the me God has made me to be.

I free those around me to be the persons God has made them to be.  

And that’s worth waking up to.

Changed

I’m not the same me  I was two years ago.

I no longer look with confidence down the driveway as friends and family pull away, certain that we will see one another soon.

I whisper, “Be safe” when we part, but know that they are not the keeper of their days and that “being safe” doesn’t mean everyone escapes deadly peril.

Read the rest here:  A Different Me

He Knows My Name

Grief can be isolating.  

It separates me as one who knows loss by experience from those who have only looked on from the outside.  

It opens a chasm between me and people who aren’t aware that life can be changed in a single instant.

And I can feel like no one sees me, no one cares about me and no one notices my pain.

Sometimes it even feels like God has forgotten me-that He isn’t listening, that He doesn’t care.

But Jehovah hasn’t abandoned me.  

Have you ever wondered why there are lists of names in the Bible?  Do you, like me, sometimes rush through them or pass over them to get to the “main part” of a story?

But look again, the names ARE the story. 

The God of the Bible isn’t the God of the masses.  He is the God of the individual. 

He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve.  He called out to Cain, ‘Where is your brother?”

He took Enoch, guided Noah, chose Abraham and Moses.

He anointed David, spoke to and through the prophets and He CAME, flesh to flesh to bear the sins of His people, redeem them from death and cover them with His blood.

My name is graven on His hands.

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
    and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
    I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands”

Isaiah 49: 15-16a NIV

My life is hidden with Christ.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life,appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:3-4 NIV

He has a new name for me, a secret name I’ll receive in Heaven.

“To the one who conquers through faithfulness even unto death, I will feed you with hidden manna and give you a white stone. Upon this stone, a new name is engraved. No one knows this name except for its recipient.”

Revelation 2:17b VOICE

The enemy wants to convince me that God has forgotten me.

That He has abandoned me in my sorrow and pain.

That when my son breathed his last, He was looking the other way.

That’s a lie.

And I refuse to listen.

Years ago I heard this song for the first time and it touched my heart:

He Knows My Name by Israel  (listen here)

Lyrics:

I have a Maker
He Formed My Heart
Before even time began
My life was in his hands

(Chorus)
He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
And hears me when I call

Not everyone reading this has lost a child.  

But everyone has lost something or someone.

And everyone, if they are honest, has experienced moments of anguish wondering if God in heaven cares.

graven on hand

 

He does.

He hears.  

He knows your name.

 

 

 

Signs

 

When my kids went anywhere, I would always ask them to send a text just to let me know they had safely arrived at their destination.  They honored that request (most of the time!) and it eased my mind.

My mama heart wanted to know they were OK.

My living children still send me texts when traveling.  It’s an easy way to relieve anxious thoughts and I appreciate it.

But my son, who has made the last great journey, is silent.

And that’s exactly what I expected.

I think Dominic is so enthralled with the beauty of Heaven, with the communion of saints gone before and with the fullness of joy at the right hand of his Savior that he does not look with longing at the life he left.

He is in possession of the promise.  He knows fully, even as he is fully known.

At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!

I Corinthians 13:12 PHILLIPS

He has the ultimate assurance that God is faithful and that His lovingkindness endures forever.  Dominic (if he even thinks of it at all) has no concern that the same Savior who rescued him won’t also rescue me.

“You must not let yourselves be distressed—you must hold on to your faith in God and to your faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s House. If there were not, should I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? It is true that I am going away to prepare a place for you, but it is just as true that I am coming again to welcome you into my own home, so that you may be where I am. You know where I am going and you know the road I am going to take.”

~Jesus ( John 14:1-4 PHILLIPS)

My faith has been tested in ways I never thought it would be.  And it has been, and continues to be, HARD. 

Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]

Hebrews 11:1 AM

The same God who made a donkey speak and sent ravens to feed Elijah can use the birds of the air and the beasts of the field to encourage me.

And He does- I have found a dozen perfect bird’s nests since Dominic left us.  I believe they are signs from my Savior, not my son-tokens of hope sent to bless my broken heart from the Father who loves me.

God still speaks-He makes Himself known through His Word, through people, through nature and in still, small whispers to my heart through His Spirit.

He doesn’t answer all my questions.  But I don’t feel abandoned.  

Dominic is with Jesus and Jesus is with me.

Jesus Christ is always the same, yesterday, today and for ever.

Hebrews 13:8 PHILLIPS

I don’t feel close to Dominic at his grave. I go to honor him, to give voice to his memory but the essence of who he was and who he still is, lies in my heart and in the hearts of those who loved him and love him still.

And the witness of that enduring love is the sign to which I cling. 

Faith is to believe when you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

~Augustine

 

 

 

 

 

My Cup Overflows

“You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” Psalm 23:5b

I remember standing in our field with my husband at sundown one day, thankfulness and grace and mercy and wonder flooding my heart-and I whispered, “surely my cup overflows!”

Surely, God’s hand is in this, is on our lives-He has brought us to this place of blessing.

And that’s how I used to always think of that verse-the cup overflowing with goodness and blessing.

But what about when the cup overflows with sorrow?  

With pain?

With tragedy, trials and temptations?

jesus in the garden

Jesus knew about that cup.  That’s the cup He begged the Father to take from Him.

The cup that was bitter and hard to swallow.

He prayed three times, He sweat blood and He battled His flesh so that His spirit could conform to the Father’s will.

And in the end, He submitted Himself to the Father’s plan.

He was obedient, even to death, even to death that He did not deserve, did not HAVE to suffer, did not WANT to suffer.

I have buried a son.

And it is the most painful thing I have ever had to bear.

It’s a burden I never anticipated and it’s a burden of which I will not be free until I join him in Heaven.

There are some parents who have suffered the loss of multiple children. Or who have suffered child loss and other difficult life circumstances.

If my cup is full and overflowing, theirs is overflowing still more.

Where to take that full cup?

Where to find the strength to carry it, to drink it to the dregs?

When my heart screams, “No more!” and my body cries, “I can’t do this!”, I look to my Savior for the model of how to carry on.

Only in Christ, Who Himself bore the cup and Who drank its bitter fullness can I hope for strength and redemption.

The One Who knows my pain can carry my pain.

The One Who lives again will breathe life into my heart.  

The One Who redeems what the enemy has stolen will turn my mourning to dancing.  

cup of blessing

This cup will not always overflow with sorrow.  Around the banquet table at the wedding supper of the Lamb, it will once again be full of joy.

You make me know the path of life; in your presence is unbounded joy, in your right hand eternal delight.

Psalm 16:11 CJB

 

 

Heart Wide Open

Grief and loss broke my heart and life wide open-no more hidden corners, no more walled-off spaces.

And the vast expanse left by Dominic’s absence will be filled.

Nature hates a vacuum.

What I pour into my heart or allow God to pour into it determines whether I am changed in a way that blesses me and others or not.

I don’t have a choice in being broken.

But I have a choice in being filled.  I can position my heart to hear from God and to dwell on His promises and Person or invite bitterness to move in.

I pray that you will have greater understanding in your heart. Then you will know the hope that God has chosen to give us. I pray that you will know that the blessings God has promised his holy people are rich and glorious.

Ephesians 1:18 ICB

Make-Me-a-Blessing-1024x791.png

 

The Sound of Silence

Busy, busy, busy and noisy, noisy, noisy.

Every day is full of activity and every minute full of sounds-television, radio, Itunes or Pandora.

holy-solitude

 

 

I am, at the same time, hyper-connected and dis-connected. My mind is often full but my heart can feel empty. 

 

 

If I can move fast enough or create sufficient distraction, then maybe I can ignore the harder questions, the deeper thoughts, the uncomfortable feelings that I would rather not explore.

Being in one’s own company alone with God is challenging.  Without the noise of outside distraction I am forced to face my fears and hidden darkness.  And in the quiet I find that the easy answers leave me empty and unsatisfied.  I must listen carefully for the still, small Voice that whispers comfort.

If I want to hear from God I need to embrace solitude and make space to hear.