Category: family

Some Days, Getting Out of Bed is Courageous

We walk past them every Sunday.  

Those people who almost didn’t come to church.  The ones who spent thirty minutes just talking themselves into getting out of bed.

And we never know.

Life is hard.  Suffering abounds.  

Since losing Dominic I have become ever more aware of how very many people are hurting. And how very many people are truly brave.  Every. single. day.

It’s one thing to act in an instant-when adrenaline rushes through your veins and pumps extraordinary strength to your muscles and grants clarity to your mind to gather all your nerve and power to jump in and DO SOMETHING.

It is quite another when, without aid of chemical courage, you wake each day to a long list of “to do” items knowing all the while you will be dragging the heavy weight of grief and sorrow everywhere you go.

Read the rest here:  Brave

 

Love Doesn’t End

I know that others want desperately me to be “better”.  They want me to be happy and carefree and back to the Melanie they knew before child loss.

And not just for their sake, for mine too.  

It’s hard to watch someone you care about in pain.

But my reality has been forever changed.

It’s no more likely that I can revert to the person I was before Dominic left us than that I could revert to the person I was before I became a mother.

How many times have you heard, “Becoming a mother changed EVERYTHING”?

Holding my baby for the first time was truly love at first sight.  And that love never ends.

Losing my son did not end my love for him.

Great grief is the price I pay for great love.

I pay it willingly.

Watching the young mother with her infant, the older mama and her child at play in a park, the joy and pride of the even older woman as her son or daughter graduates high school, college or gets married–how could anyone think a mother’s grief could be small?

How can all the love and all the hopes and all the dreams of a mama’s heart be squeezed into days or weeks or months of tears and sorrow?

Read the rest here:

Love: The Reason I Grieve

 

Helping My Children Walk Through Grief

Bereaved parents often have several tasks before them in the days and months and years following the death of a child.

One of them is to help their surviving children navigate loss.

I have three earthbound children.  And they are grieving.

Their world changed in the same instant mine did.  Their hearts are broken too.

I found it hard to watch the pain I saw written on the faces of my kids.  Harder still to know that as much as I wanted to be the guide in this situation, I was as lost as they were. My mama instincts demanded that I “make it better” -but I was and am, powerless to do that.

So I settled on being honest.

I decided that I wouldn’t hide my sorrow or my struggle in an attempt to protect them.

Because, really, how could I protect a heart that had been introduced so forcefully to the truth that WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL?

How could I try to manage their sorrow when mine was overflowing?

I acknowledged the pain-the pain of losing Dominic;  the pain of not being able to say, “good-bye”; the pain of never knowing exactly what had happened; the pain of feeling like God had closed His eyes or looked the other way while Dominic ran off the road; and the pain of watching each other in pain with no way to soothe or stop it.

I didn’t draw boundaries around how they were supposed to behave.  

I asked that we not hurt one another in our sorrow-that we not cast blame, that we not lash out-but other than this request, I made room for tears, shouts, pounding of fists or whatever else we needed to do to let out some of the emotion bottled up inside.

I do not insist that they give Sunday School answers to tough questions.  I understand that they are struggling as much as I am. We are all dissecting our faith and our understanding of Who God is, what He is doing, and whether we can trust Him with our hearts again.

We talk-about Dominic and about their lives.  I try to listen.  Sometimes I’m not as good at that as I would hope to be.

I respect their need for space or their need for companionship.  I haven’t tried to be the sole source of support for any of them.

I’m not offended if they choose to express grief in ways that are different than my own.

I am well aware that it is likely they will carry this loss for more years than I will and that they must find their own way to bear that burden.

They haven’t only lost a brother, they’ve also lost the family in which they grew up, the parents they used to have and the sense of safety that pervades childhood.  

Their eyes are opened to the fact that bad things happen.

And sometimes bad things happen with no apparent reason and absolutely no forewarning.

We love one another.  We acknowledge the impact Dom’s life and his leaving has left on us. We don’t sweat the small stuff (most of the time).

And we focus on making sure each one of us makes it through.

Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.

David Ogden Stiers

The Cost of Conquest

The Bible says that in Christ, I am more than a conqueror.

Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors and gain a surpassing victory through Him Who loved us.

Romans 8: 37 AMPC

I don’t feel like a conqueror.  I feel like a fighter.

I don’t feel like a victor.  I feel like someone in the midst of battle.

I was considering that when this thought came to mind:

“Conquerors have been in battle. Conquerors bear scars.   

Conquerors win, but it costs them something.”

I want to picture the victorious Christian life clean, simple, no wounds, no scars.

But victory cost Jesus everything.

He not only give up His life, He was beaten, mocked, humiliated, paraded in the street for all to see and condemned to the cross.

He bore the physical pain.

He bore the emotional and psychological pain.

And then He bore the most dreadful pain-the pain that only HE could bear-the pain of the just wrath of His Father in Heaven poured out on Him in payment for the sins of the world.

He rose, after three days in the grave.

And He had scars.  

His scars bore witness to His pain and suffering, but also to His victory.

Burying my son was painful.  Living each day carrying his memory and the sorrow of missing him is hard.  My life has been turned upside down and inside out.

I am weary and I bear scars.

But I refuse to be overcome by what I know in my heart is a temporary separation.

I will claw my way each day out of the pit of despair and drag myself into the light of the promises of God’s Word.

One day I will stand with the redeemed, my scars bearing witness to Christ’s victory over death and pain and every single thing that tried to separate me from His love:

So who can separate us? What can come between us and the love of God’s Anointed? Can troubles, hardships, persecution, hunger, poverty, danger, or even death? The answer is, absolutely nothing. 36 As the psalm says,

On Your behalf, our lives are endangered constantly;
    we are like sheep awaiting slaughter.

But no matter what comes, we will always taste victory through Him who loved us. For I have every confidence that nothing—not death, life, heavenly messengers, dark spirits, the present, the future, spiritual powers, height, depth, nor any created thing—can come between us and the love of God revealed in the Anointed, Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:35-39 VOICE

 

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This picture was taken for a story in UAB Magazine featuring my husband and oldest son who graduated together in December 2009. You can read the original article here: Like Father, Like Son

It is one of my very favorites. I was surrounded by my family, filled with pride and promise.

This is how I like to think of us-together and strong. 

Our circle is broken now-it is a continuing struggle to figure out how to navigate life in the wake of our loss.

And some of the greatest challenges present themselves in unexpected ways.

Redefining how to think about and present my family to the world led me to the solution presented in this post:

[Context]