One of the things I’ve been forced to embrace in the wake of child loss is there are very few questions, experiences or feelings that are simple anymore.
“How many children do you have?”
A common, get-to-know-you question lobbed across tables, down pews and in the check-out line at the grocery store. But for many bereaved parents, it can be a complex question that gets a different answer depending on who is asking and where we are.
Read the rest here: It’s Complicated
I was surprised at myself.
When we cleaned out Dominic’s apartment two weeks after he left us, I couldn’t throw away a thing.
Even though it meant boxing it up, carting it down the stairs and loading and unloading it onto our trailer, I DIDN’T CARE.
If it was his, if his hands had touched it, his body worn it or he had placed it in the cabinet or fridge, it was coming with me.
The only thing I left in that space was the empty echo of his fading presence.
I brought all the rest home.
Read the rest here: They’re Not Just “Things”
I was reminded today how close fear sits to the door of my heart and to the door of the hearts of many bereaved parents.
Once again a mom shared an experience of not being able to get in touch with a surviving child and how that quickly spiraled downward to a frenzy of fear.
To some it may seem like an overreaction. But to those of us for whom the one thing you think won’t happen, HAS happened, it made perfect sense.
Read the rest here: If It Happened Once, It Could Happen Again
I first shared this four years ago when I was reflecting on half a decade of living without one of my children beside me. I’ve now had nearly another half decade to think about why or IF I’ll continue to write.
Every so often I take a day or two to consider whether I want to keep posting. I have to admit sometimes that I wonder if I bang the same drum for too long it will sound loud and obnoxious to some people’s ears.
But then I get a message or a comment from someone fresh on this journey and they feel seen, heard, validated and safe.
So I write on.
And I find that writing brings clarity and comfort to my soul. I still have things to say and I hope what I say still brings some small measure of light, love, life and hope to other hearts.
❤ Melanie
I was one of those people years ago who set her sights on starting and maintaining a blog.
I thought I would post a few times a week and share anecdotes about my family and critters, insight into daily living and inspiration from Scripture and interesting quotes.
No, not THIS blog-the other two I started and quickly abandoned to who-knows-where in cyberspace.
Trouble was that the subject matter, while near and dear to my heart, wasn’t personally compelling enough to keep me disciplined and actively writing.
If someone had said, “Pick any topic to write about”, child loss wouldn’t have been in the first million choices.
No one CHOOSES child loss (Thus the name of the blog: The Life I Didn’t Choose).
But untold numbers of parents EXPERIENCE it every year. This very day, parents somewhere got a knock on the door or a phone call or sat next to a hospital bed as life slipped slowly from their child’s tired body.
Since I was already journaling and had walked this Valley for nearly a year and a half, it dawned on me that the ramblings I’d put down might be helpful to another heart. So I started THIS blog in September, 2015.
And I’ve been here ever since.
I’m not in the raw, breathless place I once was. But grief and loss are part of every breath I take, part of every moment I experience.
I miss Dominic. I still consider death an enemy. Every day I hate what was stolen and long for what was. I mourn the changes grief has wrought in my family. I wish things were different. I discover new ways loss impacts my life and new ways of coping with it.
So I keep writing.
I don’t want anyone to feel alone in this journey. I don’t want anyone to think there’s no way to survive. I don’t want a single broken heart to doubt that God is here and that He will help you hold onto hope.
I’ll spill my heart out in words until the words are exhausted.
It helps me.
I pray it helps others too.
I try to share this post a couple of times each year because it discusses a question many bereaved parents desperately want to answer: Did God take my child?
These are my thoughts-ones I believe are backed by Scripture and align with what I know personally about God’s character.
They are the result of many months of wrestling. I offer them in hopes they will help another heart.
❤ Melanie
This is a question that comes up all the time in bereaved parents’ groups: Did God take my child?
Trust me, I’ve asked it myself.
How you answer this question can mean the difference between giving up or going on, between turning away or trusting.
So this is MY answer. The one I’ve worked out through study, prayer and many, many tears. You may disagree. That’s just fine. I only offer it because it might be helpful to some struggling and sorrowful soul.
Read the rest here: Did God Take My Child?
Sticking with a friend whose life is hard and is going to continue to be hard is not for the faint of heart.
Not all wounds can be healed.
Not all problems have a resolution.
Not all relationships follow a path that leads to a happy ending.
Read the rest here: To The Friends Who Stay
I’ve been reminded afresh in the past few days that loss changes everything.
We often wish it didn’t-that it would last only a season and then things would return to normal. But they don’t.
When one life is yanked violently from the fabric of a family the hole simply can’t be mended. You have to learn to live with the fragility and compromised strength that remains.
It’s hard and it keeps on being hard.❤ Melanie
Read the rest here: Grief Lasts a Lifetime
I’m really thankful that more and more Christians are willing to shed false positivity and embrace lament.
Because the truth is lots of stories this side of eternity end in tragedy or at least unmet expectations and sorrow instead of glorious, victorious sunshine and roses.
Crops and marriages fail. Dreams come and go.
We hope for healing but don’t receive it.
Loved ones die.
Let’s just be honest about it-about ALL of it.❤ Melanie
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.
Read the rest of this post here: The Problem of [Un]Answered Prayer
Last summer, I participated in an online discussion group with others who read ATLAS OF THE HEART* by Brene Brown.
It was a helpful exercise to map, name and explore emotions so that I can create more meaningful connections to myself and others.
I think I’ve been doing some version of this my whole life. Language matters. Being able to give any emotion-especially the deep pain and sorrow of child loss-matters.
Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness….
Language shows us that naming an experience doesn’t give the experience more power, it gives us the power of understanding and meaning.
Brene Brown, ATLAS OF THE HEART, xxi
The morning Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, after I made the awful phone calls I reached for my journal.
I knew if I didn’t start spilling the grief onto paper my heart would explode with sorrow.
Since I learned to hold a pencil I’ve been writing.
It’s how I sort my thoughts, figure out my feelings and express my heart.
Read the rest here: Give Sorrow Words.
*Warning: ATLAS OF THE HEART contains language that may offend some folks. I just don’t want anyone to be surprised. ❤
Today is thirty-nine years since we said, “I do” and had absolutely NO idea what that would look like.
I first shared this a few years ago on our anniversary because I wanted other bereaved parents to know that while it is hard (and isn’t marriage always hard?), it is not impossible for a marriage to survive child loss.
We are definitely not the perfect couple. We fuss and we struggle. We sometimes retreat into our own separate worlds as we process some new aspect of living this earthly life without one of our children.
But we have learned that we are stronger together and that we are willing to do the work necessary to stay that way.❤
Today my husband and I celebrate 39 years of marriage.
Our thirtieth anniversary was a mere two months after we buried our son.
Here’s the last “before” anniversary photo (2013)-unfeigned smiles, genuine joy, excitement to have made it that far:
Read the rest here: Dispelling Marriage Myths Surrounding Child Loss.
thelifeididntchoose 