Category: grief

So What Did You Do With Your “Extra” Day?

It rolls around every four years in man’s attempt to keep the calendar in tune with the cosmos.

It’s really a rather rough alignment but it’s the best we can do.

Truth is that each year there’s about one-quarter of a day unaccounted for even though our minds and bodies don’t notice so we tack on a whole day every four years and act like we catch up.

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We don’t.

Most of us plod along as if the Monday (or Saturday, this year) is just another day in a series. For some it’s a bonus work day (maybe a bit extra in the check this month?). For many it’s only a date.

But for the tiny portion of the population who were born or married on this date, it’s a celebration.

Once every four years they get to mark-on the very day-what most of us take for granted. Friends and families can gather and honor a life or a marriage without trying to figure out whether to do it the day before or the day after.

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This is the second Leap Day that’s rolled around since Dominic ran ahead to Heaven and it got me thinking about that little extra time each year or each month or each day holds that I hardly notice.

What if I took those moments (or hours) and wove them into something more meaningful than playing a game on my phone, watching another show on Hulu or scrolling through social media?

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What if I choose to redeem those scraps of time that I normally toss away like they don’t matter?

  • In five minutes I can write a card, text or message to a friend.
  • In ten minutes I can call and set up a lunch or coffee date.
  • In thirty minutes I can preheat the oven and toss a storebought pie inside to take to my elderly neighbor.

So many opportunities to let someone know they are not forgotten nor unimportant.

February twenty-ninth didn’t really feel all that “extra” to me since I mostly did what I do every Saturday.

But it did make me think about how I spend my time.

How about you?

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Setting Aside Time To Grieve Helps My Heart Hold On

One of the commitments I made out loud and in my heart the day Dominic left us was this:  I was not going to let his death tear my family apart.  

I was not going to let him become the sainted brother that stood apart and above his siblings.  

I was going to continue to give as much of my time, effort, love and presence to each of the three I had left as I had done when there were four on earth beside me.

I’ve been more or less successful in keeping this promise.

Read the rest here: Child Loss: Setting Aside Time To Grieve Helps My Heart Hold On

The Best Time To Plant A Tree

Life is really rather unforgiving, isn’t it?

I can only live forward and there are no do-overs.

No amount of regret can roll back the clock and give me another chance to do it right, do it better or just do it at all.

I can’t undo or redo my past.

If I’ve made blunders, hurt hearts, missed opportunities or just plain screwed up, I have to live with that. And other people might have to live with the damage I’ve inflicted.

I need to own that.

But it is not helpful to let regret stop me working NOW to repair, restore and rebuild relationships.

Sometimes my best efforts may be rebuffed.

If I’ve hurt someone’s heart they have every single right to tell me, “No. I won’t let you back in.” I don’t get to establish a timeline for their healing. But if I don’t try to make amends I can be sure the rift won’t be mended.

If someone has hurt me I can choose to look beyond that pain, forgive the offense and commit to begin now, leaving the past in the past, and start fresh.

If so much time has passed that it feels awkward-so what? Embarrassment is a small price to pay for restoration.

So write a letter.

Send a card.

Make a phone call.

Offer peace.

There’s a proverb that’s been spoken by my family for years. It goes like this. A young man asks an old farmer, “When’s the best time to plant a tree?”

The old man answers, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. But the next best time is now.”

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I can’t go back and sow seed or plant trees when I wish I had.

But I can start now and plant for the future.

Who knows what kind of fruit it might bear?

Blessing The Dust, A Prayer For The Broken

There are many times in my life when I’ve felt small and unseen.

Many times when my spirit sank so low I couldn’t even remember “up” much less find it.

But there is no moment so humbling as the one when I came face-to-face with the undeniable FACT that my son had exhaled for the last time.

Walking into the sanctuary where his body lay still, unnatural and absolutely silent, my heart shattered into even smaller pieces.

So I understand Job’s cry.

I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer me; when I stand up, You merely look at me.

Job 30:20 HCSB

I know what it is to fall to the ground in utter dejection, complete hopelessness and pray, pray, pray that life leaves my body because the pain is unbearable.

That’s one reason Lent is a kind of relief every year.

It’s a season when others join me in admitting that from dust we came and to dust we will return.

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But it’s also a season of hope.

Because while Lent forces my heart to focus on my frailty, it points me toward my Savior.

The One who made us is the One who rescues us.

The One who saves us is the One who sees us.

The One who sees us is the One who longs to comfort us.

I love this blessing by Jan Richardson:

“All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

All those days
you felt like dust,
like dirt,
as if all you had to do
was turn your face
toward the wind
and be scattered
to the four corners

or swept away
by the smallest breath
as insubstantial—

did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

This is the day
we freely say
we are scorched.

This is the hour
we are marked
by what has made it
through the burning.

This is the moment
we ask for the blessing
that lives within
the ancient ashes,
that makes its home
inside the soil of
this sacred earth.

So let us be marked
not for sorrow.
And let us be marked
not for shame.
Let us be marked
not for false humility
or for thinking
we are less
than we are

but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.”

—Jan Richardson, Blessing the Dust, For Ash Wednesday

It’s no secret I am frail, prone to break-even shatter-into the tiniest bits of dust.

But that doesn’t stop my God from gathering what’s left to make something beautiful.

When I find myself face down in the dirt, no strength to lift my head, I remind my heart, “[Do] you not know what the Holy One can do with dust?”

Grief-So What’s Normal???

I just came home a couple days ago from a weekend retreat for bereaved moms and was reminded again that the range of “normal” in grief-especially child loss-is so very wide.

Still crying after a decade? Absolutely normal.

Trouble getting dinner on the table or remembering your child’s school schedule? Yep. That’s normal.

Struggling with crowds, back-peddling on commitments, feeling trapped by phone conversations, shopping when you are least likely to run into someone you know? Perfectly normal.

Our losses ranged from very recent to decades old and all of us admitted our behavior, our feelings, our ability to handle change, nearly every aspect of our lives was impacted by the death of our child.

So if you are wondering if your expression of grief is normal, it is.

Our lives were shattered.

Our hearts were broken.

Picking up the pieces, whatever that looks like, is absolutely, positively normal.

❤

A Study In Contrasts: Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday

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 onto hope with both hands.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/02/28/mardi-gras-and-ash-wednesday-a-study-in-contrasts/

Oh, To Be Understood! What a Blessing.

Today I’ll toss all the random bits and pieces I’ve assembled for this weekend’s retreat into my car and drive away.

I’m always a little nervous until I’m far enough down the road that turning back isn’t a realistic option.

Even though this is the third retreat in the same place with some of the same moms (plus some new ones) I always fret over whether or not the message God gave me is the one that will bless their hearts.

But I have to trust in this as in all things and keep moving.

One thing that is always, always, always a blessing-Every. Single. Time.-is the compassionate companionship of women who, like me, know what it is to bury a child.

I try to encourage every heart that might even think about joining us with this: you can be yourself.

No mask*No filter*No worrying about whether or not your tears will upset the person next to you*No wondering if your questions or queries or doubts will be considered a failure of faith*No need to hide the ugly truth that child loss is awful and time does NOT heal all wounds.

There’s nothing magical about this retreat or these moms.

It’s simply a shared experience, a shared commitment to transparency and a shared trust in the Word of God that makes our time together fruitful, strengthening and restorative.

So if you have an opportunity to join or create a small group in your neck of the woods, centered on the truth of who God is, founded on the principle of transparent sharing and committed to creating a safe space where masks are unnecessary-go for it!

You will never be sorry you did. ❤

Hardly The Time For Being Taught

It seems to be the nature of humans to listen with an ear to respond rather than an ear to hear.

I’ve done it myself.

Jumped right in with all kinds of suggestions designed to “fix” someone else’s problem.

Or worse, heaped my own experience with something more or less (often less) similar onto an already overburdened heart.

I hate that tendency in myself and I’m working hard to try to change it.

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Those who feel compelled to just say SOMETHING often bombard grievers with platitudes, comparisons to their own grief or just empty, frivolous words that require we either stand there dumbfounded or find a gracious way to exit the conversation.

It’s especially painful for a broken heart when a well-meaning someone decides THIS is the moment for a theology lesson.

“God has something planned for you in this” or “God will use this for good”. (Romans 8:28-29)

“We don’t grieve as those without hope!” ( I Thessalonians 4:13)

“All our days are numbered.” (Psalm 139:16)

I get it-death is a heavy subject and the death of a child isn’t something anyone wants to talk about, contemplate or be forced to wrestle with. So it’s often easier to simply say something-anything-do your duty and walk away.

But it is hardly helpful.

Deep grief as a result of unbearable loss is not a teaching moment.

It’s an opportunity to listen well, think carefully about if or when you need to say anything and simply offer compassionate companionship to a broken heart.

Grieving felt hardly like the time for being taught, at least initially. Early grief was my time for pulling out of my past those truths that I had already learned — out of my ‘basement — so that I could begin to assemble them together into something even more meaningful to me than before. It was the time for understanding that even though I had always believed in heaven, it now looked to my perceptions to be more real than this world. It was the time when, even though I already believed in God’s control of the world, I now felt dependent upon him being sovereign over it for all my hopes. It was the time for realizing that even though I already believed that Christ conquered death, I now longed to see death die.

Lianna Davis, Made for a Different Land

Grief Triggers: Why Does Coffee Make Me Cry?

Oh, the early days, weeks and even years of grief!

I was a giant walking nerve.

Every sight, sound, smell or even touch that reminded me of Dominic evoked a wave of sorrow that almost always ended in tears.

I cried in the grocery store, walking past Bath and Body Works in the mall, driving down the road when certain songs came on the radio, tidying up drawers and finding a long lost and forgotten something that Dominic tucked away for later.

Sometimes I just wanted to scream, “Don’t you know my son’s not here??!!”

But of course I couldn’t do that and walk around in society.

So the triggers were an outlet for that pent up energy, angst and sadness.

It was awful.

Especially when what I set out to do was something I really needed to do. I’d leave the house with a list of places to go, things to buy and people to see but often return having done only a fraction of it.

I’m better at it now.

I’ve grown stronger and am more skilled at carrying the burden of the disconnect between my heart and other hearts who haven’t experienced deep pain and loss.

I’ve learned how to fix my eyes on some distant point if cornered by a well-meaning friend asking how I am but not really wanting to hear about how Dominic’s death continues to impact our family.

I press my fingers together hard in an attempt to stop the sorrow rising up and threatening to undo me until I can escape to the bathroom, a quiet corner or my car.

And I’ve learned not to be ashamed of the tears that fill my eyes and slip down my cheek despite all my best efforts no matter where I am.

Surprised By Sunshine

The chair I sit in to write faces east and I can see the sky lighten every early morning through my big picture window.

I love greeting a new day, watching the world wake up, hearing the birds twitter around my home scooping up random bits of grain and cat food left behind by the outside animals.

And for a period of about two weeks, twice a year, I love something else-the rising sun is positioned in the perfect spot to cast it’s first golden glow above the trees squarely in my face as I sit here pecking away at the keyboard.

I could move out of the glaring light and continue my work.

But I don’t.

Instead I pause and turn my face toward the sun, soaking up every bit of warmth and light and feeling the energy flow from it to me for as long as it lasts.

And then it moves on.

Doing the work sun does for the whole earth-providing warmth and light for every living thing.

Grief can feel like one long dark night. It can wrap itself so tightly around a heart that no light penetrates the heavy cloak of sadness.

Then one day, one moment, one tiny heartbeat, the sun of gladness or laughter or sweet memory or act of kindness will be positioned just so and make it through.

Don’t move out of the glaring light of hope.

Turn your face and heart toward the gift and bask in its warmth. Let the energy of an extended hand, a thoughtful word, a precious bit of joy energize you.

It will move on and sadness will once again be your close companion.

But if you let it, the hope planted by the light will grow.

It will strengthen you for the journey.

It will sing courage over your heart and remind you in those darkest moments that night doesn’t last forever.

The sun will shine again.