grief – Page 188 – thelifeididntchoose

God’s Provision is Adequate For My Pilgrimage

This is a hard, hard thing to grasp.

A painful lesson to learn.

But it is truth:

The provision of God is adequate for my pilgrimage. God does not fail to see, know, understand, care, love, and ultimately to work all things ‘in conformity with the purpose of his will’ (Ephesians 1:11). His love is constant, though sometimes unfelt. His presence is assured, though sometimes He seems far away. His plan is good, though sometimes I hurt. For this present time I see dimly, mere faint outlines of all God’s purposes and plans. Yet I believe that His ways are better and His thoughts are higher than my own. In my time of trouble, my understanding is not crucial. It is my confidence in the person, the goodness, and the sovereignty of God that is the great, indispensable necessity.
~James Means, A Tearful Celebration

When my children were young, we made a habit of listening to classic books on tape as we made the miles between our rural home and all the places we had to go. It was glorious to learn together, explore together and build up a reservoir of common literary references.

One of the books we listened to was Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.

In it, Christian, the main character, is making his way toward the Celestial City. Along the way he meets all sorts of characters representing various temptations and snares common to all of us as we journey through this life.

I learned much from that book, the most important of which was this:

“To go back is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.”

The road is hard. The journey long. The way perilous and uncomfortable.

But I will go forward, trusting that the Lord has made every provision for my pilgrimage.

“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who’ve set their hearts in pilgrimage as they pass through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs. The autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength until each appears before God in Zion.”

~Psalm 84:5-7

Baby Steps Count

When my daughter was learning to walk, I would hover near-ready to catch her if she fell.

I covered sharp corners or moved furniture so that the chance of injury was minimized. I clapped and cooed each time she made a little progress-pulling up, cruising around the edge of the sofa and coffee table-those tentative moments when she was brave enough to let go and then plop on her bottom.

And finally, when she made her first unassisted steps between the security of holding on and my waiting arms.

It was a judgement free zone.

I wasn’t looking for technical perfection or measuring progress according to any external metric.

I didn’t rush the process. I couldn’t do it for her. I could only support her own efforts toward the goal we both had in our hearts. I never despised her baby steps.

They were a beginning.

And everything has a beginning.

When Dominic ran ahead to heaven, I felt like I was physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually knocked to the floor. I had no idea how I was going to make a life after this great blow. I could barely get dressed, much less do anything that took more thought or energy than that.

I was overwhelmed. I had to learn to walk all over again.

And I did it with baby steps, in a judgement free-zone I created for myself where I refused to gauge my progress against anyone else’s.

Because baby steps count.

Here are some of the baby steps I’ve taken and am still taking:

Got up, got dressed, bought groceries.
Cooked dinner.
Cleaned the bathrooms.
Went to church.
Remembered a birthday and sent a card.
Drove to an unfamiliar place to meet someone for lunch.
Exercised.
Made phone calls.
Went to work.
Volunteered.
Slept through a whole night.
Organized a party.
Showed up to graduations, a couple funerals and a wedding.
Kept doctor’s appointments.
Laughed.

I have yet to hit my stride and I don’t think running is in my near future, but I am moving forward. I’m making progress. I don’t have to meet a timetable or get anyone else’s approval.

It’s my journey.

And baby steps count. ❤

Sometimes I Just Want To Be Me!

Even in the very first hours after the news, my brain began instructing my heart, “Now, try to be brave. Try not to disappoint people. Try to say the right thing, do the right thing and be the example you should be.”

Whatever that meant.

As I made phone calls and received concerned friends and family members I was so aware that they would take a cue from me-how much can I say, how hard can I cry, should I hug or stand back, should I talk about him or be silent lest it make the tears fall harder?

And here-almost five years later-I still feel like I need to lead the way in conversations and social encounters.

Read the rest here: Can I Just Be Me?

How To Be Fierce Without Being Fractious

It’s funny how child loss has, at the same time, made me more yielding and more steadfast.

I give in without a moment’s hesitation to other people’s choice in where to go for lunch, what to do for birthdays, how to arrange this or that at church. My brain simply doesn’t have the capacity any more to argue over trifles.

But I will stand up to a lion for the sake of love or to protect a hurting heart.

I can be a little reactionary when that happens-snapping and biting the heads off those who might have said or done something in ignorance and not intentionally.

So I’m learning to think a minute before I launch into a tirade and try to discern just what will be most helpful.

I want to challenge and educate folks, not send them running for cover every time they see me coming around a corner.

I want to be fierce without being fractious.

I ask myself, “How can I communicate truth in love?” and I try to follow these precepts:

Don’t attack the person. Quite often people speak without thinking and speak about things they haven’t experienced. They may just be parroting something they’ve heard and not even actually believe it themselves.

Ask questions. Try to suss out WHY they said or did what they said or did. Again, without thinking? Or is there a motive behind it? Fear is a frequent motivator for pushing hurting hearts away. People are afraid of how much they might have to invest in a relationship or they are afraid that what happened to me can happen to them and they just don’t want the reminder.

Educate. I often start by saying something like, “If you haven’t buried a child, you would have no way to know this but…” and follow up with whatever I think they might need to hear. No one can argue with my experience. I’ve never had a single person walk away angry when I share this way. Some have come back and thanked me for the insight.

Extend grace. I know child loss but I don’t know everything or even a tenth of everything. So while my friend may have stepped on MY toes by saying or doing something today, I’ve probably stepped on HERS another day. I try to assume that the person in front of me is doing the best he or she can and not aiming to inflict pain on my heart.

Choose to end fruitless discussions. If I realize that the person I’m speaking to is defensive, resistant and unyielding, then I find an opportune moment to end the conversation. We’ve all been there-someone itching for a fight decides that now is the moment to have one. I’m not interested in debating anyone over my experience so I just don’t.

As long as I walk in this world there will be others with whom I disagree. some who actively seek to wound and many who are just ignorant of situations they have never experienced.

I don’t want to bludgeon them with words, forcing them to agree with me.

I want to be a light that opens eyes, a gentle breeze that blows away the fog and helps them see clearly.

❤

Should I Let My Young Children See Me Cry?

This was not my experience-all my children were adults when Dominic ran ahead to Heaven-but so many grieving parents want to know: Should I let my younger children see me cry?

How much is too much for them to witness, process and hear?

Do I need to shield them from the awful truth of how much this hurts? CAN I shield them?

It depends.

May I first say that there is NO way to shield even an infant from the overflowing emotions, stress and strain of child loss in his or her family. If we stop and think about it, we know this. And older children may look like they aren’t paying attention, but they are.

So the question is not really, “Can I shield them” but is instead, “How do I help them understand what’s happening”?

Grief in this life is inevitable.

Allowing our children to watch us grieve helps them understand how it’s done. When we share openly, we give them tools and models for sharing too.

I think it’s important to be honest with even the youngest among us.

When a parent speaks of the deep pain of loss, expresses love for the missing ones and looks longingly at photos and mementos, he or she is saying to the watching child: “Love lives. Love is important. Love lasts even when our bodies don’t. I will always love you just like I love your brother (or sister).”

Young children will create their own script if adults don’t help them write one.

Because their minds are not fully developed, they will often connect odd bits into an unhealthy whole. Just as some children decide they are responsible for their parents’ divorce, some surviving siblings think that a random act of disobedience resulted in the death of a sister or brother.

And if a parent is modeling secrecy or a stiff upper lip, that child may never reveal her dark and weighty secret.

We can help our children by providing a safe space where they can express themselves freely without fear of correction or being silenced. It might get ugly. Our grief gets ugly. It’s part of the process.

But children should never become the burden bearers for adults.

Crying in front of your child is OK. Screaming, yelling, blaming and violence is not.

No child should feel threatened or unsafe in his own home. If you are out of control, THAT is the time to go to a room and close the door. Or call a friend to come get the kids so you have a few hours alone. Or send them outside to play. It is NOT the time to unload on your surviving child(ren).

I wish that grief was not part of life.

But it is.

How I deal with it, what I say about it, when and how I express it will impact my children for good or ill.

I want to offer them tools they can use and build resilience for what they may face in the future.

Letting them see me-especially the grieving me-is an important part of that process.

Repost: I Get It-I Really DO Get It

I write a lot about what bereaved parents (me!) wish others knew or understood about child loss and this Valley we are walking. And I am thankful for every person outside the child loss community who chooses to read and heed what I write.

But I want to take a minute to tell those of you who are not part of this awful “club” that I get it-I really do get it–when you need to put distance between yourself and me or other people walking a broken road.

We all love to think that life is a never-ending ascent toward bigger, better and more enjoyable moments.

Our children are born and we think only of their future, not their future deaths.

Read the rest here: I Get It-I Really DO Get It.

Thoughts Matter

So much of this battle has been fought in my mind.

Really, even more than in my heart.

Because you can’t argue with sad or shock or missing or disappointment.

But you can absolutely argue with hopelessness (there is nothing to live for), apathy (there is nothing to do) and distrust (there is no one who can help me).

So I spend a lot of time filling my mind with truth and doing the best I can to empty it of lies. Some days I’m more successful than others, but I battle on regardless.

When hopelessness tries to take up residence I say:

Remember the word to Your servant upon which you have caused me to hope.

~Psalm 119:49

AND

Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!

~Hebrews 12:1-3 MSG

Apathy sits heavy on my chest and makes me want to give up and give in. Why try if life is random and chaos is rampant?

I push it off with:

²⁸We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan. ^29-30From the distant past, His eternal love reached into the future. You see, He knew those who would be His one day, and He chose them beforehand to be conformed to the image of His Son so that Jesus would be the firstborn of a new family of believers, all brothers and sisters. As for those He chose beforehand, He called them to a different destiny so that they would experience what it means to be made right with God and share in His glory.

~Romans 8:28-30 VOICE

I remember that I still have work to do:

“For we are His workmanship [His own master work, a work of art], created in Christ Jesus [reborn from above—spiritually transformed, renewed, ready to be used] for good works, which God prepared [for us] beforehand [taking paths which He set], so that we would walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us]. “

~Ephesians 2:10 AMP

The enemy of my soul whispers the same lie he told Eve in the garden, “God really doesn’t have your best interest at heart. He’s holding out on you. You can’t trust Him.”

I shout him down and declare:

The God Who sent His only Son to save me will not let me go. He will uphold me with His Righteous Right Hand. Even in the flood of grief, the fire of trial and the darkness of despair, He is with me.

I have verses and quotes and hymn choruses posted all over my house so that everywhere I turn, my eyes can land on encouragement.

I won’t win any awards with my decorating scheme, but I don’t care.

All of this will be dust one day.

I’m building an eternal future that won’t rot, rust or decay.

^“3Blessed is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One! Because He has raised Jesus the Anointed from death, through His great mercy we have been reborn into a living hope— ⁴reborn for an eternal inheritance, held in reserve in heaven, that will never fade or fail. ⁵Through faith, God’s power is standing watch, protecting you for a salvation that you will see completely at the end of things.”

~ 1 Peter 1: 3-5 VOICE

Hallelujah! Amen.

I Don’t Have to Choose Between Sorrow and Celebration

Our family is looking forward to Spring and also dreading it.

This year we will welcome a new baby (my first grandchild) and also celebrate my daughter’s wedding to a wonderful man.

Our family is growing again!

But we will also mark the fifth year anniversary of Dominic leaving for Heaven and another birthday that he won’t be here to greet.

I’m pretty sure tears will be shed on each of these days and they will be salty-sweet, sad and happy, sorrowful and celebratory-all at once.

There are no more hard lines in my life that separate events into distinct categories where only a single set of emotions is appropriate. Instead my heart’s a watercolor mosaic where one feeling washes into another, darker colors make the lighter ones brighter.

My daughter recently wrote her own blog post, Guest Books & Memory Tables: A Sibling’s Perspective on Love and Loss.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Even Hobby Lobby reminds me that if I’m remembering anyone at my wedding it should be the family legends of generations past, not current. Somewhere in my carefully- packed boxes of wedding decorations, sits frames and mementos for mine and my fiance’s grandparents and my forever-frozen-in-time 23 year old brother.

I highly recommend you read the whole thing. She’s done a beautiful job sharing from a sibling’s perspective.

Her wedding day will be full of great joy and celebration and also some sorrow as we take pictures of the whole family minus one.

I might be laughing one minute and crying the next.

And that’s OK.

No need to fake it.

It’s ALL part of life. ❤

Sudden and Unwelcome Change

I woke up just past midnight to notice my bedside clock flashing off and on, indicating the power had gone out for at least a few minutes at some point after I fell asleep.

“No worries, ” I thought as I rolled over and drifted off.

An hour or so later and the cold woke me again. No power. This time for several hours.

I snuggled deeper under the warm covers and decided to go back to sleep. Surely it’d be on by morning.

And it was.

But it set my mind thinking as I got up, turned on the light in the kitchen and plugged up the coffee pot: My morning routine would be utterly disrupted if electricity hadn’t begun flowing again.

No warm house, no warm shower, no hot coffee, no way to get online and post the blog (cell service is unavailable at my home), no handy portable phones to make necessary calls should the power also be out at our church just a mile down the road.

I could go on and on.

Of course each of these difficulties could be surmounted.

It would take extra effort and be frustrating, but I could manage to get by without coffee and plug up the old phone to make phone calls. The blog could wait. And it’s unlikely that the outage would last more than a few hours or a day and then things would be back to normal.

Imagine, though, being used to the modern convenience of electricity at the flip of a switch and then being suddenly plunged into darkness and disconnection.

Unprepared-no matches, no alternative fuel sources, no extra warm clothes for winter days and nights-just plucked from the world you knew and dropped into a world you didn’t.

That’s what it felt like when Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. No warning, no chance to think through what life might be like, what changes I would have to accommodate, how I would need to face the days, weeks, months and years of his absence.

I went to bed and expected to wake to the world I knew.

Instead I woke to a world I could never have imagined.

And just like I rarely consider the dozens and dozens of ways electricity impacts my life-makes it easier, brighter, better-until it’s unavailable; I had NO IDEA how Dominic’s leaving would touch every corner of every moment of every day.

Last night I slept through the power outage. Other than resetting my blinking clocks it will require no adjustments this morning.

I can’t sleep through child loss.

When I wake, I face it anew each day.

And it continues to require adjustments, even now.

New Mercies

I love to read familiar verses in different translations or paraphrases.

It helps my heart hear what I might otherwise miss because familiarity DOES breed a form a contempt even when considering the Word of God.

Recently, on my way through verses on HOPE I copied out Lamentations 3: 19-26.

A couple of the verses are ones most of us have seen or heard often:

But back up a little bit, and read it in a different version ( the VOICE) and it takes on even greater meaning for those of us walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

Jeremiah (the author of Lamentations and known as the “Weeping Prophet”) is overcome with grief. He uses words I understand to describe how relentless sorrow and despair drag a heart down, down, down.

He’s bitter, he’s crippled, he can’t move forward or even move at all.

Grievous thoughts of affliction and wandering plagued my mind—
great bitterness and gall.
Grieving, my soul thinks back;
these thoughts cripple, and I sink down.

And, stopped in his tracks, he waits.

He knows he needs hope if he is to get up again.

So he turns his heart to the only One Who can help.

Gaining hope,
I remember and wait for this thought:

He remembers that God’s love never runs out. God will never suffer from compassion fatigue because the Lord is loyal, steadfast, inexhaustible.

God’s faithful love is new every morning!

As reliable and obvious as the light that spreads across the eastern sky and chases the darkness from every corner.

How enduring is God’s loyal love;
the Eternal has inexhaustible compassion.
Here they are, every morning, new!
Your faithfulness, God, is as broad as the day.

Repeating that truth brings a heart courage to face even the most frightening or dismal circumstances.

No one can stop the sun!

No one can stop the unfailing, loyal love of God from breaking forth!

Have courage, for the Eternal is all that I will need.
My soul boasts, “Hope in God; just wait.”

I can boast (make much of, speak boldly about) about my hope in the Lord because He never, ever fails. I will not be put to shame.

I am not left alone to my bitter thoughts and my affliction will not be forever. When I seek Him with my whole heart, He lifts me up and carries me through the darkest night.

It is good. The Eternal One is good to those who expect Him,
to those who seek Him wholeheartedly.
It is good to wait quietly
for the Eternal to make things right again.

God will not allow injustice to reign forever.

Sorrow will not have the last word!

It is good to wait in full confidence, trusting that the Lord I love, loves me and will redeem and restore everything the enemy has stolen.

“The sun comes up
It’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again
Whatever may pass
And whatever lies before me
Let me be singing
When the evening comes”

Matt Redman 10,000 Reasons

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