grief – Page 235 – thelifeididntchoose

Grounding Exercise for Anxiety

Grief has a traveling companion: Anxiety. And it is relentless.

Before Dominic ran ahead to heaven I had no idea that along with sorrow, missing and heartache, I would have to battle a creeping sense of dread that could turn an ordinary day into a nightmare.

I’ve learned to plan ahead and minimize triggers I can identify, but sometimes I find myself suddenly overwhelmed with no easy means of escape.

That’s when I apply this technique.

It is amazingly effective and can be done anytime, anywhere without another soul even knowing I’m doing it.

I begin by taking five deep breaths-often I will place my hand on my diaphragm to remind me to breathe deeply.

Then I find:

five things I can see;
four things I can touch (I don’t have to touch them but if I can, it helps-even my own fingertips or my shirt or purse);
three things I can hear;
two things I can smell;
one thing I can taste.

I use my fingers to silently count down the list.

While it doesn’t always erase my anxious feelings, it always tames them.

Taking charge and taking action (even silent, mental action) helps give my heart the space it needs to regroup and reassess the actual “danger” my body is responding to.

Try it. It’s easy. It’s free. And it works.

An Open Letter to the Mom Who Was Almost Me

I hesitated to post this but plunged ahead for two reasons:

I want my friends to know that I welcome the opportunity to pray for them and their children-my heart longs to join in petition for the life of another mother’s child.

But it still hurts to hear too much detail about some things-you have no idea how well my imagination can fill in the gaps in stories of twisted metal and almost death.

So here it is. I hope you receive it as it’s intended. ❤

Dear Mom Whose Son Survived the Accident,

I want you to know that I am beyond thankful that you will be spared my pain. I prayed for your son as you requested-begged God to spare him.

They say misery love company but I say misery loves comfort.

I do not want one more parent to know the heartache of child loss.

Given the chance, I would not hesitate a moment to answer the Miss America question: “If you could do one thing in the world to make it a better place, what would it be?”

“I would make sure no parent ever had to bury a child.”

Not from disease.

Not from starvation.

Not from war or natural disaster or accidents.

No more out of order deaths!

Every parent would go to his grave assured his son or daughter would continue to carry the family legacy.

But that’s not possible. So I rejoiced extra hard when YOUR son had that awful accident, yet lived.

You get to visit him in the hospital, take him home with medicine and physical therapy. I met my son in the funeral home and could only choose a casket for his final resting place.

You will have this holiday season tempered by the shadow of what might have happened, but rejoicing in a second chance to make new memories.

This will be my fourth set of holidays without my son-without his presence at the table, his face around the Christmas tree, his stocking limp and empty because there’s nothing left for me to give him.

You were impatient when I asked you to respect how difficult it is for me to hear the details of your son’s accident. Even in my joy that you will be spared my fate, it hurts to hear how close you came. You were offended and that really hurt my heart.

I didn’t contact you; you contacted me.

I didn’t ask you to pray for me, you asked me to pray for you.

And I did.

And I will.

Because even if you are insensitive, ungrateful and inconsiderate, I will ask God to continue to protect your son-that’s what a broken heart does.

It begs for mercy.

Love,

A Broken Hearted Mama ❤

The Will of God

There are many things I do not understand about life this side of child loss. Many more I do not like and wish were different.

But this much I DO know:

God is here.

He has not abandoned me.

He has not left me to walk this Valley on my own. ❤

#thankful AND #broken

I wrote this post Thankful But Broken, in November, 2015-just barely 18 months after Dominic ran ahead to heaven.

If that’s how I felt THEN, it’s even more how I feel NOW.

Both the thankfulness and brokenness have burrowed deeper into my bones.

Losing the earthly companionship of a child I love has shattered my heart into so many fragments that I can’t find them, much less piece them back together.

But it has also made me oh, so aware of each day’s blessings and of each moment’s sacred holiness.

I can receive more freely because so much has been stolen. I appreciate what I have because I know what it is to long for what can never be again. I can both hold onto and let go of people and things and trust that in the end all shall be well. Because I know exactly what it feels like when all is most certainly NOT well.

The cracks in my heart make room for more love, more joy (muted though it is) and more thanksgiving than my whole heart could have ever held.

I am truly thankful. AND truly broken.

So my November exercise is to embrace BOTH.

My ‘Thankfulness Journal” has two lines for each day: “I am thankful for” and “I am broken over”. Like the Psalmist, I choose to breathe out my brokenness in lament and breathe in the promises of God in gratitude.

I am sad and shattered that this life is hard.

I am encouraged and comforted that God is good.

I can admit both and still be faith-filled.

Halloween

Except for a few years early in childhood, I have never liked Halloween. The combination of darkness and creepiness makes my skin crawl.

And now, this side of child loss it makes me angry.

Why?

Because for one night (really, for a couple of weeks), Americans not only think about death, they spend millions of dollars celebrating it.

Not celebrating ACTUAL death-not the absolute horror of being told your child is gone, gone, gone. Instead it’s a fake, “funny”, silly made-up mockery of a very real, very awful truth.

Sometimes the “celebrations” involve desecrating cemeteries.

And that makes me even angrier.

Graveyards are the final resting place of other people’s loved ones. My son is there! You don’t have the right to make his grave part of your truth or dare game.

So just don’t do it!

What makes me even more upset is that people will talk for weeks about what they want to “be” for Halloween yet shut down the first mention of a bereaved parent’s pain.

Conversation about costumes, haunted houses and scary movies is invited, conversation about burial and broken hearts is taboo.

Why, why, why do Americans embrace this paper mache version of death yet refuse to acknowledge or embrace the reality of death in daily life?

It’s no game. It’s no holiday. It’s nothing to laugh about or make jolly over.

It’s a very real, very painful, very awful part of my life.

I won’t participate in making light of it.

Repost: Don’t Want to Miss a Post? Here’s How.

I’m reposting this one just to help those of you that either want to catch every blog post and/or want an easy way to share them with friends and other bereaved parents. ❤

I’m no tech expert. I kind of blunder about like a blind mouse searching for cheese most of the time. So I feel you if you haven’t figured out how to make sure you get each day’s blog post.

For those that do want it each morning here are several ways to get it:

Read the rest here: Don’t Want to Miss a Post? Here’s How.

Why I Won’t Forget Death: Lessons in Living

The other day I listened to an NPR interview of Amy Tan, author of the Joy Luck Club among other best-selling titles.

Her brother and father died within an year of one another when she was fifteen.

I was spell-bound as she recounted how that experience shaped her adolescence and still shapes her today. I identified with things I am observing in my children and things I feel in my own heart.

She said she thinks about death every day. Not in a morbid sense, but in the sense that she is very aware death is every human’s experience, eventually.

Some of her friends call her paranoid.

Some of my friends call me gloomy.

But she went on to say that thinking about death gave her a precious gift: It made her constantly evaluate if what she is doing right now matters, if it is truly her passion and if it is something she will be glad she did when her time comes to pass from this life into the next.

I think she’s right.

Solomon said, “It is better to go to the house of mourning Than to go to the house of feasting, For that [day of death] is the end of every man, And the living will take it to heart and solemnly ponder its meaning.” Ephesians 7:2 AMP

It’s easy to get caught up in everyday details and forget the sweep of life. It’s tempting to fritter away a day, a month, a year, a decade doing meaningless and unfulfilling things. But my time is limited-whether I am 20 or 40 or 60.

Burying Dominic has made me zealous to make every day count. It has made me impatient with foolish pursuits and material measures marking success or failure.

I will not waste the years I have left on things that don’t matter.

And I will measure what matters by the yardstick of death.

“Whatever will matter on our dying day, and then when we stand before the Lord, is what matters most today, right now, at this instant.”
~Ray Ortlund

Fault Lines: Bereaved Parents and Social Anxiety

I’m no geologist, but from what I understand, earthquakes are nearly always “about to happen”. Fault lines guarantee it. Pressure is building underneath the surface of the earth and when it reaches a level that can no longer be contained, it spews.

Can I just let you in on a secret?

Bereaved parents are full of fault lines.

Many of us are nearly ready to blow almost every single minute, yet hold it in and hold it together. If you could put a meter to our temple and measure how close we are to a come apart, you would be amazed that it happens so rarely!

And this is why we sometimes say, “no” to an invitation. It’s why we stay home from church or baby showers or weddings. Not because we are anti-social, but because social situations present unique challenges to our desire to keep it together.

We don’t want to become the center of attention when the center of attention should be the mom-to-be or the wedding couple or the birthday boy.

It may be months or years or decades since our child ran ahead to heaven. And you may think that’s enough time to “get over” or “get past” or “learn to live with” his or her absence. In some ways it IS. Most of us have a “game face” we plaster on to make it through ordinary days and even some extraordinarily difficult ones.

But underneath the veneer of “everything’s OK” there are the fault lines and when extra pressure is applied, we just know we might blow.

Many times I want to be there, really I do. If I choose not to be, know that it’s because I am trying to be thoughtful, not ugly. I stay home out of love, not disrespect.

So please extend grace.

Give me the benefit of the doubt.

Let me bow out gracefully when I know in advance my heart won’t be able to hold on.

It’s best for both of us, really. ❤

Repost: Daily Battle-Tempted to Give Up

I wrote this over six months ago. Parts of it still describe me. Parts of it don’t.

I continue to struggle to find an overarching narrative to my current story.

My empty nest (which was inevitable and a GOOD thing) is somehow emptier with one child not just out of sight but totally unreachable.

So many adjectives that once reflected who I am no longer fit. And I can’t seem to find the ones that do.

When a bad day comes-and it does from time to time-I’m still tempted to give up and give in. Struggling to endure seems like more trouble than it’s worth. Heaven is tempting, and I’ve got someone waiting for me there. ❤

So many things raced through my mind in the first five minutes of hearing the news:

Oh, God! Is it true? (I have to authenticate his identity);

How do I tell everyone? (I have to make phone calls);

What do you do when your child dies? (I have no idea how to plan a funeral);

and on

and on.

Of course, that doesn’t touch the FEELINGS flooding my heart.

Read the rest here: Daily Battle: Tempted to Give Up

Trying to Hold off the Holidays

Here they come round the bend like a pack of dogs chasing that rabbit on a racetrack.

No way to slow them down, no way to step to the side and ward off the relentless message that Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming soon-so, so soon.

Internet ads scream, “You’ve got to buy it NOW! You’re running out of time!”

Billboards, radio and television ads, and calendars count down the days.

Decorations assault my eyes and ears and nose (thank you pumpkin everything!). I cannot get away. There’s no where to hide.

So I have decided to take the offensive. I will do the things that must be done as quickly, as efficiently and as quietly as possible.

I am sending Thanksgiving cards instead of Christmas cards. I like the fall colors better than traditional yuletide hues anyway. No one says the yearly update letter has to be postmarked in December.

Our gift-giving is much simpler now than before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven. I’m less inclined to wrap dozens of presents to pile under the tree and more likely to give cash or gift cards along with a heartfelt note. So I will get all this together before the weather warrants a fire here in the Deep South.

I’m easily overwhelmed.

And too much of anything just seems like entirely. too. much.

Instead of loads of decorating that involves changing out all the everyday with holiday, I will put out a few bright things and lots of candles.

Flickering light in approaching darkness speaks hope to my heart.

I will concentrate on people, not on things. I am making space on the calendar for casual conversation instead of constant motion.

I won’t be swept along by the yuletide current, struggling for air, barely making it to January and glad the holidays are over.

Sip and savor.

That’s my motto.

I’m sticking to it.

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