grief – Page 262 – thelifeididntchoose

True Love

It’s nice to get flowers or chocolate or balloons or cards that say, “I love you”.

But true love can’t be bought.

True love is marked by sacrifice, ongoing support, genuine compassion and willingness to do whatever it takes to “be there” for another person.

It means standing with someone even when walking beside them includes bearing the unbearable.

So I have a radical suggestion for this Valentine’s Day-instead of lining the pockets of America’s merchandising gurus-take a moment to write a note to someone who has truly loved you.

Tell them how their love has changed your life.

How their patience gives you space to grow.

How their kindness sings hope to your heart.

How their refusal to envy, boast or brag allows you to rejoice in their blessings without feeling left out or less than.

How their humility and gentleness invites you to share the deepest things, certain your secrets are safe.

How their refusal to keep a tally of the ways you’ve disappointed them grants freedom to try again.

How their trust and hope shine light in your life and give your heart something to hold onto.

How their enduring love gives you a glimpse of heaven.

Let the ones who love you well know that what they do makes a difference.

Every. Single. Day.

Repost: HALTing a Grief Spiral

I have to remind myself often of these tips. So in case you do too, here’s the original post:

If you’ve ever been in any kind of counseling or recovery group , you have probably seen or heard this acronym and advice: HALT before you speak.

It’s a great reminder that I should take a moment to consider my frame of mind before I blurt out something that might damage a relationship or wound someone else’s heart.

I had never thought about it until recently, but it is also a great reminder to us who grieve that what we interpret solely as grief (which we cannot control) might be compounded greatly by other things (some of which we can control).

Read the rest here: HALTing a Grief Spiral

Good News

Reading through the Sermon on the Mount, it’s easy to feel defeated.

Jesus ripped off the Pharisees’ masks. He gave people a peek behind the curtain-unveiling the sin that hid beneath a facade of outward obedience and seeming righteousness.

Jesus also strips away any pretense that I can follow the “rules”.

Sure I may not murder anyone, but hate and malice-how am I supposed to get through this life without calling someone “fool”?

Line after line of impossible standards-righteousness that goes way beyond the Ten Commandments!

I am hopeless and helpless.

Jesus makes just that point-on my own, in my own strength, dependent on my own efforts, I’m lost.

That’s what makes the Gospel the Good News!

God in His mercy and grace has offered the only true hope–the righteousness of Christ, the Perfect Sacrifice and atonement for sin.

When I walk into church and pretend I “have it altogether”, when I refuse to display my brokenness and my need for forgiveness, I obscure the beauty, value and truth of the Gospel.

I raise a barrier between those who need rescue and the very means by which they may be saved.

We are all broken.

We are all lost.

Our only hope is Jesus.

May we be bold enough to be honest.

Lost and Found

Yesterday I had to find a lost goat.

I had shepherded the rest into their pen, each one safely home but noticed one was missing.

I left the rest secure and went out searching for Carmelita.

She’s old, half blind and has a hard time following the herd. I knew she would never find her way back if left to herself.

So I retraced the steps they usually make when foraging in the afternoons. Down by the hayshed, up by the woods behind the donkey pen. Made sure she hadn’t followed the lane to the road (like she did one day ending up a half mile away).

I called and called and called.

Her fellow goats bellowed loud and long, the hounds joined in and every now and then the horses and donkeys added their voices.

Nothing.

I walked to the back of the house, called again and heard a faint, plaintive answer.

She was deeper in the woods and more lost than I could have imagined. Way past where the goats go to eat and blocked by a thicket of privet and tangle of vines from getting home.

She was desperate-I could hear it in her pitiful “BAAAAA”.

Blind and lost and tired and frightened-but she knew if she headed toward my voice, she would be safe.

She trusted me.

Because I had proven faithful.

So I made my way in her direction and she made her way toward mine.

I clapped and called and encouraged until I could see her. She stumbled along until she was right next to a fallen log that blocked her way. We were close enough to touch, but she was forced to walk down and around before she felt my reassuring hand on her horn, guiding her the rest of the way to the security of the pen.

Immediately she was calm. Her shepherd was with her. No fear now.

In this life it is so very easy for me to get lost.

It’s easy for me to get separated from the security of fellowship with other believers. My vision is limited-obscured by grief and dimmed by tears. I can find myself deep in the woods and tangled in vines before I know it, with absolutely no idea how to make it back to open ground.

Sometimes I don’t even have the strength to cry out in hopes of being found.

But Jesus calls out to me. He doesn’t let me stay lost and afraid.

He finds me.

And He patiently leads me back to the fold.

No rebuke. No chastisement. Only love and grace.

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep in His care.

I give them a life that is unceasing, and death will not have the last word. Nothing or no one can steal them from My hand. My Father has given the flock to Me, and He is superior to all beings and things. No one is powerful enough to snatch the flock from My Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.

John 10:11,28-30 VOICE

Repost: Sparrows DO Fall

I have never subscribed to the theory that the Christian life is free of pain and suffering.

But there are some who do.

Christian bookstores are filled with titles touting the path to joy and happiness, the way to wealth and material success.

Read the rest here: Sparrows DO Fall

Deflated

Backing up my rear tire hit the edge of a little stump and the sidewall blew out with a loud “whoosh”.

No fixing that. No way to plug it or patch it or make it work for just a little longer.

That tire was toast.

I bought a new one.

But imagine if that wasn’t an option. Imagine if I had to take the ripped apart shreds of what was left of that tire and cobble it together to make do. Imagine if it barely held air, had to be pumped up each morning and needed attention every mile or so just to keep going.

That would be exhausting and enough to make you wonder if traveling anywhere was worth it.

That’s how my heart feels these past days.

When Dominic ran ahead to heaven it was like my heart exploded into a thousand tiny bits. So many fragments with no way to put them back together.

But getting a new heart isn’t an option-I’m stuck with this broken one.

And I have to keep on going. Even when it takes every ounce of energy to hold it together, even when I can barely make two steps without feeling like it’s going to fall apart again, even when I want to give up.

So today, and maybe tomorrow too, I’m going to just sit here.

I’m going to give myself permission to acknowledge that my heart is broken, I feel deflated and defeated and pushing through is not something I have to do if I don’t feel like I can.

I’m pretty sure the feeling will pass.

I’ll gather strength and manage to glue the bits back together in a day or two, add air and travel on.

I always do.

Not-So-Random Acts of Kindness

I love the idea of Random Acts of Kindness-it’s a beautiful way to spread love and joy in our broken world.

With a few dollars or a few minutes, I have the opportunity to make someone’s day brighter, their burden lighter and remind them that not everyone is “out to get them”.

BUT-as I’ve written before here: Relational Acts of Kindness, it’s relatively easy to do my good deed and walk away.

When I bless a stranger, my work is done.

I feel good, they feel good-it’s all good.

I find it much harder to purpose to be kind every day to the people I actually KNOW-the one who may have said cutting things in the past, the one who consistently rubs me the wrong way, the one I feel is lazy or subversive or just holds opinions with which I disagree.

How about the one I thought would show up to help but didn’t? Or the one who has told tales about me or my family? The one who lets her children run wild at church? The one who makes others uncomfortable with her dress, or language, or lack of social skill?

Being kind to THAT person is hard.

I want to turn the other way. I want to make excuses. I want to pretend that my kindness toward strangers balances my lack of kindness to those with whom I walk daily.

It doesn’t.

I am called to be kind at precisely that place where it is most difficult. I am called to act in love toward just that person who is most unloveable. I am called to lay down my life where it looks most likely to be unappreciated.

Denying myself is the very method by which Christ builds His kingdom.

Offering my body as a living sacrifice is the pressure He applies to mold my flesh into His likeness

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the heathen lord it over them and that their great ones have absolute power? But it must not be so among you. No, whoever among you wants to be great must become the servant of you all, and if he wants to be first among you he must be your slave—just as the Son of Man has not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life to set many others free.”

Matthew 20:27-29 PHILLIPS

Repost: Life at the Intersection of Desire and Self-Control

Maybe you can relate: It is easier to do without if what I want isn’t close enough to tempt me.

I don’t shop if I don’t want to spend. I don’t get donuts if I don’t want to eat sugar. I don’t have soda in the house if I don’t want to drink carbonated soft drinks.

It’s much harder to deny my desires when what I long for is within reach.

Read the rest here: Life at the Intersection of Desire and Self-Control

A Letter To My Living Children*

I never thought it possible to love you more than I already did.

But I do.

Your brother’s untimely departure has opened my heart in a whole new way to the glory that is your presence. It has made me drink you in like water in the desert.

No more do I take even a moment for granted. Never again will I be “too busy” to listen to you, to hug you, to greet you on the porch when you decide to make your way back home.

I promised you when that deputy came to the door we would survive.

And we have.

I promised you that I would never raise Dominic onto a hallowed pedestal that obliterated his orneriness and only kept track of his laudable qualities.

I pray I have lived up to the promise.

We are changed-every one of us.

I am so very proud of you for continuing to live. It would have been easy to give up. It would have been easy to “live for the moment” and give in to hedonism.

You haven’t done that.

You have had to carry more weight than you should. I am so very anxious to see how you take this awful pain and weave it into your own stories-how this dark thread helps define who you become and how you choose to impact your world.

You have lent me your strength when mine was waning.

You have checked on me and loved me and borne patiently with me and with one another when it would have been easier to walk away and try to create a life outside this place of brokenness and vulnerability.

I am always cautious when ascribing feelings and words to our departed Dominic-it’s easy to make him say or feel whatever is most convenient since he’s not here to dispute it. But I am certain of this: while he would never, ever have wanted us to bear this awful burden, he would be so, so proud of the way we have supported one another in doing so.

Like always, our family has closed ranks and lifted together the weight that would have crushed us individually.

It’s who we are.

It’s who we have always been.

*I am absolutely convinced that Dominic is very much ALIVE today in the presence of Jesus. But for now, I’m denied his daily companionship.

Eye On The Prize

“To win the contest you must deny yourselves many things that would keep you from doing your best. An athlete goes to all this trouble just to win a blue ribbon or a silver cup, but we do it for a heavenly reward that never disappears.” [emphasis added]

~ I Corinthians 9:25 TLB

I remember one particularly grueling semester in college. I had foolishly stacked five upper level political science classes on top of one another thinking that taking them together would be easier.

That was a dumb idea.

The end of semester assignments included 200 pages of written term papers along with essay tests and other random bits. For two weeks I fell asleep on my bedroom floor, pen in hand, legal pad underneath my head and surrounded by dozens of open books I used for reference.

After composing the papers, I had to type them, add footnotes and bibliography and deliver them. All back before computers and word processing programs made it easy and electronic!

Oh, how I wanted to give up and give in! I was certain that I was not going to make it. I just knew that my body or mind or both would give out before I completed the task.

But they didn’t and I did manage to make it through.

I was willing to put forth the effort and pay the price for a letter grade!

No one cares what I made on those essays. No one asks me about my college classes or grades. At 53 I can’t even remember what I wrote about.

Now I face a much more challenging task: Living without the companionship of one of my precious children. The “grade” I make on this effort has eternal impact.

This is the Valley of Weeping, yet Christ promises it will become a place of refreshing.

“When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of springs where pools of blessing and refreshment collect after rains!”

Psalm 84:6 TLB

I can’t see an end for this grueling work. There’s no “semester break” circled on my calendar.

But there will be an end to this toil and pain-just as surely as there was an end those many years ago.

“As for us, we have this large crowd of witnesses around us. So then, let us rid ourselves of everything that gets in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly, and let us run with determination the race that lies before us. ²Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from beginning to end. He did not give up because of the cross! On the contrary, because of the joy that was waiting for him, he thought nothing of the disgrace of dying on the cross, and he is now seated at the right side of God’s throne.” [emphasis added]

~Hebrews 12: 1-2 GNT

And the reward for faithfully completing this assignment is so much more valuable than a good grade.

“Yet, my brothers, I do not consider myself to have “arrived”, spiritually, nor do I consider myself already perfect. But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ grasped me. My brothers, I do not consider myself to have fully grasped it even now. But I do concentrate on this: I leave the past behind and with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward the honour of being called by God in Christ.” [emphasis added]

~Philippians 3:12-16 PHILLIPS

This reward is eternal-a never-ending supply of God’s grace and love and joy that will overwhelm the toil and pain I’ve endured.

Reunion.

Redemption.

Restoration.

So while I wait, I encourage my heart with these truths:

“Even more, I consider everything to be nothing compared to knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. To know him is worth much more than anything else. Because of him I have lost everything. But I consider all of it to be garbage so I can know Christ better.” [emphasis added]

~Philippians 3:8 NIRV

“We are cracked and chipped from our afflictions on all sides, but we are not crushed by them. We are bewildered at times, but we do not give in to despair. ⁹We are persecuted, but we have not been abandoned. We have been knocked down, but we are not destroyed. ¹⁰We always carry around in our bodies the reality of the brutal death and suffering of Jesus. As a result, His resurrection life rises and reveals its wondrous power in our bodies as well. ¹¹For while we live, we are constantly handed over to death on account of Jesus so that His life may be revealed even in our mortal bodies of flesh.” [emphasis added]

~ 2 Corinthians 4:8-11 VOICE

“And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” ~Jesus

~Matthew 28:20b NKJV

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