It was a long time before I wanted to believe that I received any gifts worth keeping from this life I didn’t choose.
I knew I had tears, pain, agonizing sorrow, loss, heartache, dashed hopes, empty arms.
If I could give those back and regain my son, I would do it in less than a heartbeat.
I can’t, so I’m left here to ponder what else I’ve received from burying a child.
Read the rest here: Grace Gifts of Grief
Oh, dear one who opened your eyes to the morning light carrying wounds so deep no one can see!
I am so, so sorry.
When things have gone terribly wrong it’s hard to get up and make merry.
I know.
But that first Christmas felt more like heartache and less like ho-ho-ho. So you are in good company.
You don’t have to pretend that nothing has changed but you can reach out and take hold of what remains.
You don’t have to hide your tears or your memories but you can share them with people who love you and long to help you carry the legacy of the one you miss.
Today may be long.
But it is only one day.
You can make it.
You will make it.
I promise.
May you experience the Presence of the Christ of Christmas no matter how dark and lonely and sad you feel. May your heart hold onto hope regardless of how tempted it is to give in to despair. May the Holy Spirit Who overshadowed Mary, overwhelm you and fill you with grace and mercy. May you hear the Father whisper, “Courage, My child” to your soul.
And more than all this, may you know that you are seen, you are loved and you are being carried. ❤
~Melanie DeSimone
This time of year all the package handlers are busy dropping off the bounty of online shoppers’ purchases to millions of doorsteps around the world.
It’s a wonder that most of it arrives on time and in good condition.
I suspect though, that you, like me, have gotten one or two boxes over the years that arrived dinged and damaged, battered and broken.
While it can be a real hassle to get the product replaced, it’s usually only a matter of time before a brand new “whatever” arrives.
People aren’t so easily mended, though.
And I think we forget that.
People are more fragile than they appear. Words are more piercing than we realize. We should add in an extra notch of kindness and gentleness whenever we can.
~Gavin Ortlund
I have friends that take more care with their smartphone than with their spouse or children or parents.
Things can be replaced. People can’t.
Mass produced consumer goods-no matter how expensive or treasured-are worthless compared to a heart.
In an age where clicks and phone calls make it possible to fix so many things, they are rarely helpful in fixing relationships.
“Special Handling Required!” should be plastered across every human’s forehead.
People are irreplaceable, fragile, beautiful gifts.
More valuable than anything we could ever buy. ❤
I don’t know about you but I’ve never thought of hopelessness as something I wanted on my resume.
Hopelessness is typically tossed into the pile of “negative” feelings we all acknowledge but don’t want to experience and if we do, we try to minimize, rationalize or disguise them.
If I admit to it at all, I tend to look downward, whisper quickly and pray that no one takes much notice because it feels shameful.
But maybe hopelessness is the first step to truly celebrating Christmas.
Think about Scrooge. When was his heart able to make the turn and embrace the joy that Christmas represents? It took one long night and four strange visitors to take him down a path where he understood his own strength was woefully inadequate to accomplish anything. It was finally the spectre of death-death of relationships, death of a child and the certainty of his own lonely demise that shook him from slumber and awakened him to real life and love and joy.
I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!
― A Christmas Carol
Now consider the story of the first Christmas. Two poor sojourners in desperate need of a place to stay and, even more important, a place to birth a baby.
But not just any baby. No, this was the Promised One, Immanuel, Jesus, Messiah, Light of the World. Yet He made His appearance in the dark, in a stable and unnoticed.
I don’t know if Mary felt hope-filled or hopeless as she labored without the company of other women to encourage and guide her. But I can imagine there were moments if not hours, of something like hopelessness.
Yet it ended with her holding the God of the universe in her hands.
What about Israel? Four hundred long years since Jehovah had shut the mouths of prophets and allowed the Apple of His Eye to wallow in the darkness they had begged for by turning away from the God Who loved them. Prophesies were still handed down like good luck tokens but many who heard them had long ago decided they didn’t matter.
It was dark in the world of Judea.
So, so very dark.
Hopelessness prevailed.
And that is precisely when the angel showed up and the sky was bright with praise:
Don’t be afraid! Listen! I bring good news, news of great joy, news that will affect all people everywhere. Today, in the city of David, a Liberator has been born for you! He is the promised Anointed One, the Supreme Authority!
~Luke 2:10-11 VOICE
It was all the brighter because it was dark. It was that much more joyous because hopeless hearts were longing for something to cling to.
There is no shame in being hopeless and broken.
God loves the broken. Christ came for the broken. It’s the broken and breathless who long for the Spirit to blow life across their wounded hearts.
It’s the hopeless and fearful that run faster to the safety of their Shepherd.
It’s the worried and weary who are thankful for a Burden-bearer.
Christmas is the story of Hope entering the world, of Light shining forth in darkness, of Love overcoming death.
A heart has to be looking to find it.
A heart has to be desperate to believe it.
A heart has to be hungry to come to the table of everlasting bread.
Have you been living in the land of deep shadows? I have. I’ve spent long years in that gray and weary country, and sometimes it makes me feel disqualified from Christmas. Most Christmas carols do not talk about daunting shadows or dreary days. They talk about sparkle and shimmer. They talk ho-ho-ho-ing and mistletoeing, and all of that is fine and fun if you’re having a great year. But let’s be honest about the fact that this relentless commercialized happiness is not really what lives at the heart of Christmas.
Christmas is deeper than that. It reaches into darker places. Jesus didn’t come to cheer us up. He came into the shadowlands we call home to set us free. He came to untangle us from the despair that wraps itself around our joy and peace and purpose. It seems, then, that hopelessness is the very first qualification for receiving the bright hope of Christmas. Perhaps you are exactly where you need to be to experience the miracle of Advent after all.
~Bo Stern, When Holidays Hurt
I wrote this three years ago and it was probably one of the first posts where I was bold enough to bare it all.
I was afraid to hit “publish” because I was afraid it would be misunderstood or seem pushy or too raw.
But then something amazing happened-I was out shopping later that day and had an email come through from the Huffington Post.
I thought it was a joke.
It wasn’t-they wanted to publish this on their blogging website platform. And they did. (You can read it here.)
It’s still one of my favorite posts-not because it was picked up by them but because it’s been shared by many, many grieving parents in an attempt to open the door of the closet full of emotions we often keep hidden.
People say, “I can’t imagine.“
But then they do.
They think that missing a dead child is like missing your kid at college or on the mission field but harder and longer.
That’s not it at all.
It isn’t nostalgia for a time when things were different or better or you talked more: it’s a gut-wrenching, breath-robbing, knee-buckling, aching groan that lives inside you begging to be released.
Read the rest What Grieving Parents Want Others to Know.
We do it all the time in the physical world-leave the shopping cart in line with the admonition to the person behind us to “hold our place” while we run to get that forgotten item.
We leave a gap for that minivan to pull in just where the construction cones narrow a highway from two lanes to one.
We open a door and step aside so the elderly lady with her hands full can manage to get through without dropping the load.
But most of us are not as good at it in relationships.
Read the rest here: Holding Space
I think I will repost this every year as long as I maintain this space.
It may get old for some, but it will never get old for me.
While my heart is turned toward thankfulness this time of year, I’m also profoundly aware of my own brokenness…
Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday.
My birthday sometimes falls on the day itself, and I have often been able to celebrate with extended family and friends-a full table of food and a full house of fellowship.
Read the rest here: Thankful But Broken
When someone invites you in and serves up her deepest pain along with the coffee it might feel like a trap or a burden or a bother.
But it’s actually an act of great respect and trust.
Not everyone gets the privilege of hearing a heart laid bare and broken, vulnerable and uncovered.
If you are entrusted with such a treasure, consider it a sacred privilege.
Treat it with care.
Carry it carefully.
Wrap it in love.
❤
Life after child loss can be described in various ways.
But any that ring true convey a sense that in an instant, everything is different, shattered, scattered, obliterated, changed.
I like this quote by Tolkien:
It’s the threads, the shards, the broken bits that I will spend a lifetime trying to gather, save and weave or glue back together.
It will never be what it was, but it can still be something.
I will always carry the scars.
The scars are proof of my love.
❤
It’s a hard, hard lesson to learn.
It’s even harder to carry it like a precious burden in the bosom of your heart.
Because while it is oh, so true, it does not take away the pain when circumstances just don’t change no matter how hard you pray, how long you endure or how much you wish they would.
God’s ways are not my ways. His thoughts are not my thoughts. He is not required to fit into whatever box I wish to place Him.
I came to child loss with what I thought was a pretty good understanding of Scripture, of theology and of Who God is.
What I realized was that no matter how much HEAD knowledge I had, it was only HEART knowledge that could sustain me in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
He [Christ] said not, ‘Thou shalt not be tempested, thou shalt not be trevailed, thou shalt not be dis-eased,’ but He said, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome.
•Julian of Norwich•
Some people live lives that make sense. They connect the dots-even of the hard and tragic things-into a picture that looks like something. They emerge from the ashes like a phoenix, wings outspread in victory and rising to new heights.
Not me.
I can’t figure out what God is doing with my life.
I don’t feel victorious.
Mostly I feel tired.
But I am absolutely convinced that God loves me and that He is doing SOMETHING. What that is and how He is doing it are hidden from me.
I don’t understand.
I can’t trace His hand.
But I trust His heart.
If there is anywhere on earth a lover of God who is always kept safe, I know nothing of it, for it was not shown to me. But this was shown: that in falling and rising again we are always kept in that same precious love.
•Julian of Norwich•
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