heart – Page 30 – thelifeididntchoose

Advent for the Brokenhearted: Birthplace Foretold

But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    are only a small village among all the people of Judah.
Yet a ruler of Israel,
    whose origins are in the distant past,
    will come from you on my behalf.
³The people of Israel will be abandoned to their enemies
    until the woman in labor gives birth.
Then at last his fellow countrymen
    will return from exile to their own land.
⁴And he will stand to lead his flock with the Lord’s strength,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
Then his people will live there undisturbed,
    for he will be highly honored around the world.
⁵    And he will be the source of peace.

Micah 5: 2-5a NLT

One of the things I struggle with since Dominic ran ahead to heaven is this: is every detail of history planned by God? Or are there general outlines filled in by human choices (good and bad) and leading ultimately to God’s working out HIS story within OUR stories?

How do I reconcile God’s sovereignty and my free will?

I’m still working on that.

But there is one thing I do understand. God had a plan from the foundation of the earth to reconcile sinful man to Himself by the birth, life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

He sent prophets to point the hearts of His people toward the place the Savior would be born. He laid out promise after promise for hundreds and thousands of years so that when Jesus came, they would be ready.

It was no accident Jesus was born precisely when and precisely where the prophets foretold.

Bethlehem-The House of Bread-became the place that housed the Bread of Life.

Here We Go Again: Season of Joy-Blessing the Brokenhearted During the Holidays

I wrote this two years ago, our second without Dominic.

This will be our fourth.

I’m still feeling my way along this path, still trying to figure out how to honor the missing and love the living in ways that are meaningful and helpful. I didn’t get a “how-to” book when my son died. I and other grieving hearts are doing the best we can.

Most parents feel a little stressed during the holidays.

We used to be able to enjoy Thanksgiving before our 24/7 supercharged and super-connected world thrust us into hyper-drive. Now we zoom past the first day of school on a highway toward Christmas at breakneck speed.

For bereaved parents, the rush toward the “Season of Joy” is doubly frightening.

Constant reminders that this is the “most wonderful time of the year” make our broken hearts just that much more out of place. Who cares what you get for Christmas when the one thing your heart desires–your child, alive and whole–is unavailable…

Read the rest here: Season of Joy: Blessing the Brokenhearted During the Holidays

Reminder for Weary Hearts

If you are worn and weary from surviving Thanksgiving, take a few days to recover.

December isn’t here yet.

Don’t let other peoples’ expectations push you farther or faster than your heart can bear.

It is perfectly acceptable to observe a pause between one holiday and the next.

Hiding in Plain Sight

They say that if you want to hide something so it’s never found, hide it in plain sight.

I think I’m living proof.

Because every single day I hide my wounded heart.

I walk right up to people and they never know. I conduct business, entertain family and friends, sing hymns in church and do daily tasks without a hint that something’s wrong-terribly, terribly wrong.

Am I stronger now than three years ago? Absolutely! I have developed muscles I didn’t know existed. I have a go-to method to stop tears, stop screams, stop tremors, stop panic attacks and swallow words that might otherwise slip out and give me away.

I can make small talk with the best of them. I’ve learned to redirect a conversation so that it cannot venture into territory that guarantees I won’t be able to keep it together.

I look for opportunities to serve at gatherings. Kitchen duty? First in line! It’s easy and perfectly acceptable to mutter one word replies when your hands are in the sink washing dishes.

I locate bathrooms and exits everywhere I go. Ducking into the ladies’ room or out the door for a minute or two is usually all I need to regather myself and reenter the fray.

All this hiding takes a toll. So much energy is needed to shield the world from the pain I carry.

I often find that after a holiday or extended period of social interaction I need a day (or a week!) to recover. And that’s OK.

I’m learning to say “no” to invitations or expectations or intimidation.

I’m learning I have to give myself time to regroup.

Because then I can reengage, recharged and ready to keep hiding my heart.

Gratitude and Grieving: The Truth Will Set You Free

How much energy do we spend dancing around the truth? How many times do we gather with family or friends and cast our eyes downward so we can ignore the elephant in the room? How many shackles would fall away if just one person stood up and said what everyone else was thinking but was afraid to whisper aloud?

As family gathers around the table for Thanksgiving, we all have those subjects no one will touch. And often they are the very ones that need to be laid bare, talked about and shared. They are what keep hearts apart even while bodies sit closer than any other time of year.

Now I’m no advocate of random outbursts intended to shock and raise a ruckus but I am a firm believer in speaking truth in love.

It’s hard.

In fact, next to carrying this burden of missing, it is the hardest thing I do.

And I am often unsuccessful.

I screw up my courage, practice my speech, lay out the strategy and then crumble, last minute, under dozens of potentially awful outcomes.

What if they get mad? What if they think I’m crazy, or selfish, or wrong?

Or I DO share and it falls flat because the words I thought would communicate love are misunderstood or misdirected or misapplied.

So instead of helping, I hurt.

But the alternative is this: we all remain imprisoned behind a wall where freedom is clearly visible on the other side. We can smell it, almost taste it but not quite touch it.

And that is not how I want to live.

I want to claim the freedom that truth offers.

So this Thanksgiving I will try again: truth in love.

Lots and lots of love with truth sprinkled in. Maybe the sugar in the pie will help.

I’ll never know if I don’t give it a shot.

Gratitude and Grieving: Appreciating What I Have, Acknowledging What I Miss

Gratitude does not undo grief.

There, I said it.

Gratitude is important. It is (in my opinion) a necessary ingredient for a healthy and hope-filled and useful life. It is the key to any real happiness a heart might find on this broken road.

But it cannot fill up the empty place where Dominic used to be.

Grief does not preclude gratitude.

Although some broken hearts swear it does. They have convinced themselves that if they cannot have the one thing they really want, then nothing else matters.

That’s a lie as well.

Grief is hard. I am grieved because I no longer have the earthly companionship of one of my children. But I refuse to dishonor Dominic’s memory and the life he lived by holding onto grief so hard that I squeeze out the love and life that is still available.

I am grateful AND grief-filled.

I appreciate what I have:

Three amazing children here and one in heaven.
A husband who loves me and works hard to provide for me.
Family and friends who care about me and love me well.
Food.
Shelter.
A home where animals (wild and otherwise!) bring me great comfort and pleasure.
Strength and relatively good health.

I acknowledge what I have lost:

The earthly companionship of my son.
The family I once had-we are no longer an unbroken circle.
Secure confidence in the future.
Sense of who I am.
Unbridled joy.

These things are not mutually exclusive.

Dark and light add contrast. You need both to see the whole picture.

If you are struggling and believing either of the lies-that gratitude undoes grief OR that grief precludes gratitude-may I ask you to try something?

Make a list of BOTH.

Give your heart permission to appreciate what you have AND acknowledge what you’ve lost.

I truly believe that is the healing path.

❤

Too Scared to Stay

How many reading this enjoy roller coasters? Or scary movies? Or action films?

My guess is that most like one or the other or all three.

Why? Because it’s fun to dip our emotional toe into deep water when we know we can take it out at any moment.

We experience a sort of “high” when the “fight or flight” adrenaline pumps through our veins but our minds know full well that we are in no real danger.

What’s much more difficult is to commit to experience in real time with real people the real emotional roller coaster of hard situations and unending sorrow or pain.

Then people tend to withdraw because they are too scared to stay.

I am so sorry that broken hearts are wounded further when friends or family just can’t bear the pain of watching us hurt and run away instead of walking with us.

They are afraid. I used to be afraid too. But I’m not afraid now.

My new bravery was purchased at great cost. And I don’t want to waste it.

This Valley is teaching my heart to reach out further, quicker, more often and to stick around longer than I was willing to before.

I want to stand with and speak courage to wounded hearts.

I want to help healed hearts that choose to be brave and commit to walk with those in pain.

And I am learning to extend grace to the hearts who choose to run away.

Fear is powerful and I can’t blame them.

But for those who remain, I am so, so grateful.

Transforming Pain

I have had my share of pain in life-physical, emotional and psychological.

Some of it I’ve brought on myself and some of it has been thrust upon me.

None of it was pleasant.

But by far the most excruciating pain I have endured is the death of my son. If someone could have induced this pain for five minutes as a preview before Dominic ran ahead to heaven, I would have sworn I couldn’t have withstood it for five minutes more.

Yet here I am not just minutes or months but years later. Still standing.

How? By the grace of God and by choosing to transform that pain into something besides just pain.

I cannot ignore the pain. It has changed me. But I won’t let it dominate me.

Instead I let is goad me into being a better me than I might have been if my heart were whole and unbroken.

I am gentler, more eager to listen to hurting hearts.

I am less likely to judge others and more likely to lend a helping hand. I am committed to walk gently through this life and to cause as little harm as possible and bring as much joy as is mine to give.

I definitely walk with a limp.

But I won’t let it stop me from walking.

❤

Why Self Talk Matters

What you tell yourself matters.

What you rehearse becomes what you believe.

What you believe becomes what you do.

When Dominic first ran ahead to Heaven, I was determined to hold onto truth with both hands. I would not allow my mind to wander the winding path of “Why?“ or “What if?” or “Where now?”

I was able to keep that up until the funeral.

Then the bottom fell out.

All the thoughts I had kept at bay crashed through my defenses like an invading army. My mind was consumed by questions, doubts, horrible imagery and awful anxiety.

Slowly, slowly I recaptured the conquered territory.

I hung scribbled Bible verses and encouraging quotes all around the house. I refused to read or listen to news stories recounting accidents. I began the day with remembering Dom was gone, but also remembering I was still here and that my three living children, husband and parents needed me.

When my heart screamed, “Give up! Give in! It’s not worth it!”

My head answered, “No. I will endure. I will continue. I will be the one to carry Dominic’s light into the world.”

If I speak doom, gloom and despair to myself then I will live darkness, defeat and disillusionment.

If I speak courage, calm and compassion to my heart then I will live with hope and reach for happiness.

Self-talk matters more than we know.

How I frame my experience-both my son’s death and my ongoing interaction with the living-determines if I will waste the days that remain or will work to make them count.

I have no control over the past, but I have a little over the future.

I can’t change what happened, but I can change my attitude.

Learning To Trust God Again After Loss

I am sharing from the perspective of child loss but the things God is teaching me have much broader application. If you are struggling because you feel like God has let you down, please read on. And please read the posts that follow this one.
God welcomes us to the divine dinner table to talk things out.
Join us.

If you’ve read the blog for very long, you’ve learned two things about me: (1) I am up front and honest about my feelings, my doubts, my faith and my heart; and (2) I’m not afraid to explore topics that often make the church uncomfortable.

So here I am again.

A few months ago I was asked to speak at a conference for bereaved parents and to take the topic of “Learning to Trust God Again After Loss”. I agreed, thinking that since I had already written extensively about this very thing, organizing my previously published musings would be easy enough to gather into a presentation.

But when I began trying to do that, I realized the bits and pieces needed an overarching narrative and theme to tie them together. I knew that LISTENING is very different than READING where you can go back and access the information over and over to make sure you understand what’s being said.

And I was operating on thin margins.

The weeks I planned on using to prepare were overtaken by a family emergency. So just two days before I was to leave home for Arkansas I was nearly paralyzed by panic-how in the world could I present a coherent message on such an important topic when I was having trouble stringing sentences together in everyday conversation?

But God…

Two words that are worth holding on to.

He gave me the framework. He gave me the words. He gave me the examples and the courage and the strength.

So for the next few days I’ll be sharing from my notes-putting into writing what I shared at the conference. Here I have the luxury of time and editing.

If you were there, I hope these posts can remind your heart of truth.

If you weren’t, I hope these posts can introduce your heart to truth.

It’s OK to doubt. It’s OK to ask questions. It’s OK to wonder if God sees you, hears you and cares about you.

That is part of the work we must do in grief.

It cannot be ignored and it cannot be rushed.

Come with me as we walk this Valley together, learning to trust our Shepherd again.

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