When I find words for my feelings it helps.
So I collect quotes, copying them down in my journal and sometimes hanging them where I can see them throughout the day.
Here are a few that speak to my heart. I hope they speak to yours. ❤
Read the rest here: Ten Grief Quotes That Speak To My Heart
Sometimes people ask, “How can you cling to Jesus when He could have saved your son, but didn’t?”
I give the same answer Peter gave, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
He is light and life in the Valley and on the hilltop, in the fire and in the flood.
Read the rest here: There’s Hope in Every Scar
I like to think of Dominic surrounded by songs and sounds of unimaginable beauty. So I count the days, and I count it joy that I will see him again.
I can hear him saying, “Do you really believe, Mom?”
Read the rest here: Prisoner Of Hope
One of the things I’m learning this side of burying my precious child is that there is no upper limit to the sorrow and pain I may have to carry in this life. And it’s no use comparing my burden to that of another-begging God to consider the differing weights and to make adjustments to lighten my load because it is heavier than that of another.
I do not get a pass on daily stress and strain.
I’m not guaranteed physical health.
I am just as likely as anyone else to get the grumpy cashier, to drop a dish or lose my keys. Or worse.
Read the rest here: Life is Absolutely NOT Fair
I don’t know about you, but sometimes cute little memes intended to help me “look on the bright side” fly all over me.
Sure, if life gives you lemons (bad hair day, late to work, long line at the grocery store) make lemonade.
But sometimes it’s not lemons life gives you, it’s an avalanche of pain, heartache and world-shattering awful.
Read the rest here: Distant Music
Life after child loss is full of seeming contradictions.
I am broken yet God is redeeming those fragments and reassembling a life of beauty and meaning.
The cracks are visible but they haven’t disqualified me as a vessel that can hold His love, His grace, His mercy and pour all that out on others.
I’m often scared, but am able to walk into each day brave in the knowledge I don’t walk alone.
Read the rest here: Scared and Brave: Reaching For Jesus in the Midst of Sorrow
It’s so easy to focus on the miles left to travel and forget how far I’ve come.
Life has a habit of reminding me that there are hills yet to climb, emotional hurdles still to come and (the ever looming threat) gray hair, wrinkles and an aging body with which to tackle them.
But every now and then I remember to take stock of just how many miles I’ve already traveled.
Read the rest here: Take A Minute To Remember How Far You’ve Come
I’m pretty sure I’m not the only bereaved parent who has boxed up things post loss and left them untouched for years.
Life kept moving at a fast pace after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven and it’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve had the time to even consider going through his stuff.
Time alone was not enough to push me toward doing the hard work of deciding what to keep, what to give away and (most painfully!) what to throw away. But various circumstances forced my hand and I’ve spent much of the last year digging through stuff and digging up memories.
To be sure, not everything has a direct connection to Dominic. I have a giant pile of craft materials that needed sorting and organizing.
Even then, as I put like items together I remembered pushing two littles in a buggy with two older children on either side through the craft store or Walmart. I knew where this tidbit was purchased and what school or church project prompted buying dozens of a certain sticker or wooden cut out.
This past week I’ve been working on “my” side of our two-car garage.
It’s never been used as a garage but instead as a catch-all for a house that has no basement. My side is where I store pantry overflow and all kinds of supplies from toilet paper to party goods.
It’s also where I put some things from Dominic’s kitchen when we had to hurriedly empty his apartment over seven years ago.
Seven years. How can it be seven years?
I finally had to do the hard work of deciding what I should REALLY keep and what it was time to let go of. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit. But it is necessary.
I’m taking it in small doses-two or three hours a day-and trying to give myself grace when even that amount of time doesn’t seem to make a dent.
It’s grueling labor to dig up memories and lay down dreams.
Unrelenting emotional work.
Every bit tossed in the trash is a declaration that he isn’t coming back to claim it. I can’t ask him if he deems it worthy of saving because I can’t ask him anything.
That in itself is a kind of concession to defeat.
Where he is he doesn’t need or miss this stuff but it represents hopes and dreams to me.
I have to lay them down.
And that hurts.
Have you ever wondered why there are lists of names in the Bible? Do you, like me, sometimes rush through them or pass over them to get to the “main part” of a story?
But look again, the names ARE the story.
The God of the Bible isn’t the God of the masses. He is the God of the individual.
Read the rest here: He Knows My Name
It is unhealthy to ignore pain.
But when it comes to emotional pain, we sometimes shut people out or shut them down.
I submit that we diminish the power of the cross when we deny or minimize the presence of pain.
Believing that God is in control and Jesus lives does not undo grief’s storm-it is a lifeline that keeps my desperate and hurting heart from sinking under the waves.
Read the rest here: Heartache and Hope
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