My friend and fellow bereaved mom, Margaret Franklin, Ryan’s mom, shared a beautiful Dutch word with me “Sterkte” (pronounced STAIRK-tah).
It literally translates “strength” or “power” but culturally means much more. It means bravery, strength, fortitude and endurance in the face of fear and insumountable odds through the empowering strength of God in me.
Not MY strength, but HIS.
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Appropriate God’s Strength
I have loved Scripture as long as I can remember. When I was in second grade I got the notion to read the whole Bible straight through-in the King James Version. I made it to Leviticus before I threw in the towel.
By the time my kids were grown I had read and studied Scripture for decades.
But three years before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I realized my reading had become rote-I felt like I “knew” all the stories. So I slowed my study to a crawl-only one chapter a day-and I usually copied the whole chapter plus my notes into a journal. I had just finished this time through the Bible in January before Dom was killed in April.
And all that truth stored in my mind and heart was what I “read” for months when my eyes were too full of tears to see print on a page.
Many verses stung-some still do-but I was committed to bathe my broken heart in what I knew was true. I would take it like medicine, even when it tasted awful. I knew-in the end-it was my only hope for help.
It’s easy when doubt creeps in to let my heart hold onto it-even in the face of Truth that puts the doubt to rest.
But if all I do is question, question, question and never still my soul to receive God’s answers or His comfort, then I will simply run out of oxygen and faith.
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Access the Truth
Grief forces me to walk Relentlessly Forward even when I long to go back.
I can’t stop the clock or the sun or the days rolling by.
Those of us who are more than a couple months along in this journey (or any journey that involves tragedy and loss) know that it is ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE to feel worse than in the first few days.
Because as the edges of the fog lift and the reality of an entire lifetime looms before you the questions form and the doubt sinks in:
Where ARE You God?
Why don’t You DO something?
Are You even LISTENING?
So many of us who have been in church for a long time think that Wrestling With God or entertaining doubt is sin-or, at best- unhealthy and proof of a weak faith.
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Acknowledge Doubt and Ask Questions
Child loss is Unnatural-no way around it.
Out of order death is devastating.
When my perfectly healthy, strong and gifted son was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident on April 12. 2014 my world fell apart. My heart shattered into a million pieces. And after three and a half years, I’ve yet to even FIND all of those pieces much less put them back together.
So what does a heart do when that happens? Because, try as I might, I cannot stop time.
Even THAT awful day only lasted 24 hours.
When the sun rose again, the pain was still there. And behind that pain and mixed with it was something else-disappointment, disaffection, distrust.
Where were You, God???
God is sovereign-He rules.
God is good-He loves.
How do those two truths live together in a universe that includes child loss? How can I trust the rest of my life and my eternal future to a God who lets this happen?
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Admit the Pain
I just got through sharing this past week with a couple of bereaved parent support groups on the topic of “Bringing our child with us into a New Year”.
We talked about how time is tricky once a child goes to Heaven.
In the course of our conversation, I talked about Psalm 139:16.
I know for some parents it brings tremendous comfort.
For others, it feels like the plainest interpretation (in English, at least) is that God ordained our child’s death and that feels cruel.
For what it’s worth, after consulting as many different translations as I could find and looking up key words in a concordance, this is how I think about that verse.
God is outside time. That’s why the Bible says Jesus “was slain from the foundation of the world”.
Yet we know, historically, that Jesus’ death occurred on a specific day in human history. When the Son of God came as the Son of Man and took on flesh, He was as much a prisoner of time as we are. That is why He wept with Mary and Martha at the death of Lazarus.
It’s not that God ordained my son’s death, it’s that He knew precisely when it would occur. If my son had not left his apartment that night and driven his motorcycle too fast in a curve, I do not for one minute think God would have sent a lightning bolt to end his life because it was “his day to die”.
Our lives are laid out before Him from birth through eternity and nothing is a surprise to Him.
He knows the end from the beginning.
And yet…He has also given us free will.
He has created a world in which biology, physics, and other natural laws prevail.
Sin has marred that creation and so bad things happen. Sometimes the bad things are a result of cells that grow out of control or body parts that don’t function properly. Sometimes the bad things are due to the sin of others or ourselves. Sometimes the bad things are “acts of nature”.
Death is not God’s will for any of us but it is something we must bear because of sin. Thankfully, for those who are in Christ Jesus, physical death is not the final word!
I do not understand this even as I type it.
It’s a mystery that I’ve learned to live with every day (some days it’s easier than others!).
Still, I am more comforted by a God I cannot fathom and Who is all-knowing, all-powerful and all-loving than I would be with a god I could fit into a box of my own making.
On the hard days, I have to remind my heart of that truth.
You can find my list of ways to keep our children close throughout the year here: https://www.heartacheandhope.org/_files/ugd/fc3456_9e8a535f36bd454a94e25872be82dec2.pdf
Trying to ignore or stuff our questions because they are uncomfortable or too hard to think about isn’t helpful. They just rattle around in our minds and burrow deeper into our hearts causing confusion and raising doubt.
One of the questions many bereaved parents desperately want to answer: Did God take my child?These are my thoughts-ones I believe are backed by Scripture and align with what I know personally about God’s character.
They are the result of many months of wrestling. I offer them in hopes they will help another heart.
❤ Melanie
This is a question that comes up all the time in bereaved parents’ groups: Did God take my child?
Trust me, I’ve asked it myself.
How you answer this question can mean the difference between giving up or going on, between turning away or trusting.
So this is MY answer. The one I’ve worked out through study, prayer and many, many tears. You may disagree. That’s just fine. I only offer it because it might be helpful to some struggling and sorrowful soul.
Read the rest here: Did God Take My Child?
Several recent conversations and comments have reminded me again how much energy and effort it takes to work through the cosmic questions that rock every bereaved parent’s world.
When Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I no longer had the luxury of turning a blind eye to things like, “How do you reconcile God’s sovereignty with free will?” and, “What difference does prayer make?” or, “Why do bad things happen to ‘good’ people?”.
These are the questions that filled my mind and kept me awake at night after burying my son. Questions I was free to ignore before they took up residence in my soul and echoed in my head with every thump, thump, thump of my beating heart.So I’m digging out some old posts where I share how I came to understand those questions, live with many (most?) unanswered yet hold fast to the truth that God’s faithful love and grace are sufficient and unending.
I hope it helps another heart.
❤ Melanie
We are a people who love a good mystery as long as it leads to a good ending-bad guys vanquished, questions answered, motives revealed and a tidy resolution.
But real life is rarely so neat and squared away.
Just consider your average doctor’s visit. Diagnosis is often a result of trial and error when a simple blood test or throat culture is unavailable to confirm or rule out a particular malady. Yet we blunder forward, trying this and that until something either works or the illness runs its course.
Relationships are even trickier. We stand toe-to-toe with others hoping we understand what they are saying or not saying, feeling or not feeling-all the while forced to act and react in the space between. It’s a wonder we aren’t all at war with one another.
And then there are the big “What ifs?” and “Whys?”
The cosmic questions that rock our world and threaten to undo us.
These are the questions that filled my mind and kept me awake at night after burying my son. Questions I was free to ignore before they took up residence in my soul and echoed in my head with every thump, thump, thump of my beating heart.
It took a very long time for me to learn to live with them unanswered. And there are still moments when I scream aloud and raise my fist to the sky, demanding an accounting.
But most days, I can rest in that space between the asking and the answer-if not exactly at peace-then at least in a state of suspended animation.
And that may really be all God expects of me this side of heaven.
Job never did get any answers.
He stood before God speechless and in awe.
That’s pretty much where I am right now.
I don’t have to like it.
I don’t have to understand it.
I only have to be willing to admit that He is God and I am not.
Job answered God:
“I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything.
Nothing and no one can upset your plans.
You asked, ‘Who is this muddying the water,
ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’
I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me,
made small talk about wonders way over my head.
You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking.
Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!
I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!
I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”Job 42:4-6 MSG
I must remind my heart every day that Jesus Himself declared the blessing in mourning.
I must remember that there is comfort available at His feet.
Not in running from my pain, but in embracing it and trusting Him to redeem it.
What blessing is there in mourning? What comfort in distress? What good can come from pain and brokenness?
Good questions.
Honest questions.
Questions I have asked God.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”~Jesus
The folks that followed Him up the hill were part of a nation that had waited centuries for deliverance from sin and persecution. Jesus was surrounded by people powerless to change their circumstances. They were grieving, mourning, in distress.
So when He said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” He was offering real hope to the brokenhearted. He was issuing an invitation…
When we reach the end of our own strength in grief, God invites us into a fellowship of suffering that includes Jesus Christ.
Burying a child is a humbling experience. It is teaching me that I am powerless and oh, so dependent on the grace and mercy of God.
My heart was broken open wide to receive the truth that fierce love makes me vulnerable to deep pain.
And the pain cleared the clutter and noise of the everyday to focus my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection on the eternal.
My life is swept clean of distraction and foolish things and filled with new understanding of what is important and lasting.
My pain has not disappeared.
But it is making room for the God of all comfort to fill it with hope:
That what I am feeling right now is not forever and forever is going to be glorious…
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:4 KJV
What, exactly, is the value of believers in Jesus plastering an “Everything is fine” mask across our faces?
Are we afraid that if we allow someone to see our pain we are letting God down?
And how could that be?
Did not Christ Himself beg the Father in the Garden to take the cup from Him?
Yet we smile and wave and chat our way through encounters with people around us, pretending, pretending, pretending that life is easy when it most certainly is not.
Denying the dark and refusing to acknowledge the depth of our pain diminishes the value of the comfort of Christ.
When David wrote that, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me” he understood both the desperate need for and the great assurance of Christ’s Presence.
When we allow others to see our broken hearts, we bear testimony to the sustaining grace of Jesus.
And we extend an invitation for them to meet this Savior that gives strength and comfort even in the darkest hours and hardest journeys.
We just moved through the feel-good season of Christmas where we look with awe on baby Jesus, cute and cuddly in swaddling clothes, surrounded by His loving parents.
But what most moderns miss is that even in His birth, His death was foretold.
The manger was most likely hewn from stone, as was His tomb. And while the wise men’s gifts were costly and appropriate, they not only spoke of His kingship, they also included myrrh which was used for embalming the dead.
Jesus came to live so that He could die.
Both His life and his death are models for my own.
Every day of ministry was a day of self-denial-a pouring out of life onto and into the ones He came to serve.
And if anyone-if ANY. ONE.-could have lifted Himself above those who presented their brokenness like offerings at His feet, He certainly could. Not only was He without sin, He was God Himself in the flesh.
But look how gently Jesus welcomed the lost and lonely. See the compassion of the Good Shepherd for His confused sheep. Notice the love and kindness as He gathered the children around Him.
THIS is my example.
I am most certainly not above my Master.
I am called to love and serve as He did-not in a condescending way that says, “I am helping you because I am better than you.” But in a way that says, “I am helping you because I AM you.”
I have nothing I did not receive. I have nothing to give except from the bounty of my Lord.
My heart is just as broken as the next heart.
We all need His touch.
thelifeididntchoose 