Category: jesus

Grief On Display: August Through the Years

I’m doing this as much for ME as for anyone else-going through seven plus years of blog posts to take stock of how my grief journey has changed over time.

I thought it would be helpful to some newcomers (both to the site and to the path) and to those who’ve been around since the beginning to look back and take stock.

For those who are fresh on this road, I pray they are encouraged to know they are not alone. For those who’ve traveled far, I pray they recognize the many ways they have grown stronger and better able to carry this burden.

So here are the blog posts for this date, in order, from 2016 through 2022. When there were duplicates (because I had reposted a previous entry) I am leaving it out.

2016: Prayers I Still Pray

As I mentioned yesterday, prayer after loss is complicated for me.  I wrote a post months ago The Problem of [Un]Answered Prayer that addressed this.

But I AM able to pray Scripture-especially the prayers of Paul, which are centered on asking God to strengthen others and to expand their understanding of His love, compassion, power and grace.

Read the rest here: Prayers I Still Pray, Part II

2017

Obviously, this particular post is dated. But I’m including it because it was the first time I’d been asked to speak instead of WRITE about my loss. It was a great step of faith and I am thankful I did it.

My mother was gravely ill (she lived 2 more years but we weren’t certain at the time) and it was a long and arduous journey to Arkansas (not by miles but by emotional endurance).

I was able to hug the necks-for the first time- of so many fellow loss parents who had encouraged and strengthened me.

❤

If you are a bereaved parent and can fly,

drive

or walk to Hot Springs, Arkansas October 6-7

you will want to make the journey

Read the rest here: Amazing *FREE* Opportunity for Bereaved Parents

2018: Trusting God After Loss-Why It’s Hard, Why It’s Necessary

One of the greatest challenges I faced this side of child loss was finding a space where I could speak honestly and openly about my feelings toward God and about my faith.

So many times I was shut down at the point of transparency by someone shooting off a Bible verse or hymn chorus or just a chipper, “God’s in control!”

They had NO IDEA how believing that (and I do!) God is in control was both comforting and utterly devastating at the very same time.

It took me awhile to revisit the basic tenets of my faith and tease out what was truly scriptural and what was simply churchy folklore. 

Read the rest here: Trusting God After Loss: Why It’s Hard, Why It’s Necessary

2019: Safe In My Daddy’s Arms

When I was a little girl my family made a yearly pilgrimage to the white sand and clear water beaches in Florida.

We were allowed to wade out on our own as high as our waist while the adults talked and sunbathed on shore. If we wanted to go deeper, even for those of us who were good swimmers, we had to wait for the grown ups to join us.

I have a vivid memory of one sunny day when the waves were rolling in and my six-foot-tall dad was standing neck deep in the Gulf. I was a little closer to shore and decided to join him.

My young mind didn’t do the math between my short self and his taller one and stepped off an underwater ledge into water way over my head. I panicked when I realized there was no way for me to save myself.

Read the rest here: Scripture Journal Challenge: Safe In My Daddy’s Arms

2020: I Really DO Get It

I write a lot about what bereaved parents (me!) wish others knew or understood about child loss and this Valley we are walking.  And I am thankful for every person outside the child loss community who chooses to read and heed what I write.

But I want to take a minute to tell those of you who are not part of this awful “club” that I get it-I really do get it–when you need to put distance between yourself and me or other people walking a broken road.

We all love to think that life is a never-ending ascent toward bigger, better and more enjoyable moments.

Our children are born and we think only of their future, not their future deaths.

Read the rest here: I Get It-I Really DO Get It.

2021: Reaching For Jesus in the Midst of Sorrow

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

2022: Choosing Transparency

Needless to say I’m still here.

But I think it’s important to document my own self-doubt and my weariness.

Maybe it’s something about the heat of August or maybe it’s just the too-early appearance of holiday decorations reminding my heart another frenetic season is just around the corner.

Whatever the reason, this month seems to always be one of reflection.

❤ Melanie

It will soon be seven years since I started writing in this space and I have to say, it’s been such a blessing to share the good, the bad, the ugly and the desperate with hearts that choose to come alongside and encourage me!

But I’m tired.

I’m just not certain I can keep pumping out (even recycled) posts every single day.

Read the rest here: Choosing Transparency

The Best is Yet to Come!

Funerals.

Sigh…

I just came home from my uncle’s funeral. He met Jesus face-to-face the end of June but we didn’t have his service until July 29th for lots of reasons.

Then I opened my computer after a long day of travel and unloading a car full of memories to the news a precious friend-in-loss and indefatigable encourager of grievers had laid down for a nap and woke in the arms of her Shepherd King.

Joy Hart Young was famous for saying, “The BEST is yet to come!” and I believe she is experiencing it at this very moment. She’s in the Presence of the One who saved her, sustained her and loves her. She is reunited with her son, Matt, and tears will never again be her food.

No more night. No more death. No more sadness or sickness or disappointment or sin.

Hallelujah! Amen.

My uncle was old and full of years. Joy wasn’t exactly a spring chicken (she’d approve of my saying that) but she wasn’t the age one might expect to leave this world. Her son and my son were so, so young when their earthly lives ended and their heavenly ones began.

Death comes to us all. No one gets out alive.

Death is a line in the sand that cannot be crossed. What hasn’t been said or done can never be said or done. That’s one of the reasons it’s so very hard.

My uncle made some choices that were burdensome for his family to live with after he left. They will continue to mold his legacy in the hearts and minds of those who loved him.

Joy chose to take the pain of child loss and allow it to shape her into a vessel of hope, grace and encouragement for other parents suffering the same devastating sorrow.

So I’m reminded again that our time here is short. How short (or long) only the Lord knows.

What I do in that time matters.

I won’t get a second chance to live my life. I can’t recoup lost moments or lost years.

There are some practical things I can do like create an end-of-life file or notebook to make it easier on those left behind.

But there are more important things I NEED to do if I’m going to leave a legacy of love.

I have to keep short accounts, make amends, ask for and grant forgiveness.

I need to hug necks, speak aloud the beauty I see in others, shake off shame and emotional baggage.

One day (please Lord let it be!) I’ll lie down and not wake up.

I hope the only sorrow I leave behind is the sorrow of missing my presence, not the sorrow of unsaid words or unhealed wounds.

I’m human.

I’ll miss someone or someplace I need to address.

But (Hallelujah! Amen.) in Heaven it will all be made whole.

The best is yet to come!

Joy Hart Young

Mustard Seed Faith is Enough on My Worst Days

I didn’t grow up doing in-depth Bible studies so when I “discovered” the Bible in my early twenties, it was an exciting adventure to dig for treasure in the Word of God.

Along with Scripture itself, I devoured book after book on theology.

I could not get enough.

By my mid-thirties I had developed a fairly well-defined and defensible doctrine. I really thought I understood how God works in the world.

Then my son died.

Read the rest here: On My Worst Days, Mustard Seed Faith is Enough

Why I Choose to Say, “My Son Died”.

Died.  

It is a harsh word.

I understand completely that some parents don’t want to use it to describe their child and I respect that.

I have chosen to use it often (not always-sometimes I say “left” or “ran ahead to heaven”) because what happened IS harsh. I don’t want to soften it because there was nothing soft about it for me or my family.

Read the rest here: Why I Say, “My Son Died.”

Hope Helps, But It Doesn’t Erase the Pain

It is unhealthy to ignore pain.

heal and acknowledge

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

Jesus Knows Your Name

I have family members and friends who are facing situations where they feel alone and lonely.

Some are wondering if God is listening, if He cares, if He sees, if He actually even knows they exist.

I get it-really I do.

When awful storms cross your own threshold and you’ve previously clung to the notion that God is everywhere, that He is good and that He is controls everything; it’s hard to square that with what you’re experiencing.

I can’t answer all your questions. Goodness, I’m waiting for my own to be answered!

But I can tell you that I am absolutely, positively convinced that the Lord of Heaven, our Shepherd King-Jesus-sees you, knows you and loves you.

And I pray His Presence is made manifest to you today in whatever mess you find yourself in.

❤ Melanie

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

Like a Blessing Buried in the Broken Pieces

In the waiting, in the searching

In the healing and the hurting

Like a blessing buried in the broken pieces

Every minute, every moment

Where I’ve been and where I’m going

Even when I didn’t know it or couldn’t see it

There was Jesus

Jonathan Smith/Casey Beathard/Zach Williams, “There Was Jesus”

Songs reach places in my heart that words alone can never touch.

Read the rest here: Every Minute, Every Moment There Was Jesus

So Many, Enrolled In The School of Suffering

Today I’m remembering the parents at Uvalde, Texas.

When I first heard the news last year I was enveloped in a fog of disbelief (like most folks) and utter horror (as only fellow bereaved parents can comprehend).

I was processing. I was mourning. I was angry.

I relived the awful reality of learning that my child will never again walk through my door, hug my neck, call my name, sit at my table or contribute to a family conversation.

So I want to share something I wrote a couple years ago because I think it’s important.

❤ Melanie

I have written before that Grief is Not a Hammer in the Hand of God.

I do not for one minute believe that the Lord I love inflicted this pain on me for the purpose of “teaching me something”.

But I absolutely, positively believe that He can use it (and HAS used it) to make me more compassionate, kinder and more grace-filled than I was before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven.

Still, “becoming” is painful and requires that I submit to the hand of the Potter.

Read the rest here: Unwanted Assignment: Enrolled in the School of Suffering

Holy Week 2023: Resurrection-Reality and Reassurance

“The worst conceivable thing has happened, and it has been mended…All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” ~Julian of Norwich

I’m not sure when I first read this quote, but it came to my mind that awful morning.   And I played it over and over in my head, reassuring my broken heart that indeed, the worst had already happened, and been mended.

Death had died.

Christ was risen-the firstfruits of many brethren.

Read the rest here: Resurrection: Reality and Reassurance

Holy Week 2023: Why Good Friday Matters as Much as Resurrection Sunday

On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more.
On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall.

Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.

~C.S. Lewis,  Miracles

Bury a child and suddenly the death of Christ becomes oh, so personal. 

The image of Mary at the foot of the cross is too hard to bear.

Read the rest here:  Remember: Why Good Friday Matters as Much as Resurrection Sunday