I confess.
When I used to drive by an unkempt yard, a run down house or bumped into an untidy person, I would think, “Goodness! Don’t they care about their yard, home or appearance? They need to do better! I would NEVER let my (fill in the blank) look like that.”
I don’t do that anymore.
Because I’ve learned that there are all kinds of reasons a body may not be busy mowing a lawn, painting a porch or even putting on matching socks.
Read the rest here: Life Happens
Like many families in the United States ours has entirely too much stuff.
Homeschooling four children over twenty years and living in the same house for longer than that added to the pile of memories and tokens tucked in boxes and corners.
This week I decided (along with my youngest son) to tackle a couple of storage buildings we have. It was definitely time to clean out, throw out and pare down the piles.
So together we opened the doors and dug in.
Boxes that hadn’t been opened for years spilled out souvenirs from childhood, teen years and early adulthood. It was tempting to get lost in remembering but the heat of summer spurred us on.
More than once tears threatened and I had to take a deep breath to keep going.
Cleaning out is especially hard on my heart.
Just a couple months before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I had gone through a ton of homeschooling papers, memorabilia and odds and ends, gleefully culling them down to a few representative bits I thought I’d box or scrapbook into a keepsake for each child.
I filled my truck bed with boxes and boxes and took it to the dump. I enjoyed tossing them on the pile and relished the now organized space left at home.
What felt like freedom then, feels like regret and longing now.
Because what I have left of the physical presence of my son is represented in the scraps I have kept-the clothes, the notes, the scribbled comments in the margins of his notebooks and college texts.
So I’m careful about what gets tossed and what I keep.
And regardless how many bins and boxes I sort through on a given day, I’m exhausted by the end of it.
It’s ALL heavy lifting for my heart even when it’s light in my arms.
❤
At first grief felt only like sorrow and longing and brokenness.
Then it felt like confusion and anxiety and despair.
A little further along this journey it mostly felt like apathy.
Now it feels like love.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/09/23/grief-its-really-just-love/
We had to put down a sick goat the other day.
I say “we” loosely because the men in my family shield me from the hard task of taking life.
But it still hurts.
I hate that life is hard and death is the end of all living things.
More than six years after Dominic left us and I still cry. I’m OK and then I’m not OK.
I don’t know what to tell you-I’m stronger but it’s not easier.
Last year around this time I was hunkered down with my daughter-in-law, my grandson and her mama at my parents’ farm waiting on Hurricane Dorian to make landfall.
It was eight days with a full house, some craziness and lots and lots of sweet memories that I now treasure more than I could have ever imagined while we were making them.
My mama joined Dominic in Heaven just a few short weeks later.
Hurricanes and random shootings and sudden death can make a heart remember that relationships are really what matters.
One hard, hard lesson I’ve learned from waking up one morning to a never-coming-home son is this: You may not have another chance to make amends, say “I love you“, kiss a face or hug a neck.
I’m here to tell you: don’t drown your important relationships in unsaid words, unshared feelings, unacknowledged wounds.
All that does is guarantee distance grows between your hearts.
If you let the distance become too vast, or the pile of unsaid truth get too high, you might just find you can’t reach that far or that high to reconnect.
It takes a bit of brave to say what’s important and uncomfortable.
Read the rest here: Speaking Truth
Hey- I love a joke as much as anyone.
But there’s a difference between a genuine joke and a mocking comment made at the expense of another.
So often we laugh off things other people endure because we are afraid-afraid of the pain and the broken heart bearing it.
Stop laughing. Start loving. 
You’d think I’d know how valuable tears are by now.
But sometimes I forget.
Tears cleanse, they provide release for emotion too deep for words. They are precious.
And when you have someone who understands that, who sits silent in the sacred space where tears fall freely, that is a beautiful gift.
Let me come in where you are weeping, friend,
And let me take your hand.
I, who have known a sorrow such as yours,
Can understand.
Let me come in — I would be very still
Beside you in your grief;
I would not bid you cease your weeping, friend,
Tears can bring relief.
Let me come in — I would only breathe a prayer,
And hold your hand,
For I have known a sorrow such as yours,
And understand.
Grace Noll Crowell, To One in Sorrow
Those of you who have followed the blog for a bit know that I’ve said over and over and over: there is no limit to the heartache you may have to endure in this life.
The past three years have been the most difficult since the very first year after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven in 2014.
But this memory popped up in my Facebook timeline the other day and reminded me that along with all the hard, there have been some beautiful blessings.
Two years ago around this time I was listening to day after day after day of witnesses giving first one account and then another of events that happened three years prior trying to frame facts so that the twelve jurors would vote a certain way.
Only my friends and family from miles away helped me hold onto the thin thread of hope that truth would prevail.
It was brutal and not something I ever want to repeat.
If you ever wonder if a phone call, text, card or message make a difference, just ask me.
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I would not have made it without them.
How long has it been? A year, two, eighteen or twenty-five?
When. are. you. going. to. move on?
Aren’t you over talking about their birth story, their childhood, their school years, their spouse, children, moves and career? How many funny stories or sad recollections do I have to listen to?????
I mean, really-it’s been soooooooooo00 long since they were BORN!
Sound’s ridiculous, doesn’t it? It IS ridiculous.
Read the rest here: Move On Already!
Walking beside a hurting heart is hard.
Especially for “fixers”.
We want to DO something, to effect change, to “solve the problem”, to make things better.
But there are circumstances in life that cannot be fixed, changed or solved.
Child loss is one of them.
Those suffering under the load of pain and sorrow, devastation, heartbreak and brokenness that enter a heart when a child leaves this earth need compassionate companionship, not advice.
That might mean you have to bite your tongue. It might mean you have to sit silent as tears roll down or sobs wrack your friend’s body. It might mean that you have to refrain from making comparisons between their grief and your own (whatever that might be).
It most certainly means that you should keep reaching out, reaching across the divide that separates the bereaved from the non-bereaved, and put your own ego aside when it seems like all the effort you are making isn’t making a difference.
It takes lots and lots of time and lots and lots of work for a heart to even begin to heal from deep grief.
Your constant and unwavering support can provide the space and grace that enables someone to do that.
Don’t give up on your brokenhearted friend.
Encouragement can make the difference between giving up or going on.
Your compassionate companionship can offer hope and light in a hopeless and very dark place.
thelifeididntchoose 