Category: Love

Repost: In Love’s Service Only Wounded Soldiers Will Do

I wrote this last year around this time. I was planning my daughter’s wedding and coming off an extremely stress-filled and difficult year.

Little did I know more wounding was in store.

And now we find ourselves collectively fearful of an invisible enemy. We are holding our breath, waiting to see what the worst will be.

In this hour of need, we wounded soldiers have something to offer our frightened friends and neighbors. Suffering well gives us authority to offer true compassion and genuine love.

Let’s be the light.

❤ Melanie

So often we hide our wounds.

Sometimes it’s because others have shamed us into covering up.  Sometimes it’s because our hearts have been stomped on by folks who might mean well but really don’t understand what it’s like to live every day with a messy and unfinished story.

But there’s no shame in being broken. 

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/03/27/in-loves-service-only-wounded-soldiers-will-do/

Fly The Plane

I was talking to my dad the other morning as I do every morning.

We catch one another up on personal news and then turn to the world at large.

After another day of dismal and disconcerting headlines I asked my retired fighter pilot/flight instructor/still flying/recently bereaved dad, “So, how are you REALLY doing?”

He replied, “I’m flying the plane.”

He told me the first rule of flying was: NO MATTER WHAT– never, never, never stop flying the plane.

Papa’s been flying for over 50 years!

Even if the only thing you can do is fly it into a crash.

Focus on the essentials.

Don’t be distracted by incidentals.

Save all your energy for the things you CAN do something about and ignore the things you can’t control.

As he was talking I realized that somewhere in my 56 years he had taught me this lesson well although he’d never taught me to fly.

So that’s what we are doing.

It’s what we’re all doing.

We are taking care of the things we can and trying hard to not waste any energy on things we can’t. We’re checking on one another, encouraging one another, making sure each one is getting proper nutrition and rest and refusing to sweat the small stuff.

I can’t see my ICU nurse daughter because she’s possibly been exposed to the virus and I am immunosuppressed.

So I dug through my stash and sent her and the foster kids she helps her best friend parent a box brimming full of random craft supplies to stave off boredom.

It’s not much but it’s something I CAN do.

I’m walking every day and keeping my cardiovascular system as fit as possible.

I’m writing and posting on several public Facebook pages I maintain. One is dedicated to bereaved parents, another to general spiritual encouragement and a third to educational resources for parents who suddenly find themselves having to teach their children at home when they were used to sending them off to school.

I have cleaned out a few random corners that should have been cleaned months (let’s be honest-years!) ago. And I’m checking in on friends and neighbors.

My public health officer son is running crazy so I don’t bombard him with texts or messages but I try to shoot him at least one encouraging word every day. He calls when he can and just last evening treated us to a FaceTime session with our little Captain.

Seeking joy wherever we can find it is part of our daily routine. And nothing says “JOY!” like this happy smile.

My husband is working from home (THAT’S an adjustment for this women who loves her quiet time!) so I fixed him up a work station and make sure I don’t interrupt his conference call by hollering something from the kitchen (or vacuuming under his feet). He’s making some adjustments to my preference for light-hearted viewing in the evenings and saving his heavier, action-packed choices for after I go to bed.

Kind of a trial run for his retirement.

NOT my house, but yes, I’ve vacuumed around him more than once 🙂

The son that lives close by has become our errand runner and grocery store shopper.

He picks up what we need, being extra careful to clean his hands and clothes before bringing it into the house. He shopped for our elderly neighbor as well. He’s doing his part to maintain a buffer between those of us who may be more susceptible and the virus.

Flying the plane means we are keeping our wits about us, doing the important and necessary things.

But it also means we are finding moments to take a breath, enjoy a laugh, watch a sunset, go for a walk, listen to the birds sing, play with the dog or cats, share a funny meme, and eat meals together.

We can’t control the world but we can control our reaction to what it tosses our way.

We can’t guarantee our safety but we can choose to do things that enhance it.

Tomorrow the wings might fall off.

But today we are flying the plane.

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A Bit Of My Heart

“People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou

It’s easy when you’re scared to shout loudly at whatever scapegoat crosses your path. But it’s hardly helpful.

My earnest hope in this season of worldwide fear is this: that people will show themselves to be more compassionate than they think they are, that communities will come together instead of falling apart and that while politicians may work hard to spin headlines one way or the other, citizens will insist on helping one another instead of hating one another.

❤ Melanie

A friend recently posted that not all the lessons of grief are bitter.

Some are sweet.

She’s right.

I’ve learned a lot on this journey.  And one of the sweet things I’ve learned is that the best thing to offer fellow travelers is a bit of my heart instead of a piece of my mind.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/03/09/a-bit-of-my-heart-instead-of-a-piece-of-my-mind/

Defying Fear: First Birthdays and New Memories

A year ago I was in the same city under very different circumstances.

My first grandson had been born at just over 28 weeks because his mama developed HELLP syndrome and was in mortal danger. Both he and she were in the hospital while we held our collective breath, begging for them to be OK.

We were filled with quiet but uneasy joy knowing as we do how death can come to steal it away.

This Sunday, family and friends gathered to watch this little guy grab his first birthday cake with gusto and smear his mama and daddy with blue icing.

You’d never know he got such a tentative start in life just by looking at him.

Grateful is too small a word for how we feel.

Melanie ❤


THIS YEAR:

LAST year:

Last week was a roller coaster.

My first grandchild-a boy-was born prematurely on Saturday after several days of heart stopping, breath robbing drama as his mama went back and forth to the hospital three times in as many days.

My son, his father, is deployed overseas and paddling as fast as he can to get home.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/03/11/fear-of-what-you-know/

The Best Time To Plant A Tree

Life is really rather unforgiving, isn’t it?

I can only live forward and there are no do-overs.

No amount of regret can roll back the clock and give me another chance to do it right, do it better or just do it at all.

I can’t undo or redo my past.

If I’ve made blunders, hurt hearts, missed opportunities or just plain screwed up, I have to live with that. And other people might have to live with the damage I’ve inflicted.

I need to own that.

But it is not helpful to let regret stop me working NOW to repair, restore and rebuild relationships.

Sometimes my best efforts may be rebuffed.

If I’ve hurt someone’s heart they have every single right to tell me, “No. I won’t let you back in.” I don’t get to establish a timeline for their healing. But if I don’t try to make amends I can be sure the rift won’t be mended.

If someone has hurt me I can choose to look beyond that pain, forgive the offense and commit to begin now, leaving the past in the past, and start fresh.

If so much time has passed that it feels awkward-so what? Embarrassment is a small price to pay for restoration.

So write a letter.

Send a card.

Make a phone call.

Offer peace.

There’s a proverb that’s been spoken by my family for years. It goes like this. A young man asks an old farmer, “When’s the best time to plant a tree?”

The old man answers, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. But the next best time is now.”

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I can’t go back and sow seed or plant trees when I wish I had.

But I can start now and plant for the future.

Who knows what kind of fruit it might bear?

Hardly The Time For Being Taught

It seems to be the nature of humans to listen with an ear to respond rather than an ear to hear.

I’ve done it myself.

Jumped right in with all kinds of suggestions designed to “fix” someone else’s problem.

Or worse, heaped my own experience with something more or less (often less) similar onto an already overburdened heart.

I hate that tendency in myself and I’m working hard to try to change it.

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Those who feel compelled to just say SOMETHING often bombard grievers with platitudes, comparisons to their own grief or just empty, frivolous words that require we either stand there dumbfounded or find a gracious way to exit the conversation.

It’s especially painful for a broken heart when a well-meaning someone decides THIS is the moment for a theology lesson.

“God has something planned for you in this” or “God will use this for good”. (Romans 8:28-29)

“We don’t grieve as those without hope!” ( I Thessalonians 4:13)

“All our days are numbered.” (Psalm 139:16)

I get it-death is a heavy subject and the death of a child isn’t something anyone wants to talk about, contemplate or be forced to wrestle with. So it’s often easier to simply say something-anything-do your duty and walk away.

But it is hardly helpful.

Deep grief as a result of unbearable loss is not a teaching moment.

It’s an opportunity to listen well, think carefully about if or when you need to say anything and simply offer compassionate companionship to a broken heart.

Grieving felt hardly like the time for being taught, at least initially. Early grief was my time for pulling out of my past those truths that I had already learned — out of my ‘basement — so that I could begin to assemble them together into something even more meaningful to me than before. It was the time for understanding that even though I had always believed in heaven, it now looked to my perceptions to be more real than this world. It was the time when, even though I already believed in God’s control of the world, I now felt dependent upon him being sovereign over it for all my hopes. It was the time for realizing that even though I already believed that Christ conquered death, I now longed to see death die.

Lianna Davis, Made for a Different Land

Life Has Limits: Making Choices So My Legacy Lasts

Not every soul lives to be “full of years”.

Some are snatched away when life has barely begun while others live a bit but not long enough. Even those whose lives span decades seem gone too soon for those left behind.

Dominic died just six weeks short of his twenty-fourth birthday.  

My mother lived four days past her eighty-first.

We didn’t expect either of them to leave us when they did. Yet, here we are.

A day dawned that did not include them and there will be a sunrise that does not include me.

There is a limit to my opportunity to leave a legacy of love, of influence and of purpose to those who come behind. I want it to be one that lasts, that matters and that has eternal impact.

That’s why it matters how I spend my days. 

Because days make up weeks which make up months, years and decades and then it’s over. 

That doesn’t make me sad-because what comes next is more wonderful than what I have here-no matter how wonderful I think it is. 

But it makes me thoughtful. 

Paul reminds the Ephesians:

“Look carefully then how you walk!

“Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people), Making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity], because the days are evil. Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.” 

~Ephesians 5:15-17 Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC)

While the days are often long, the years are short.

I don’t get a “do over” but I can do better.

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God has prepared good works for me to do.  My responsibility is to look for them and to do them.  

I LOVE these verses in Ephesians:

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing. 

Ephesians 2:7-10 MSG

Do you hear what Paul is saying? 

God saved us from sin and death.  But that’s not all! 

He saved us TO a life of loving service.  And He’s already set the opportunities in place for us to simply take advantage of as we walk on in our lives! 

I don’t have to go out of my way to find them.  I simply have to offer up myself as a living sacrifice and trade my will for His. 

God never wastes anything. 

Not even suffering. 

I’ve served in some capacity within my local Body for my entire adult life.  But when Dominic died, I found I was so broken I couldn’t do it anymore.  I had to step back, nurse my shattered heart and try to heal. 

But about a year and a half after he left for Heaven, I felt God nudging me to try again. 

So I did. 

I started sharing my struggle, my faith and my experience in daily blog posts. 

What began as kind of grudging obedience to God’s prompting has become a lifeline for me and for other bereaved parents. 

It takes time.  It takes effort.  It takes commitment. 

And there are days when I don’t want to do it. 

But I’m convinced it’s one of the works God prepared beforehand that I should do. 

There will be a day when my work will cease and the book will be closed on my earthly life.

Until then, I will strive to remember what Jesus told His disciples:  “While it is daytime, we must do the works of the One who sent Me. But when the sun sets and night falls, this work is impossible.” (John 9:4 VOICE)

What has God equipped and called YOU to do? 

What experiences in your life, gifts and talents, opportunities is God weaving together so You can do the good works He’s placing in your path?

Someone needs you to share YOUR story.

Someone needs you to help them connect THEIR story to God’s story.

Look around, they’re right in front of you. ❤

This post is the second in a series I began writing for a presentation I gave last Saturday entitled “Don’t Grow Weary In Doing Well: Making Kingdom Work a Priority”.

If you want to read the first post, you can find it here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2020/02/07/today-is-a-gift/

❤

It Is Terrible To Love Something That Death Can Touch

I know as a believer in Jesus I’m supposed to be able to look beyond “this mortal veil” and treat death as a mere “address change”.

Well, I can’t.

Death is the enemy and I do not experience it as simply a transition from one state to another.

The last enemy to be abolished and put to an end is death.

~I Corinthians 15:26 AMP

Death is a reminder of all that is wrong with this earth.  It’s a reminder that sin is costly.  It’s a reminder that this world is not my true home.

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/02/09/how-terrible-it-is-to-love-something-that-death-can-touch/

Today Is A Gift

“Today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.” ~unknown

Do we treat each day as a gift from a loving God, a present wrapped up in His grace and goodness, to be opened with joy, used with care and set lovingly on the shelf of life when done?

Or do we bear it as a burden?

I’ll admit not all days are equal.

Some ARE burdens.

No one (I don’t think!) loves going to the dentist. Few of us are keen on doing taxes or taking tests or slogging through the rain to work or school.

Some of us have much heavier burdens as we wake to an empty bed, an empty heart or an empty bank account.

But even these awful days are a gift.

Why?

Because God’s mercies are new every morning. The rising sun brings fresh opportunity to rest in, rely on and relish God’s grace, goodness and promised strength.

And every new day means we have more time.

More time to love the people we love, more time to find new people to love, more time to do the good works which God in Christ has planned for us to do.

We wake each morning to the same 24 hours given every other soul on this planet.  It’s ours to choose. 

How will we spend it?  Will we fill it with foolish things? With important things?

Here’s how I do it:

  • Put the significant and essential things in first. Time with the Lord, time with family, time with my own thoughts. (Orienting my heart and mind to what truly matters first thing makes the rest of the day so much better.)
  • Then the necessary. Work, school, chores, appointments, cooking and meals. (No way around having to do these things, but I can still choose to fit them in AFTER the most important and valuable ones.)
  • Finally, the incidental things. Facebook, television, window (internet) shopping, binge watching Netflix. (So hard to discipline my heart to focus on what will truly make a difference instead of distracting myself with the trivial.)

And surprisingly I manage most days to get it done (even checking social media).

Life is not an emergency, although I often live as if it is.

I careen around the corner of hour after hour like I’m driving a car out of control, begging someone to make it stop.

I can make it stop.

I can take my foot off the accelerator, park it and decide where and how fast I’m going to drive tomorrow.

Every single day is an opportunity to choose.

I can start fresh and make time for the things that are truly important.

If I want to. ❤

Repost: Shadows and Sunlight

The sun streams just so

and turns my head

I’ve learned not to look too long at that wall

But today

Well today I am face to face with HIS face

I didn’t mean to linger

but I did

No remedy but to let the grief wash over me

allow the tears to fall and the hurt to run its course

Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/01/15/shadows-and-sunlight/