I’m not making a political statement.
Instead, it’s a very personal truth that I repeat often to myself: We are Stronger Together.
Read the rest here: Stronger Together
Category: Love
The Irresistable Power of Love
As you gather with loved ones today, can I tell you something oh, so important?
Don’t wait for that phone call or red-letter calendar day to reach out. Don’t let busy-ness overrun your life so that it squeezes out what and who is really important. Don’t let twelve months separate this time and the next time you talk to the people you care about.
When you think about someone-call them or get in touch in some way. We have the potential for connectivity as never before. There is really no excuse for not sending a text or an email or a Facebook message. Don’t just think about it, DO it!
Love is irresistable when it’s not just a feeling.
Love in action can break down walls, build bridges, overcome evil and speak courage to broken hearts.
There is so much we cannot control in this world-so many hard things we cannot stop from happening.
But when we choose to love-really, really love-we can create pockets of peace and places of safety.
Never underestimate the power of love.
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Ten Ways to Love a Mourning Heart at Thanksgiving
We are all on a journey through life and each carry some sort of load. Mine is child loss. Yours may be something else.
We can help one another if we try.
Love and grace grease the wheels and make the load lighter.
Here are ten ways to love a mourning heart at Thanksgiving:
1. Let them grieve. Give space and grace for any outward display of grief or emotion. It doesn’t require comment. Maybe an outstretched hand or a tissue or maybe not. Sometimes silence presence is best.
2. Begin conversation with statements that are true for you and then listen. I appreciate someone sharing their heart with me. It’s really OK to say, “Hey, I’ve wanted to reach out but I just didn’t know how.” I would rather hear that than excuses. ❤
3. Share a memory of their child or their pregnancy (if a child was born straight into heaven). Whenever I hear a story about Dominic I may not have heard before, it is a gift.
4. Speak their child’s name. It may make me cry. But I cry anyway. And if no one says his name I cry because I think they’ve forgotten.
5. Give them room to step away. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed and I just need a breath of fresh air or a moment to gather my strength. Don’t send the cavalry to “rescue” me and don’t make me feel bad by drawing attention to my absence when I return.
6. Find a way to commemorate their child in company with the living. Light a candle, place a photo, set an honorary place at the table, give a gift in his memory to a charity and display the card-there are many ways to make him part of the holidays.
7. Allow them to participate/ not participate as they are able. This will be our fourth set of holidays and I still don’t have a routine that feels “right”. I do enjoy and even crave cooking meals so I appreciate being asked to do that. Some other things are still hard so I appreciate not being forced to do those.
8. Don’t use this once or twice a year gathering to require an extended debrief of how they are feeling/coping/doing. Invite me to share and then respect the boundaries I establish in my sharing. It depends on the day whether I’m going to give you a brief response or a long one. Let me lead the dance.
9. Try not to make assumptions about what is best for their heart. Ask questions instead of making pronouncements. Like I said, I still don’t have any traditions that feel right after nearly four years. I need space to think about and make choices about what may work for THIS Thanksgiving.
10. Remember that all holidays are hard. When the whole family gathers, it highlights even more that my son is missing. Other times it’s easier to play a mental game with myself and pretend he’s just off somewhere. But when the chairs are drawn around the table and his is empty, there’s no denying that he is gone, gone, gone. Lots and lots of grace makes it easier for my heart.
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Too Scared to Stay
How many reading this enjoy roller coasters? Or scary movies? Or action films?
My guess is that most like one or the other or all three.
Why? Because it’s fun to dip our emotional toe into deep water when we know we can take it out at any moment.
We experience a sort of “high” when the “fight or flight” adrenaline pumps through our veins but our minds know full well that we are in no real danger.
What’s much more difficult is to commit to experience in real time with real people the real emotional roller coaster of hard situations and unending sorrow or pain.
Then people tend to withdraw because they are too scared to stay.
I am so sorry that broken hearts are wounded further when friends or family just can’t bear the pain of watching us hurt and run away instead of walking with us.
They are afraid. I used to be afraid too. But I’m not afraid now.
My new bravery was purchased at great cost. And I don’t want to waste it.
This Valley is teaching my heart to reach out further, quicker, more often and to stick around longer than I was willing to before.
I want to stand with and speak courage to wounded hearts.
I want to help healed hearts that choose to be brave and commit to walk with those in pain.
And I am learning to extend grace to the hearts who choose to run away.
Fear is powerful and I can’t blame them.
But for those who remain, I am so, so grateful.
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Parenting After Loss: Giving Surviving Siblings Permission to Live
I wrote this post about things I’m learning almost two years ago.
A couple of the things I’m learning are:
There is no limit to the pain you may have to endure this side of heaven.
Lightning can strike twice in the same place, and fear of what you know by experience trumps fear of the unknown by miles.
I’ve buried one child, I do not want to bury another.
So one of the biggest struggles I face is how to parent my surviving adult children. I do not want their lives circumscribed by my fears.
Are we ALL changed by Dominic’s death? Absolutely! But they are young, at the beginning of life and making choices about direction and life partners and what they want out of the years stretching before them.
I pray every day they will make those choices from a place of freedom and hope instead of a place of confinement and fear.
Can something happen to any one of them? Of course! But it is no more likely today than it was three years ago when I didn’t think it could happen at all.
I will not let my mind and heart borrow trouble from tomorrow. I will choose to focus on today and encourage them to do the same.
While Dominic was here-he LIVED.
I want his brothers and sister to be completely free to live too.
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A Faint Echo
Just out of earshot my heart strains to hear the faint echo of Dominic’s voice-his humor, his lively sarcasm and biting wit. I can almost convince myself that he’s there in the room as the two other boys banter back and forth.
I’m used to a trio, not a duet.
It’s like the blues without a bass line.
How can it be the same song and yet a different one altogether?
Oh, how I miss him!
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Let Me Know You Remember
As families gather around tables and in backyards to celebrate fall birthdays, Thanksgiving and (soon!) Christmas, my heart longs even harder to hear Dominic’s name.
Of course I remember him-he’s my son-and of course others do too.
But it is especially helpful this time of year to have friends and family speak of him aloud.
Of course I may cry.
I cry often anyway.
But if I cry because you remind me of the good friend Dominic was to you or because of a special memory you shared with him, they are tears of joy as much as tears of longing. ❤
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Repost: Time Change
I wrote this two years ago and it still resonates with my heart. If there was one message I could scream from the rooftops this side of child loss it would be this: Everything, EVERY. THING. except time and people can be replaced.
Think about it.
Is it difficult to rebuild a home or replace favorite keepsakes, yes-but not impossible. But it is utterly and unforgivingly impossible to recapture lost moments and there is no one but God that can breathe life into a body.
Please, please, please don’t take your people for granted thinking, “There’s always tomorrow.” Sometimes there isn’t.
Every spring and every fall we dutifully make the rounds to our clocks and digital devices, putting them first forward an hour and then back in an attempt to make the days “longer”.
As if time was in our hands.
The sun rises and sets according to the Creator’s schedule, we can neither speed the world’s turning, nor slow it down. We can only choose whether to be present in the moments He grants us.
Read the rest here: Time Change
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Code Words and the Jesus Juke
In the South we have our ways. Our ways of marginalizing folks who don’t quite fit in with who we think they should be or how we expect them to act.
Mostly we use code words. Words that seem innocent enough to the uninitiated but pack a punch if you have inside information and know what they really mean.
Any sentence that begins, “Bless her heart….” will almost surely end with a tidbit of gossip that undermines a reputation.
Sometimes we switch it up (especially in church) with “I think we need to pray for…”. Because we all know asking for prayer is holy, even if the situation isn’t and the person mentioned would just as soon her business stay private.
Social media has its own code words too.
Vague references to someone or something we don’t like or agree with usually begin with, “Ugh! I just don’t understand why….” followed by a litany of thinly veiled complaints.
But sometimes the code isn’t very complicated and it’s really easy for others to figure out precisely who or what you are talking about.
And it damages reputations and hurts feelings and you may sit back in your chair, tablet or laptop in hand, thinking, “Not my problem. I didn’t say WHO it was”.
But it IS your problem.
Even when you cloak your complaint or comment in biblical references or godly quotes, bottom line is you are accusing or mocking or undermining someone else.
My daughter calls it “Jesus juking”-tacking on a Bible verse before or after a remark in an attempt to shut down discussion or rebuttal.
Because if someone tries to disagree with YOU, it’s set up to make them look like they are disagreeing with Scripture or God Himself.
I don’t like these games people play. I don’t like code words. I don’t like tactics intended to make others feel small so I can feel larger.
Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. Sometimes social media forces my hand and I have to speak publicly on what I would rather discuss privately.
But that’s rare.
If I have a problem with someone, I try to take it directly to THEM.
And I hope they will do the same with me. ❤
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Important Reminder
It can get lonely in this life. Social media aside, most of us wonder if who we are really makes a difference at all.
But it does.
You are unique-created to make a difference only YOU can make.
The edges of your life touch the edges of others’ lives in places no one else can reach.
Don’t give up.
Don’t give in.
thelifeididntchoose 