Category: Love

Help! I Need Somebody!

So, more than twenty years on a farm and I can NOT back a trailer.  Nope.  Can’t do it.

One day I spent hours trying to teach myself how to do it.  Never was able to do anything other than manage to jackknife the trailer, go unhook it and start over.

When I go somewhere with a trailer I do one of two things:  (1) I find a space where I can drive in and be able to just make a loop or (2) I find the nearest person who CAN back a trailer, hand them my keys and ask them to do it.

I feel NO shame.

But that’s not the case with other things I can’t do.  So many times I try to avoid admitting that I am unable to meet certain people’s expectations or do certain things that I either used to be able to do or feel I SHOULD be able to do.

I think the reason I don’t mind outing myself on trailers is because that confession usually gets a laugh or a knowing look from the person who helps me or an admission from someone standing near at the feed store that they also have trouble backing up a trailer.

But when I say, “I just don’t think I’m up to teaching VBS” or “I’d love to come to that event but I’ve reached my social quota this week” or “I’m still struggling with driving by that spot or eating at that restaurant” it’s often met with (at best) a quizzical look or (at worst) a comment about how I should be “better” by now.

And then I DO feel shamed.  I feel like I don’t measure up, like I’m not as valuable as the next person or that I have failed some cosmic test.

shame-is-the-intensely-painful-feeling-we-are-unloveable-brene-brown

You know what though?  That’s a reflection on other people’s lack of compassion and experience or their personal insecurity NOT a reflection of my worth.

It is really just fine for me to admit my limitations because EVERYONE has limitations.

I can’t lift a 250 lb barbell.  But I can whip up dinner for fifty people.  I can’t read Chinese but I can read Dr. Seuss with an accent and hit all the rhymes on cue.  I can’t run a marathon but I can work all day without complaining (most of the time).

I’m human (surprise!).    So are you.

brene brown vulnerablity sounds like truth

I have some limitations as a result of burying a child. You may have limitations because of age or disease or something else I don’t know about or can’t see.

That’s OK.

Let’s make a pact:  I’ll take you as you are and you can take me as I am.  I’ll help you when you need help and you can help me when I need help.

We will extend grace and receive grace as needed to make life work.

Isn’t that really the essence of human community?

brene brown we dont have to do it alone

Repost: Love Doesn’t End

I know that others want desperately me to be “better”.  They want me to be happy and carefree and back to the Melanie they knew before child loss.

And not just for their sake, for mine too.  

It’s hard to watch someone you care about in pain.

But my reality has been forever changed.

Read the rest here:  Love Doesn’t End

International Bereaved Mother’s Day

International Bereaved Mother’s Day is observed the Sunday before Mother’s Day in the United States.  This year it’s Sunday, [May 4, 2025].

I didn’t even know such a day existed until I was a mom that needed it.

For those of us who have children in heaven, setting aside a day to acknowledge that unique mother/child relationship is helpful.

Traditional Mother’s Day is meant to be a time of celebration.  A day when children send cards or flowers or give gifts to honor their mom and let her know that years spent pouring into their lives are appreciated.

Lots of church pews and restaurant tables are filled with family as children come home to be with mom.

But Dominic can’t come home.

That makes Mother’s Day complicated for me.  

It means that while I am thrilled to spend it with the children who can make it home, there is always a tinge of sadness to the celebration.  And I hate that. Because they deserve a whole-hearted mama. 

So I’m thankful this other day exists. Thankful for a day when I can think about and speak about and embrace the child that won’t be with me next weekend.

Because Dominic is STILL my son.  He is still very much a part of my heart.  And I need to be able to speak that aloud for others to hear.  

Some mamas will be drawing or painting hearts on their hands and writing their missing child’s name inside as a beautiful outward testimony to an inward reality.  Every day we carry our missing child in our hearts.  

international bereaved mothers heart brave and courageous

So if you know a bereaved mama, give her a hug Sunday.

Make time and give space for her to share.  

And then listen, love and lift her up.  

still choose you

Flashback

I bend down and bump my head against memories.

“Mama, look at THAT!”

“Have you ever seen one of those?”

“Is it true toads give you warts?  He lives under that rock.  Don’t move it-let him live there because he eats bugs!”

“Why is the tail blue?  What happens when it breaks off?”

Young boys found toads and luna moths, blue-tailed skinks and lizards  Older boys hid with air-soft guns to ambush the other team. Young men changed oil and car parts.

And one summer a laughing Dominic lifted me high in the backhoe bucket so I could paint the top trim of the house.

Synapses fire and lightning flashes through my brain in seconds.  ONE corner of my house-all this.

Every room holds memories.  Every footfall echoes past days.  Every window frames some precious vignette in my mind’s eye.

Inescapable.

Most days I’ve learned to turn down the volume.  But today it would not be denied.

And I think, “How would I have survived those precious, precious years if I had known what was coming?”

Thank God I didn’t.

 

 

Repost: Loving the Wounded

God bless the inventor of Band Aids!

That little tacky plaster has soothed more fears and tears than almost any other invention in the world.

Skinned knee?  Put a BandAid on it.

Bee sting?  BandAid.

Tiny bump that no one can even see?  Oh, sweetie, let me give you a BandAid.

Simply acknowledging pain and woundedness is so often all that is needed to encourage a heart and point it toward healing.

Read the rest here:  Loving the Wounded

Resisting Fear, Embracing Love

In my grief and sorrow it is tempting to dig a moat, draw up the bridge to my heart and wait out life like I am under siege.

But that would be wasting this pain and I won’t do that.

I won’t dishonor Dominic and dishonor Jesus by refusing to love.

fear is the opposite of love brene brown

Just a few days after Dominic ran ahead to heaven,  my youngest son wrote this:

“If you are surrounded by life you will be surrounded by death, if you feel love you will also feel pain. But never let the fear of death or pain rob you of the joy of LIFE and LOVE.”

Fear is a thief.

It sneaks in and can rule my heart before I even know it.

I will not bar the door to love, but I will barricade it against fear.

I refuse to let fear win.

fear does not prevent death it prevents life

I Will Not Be Ashamed of My Tears!

It happens when I least expect it.

I try hard to manage life so that I’m not blindsided by grief-that I don’t find myself in the middle of people when I can be sure some trigger will start the flow of tears

But you can’t prepare for what you have no way to predict.

So even three years down the path of child loss, there are times I am overwhelmed by a wave of grief and cannot stop the tears.

ann voskamp love will always cost you grief

I used to try to hide them.  I don’t anymore.

I will not be ashamed of my tears.

They are proof of my love.

They are evidence of a heart that refuses to grow cold, hard or bitter even though the frost of death has blown hard across it.

They are testimony to the promise that God is collecting them in His bottle and that one day all this will be redeemed and restored.

you keep track of all my tears

I will wear them as a badge of honor until I see Dominic again.

Repost: Remember: 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

Repost: Maundy Thursday

Today is the day on the church calendar when we pause and reflect on the Last Supper, and the last words of Jesus to His disciples.

A year’s worth of sermons is contained in John 13-17 but this week I have been drawn to just one verse:

[Jesus said] “Now I am giving you a new command—love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. This is how all men will know that you are my disciples, because you have such love for one another.”  John 13:34 PHILLIPS
Read the rest here:  Maundy Thursday

Repost: Making Space for the Broken at the Table of the LORD

These days are especially difficult for me because Palm Sunday and Easter are markers on the road to remembering the worst days of my life.  Dominic left us the Saturday before Palm Sunday and was buried the Monday after Resurrection Sunday.

I hate death.

We shouldn’t rush past it’s awfulness.  If we do, we miss the glory of the finished work of Christ.

As we enter the week on the Christian calendar when most churches celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am reminded that often we race past the road that lead to Calvary and linger at the empty tomb.

But to understand the beauty of forgiveness and the blessing of redemption, we MUST acknowledge the sorrow of sin and the burden of brokenness.

Read the rest here:  Making Space for Brokenness at the Table of the LORD