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.
It is heartbreaking, lonely, heavy, hard and utterly devastating.
Read the rest here: Why I Say, “My Son Died.”
Even if my lifeblood is to be poured out like wine as a sacrifice of your faith, I have great reason to celebrate with all of you.~ Philippians 2:17 VOICE
In many ways I feel like this season of my life is a drink offering-poured out on the ground-unrecoverable except as a sacrifice lifted to the throne of grace.
But my story is not only loss and pain, it is also life and love.
I have to be careful to remember that.
… you may reformulate your story in terms of sadness and pain. Because you lost a child, or experienced a divorce, or killed someone in a car accident, you will never be happy again. Or even worse, you are never allowed to be happy again.
In all of these cases, we must remember that our stories fall under Christ’s story of redemption. Your life is but a chapter in God’s greater narrative of restoring the world. Your Worst is merely a chapter in your own story. If we allow God to write our stories and to carry us through the season of darkness and despair, he will ensure that redemption constitutes the central progression of our stories.
~Cameron Cole, Therefore I Have Hope
Redemption is the overarching theme of my story, of all history.
It doesn’t mean I have to deny the pain and darkness. In fact, if I try, I diminish His glory in redeeming what would otherwise be nothing but brokenness and loss.
I can lift those feelings to the throne of grace as a drink offering.
I can pour them out at Christ’s feet and trust that even though in the natural there is no way to recapture and restore what has been lost, in His power and love it is never, ever wasted.
And I heard a voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”~Revelation 21: 3,4
Today is the day!
All the preparation and anticipation meet under a covered outdoor chapel as my daughter and her fiance exchange vows and become one.
By the end of the evening, we will have laughed (and cried!), danced and toasted our way through this very important event.
And they will leave changed in ways they can’t imagine nor fully understand. It takes time to grow into lifelong commitment.
It takes years for singleness to be sanded down to a perfect fit one for the other.
Weddings are fun.
Marriage is work.
My parents have been married for 58 years. My husband and I for nearly 35. None of us has a magic formula for marital longevity. Mostly it’s been leaning into the commitment we made at the altar so many years ago even when it seemed easier to give up and give in.
We’ve all faced so many challenges in our decades together. Some we saw coming and some landed suddenly on top of us without warning. Life, death, moving house, illness, accident, floods, hurricanes, and dozens of smaller crises have forced us to change course, adjust our sails and adapt to new and often unwelcome directions. But we haven’t abandoned ship.
Sometimes it’s been pure grit and determination that see us through. Other times it’s holding on to the good things we’ve shared together.
I’m thankful we are celebrating today.
I’ll be tucking this memory in a safe place where I can pull it out on days that aren’t so beautiful.
It’s my prayer that Fiona and Brandon do the same.
When life gets hard (and it will!) may they remember the promises they made to one another and weather the storms together.
Now this is the reason a man leaves his father and his mother, and is united with his wife; and the two become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24 VOICE
“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
Like most of us I am enjoying the change from cold and wet to warm and sunny.
Spring breezes and spring sunshine usher in fresh beauty and speak hope to a heart. It reminds me that the earth will not always be locked in darkness nor be a frozen wasteland.
But spring isn’t all sunshine and flowers for me.
It’s death and dying and tears and heart wrenching reminders that no matter how hard we try to hold onto life in THIS life, we can’t.
Right now I’m holding my dying cat. He’s been a faithful companion for thirteen years.
I’ve had many, many wonderful animals in my life but none have come close to being the constant shadow and empathetic friend that Roosevelt is. His warm body snuggled into my arms like an infant every morning has been a touchstone that kept me from floating away in grief’s inviting fog.
I will miss him.
Death is awful.
I do not equate Roosevelt’s death with Dominic’s. There isn’t a scale conceivable that would measure the distance between the two.
But one of the things I’m learning in this Valley is that every death taps the same wound. Every death hurts my heart. Every death reminds me that this life is not as it ought to be, not as God intended it to be when He placed Adam and Eve in the Garden.
And every death reminds me that Christ came, Christ suffered, Christ conquered precisely BECAUSE death. is. awful.
Resurrection is coming.
But it is not yet.
So I wait.
In hope.
Clinging to the promises.
❤
**My faithful companion died in my arms- peacefully and without pain. ***
I’m not sure when I’ll get the hang of this life after loss.
Five years is long enough to have completed a college degree, so you’d think it would be long enough to explore the edges of how to walk in the world without my son, without the family I used to have, without the confidence I once enjoyed that “every little thing was gonna be alright”.
But it’s not.
I’m still feeling my way in the dark much of the time.
New challenges greet me and I have to navigate them with the profoundly changed “me” that I neither understand nor like.
I make mistakes.
I get upset and I upset others.
If I didn’t believe that there was a Day when all this would be redeemed, I would just give up.
But I DO believe that.
It doesn’t take the pain away. It doesn’t soften the feeling of failure when my sorrow stops me being what others need me to be. It doesn’t blow soft breezes across my weary soul.
It gives me focus and a goal. It gets me out of bed so I persevere. It helps my heart hold on and not give in to despair.
Today is not a good day.
Tomorrow doesn’t look good either.
But one day-
One. Glorious. Day.
All believers in Jesus are commanded to live as aliens in this world. But it is so easy to get comfortable here. So easy to think we were made for the earth we see instead of an eternity with God in heaven.
Kenny Chesney sings a song;
Everybody wants to go to heaven
Have a mansion high above the clouds
Everybody wants to go to heaven
But nobody wants to go now.
And if we are honest, even most folks in church on Sunday would agree. Heaven is a great place to look forward to, but not somewhere you would plan to go this week.
Read the rest here: Looking Up
This is a hard, hard thing to grasp.
A painful lesson to learn.
But it is truth:
The provision of God is adequate for my pilgrimage. God does not fail to see, know, understand, care, love, and ultimately to work all things ‘in conformity with the purpose of his will’ (Ephesians 1:11). His love is constant, though sometimes unfelt. His presence is assured, though sometimes He seems far away. His plan is good, though sometimes I hurt. For this present time I see dimly, mere faint outlines of all God’s purposes and plans. Yet I believe that His ways are better and His thoughts are higher than my own. In my time of trouble, my understanding is not crucial. It is my confidence in the person, the goodness, and the sovereignty of God that is the great, indispensable necessity.
~James Means, A Tearful Celebration
When my children were young, we made a habit of listening to classic books on tape as we made the miles between our rural home and all the places we had to go. It was glorious to learn together, explore together and build up a reservoir of common literary references.
One of the books we listened to was Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.
In it, Christian, the main character, is making his way toward the Celestial City. Along the way he meets all sorts of characters representing various temptations and snares common to all of us as we journey through this life.
I learned much from that book, the most important of which was this:
“To go back is nothing but death; to go forward is fear of death, and life everlasting beyond it. I will yet go forward.”
The road is hard. The journey long. The way perilous and uncomfortable.
But I will go forward, trusting that the Lord has made every provision for my pilgrimage.
“Blessed are those whose strength is in you, who’ve set their hearts in pilgrimage as they pass through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs. The autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength until each appears before God in Zion.”
~Psalm 84:5-7
Some of us enter trembling through the door of a new year.
This last year wasn’t so good and our hearts are broken.
What if the next year is worse? How will we manage? Where can we hide from bad news, bad outcomes, disastrous trauma?
Truth is, we can’t.
So here we are, bravely marching in, hanging on to hope and begging God for mercy.
Father God,
I admit that I am scared. No matter how many times I read or someone reads to me, “Fear not!” my heart screams, “Easy for YOU to say!” I know deep down that You are here. I know that nothing happens without You seeing. But I am still trembling.
Help me feel Your Presence. Help me hold onto the hem of Your garment. Help me reach out and take possession of the promises You give me-to guide, carry and strengthen me. When I am weak, You are strong. If I forget everything else, don’t let me forget that.
Lord, even if no new disaster takes shape in the months to come, I’m left holding the broken pieces of a broken life and I am oh, so tired of plodding through my days trying to put it all back together. Bring light into the dark corners. Bring hope into the desperate places. Bring tangible help to my doorstep so I can find a little rest in these weary days, weeks, months.
Whatever this year brings, You are already there.
You know the end from the beginning. Nothing takes You by surprise.
And when I want to give up and give in, speak courage to my soul. Lift my head and help my heart hold on. ❤
I need to remind my heart on a regular basis that grace covers it all-every mistake, every sin, every need, every. single. thing.
Because if it doesn’t, then it’s not grace at all.
So here are some of my favorite quotes about grace.
They help me hang on when my heart wants to let go. They help me hear my Father’s voice when my ears are full of condemnation and guilt. They help me recognize truth when the hater of my soul fills my head with lies.
Every time you fall down, at the bottom of every hole is grace. Grace waits in broken places. Grace waits at the bottom of things. Grace loves you when you are at your darkest worst, and wraps you in the best light. Grace seeps through the broken places and seeps into the lowest places, a balm for wounds.
~Ann Voskamp
The gospel is not just an evangelistic principle; it is a message that gets you out of bed in the morning. The sovereignty of God is not some debatable proposition; it is the assurance that your child’s death is not a meaningless accident. Grace is not simply a word in a hymn; it’s the very thing you rely on when you are so bereaved that you cannot imagine living another day. Faith is not just a cliche’ term for religion, it is the thing that picks you up off the carpet where you have been crying for over an hour.
~Cameron Cole, Therefore I Have Hope
What else can I do but keep praying to You even when I feel dark; to keep writing about You even when I feel numb; to keep speaking Your name even when I feel alone. Come, Lord Jesus come. Have mercy on me, a sinner.
-Henri Nouwen
My faith demands that I face the uncertainty of the future in the confidence that in any meeting of affliction, I am held by the tether of God’s grace. My way is well known to my Master, and therefore I walk in confidence. No testing will come that will not be accompanied by sustaining grace. If I failed to believe that, I would be impoverished beyond measure and would deny the truthfulness and example of Scripture. God’s provision has been adequate in the past; it will be adequate in the future. The secret of our courage lies in our confidence that the future is controlled by the providence of a sovereign God.
~James Means, A Tearful Celebration
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