Category: truth

A List of What Helps and What Hurts

I originally shared this post when I was only a bit past two years into life after loss. It’s still a pretty good list of what helps and what hurts my heart.

The only thing that I’d say NOW versus THEN is this: Most days are better days (seven years down the road) than hard ones. Oh, there are still terrible, terrible days when grief washes over me like a flood. But many, many days include joy, laughter, a renewed sense of purpose and lots and lots of love.

I’m so thankful for God’s mercy and grace and for His steadfast love. Without that-without Him-I would not have made it this far.

❤ Melanie

I am committed to continue to trust Jesus and to look to the Word of God for my hope and direction in this life and in the one to come.

I speak truth to my heart through Scripture, worship songs, testimonies of others who have gone before and by remaining in community with other believers.

But I’ve yet to reach the place where I can plan on most days being better days rather than hard ones.

I’m trying.

And I’m working to tease out the influences that make a difference-both the ones that help and the ones that hurt.

So here’s the list so far:

Read the rest here: What Helps and What Hurts

Mustard Seed Faith is Enough…

I didn’t grow up doing in-depth Bible studies so when I “discovered” the Bible in my early twenties, it was an exciting adventure to dig for treasure in the Word of God.

Along with Scripture itself, I devoured book after book on theology.

I could not get enough.

By my mid-thirties I had developed a fairly well-defined and defensible doctrine. I really thought I understood how God works in the world.

Then my son died.

Read the rest here: On My Worst Days, Mustard Seed Faith is Enough

Reaching For Jesus In The Midst of Sorrow

Life after child loss is full of seeming contradictions.

I am broken yet God is redeeming those fragments and reassembling a life of beauty and meaning.

The cracks are visible but they haven’t disqualified me as a vessel that can hold His love, His grace, His mercy and pour all that out on others.

I’m often scared, but am able to walk into each day brave in the knowledge I don’t walk alone.

Read the rest here: Scared and Brave: Reaching For Jesus in the Midst of Sorrow

Conduit of Mercy

If we can keep the vision of how much mercy has been poured out on our own hearts and in our own lives, it is so much easier to pour it out on others.  We don’t have to manufacture it-we only have to be a willing conduit of the mercy already overflowing from God’s heart to our own.

When the deputy delivered the news that Dominic was gone, my heart broke wide open, its contents spilled on the floor.

But  I knew it would not remain empty for long.

It would be filled with something.  

And I begged God to fill it so full of love, grace and mercy that bitterness, unforgiveness and anger would be squeezed out with no room to stay.

Read the rest here: Mercy

Will Suffering Be Redeemed?

I have doubts some days too.  

There are moments when suffering washes over me like a flood and I am swept under with the tide.  

It’s then I cling tenaciously to the promise that my wounds, like Christ’s, will one day not only be proof of pain but also evidence of God’s redemptive power. 

Read the rest here: On Suffering and Redemption

Am I Trying to Put God in a Box?

I first shared this some years ago as I was beginning to work through the theological implications of a God who did not intervene to save my son.

I thought I understood who God was and how He worked in the world because nothing that had happened to me challenged those assumptions. Things were neat and tidy with clear edges that demarcated “those who love God” and “those who refuse Him”.

But God is not confined to a box I or any other human can construct. He is GOD.

That’s a hard, hard truth to digest but it is truth.

❤ Melanie

It’s possible that you haven’t thought of it this way, but if you are a believer in Christ and have yet to walk through faith-shattering trials, you may have placed God in a box.

I know I had.

I thought that after decades of walking with Jesus, reading and studying Scripture and wading through some fairly significant trials I had God pretty well figured out.

I could quote verses for every occasion, open my Bible to any book without looking in the Table of Contents, and had something sprirtual to say about everything.

But now, like Job, I cover my mouth.

Read the rest here: God in a Box

The God of the Universe Treasures You

Grief tells lies.  

And one of the biggest lies grief whispers is, “You are worthless.”

That is simply not true.

Read the rest here: You are a Treasure

God Knows Your Name

Have you ever wondered why there are lists of names in the Bible?  Do you, like me, sometimes rush through them or pass over them to get to the “main part” of a story?

But look again, the names ARE the story. 

The God of the Bible isn’t the God of the masses.  He is the God of the individual. 

Read the rest here: He Knows My Name

So Sorry I Haven’t Texted Back…

I remember the early days after Dominic ran ahead to Heaven when people were still checking in often on our family.

Some days there were a dozen or more messages that really, really needed an answer.

But I just couldn’t.

“How are you?” is often a more difficult question than you might think when your world is falling apart.

I wanted to tell the truth about how hard the days were and harder still the long dark nights but it felt too personal, too frightening and too likely to be misunderstood by a heart with no frame of reference.

So most of my responses looked something like this:

Read the rest here: Sorry I Haven’t Texted Back

Not The Last OR First To Ask, “Why Me?”

If you are new to this journey and still in the throes of asking, “Why ME?” I don’t want my words to feel like a rebuke.

I STILL have moments when I look around and bemoan the fact that it seems (from the outside looking in) other families are sailing through life with little more than tiny bumps in the road while mine is being asked to navigate around (and through!) giant craters with a barely functional vehicle.

But the Lord woke me up one day about eighteen months into this journey with some insight: I’m not the first nor the last mama to bury a child.

Truth is, few of us escape some sort of hardship in life and many of us face tragedy.

It’s hard. It’s exhausting. But you are not alone.

❤

I cannot bring Dominic back-I cannot have my child once again in my arms.  I cannot undo the damage death has wrought and the great gash loss has made in my heart.  

And so I am left with my pain and my questions.

“Why?” is not a particularly fruitful question (although I ask it still).

 “Why not?” is probably more helpful.

Read the rest here: Why Not?