words – Page 3 – thelifeididntchoose

Hollow Words

We don’t mean to speak words that echo like a whistle in an empty auditorium.

But we do.

We open our mouths and pour out platitudes because that’s what’s been poured into us.

But we need to stop. We need to listen.

And then we need to respond to the heart that stands before us and not to our need to shut down and shut up and shut out another person’s pain.

It’s hard to choose compassion. It’s hard to lean in and listen well. It’s hard to let our hearts get all tangled up with someone else’s when we could just walk away.

I am well aware that you have a life of your own full of drama, daily duties and demands. I don’t want to drain you dry.

Truly.

But I might need just a moment of your time and a bit of your courage to make it through my own darkness and despair.

One word.

One REAL word.

“I’m sorry. That is awful.”

“I hate that you have this heavy burden.”

“How can I pray for you?”

“I don’t know what to say, but I want you to know I’m here and not going anywhere.”

Speaking Truth

In the South, we tend to pussyfoot around hard truths because most of us grew up with the admonition, “Now just be nice!”

And while that makes for charming dinner table conversation, it makes for lousy long-term relationships.

Because we all know the longer you live with, work with and love another body, the more things that should be said but aren’t add up.

Pretty soon the pile is so big it obscures the love or fun or shared interests that should be holding hearts together and instead they drift apart.

I haven’t been all that good at following the southern tradition of code words and cute phrases that mask true intent. But I used to be guilty of it from time to time.

These past years of heartache and hardship have pretty much stripped all the veneer that was left off my tongue.

I doubt you will find a soul that would call me a silver-tongued devil. They’re more likely to call me a brash something else.

But I have important things to say and I don’t want to waste time sugar-coating them. I don’t want the meat of my message hidden inside a puff pastry of silly words. I believe truth should be easy to swallow but not necessarily tasty.

Often the most efficacious medicine leaves a nasty aftertaste.

So I’m here to tell you: don’t drown your important relationships in unsaid words, unshared feelings, unacknowledged wounds.

All that does is guarantee distance grows between your hearts.

If you let the distance become too vast, or the pile of unsaid truth get too high, you might just find you can’t reach that far or that high to reconnect.

It takes a bit of brave to say what’s important and uncomfortable.

But it’s worth it.

And it’s really the only way to authentic and lasting relationships.

It’s The Little Things

I am oh, so grateful for every single thing someone does to encourage my heart.

And I try hard to pass it on.

Because, really, when you think about it, it’s the little things that either wear us down or build us up.

The daily drip of encouragement or criticism is what shapes our hearts most.

The hardest stone can be worn away by water over time. And the softest earth can be packed firm and resist any new seed when trod upon and squeezed dry by drought.

Words are not neutral. They either build up or tear down.

And so many hearts are holding onto hope by the thinnest thread.

I want to be the person that helps build it into a lifeline, not the one who snaps it in two.

If You Can’t Say Anything Nice….

There may be some mamas that don’t drill this into their children but if there are, they don’t live south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Every time there was back and forth in the back seat or on the front porch and Mama overheard, we were told, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.”

Parents weren’t interested in policing every errant word out of the under 18 crowd’s mouth back in the day.

It was a simple (and effective!) rule: If what you want to say does not meet the criteria of T.H.I.N. K. (true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, kind) then

just.

don’t.

say.

it.

I wish grown-ups would follow the same advice.

Especially when it comes to offering up “helpful hints” to broken hearts.

In that instance it is rarely a case of another person aiming to be ugly or to hurt someone, but words are not neutral and they do hurt when tossed out carelessly by people who really just don’t understand another person’s pain.

So, for those who are tempted to fill empty spaces with empty words, may I help you apply the T.H.I.N.K acronym to the kinds of situations more likely to face us as adults?

T-Is it true? You may think that giving out a Bible verse would automatically mean you were safe on this count. Yes. God’s Word is truth. But how we use it and whether or not we understand the context can make a particular application of God’s Word UNTRUE. And even if we get the context right, hammering a heart with a Bible verse may not be helpful. You are not the Holy Spirit. Let Him breathe truth gently into a wounded heart.

H-Is it helpful? This is tricky because sometimes what is helpful for one person is unhelpful for another. I try to use this as my litmus test: When have I ever been distraught and helped by someone pointing out the obvious? Or laying out a plan of action (when they don’t have access to the full picture)? Or reminding me that “all things work together for good” when right now all things really stink? If there is any doubt about whether or not what I say will be helpful, I swallow my words.

I-Is it inspirational? The word, “inspire” has roots in the the idea of breathing into someone or something. Will my comment put wind in a person’s sails? Will it breathe courage into his or her heart? Will it lift them up and help them hold onto hope? Is it the equivalent of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or am I instead sucking what little breath they have left out of their body?

N-Is it necessary? This single criteria helps me hold my tongue so many times. I might think of lots of things but is is necessary for me to speak them? Am I warning someone of impending danger or am I just trying to make myself sound wise or insisting on making a point? To be honest, very few things I have to say are necessary. Most of the time a hand on the shoulder, a hug, a smile, a friendly nod are the only thing someone really needs.

K-Is it kind? The word kind comes from the same root as “kin”-which means family. Is what I’m going to say something I’d want someone to say to me or my close family? Am I treating (with my words) this person they way I want to be treated? The Golden Rule, rules.

I can’t claim to always follow my own good advice.

But when I do, I find that I am building people up, not tearing them down.

There’s enough tearing down in the world.

I want to speak light and life.

Post # 1000: Thelifeididntchoose By the Numbers

This is one of my favorite photos of my son Dominic-the inspiration for this blog. I love it because he was doing something he loved. He was traveling in Brazil and went mountain climbing on his 21st birthday.

It’s pure Dom-shorts and sleeveless shirt (he was always warm-natured) and what you can’t see in this photo is he was in flip-flops-hardly appropriate footwear for the mountains.

Strong, fearless, brave and adventurous-God I miss him!

Until the day my pain is redeemed and my heart restored, I’ll keep sharing the life I didn’t choose.

I am thankful for every reader who now carries a tiny bit of my son in his or her heart too. ❤

I rarely pay attention to all the statistics offered by WordPress when I log into my account.

I can see how many views a post has received, where my readers are and how they got to the post-whether via Facebook, Pinterest, search engines, etc.

Sometime last week I did notice a tiny number at the top of the list of published posts and realized I was creeping close to having made 1000 posts.

It floored me.

When I started writing in September, 2015 I envisioned a once-in-a-while update on my grief journey primarily for family and friends. I had started blogs in the past but never had the mojo nor the commitment to keep them up much longer than a few months.

And then I discovered that writing for a bigger audience than myself and God was helpful and freeing. I found out that putting words out in public forced me to refine my thoughts and dig deeper than I was otherwise willing to go. I found out, like Flannery O’Conner, that often I don’t really know what I think until I write it down.

I made a commitment in November, 2015 to write every day and thought it would only last a month.

But it’s lasted now for nearly two and a half years!

Sometimes I’m too exhausted to produce fresh material so I will repost an old entry. Sometimes I recycle a post because it was well-received and I feel like it needs to be put out there again.

Most days I write something fresh that reflects where I am right now.

I decided early on that writing here was going to be a way to honor Dominic, my family, my journey and God so I would not monetize it in any way. I plan to stick to that commitment.

Free of any commercial expectations or limitations I can write what I want, when I want, how I want.

Interacting with readers and with others on Facebook sent me in new directions and challenged me to explore the corners of my experience and try to put it into words that might help others feel less alone and misunderstood.

The result so far is one thousand posts!

I can hardly believe it.

So here are a few statistics for Post # 1000 that I find fascinating:

Number of countries where at least one person has accessed a post: 189–including Iraq. The Palestinian Territories, The People’s Republic of China and Uzbekistan! There is even a fairly large group that accesses daily posts from South Africa.

Obviously I knew in my head that the Internet has no borders, but this has really proven it to me in a very practical and surprising way!

Total number of views: (at the time of writing) 794, 980

Total number of visitors: 492, 058

Several posts have been shared thousands and tens of thousands of times which is another fascinating and surprising statistic that I find hard to grasp.

There have been a few moments when choosing to be so public has been painful.

Sometimes I’ve gotten comments that try to pick a fight over theological positions that I consider tangential to the central tenets of Christianity. Sometimes I’ve had to ward off people who really just want to rant and rave in their grief-I’m truly sorry for their pain but I’m in no position to be an endless source of support and affirmation.

Once or twice my material has been stolen and circulated by others and that hurts because it is a record of MY journey and a tribute to MY son.

But all in all I have been blessed.

Blessed by the folks who take time to comment on the blog or comment on the public Heartache and Hope: Life After Losing a Child Facebook Page. I’ve been blessed by people who let me know that they look for the post every morning and that it gives them strength to get up and go on.

Mostly I’ve been blessed by knowing that I am doing the work that God prepared in advance for me to do.

Dominic’s death was no surprise to the Lord.

He knows the end from the beginning. I am so thankful that I don’t. But I can see how He was preparing me for decades to be able to put this journey into words and share it with others.

I don’t like my subject.

I would give anything-literally ANYTHING– for the calling on my heart to be something else.

But until He tells me to stop or I run out of words, I’ll be here.

I hope you’ll continue to join me.

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. ❤

No Words

Some days there are just no words for this journey.

Sometimes I can only feel what I feel

and do what I do

and cry when I cry.

Today is like that.

I cannot wrap my mind around the FACT that my son is dead.

Am I somehow defective because I can’t?

Can any parent do that?

I know it’s true-I’m not in denial.

But knowing something is true and embracing it as true are two different things. I am forced to walk in the world but not always forced to confront Dominic’s absence.

He could just be on a trip, or away at school, or out of cell phone range. It’s funny the tricks your mind will play to placate your heart.

But this morning when the light pushed back against the darkness my mind refused to continue the charade.

In a moment of clarity, the sword of truth penetrated my soul.

And here I am, naked and bleeding clinging to the fact that I am mother to a dead son.

Nowhere to hide. No way to escape.

No words.

Death Is Awful

I have friends who have not only buried a child (some have buried more than one) but have also buried parents, siblings, in-laws and other people close to their hearts in a very short span of time.

And I am appalled when they recite the trite comments doled out by others meant to patch broken hearts and sweep the leftover pieces under the rug of social propriety.

Let me just say this: Death. Is. Awful.

Full stop. No easy change of subject or laughter allowed to make the hearing of it softer.

It should be hard.

It should make us pause.

We should stop in our tracks to acknowledge the passing of the breath of God from a person’s body.

Death is an unavoidable reminder that the world is not as God intended it to be. It’s a reminder of the cost of sin. It’s a reminder that our time is short. And it’s a reminder that we are NOT in control.

Those are very uncomfortable truths.

My hope in Christ makes those truths bearable but it does not make facing the death of those I love hurt less.

A broken heart is a perfectly natural and reasonable response to the awfulness of death and to the absence of the presence of one I love. Great grief is the price of great love.

There’s a scene in The Magician’s Nephew where a little boy named Digory meets Aslan. His mother is sick, and he wants to ask for Aslan’s help, but he’s afraid. Lewis writes:

Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great front feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. “My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.”

For those outside this great grief, it seems helpful to toss words like bandaids but it’s not.

I’m sure you mean well when you try to circumscribe my grief-to give limits to its expression and duration.

But unrealistic expectations make it more difficult to bear the burden I’m already carrying. Your words add to this weight of sorrow and pain that I cannot untie from my bent back.

Presence-often SILENT presence-is the balm for my wounded soul.

But please: Don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief but place yourself off in the distance away from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.

~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

Bridle your Tongue

In this journey of loss I have been blessed and wounded by words.

I have been encouraged and disheartened by stray comments. I’ve been thrown a lifeline and pushed under the raging waves of grief by friends, family and acquaintances who often had no clue they were doing either.

Our words matter.

Our tongues have the power of life and death.

Whoever first wrote “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me” was either in denial or lived a very sheltered life.

Please, for the love of love, think before you speak.

Choose to listen before you lob a response bomb across whatever divides your heart from another. Count to ten if you have to, take a deep breath, read and re-read your words before you press “post”.

And, if all else fails remember: if you don’t have something nice to say, maybe it’s better not to say anything at all.

The one you think is invincible may be on the edge of crumbling. The one you think is strong may be hanging by a thread.

We all make mistakes in all kinds of ways, but the man who can claim that he never says the wrong thing can consider himself perfect, for if he can control his tongue he can control every other part of his personality! Men control the movements of a large animal like the horse with a tiny bit placed in its mouth. Ships too, for all their size and the momentum they have with a strong wind behind them, are controlled by a very small rudder according to the course chosen by the helmsman. The human tongue is physically small, but what tremendous effects it can boast of! A whole forest can be set ablaze by a tiny spark of fire, and the tongue is as dangerous as any fire, with vast potentialities for evil. It can poison the whole body, it can make the whole of life a blazing hell.

James 2-6 PHILLIPS

Every person on this planet bears the image of the God who made him or her. You can’t disrespect the person without also disrespecting the Lord.

tongue-has-no-bones

No Redshirts Here

If you are a Star Trek fan, you get the reference. In most episodes involving fear of mortal danger, the landing team included several main characters and one or two “redshirts”. Those were the expendable crewmen (or women)–the ones you knew would take the fatal hit and fade into the story background. There might be a moment when Captain Kirk or Spock or Dr. McCoy were threatened, but in your heart you just knew that they would be safe because, after all, there’s next week’s episode.

In some ways, this mentality crept into my life. The people I love are too important, too central to my life to die. Sure, eventually, we all leave this earth. But not today, not without warning.

And not in the middle of the story.

I resisted the truth that “life is but a vapor”. I acknowledged it in my head but ignored it in my heart.

I’m here to tell you–life is a vapor…it can be gone as quickly as the morning mist and there is no getting it back.

I console myself that Dominic knew I loved him. Because I told him so–in person, on the phone and in messages. I couldn’t save him from death, but am spared at least that one regret.

If you knew that today would be the last day you would be with someone, what would you do differently? What would you say? What would you choose not to say?

We never know. Even anticipated deaths are often unexpected. Age and illness seem like creeping things until the moment they strike the final blow.

There are no red shirts in real life. No telltale symbol to clue us in to who will be here tomorrow and who will enter eternity today. Babies aren’t born with expiration dates.

Choose to honor the ones that are important to you.

Leave in love. Part in peace.

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