I participate in a number of online support groups for bereaved parents.
And one topic that makes the rounds at least once a week-often once a day-is how those outside our experience cannot truly understand our experience.
Because it’s true-you THINK you can imagine the pain of child loss if you have children, but even the most vivid imagination can’t conjure the utter blackness that waits on the other side of hearing, “Your son is dead.”
There’s a great divide between me and those who have not experienced child loss.
But it’s one I hope they never have to cross.
Because it’s a mercy to not know.
If all of us could fathom the pain of losing a child, no one would bear children–the risk would be too great.
So while the gap can be a source of misunderstanding and isolation for ME, it is a safeguard for YOU.
Earlier this week I participated in a “retreat” with Our Hearts Are Home-a ministry to bereaved parents and their families.
On the Zoom call were individuals active in their own communities and own ministries who also lend their time and talents to this one. Together we represent a cadre of bereaved parents who have chosen to come back with a torch to light the way of those still walking in the early days, weeks, months, YEARS of child loss.
It’s a privilege to work and walk beside them.
What I wanted to share today was this:Every one of these individuals is carrying their own burden of grief and loss, every one of them has a life outside ministry that includes family commitments, aging parents, growing children and grandchildren, work, church attendance and committee positions and just the everyday chores of living.
We are contacted via DM and text by newly bereaved parents all the time.
We have nonbereaved friends and family experiencing challenging life events. We have to negotiate holidays and family gatherings while respecting various people’s schedules and preferences.
We are administrators of closed Facebook groups and host book studies and write blogs.
We field phone calls and try to squeeze in workouts or walks, cooking and cleaning.
So when you are thinking about people to pray for, our “cause” may not be dramatic or life-threatening but our work is life giving and light sharing.
There have been a number of posts from different parents in our closed groups recently remarking on how difficult this journey continues to be even decades down the road.
From the outside looking in, folks think, “Well, they’ve had plenty of time to adapt”.
But what they don’t understand is that for a parent, it’s not only what we HAD that is missing, it’s what we thought we WOULD HAVE that we miss too.
So every Christmas, every New Year, every birthday, holiday and family celebration our child isn’t present is another “not there” we have to process and accept.
The sun rises behind bare branches and they look beautiful.
In just the right light and at the perfect angle, anything can be lovely.
It’s true that every living thing needs rest. Every working part must be oiled.
And while winter can be hard and heartless and cold and cruel, it is also space and time for re-creation.
If I only look harder I can already see tiny buds of springtime promise on the tips of branches overhead.
Death is winter.
Cold, hard, gray. Every lovely thing fallen and dry underfoot.
A season of rest-not chosen, unwelcome, resisted.
But rest just the same.
Yet the sun still shines and spreads warmth and light on even these bare branches.
After such a long time can the sap still rise?
Is there life left here?
Will spring come again and flowers bloom?
I’m counting on it.
It will all happen so fast, in a blink, a mere flutter of the eye. The last trumpet will call, and the dead will be raised from their graves with a body that does not, cannot decay. All of us will be changed! We’ll step out of our mortal clothes and slide into immortal bodies, replacing everything that is subject to death with eternal life.And, when we are all redressed with bodies that do not, cannot decay, when we put immortality over our mortal frames, then it will be as Scripture says:
Life everlasting has victoriously swallowed death. Hey, Death! What happened to your big win? Hey, Death! What happened to your sting?
Sin came into this world, and death’s sting followed. Then sin took aim at the law and gained power over those who follow the law. Thank God, then, for our Lord Jesus, the Anointed, the Liberating King, who brought us victory over the grave.
My dear brothers and sisters, stay firmly planted—be unshakable—do many good works in the name of God, and know that all your labor is not for nothing when it is for God.
I went to see The Greatest Showman a few years ago with my daughter. It was an amazing film-I was drawn into the story and my heart longed to see where it was going and how it would end.
I highly recommend it for two hours of uplifting entertainment.
Butit got me thinking.
So I did a little digging into P.T. Barnum’s REAL life story.
As you might imagine, several liberties were taken with actual history in order to create what I saw on the screen. That’s really just fine.I knew what I was getting into when I plunked my money down for the ticket. I had no illusion that I was walking into a history lecture- I understood I was there to be entertained.
When I compared the actual Barnum life story to the tidy, beautiful, uplifting and wonderfully scored musical I had seen in the theater, I found gaping holes.
And most of the holes involved the hard and ugly parts of his story-the parts people don’t like to talk about, much less live through.
While leaving them out or glossing them over with a moment or two of wistful glances for the movie is exactly what I expect from Hollywood, it can condition hearts to expect the same kind of thing in real life.
But real life stories don’t skip over the hard parts.
Real people have to live through the ugly and the painful and the devastating and the doubt and the sorrow. We don’t get to hop right to the happy ending (if there even IS a happy ending) nor do we get to whitewash the dark truths that inform our experience.
And because we prefer tidy (and happy) endings, bright and sunny days, encouraging and uplifting stories, when we are face to face with a challenging and difficult reality, we often turn away.
If we don’t hear it, it doesn’t matter.
If we don’t look, it didn’t happen.
If we wait long enough in our safe cocoon, someone else will deal with it.
Sometimes those of us in the middle of hard stories try to ignore it. But busyness and distraction do not make bad times better. Maybe for a moment, but not in the long run.
We’ve got to learn to experience it all, tell it all, be honest about how dark the path, how difficult the journey.
And those who are on the sunny side of the street need to learn to lean into friendship, cross over and offer compassionate companionship to those who are struggling.
It would be helpful if the world could just stop for a day or a week (or a year!) when your heart is shattered by the news that one of the children you birthed into this world has suddenly left it.
But it doesn’t.
And immediately all the roles I have played for decades are overlaid by a new role: bereaved mother. Except instead of being definitive or even descriptive, this role is more like a foggy blanket that obscures and disorients me as I struggle to fulfill all the roles to which I’ve become accustomed.
For the most part, I’m pretty transparent. Because secrets don’t serve anyone well.
If I pretend to be stronger than I really am, I hide the truththat it is Christ in me that gives me strength.
If I don’t admit that certain words or actions hurt my heart, I enable thoughtless behavior.
If I only parrot “Sunday School” answers when someone asks about my faith in relation to my loss, then I silence other heartswrestling with questions and pain in light of God’s sovereignty and love.
If I hide my tears, my pain, the missing then I minimize this great loss,And I will not make losing Dominic small.
It’s tempting to line up our friends and acquaintances in columns under headings of “perfect family”, “good christian”, “struggling addict” or “hopeless case”.
When I label someone I justify my response-good or bad-and let myself off the hook for sharing the extravagant, unrestrained love God has shown to me.
The longer I live, the more people I meet, the more certain I am that the neat little categories we like to use are not very helpful.
If I decide they are “doing well” then they don’t need my help.
And if I decide they are “beyond hope” then why waste my time or effort?
Either way, I’m wrong.
Christmas is the story of God come down-Emmanuel-of Love reaching down into a dark and lonely world. It was hardly tidy, it was a Messy Christmas
I’ll never forget one Christmas when I and some other moms organized a craft day for our preschool kids at a local church.
In our youthful enthusiasm, we thought doing homemade cards accented by glitter was a good idea. Boy, were we wrong!
Those bits of metallic bliss went everywhere-in hair, on clothes, in the carpet…we spent twice as much time trying to clean up as we spent making memories with the children. Never again!
So this quote about grief and glitter really struck home in my heart.
❤ Melanie
Every now and then I run across a quote or a meme that is perfect.
thelifeididntchoose 