How can all the love and all the hopes and all the dreams of a mama’s heart be squeezed into days or weeks or months of tears and sorrow?
If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them.
—James O’Barr
I grieve because I love.
My tears are a gift to the son I miss. My sorrow honors his memory. My broken heart gives evidence to the ones walking with me that my love is fierce and timeless.
Read the rest here: Love: The Reason I Grieve
Believe me, I’ve imposed my share of“Quiet Mouse” on my own kids through the years.
Raising four close-in-age siblings, sometimes that was the only way to make the last five miles home without losing my mind.
But the premise of the game is really this: I’m bigger, I’m stronger, I’m in control and you are not-so shut up.
Even if you have something important to say.
Even if you feel like you will burst wide open if you have to hold it in.
No excuses allowed. Just. Be. Quiet.
I’ve been a quiet mouse for most of my life when it comes to standing up for myself.
Now, advocating for my children or for someone unable to fend for themselves-that’s another story. But somewhere in my formative years I embraced the message that the most important thing in the world was to keep the peace.
Even if you have something important to say.
Even if you feel like you will burst wide open if you have to hold it in.
No excuses allowed. Just. Be. Quiet.
But all this emotional turmoil I’ve been feeling since Dominic left us has uncovered layer after layer of brokenness, pain and untold stories. His death lifted the lid on the vault that had been sealed for decades.
Emotions are flying out like genies.
And I’ve come to understand that peace at all costs-when the costs are borne by a single individual in a relationship-is not peace.
It’s slavery.
I also realize that not every friendship and family tie is a mission field on which I must spill my life’s blood to prove my love for Jesus.
Sometimes laying down simply enables bad behavior and encourages bullying and disrespect.
I want to walk in love. Always.
But love does not mean I must allow other people to walk all over me.
I don’t plan to.
No more “Quiet Mouse” for me.
It’s tempting to hide.
All I have to do is stay home or plaster on the “I’m fine” mask before I leave my driveway and venture out into the world.
Because, frankly, sometimes I just don’t want to explain why I’m crying again, struggling still, walking wounded and not “healed”.
But it’s not healthy.
I cannot selectively numb my emotions. When I push down the painful, I slam the lid on all of it-joy and love included.
It takes courage to choose to be seen.
It’s hard to choose to walk honestly and openly in the world.
It’s risky to offer my authentic self up to an often inattentive, insensitive and critical audience.
But if I am to be truly known then I must choose to let others see my struggle and allow them to witness my failures and heartache.
Truth is, when I hide I forfeit real connection.
There’s no authentic relationship without vulnerability.
I want deep and authentic bonds with family and friends.
I don’t want to hide.
I want to be seen.
I wish that I could mark my heart’s healing like I can mark my body’s healing after surgery-wound closes, scar remains, function returns, and forget about it.
But I can’t.
This journey is like walking those narrow ledges on the side of a mountain-doable, but requiring careful attention lest I fall off.
So far, so good.
But I hate days when my attention is drawn back to the threat of falling instead of the journey itself.
Almost three years [now four] and here I am-
still on the edge.
On the edge of an anxiety attack.
On the edge of the cliff of deep sorrow and darkness that threatens to swallow every thing bright in my life.
Read the rest here: On The Edge
I’m no art historian. But I think I may have solved the mystery to Mona Lisa’s smile.
For hundreds of years people have wondered just what is behind that enigmatic expression-it’s a smile, but almost not a smile.
Her lips and eyes do not agree.
I know exactly how she feels.
Some folks think bereaved parents want to prolong the pain and sorrow they are feeling. Some figure that those Facebook posts and Instagram photos and Tweets are aimed at generating pity.
But you want to know the truth?
Most bereaved parents long to feel happy again. They want, more than anything, to have a few moments when the weight of grief is lifted and genuine joy bubbles up from down deep like it used to.
The first chance I got to ask a fellow bereaved mom, I did: “Will I ever feel happy again?”
She was honest and told me it would come, but that it would take longer than I hoped.
She was right.
Nearly four years into this journey and I can faithfully report that yes, I do feel happy. I can laugh, I smile, I rejoice with those who rejoice.
I even have whole days when I am barely aware of sorrow and longing.
But the me that was jubilant and radiantly glowing with happiness is gone.
Instead, most days I am just quietly not sad.
You can see it in my face.
Just like Mona Lisa.
What, exactly, is the value of believers in Jesus plastering an “Everything is fine” mask across our faces?
Are we afraid that if we allow someone to see our pain we are letting God down?
And how could that be?
Did not Christ Himself beg the Father in the Garden to take the cup from Him?
Yet we smile and wave and chat our way through encounters with people around us, pretending, pretending, pretending that life is easy when it most certainly is not.
Denying the dark and refusing to acknowledge the depth of our pain diminishes the value of the comfort of Christ.
When David wrote that, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me” he understood both the desperate need for and the great assurance of Christ’s Presence.
When we allow others to see our broken hearts, we also bear testimony to the sustaining grace of Jesus.
And we extend an invitation for them to meet this Savior that gives strength and comfort even in the darkest hours and hardest journeys.
Even in the very first hours after the news, my brain began instructing my heart, “Now, try to be brave. Try not to disappoint people. Try to say the right thing, do the right thing and be the example you should be.”
Whatever that meant.
As I made phone calls and received concerned friends and family members I was so aware that they would take a cue from me-how much can I say, how hard can I cry, should I hug or stand back, should I talk about him or be silent lest it make the tears fall harder?
And here-almost nine years later-I still feel like I need to lead the way in conversations and social encounters.
If I don’t mention Dominic, no one else does and that disappoints me.
If I do mention Dominic, the response is often sympathy or rushing to another topic.
Which is also disappointing.
If I smile, then I’m “so much better’.
If I tear up, then I’m “not over it yet”.
The entire time I’m in the company of others (besides my family and a couple close friends) I am editing myself. Everything I say or don’t say is filtered through a grid based on how others may receive it.
No off the cuff responses here.
Past experience has taught me that what most folks want from the bereaved (after the first few months or maybe a year) is evidence that they are “moving on”, “healing”, “trusting Jesus”, “getting better” or “finding the silver lining”.
Part of me would like to participate in this ruse because it’s so much easier than trying to push, pull or drag them into the reality that bereaved parents face.
But another part of me wants to rip the blinders off and let them see that this is a lifelong journey that is bumpy, hard and doesn’t look like victory.
It looks like perseverance.
Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I cry. Some days are good. Some days are awful.
I’m stronger than I was but I’m not “better”.
I’m able to greet most days but I still struggle some mornings to get out of bed.
I enjoy my family and friends but I miss my son.
And sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could be only me.
Not a “me” curated for public consumption.
But just me.
There’s a common bit of advice in grief circles: Fake it until you make it.
It’s not bad as far as it goes and can be pretty useful-especially just after the initial loss and activity surrounding it.
Like when I met the acquaintance in the grocery store a month after burying Dominic and she grabbed me with a giant smile on her face, “How AREyou?!!! It’s SO good to see you out!!!”
I just smiled and stood there as if I appreciated her interest, a deer caught in headlights, silently praying she’d live up to her talkative past and soon move on to another target.
Faked it.
Boom!
BUT there comes a time when faking it is not helpful. In fact, it’s downright dangerous.
Read the rest here: Can’t Fake It Forever
I went to see The Greatest Showman the other day 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.
But I’ve been thinking about it since.
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.
Because sooner or later, it will be all of us.
thelifeididntchoose 