I was looking for it too, at first.
There had to be a secret path, a magic word, a hidden key that would make this awful child loss journey more manageable.
But there is none.
It seems unbearable to think ahead to the possible years of doing this hard thing. And it is- UNBEARABLE. If I look at the missing writ large across the rest of my life, I will crumble beneath the weight of it.
Read the rest here: No Magic
C.S.Lewis was an amazing man who died one day before I was born and just three years after his beloved wife ran to heaven ahead of him.
In these later years I’ve often wondered how much grief played a role in his departure.
I have appreciated his books for decades. Shared them with others and spent hours reading The Chronicles of Narnia series to my children.
He is a family staple.
But he can be a bit hard to understand at times-his rich background studying literature informed his own writing style. So I often have to tease apart longer quotes to get at the meat of what he’s saying.
It’s always worth it.
I read A GRIEF OBSERVED in my 30’s as another in a long list of “Books You Should Read”. I gleaned a bit here or there that I thought might be of use later on.
But when Dominic ran ahead to heaven, it was the first book on grief I bought for myself and I read it like a starving man set down to a full table.
This passage, in particular, was helpful in understanding how my absolute trust in the FACT of ultimate redemption of my pain and sorrow did absolutely NOTHING to take away the pain and sorrow-it only made it bearable.
If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to “glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.
~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
My son is safe in the arms of Jesus. And that is a comfort.
And I, trusting in that truth and leaning into my faith in Christ, am also comforted that even here, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, am safe in the arms of Jesus. I may FEEL lost, but I am NOT lost.
But-and here’s the experiential truth that separates those of us who experience the REALITY of child loss from those that IMAGINE it-my mother’s heart is denied the presence of my son for the rest of my earthly days.
All the things I had hoped for, dreamt of and expected to experience are robbed from me.
There is no remedy for that.
Absolutely none.
Grief changes lots of things.
I am simply not able to spend energy on frivolous and marginally meaningful social activities anymore.
I’m sure that hurts some folks feelings and I am truly sorry.
But I can’t help it.
Truth is, we all have a limited amount of energy to spend on life’s commitments, celebrations and unexpected circumstances. It’s just that most of us aren’t forced to admit it very often. Before Dominic ran ahead to heaven, I could “rob Peter to pay Paul” as my daddy used to say. A few days of not enough sleep, a few days of rushing here and there, a few days of biting my tongue and smiling when I wanted to cry were bearable.
I could survive a week or two and then take a day or two to recover. Good as new.
I don’t have that luxury anymore.
Now I operate every. single. day. on a razor thin edge of just enough energy to get by and not enough energy to get out of the bed.
So I am selective about social commitments because I know the energy just isn’t there.
I’m not withdrawing, I’m drawing boundaries.
I promise you are still important to me but I may have to check up online instead of in person.
I want to know about every special and exciting thing going on in your life-I want to celebrate with you!-even if it’s from a distance.
Please don’t scratch me off your list just because I don’t always say “yes” anymore.
I will keep showing up when I can and send a card or gift when I can’t.
I care.
I promise.
I’m doing the best I can.
Yesterday was four years since the day we buried Dominic. I can barely comprehend it. It’s a terrible thing for a mama’s heart to watch the seasons change and think, “I need to change the flowers on Dominic’s grave.”
But I do it.
It’s one of the last things I can do for this child of my heart.
Sterkte.
I didn’t even know this word when we buried Dominic.
But I wish I had.
Because “sterkte” expresses precisely the supernatural strength and courage that filled my heart, mind and body as I stood for the hours of visitation, sang the worship songs, listened to friends, family and our shepherd/pastor give a message and invitation to a packed sanctuary, then filed out ahead of my son’s casket.
Sterkte literally translates “strength” or “power” but culturally means much more.
It means bravery, strength, fortitude and endurance in the face of fear and insurmountable odds through the empowering strength of God in me.
The morning of Dominic’s funeral-nine long days after his accident-I posted this on Facebook:
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.”
~Habakkuk 3: 17-18
Years before, in another dry but hardly tragic season, God had imprinted those verses on my heart. Even if-even if- there was no way through but through, I was determined to trust God and to lean in and hold onto hope.
I had no idea how that choice would be tested in the coming days, weeks, months.
I had no idea that even now, four years later, I would have to hold on just as hard, wake each morning and make that choice once again, refuse the whispers of the enemy of my soul that spread seeds of doubt and confusion.
But in my own strength, all the determination in the world would be for nothing.
I am not strong enough or brave enough to stand.
It’s sterkte that held me up that day four years ago when my son’s body was lowered into the ground and dirt shoveled on top. It’s sterkte that keeps me upright today when tsunami waves of grief still wash over me and sobs escape. It’s sterkte that gives me strength to hold onto hope and lean into truth and keep marching bravely into a future that may yet hold more heartache.
Habakkuk committed to praise God no matter what happened.
He understood sterkte. It was his lifeline.
After his declaration of purpose, he gives the reason why:
The Lord God is my Strength, my personal bravery, and my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds’ feet and will make me to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon my high places [of trouble, suffering, or responsibility]!
~Habakkuk 3:19
The Lord God is my Strength.
The Lord God is my personal bravery.
The Lord God is my invincible army.
He is the reason I’m still standing.
If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.
We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.~Cheryl Strayed, Brave Enough
Stuck in grief”-it’s a theme of blog posts, psychology papers and magazine articles. The author usually lists either a variety of “symptoms” or relates anecdotes of people who do truly odd things after a loved one dies. “Complicated grief” is a legitimate psychiatric diagnosis.
But who gets to decide?
What objective criteria can be applied to every situation, every person, every death to determine whether someone is truly stuck in grief?
Read the rest here: Stuck or Unstuck in Grief? Who Gets to Decide?
Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Sunday I sat through what started off as a promising sermon.
The text was from Jeremiah when he was sent by God to the potter’s house for an object lesson.
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.
Jeremiah 18:1-6 NIV
This story hits home in so many ways.
I identify with Jeremiah’s tears shed over the message he was called to deliver (Israel was about to experience harsh judgement) and the image of God as Potter and me as clay in His hands, to be molded and shaped according to HIS purpose and plan regardless of how I might like to be molded and shaped.
But the sermon took a turn that hurt my heart when the preacher began suffusing the message with personal experience. It is absolutely his prerogative to relay his own life story but it is another thing to draw general conclusions from HIS experience as being relevant and instructive for EVERYONE.
His wife had been diagnosed many years ago with a brain tumor. She underwent extensive surgery and therapy but ultimately survived and is still living today.
Hallelujah!
I am thankful their story has a hopeful and happy ending (so far). The problem came when the pastor said, “I never asked, ‘why?'” and then proceeded to imply that asking, “why?” was wrong and the mark of an immature faith.
I’m delighted his faith was strong enough (or naive enough) that his heart never argued with his theological framework.
That is not my experience.
And it is not the experience of millions of faithful Christ followers who have been asked to bear up under burdens that do NOT have a hopeful or happy conclusion this side of heaven.
It took every bit of self-control I had to not stand up and shout, “REALLY? What about Job? What about Paul? What about David? What about JESUS?”
The Psalms are filled with questions.
Jesus Himself asked, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” from the cross.
God invites us to ask.
“Come now, and let us reason together,” saith the Lord
Isaiah 1:18 KJV
My faith is stronger because I have taken my questions to the only One Who can answer them.
He doesn’t always answer.
But He always listens.
He doesn’t give me reasons.
But He gives me Himself.
I am the clay-I know that. But unlike dumb physical material that can be molded and shaped without feeling or self-awareness, I am a human being, created in the image of God Himself and endowed with feelings, knowledge and a heart that longs to understand.
So I must choose–as an act of free will–to offer myself as a living sacrifice, to remain supple and malleable under the Hand of my Creator as He makes me into what He intends me to be.
But submission does not preclude my questions.
I would argue that true submission insists on acknowledging and asking the questions and choosing to yield anyway.
Anything less is not submission, it is simply fatalism.
I serve a God Who is my Father, not my dictator. I serve and worship a Savior Who is gentle, humble and kind, not harsh, proud and uncaring.
It is no sin to ask, “Why?”
In fact, it is exactly the kind of exchange relationship insists upon.
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“Can you?” ” Would you?” “We need you to… Help!”
You’d be surprised how soon people start expecting a bereaved parent to jump right back into the responsibilities and activities they shouldered or enjoyed before burying a child.
I know the rest of the world didn’t stop when mine did, but I was truly amazed that some people in my circle seemed unaware mine had stopped at all.
As I’ve written before here the funeral is not the end of grief’s journey, it’s quite near the beginning. It took a year for me to just convince my heart Dominic wasn’t coming back. It took longer to begin to understand how very different I am now and to embrace those changes.
I simply cannot do some things I once did.
Read the rest here: A Fine Line
Whether the burden is child loss, abuse, chronic illness or some other ongoing and unchangeable hard circumstance, it’s easy to get so good at acting “OK” you can almost fool yourself.
But all that stress and struggle exacts a cost.
Pretending that it doesn’t is not helpful at all.
So it’s wonderful when people ask about it.
It’s a gift when they let us share.
Awhile back another loss mom wrote this and gave me permission to use it:
In case you ever wonder, please know that it is always, always OK to ask me about [Dominic].
I love to talk about him.
No, I’m not OK. I’ll probably cry, but it’s just because it’s under the surface always, not because you asked.
And I don’t really know what people mean when they say “she’s doing well,” because if you knew what all goes on in my mind and body from grief-well, frankly you couldn’t handle it.
But it’s OK to bring it up.
Talking helps. ❤
What if, instead of hiding my pain, I allowed others to see it and offer it as a testimony of the power and grace of God in my life?
What if, instead of pretending that “everything is alright”, I admit that it’s not, but that God is still on the throne?
What if, instead of creating a gulf between myself and others by walling off parts of my life that I deem too messy, I throw open the door and invite folks inside-mess and all?
Read the rest here: Displaying Our Scars
I know many faithful readers who also follow Christ may gasp at this title. But the definition of disappoint is most literally, “not to live up to expectations”. And if we are honest, every one of us has expectations of how God is going to act in our lives. I know I did!
Aren’t there promises in Scripture that declare good things for those who obey the Lord? Aren’t there proclamations of protection?
So when Dominic died I was most certainly disappointed. ❤
I can identify with the faithful among the Palm Sunday crowd- joyful because all evidence pointed to a happy climax.
Here was the Messiah entering Jerusalem just like the prophets promised. Surely an end to this pagan tyranny was near!
“Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He Who comes in the name of the Lord!”
Just a little longer and this heavy burden will be lifted, this hard life transformed.
A few days later this same crowd would choose a murderous rebel over the gentle Rabbi because He had not lived up to their expectations of deliverance.
I can identify with those folks too.
God most certainly has not lived up to my expectations. He has not fashioned my life according to my plan.
He has not delivered me from this body of sin and death.
He allowed death to enter my home and my heart.
I am tempted, in my sorrow, to shake my fist and demand an answer. And then, in a moment of clarity I realize how foolish that is.
“Where were you when I [God] laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
7 while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy?Job 38:4-7 NIV
I am in no position to judge God’s motives, His heart, His plan. I am bound by time and blinded by the limitations of my flesh.
I want immediate relief because pain is painful and sorrow is heavy and grief is unbearable in my own strength.
But God knows the end from the beginning. He is weaving all these things into a story that will be told for eternity. He is creating masterpieces to declare His glory, His faithful love and His grace and mercy.
For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago.
Ephesians 2:10 VOICE
So on this Palm Sunday I will join the crowd of worshipers shouting, “Save us! Son of David!”
I will lay my sacrifices at His feet and trust that He will redeem and restore what the enemy has stolen.
I will refuse impatience when the time of waiting lingers long before me.
I will refuse despair when it looks like things are dark and may never be light again.
I will trust and not be afraid because my King has conquered and is conquering every evil thing and every sad thing.
thelifeididntchoose 