One of the reasons I write is to share my grief experience with others.
I realized when tossed into the ocean of sorrow that of all the things I had heard about or read about, surviving child loss was never mentioned.
Read the rest here: Silence Doesn’t Serve Anyone Well
I am thankful for Brene Brown.
She has helped me put words to my feelings, helped me see a way forward when I felt there was none and helped me own my story even though it is hard.
I keep her quotes around to encourage my heart and remind me that I am brave.
This is one of my favorites:
Those of you who follow the blog regularly know I have rheumatoid arthritis.
It’s something I’ve been living with three times as long as the years I’ve lived without Dominic and I find strange parallels in the twin journey of chronic disease and chronic heartache.
Both are crippling in their own way, both force me to work around the pain. Both have changed me in ways I could not have imagined and certainly wouldn’t have wished on myself or my family.
Both have taught me to endure.
Both have taught me many other things as well:
I have learned to be more compassionate. With pain as my constant companion, it reminds me this life is hard and that it’s hard for others too.
I have learned not to take a good day for granted. I never know when I will wake to an RA flare, I am constantly surprised by random heavy grief days and I can’t tell when I go to bed at night what tomorrow will bring. So when a day is good, I grab hold of every moment. I laugh, I move, I do things that make my heart sing. And I store the memory for days that aren’t so good.
I have learned to be gentle to myself. I can only do what I can do. And what I can’t do today will just have to wait for tomorrow-or maybe wait for forever-and that’s OK.
I have learned to say, “no” graciously, without making excuses. I try very hard to live up to commitments so I am selective in taking on new ones. I know that if I take on too many, I’m sure to have to let someone down in the end. I can’t make others outside my disease or my grief understand so I’m learning to not try. Their disappointment or disapproval is something they have to carry, not me. (I wrote more about this here: No. It’s a Complete Sentence.)
I have learned to create “work arounds” for the things that I have to do but are very hard to do. For my RA that means unloading the dishwasher two plates at a time instead of lifting the whole stack at once. For my grieving heart that means spreading out the hard things over a week instead of a few hours. It means not feeling compelled to answer every message, phone call or text right away if my mind is unclear or my heart too heavy.
I’ve learned to wear what’s comfortable. Whether that is shoes that accommodate my crooked toes or refusing to put on a “happy face” mask in public-I am who I am. I certainly don’t mope around or try to draw attention to myself. But I’m just not responsible for making other people feel comfortable with my disease or my grief.
I have learned to plan “rest stops” on my daily journey. It may be a moment to sit down or a moment to do something creative or a moment to watch a funny video-but each thing is designed to help me recharge for the next few hours. If I try to soldier on I end up too tired and emotionally spent to do anything. One day of that and I may lose a whole week. So I pace myself.
I have learned that appropriate medical intervention and treatment is not a crutch, it’s a pathway to a more productive life. I resisted taking medication for my RA for a long time-the potential side effects are frightening. But when the swelling, pain and joint deformity became too much to bear, I gave in. I shouldn’t have waited so long. It was foolish. I will never be free of the disease, but my life can be better with appropriate intervention. It’s the same with grief. Anti-depressants and anxiety medicine do not remove the pain of grief but they can make space in a heart and mind to do the work grief requires. There is NO SHAME in using whatever tools are available to make it through.
I have learned to ask for help. There are a number of things I just can’t do alone. I used to be able to do them. But not anymore. Asking for help is not defeat. I have to remind myself of that. At the end of the day what matters is that what matters gets done-I don’t get “extra credit” for struggling through alone.
I have learned to speak my truth. (This is one I’m still working on!) If I am having a bad pain day or a bad grief day, I don’t try to hide it. I just tell those who ask and those closest to me the truth. The energy I have to expend to keep it covered up means less energy to work on the underlying factors contributing to the bad day. It’s just NOT worth it. And I’m not good at hiding it anyway.
I have learned that walking (literally or figuratively) with a limp is not a defect. It’s simply my life. I won’t apologize for it. If someone asks, I’ll share. But if not, I just go limping along, making my way forward. I might be slow, but I’m moving.
And that’s what counts in the end.
I will walk with an emotional limp for the rest of my life … But I don’t want it to just remind me of the struggle and the pain; I want it to remind me of a place of surrender, a place where God met me and blessed me. Otherwise, it is just wasted pain.
~Nancy Guthrie, The One Year Book of Hope, p. 332
In centuries past it was common for Christ followers to fast.
They fasted for many reasons: to consecrate themselves for a task; to seek answers to prayer; observance of seasons on the church calendar; or for strength to overcome besetting sin.
Today, fasting has fallen out of favor in most western churches-deemed unnecessary or an attempt to gain favor with God by “works”.
That’s unfortunate.
Because fasting has never been about making points with God, it’s been about removing self-reliance from our spiritual vocabulary.
It’s not about demonstrating personal fortitude or displaying self-righteousness, it’s about recognizing my weakness and desperate dependence on Christ.
Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are – dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon.
~Hudson Taylor
Like the Pharisees, though, I am apt to make much of my “sacrifice” and little of Christ’s sufficiency. I want to bargain with God and rise in the ranks of His favor because I’m so “good”.
It doesn’t work like that.
I was almost to the end of a 40 day fast when Dominic was killed.
I am physically unable to fast 40 days consecutively so, for several years, I had done an every-other-day fast so that it equaled 40 days.
At some point in the first week after Dom ran ahead to heaven I remember crying out to God, “What exactly do You want from me??? I’ve done all that I know to do in an attempt to live up to Your expectations, and yet it is never enough!”
And (not then, certainly!) but at some point in the nearly 3 years since, He answered, “Your righteous acts are as filthy rags. The only sufficient sacrifice is My own Son’s blood.”
THAT was humbling.
Because even though I would have given the same answer to anyone else who thought they could “work” their way into God’s good graces, obviously the truth of it had not seeped into the fabric of my being.
I WAS trying to make points with God. And I was angry He hadn’t taken that into consideration and spared me the pain of burying my son.
We often mock the Pharisees for thinking that “getting it right” means “being righteous”, but I understand the temptation to substitute acts of righteousness for relying on relationship through Jesus Christ.
The one means I am in control, the other means I have to follow and give up control.
If there is one thing I’ve learned through child loss that I cannot forget for even a millisecond is: I am NOT in control.
I am utterly dependent on Him for life, for breath, for saving AND sustaining grace.
For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing.
Ephesians 2:8-9 VOICE
Fasting from food is relatively easy. Fasting from my tendency toward self-righteousness is much harder.
This year, as I observe Lent,
as I fast,
as I add in holy habits,
I am asking God to help me remember that I am not trying to win His favor,
I am making room to hear His heart.
Think back on the most awful thing that has ever happened to you.
Does it still hurt? Do you still carry scars from where it pierced your soul and broke your heart?
Can you forget it? Really, really forget it?
Read the rest here: When Will You Be Over This?
You know, I don’t expect those outside the Body of Christ to have good theology-that’s like expecting me to be able to explain thermodynamics.
Ain’t gonna happen-it’s outside my scope of understanding and practice.
I do expect those who have spent a lifetime reading Scripture, studying Sunday School lessons and listening to sermons to know better.
But many don’t.
Read the rest here: Exploding the Myth: God Doesn’t Give You More Than You Can Handle
I talk about Dominic “running ahead” but it feels like I‘m leaving him behind.
I know he’s the first to Heaven and I know I’ll join him, but my daily experience is that I am the one moving forward and he is the one stuck somewhere, unable to catch up.
I absolutely HATE that his footprint on my life grows smaller with each passing day, each new memory made without him, each event at which his smiling face makes no entrance.
I can’t stop the accumulation of bits and pieces that make it harder to spot his unique contribution to the collage of my life.
I am in no danger of forgetting him.
That’s not what I fear.
But bringing what he still is to me into a conversation, into view for others to see and appreciate is getting more difficult.
When I mention him, people don’t know whether to be sad or happy, question my sanity or rush past hoping I’ll change the subject.
There’s just no natural seque between the living and the dead.
And it hurts my heart to watch the gap grow wider.
Reading through the Sermon on the Mount, it’s easy to feel defeated.
Jesus ripped off the Pharisees’ masks. He gave people a peek behind the curtain-unveiling the sin that hid beneath a facade of outward obedience and seeming righteousness.
Jesus also strips away any pretense that I can follow the “rules”.
Sure I may not murder anyone, but hate and malice-how am I supposed to get through this life without calling someone “fool”?
Line after line of impossible standards-righteousness that goes way beyond the Ten Commandments!
I am hopeless and helpless.
Jesus makes just that point-on my own, in my own strength, dependent on my own efforts, I’m lost.
That’s what makes the Gospel the Good News!
God in His mercy and grace has offered the only true hope–the righteousness of Christ, the Perfect Sacrifice and atonement for sin.
When I walk into church and pretend I “have it altogether”, when I refuse to display my brokenness and my need for forgiveness, I obscure the beauty, value and truth of the Gospel.
I raise a barrier between those who need rescue and the very means by which they may be saved.
We are all broken.
We are all lost.
Our only hope is Jesus.
May we be bold enough to be honest.
Backing up my rear tire hit the edge of a little stump and the sidewall blew out with a loud “whoosh”.
No fixing that. No way to plug it or patch it or make it work for just a little longer.
That tire was toast.
I bought a new one.
But imagine if that wasn’t an option. Imagine if I had to take the ripped apart shreds of what was left of that tire and cobble it together to make do. Imagine if it barely held air, had to be pumped up each morning and needed attention every mile or so just to keep going.
That would be exhausting and enough to make you wonder if traveling anywhere was worth it.
That’s how my heart feels these past days.
When Dominic ran ahead to heaven it was like my heart exploded into a thousand tiny bits. So many fragments with no way to put them back together.
But getting a new heart isn’t an option-I’m stuck with this broken one.
And I have to keep on going. Even when it takes every ounce of energy to hold it together, even when I can barely make two steps without feeling like it’s going to fall apart again, even when I want to give up.
So today, and maybe tomorrow too, I’m going to just sit here.
I’m going to give myself permission to acknowledge that my heart is broken, I feel deflated and defeated and pushing through is not something I have to do if I don’t feel like I can.
I’m pretty sure the feeling will pass.
I’ll gather strength and manage to glue the bits back together in a day or two, add air and travel on.
I always do.
thelifeididntchoose 