Tag: authenticity

Then and Now: How Can Death and Life Inhabit the Same Frame?

April 17, 2014

Father, I have received through Your hand a most grievous wound-part of my heart has been ripped from my chest and I will limp through life forever changed, forever broken.

My beautiful, fearless, strong son has been struck down in his youth. I am dismayed that my body will continue to live when my spirit is crushed.

How can death and life inhabit the same frame?

How can I attend to the externals of commonplace things when all I want to do is hurry through to the eternal home You have prepared for me?

Oh Jesus!  Hold my baby!  I know that You were with him and I know that you love him.  I know (I have to know-or I couldn’t breathe) that you love me!

What a steep price to pay  for a tender heart-fill me up with grace, mercy and love.  Make our circle stronger and more resiliant.

Help me to love, to be love, to show love, to give love, to eat,sleep, drink love.

“Here I am, LORD, and the children You have given me-make us as signs and symbols to Your people, for the glory of Your Name.” ~Isaiah 8:18

If I believe that only Your Word and the people You have made are eternal, then I must order the rest of the life You give me to align with that truth.

Take this mother’s heart and make this pain count for something.

“A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of the joy that a child is born into the world.  So with you:  Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.” ~John 16:21-22

Lord, I choose to believe that this pain will produce the life You have ordained and that joy will be the ultimate outcome.

April 30, 2016

I continue to carry both death and life in my body and my heart.

Death reminds me of the cost of sin, of the price of redemption and of how fragile and temporary our earthly existence.  It makes me uncomfortable here-is a constant thorn in my flesh.

I cannot lay it aside or ignore it.

The undeniable presence of death contrasts sharply with the equally undeniable life of Christ sustaining me.

I have been asked how I can believe in what I cannot see or touch. How I can trust a God Who allowed such pain in my life.

It is true that I can’t see God,  I can’t prove His existence.

But the fact that I’m still holding onto hope gives testimony to the life of Christ in me.

This is in keeping with my own eager desire and persistent expectation and hope, that I shall not disgrace myself nor be put to shame in anything; but that with the utmost freedom of speech and unfailing courage, now as always heretofore, Christ (the Messiah) will be magnified and get glory and praise in this body of mine and be boldly exalted in my person, whether through (by) life or through (by) death.

For me to live is Christ [His life in me], and to die is gain [the gain of the glory of eternity].

Philippians 1:20-21 AMP

 

 

Then and Now: The Morning After

April 13, 2014: The Morning After

Everyone is home-everyone except Dominic.  Quiet now that there’s just us.  How did I even manage to close my eyes last night?  How are we going to face another day? How are we going to face all the days to come?

This is the song that came first to mind even as I sat crying in disbelief:

“Alleluia!  Alleluia! For the Lord God Almighty reigns!”

You can watch it here:  Agnus Dei by Michael W. Smith

  And they sang a new song, saying:

“You are worthy to take the scroll
    and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
    and with your blood you purchased for God
    persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.
   You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
    and they will reign on the earth.”

   Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:

“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
    to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
    and honor and glory and praise!”

  Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:

“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
    be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”

  The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

Revelation 5:9-14 NIV

Either it is true and everything will be well-or it is not true and nothing will be well.

IT IS TRUE.

HE IS TRUE.

God is on His throne.

“Melanie”-clad in black. Covered in sorrow but trusting in God.

“He who sows in tears shall reap in joy.” Psalm 126:5

eyes of the lord attentive

April 29, 2016

Today I still cling to those verses, still hold those promises close to my heart.

Some mornings I wake and cannot wrap my mind around the fact that my son is gone.

Sunrise finds me crying out to God, begging Him to make it untrue, to turn back the clock and miraculously restore my life before loss.

It is still hard and I still struggle.

But I believe,

I believe,

I believe.  

What I Want You to Know About My Grief

I am so very thankful I live in a country where the vast majority of parents do not know what it’s like to bury a child.

I am part of a relatively small group.  Bereaved parents make up a tiny segment of the population.

It’s possible that you may never be close friends with someone who has lost a child.

And because death and dying are unpopular subjects, and because grieving parents can become very good at hiding the pain, even if you DO meet someone whose child has died, they may never tell you about it.

So, so many of the friends I have made on this journey live each day bearing the weight of grief AND the heavy burden of being misunderstood-at work, in church, even in their own extended families.

One of the first posts I wrote was born out of this angst-birthed in pain as I realized that even well-meaning friends and family members who have not experienced child loss really don’t have any idea how it feels :

People say, “I can’t imagine.“

But then they do.

They think that missing a dead child is like missing your kid at college or on the mission field but harder and longer.

That’s not it at all.

Read the rest: What Grieving Parents Want Others to Know

 

Today’s Choice

Every day I have a choice:  do I allow grief to overwhelm me and harden my heart or do I cling to mercy and grace and embrace my vulnerability?

Losing a child is a uniquely painful experience, but we all face some kind of trial.  Every one of us carries a burden.  Each of us must decide.

And it’s not that easy.

Read more here:  A Daily Struggle

 

Still Wrestling

If you’re looking on from the outside you might well think that I’ve laid most of my questions to rest; that I’m no longer wrestling with trying to comprehend both the sovereignty of God and the goodness of God;  and that I’ve figured out how to reconcile verses that seem to promise protection for those that love the Lord and the reality of death and destruction of some of the very same people.

But you would be wrong.

I do experience the peace that passes all understanding.  I do rely on Jesus to be the Arbiter of Truth and the Umpire of my questions:

Let the peace of Christ [the inner calm of one who walks daily with Him] be the controlling factor in your hearts [deciding and settling questions that arise]. To this peace indeed you were called as members in one body [of believers]. And be thankful [to God always].

Colossians 3:15 AMP

.I am trusting fully in the ultimate redemption of my pain.

Yet there are moments when I am overwhelmed by the “whys”. Thankfully they don’t come as often as they used to.

Still, I refuse to pretend that I have it all figured out.  Five months later I continue to identify with what I wrote here:  Wrestling With God

 

A Different Me

I’m not the same me  I was two years ago.

I no longer look with confidence down the driveway as friends and family pull away, certain that we will see one another soon.

I whisper, “Be safe” when we part, but know that they are not the keeper of their days and that “being safe” doesn’t mean everyone escapes deadly peril.

I don’t have the luxury of emotional distance when I read the newspaper anymore.

I can’t watch the text scroll by on CNN or FoxNews and allow my eyes and heart to glaze over as numbers representing lives flash by.

Burying my son has tenderized me.

My mind drifts effortlessly and immediately to the ones left behind any time there is mention of a murder or a suicide or an accident.

And my spirit rejoices  when a heroic rescue uncovers someone buried in the rubble or a passerby stops to help a person who otherwise faced certain doom.  Second chances make me cry happy tears.

I have higher tolerance for the failures of others and lower tolerance for hatefulness and unkindness.

Maybe I’m just tired, but I find it easier to extend grace than to fuel anger.

I don’t care what latest or greatest movie, TV show, fashion fad or IPhone App has just been released-ads for a better, bigger, newer anything don’t entice me.

Don’t try to draw me into drama or worry or hand-wringing over politics or social media or foolish disputes.  There is no part of my heart with room for that.

I will exhaust myself loving others but not on loving things.

I’m a pilgrim and a stranger on this earth. I’m walking a path in a foreign land, looking forward to my heavenly home.  

By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.

Hebrews 11:8-10 MSG

 

 

 

 

Visible Wounds

A sweet friend made sure I had Nicholas Wolterstorff’s book, Lament for a Son, in my hands just days after Dominic’s accident.  And it was one of the most helpful, kindest gifts I ever received.  It still lives by my chair and I look at it often.

It might have been the similarities in circumstances that took our sons-his died in a mountain climbing accident, mine in a motorcycle accident-or it might have been our shared theology, but when I read his words, they spoke my heart.

A professor of philosophy and a believer in Christ, he refuses to gloss over the hard edges of grief and pain.  He faces the questions head-on and brings me with him into the dark chamber of sorrow, letting me sit in silence and feel the heaviness of loss.

He does not wrap his experience up into a tidy package.

It may be counter-intuitive to those who have not experienced child loss to know that I find his lack of tidy ending MORE encouraging than the books I read that try to tell me it will all be just fine.

Because my heart screams that it will NOT be “fine” this side of heaven.  I will NOT understand this side of heaven.  I WILL NOT be satisfied with any answer this side of heaven.

There are many quotes from this book that speak to my heart, but this one sums up so much of what I am learning through loss:

If sympathy for the world’s wounds is not enlarged by our anguish, if love for those around us is not expanded, if gratitude for what is good does not flame up, if insight is not deepened, if commitment to what is important is not strengthened, if aching for a new day is not intensified, if hope is weakened and faith diminished, if from the experience of death comes nothing good, then death has won. Then death, be proud.

So I shall struggle to live the reality of Christ’s rising and death’s dying. In my living, my son’s dying will not be the last word. But as I rise up, I bear the wounds of his death. My rising does not remove them. They mark me. If you want to know who I am, put your hand in.

~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

As I wrote on Dominic’s first Remembrance Day, April 12, 2015:

Two truths have been burned on my Soul. One, broken hearts still beat. We are surrounded by wounded people. Walking gently through this life is the greatest blessing we can give to one another.

And two, LOVE WINS. There is no force as strong or attractive or eternal as love. God’s love for us and our love for Him and one another will be the song we sing forever. It would behoove us all to learn it here on earth.

I am not who I was [ten] years ago.  

My heart has been both broken and made larger.

My eyes see the pain in the eyes of those around me.  My ears hear the strain in a muttered, “I’m fine.”

I have no patience for petty disputes and silly games.  I am more empty of envy and more full of love.

And my arms reach further and wider to embrace and encourage the wounded.

As I have been comforted, I want to comfort others.

Blessed [gratefully praised and adored] be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts and encourages us in every trouble so that we will be able to comfort and encourage those who are in any kind of trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For just as Christ’s sufferings are ours in abundance [as they overflow to His followers], so also our comfort [our reassurance, our encouragement, our consolation] is abundant through Christ [it is truly more than enough to endure what we must].

2 Corinthians 1:3-5 AMP

Stronger

If you meet me now at the grocery store or pass me in church, I probably won’t cry.

I will most likely ask you how you are, what you’ve been doing and smile when you share the latest family news even if in the midst of the words a thousand alarms go off in my head, reminding me of Dominic.

Because I’m stronger.

There’s a common misconception about grief among those who have never experienced the loss of a close loved one.

It goes something like this:  The first few weeks, months and the first holidays celebrated without them are the hardest.  But once the bereaved make it through THOSE, things get EASIER.

I’m here to tell you that, at least for me, it’s just not true.

A better picture of how I am continuing in this grief journey is to think of it as weight lifting.   I started with a 250 pound barbell raised over my head-no warning, no training-that knocked me to my knees and threatened to press the life out of me.  But friends and family came alongside and helped me lift the heavy weight for a season.

And I survived.

Each day, I have to get out of bed and lift that weight.

  • Over time, my muscles have grown stronger.
  • Over time, I’ve become more adept at keeping my grip.
  • Over time, I’ve learned a few tips and tricks to balance the bar more evenly, to situate myself more strategically beneath it and to breathe through the lifting so that I don’t become light-headed and faint.

But there are still days, still moments, when my balance is off and I can be crushed by the weight of grief.  There are times when life adds a few more pounds onto the bar and even my stronger arms are unable to lift it up and carry on.

And in those moments or on those days, the full weight of sorrow and pain and longing overwhelm me.  That’s when I understand how Paul felt when he wrote:

We are pressed on every side by troubles, but not crushed and broken. We are perplexed because we don’t know why things happen as they do, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going. These bodies of ours are constantly facing death just as Jesus did; so it is clear to all that it is only the living Christ within who keeps us safe.  

2 Corinthians 4: 8-10

I sit in my floor and cry out to God for mercy, cry out to Him for strength, cry out to Him for grace to rise and carry on.

I am thankful that it’s no longer every day.  I’m relieved that I can do routine things more easily.  I can smile. I can even laugh.

I am stronger.  I am more capable.

But I am never completely free of the load.  

Understanding Acceptance: Loving Well Series

There is a lot of misconception around the notion of “acceptance” in the grief community. Sometimes among the very people counseling those walking this valley of loss.

It’s not a once-and-done realization or commitment or decision.  It’s a process…

Sometimes those that walk alongside the bereaved are biding time, waiting for that “final” stage of grief: Acceptance.

And some therapists, counselors and armchair psychiatrists are certain that if the grieving mother can simply accept the death of her child, she can move on–that she can get back to a more “normal’ life.

But this notion is as ridiculous as imagining that welcoming a new baby into a household doesn’t change everything.

Read the rest here:  Loving well: Understanding “Acceptance”

Just Say His Name: Loving Well Series

As a bereaved mother, I long desperately to know that my son is still remembered and that he still matters.  Of course, he matters to me-but it is a great gift to know that he matters to others as well. 

Death is scary.  Even for us who trust Jesus.  And the death of a child just trashes the notion that we are in control, that we can fully protect the ones we love from all harm.

But you are frightened of what you cannot comprehend.

I am living the reality of your greatest fear.

Read the rest here:  Loving Well: Just Say His Name