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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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”
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
I wrote this post in an effort to help the nonbereaved understand that funerals and memorials and other outward symbols of “good-bye” are only the BEGINNING to our sense of loss and sorrow. And that while everyone else walks away and goes back to the life they had the day before, we stand on the threshold to a different life we are unprepared for, know nothing about and do not want.
“A funeral or memorial service seems like a final chapter. We close the coffin, close the doors and everyone goes home.
But for bereaved parents and their surviving children, it’s not an end, it is a beginning.
Much like a wedding or birth serves as the threshold to a new way of life, a new commitment, a new understanding of who you are, burying a child does the same.
I walked away from the cemetary overwhelmed by the finality of death–not in a theological sense–I believe firmly that my son lives with Jesus–but with the undeniable fact that he is no longer available to me on this earth.”
Read more: Loving Well: Transitioning From “Good-bye” to Grief
I’ve had two conversations in as many days that revolved around how hard it is to be transparent in relationships.
And it seems that the difficulty lies not only in our own desire to present ourselves in a way that casts a positive light on our actions, thoughts and feelings but also because of an unspoken rule in social transactions that demands (and I don’t think “demand”is too strong a word) we conform to the “I’m doing just fine” standard that is prevalent everywhere you turn.
All around me, people are faking life.
They are acting as if there are no hurdles, no burdens, no wounded places in their own hearts. They run around proclaiming, “this is my best life now!” somehow convinced that if they say it loud enough and long enough it will be true.
But everyone sees what we think we are hiding.
Many know what we think we’re not saying.
And we all walk around, seeing and knowing but never acknowledging the truth: we are not as strong or as perfect as we wish we were.
All this fake life is costly. It’s costly to us who try so very hard to keep up appearances-it robs our lives of energy that would be better used in loving and serving others. It is costly to the people around us because as long as we play the game, they feel like they must play along too.
And everywhere, hurting people hurt alone. Scared people remain isolated in their fear.
That is not the life Jesus came to give us. That is not the way to build true community among His called-out ones. That is not the way to teach our children how to lean into and hold onto the strength and hope that Christ died to bring.
When I lost Dominic, many feelings overwhelmed me-sorrow, pain, disbelief-and, to my surprise, humility.
For the first time in my life it made sense to me why in many cultures bereaved people sit in the dirt and tear their clothes. Because I remember saying over and over, “I am cast to the ground, and ashes are my food.”
And while that feeling is no longer as strong as it once was, it still echoes in my heart and mind. I carry it with me wherever I go. It has freed me from the game of “let’s pretend” that held me hostage to other people’s expectations of how I should act or what I should hide from public view.
Let’s just STOP.
Let’s be honest.
Let’s refuse to hide our scars, our tears, our fears and our failures.
If those of us who love Jesus refuse to acknowledge our weakness, how do we expect others to acknowledge their need for a Savior?
“The Christian often tries to forget his weakness; God wants us to remember it, to feel it deeply. The Christian wants to conquer his weakness and to be freed from it; God wants us to rest and even rejoice in it. The Christian mourns over his weakness; Christ teaches His servant to say, ‘I take pleasure in infirmities. Most gladly …will I…glory in my infirmities’ (2 Cor. 12:9)’ The Christian thinks his weaknesses are his greatest hindrance in the life and service of God; God tells us that it is the secret of strength and success. It is our weakness, heartily accepted and continually realized, that gives our claim and access to the strength of Him who has said, ‘My strength is made perfect in weakness”
― Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
As we enter the week on the Christian calendar when most churches celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am reminded that often we race past the road that lead to Calvary and linger at the empty tomb.
But to understand the beauty of forgiveness and the blessing of redemption, we MUST acknowledge the sorrow of sin and the burden of brokenness.
When our sacred spaces draw boundaries around what we can bring to the Lord’s Table, we exclude the very ones who are desperate for the bread and cup. When we treat the path as unimportant and only acknowledge the destination, we discourage those that are struggling to keep up. When we welcome only the triumphant, we exclude those that are trying.
Let’s throw open the doors to the church and
Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness [remove the obstacles]; Make straight and smooth in the desert a highway for our God. (Isaiah 40:3 AMP)
Let’s invite the outcasts, the limping, the hurting and the broken to the table.
Let’s declare to the wounded that in Christ there is healing!
As I’ve written before: “The truth is that none of us escape hardship in life. All of us have hidden heartache. We all have cracks in our polished persona.”
Read more: Beautiful Broken
thelifeididntchoose 