battle – Page 2 – thelifeididntchoose

Repost: Remember: Why Good Friday Matters as Much as Resurrection Sunday

“On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more.
On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call “ambivalent.” It is Satan’s great weapon and also God’s great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered.” C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Bury a child and suddenly the death of Christ becomes oh, so personal. The image of Mary at the foot of the cross is too hard to bear.

Read the rest here: Remember: Why Good Friday Matters as Much as Resurrection Sunday

Why Do We Turn Away?

The news goes out over Facebook, over phone lines, over prayer chains and everyone shows up.

Crowds in the kitchen, in the living room, spilling onto the lawn.

It’s what you do.

And it’s actually the easiest part. Lots of people, lots of talking, lots of activity keep the atmosphere focused on the deceased and the family. The conversation rarely dips to deeper waters or digs into harder ground: “Where was God?”; “Why him?”; “Why do ‘bad’ things happen to ‘good’ people?”

But eventually the busyness and noise gives way to stillness and silence.

That’s when the harder part starts.

The long hours of nightime darkness that invite questions that demand answers. The quiet hours of daylight that insist on playing a home movie of the years that went before. Forcing me to wrestle. Tossing me in the ring of trying to reconcile this tragedy with my worldview.

And many people turn away from the spectacle.

Even good, loving, Christ-following friends find it hard to stick around and watch.

Because it challenges their worldview too.

It makes them wonder if what they have always believed about God is true. It makes them fearful that if it could happen to my son and to me, it could happen to their child and to them. Ir raises questions, they’d rather not answer.

And they don’t have to answer them-YET-because their lives haven’t been turned upside down and inside out.

So they run.

They stop calling, they stop coming and they keep their distance in public spaces.

It hurts.

A lot.

It’s human nature to avoid pain. No one marches headlong into suffering. Empathy requres energy. Compassion demands opening your heart to the hurt hiding inside someone else’s.

I understand, truly I do.

If I could find a place where sorrow and longing couldn’t find me, I would stay there forever. But I can’t. I have to carry this load, I have to face the tough questions, I have to work hard to give my heart a chance.

It is so much easier when others come alongside. I feel so much stronger when others choose to call courage to my broken heart. I find great comfort in knowing that someone is willing to risk their own comfort to bear witness to my pain and struggle.

Please don’t lower your eyes and hide. Raise them and help heal.

I know it’s hard and you don’t have to, but please don’t turn away.

Repost: Worship as Warfare

After [Jehoshaphat] had advised the people, he appointed people to sing to the LORD and praise him for the beauty of his holiness. As they went in front of the troops, they sang, “Thank the LORD because his mercy endures forever!”

2 Chronicles 20:21 GWT

I love worship music.

My heart is transported from here to there in a single note.

In a moment, I am before the Throne, inside the Holy of Holies, crying out for more, more, more of Jesus.

Read the rest here: Worship as Warfare

He Will Hold Me Fast

I’ve mentioned it before.

I’ve encouraged others not to resist.

But I want to be absolutely clear: Losing my son made me doubt EVERYTHING.

I grew up going to church, listening to Bible stories, hearing “God is in control”, “Jesus loves me”, “prayer moves mountains” and (even though it isn’t true) being “good” gets rewarded.

The prerequisite, of course, was receiving Christ, being “saved”, trusting Jesus.

I did that when I was eight years old.

And I leaned in and studied Scripture, fashioning my life around the Holy Word. My home rested firmly on the solid rock foundation of belief in Jesus and the sovereignty and sufficiency of God.

For heaven’s sake! I spent twenty years homeschooling my kids! We might skip a math lesson but we never missed a chance to note how biblical principles and biblical truth informed our worldview and guided our choices.

I know, I know, I know that I don’t deserve special treatment. I know that God does not promise to exempt any person from hurt and heartache as long as we walk this earth.

But somewhere I got mixed up.

Somehow I thought that if I did all the right things, made all the necessary personal sacrifices, read the right books, walked the right path, my heart might be spared.

I was, oh, so wrong.

So when I had to bury my perfectly healthy, vibrant, brilliant, loving son who was here-one-moment-gone-the-next, I had to take a little while to decide how much of what I used to believe I could still believe.

I had to pull out all the verses, all the suppositions, all the theological arguments upon which my faith had rested and test them against my new reality.

Is God sovereign? Does He have control?

I decided that He is and does.

Based on His Word and my own life experience, I am convinced that God is in control.

But His control does not routinely override the laws of physics He has put in place to rule the world. His control does not always spare someone the natural consequences of choices made by free will. His control does not always supersede the sinful brokenness that abounds on this earth.

So, here I am. Left with absolute rock solid faith in the few, most important things upon which my hope can rest.

Christ died.

Christ rose.

Christ will come again.

Death is conquered.

Heaven is sure.

Redemption has been paid for and restoration will be complete.

I know by painful experience that His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts.

I do not understand everything.

But I cling to what I can understand.

Doubt is not sin. I don’t try to talk myself out of it anymore.

Because the One Who made me holds me fast.

Those He saves are His delight
Christ will hold me fast
Precious in His holy sight
He will hold me fast
He’ll not let my soul be lost
His promises shall last
Bought by Him at such a cost
He will hold me fast

~He Will Hold Me Fast, Getty Music

Some Days, I’m Just a Mess

weakness1

The other day a conversation about the upcoming holidays devolved into a confrontation.

What I was trying to communicate came out wrong and one thing led to another until I fled- a crying, trembling mess.

I am trying so hard to manage this life I have left.

I work out plans in my head to navigate what I know will be challenging events or days or gatherings. I execute the plan as best I can and when I feel overwhelmed I try to escape to a quiet corner or a bathroom or outside for a moment to regather my composure.

But it doesn’t always work.

There are so many variables-people, lack of sleep, random added stressors, physical pain, grief triggers, and even low blood sugar-any one of which, or a combination of which, can sabotage the carefully constructed plan I’ve made.

I feel like there are no easy days. I feel like there are no moments when I don’t have to be on alert. I feel like I am constantly doing battle.

I stop by the store and meet someone I haven’t seen in awhile. They ask, “How are you?”

So I go down the line of my living children and give a description of what they are doing-leaving out how they are feeling. I don’t mention me. The person never notices but I’m reminded again of the disconnect between what others see and what I know to be true.

Sunday’s sermon is taken from a text that could be interpreted to mean that God protects His faithful people from physical harm. I’m hemmed in by someone on the end of the pew but I want to get up and run from the sanctuary.

Is my son’s death judgement on my unfaithfulness or on his?

It takes every ounce of self-control I can muster to remain in place. No one is even aware of the battle raging inside.

I walk through each day pushing down the pain, shoving aside the rising tide of tears.

I measure my words, measure my reactions, measure my emotions-trying so very hard to keep it in.

I wish I could crawl in bed, cover my head with the blanket and just stay there until this all went away.

But I can’t.

So I muddle through the best I can-hoping that one day I will figure it out.

Probably not today.

Faith

Part of our homeschooling routine was Bible reading.

I’ll never forget the first time I came to Hebrews chapter 11, often referred to as the “Hall of Faith”.

It begins:

Now faith means putting our full confidence in the things we hope for, it means being certain of things we cannot see. It was this kind of faith that won their reputation for the saints of old. And it is after all only by faith that our minds accept as fact that the whole scheme of time and space was created by God’s command—that the world which we can see has come into being through principles which are invisible.

Hebrews 11:1-3 PHILLIP

From there the writer lists those who followed God even when the path was dark, even when the promise was beyond sight and even when it cost them their lives.

I cried.

I remember thinking that maybe one day the children looking at me around that table might face a crisis of faith and I prayed that they would always choose to believe.

I never dreamed that it would be ME that had to wake up each morning and make that choice over and over again.

I’m not talking about the single, life-changing commitment to receive forgiveness through Christ’s blood.

But rather obedience to keep following His lead and strength to walk in His footsteps day after day regardless of how I feel or what I can or cannot see.

The choice I have to make is whether or not to turn my heart toward His, to open my ears to His voice, and to bend my will to accept whatever storms He allows in my life.

Suffering is NOT a choice, but faith is.

Astonished. Again.

For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often — will it be for always? — how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, “I never realized my loss till this moment”? The same leg is cut off time after time.
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

No matter how tightly I strap on my armor, grief sends arrows through the tiniest unprotected chink and pierces my heart.

Read the rest of this post here: Not as Strong as I Look

He Knows My Name

Grief can be isolating.

It separates me as one who knows loss by experience from those who have only looked on from the outside.

It opens a chasm between me and people who aren’t aware that life can be changed in a single instant.

And I can feel like no one sees me, no one cares about me and no one notices my pain.

Sometimes it even feels like God has forgotten me-that He isn’t listening, that He doesn’t care.

But Jehovah hasn’t abandoned me.

Have you ever wondered why there are lists of names in the Bible? Do you, like me, sometimes rush through them or pass over them to get to the “main part” of a story?

But look again, the names ARE the story.

The God of the Bible isn’t the God of the masses. He is the God of the individual.

He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. He called out to Cain, ‘Where is your brother?”

He took Enoch, guided Noah, chose Abraham and Moses.

He anointed David, spoke to and through the prophets and He CAME, flesh to flesh to bear the sins of His people, redeem them from death and cover them with His blood.

My name is graven on His hands.

“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands”

Isaiah 49: 15-16a NIV

My life is hidden with Christ.

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life,appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:3-4 NIV

He has a new name for me, a secret name I’ll receive in Heaven.

“To the one who conquers through faithfulness even unto death, I will feed you with hidden manna and give you a white stone. Upon this stone, a new name is engraved. No one knows this name except for its recipient.”

Revelation 2:17b VOICE

The enemy wants to convince me that God has forgotten me.

That He has abandoned me in my sorrow and pain.

That when my son breathed his last, He was looking the other way.

That’s a lie.

And I refuse to listen.

Years ago I heard this song for the first time and it touched my heart:

He Knows My Name by Israel (listen here)

Lyrics:

I have a Maker
He Formed My Heart
Before even time began
My life was in his hands

(Chorus)
He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
And hears me when I call

Not everyone reading this has lost a child.

But everyone has lost something or someone.

And everyone, if they are honest, has experienced moments of anguish wondering if God in heaven cares.

He does.

He hears.

He knows your name.

Bill of Rights for Grieving Mamas

One of our family’s inside jokes comes from a movie about the Civil War. A young soldier questioned about why he’s fighting declares, “I’m fightin’ for my rights!”-except is sounds like he’s saying, “I’m fightin’ for my rats!”

So we often laugh back and forth when faced with combative situations by using that line.

You wouldn’t think that grieving would be one of them. But it can be.

I’m kind of a touchy-feely person. One who will hug strangers, pat puppies and offer a hand whenever I see someone struggling.

So it has been a bit of a surprise to find out that some people really want me to keep my grief in the closet.

They would rather I hide my tears. They have decided on an appropriate number of days, weeks, months for my grief to run its course and then it should be “over”.

Now, let me just say that I do not think I have the right to ruin someone else’s day.

I make appropriate arrangements when asked to participate in special events. If I can go and be certain I won’t draw attention away from the celebration, I do. If I can’t, then I’m honest about it and find another way to contribute.

But I can’t spend my life in a bubble.

I’m inevitably going to be around others when a wave of grief hits me. Sometimes I will not be able to control my reaction.

And that’s OK…

So here’s what I believe to be my rights as a grieving mom (other grieving parents may disagree-and that’s o.k.):

I have a right to my feelings. I am open to someone who has demonstrated sincere compassion to help me work through them or to share their concerns if they see me heading toward destructive expression of them. But it is not up to someone else to validate my feelings about burying my son.

I have a right to draw boundaries. So much of my energy is being sapped by working through grief that I just do not have the resources to deal with everyday drama. I care deeply about the other people in my life and I will absolutely be there for them when they really need me. But I can’t be a sounding board for every little thing.

I have a right to talk about my son. He is still my child. He is still part of my life and my family’s life. Most mamas talk about their children all the time. I talk about my living children and I will continue to talk about the child I miss.

I have a right to cry. Tears make most folks a little uncomfortable. I acknowledge that and believe me, I try to hold them back. But when they fall-I won’t hide them as if it’s shameful. I won’t draw attention to myself, but I won’t always slink away either.

I have a right to laugh. Humor still moves me. And a belly laugh is good medicine. But don’t mistake a moment of laughter as a signal that I’m “better”. I am healing, slowly, but I am not whole.

I have a right to NOT talk about how I feel. Life still happens and every emotion I experience is not necessarily tied to missing my son. I don’t always need to “talk about it”. Sometimes, like everyone, I just need time to process and get over something.

I have a right to celebrate or not celebrate, participate or not participate in holidays, birthdays, remembrance days or any other special day or occasion however I am able-even if it means changing long-standing traditions or routines. I do my very best to live up to the expectations and needs of the people that are close to me. I want to have birthday parties, exchange gifts, celebrate graduations and weddings and other major milestones. But sometimes I might have to attack these gatherings in a slightly different way. I’m not the same person I was before Dominic left us and I can’t always do things the way I used to.

I have a right to be heard. I don’t expect nor do I want to be the center of every decision or every event. But I have a right to express my opinion, I’m not invisible. And no one knows what is best for me except ME. It’s easiest if people just ask me what will be most helpful instead of assuming that I would or wouldn’t like this or that.

Navigating the death of a child is a treacherous journey. I understand that those who have not travelled this path may not think about how hard it is and some of the little things that can make it easier or harder.

I am so thankful for the ones who try.

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

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