God bless the inventor of Band Aids!
That little tacky plaster has soothed more fears and tears than almost any other invention in the world.
Skinned knee? Put a BandAid on it.
Bee sting? BandAid.
Tiny bump that no one can even see? Oh, sweetie, let me give you a BandAid.
Simply acknowledging pain and woundedness is so often all that is needed to encourage a heart and point it toward healing.
Read the rest here: Loving the Wounded
I’ve never been really big on fear.
I jumped from the high dive at three years old-that belly flop hurt but I survived and it fueled my adventurous spirit.
I rode horses other people didn’t like-was bucked off a time or two but no broken bones so that didn’t slow me down.
My dad had an open cockpit biplane and we flew aerobatics over Colorado Springs-fanny pack parachute strapped to my butt “just in case”-upside down and round and round. We never needed to jump and landed safely every time.
Never been afraid of speaking in public.
Never been afraid of strangers.
Never been afraid of heights.
UNTIL.
Until I had children and then I was afraid of nearly EVERYTHING for them.
I didn’t want any harm to befall these tiny humans carrying my heart outside my body. I wanted to protect them, to cushion them, to wrap them in a bubble so that nothing bad ever happened to them.
As they grew, I learned to let go- a little at a time. I learned you can’t prevent the scrapes and bruises and heartaches and disappointments of life. And I learned that a little “harm” made them stronger.
I forgot most of my fears and was again unafraid.
UNTIL Dominic was killed.
And all the old fears came rushing back. I wanted to lock my surviving children in a room and slip food under the door. I HAD to keep them safe.
Only I can’t. It is not possible for me to keep. them. safe.
All I could possibly do is make them afraid. I could make them afraid of choosing their hearts’ desires in an attempt to prevent more pain for mine.
I won’t do that.
I will not allow part of Dominic’s legacy to be that our family lives afraid.
NO.
I choose to release my children to make the best choices they can and to live boldly and unafraid.
This was one of the first posts I wrote. It hadn’t been long since I was introduced to an online community of bereaved parents and began to see that I wasn’t the only one who had friends and family that misunderstood child loss.
I was spending a lot of time in my life trying to help others comprehend, just a little, what it felt like to bury a child.
Trying to give them a tiny taste of how this pain is so, so different than any other I had experienced. Begging them to toss the popular ideas bandied around that grief followed “stages” and was “predictable”.
I re-share every so often because it seems to help, a little. ❤
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.
It isn’t nostalgia for a time when things were different or better or you talked more: it’s a gut-wrenching, breath-robbing, knee-buckling, aching groan that lives inside you begging to be released.
Read the rest here: What Grieving Parents Want Others to Know
In my grief and sorrow it is tempting to dig a moat, draw up the bridge to my heart and wait out life like I am under siege.
But that would be wasting this pain and I won’t do that.
I won’t dishonor Dominic and dishonor Jesus by refusing to love.
Just a few days after Dominic ran ahead to heaven, my youngest son wrote this:
“If you are surrounded by life you will be surrounded by death, if you feel love you will also feel pain. But never let the fear of death or pain rob you of the joy of LIFE and LOVE.”
Fear is a thief.
It sneaks in and can rule my heart before I even know it.
I will not bar the door to love, but I will barricade it against fear.
I refuse to let fear win.
I don’t know just when I figured it out, but somewhere in this Valley it dawned on me-NO day lasts forever.
Many feel like they do.
The day I got the news stretched impossibly long in front of me as calls were made and people came to be wtih us.
But even THAT day ended. Night fell, the earth turned, and another sunrise showed up on cue.
Remembering that truth is how I manage to keep going most of the time. I remind my heart that no matter how hard today is, it will end. I recite the mantra, “No day lasts forever. No day lasts forever” over and over if I have to. I refuse to look at the clock and count the minutes-instead I occupy my mind and hands until they pass of their own accord.
Some days are good. I’m with people I love and doing things that bring joy.
Some days are unbearably hard. The sorrow and missing that I manage to keep in check most of the time bubble up like lava and consume me with their red-hot pain.
It doesn’t matter.
Night falls,
the earth turns
and another sunrise will show up on cue.
All the fears I thought I knew
All the what-ifs I pondered during inky nights-
None of them-none. of. them. prepared me for this reality.
Read the rest here: Unnatural
It’s oh, so hard to know what to do when you are watching a heart break.
You want to reach out and make it better, make the pain go away, make a difference. But it seems like nothing you can do will matter much in the face of such a huge loss.
While it’s true that you cannot “fix” the brokenness in a bereaved parent’s life, there are some very important and practical ways you can support them in their grief-especially as the weeks turn into months and then to years.
Here are five practical ways to support grieving parents:
You may be surprised how often I get discouraged and feel alone.
An outstretched hand at just the moment when my strength is fading makes all the difference.
It’s so easy to take Bible verses out of context. Our modern rendering of the Word of God broken into chapter and verse lends itself to lifting a sentence or two and ignoring the surrounding words.
Sometimes it doesn’t seem to matter much-the verse CAN stand on its own.
But sometimes it is devastating. Especially to those who find themselves in a situation that seems to clearly contradict the promise.
Jeremiah 29:11 is a popular verse plastered on posters, coffee cups, graduation cards and lovely Christian wall hangings.
It’s a hard one for me to swallow the way it’s usually dished out.
Death feels pretty much like harm to me.
I can spiritualize the verse and say, “Well, God’s ultimate plan is to give me and Dominic a hope and a future”.
That is absolutely true.
But that’s not what Jeremiah was talking about. He was speaking to a specific people at a specific point in time.
The original context of the Scripture was just for Israel-a promise that the nation would not be utterly destroyed or left bereft in exile. A promise that God would fulfill His covenant with Abraham and keep for Himself a people to declare His faithful love to the nations.
I think we moderns take it out of context when we apply it to individual lives.
Many Jews died in exile and not all who could return, chose to return when Cyrus issued the order.
The Scripture that speaks to my heart in this Valley of the Shadow of Death is this:
And I am convinced and sure of this very thing, that He Who began a good work in you will continue until the day of Jesus Christ [right up to the time of His return], developing [that good work] and perfecting and bringing it to full completion in you.
Philippians 1:6 AMP
Here is my HOPE. Here is MY promise of ultimate redemption and restoration.
God is still working to bring about His purpose in and through Dominic and in and through me “until the day of Jesus Christ”.
I don’t know how it works but He’s doing it.
He Who is Faithful and True has promised.
Dominic’s Heaven Day fell right in the middle of Holy Week this year-Wednesday, April 12th marked three years since he entered Heaven and left us here.
And every day since then I’ve been homesick. Homesick for what I used to know and homesick for what I know awaits me when I join him there.
I can’t say that I handled this awful anniversary any better than the previous two but I did handle it differently. This year I was determined to create space for both mourning and dancing.
I cried a lot from Palm Sunday through his Heaven Day and into Resurrection Sunday morning. I found new wounds that needed attention and realized some old ones weren’t as patched up as I thought.
It was costly in terms of personal and relational energy but for the first time since Dom ran ahead to heaven, I was able to reclaim a holiday gathering.
And it was beautiful.
I missed him, of course, but things flowed and people loved one another and ministry happened and laughs floated through the air.
Everyone left with extra food and smiles on their faces.
This used to be my house every holiday, almost every Sunday. It hasn’t been that way since Dom left.
But for a few hours it felt like home again.
It happens when I least expect it.
I try hard to manage life so that I’m not blindsided by grief-that I don’t find myself in the middle of people when I can be sure some trigger will start the flow of tears
But you can’t prepare for what you have no way to predict.
So even three years down the path of child loss, there are times I am overwhelmed by a wave of grief and cannot stop the tears.
I used to try to hide them. I don’t anymore.
I will not be ashamed of my tears.
They are proof of my love.
They are evidence of a heart that refuses to grow cold, hard or bitter even though the frost of death has blown hard across it.
They are testimony to the promise that God is collecting them in His bottle and that one day all this will be redeemed and restored.
I will wear them as a badge of honor until I see Dominic again.
thelifeididntchoose 