Even at four years into this journey, I can surprise myself when, for no apparent reason, grief explodes from someplace deep within me.
I’m keyed into triggers-sights, smells, places and people that remind me of Dominic.
But sometimes I can’t figure out what causes the tears to fall or my stomach to be tied in knots.
It seems to happen most often when I’m in social situations. I feel surrounded, trapped and anxiety mounts.
I’m no geologist, but from what I understand, earthquakes are nearly always “about to happen”. Fault lines guarantee it.Pressure is building underneath the surface of the earth and when it reaches a level that can no longer be contained, it spews.
Can I just let you in on a secret?
Bereaved parents are full of fault lines.
Many of us are nearly ready to blow almost every single minute, yet hold it in and hold it together. If you could put a meter to our temple and measure how close we are to a come apart, you would be amazed that it happens so rarely!
Just after I got my driver’s license I was using the family station wagon to run some errands.
I remember thinking, “Should I pull into that space between two parked cars or should I just go a bit further and make it easy on myself?” I channeled my dad’s voice which was always pushing me past my comfort zone, threw off my fear and started into the smaller space.
Bad choice.
I kept trying to convince myself it was a dream. I was not going to have to go home and tell my father what I had done. It would disappear if only I wished hard enough.
But that was silly and untrue.
Denting the family wagon is small potatoes next to many other, bigger things I’ve faced in life.
And it is absolutely a zero on a scale of one to ten when considering the death of my son.
You can fix a dent. Even if it costs money and time.
You can’t fix child loss.
Because of that FACT-I wake every morning to the same awful reality: My child is dead. He’s not coming back. My life is forever changed. My family forever altered. My heart will carry this burden to the grave.
That makes waking up hard to do.
Each morning I must force myself to push through an invisible wall and set my feet on ground I’m not sure I want to walk upon.
I must open my eyes and abandon the sweet release of dreamless sleep.
I wrote this a few months ago because it is an issue every grieving parent faces: Why do friends abandon us?
Truth be told, many of us abandoned others prior to our own bereavement for some of the same reasons.
It is really hard to hang in and hang on when a friend is going through such a hard time. Understanding why my friends might pull away helps me extend grace. ❤
It happens in all kinds of ways. One friend just slowly backs off from liking posts on Facebook, waves at a distance from across the sanctuary, stops texting to check up on me.
Another observes complete radio silence as soon as she walks away from the graveside.
Still another hangs in for a few weeks-calls, texts, even invites me to lunch until I can see in her eyes that my lack of “progress” is making her uneasy. Then she, too, falls off the grid.
The world is so busy telling us to “just do it” or “put on a happy face” or “think positive” that we begin to wonder if maybe we’ve got this grieving thing all wrong.
We don’t.
There is absolutely NOTHINGwrong with being sad your child is not here.
I honestly thought I had a fairly accurate and well-rounded theological grid before Dominic ran ahead to heaven.
I had studied Scripture diligently for over 25 years, read extensively, engaged in active and insightful conversation with thoughtful believers and swallowed some difficult truths.
But when faced with my child’s untimely and sudden death, I realized that I had also swallowed some untruths and half-truths.
I thought I had God figured out, that I knew how He worked in the world and that I was definitely on the inside track to gain His favor and blessing.
I was wrong.
I wrote this a couple years ago, but it is something I have to come back to over and over in this Valley of the Shadow of Death:
Every idea of [God] we form, He must in mercy shatter. The most blessed result of prayer would be to rise thinking ‘But I never knew before. I never dreamed…’ I suppose it was at such a moment that Thomas Aquinas said of all his own theology, ‘It reminds me of straw.’
—Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964)
It’s possible that you haven’t thought of it this way, but if you are a believer in Christ and have yet to walk through faith-shattering trials, you may have placed God in a box.
The past seven days have been anything but the lazy, hazy days of summer.
There has not been a solid 24 hours where some kind of crisis didn’t find its way to my doorstep, across my driveway or into my living room.
Seriously.
On a scale of one to ten, none actually rank high in that there’s not a solution or plan of action.
But every single one of them raised my stress and anxiety to very uncomfortable heights.
I have no ideawhy I keep thinking maybe-just maybe-there will be a season of rest when I can get my feet under me, get my mind settled (a bit) and get the laundry put away.
There are good days.
But then there are bad ones right on their heels.
I’m 54 years old, raised and home educated four children, helped my husband with his career and a personal business, managed a small farm and cooked, cleaned and was the all around go-fer for my family while each one pursued his or her education and dreams.
But there has been no season as stress-filled and trying as this one: the season of grief, the season of missing, the season where I have had to admit that control is an illusion.
So many days I watch the sunset in defeat.
Overcome, overwhelmed and undone.
I know the new day will bring new mercies and that is how my heart holds onto hope.
God’s grace meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be.
~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine
Yes, I know, the commonly touted wisdom in church circles is not to ask, “Why?”
It’s also bad form to admit that you might actually be angry* with God.
But I can pretty much guarantee that over half of any congregation sitting in the pews on a given Sunday has had at least one moment when, with raised eyes they screamed, “Why?????” to the sky aimed at a God they didn’t understand but believed in anyway.
I know I have.
David did.
Paul did.
Job did.
So what does a heart do if it’s upset with God? Stuff it? Reason it away? Shame it to silence? Hope it fades on its own?
I think the only thing a heart can do with that anger and doubt and disappointment is take it straight to the Throne of Grace where we are promised to find help in an hour of need.
That’s what I did.
I wrote hundreds of pages of journals with my Bible beside me. When the Holy Spirit brought a scripture to mind as I was writing, I looked it up, read it and usually copied it into my journal right alongside my questions and rambling.
Sometimes I would write the letters large and decorate them or look up the meaning of words in a concordance or dictionary and write the definitions or synonyms out to help me deepen my understanding.
In the end, my heart was finally able to accept the truth of Who God is-my loving, omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent Heavenly Father-even when I do not like what He is doing.
Reaching a place of accepting His will while still acknowledging the pain it brings me (like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane) has given me a measure of peace.
It has freed me to walk on in this life and to take the good, the bad, the painful and the wonderful in stride.
Do I still have moments (days!) when I want to scream?
Absolutely. But I am submitted to God and bow my heart to His.
It took a long time.
The more I read and studied Scripture, the more I found evidence of anguish, tears, and the messiness of human emotion. When we are in pain, the pain we are facing is temporary, even though it never feels temporary. Pain can linger, and it will always be with us, but for the believer in Jesus Christ, pain is never the final destination.
~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine, p. 134
*I am lumping a lot of strong (often considered “negative”) emotions in with the one word “angry”-for me, it was actually disappointment-God did not live up to my expectations (which is not to say He should or that my expectations were accurate). For others it might be distrust and for some it might be doubt (does God love me?). I’m most certainly NOT suggesting that Jesus was angry with God in the garden but it is plainly stated in Scripture that He begged God for another, less painful way that would still accomplish the Father’s plan.
Here I am four years into this journey and I still have days when I think I have utterly lost my mind.
Not because of internal cues but because of external pressure by family and friends to conform to some idea THEY have of what grief after child loss should look like.
I have to remind myself that they have NO IDEA what this is like and that if I am managing to move along-even at a snail’s pace-I’m just fine.
I wrote this a couple years ago in response to a private message sent to me by a friend:
“It was just over a year after Dominic’s accident and a friend forwarded an article about odd behaviors of those who were “stuck’ in grief. Along with the forward was a little tag, “Reminds me of you.”
They’d crossed over to that continent where grieving parents lived. It looked the same as the rest of the world, but wasn’t. Colors bled pale. Music was just notes. Books no longer transported or comforted, not fully. Never again. Food was nutrition, little more. Breaths were sighs. And they knew something the rest didn’t. They knew how lucky the rest of the world was.
― Louise Penny
It was absolutely this way for more than the first three years.
No matter how hard IWILLEDit, I could not make my world any different than it was.
But thankfully, slowly, the color has returned-dimmer still-but no longer only shades of gray.
Music again touches my heart and the right words do bring comfort.
Sighing remains my second language.
And I still think how very blessed are those who have been spared this awful knowledge.
My hardest grief season begins in November and runs to the end of May. Thanksgiving through Dominic’s birthday on (or near) Memorial Day are days full of triggers, memories and stark reminders that one of us is missing.
If I could fall asleep November first and wake up in June I’d do it.
But I can’t so I have to employ all the tricks I’ve learned in the nearly four years since Dominic ran ahead to heaven to survive those particularly challenging months.
Here are ten ways I survive hard grief days:
1. I make lists of things to do. I’ve found that if I don’t make a plan for each day it’s far too easy to just lie around and feel sorry for myself. I use index cards but whatever works for you is fine. I list household chores, phone calls to make or notes to write, exercise, errands or whatever. And then I consider them non-negotiable. These are my marching orders and after my morning coffee I start down the list.
2. I do something creative. I crochet or arrange flowers or sew a little. Taking just five or ten minutes to make something beautiful changes my perspective. I have a can opener that takes the lids off without sharp edges and I make magnets for friends and family members or just to have on hand for a little gift.
3. I take a walk. I am thankful I can go outside on my own property and enjoy fresh air and country sunshine. I know not everyone has that option. But even a walk inside your office building or up and down a couple flights of stairs gets the blood pumping and releases endorphins. If I can’t walk, then I at least change my physical position-from sitting to standing, from standing to moving. Body position impacts my emotions.
4. I find something to make me smile. There is scientific evidence to back our common sense experience that smiling lightens our mood and helps our hearts. I read jokes or check out some of my Facebook friends that tend to post funny memes or stories. Sometimes I just “practice” a smile and even that can send feel-good hormones surging through my system.
“Don’t try to win over the haters, you are not a jackass whisperer.” ~ Brene Brow
5. I call or text a friend. Sometimes I just need to know that someone else is aware of my hard day. No one can undo my grief but when I feel there is a witness, it lightens the load somehow.6. I stay off Facebook and other social media platforms. I love that I’m able to keep in touch with friends and family via social media. But it can be full of drama and negativity as well. So if I’m having a tough day, I remove the potential for it to be made harder due to random comments, posts or photographs.
7. I pet my cats. I have always been an animal lover. But I truly do not know how I could have survived these past four years without the companionship of my cats and other furry friends. Study after study confirms that being in the presence of pets lowers blood pressure and calms nerves.
8. I go with my feelings. There is no rule book that says I have to be tough and hide my tears. If I’m having a hard grief day it is perfectly acceptable to let the sorrow wash over me and let the tears fall. Sometimes fighting the feelings only prolongs my pain. Often a good cry is cleansing and I am much better afterwards.
9. I journal. There are things I need to “say” that are better kept between me, God and my notebook. I have kept a journal for nearly three decades. Many times just writing out my feelings, my fears, my thoughts and my frustrations is enough to take the sting out. There’s something about not keeping it all bottled up inside-even if no other soul reads it-that acts as a catharsis.
10. I copy encouraging quotes or Scripture and hang them prominent places throughout the house. I have notes tacked to my bed post, on my bathroom mirror, taped to the cabinet next to my stove, stuck on the fridge, slid into my wallet in my purse-absolutely everywhere. Because when my heart is hanging on by a thread, the smallest bit of encouragement is often enough to help me hold onto hope.
None of these things undo my grief in the most basic sense.
Dominic is gone, gone, gone and I will not see him or hear his voice until we are reunited in the Presence of our Savior.
But they DO help.
One of the most devastating aspects of child loss is the overwhelming sense that NOTHINGmakes sense anymore and that I have absolutelyNOcontrol.
Choosing helpful habits and actions gives me a way to regain dominion over a tiny corner of my world.
And that little bit of action strengthens my spirit and helps my heart hold on.
6. I stay off Facebook and other social media platforms. I love that I’m able to keep in touch with friends and family via social media. But it can be full of drama and negativity as well. So if I’m having a tough day, I remove the potential for it to be made harder due to random comments, posts or photographs.
7. I pet my cats. I have always been an animal lover. But I truly do not know how I could have survived these past four years without the companionship of my cats and other furry friends. Study after study confirms that being in the presence of pets lowers blood pressure and calms nerves. 
9. I journal. There are things I need to “say” that are better kept between me, God and my notebook. I have kept a journal for nearly three decades. Many times just writing out my feelings, my fears, my thoughts and my frustrations is enough to take the sting out. There’s something about not keeping it all bottled up inside-even if no other soul reads it-that acts as a catharsis.
thelifeididntchoose 