I have to keep telling myself that no matter how it looks right now, this is not the end of the story.
Every morning I’m reminded by the “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” of my early rising roosters, that the light is coming….
Read the rest here: Crowing in the Dark
The months roll by, the calendar pages turn, soon school will be back in session and you are still not here.
Sometimes I think I have figured out how to do these days that remain between now and when we will be together again.
And sometimes I realize that I haven’t.
Today is one of those days.
I miss you.
I love you.
I can’t round a corner without thinking of you and wishing this was not my life.
But it is.
So I’ll keep on keeping on. Just like you would want me to.
Just like you would do.
Even when it’s hard.
And some days it is so very hard.
One of the things I’ve been forced to embrace in the wake of child loss is that there are very few questions, experiences or feelings that are simple anymore.
Read the rest here: It’s Complicated
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.
It’s the same in the world of emotional, psychological and spiritual wounds.
But we have yet to invent the BandAid for those.
Instead, frequently we ignore, refute, minimize and pass over the one in our midst who holds out a hand or a heart saying, “I have a boo boo.”
Believe me, I understand-so many of these wounds are incurable, they are uncomfortable to think about, hard to look at.
But often the only thing the hurting heart wants is acknowledgement, a moment of time, a face turned full into theirs, eye-to-eye and unafraid to remain alongside through the pain.
Just as a BandAid bears witness to the wound underneath, our compassionate presence can bear witness to the deeper wounds no one can see.
When we choose to lean in and love, to listen and learn, to walk with the wounded we give a great gift.
Think back on the most awful thing that has ever happened to you.
Does it still hurt? Do you still carry scars from where it pierced your soul and broke your heart?
Can you forget it? Really, really forget it?
Has it shaped the way you think about life and how you conduct yourself today?
Are you a different person NOW because that happened THEN?
Now magnify that to an impossibly greater degree and you might have an inkling of how child loss impacts parents and their families.
I will never “get over”, “move on”, “cease feeling sorrow” or “forget what happened”.
My son is my son as long as my heart still beats. If he were living, he would be part of my life. Death hasn’t changed that.
I am learning to live with loss, learning to bear up under its unceasing pressure and learning to carry on and keep going.
I am different than I was and different than I would have been if Dominic hadn’t left us.
But only heaven can undo this injury, only Christ in eternity can fully redeem this pain.
C
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
In the wake of burying Dominic, the most difficult spiritual discipline for me to recover has been prayer.
In part because my heart just doesn’t know what to ask for or how to talk to a God Who has allowed this pain in my life.
In part because I don’t really have a framework for placing the prayers I want to pray inside my ongoing struggle to commit my future and the future of my family to the hands of a Father Who didn’t step in to prevent Dominic’s death.
I still struggle with this.
“When it’s not your kid you can think of all kinds of lofty, theologically correct arguments or reasons for why God answers one prayer and not another–for why one person is healed and not another–for why one person survives a devastating-should-have-killed-him accident but not another.
But when it is your child that doesn’t survive or isn’t healed or is stolen through the violent actions of someone else…well, that’s a different matter entirely.”
Read the rest of this post here: The Problem of [Un]Answered Prayer
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.
Read the rest here: A Different Me
It’s OK to not be OK.
If you are grieving, you are not responsible for making others feel better about YOUR pain.
You have suffered a great wound and you carry a heavy load.
You are allowed to express sorrow and longing. It’s what people do.
It’s what we have to do if we are going to make it through this dark valley.
Find a safe person and let. it. out.
Bottling it up inside only drags me deeper under the waves. Hiding my tears doesn’t save me from sorrow, it only makes me ashamed and anxious.
And there is nothing shameful in grieving my missing child.
Great grief is the price I pay for great love.
I’m not advocating pitching a fit in public.
It’s good to be sensitive to other people, and I want to extend the same courtesy and kindness to others I would like to have extended to me.
BUT–when sorrow rolls over me like a tidal wave, I do not have to hide to preserve the comfort of others.
And I won’t.
One of the reasons I write is to share my grief experience with others.
I realized when tossed into the ocean of sorrow that of all the things I had heard about or read about, surviving child loss was never mentioned.
Oh, someone might comment that so-and-so had LOST a child, but then the conversation quickly moved on to more comfortable topics.
But if we don’t talk about it, we can’t learn to live through it.
Silence doesn’t serve anyone well.
I agree with Mr. Rogers:
Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
― Fred Rogers
During the course of my lifetime I have seen many topics dragged from behind closed doors out onto the stage and under the public spotlight.
Frankly, some of them could have remained in darkness as far as I’m concerned.
But there is something still taboo in polite conversation–something hushed with awkward silence should it ever be spoken aloud in a crowded room–mention GRIEF and eyes drop to the floor or someone hastily throws an arm around you and says, “There, there–it’s going to be alright.”
I don’t blame them. Remaining in the presence of great pain is uncomfortable.
In my growing up years I don’t remember anyone speaking about death and grief for longer than the time it took to go to a funeral home visitation and stand by the grave as the casket was lowered in the ground.
What came AFTER the loss–not a word.
We need to talk about it. We need to educate ourselves about it. Because, like my EMT son says, “No one gets out of here alive.”
You WILL experience grief in your lifetime.
I pray the people you lose are full of years and ready to go–that you get to say “good-bye” and all the important things have been said and done so you aren’t left with extra emotional baggage in addition to the sorrow and missing.
But you never know. Neither you nor I are in control.
And even in the one place where it would seem most natural to talk about life and death and grief and pain–our churches–it still makes those who are not experiencing it uncomfortable.
Yes, there are grief support groups. And, yes, they are helpful in ways that only a group made up of people who understand by experience what you are going through can be.
But much of life is spent rubbing elbows with folks unlike ourselves, with parents who know the fear of losing a child but not the awful reality.
And just a little bit of openness, a little bit of education and a little bit of understanding would make such a difference.
We don’t want pity.
We aren’t looking for special accommodations that single us out and mark us as “needy”.
But we long for understanding and compassion and the opportunity to tell our stories.
thelifeididntchoose 