I wasn’t there when Dominic left the road but I’ve imagined it in detail hundreds of times since that night nearly five years ago.
I can’t help it.
I wonder what he thought, what he felt, whether he knew…
It’s not the only tape that plays over and over in my head.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/01/17/feedback-loops-and-grief/
Retreats are not for everyone.
In fact, I’ve never been the retreat kind of gal myself.
But I’ve changed my mind about one very different type of retreat that has both encouraged my heart and led to deep and lasting friendships with other women who know the pain of child loss.
Since February, 2018 I’ve had the privilege to be part of two unique, intimate and life-giving retreats for bereaved moms.
This February (21-23) will be the third.
This time we are focusing on God’s promises to redeem our pain, to restore our hearts and to weave the broken threads of our lives into a beautiful tapestry that testifies to hope, grace and the faithful love of our faithful Father.
He binds their wounds, heals the sorrows of their hearts.
Psalm 147:2 VOICE
Hope Lee, a fellow mom-in-loss, provides the wonderful facility (a cozy but spacious camp house in the Mississippi countryside) and I facilitate interactive sessions filled with Bible study, sharing and encouragement.
There is plenty of time to just visit, lots of great food and we usually do a fun craft or other slightly zany activity.
It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet other moms whose experience may help you in your journey. It will definitely be a safe space to let your hair down and take your mask off.
I have left each weekend with renewed energy, hope and courage for this often tiresome and lonely road.
Depending where you are in this journey the thought of a weekend away with other bereaved moms may be either terrifying or exciting.
But may I encourage you-whether terrified or excited-to listen to the Spirit? If He is pushing you to step out in faith, do it.
I promise you won’t regret it!
Spaces are limited so call or text Hope at 662-574-8445 today and reserve your spot.
I’ve heard it from more than one bereaved parent.
I’ve thought it myself.
“Is God punishing me?”
Have I done something so terrible that it falls outside the grace and mercy of the God Who sent His Son and so I must pay for it with my own child?
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/01/15/is-god-punishing-me/
I know that when I first stumbled onto a bereaved parent group, it was one of the things I was looking for: evidence that the overwhelming pain of child loss would not last forever.
Some days I was encouraged as those who had traveled farther down this path posted comments affirming that they could feel something other than sorrow.
Some days I was devastated to read comments from parents who buried a child decades ago asserting that “it never gets better”.
Who is right?
What’s the difference?
Do I have any control over whether or not this burden gets lighter?
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/01/12/will-it-ever-get-better/
I am always devastated when another parent discovers the heartache of child loss.
They are forced to join a club no one wants to join.
But I’m grateful when that parent has a platform because of fame, fortune or circumstances and decides to draw attention to the truth of this painful path.
The singer Toby Mac recently lost his son and has chosen to do just that. He wrote a song that puts words to the sorrow, words to the struggle and vividly shares the heart of a bereaved parent.
Here it is (grab a tissue):
While I don’t identify with every word in the lyrics, I absolutely identify with the deep pain of sudden loss.
Why would You give and then take him away?
Suddenly end, could You not let it fade?
What I would give for a couple of days
A couple of days
TobyMac, 21 Years
I have cried the same tears, begged for the same answers, dug deep to find strength when I wanted to lie down and give up.
Thousands of parents walk around every day carrying a burden most say they would never be able to carry.
But you do.
Because there’s no alternative but to get up and go on.
Even when your heart is breaking, even when your legs feel like they will not make one more step, you get up, face the day and begin trying to put the pieces back together.
And you learn how to love a child that you can only hold in your heart instead of your arms.
Is it just across the Jordan
Or a city in the stars
Are you singing with the angels
Are you happy where you are
Well until this show is over
And you run into my arms
God has you in heaven
But I have you in my heart
TobyMac, 21 Years
A few days ago I wrote about how panic is always just a breath away for those of us who have suffered loss.
Like a friend of mine recently said, “We are branded. GRIEF is burned into our hearts and we are never the same.”
So how to live this altered life?
How can I manage that emotional tension that saps energy and strength from my heart, mind and body?
Our family has adopted some practical protocols that help.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/01/08/practical-protocols-to-mitigate-panic-after-loss/
How many of us have been wrangled into buying something by advertisements that convince us if we don’t get it now we will miss our opportunity to get it at all?
Every hand raised?
Yep. Me too. And then I see the same item the next week at the same price and realize I was duped.
It works because humans are wired to respond to urgency.
Problem is, we don’t always recognize the truly urgent.
In fact, we often overlook it in favor of the easy or shiny or fun or inconsequential.
We piddle away our lives on screens and in cars and listening to the latest gossip about celebrities or politicians we will never meet all while ignoring the people we love or should be learning to love.
There are so many opportunities that truly ARE “today only!”. So many moments that will come once in a lifetime and never again.
People cross our path and we miss them because we are looking down at our phone. Kids beg for attention while Mom or Dad are watching TV. Spouses long for connection but can’t find it because each one has created his or her own virtual world and forgotten how to reach across the sofa and take a hand.
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln
Waking up to the news that one of my children would never, ever cross my doorstep again changed my perspective.
Dominic was a very busy law student. But the things people remembered about him and spoke about at his funeral weren’t associated with school. They were testimonies of how he went out of his way to do things for his friends.
I’m learning to listen to what’s truly urgent and not be drawn in by flashy lures to waste my day on unimportant things. I’m learning to use the time I have for what matters.
Every single day can be spent only once.
Unlike merchandise that can be returned, money refunded and used again, the twenty-four hours from sunrise to sunrise is unique, never to be repeated.
I want to spend it wisely.
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
Diane Ackerman
Sometimes I’m envious of folks hobbling along in those plastic boots designed to support an injured leg or ankle and aid healing.
Not because of the injury–I’m thankful I’ve never broken a bone-but because it’s an outward warning to anyone who might otherwise be impatient or insensitive that they just can’t go any faster.
I think there ought to be a t-shirt, pin or banner that gives the same kind of warning for those of us walking around with broken hearts and broken lives.
But there isn’t.
Except for the first shell-shocked days immediately following Dominic’s death, I look pretty much the same as I always have.
Most of us do.
If you lined up a hundred parents and scattered ten in the group who had suffered child loss, very few people would be able to single them out.
The giant heart wound we bear is barely noticeable to the uninitiated.
Yet even years later, we need extra support, extra care, extra grace to help us continue to heal.
There’s no plastic boot to fit around a broken heart. But there are things friends and family can do to create safe spaces that protect it.
If you know someone whose child has run ahead to Heaven, don’t ignore the wound.
Reach out.
Don’t insist that they walk as fast or as unencumbered as you might.
Be willing to slow down and walk with them awhile.
Toss that rock in the water and see what happens.
It’s impossible to keep the ripples from moving farther and farther from the point of impact.
And even though I can’t see it, my casual toss has changed the environment of the pond in ways it would not have been changed without my action.
Our lives are like that- we touch other people every day and rarely know how our brief brush may ripple through their lives for years or even eternity.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2018/01/04/ripples/
Music has been an important part of my healing.
Not always, or even often, because it makes me feel better.
Rather, like poetry, music distills deep emotions into few words that resonate in my soul.
This isn’t a new song and I have heard it many times. But just the other day someone posted it in a group where we were praying desperately for a baby with profound health issues. Barring a touch from the Father’s hand, there was little hope.
The precious little warrior went home to rest, healed and whole, in the arms of Jesus.
So I listened again. And I realized how unbearably true the lyrics are.
Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling
Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It’s unfair
Natalie Grant, This is What it Means to be Held
Appalling, unfair, why did this happen?
Oh, how those questions still rattle around in my heart and mind on some days. When Dominic first left for Heaven they were my constant companion.
“Who told us we’d be rescued?”
Who indeed.
Certainly not Jesus.
He said we’d have trouble in this world. He never sugar coated how hard life could be.
But He left us with the promise that He would be with us no matter what. We would never be alone in the flood or the fire or the deep, deep pit of child loss.
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held
Natalie Grant
Child loss shattered everything-my heart, my world and my understanding of how God works in it. The sacred was most certainly “torn from my life”.
My struggle with the God I thought I knew was as painful as the devastation of burying my son.
This hand is bitterness
Natalie Grant
We want to taste it, let the hatred numb our sorrow
The wise hands opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow
It’s so tempting to swallow bitterness when unending despair seems like the only alternative.
But it doesn’t numb the sorrow. Bitterness turns a heart so hard it can’t feel anything-not even love.
The wise hand does open slowly-oh, so slowly-to the beauty and promise of tomorrow.
This is what it means to be held
Natalie Grant
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held
When we received the news that Dominic left us that early, still-dark morning, I looked over to a sculpture of upturned hands on my living room table and said, “I can’t open my hands to receive blessings if I don’t also leave them open for the bruisings.”
It’s true.
God is holding me still. He is blessing me still.
I will, undoubtedly, be bruised again in some way.
I know His faithful love will see me through.
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