Growing up digesting Disney fairy tales can warp your sense of reality.
There are no unblemished princes or perfect princesses out there. The bad guys don’t always get what they deserve and the good guys don’t always win.
At least not here on earth.
Read the rest here: Messy Lives, Merciful Savior
When my kids went anywhere, I would always ask them to send a text just to let me know they had safely arrived at their destination. They honored that request (most of the time!) and it eased my mind.
My mama heart wanted to know they were OK.
My living children still send me texts when traveling. It’s an easy way to relieve anxious thoughts and I appreciate it.
But my son, who has made the last great journey, is silent.
And that’s exactly what I expected.
I think Dominic is so enthralled with the beauty of Heaven, with the communion of saints gone before and with the fullness of joy at the right hand of his Savior that he does not look with longing at the life he left.
He is in possession of the promise. He knows fully, even as he is fully known.
At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!
I Corinthians 13:12 PHILLIPS
He has the ultimate assurance that God is faithful and that His lovingkindness endures forever. Dominic (if he even thinks of it at all) has no concern that the same Savior who rescued him won’t also rescue me.
“You must not let yourselves be distressed—you must hold on to your faith in God and to your faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s House. If there were not, should I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? It is true that I am going away to prepare a place for you, but it is just as true that I am coming again to welcome you into my own home, so that you may be where I am. You know where I am going and you know the road I am going to take.”
~Jesus ( John 14:1-4 PHILLIPS)
My faith has been tested in ways I never thought it would be. And it has been, and continues to be, HARD.
Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]
Hebrews 11:1 AM
The same God who made a donkey speak and sent ravens to feed Elijah can use the birds of the air and the beasts of the field to encourage me.
And He does- I have found a dozen perfect bird’s nests since Dominic left us. I believe they are signs from my Savior, not my son-tokens of hope sent to bless my broken heart from the Father who loves me.
God still speaks-He makes Himself known through His Word, through people, through nature and in still, small whispers to my heart through His Spirit.
He doesn’t answer all my questions. But I don’t feel abandoned.
Dominic is with Jesus and Jesus is with me.
Jesus Christ is always the same, yesterday, today and for ever.
Hebrews 13:8 PHILLIPS
I don’t feel close to Dominic at his grave. I go to honor him, to give voice to his memory but the essence of who he was and who he still is, lies in my heart and in the hearts of those who loved him and love him still.
And the witness of that enduring love is the sign to which I cling.
Faith is to believe when you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
~Augustine
Grief and loss broke my heart and life wide open-no more hidden corners, no more walled-off spaces.
And the vast expanse left by Dominic’s absence will be filled.
Nature hates a vacuum.
What I pour into my heart or allow God to pour into it determines whether I am changed in a way that blesses me and others or not.
I don’t have a choice in being broken.
But I have a choice in being filled. I can position my heart to hear from God and to dwell on His promises and Person or invite bitterness to move in.
I pray that you will have greater understanding in your heart. Then you will know the hope that God has chosen to give us. I pray that you will know that the blessings God has promised his holy people are rich and glorious.
Ephesians 1:18 ICB
Day Twelve of Kathleen Duncan’s June 1-30 challenge.
The prompt: 12 things you are grateful for
Like Kathleen, the 12th of each month marks the anniversary of the accident that took my son’s life. And like many bereaved parents, the date is etched in memory and re-etched every time it rolls around.
I love the idea of reclaiming the ground which the enemy has stolen by resolving to remind my heart of the promises of God that uphold me in the midst of my sorrow.
I am grateful for promises contained in His Word. They are manna, bread from heaven as I walk the wilderness of grief.
Here are 12 I savor:
1. One day there will be no more tears because God will restore and redeem every hurtful thing:
2. A single day in the presence of my Savior is better than a thousand years here on earth:
Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor;
no good thing does he withhold
from those whose walk is blameless.Lord Almighty,
blessed is the one who trusts in you.Psalm 84:10-12 NIV
3. I can trust God to finish what He started-in me AND in Dominic:
4. The Lord is good and He is my stronghold, even in this trouble:
The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust Him.
Nahum 1:7
5. The Lord will restore the years the locust has eaten-He will give back what the enemy has stolen:
I will restore to you the years which the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you.
Joel 2:25
6. God will carry me, even to my old age-as long as it takes-until I am in His presence and with my son:
7. My Shepherd is with me in the Valley of the Shadow of Death:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Psalm 23:4 KJV
8. This trial will refine my faith and it will shine as pure gold on the day Jesus is revealed:
Their purpose is to prove that your faith is genuine. Even gold, which can be destroyed, is tested by fire; and so your faith, which is much more precious than gold, must also be tested, so that it may endure. Then you will receive praise and glory and honor on the Day when Jesus Christ is revealed.
1 Peter 1:7 GNT
9. Death is defeated because Christ is risen:
10. I am struck down, but not destroyed or abandoned:
We are pressured in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
2 Corinthians 4:8-10
11. Even as I walk through the Valley of Weeping, God turns my tears to springs of life:
12. God will turn my mourning into dancing. He will fill my mouth with songs of gladness:
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing. You have loosed my sackcloth and girded me with gladness. That my soul may sing praise and not be silent. O Lord my God I will give thanks to You forever.
Psalm 30:11-12
Advertising works on a simple principle: exposure.
The more exposure a person has to the product, the more likely that person will want to buy it.
My eyes lead my heart.
I go where my gaze rests.
What I stare at changes me.
In the first moments, days, weeks after Dominic’s accident, it was very hard to lift my eyes from the reality of pain and sorrow that began like a hard kernel in my heart and grew to a mushroom cloud of destruction that took over my whole body.
But even then, God broke through to remind me all was not dark, all was not lost, and, in the end, all would be well.
See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?
Julian of Norwich
As the cloud began to lift, I was able, by degrees, to choose where to turn my eyes. I could read and write and focus on truth, or I could fill my gaze with deception, darkness and lies.
I am going to stare at SOMETHING-I have to decide what or Who will fill the horizon of my days.
In my sorrow, I can stare down the black hole of death or I can lift my eyes to the Hope of Heaven.
I can linger long at the grave or I can point my face to the sky and look for His return.
My gaze can rest on the emptiness of today or it can rest secure in the promise of tomorrow.
I can sit at the feet of Jesus and let His Presence fill my eyes and guide my heart or I can turn away and let despair overtake my soul.
I’m asking God for one thing, only one thing: To live with him in his house my whole life long. I’ll contemplate his beauty; I’ll study at his feet.
Psalm 27:4 MSG
When Moses came from God’s Presence, he glowed.
His face was transformed because he beheld the glory of the Lord.
He was sustained in the dry season of leading the Israelites through the wilderness by the abundant life he received in communion with God.
This season of grief is hard.
It is DRY, and if I focus on the sorrow, it will suck the life right out of me.
I feel the sorrow. I feel the pain. There is no escaping reality.
But I can fix my eyes on the truth that this world is not all there is.
I can focus my gaze on the finished work of Christ and the promise of reunion made possible by His blood.
Wearing Michael Jordan’s shoes won’t make me a basketball star.
But spending time in the Presence of Jesus will make me more like Him.
As I expose myself repeatedly to His grace, mercy and beauty , I am transformed.
Our faces, then, are not covered. We all show the Lord’s glory, and we are being changed to be like him. This change in us brings more and more glory. And it comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18 ICB
Busy, busy, busy and noisy, noisy, noisy.
Every day is full of activity and every minute full of sounds-television, radio, Itunes or Pandora.
I am, at the same time, hyper-connected and dis-connected. My mind is often full but my heart can feel empty.
If I can move fast enough or create sufficient distraction, then maybe I can ignore the harder questions, the deeper thoughts, the uncomfortable feelings that I would rather not explore.
Being in one’s own company alone with God is challenging. Without the noise of outside distraction I am forced to face my fears and hidden darkness. And in the quiet I find that the easy answers leave me empty and unsatisfied. I must listen carefully for the still, small Voice that whispers comfort.
If I want to hear from God I need to embrace solitude and make space to hear.
I am so very thankful for the hope I have in Christ.
I am dependent every moment on the strength of Jesus and the Word of God to point my heart to the eternal truth that my son is safe in heaven and that I will be reunited with him one day.
I honestly don’t know how a person who does not share my hope in the finished work of Christ can bear the burden of child loss.
But hope, strong as it is, and effective as it is, does not erase the pain.
It gives me the endurance to bear the pain.
It allows me to see past the pain to something better.
But I still feel the pain.
Hope is not anesthesia.
Hope does not dull my senses nor does it render my heart hard to the longing and missing and hurting of life without the son I love.
I believe in Christ.
I believe that “God so loved the world He sent His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”. (John 3:16)
And often, when inviting someone to believe in Jesus I will explain that God loves them SO much, He gave up His Son, just to save them.
Only the hardest heart would think such sacrifice was small or insignificant.
If it was painful for the Father to allow wicked men to kill His Son, then it is painful to me for death to take mine.
It is unhealthy to ignore pain.
But when it comes to emotional pain, we sometimes shut people out or shut them down.
I submit that we diminish the power of the cross when we deny or minimize the presence of pain.
Believing that God is in control and Jesus lives does not undo grief’s storm-it is a lifeline that keeps my desperate and hurting heart from sinking under the waves.
One day my hope will be made sight. One day the faith I hold onto will be realized in full.
Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, even though He knew that death would not win and Lazarus would walk out of the grave.
For now, I place my broken heart in the hands of the One Who made it because I know He knows my pain.
And I know that He longs as much as I do for the day when all will be redeemed and restored.
Ignoring pain doesn’t make it go away.
The world we live in is a broken place where bad things happen and life can be hard.
Sometimes believers in Christ can convince themselves that admitting their world is dark with pain or suffering or questions diminishes the power of God–that it speaks ill of God or that it means God is insufficient to uphold us in our weakness.
If I pretend that I’m never afraid, or that I never experience darkness, I am denying others my aid.
Even worse, I may be shaming them to silence, sending the message that if they are experiencing pain, something is wrong with THEM.
God of the Day and God of the Night
Most of us know the story of Job.
A righteous man, singled out by Satan to be tempted, ends up bereft of his children, his fortune and his health.
Sitting in the dust, scraping the pus from his wounds, three friends join him in his misery.
And they make it worse.
It’s hard to imagine that after burying a child, anything that people say or do can make you feel worse-but it is possible.
I had many friends and family that brought genuine comfort to my spirit.
They were the ones who spoke courage to my battered heart and helped me face another day when all I wanted to do was crawl under the covers and pray that the sun refused to shine. And I will never be able to repay them for that kindness.
But there were others….people who wanted to make sense of a senseless tragedy.
People who wanted to equate the loss of their aged aunt, their job, their (fill in the blank) with the unexpected, sudden loss of my perfectly healthy son.
And some folks kept poking around for details, for tidbits of information surrounding his accident like chickens scratching in the dirt.
Then there were the ones who tried to use human wisdom to fit things into their version of God’s “greater plan”.
It was very painful at first to fend off what felt like attacks. It was hard to ignore the additional burden of careless words or thoughtless actions.
But at this point in my grief journey I think I’ve figured out some of what motivates people who follow in the footsteps of Job’s comforters.
While I, the one who suffered loss, knew immediately and irrevocably that I WAS NOT IN CONTROL–bystanders and onlookers were still trying to preserve the illusion that they were.
They were looking for a clue, for a pattern, for a reason so that they could avoid the same fate.
If it’s possible to map a path to what led to my son’s death, then they will choose a different route.
If danger lurks in one direction, they will head the other way.
And that’s really what Job’s comforters were trying to do-they were attempting to fit Job’s experience into a grid they could understand.
They were struggling to align their concept of God, of righteousness and fairness with what they saw with their own eyes.
Surely Job must be hiding something.
Surely he wasn’t as righteous as he appeared.
Surely bad things don’t happen to good people.
Because, really, if they do, none of us are immune.
If doing the right thing, being careful, being “good” doesn’t protect you, then the world is a much more frightening place than we can imagine.
Believe me-I get it. Having lost one child, I would do ANYTHING to guarantee that it didn’t happen again.
But newsflash: We are not in control. We cannot guarantee outcomes. We do not determine our days.
God does.
And His ways are higher than our ways. His plan is bigger than mine.
Job asked God, “Why?”
God never answered Job’s questions.
Instead He invited Job to consider the great gap between himself and the God Who made him.
And faced with undeniable evidence, Job relented:
Then Job replied to the Lord:
I know that You can do anything
and no plan of Yours can be thwarted.
You asked, “Who is this who conceals My counsel with ignorance?”
Surely I spoke about things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to[b] know.
You said, “Listen now, and I will speak.
When I question you, you will inform Me.”
I had heard rumors about You,
but now my eyes have seen You.
Therefore I take back my words
and repent in dust and ashes.Job 42:1-6 HCSB
I cannot bring Dominic back-I cannot have my child once again in my arms. I cannot undo the damage death has wrought and the great gash loss has made in my heart.
And so I am left with my pain and my questions.
“Why?” is not a particularly fruitful question (although I ask it still).
“Why not?” is probably more helpful.
If I consider the lives of all the people God chose as examples of His faithfulness and grace there is not one who escapes heartache.
Not even one was allowed to walk this sod untouched by suffering that forced them to lean hard into the only Hope that lasts for eternity.
Adam and Eve reaped the consequences of their sin, were cast from the Garden and buried one son murdered by the other.
Noah watched the world descend into unbelievable wickedness around him and then witnessed the destruction of all flesh on earth.
Abraham left the familiar, trudged for years in a land promised but not given, had a son that he loved but had to send away because he was begotten outside the plan and will of God. He finally received the son of promise but was aked to sacrifice him.
He grew old without the blessing of possessing much of what God had promised him.
Jacob reaped the reward of his deception but lived a complicated and heartbreaking life.
Joseph enjoys a happy ending, but it was a long lonely path that led him there.
David, Moses, Paul, the apostles, Elizabeth, Hannah, Mary, Esther, Ruth-all were called to walk in sorrow as vessels of God’s glory.
Only recently in human history have we been able, in small pockets of abundance, to mistakenly assume this mortal life is as wonderful (or, dare I say it?) MORE wonderful than the promised eternal life provided by God through the ultimate and complete suffering and sacrifice of Jesus.
I want victory without war.
I want harvest without planting and working the fields.
I want to be happy and satisfied here yet still have a heart for heaven.
It is impossible to have both.
Only in light of eternity am I free to live a life set apart for God’s use in the here and now.
Only as a recipient of God’s grace can I be a conduit of that grace to others.
Only in deep sorrow can I find the true value of Christ’s promise that He will never leave me nor forsake me.
Only alone can I fully appreciate the gift of God’s constant companionship.
Only when I am truly hungry can I taste the bread that satisfies my soul.
Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You [alone] have the words of eternal life [you are our only hope].
John 6:68 AMP
thelifeididntchoose 