grief journey – Page 30 – thelifeididntchoose

Swiftly Flow the Days

It’s my habit to watch the sunrise and the sunset every day.

I usually greet the morning in my rocking chair, looking out my east-facing picture window. It never gets old to watch darkness chased away by relentless light rising over the tops of trees.

Beautiful.

Every. Time.

Sunset is a little trickier.

I don’t have a clear view of the west from inside my house and the western edge of my property is peppered with tall trees so I usually only see the beginning of the end of every day. But one of my favorite things to do is watch the golden glow of lingering light touch the tops of the highest pines and then slip away as the sun sinks below the horizon.

Another day has come and gone.

And the days become weeks that become months that become years.

Sometimes the days are long.

But the years are short.

Some days bring news I don’t want to hear. Some bring shouts of rejoicing. Either way I’m not the keeper of my days. The sun neither rises nor sets at my bidding.

But I have choices in the daylight hours. I can work while the sun is shining or I can worry that it might set soon.

I can take advantage of the light or I can wring my hands anticipating the darkness.

I am not naive.

I wish I were.

I wish I didn’t know by experience how much a heart can long for days gone by, days wasted, days that could have held more love and laughter but were overshadowed by worry or hurry or just indifference.

So I watch the sunrise to remind me that TODAY is a gift. And I watch the sunset to remind me that the gift of today is gone forever.

What have I done with it? Who have I loved? Where have I placed my energy and purpose and hope?

Every day is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

I never want to forget that.

Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly flow the days
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze
Sunrise, sunset, Sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears

~Sheldon Harnick

Where’s the Blessing in Mourning?

I must remind my heart every day that Jesus Himself declared the blessing in mourning.

I must remember that there is comfort available at His feet.

Not in running from my pain, but in embracing it and trusting Him to redeem it.

What blessing is there in mourning? What comfort in distress? What good can come from pain and brokenness?

Good questions.

Honest questions.

Questions I have asked God.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”~Jesus

The folks that followed Him up the hill were part of a nation that had waited centuries for deliverance from sin and persecution. Jesus was surrounded by people powerless to change their circumstances. They were grieving, mourning, in distress.

So when He said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” He was offering real hope to the brokenhearted. He was issuing an invitation…

When we reach the end of our own strength in grief, God invites us into a fellowship of suffering that includes Jesus Christ.

Burying a child is a humbling experience. It is teaching me that I am powerless and oh, so dependent on the grace and mercy of God.

My heart was broken open wide to receive the truth that fierce love makes me vulnerable to deep pain.

And the pain cleared the clutter and noise of the everyday to focus my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection on the eternal.

My life is swept clean of distraction and foolish things and filled with new understanding of what is important and lasting.

My pain has not disappeared.

But it is making room for the God of all comfort to fill it with hope:

That what I am feeling right now is not forever and forever is going to be glorious…

And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

Revelation 21:4 KJV

Where Ministry Intersects Real Life: Lighting the Path for Other Bereaved Parents

Earlier this week I participated in a “retreat” with Our Hearts Are Home-a ministry to bereaved parents and their families.

On the Zoom call were individuals active in their own communities and own ministries who also lend their time and talents to this one. Together we represent a cadre of bereaved parents who have chosen to come back with a torch to light the way of those still walking in the early days, weeks, months, YEARS of child loss.

It’s a privilege to work and walk beside them.

What I wanted to share today was this: Every one of these individuals is carrying their own burden of grief and loss, every one of them has a life outside ministry that includes family commitments, aging parents, growing children and grandchildren, work, church attendance and committee positions and just the everyday chores of living.

We are contacted via DM and text by newly bereaved parents all the time.

We have nonbereaved friends and family experiencing challenging life events. We have to negotiate holidays and family gatherings while respecting various people’s schedules and preferences.

We are administrators of closed Facebook groups and host book studies and write blogs.

We field phone calls and try to squeeze in workouts or walks, cooking and cleaning.

So when you are thinking about people to pray for, our “cause” may not be dramatic or life-threatening but our work is life giving and light sharing.

Consider adding us to your prayer list.

We’d be oh, so grateful!

**** If you’d like to learn more about the work I do at Heartache and Hope ministry, The Life I Didn’t Choose blog or partner with me through financial support, you can find out more through these links: http://heartacheandhope.org; http://thelifeididntchoose.com; http://square.link/u/cNen14Q1 ****

Life is Short. Make Haste to Be Kind.

Grief has worn away some of the sharp edges of my personality.

I’m still prone to impatience-especially when faced with incompetence or hateful behavior in others.

But I’m learning that walking gently through life is not only good for others, it’s good for ME.

Life IS short. ‘

Not just the life of a child or teen or young adult cut down by accident or disease.

But even if I live my “threescore and ten” the Bible talks about, it will STILL be short. Seventy, eighty, one hundred years set on the timeline of history or eternity is less than a pinpoint.

What do I want my legacy to be? What do I want to leave behind for others to remember, to ponder, to carry in their hearts attached to my memory?

That’s easy. I want my legacy to be love.

I want people to remember that I treated them with kindness, that I respected them as persons, that I reached out, reached down and never separated myself from them by false barriers, foolish divisions or fake measures of who is “better” and who is “worse”.

More than anything I want people to feel that I made their burden lighter, not heavier.

So much of life is hard.

So many things happen for which there is no remedy.

I can’t choose everything, but I can choose love.

Life is short and we have not much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are traveling the dark way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind.

– Henri Fredric Amiel

Called to Be a Witness

What, exactly, is the value of believers in Jesus plastering an “Everything is fine” mask across our faces?

Are we afraid that if we allow someone to see our pain we are letting God down?

And how could that be?

Did not Christ Himself beg the Father in the Garden to take the cup from Him?

Yet we smile and wave and chat our way through encounters with people around us, pretending, pretending, pretending that life is easy when it most certainly is not.

Denying the dark and refusing to acknowledge the depth of our pain diminishes the value of the comfort of Christ.

When David wrote that, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me” he understood both the desperate need for and the great assurance of Christ’s Presence.

When we allow others to see our broken hearts, we bear testimony to the sustaining grace of Jesus.

And we extend an invitation for them to meet this Savior that gives strength and comfort even in the darkest hours and hardest journeys.

Child Loss is Truly Relentless

There have been a number of posts from different parents in our closed groups recently remarking on how difficult this journey continues to be even decades down the road.

From the outside looking in, folks think, “Well, they’ve had plenty of time to adapt”.

But what they don’t understand is that for a parent, it’s not only what we HAD that is missing, it’s what we thought we WOULD HAVE that we miss too.

So every Christmas, every New Year, every birthday, holiday and family celebration our child isn’t present is another “not there” we have to process and accept.

This grief truly is relentless.

❤ Melanie

re·lent·less

adjective

opressively constant; incessant.

Synonyms: persistent, continuing, nonstop, never-ending, unabating, interminable, incessant, unceasing, endless, unremitting, unrelenting, unrelieved.

Use The Gifts God Has Given You

Sometimes it seems more trouble than it’s worth to try to tease out truth from antiquated language.

But may I encourage you to find at least one quote a day that makes you stop and think?

It’s good exercise for the mind and the soul!

Here’s one I ran across just recently (with modern “translation” between stanzas):

Trade with the gifts God has given you.

Lend your minds to holy learning that

you may escape the fretting moth of

littleness of mind that would wear out your souls.

Be who you are-don’t spend time lamenting who you are not. Do the thing God has given YOU to do. Work the field God has given YOU to work.

Fill your mind with Truth from Scripture and from trusted sources. Enlarge your vision by embracing an eternal perspective lest the struggle of daily life eat holes in your hope like moths in a sweater. You might not realize it until you need it most, and then it won’t be serviceable.

Grace your wills to action that they may

may not be the spoils of weak desires

Train your hearts and lips to song which

gives courage to the soul.

Learn to act according to principle and not desire-rise above the moment and lean into the long view. Don’t give in to every lust that pops into your head-that only leads to sorrow and addiction.

Sing in the daylight when it’s easy and you feel like singing so that it’s a habit.

You will need it in the dark.

Being buffeted by trials, learn to laugh.

Being reproved, give thanks.

Having failed, determine to succeed.

Homily of St. Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, 657-680 A.D.

You are going to be knocked down, learn to laugh about it-or at least to smile.

You will be criticized, learn to receive it with thanks-there is usually some truth in it.

You will fail.

Don’t give up.

Try again and again and again.

May we never tire of doing what is good and right before our Lord because in His season we shall bring in a great harvest if we can just persist.

Galatians 6:9 VOICE

Surviving the Unthinkable: Grief and Self-Care

My first instinct as a mother and a shepherd is always, “How can I help?”

I routinely set aside my own needs for the needs of others. Not because I’m so selfless but because that’s how I’m made-I’ve always had the heart of a caretaker.

That’s not a bad thing, most of the time.

But if taking care of others means NOT taking care of myself, then in the end, I’m of no use to anyone. When I allow every bit of energy-emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual-to drain away until there’s nothing left, I am unable to meet my most basic needs, much less the needs of others.

Read the rest here: Grief and Self-Care: Surviving the Unthinkable

The Power and Peril of Story

I went to see The Greatest Showman a few years ago with my daughter. It was an amazing film-I was drawn into the story and my heart longed to see where it was going and how it would end.

I highly recommend it for two hours of uplifting entertainment.

But it got me thinking.

So I did a little digging into P.T. Barnum’s REAL life story.

As you might imagine, several liberties were taken with actual history in order to create what I saw on the screen. That’s really just fine. I knew what I was getting into when I plunked my money down for the ticket. I had no illusion that I was walking into a history lecture- I understood I was there to be entertained.

When I compared the actual Barnum life story to the tidy, beautiful, uplifting and wonderfully scored musical I had seen in the theater, I found gaping holes.

And most of the holes involved the hard and ugly parts of his story-the parts people don’t like to talk about, much less live through.

While leaving them out or glossing them over with a moment or two of wistful glances for the movie is exactly what I expect from Hollywood, it can condition hearts to expect the same kind of thing in real life.

But real life stories don’t skip over the hard parts.

Real people have to live through the ugly and the painful and the devastating and the doubt and the sorrow. We don’t get to hop right to the happy ending (if there even IS a happy ending) nor do we get to whitewash the dark truths that inform our experience.

And because we prefer tidy (and happy) endings, bright and sunny days, encouraging and uplifting stories, when we are face to face with a challenging and difficult reality, we often turn away.

If we don’t hear it, it doesn’t matter.

If we don’t look, it didn’t happen.

If we wait long enough in our safe cocoon, someone else will deal with it.

Sometimes those of us in the middle of hard stories try to ignore it. But busyness and distraction do not make bad times better. Maybe for a moment, but not in the long run.

We’ve got to learn to experience it all, tell it all, be honest about how dark the path, how difficult the journey.

And those who are on the sunny side of the street need to learn to lean into friendship, cross over and offer compassionate companionship to those who are struggling.

Because sooner or later, it will be all of us.

we will all struggle and fall brene brown

Our Hearts are Home Spring Conference: Won’t You Join Me?

It took me a long time before I wanted to gather in a room with other bereaved parents.

My son’s death had undone me and I had no capacity for other people’s raw grief where I might not have an escape.

I wish I hadn’t been so reluctant and waited so long because what I found when I finally walked into the in-person community of other moms and dads who shared my loss, it was life giving, uplifting and utterly amazing.

So I want to extend an invitation to fellow broken hearts who hope for hope:

WHO? Bereaved parent & grandparents, and anyone who wants to better know how to comfort a grieving friend

WHAT? Our Hearts Are Home Spring Conference

WHEN? April 25-26, 2025

WHERE? Online or In Person

(If you can’t come on those days, you’ll receive all of the session recordings that remain available for two weeks following the conference.)

Read the session details and register at: https://ourheartsarehome.org/spring-conference

I’ll be sharing in a main sessions and participating in breakout sessions. AND there will be many opportunities to chat informally around meals and other unstructured times.

This is NOT your typical “Christian Conference” where what’s shared is memorized and rehashed in city after city. This is a unique opportunity to interact with parents who are walking the same broken road as you and are willing to reveal the ups and downs, ins and outs of navigating child loss. (My husband will be there too, bereaved dads!)

The cost is minimal although I know travel expenses may make attending in person out of the question for some of y’all. (Online option available!)

I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to meet (in the flesh!) anyone who has joined me here online.

You have no idea how often your words of encouragement have helped me hold onto hope.

So if you can, join us.

You may be nervous up to the very minute you show up or log on but I PROMISE you will not regret it.

See you there!

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: