I don’t know about you, but I think of every day as a blank canvas and it’s my responsibility to paint something useful or beautiful or helpful on it.
I’m a list maker so each night before I drift off, I usually jot down 3 or 300 things I would like to do the next day.
I get up, get started and then (more often than I’d like to confess!) hit a wall.
Read the rest here: Have A Day. It Doesn’t Have to Be a Good One.
I ask myself this question often: Do I want to keep writing in this space?
Sometimes the answer is a resounding, “no!”.
Because while I love to write, some days it’s hard to put together words in a way others can understand. Sometimes I’m tired, or rushed or just tired of thinking about how grief and loss impact my life.
And then I ask the follow up: Do I still have anything to say?
That’s the one that keeps me here.
Because as soon as I think the answer is “no” to that question, a conversation or a comment thread or a personal experience brings up something that I feel I need or want to write about.
So I sit down and begin again.
I made a commitment in the beginning to be as honest as possible and I’ve done that the best I know how while protecting identities of those who are part of my story but who have their own stories to tell (should they choose).
I also promised to be transparent about my thoughts on God, on faith, on life everlasting. I feel like I’ve done that. In fact, I’m pretty sure some of my rambling has shocked friends and family from time to time. But I’m not afraid of shocking God. He knows my frame, knows my heart and cannot be made small by my questions or doubts.
I try to do research when appropriate to bring together resources and ideas for bereaved parents in one place.
One of the most frustrating things to me in the early months of missing Dominic was how hard it was to find good resources. The Internet is not your friend if you are looking for local and accessible help for practical problems. It was over a year and a half before I found a closed group of like-minded bereaved parents. But once I did, oh, what a difference that made in my journey!
So if you are interested in finding a safe, closed group, ask me. I know of several.
And then there’s the sweet comments that (usually) mamas send my way-either through Facebook or here. When someone writes that looking for the blog post each morning helps them get out of bed-well, that’s both encouragement and a serious responsibility. I don’t want to not show up and disappoint a heart. Even when all I have to offer is only my words.
So for now, at least, I plan to stay.
When my life circumstances make it impossible to carry on or I run out of things to say (which my mother will swear won’t happen!) then I’ll quit.
I send each post into cyberspace with a prayer-even for my readers who don’t believe in prayer:
“Father God, help each heart hold onto hope. Send a ray of sunshine into every cloudy day. Bring someone along who will listen, who will care and who will offer a hand to the one who is too weary and broken to take another step. Help them believe that they are seen, they are loved and that they matter. Overwhelm them with Your love, grace and mercy.”
You DO matter.
I DO care.
If you need to talk, message me.
If you need a safe space, I’ll direct you to it.
I’m not going anywhere.
Attention spans are shorter than ever.
It’s easy to understand why. We live in a world full of sound bytes, memes, tweets and T-shirt slogans.
But life can’t be reduced to such little snippets, even if we wish it could.
Not every biography has the perfect “beginning, middle, end” arch that makes for a good and satisfying story.
Some of us can’t tie up our experiences in tidy boxes, with colorful bows and a lovely tag line that inspires thousands.
We are living unfinished, messy, hard stories that keep shifting, changing and require us to face mountain after mountain and valley after valley.
And we stumble.
A lot.
Read the rest here: Fix It Or Forget It: Why Unfinished Stories Make Others Uncomfortable
My friend and fellow bereaved mom, Margaret Franklin, Ryan’s mom, shared a beautiful Dutch word with me “Sterkte” (pronounced STAIRK-tah).
It literally translates “strength” or “power” but culturally means much more. It means bravery, strength, fortitude and endurance in the face of fear and insumountable odds through the empowering strength of God in me.
Not MY strength, but HIS.
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Appropriate God’s Strength
I have loved Scripture as long as I can remember. When I was in second grade I got the notion to read the whole Bible straight through-in the King James Version. I made it to Leviticus before I threw in the towel.
By the time my kids were grown I had read and studied Scripture for decades.
But three years before Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I realized my reading had become rote-I felt like I “knew” all the stories. So I slowed my study to a crawl-only one chapter a day-and I usually copied the whole chapter plus my notes into a journal. I had just finished this time through the Bible in January before Dom was killed in April.
And all that truth stored in my mind and heart was what I “read” for months when my eyes were too full of tears to see print on a page.
Many verses stung-some still do-but I was committed to bathe my broken heart in what I knew was true. I would take it like medicine, even when it tasted awful. I knew-in the end-it was my only hope for help.
It’s easy when doubt creeps in to let my heart hold onto it-even in the face of Truth that puts the doubt to rest.
But if all I do is question, question, question and never still my soul to receive God’s answers or His comfort, then I will simply run out of oxygen and faith.
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Access the Truth
Grief forces me to walk Relentlessly Forward even when I long to go back.
I can’t stop the clock or the sun or the days rolling by.
Those of us who are more than a couple months along in this journey (or any journey that involves tragedy and loss) know that it is ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE to feel worse than in the first few days.
Because as the edges of the fog lift and the reality of an entire lifetime looms before you the questions form and the doubt sinks in:
Where ARE You God?
Why don’t You DO something?
Are You even LISTENING?
So many of us who have been in church for a long time think that Wrestling With God or entertaining doubt is sin-or, at best- unhealthy and proof of a weak faith.
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Acknowledge Doubt and Ask Questions
I may risk offending some of my fellow believers in Jesus but I will take that risk.
While scripture is plain that God uses the events in our lives to help fashion our hearts, it is also equally plain that God does not act cruelly or spitefully or wantonly.
What Joseph’s brothers did to him was evil. God redeemed it.
What the crowd did to Stephen, the first Christian martyr, was evil. God redeemed it.
What Nero did to the early Christians was evil. God redeemed it.
Death is the ultimate evil, the last enemy. But Jesus overcame it and God will redeem it.
Yes, “all things work together for good for those that love the Lord” but not all things are good.
My son’s death is not a test, a lesson, a trial nor a hammer in the hand of God sent to pound me into the shape He desires for me.
It is an evil that He can and is using for good.
It will one day be absolutely, totally and irrevocably redeemed.
I can’t wait.
I have lots and lots of questions.
And I don’t think ignoring them or shoving them in a chest and sitting on the lid is helpful.
But I’m far enough along in this journey to admit that if I let my heart and mind focus on the questions I’ll drown in sorrow and despair.
Read the rest here: A Reason Can’t Wipe Away Tears: A Modern Lament
Trying to ignore or stuff our questions because they are uncomfortable or too hard to think about isn’t helpful. They just rattle around in our minds and burrow deeper into our hearts causing confusion and raising doubt.
One of the questions many bereaved parents desperately want to answer: Did God take my child?These are my thoughts-ones I believe are backed by Scripture and align with what I know personally about God’s character.
They are the result of many months of wrestling. I offer them in hopes they will help another heart.
❤ Melanie
This is a question that comes up all the time in bereaved parents’ groups: Did God take my child?
Trust me, I’ve asked it myself.
How you answer this question can mean the difference between giving up or going on, between turning away or trusting.
So this is MY answer. The one I’ve worked out through study, prayer and many, many tears. You may disagree. That’s just fine. I only offer it because it might be helpful to some struggling and sorrowful soul.
Read the rest here: Did God Take My Child?
Several recent conversations and comments have reminded me again how much energy and effort it takes to work through the cosmic questions that rock every bereaved parent’s world.
When Dominic ran ahead to Heaven I no longer had the luxury of turning a blind eye to things like, “How do you reconcile God’s sovereignty with free will?” and, “What difference does prayer make?” or, “Why do bad things happen to ‘good’ people?”.
These are the questions that filled my mind and kept me awake at night after burying my son. Questions I was free to ignore before they took up residence in my soul and echoed in my head with every thump, thump, thump of my beating heart.So I’m digging out some old posts where I share how I came to understand those questions, live with many (most?) unanswered yet hold fast to the truth that God’s faithful love and grace are sufficient and unending.
I hope it helps another heart.
❤ Melanie
We are a people who love a good mystery as long as it leads to a good ending-bad guys vanquished, questions answered, motives revealed and a tidy resolution.
But real life is rarely so neat and squared away.
Just consider your average doctor’s visit. Diagnosis is often a result of trial and error when a simple blood test or throat culture is unavailable to confirm or rule out a particular malady. Yet we blunder forward, trying this and that until something either works or the illness runs its course.
Relationships are even trickier. We stand toe-to-toe with others hoping we understand what they are saying or not saying, feeling or not feeling-all the while forced to act and react in the space between. It’s a wonder we aren’t all at war with one another.
And then there are the big “What ifs?” and “Whys?”
The cosmic questions that rock our world and threaten to undo us.
These are the questions that filled my mind and kept me awake at night after burying my son. Questions I was free to ignore before they took up residence in my soul and echoed in my head with every thump, thump, thump of my beating heart.
It took a very long time for me to learn to live with them unanswered. And there are still moments when I scream aloud and raise my fist to the sky, demanding an accounting.
But most days, I can rest in that space between the asking and the answer-if not exactly at peace-then at least in a state of suspended animation.
And that may really be all God expects of me this side of heaven.
Job never did get any answers.
He stood before God speechless and in awe.
That’s pretty much where I am right now.
I don’t have to like it.
I don’t have to understand it.
I only have to be willing to admit that He is God and I am not.
Job answered God:
“I’m convinced: You can do anything and everything.
Nothing and no one can upset your plans.
You asked, ‘Who is this muddying the water,
ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?’
I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me,
made small talk about wonders way over my head.
You told me, ‘Listen, and let me do the talking.
Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.’
I admit I once lived by rumors of you;
now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears!
I’m sorry—forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!
I’ll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”Job 42:4-6 MSG
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