grief – Page 292 – thelifeididntchoose

Can I Just Be Me?

Even in the very first hours after the news, my brain began instructing my heart, “Now, try to be brave. Try not to disappoint people. Try to say the right thing, do the right thing and be the example you should be.”

Whatever that meant.

As I made phone calls and received concerned friends and family members I was so aware that they would take a cue from me-how much can I say, how hard can I cry, should I hug or stand back, should I talk about him or be silent lest it make the tears fall harder?

And here-almost nine years later-I still feel like I need to lead the way in conversations and social encounters.

If I don’t mention Dominic, no one else does and that disappoints me.

If I do mention Dominic, the response is often sympathy or rushing to another topic.

Which is also disappointing.

If I smile, then I’m “so much better’.

If I tear up, then I’m “not over it yet”.

The entire time I’m in the company of others (besides my family and a couple close friends) I am editing myself. Everything I say or don’t say is filtered through a grid based on how others may receive it.

No off the cuff responses here.

Past experience has taught me that what most folks want from the bereaved (after the first few months or maybe a year) is evidence that they are “moving on”, “healing”, “trusting Jesus”, “getting better” or “finding the silver lining”.

Part of me would like to participate in this ruse because it’s so much easier than trying to push, pull or drag them into the reality that bereaved parents face.

But another part of me wants to rip the blinders off and let them see that this is a lifelong journey that is bumpy, hard and doesn’t look like victory.

It looks like perseverance.

Sometimes I laugh. Sometimes I cry. Some days are good. Some days are awful.

I’m stronger than I was but I’m not “better”.

I’m able to greet most days but I still struggle some mornings to get out of bed.

I enjoy my family and friends but I miss my son.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could be only me.

Not a “me” curated for public consumption.

But just me.

Trade With 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

OOPS!! How in the World Did I End up HERE?

My front yard is full of juvenile squirrels. They love to chase one another round and round-playing some version of “king of the hill”.

I’m used to hearing their chatter and seeing them jump from branch to branch, tree to tree.

But yesterday I saw something I’d never seen before-two young squirrels were clinging desperately to the phone lines that stretch between two power line poles. They were twisting and turning, grasping for a foothold and completely flabbergasted to find themselves in such a precarious position.

I looked to see how in the world they might have ended up there. Sure enough, there is a crepe myrtle tree with branches that just graze the phone lines.

I’m pretty sure the silly young things were chasing each other and didn’t realize that they had jumped from the safety of a tree to the danger of the phone line.

As I was watching them I thought about how I can find myself in a very similar situation.

Grief is not a single emotion-it’s a whole suitcase of them! I can’t help feeling them. In fact, I NEED to feel them if I’m going to do the work grief requires.

But if I allow myself to be led by my emotions, I can quickly be drawn away from the safety of truth and find myself perched precariously on the high wire of my feelings.

Once there, my sole focus becomes maintaining my balance and I lose sight of where I want to go.

In my scramble to keep my footing, I can sacrifice relationships.

I can take offense when none was intended.

I give offense because I’m angry and wounded myself.

I can allow sorrow to cloud my vision so that I can’t see the real beauty that still remains.

I need to remain aware of where my emotions are leading me so that I don’t end up somewhere I don’t want to be.

I’m not nearly as nimble as a squirrel. 🙂

Decisions, Decisions-The Complicated Everyday World of Child Loss

Sometimes I wonder why in the world am I so exhausted?

Why does it drain me to go to the grocery store?

Why do I have to gird my loins as if going into battle to make a phone call or a doctor’s appointment or to handle the normal, pesky details of living?

THIS. This is why: Every single thing I do or say is complicated now. No simple answers, no easy, breezy interactions with strangers.

I weigh every word, strategically plan each stop on my shopping route and choose carefully when and where to meet a friend for lunch.

Nothing is simple.

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.

“How many children do you have?”

A common, get-to-know-you question lobbed across tables, down pews and in the check-out line at the grocery store. But for many bereaved parents, it can be a complex question that gets a different answer depending on who is asking and where we are.

I decided from the beginning that I would say, “four” in answer to that query.

But that doesn’t always get me off the hook. A follow-up of, “Oh, what do they do?” means that I have to make a decision: do I go down the line, including Dominic in any kind of detail or do I gloss over the fact that one of my children now lives in heaven?

Read the rest here: It’s Complicated

NO Heart is as Whole as a Broken Heart

It is possible to go through life without having to question your faith.

But I’m not sure that is a good thing.

Although I would never, ever have chosen this path, child loss has forced me to entertain questions I might have ignored and to dig deeper than I might otherwise have done if life had been easier and less challenging.

My faith is not blind faith.

My faith is not unchallenged faith.

I am facing the fact that terrible things happen even to those who love and trust God. I will not parrot empty phrases that promise smooth sailing to new converts if they will “only turn their lives over to Jesus”.

I don’t even know where we get that idea. Every single disciple was martyred except John and he was boiled in oil and exiled to the Isle of Patmos.

There are faithful believers starving TODAY, dying TODAY and suffering TODAY.

Why should I be exempt?

‘No heart is as whole as a broken heart.’ And I paraphrase it differently: No faith is as pure as a wounded faith because it is faith with an open eye. I know all the elements of the situation; I know all the reasons why I shouldn’t have faith. I have better arguments against faith than for faith. Sure, it’s a choice. And I choose faith.

~Elie Wiesel

You are Braver than You Think

Child loss is not the only devastating life circumstance that can make a person want to hide in bed.

Every single day, broken hearts, broken bodies and limping spirits open their eyes to the dawn and choose to get up and get going.

If that is you, I want you to know this:

You are strong.

You are brave.

You are not invisible.

You may never be recognized in this life for the heroic struggle you face every day but it counts.

Endurance is triumph.

Perseverance is conquest.

Choosing brave in the face of fear is victory.

Life is Short, Be Swift to Love

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

Repost: Can’t Fake it Forever

There’s a common bit of advice in grief circles: Fake it until you make it.

It’s not bad as far as it goes and can be pretty useful-especially just after the initial loss and activity surrounding it.

Like when I met the acquaintance in the grocery store a month after burying Dominic and she grabbed me with a giant smile on her face, “How AREyou?!!! It’s SO good to see you out!!!”

I just smiled and stood there as if I appreciated her interest, a deer caught in headlights, silently praying she’d live up to her talkative past and soon move on to another target.

Faked it.

Boom!

BUT there comes a time when faking it is not helpful. In fact, it’s downright dangerous.

Read the rest here: Can’t Fake It Forever

Step Back, Don’t React

It is possible not to react to every single thing someone says or does. It is possible to scroll past social media posts that get under your skin and not look back. It is possible to ignore a snarky comment or an unhelpful piece of advice from someone who ACTS like they know what you’re going through but really has. no. idea.

Now if you are new on this journey, you will read these first few lines and think, “Is this woman crazy????”

I felt EXACTLY the same way in the first months and even through the first couple years in this Valley.

But, I will tell you this: the sooner you can embrace the habit of practicing the pause, the sooner you will begin to feel like you have some control in your world again.

And isn’t that one of the things we crave after the tsunami of child loss sweeps over our lives-order, control, a sense of purpose and direction?

It’s hard.

Really, really hard not to react against every arrow shot into my wounded heart. Even when I know it was an accident and the offense is collateral damage, it still hurts.

But I’ve found that if I just take a single, deep breath I can put a bit of distance between the oomph of the impact and my reaction. And there is actually power in choosing to ignore offense.

Because then I am in control, not the person lobbing the arrows.

So what do I do in the split-second it takes to draw in that preparatory breath? I consider the source. I think (quickly) about my ongoing relationship with this person, what’s happening in THEIR life and why they might have said or done what they said or did.

Is it ignorance? Is it sloppy choice of words? Is it due to stress in his life? Is she just worn out and not thinking?

And I decide: is reacting to THIS particular exchange worth damaging the relationship?

Is it worth the negative emotional energy that I will have to expend?

Is it something I can overlook and move past?

Most of the time the answer is, “yes”. I CAN let it go. It’s not that big of a deal. It is not a fair representation of our relationship and it is certainly not worth ruining a friendship.

I’m not just doing THEM a favor. I’m doing ME a favor.

I’m not “letting them off the hook”. I may actually revisit the issue later on, when emotions aren’t running high.

But I have learned that I only have so much emotional energy to expend in this Valley. So much of it is already absorbed in carrying the missing and sorrow and reining in my own outrageous feelings that I just don’t need to waste the rest on trivial things.

So I don’t (most of the time).

Practicing the pause helps me do that.

It gives me control.

There is far too little of that this side of child loss.

So I will take what I can get.

The Greatest Showman: The Power and Peril of Story

I went to see The Greatest Showman the other day 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 I’ve been thinking about it since.

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.

brene brown vulnerablity sounds like truth

owning-our-story-and-loving-ourselves-through-the-process

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.

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