I’ve struggled since the beginning of this journey to convey others the ongoing open-ended emptiness of burying a child.
There is simply no way to fill the void left by my son’s leaving.
No job, no hobby, no ministry, no person, no exercise regimen, dietary discipline or medical intervention can fix this pain.
So when people think I will
“get over”,
or
“move past”
my son’s death,
they profoundly misunderstand my experience.
It’s funny-or maybe not-that God will weave a theme through a day or week or month.
He will put the same word in front of me in multiple places, speak it through different people, sometimes even (literally) plaster it across a billboard.
This morning it is grace.
Abundant, sufficient, enduring grace.
Read the rest here: Grace for Right Now
I may get jeered by my fellow bereaved parents but I’m committed to honesty so here it is: there is no hierarchy of grief and loss.
Now, am I saying that losing a dog is the same as burying a child? Absolutely not! I’ve written about that here.
But what I am saying is that grief, sorrow, loss and heartbreak comes to us in all shapes and sizes. And what may be small to me may be huge to someone else.
In the past weeks I’ve been exposed to a number of people who were waiting for those magic minutes of visitation allowed for intensive care units.
Each one had a story.
Each one had a cross to bear and a complicated life they were trying to maintain outside the additional stress and strain of a loved one hooked up to tubes and heart monitors.
None of them revealed (to me at least) that they were bereaved parents.
But I could clearly see pain, sorrow, grief and weariness etched in their furrowed brows. I could hear exhaustion in their voices as they placed phone call after phone call to update people that wanted to know how things were going but couldn’t make it to the hospital. I noticed hope spring to life in each heart when the clock ticked toward the assigned visitation window and how they leaned forward willing those last seconds to fly by faster.
I knew they were hurting. It didn’t matter if they hurt as much or less than me. There’s enough pain to go around in this life.
It isn’t a contest.
And I realized that because of my great grief and sorrow, I had a gift to share. I could reach out and take a hand, listen to a story, hug a weary shoulder empathetically, gently and without judgement.
I understand the weight of hard things.
I know by experience that life can change in a single breath. I carry both the ongoing burden of missing my son and the traumatic memory of life changed instantly by a knock on the door. It’s made me stronger in ways I would not have chosen.
I will not squander that strength.
I will put my shoulder to the harness alongside my fellow humans and offer to help carry some of their burden. I will extend my hand to the stumbling, strengthen the heart of the hurting and offer a listening ear to the one who has no one to talk to.
I cannot undo what I know. I cannot undo what has brought them here or may take them to places THEY don’t want to go.
But I can be present.
I can refuse to turn away because I think their grief is small in comparison to my own.
I can choose love.
My fellow bereaved mother and blogger, Kathleen Duncan, recently wrote that she felt she was done writing about grief.
It’s been a little over four years since her son Andrew ran ahead to heaven and, as she explains:
I think I’m done.
I think I’m done writing about death. Writing and thinking about death, grief, and pain doesn’t help me anymore. And it may be detrimental for me to spend time writing about those topics. ~ Kathleen B. Duncan
Both our sons were killed instantly in an accident (although the details are different) and both were vibrant young men pursuing what they loved when they left this life.
That got me to thinking since I’m only a few months behind her in my own grief journey.
Because my experience seems to be very different from hers.
I still find writing not only helpful, but healing. And while I think of many things in addition to grief, I still think about grief often-not only my own, but that of others. Not only the grief of bereaved parents, but of all the suffering, broken people I meet or hear about each day.
The feeling is different, but it remains.
At first my grief was so overwhelming and the sorrow loomed so large that it was constantly before my eyes. Everything I saw, heard, experienced or felt was filtered through tears. The world was a blurry place and life was unbearably hard. Every day I labored to lift my head from the pillow and roll my body from the bed. Every morning I remembered afresh that Dominic was not here, that my family circle was broken, that another 24 hours loomed large and lonely before me.
It’s definitely not like that anymore.
But, for me, what’s changed is the location of my sorrow and sadness, not the FACT of it.
Now, instead of being in front of me, my sorrow has bored its way into my bones. It rests deep inside the core of who I am, woven into the fabric of me.
I think of it like I think of being a mother.
My “baby” is 25 years old. But if I hear a plaintive “Mama!” in a store, I instinctively turn to see where the desperate or needy child may be. I can’t resist even when my head tells me that whoever it is, isn’t MY responsibility.
My heart responds because “Mama” is an unchangeable part of my identity.
I don’t cry every day. I don’t only see, feel or hear things through a veil of tears anymore. But bereavement has changed me forever. It remains part of the way I experience the world.
I appreciate Kathleen. I hate that we are part of the same “club” where the dues are higher than anyone would willingly pay but I love the precious community of loving parents who are willing to share their journeys through blogs, closed groups and published books.
And I am blessed by honesty, transparency and authenticity-whatever that looks like.
For me, that’s to continue writing about my grief journey. For someone else, maybe not.
There’s room for everyone because what calls courage to MY heart might not call courage to yours.
I suspect that just as our children are unique, the circumstances surrounding their deaths unique and we are unique, so will be our grief experience. 
Grief can be isolating.
It separates me as one who knows loss by experience from those who have only looked on from the outside.
It opens a chasm between me and people who aren’t aware that life can be changed in a single instant.
And I can feel like no one sees me, no one cares about me and no one notices my pain.
Sometimes it even feels like God has forgotten me-that He isn’t listening, that He doesn’t care.
Read the rest here: He Knows My Name
If, as a believer in Christ, I abide in Him and am filled with His limitless love, why do I portion it out in such a miserly fashion?
I often act as though it were MY personal treasure house and that to give love freely diminishes my supply.
What foolishness!
God’s love is eternal and bottomless and as a conduit of that love He invites me to lavish love on others without fear of running out.
What does God’s love look like. It has hands to help others, it has feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
~Augustine
Love is never wasted!
I want to love without limits and without fear, trusting God with my heart because He is the One Who fills it.
No days are easy when you are this side of child loss.
There is the constant burden of sorrow and pain bearing down on my heart and mind 24/7. Then there are the little (and not so little!) everyday bumps along the road of life.
But sometimes it’s not a bump, but a mountain that looms large. Or it may be a sinkhole that opens up and swallows days and weeks before you even realize how much time has passed since you last drew a calm breath.
These past weeks have been like that.
From the night my mother was lifeflighted to the hospital until today, we spent a week and a half in hospital plus these past few days at home trying to get her stable, better and transitioned to a new regimen that will hopefully keep her reasonably well.
While every medical professional gave great care, the majority of responsibility is falling on my dad and myself. And it’s a huge adjustment for everyone. No more in and out to the field on the tractor. No more quick trips into town-at 2 litres of oxygen per hour it will take one portable tank just for the round trip.
Doctor appointments need to be carefully scheduled and routed to minimize time away from home where there is an unlimited supply of oxygen.
I am learning that elder care is a huge challenge-one I thought I knew (in principle, though not by experience).
I was dreadfully wrong.
Just like child loss, until a single call or event takes your world from “I’m in control” to “I have lost all control”, it’s impossible to understand.
There is so much to keep track of, to manage, to watch for, and to do that I honestly feel like my head is about to pop off.
Add random phone calls, doctor appointments, home health visits and (oh yes!) Hurricane Irma-well, you get the picture.
So here’s to all my fellow sandwich generation peers.
And here’s a special shout-out to the ones whose broken hearts already limp along because they are missing a child they love and are now caring for ailing parents as well.
May we all reach out to the only One Who can strengthen us for this journey.
May we speak courage to one another.
May we extend grace to ourselves because no matter how hard we try to pretend otherwise, we are human.
I’ve probaby heard the question a half-dozen times in the past three weeks as doctors or nurses were checking my mom’s mental function during her hospital stay: What year is it?
And every single time-even though I know full well that it is 2017-the answer makes me suck in my breath. Because, really, how has the world kept turning since Dominic left us?
How, how, how can it be nearly three and a half years since I talked to him, hugged him, heard his voice?
But it is.
And the further we get from that point in time when the world as I knew it came crashing down, the harder it is for people around me to remember that I continue to carry this load.
I’ve gotten stronger. I’ve developed ways to work around the grief most days and in most situations.
Still, I find daily tasks more challenging than before. Sadness sneaks up on me and tears leak from my eyes. Anxiety stalks my heart and sometimes catches it.
I get tired-so, so tired-because there is just no reserve.
I wish I could press the “pause” button and give myself a little break.
But time (and life!) marches on.
We live in an angry society.
Social media is full of rants about this and that. Television blares raised voices shouting over one another in what passes for news coverage. T-shirts are emblazoned with one-liners intended to provoke others.
We tolerate and even embrace anger as a legitimate emotion.
Yet we rarely make room for mourning. We hide our tears. We shame those who don’t hide theirs as “weak” and “soft” and “cowardly” or worse.
But many times what we think is anger, is really sadness.
I’ve discovered that sometimes in this Valley of the Shadow of Death, deep sorrow masquerades as anger. And I’ve become sensitive to that truth in other people as well.
Sadness over loss of any kind can be spewed out as anger:
Sorrow over declining health.
Despair over lost opportunities with loved ones.
Heartache that life has not turned out the way one had hoped.
The problem with anger is that it pushes people away. It creates an impenetrable circle that isolates a heart just when it needs to be loved, cared for and comforted.
Very few are brave enough to battle through another’s angry front to find the sorrow hidden underneath.
So I challenge myself to be more authentic in expressing what I actually feel and not dig a moat around my heart by acting angry when I’m really devastated by grief.
Because I don’t want to push people away, I want them to come close.
I need them to take my hand and remind me that I’m not alone.
If you had asked me four years ago where I’d be and what I’d be doing in life, I can guarantee you that writing a blog and ministering to bereaved parents wouldn’t have been in the top 1000 answers I might have given.
But here I am.
Because it is where I have been sent.
Not where I would have gone-oh, no!-I would have taken a ship in the opposite direction like Jonah if God had given me a heads up. Instead I was whisked away on the waves of grief right out to sea.
Gasping for breath and trying to keep my head above water, I realized that what I had needed early on were two things: (1) assurance that what I was experiencing/feeling/thinking was normal; and (2) encouragement from others farther along in this journey that I could endure this awful pain.
So I stepped out in faith hoping that being authentic, transparent and sharing MY journey might help another heart desperate to know she wasn’t alone.
I decided that even if others misunderstood or took issue with or didn’t like what I wrote, I would not pull any punches.
It was going to be the good, the bad and the ugly.
No holds barred.
Emotional nakedness-even if it meant embarrassment.
And I pray every single time I hit “publish” that what I send into cyberspace is what at least one heart needs for THAT day.
It’s all I’ve got, and I’m giving it away.
thelifeididntchoose 