If you are worn and weary from surviving Thanksgiving, take a few days to recover.
December isn’t here yet.
Don’t let other peoples’ expectations push you farther or faster than your heart can bear.
It is perfectly acceptable to observe a pause between one holiday and the next.
I freely and publicly admit that until Dominic ran ahead to heaven I was just as likely as the next person to declare something “impossible” when it was really simply hard, distasteful or uncomfortable.
Because before Dominic was snatched away in an instant-irretrievably lost to me this side of eternity-I lacked perspective.
I didn’t realize that as long as someone is breathing, there is hope.
As long as there are choices, you can make them.
As long as people offer to help, you can let them.
What I am facing may seem insurmountable but if money, time and/or energy can make a difference, then no circumstance is truly impossible.
So I carry an absolute yardstick in my heart: death is the only utterly impossible situation.
Anything that falls short of that holds out hope.
I can choose to grab hold or choose to let go, but I have a choice.
It may be excruciating and hard and frustrating and foolhardy, but I can still hold on.
❤
They say that if you want to hide something so it’s never found, hide it in plain sight.
I think I’m living proof.
Because every single day I hide my wounded heart.
I walk right up to people and they never know. I conduct business, entertain family and friends, sing hymns in church and do daily tasks without a hint that something’s wrong-terribly, terribly wrong.
Am I stronger now than three years ago? Absolutely! I have developed muscles I didn’t know existed. I have a go-to method to stop tears, stop screams, stop tremors, stop panic attacks and swallow words that might otherwise slip out and give me away.
I can make small talk with the best of them. I’ve learned to redirect a conversation so that it cannot venture into territory that guarantees I won’t be able to keep it together.
I look for opportunities to serve at gatherings. Kitchen duty? First in line! It’s easy and perfectly acceptable to mutter one word replies when your hands are in the sink washing dishes.
I locate bathrooms and exits everywhere I go. Ducking into the ladies’ room or out the door for a minute or two is usually all I need to regather myself and reenter the fray.
All this hiding takes a toll. So much energy is needed to shield the world from the pain I carry.
I often find that after a holiday or extended period of social interaction I need a day (or a week!) to recover. And that’s OK.
I’m learning to say “no” to invitations or expectations or intimidation.
I’m learning I have to give myself time to regroup.
Because then I can reengage, recharged and ready to keep hiding my heart.
We are all on a journey through life and each carry some sort of load. Mine is child loss. Yours may be something else.
We can help one another if we try.
Love and grace grease the wheels and make the load lighter.
Here are ten ways to love a mourning heart at Thanksgiving:
1. Let them grieve. Give space and grace for any outward display of grief or emotion. It doesn’t require comment. Maybe an outstretched hand or a tissue or maybe not. Sometimes silence presence is best.
2. Begin conversation with statements that are true for you and then listen. I appreciate someone sharing their heart with me. It’s really OK to say, “Hey, I’ve wanted to reach out but I just didn’t know how.” I would rather hear that than excuses. ❤
3. Share a memory of their child or their pregnancy (if a child was born straight into heaven). Whenever I hear a story about Dominic I may not have heard before, it is a gift.
4. Speak their child’s name. It may make me cry. But I cry anyway. And if no one says his name I cry because I think they’ve forgotten.
5. Give them room to step away. Sometimes I’m overwhelmed and I just need a breath of fresh air or a moment to gather my strength. Don’t send the cavalry to “rescue” me and don’t make me feel bad by drawing attention to my absence when I return.
6. Find a way to commemorate their child in company with the living. Light a candle, place a photo, set an honorary place at the table, give a gift in his memory to a charity and display the card-there are many ways to make him part of the holidays.
7. Allow them to participate/ not participate as they are able. This will be our fourth set of holidays and I still don’t have a routine that feels “right”. I do enjoy and even crave cooking meals so I appreciate being asked to do that. Some other things are still hard so I appreciate not being forced to do those.
8. Don’t use this once or twice a year gathering to require an extended debrief of how they are feeling/coping/doing. Invite me to share and then respect the boundaries I establish in my sharing. It depends on the day whether I’m going to give you a brief response or a long one. Let me lead the dance.
9. Try not to make assumptions about what is best for their heart. Ask questions instead of making pronouncements. Like I said, I still don’t have any traditions that feel right after nearly four years. I need space to think about and make choices about what may work for THIS Thanksgiving.
10. Remember that all holidays are hard. When the whole family gathers, it highlights even more that my son is missing. Other times it’s easier to play a mental game with myself and pretend he’s just off somewhere. But when the chairs are drawn around the table and his is empty, there’s no denying that he is gone, gone, gone. Lots and lots of grace makes it easier for my heart.
How much energy do we spend dancing around the truth? How many times do we gather with family or friends and cast our eyes downward so we can ignore the elephant in the room? How many shackles would fall away if just one person stood up and said what everyone else was thinking but was afraid to whisper aloud?
As family gathers around the table for Thanksgiving, we all have those subjects no one will touch. And often they are the very ones that need to be laid bare, talked about and shared. They are what keep hearts apart even while bodies sit closer than any other time of year.
Now I’m no advocate of random outbursts intended to shock and raise a ruckus but I am a firm believer in speaking truth in love.
It’s hard.
In fact, next to carrying this burden of missing, it is the hardest thing I do.
And I am often unsuccessful.
I screw up my courage, practice my speech, lay out the strategy and then crumble, last minute, under dozens of potentially awful outcomes.
What if they get mad? What if they think I’m crazy, or selfish, or wrong?
Or I DO share and it falls flat because the words I thought would communicate love are misunderstood or misdirected or misapplied.
So instead of helping, I hurt.
But the alternative is this: we all remain imprisoned behind a wall where freedom is clearly visible on the other side. We can smell it, almost taste it but not quite touch it.
And that is not how I want to live.
I want to claim the freedom that truth offers.
So this Thanksgiving I will try again: truth in love.
Lots and lots of love with truth sprinkled in. Maybe the sugar in the pie will help.
I’ll never know if I don’t give it a shot.
Gratitude does not undo grief.
There, I said it.
Gratitude is important. It is (in my opinion) a necessary ingredient for a healthy and hope-filled and useful life. It is the key to any real happiness a heart might find on this broken road.
But it cannot fill up the empty place where Dominic used to be.
Grief does not preclude gratitude.
Although some broken hearts swear it does. They have convinced themselves that if they cannot have the one thing they really want, then nothing else matters.
That’s a lie as well.
Grief is hard. I am grieved because I no longer have the earthly companionship of one of my children. But I refuse to dishonor Dominic’s memory and the life he lived by holding onto grief so hard that I squeeze out the love and life that is still available.
I am grateful AND grief-filled.
I appreciate what I have:
I acknowledge what I have lost:
These things are not mutually exclusive.
Dark and light add contrast. You need both to see the whole picture.
If you are struggling and believing either of the lies-that gratitude undoes grief OR that grief precludes gratitude-may I ask you to try something?
Make a list of BOTH.
Give your heart permission to appreciate what you have AND acknowledge what you’ve lost.
I truly believe that is the healing path.
❤
How many reading this enjoy roller coasters? Or scary movies? Or action films?
My guess is that most like one or the other or all three.
Why? Because it’s fun to dip our emotional toe into deep water when we know we can take it out at any moment.
We experience a sort of “high” when the “fight or flight” adrenaline pumps through our veins but our minds know full well that we are in no real danger.
What’s much more difficult is to commit to experience in real time with real people the real emotional roller coaster of hard situations and unending sorrow or pain.
Then people tend to withdraw because they are too scared to stay.
I am so sorry that broken hearts are wounded further when friends or family just can’t bear the pain of watching us hurt and run away instead of walking with us.
They are afraid. I used to be afraid too. But I’m not afraid now.
My new bravery was purchased at great cost. And I don’t want to waste it.
This Valley is teaching my heart to reach out further, quicker, more often and to stick around longer than I was willing to before.
I want to stand with and speak courage to wounded hearts.
I want to help healed hearts that choose to be brave and commit to walk with those in pain.
And I am learning to extend grace to the hearts who choose to run away.
Fear is powerful and I can’t blame them.
But for those who remain, I am so, so grateful.
I have had my share of pain in life-physical, emotional and psychological.
Some of it I’ve brought on myself and some of it has been thrust upon me.
None of it was pleasant.
But by far the most excruciating pain I have endured is the death of my son. If someone could have induced this pain for five minutes as a preview before Dominic ran ahead to heaven, I would have sworn I couldn’t have withstood it for five minutes more.
Yet here I am not just minutes or months but years later. Still standing.
How? By the grace of God and by choosing to transform that pain into something besides just pain.
I cannot ignore the pain. It has changed me. But I won’t let it dominate me.
Instead I let is goad me into being a better me than I might have been if my heart were whole and unbroken.
I am gentler, more eager to listen to hurting hearts.
I am less likely to judge others and more likely to lend a helping hand. I am committed to walk gently through this life and to cause as little harm as possible and bring as much joy as is mine to give.
I definitely walk with a limp.
But I won’t let it stop me from walking.
❤
In the South we have our ways. Our ways of marginalizing folks who don’t quite fit in with who we think they should be or how we expect them to act.
Mostly we use code words. Words that seem innocent enough to the uninitiated but pack a punch if you have inside information and know what they really mean.
Any sentence that begins, “Bless her heart….” will almost surely end with a tidbit of gossip that undermines a reputation.
Sometimes we switch it up (especially in church) with “I think we need to pray for…”. Because we all know asking for prayer is holy, even if the situation isn’t and the person mentioned would just as soon her business stay private.
Social media has its own code words too.
Vague references to someone or something we don’t like or agree with usually begin with, “Ugh! I just don’t understand why….” followed by a litany of thinly veiled complaints.
But sometimes the code isn’t very complicated and it’s really easy for others to figure out precisely who or what you are talking about.
And it damages reputations and hurts feelings and you may sit back in your chair, tablet or laptop in hand, thinking, “Not my problem. I didn’t say WHO it was”.
But it IS your problem.
Even when you cloak your complaint or comment in biblical references or godly quotes, bottom line is you are accusing or mocking or undermining someone else.
My daughter calls it “Jesus juking”-tacking on a Bible verse before or after a remark in an attempt to shut down discussion or rebuttal.
Because if someone tries to disagree with YOU, it’s set up to make them look like they are disagreeing with Scripture or God Himself.
I don’t like these games people play. I don’t like code words. I don’t like tactics intended to make others feel small so I can feel larger.
Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. Sometimes social media forces my hand and I have to speak publicly on what I would rather discuss privately.
But that’s rare.
If I have a problem with someone, I try to take it directly to THEM.
And I hope they will do the same with me. ❤
What you tell yourself matters.
What you rehearse becomes what you believe.
What you believe becomes what you do.
When Dominic first ran ahead to Heaven, I was determined to hold onto truth with both hands. I would not allow my mind to wander the winding path of “Why?“ or “What if?” or “Where now?”
I was able to keep that up until the funeral.
Then the bottom fell out.
All the thoughts I had kept at bay crashed through my defenses like an invading army. My mind was consumed by questions, doubts, horrible imagery and awful anxiety.
Slowly, slowly I recaptured the conquered territory.
I hung scribbled Bible verses and encouraging quotes all around the house. I refused to read or listen to news stories recounting accidents. I began the day with remembering Dom was gone, but also remembering I was still here and that my three living children, husband and parents needed me.
When my heart screamed, “Give up! Give in! It’s not worth it!”
My head answered, “No. I will endure. I will continue. I will be the one to carry Dominic’s light into the world.”
If I speak doom, gloom and despair to myself then I will live darkness, defeat and disillusionment.
If I speak courage, calm and compassion to my heart then I will live with hope and reach for happiness.
Self-talk matters more than we know.
How I frame my experience-both my son’s death and my ongoing interaction with the living-determines if I will waste the days that remain or will work to make them count.
I have no control over the past, but I have a little over the future.
I can’t change what happened, but I can change my attitude.
thelifeididntchoose 