As I continue to walk this Valley, my heart asks the question, “What does healing look like?”
Fewer tears? Check.
More laughter? Check.
Better able to function? Check.
Read the rest here: What Does Healing Look Like?
Tag: heart
Something To Sing About
If you live in the city or a heavily-developed neighborhood you may only see a few birds. But out here in the country, with plenty of cover and a variety of bugs, trees and weeds, there are dozens of species living within earshot of my house.
And I love, love, love hearing their songs.
Sometimes it’s the keening wail of a hawk flying high and searching for something to eat. Sometimes it’s an owl calling to its mate or warning off another suitor. Often it’s the chitter-chatter of wrens or robins or cardinals as they go about their daily business and fuss over patches of ground finding food.
The blue-jays chase the squirrels.
Mockingbirds dive-bomb crows.
Each one doing what it was created to do, not worrying about a thing.
A veritable chorus fills the air.
And at night I get a lovely bonus-a whippoorwill’s voice drifts toward my window through the dark reminding me that not everyone is ready to fall asleep.
All these songs make my heart sing too.
They lift my spirit and fill me with hope.
They remind me that I have also been given a song though I often forget it.
Yet in the light of day, the Eternal shows me His love.
When night settles in and all is dark, He keeps me company—
His soothing song, a prayerful melody to the True God of my life.Psalm 42:8 VOICE
But when I choose to remember and sing, it calls courage to my heart.
Exposed
When you pass that accident on the side of the road or read about the mass shooting in the press, what do you think?
What do you say?
Do you breathe a sigh of relief that no one you loved or knew was part of such a tragic disaster? Do you feel chosen, special, “above it all” because you follow Jesus? Do you think that your faithful, Bible-focused life and worldview will protect you from random accidents or the sinful actions of others?
Do you say, “Thank You God, it wasn’t me (or mine)?” Do you pray for the ones caught up in the death and destruction? Pray that they knew Jesus? Pray that their families will be able to bear the weight of grief and sorrow that is just this moment bearing down on them?
Or do you snap a photo with your phone and post on social media something like: “Awful wreck on the interstate. So glad I was a little late this morning or it might have been me! God is good!”
Or worse: “Awful wreck on the interstate. Traffic backed up for miles. UGH!“
I walk in two worlds–one where I am so very thankful for each life and family spared what I now know by experience, and one where I am brought to tears every time they aren’t.
I wish believers in Christ would choose words that are consistent with compassion-whether the person is spared or not.
Jesus is a man of tears.
He was moved by love and compassion in every human encounter (even with the Pharisees-He wished their eyes were opened).
I want my heart and my words to reflect that I know this Saviour full of love and mercy.
Spared or not, it’s no doing of mine.
To say otherwise reflects only arrogance and ignorance.
Just a moment, now, you who say, “We are going to such-and-such a city today or tomorrow. We shall stay there a year doing business and make a profit”! How do you know what will happen even tomorrow? What, after all, is your life? It is like a puff of smoke visible for a little while and then dissolving into thin air. Your remarks should be prefaced with, “If it is the Lord’s will, we shall be alive and will do so-and-so.” As it is, you get a certain pride in yourself in planning your future with such confidence. That sort of pride is all wrong. No doubt you agree with the above in theory. Well, remember that if a man knows what is right and fails to do it, his failure is a real sin.
James 4:14-17 PHILLIPS
Prayer Requests and a Pounding Heart
It’s what we do when we get together at church-in Sunday School or Wednesday night Prayer Meeting-we take prayer requests.
It’s what we should do.
We are commanded to pray for one another.
I listen attentively, take notes, try to get the names spelled correctly-I’m the one who types the list for the weekly bulletin so I want to get it right.
Until...someone shares a request that sends my mind down a winding path of memory. My heart begins to beat the rapid tap-tap-tap warning of mounting anxiety. Death has come to another family’s door or is stalking them around the corner.
Some parent will stand by the casket of the child they bore and wonder how in the world they outlived their offspring.
And while I try to pray faithfully for all the requests shared, this one lodges in my throat and will not be ignored.
My heart is broken as theirs breaks. I know only God can hold it together.
I breathe a prayer in: “God grant them strength, grant them mercy, grant them grace.”
I breathe a prayer out: “Jesus, Shepherd, carry them in Your arms. Don’t let their faith fail.”
Repost: A Letter to My Living Children
I miss Dominic. I will always miss him. Our table will never be full no matter how many others come to sit round its edges.
BUT-I will not rob my living children of my heart because part of it lives in Heaven.
I wrote this for the three children that still walk the earth with me.
You made me a mother, along with Dominic, and I celebrate each one of you as a gift from God.
Read the rest here: A Letter To My Living Children*
International Bereaved Mother’s Day
International Bereaved Mother’s Day is observed the Sunday before Mother’s Day in the United States. This year it’s Sunday, [May 4, 2025].
I didn’t even know such a day existed until I was a mom that needed it.
For those of us who have children in heaven, setting aside a day to acknowledge that unique mother/child relationship is helpful.
Traditional Mother’s Day is meant to be a time of celebration. A day when children send cards or flowers or give gifts to honor their mom and let her know that years spent pouring into their lives are appreciated.
Lots of church pews and restaurant tables are filled with family as children come home to be with mom.
But Dominic can’t come home.
That makes Mother’s Day complicated for me.
It means that while I am thrilled to spend it with the children who can make it home, there is always a tinge of sadness to the celebration. And I hate that. Because they deserve a whole-hearted mama.
So I’m thankful this other day exists. Thankful for a day when I can think about and speak about and embrace the child that won’t be with me next weekend.
Because Dominic is STILL my son. He is still very much a part of my heart. And I need to be able to speak that aloud for others to hear.
Some mamas will be drawing or painting hearts on their hands and writing their missing child’s name inside as a beautiful outward testimony to an inward reality. Every day we carry our missing child in our hearts.
So if you know a bereaved mama, give her a hug Sunday.
Make time and give space for her to share.
And then listen, love and lift her up.
Resisting Fear, Embracing Love
In my grief and sorrow it is tempting to dig a moat, draw up the bridge to my heart and wait out life like I am under siege.
But that would be wasting this pain and I won’t do that.
I won’t dishonor Dominic and dishonor Jesus by refusing to love.
Just a few days after Dominic ran ahead to heaven, my youngest son wrote this:
“If you are surrounded by life you will be surrounded by death, if you feel love you will also feel pain. But never let the fear of death or pain rob you of the joy of LIFE and LOVE.”
Fear is a thief.
It sneaks in and can rule my heart before I even know it.
I will not bar the door to love, but I will barricade it against fear.
I refuse to let fear win.
Repost: Making Space for the Broken at the Table of the LORD
These days are especially difficult for me because Palm Sunday and Easter are markers on the road to remembering the worst days of my life. Dominic left us the Saturday before Palm Sunday and was buried the Monday after Resurrection Sunday.
I hate death.
We shouldn’t rush past it’s awfulness. If we do, we miss the glory of the finished work of Christ.
As we enter the week on the Christian calendar when most churches celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am reminded that often we race past the road that lead to Calvary and linger at the empty tomb.
But to understand the beauty of forgiveness and the blessing of redemption, we MUST acknowledge the sorrow of sin and the burden of brokenness.
Read the rest here: Making Space for Brokenness at the Table of the LORD
Healing? Curing? Same Thing?
Healing and curing are not the same thing.
Healing is a process that takes as long as it takes and may never be complete this side of eternity. It’s a folding in of the hard parts of my story, an acknowledgement of the way I am changed because of the wounds I’ve received. It involves scar tissue and sore spots and ongoing pain.
To be cured is to be free of the effects of disease or injury.
And there is no cure for child loss.
I will never be free of the effects of burying a child this side of Heaven.
I did not understand the difference until it was my heart bearing an incurable wound.
The thing about healing, as opposed to curing, is that it is relational. It takes time. It is inefficient, like a meandering river. Rarely does healing follow a straight or well-lit path. Rarely does it conform to our expectations or resolve in a timely manner. Walking with someone through grief or through the process of reconciliation requires patience, presence, and a willingness to wander, to take the scenic route.
~Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday
It really IS all about relationship.
Relationship first with the Living God through His Son, Jesus.
The ongoing life-giving ministry of His Spirit calls courage to me as I travel this Valley and sings hope to my heart when I cannot hear anything else.
He will not leave me in my distress.
He does not abandon me in my darkest hour.
But it is also about relationship with others.
Relationship with those willing to meander with me along this unlit and winding path. They are the ones who give me courage to carry on. They are the ones who lift me up when I am unable to lift myself and who lie down with me when even their best pep talk is not enough to get me off the floor.
They have listened to me tell and retell my story.
The first time I told it, I didn’t have a clue what to say or how to say it-what to leave in, what to leave out. How do you condense a life-sized earthquake to a novel, much less a few sentences?
But I find as I practice telling my story, it is healing.
Sometimes it’s as if I speak without my mind being engaged and listening, I have an “aha” moment-suddenly recognizing a new insight and another place that needs work or has received healing.
I’ve learned that there is no substitute for companionship on this journey.
My healing depends on the faithful Presence of my Shepherd
AND
the faithful presence of friends who refuse to leave even when it seems we are lost in the wilderness of grief together,
Yes, I AM a Cat Lady
I confess: I AM a cat lady.
Not the one with the dozens living in the house and stinking up the place but the one who relies on her furry pal to get her through hard days.
I raised Roosevelt from the day he was born.
His mom was a sickly outdoor cat that had never made it through a successful pregnancy and was not a candidate for being spayed because she wouldn’t have survived the anesthesia.
So the day I heard a tiny “mew” outside my window I hardly expected the sight I beheld. Here was mama kitty utterly amazed that she had birthed a baby, walking off the edge of the porch with a tiny black something still attached by the umbilical cord.
She could have cared less.
I grabbed scissors and a towel and rescued the little darling without much hope of his surviving.
But he did.
That was seven hospitalizations, two surgeries and one giant heartache ago.
He has become my comfort companion, my purring pal, the one who knows before I do that my RA is flaring, my heart breaking.
I am thankful for this oasis of comfort in a desert of hurt.
I am thankful that the God Who made me also made animals to bring healing in the midst of heartache. Oh, so thankful for a husband that puts up with my crazy “save everything that breathes” personality and doesn’t mind if a cat sneaks up the side of the bed in the middle of the night to get cozy in the covers..
When Dominic died, I remember sitting in my chair as the parade of sweet friends and family came over to cry with us. Roosevelt sat with me the entire time. His warm body reminded me that I was still here even when my limbs seemed to float away into the ether and my mind wasn’t entirely certain that what I saw or heard was real.
I have learned to count my blessings.
And while the majority of them walk on two legs, at least one has four.
thelifeididntchoose 