Clearly marked boundaries, categories and rules make things easier.
But life rarely fits in the tidy boxes I like to create.
And when it doesn’t I’m tempted to ignore the parts that don’t fit-tempted to pretend they don’t exist-so I can maintain the world I’ve created for myself. I would rather march on in ignorance than drag out my underlying assumptions to figure out if they are true or false.
That takes a lot of work.
Read the rest here: What if My Testimony is Endurance?
I’m a stickler for accurate theology.
While that might make for interesting and lively debate with fellow believers, force of habit limits my imagination when it comes to what I believe with certainty about Heaven.
So on the other side of sending my child ahead of me to live with Jesus, I find I wish I were more free to make up scenes of what he might be doing there. But I cannot, no matter how hard I try, create a movie-style narrative that includes him and the saints that have gone before.
And that leaves a gaping hole in addition to the unfillable abyss in my heart of where Dominic used to be.
I also do not believe my son sends me signs from heaven. I wrote about that here a few months ago. Although I do believe that God Himself can and does use the natural world to encourage my heart and give me hope.
And approaching the third anniversary of Dominic’s leaving, I need a little encouragement to hope.
So a few weeks ago I did something for myself that I probably should have done long before. I bought six beautiful sets of windchimes-different lengths, different tones-and hung them all around my house under the porch eaves where even the slightest breeze sets them swaying.
They help me remember what Jesus told Nicodemus, “The wind blows all around us as if it has a will of its own; we feel and hear it, but we do not understand where it has come from or where it will end up. Life in the Spirit is as if it were the wind of God.” ( John 3:8 VOICE)
They help me remember that God drew Dominic to Himself by His Spirit when he was a little boy in ways I can’t see or fully understand.
They help me remember that God was present and working on the day He called him Home.
They help me remember that God is working right now to hold my heart steady and help me rest firmly on His promise that we will be together one day for eternity.
God has not abandoned me.
Every tinkling sings hope to my heart.
It’s easy to justify bad behavior when I am hurting.
As the saying goes, “Hurt people, hurt people”.
But if I know Jesus, I don’t get a pass. I don’t get to act ugly or pretend I don’t know better or have His Spirit to help me BE better.
Sometimes I AM ugly. Sometimes I do act badly. I am ashamed that even though I am fully aware of my own desperate need for grace and mercy I sometimes withhold it from others.
I’m also ashamed that I can be judgmental and hateful and short-tempered and short-sighted. I can exclude others and run out of patience and choose to turn away when I should be tuning in.
And I’m really, really sorry.
I’m trying to lean more fully on the grace available to me through God’s Holy Spirit. I am trying to pause so that the first thing that springs to mind doesn’t always fly out of my mouth. I am learning to wait before returning phone calls, emails and text messages.
I try to take a walk when my heart is twisted ugly so that the ugly doesn’t spill out onto others and ruin THEIR day.
I don’t get to lay aside the calling to love because I’ve laid a child to rest.
I’m working hard to remember that.
Today is full of tears.
No real reason-other than the obvious one-but so many things coming together to remind me this life is hard, hard, hard.
I find on this side of burying Dominic that when two or three other stressful events pile one atop the other I crumble. Sometimes it’s other family members doing the best they can to muddle through and sometimes it’s physical pain or disappointment or the random “ya-ya” stuff of life in community with other people Whatever it is, the weight-in addition to grief-just absolutely overwhelms me.
I used to be stronger.
Or at least I thought I was stronger. But maybe the truth was the burden I was carrying wasn’t nearly as heavy as I thought it was and I just didn’t have anything to compare it to.
Now I do.
And I am oh, so weary! I want to curl up in a ball and wish for it all to be over. I want to hide in a hole and hope the world passes me by. I want to wait out my years unnoticed and unchallenged and pass peacefully to eternal rest and the joyful fullness of what has been promised.
Not an option.
So I hang in and hold on. I cling to hope and I climb the mountain. I crawl when I can’t walk. I beg for mercy when my mind grows dark and all I see is the long years stretching before me like a prison sentence.
And I cry.
I let the tears roll down my cheeks and fall into the corners of my mouth. I taste their salty sweetness and let them remind me that Dominic matters. That even when other folks have forgotten and moved on, he’s still part of my every day. My heart is still in pieces. My family circle has been torn apart.
Some days I can push it down and forget a little. But today I can’t.
It’s just plain hard.
In centuries past it was common for Christ followers to fast.
They fasted for many reasons: to consecrate themselves for a task; to seek answers to prayer; observance of seasons on the church calendar; or for strength to overcome besetting sin.
Today, fasting has fallen out of favor in most western churches-deemed unnecessary or an attempt to gain favor with God by “works”.
That’s unfortunate.
Because fasting has never been about making points with God, it’s been about removing self-reliance from our spiritual vocabulary.
It’s not about demonstrating personal fortitude or displaying self-righteousness, it’s about recognizing my weakness and desperate dependence on Christ.
Perhaps the greatest hindrance to our work is our own imagined strength; and in fasting we learn what poor, weak creatures we are – dependent on a meal of meat for the little strength which we are so apt to lean upon.
~Hudson Taylor
Like the Pharisees, though, I am apt to make much of my “sacrifice” and little of Christ’s sufficiency. I want to bargain with God and rise in the ranks of His favor because I’m so “good”.
It doesn’t work like that.
I was almost to the end of a 40 day fast when Dominic was killed.
I am physically unable to fast 40 days consecutively so, for several years, I had done an every-other-day fast so that it equaled 40 days.
At some point in the first week after Dom ran ahead to heaven I remember crying out to God, “What exactly do You want from me??? I’ve done all that I know to do in an attempt to live up to Your expectations, and yet it is never enough!”
And (not then, certainly!) but at some point in the nearly 3 years since, He answered, “Your righteous acts are as filthy rags. The only sufficient sacrifice is My own Son’s blood.”
THAT was humbling.
Because even though I would have given the same answer to anyone else who thought they could “work” their way into God’s good graces, obviously the truth of it had not seeped into the fabric of my being.
I WAS trying to make points with God. And I was angry He hadn’t taken that into consideration and spared me the pain of burying my son.
We often mock the Pharisees for thinking that “getting it right” means “being righteous”, but I understand the temptation to substitute acts of righteousness for relying on relationship through Jesus Christ.
The one means I am in control, the other means I have to follow and give up control.
If there is one thing I’ve learned through child loss that I cannot forget for even a millisecond is: I am NOT in control.
I am utterly dependent on Him for life, for breath, for saving AND sustaining grace.
For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing.
Ephesians 2:8-9 VOICE
Fasting from food is relatively easy. Fasting from my tendency toward self-righteousness is much harder.
This year, as I observe Lent,
as I fast,
as I add in holy habits,
I am asking God to help me remember that I am not trying to win His favor,
I am making room to hear His heart.
Oh, how my heart hurts!
Deep down where no one can touch it-it aches for my missing child, the family I used to have, the lost opportunities, the missed moments.
And there is no cure.
Yes, there is a Balm in Gilead-there is hope in the Person of Jesus Christ.
And it soothes the pain, takes the edge off, makes it bearable.
But it does not take it away.
I’m sorry if that tosses grit in the works of your theology. I’m sorry if that makes you a little afraid that if this happened to you, the pain might last a lifetime.
I wish some of the books I’d read, the movies I’d seen, the sermons I’d heard had dealt more honestly and openly with the topic of loss, grief, heartache and unchangeable circumstance. Most of them minimized the crisis and moved straightaway to the victorious ending. That’s a convenience and device unavailable to us who are living with the reality day to day.
I can’t turn a page and get to the finale.
I can’t wrap up my experience in three points and a tidy tag line.
So as the ache began to settle in, I questioned my faith. I questioned my relationship with Jesus. I questioned my sanity and my strength and my sadness.
What was wrong with me????
Why can others move through and move on????
And then I reexamined the published stories and realized that the arc presented as going from devastation to declaration of God’s goodness was very selective.
If I wanted to, I could craft my narrative the same way.
I am definitely better than I was. Definitely more confident of God’s working in this Valley than I was. Definitely more convinced that God will redeem and restore than when I first faced the fact my son was dead.
But it is still a battle.
It is still a choice that I have to make every day. It is still something I hold onto IN SPITE of my hurting heart. My hope has not replaced the pain. It lives alongside it and sometimes overshadows it-but the pain is still there.
I can not pretend that “all is well” any more than I can claim I understand when Paul writes I am “seated in the heavenlies with Jesus”.
God sees it all in the “right now”.
I am trapped in time.
Yes, these things are true. But I do not experience them as true right now.
So in the meantime, I wait to see with my eyes what has been promised to my heart. And the distance between now and then leaves a gaping wound that hurts.
It’s simply the truth.
Remember the childhood riddle, “Which is heavier, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?”
It was great fun to catch someone giving the wrong answer.
Because, of course, a ton is a ton is a ton. Weight is an absolute measure.
But it takes fewer bricks to reach that quota although it takes just as much strength to lift the burden.
One thing I’m learning in my grief journey is that there are so many people carrying a load.
I find my compassion radar has been fine-tuned to hear even the faintest whisper of hurt in someone’s voice, to see the tiniest gleam of a tear, to notice the smallest stoop of shoulders or the beginning of a frown.
And while some of us have had our ton of pain and sorrow delivered via bricks-suddenly, forcefully and overwhelmingly dumped-others have acquired their ton over a lifetime of disappointment, struggle and testing.
They both weigh a ton.
And they both require great strength to carry.
It’s a challenge to resist the urge to rank my experience on a continuum of pain.
Although I bridle when people compare their loss of a pet or job to my loss of a child (as I wrote about here), I do try to extend grace when others expose their own wounds.
I want to comfort other people with the comfort I have received. Not only the comfort from Christ-which is the ultimate comfort-but also the comfort I’ve received from wise friends and caring sisters-in-loss.
I want to be a listening ear, a compassionate heart and an outstretched hand.
I want to be a witness, a fellow traveler on the journey, an encourager.
Grief
is grief
is grief.
A ton is a ton is a ton.
So many things raced through my mind in the first five minutes of hearing the news:
Oh, God! Is it true? (I have to authenticate his identity);
How do I tell everyone? (I have to make phone calls);
What do you do when your child dies? (I have no idea how to plan a funeral);
and on
and on
and on.
Of course, that doesn’t touch the FEELINGS flooding my heart.
I don’t really have words for that, even now.
But as the days of crazy activity and people everywhere gave way to the weeks and months of silent sorrow, all I wanted to do was to give up and give in.
What was the point of carrying on if it meant carrying this weight of sadness until I was also in the grave?
At first, my motivation was to help my husband and children through these crisis moments. My training gave me tools to give them words and ways to frame the pain. Hours of home “therapy” drained me but also gave me a sense of purpose and direction.
It was a couple of months into this journey when I faced my first test: I suffer from a gastrointestinal condition that predisposes me to catastrophic GI bleeds. Combined with the medications I take for RA, I woke one morning to find I was losing large amounts of blood.
It was nearly welcome news.
As weakness overtook my body, I could feel the lure of simply drifting away into eternity. I was tempted to lie down on the bed and allow my heart rate to decrease, my blood pressure to dive and my soul to break free from this body of death.
But I didn’t-because I could not knowingly add to my family’s heartache.
No one was home so I drove myself to the emergency room and was admitted to the ICU. Several days and units of blood later I came home, restored to life but not unburdened of grief.
And so it goes. Each day brings its own temptations.
I will be honest: I am still motivated more strongly by love of my family than a sense of mission or purpose this side of burying Dominic.
Perhaps that is sin. I don’t know.
But for right now, that’s enough.
Every day, even almost three years later, I wake up and must choose to go on.
I’m not suicidal!
I’m willing to stick around. But I am no longer afraid to die.
I can say, like Paul, “To live is Christ, to die is gain”.
One of the hardest parts of blogging for me is that I am committed to authenticity. As best as I am able, I try to be honest and transparent.
This entry was tricky.
I never, ever want to minimize ANYONE’S pain-in my mind there is no hierachy of misery. But I also want to let those outside the child loss community see how much it hurts to have our loss compared by others to their very different losses. We would much rather you simply take our hand or hug us or sit silently with us on the mourning bench.
So, here it is. I hope you receive it in the spirit in which it is intended.
It is just so hard to accept that remaining silent is often better than saying the wrong thing.
It seems like every quiet space MUST be filled with chatter-especially in our overstimulated world of screens and noise boxes.
But, I promise-if you and I are speaking, and I choose to expose my heart-I would rather you take my hand or hug my neck and say nothing than tell me, “I understand exactly how you feel.”
Unless, of course, you do.
If you have buried a child, then please, please, please tell me that! We will cry together.
But there is no comparison between losing an aged aunt, full of years, and losing a child, full of promise.
There is no comparison between losing a job, a house or a dream-any of which have the potential for restoration in this life– and losing a child–whom I will not see until I reach heaven.
There is no comparison between losing a pet and losing my son.
It’s the difference between being hungry because you skipped lunch and starving to death because you don’t have access to food or water.
One is uncomfortable and the other is excruciating.
So, while I deeply appreciate your desire to empathize with me, please don’t try to stretch your limited experience with loss to include my own.
It hurts my heart and minimizes my pain.
There’s just no comparison.
I talk about Dominic “running ahead” but it feels like I‘m leaving him behind.
I know he’s the first to Heaven and I know I’ll join him, but my daily experience is that I am the one moving forward and he is the one stuck somewhere, unable to catch up.
I absolutely HATE that his footprint on my life grows smaller with each passing day, each new memory made without him, each event at which his smiling face makes no entrance.
I can’t stop the accumulation of bits and pieces that make it harder to spot his unique contribution to the collage of my life.
I am in no danger of forgetting him.
That’s not what I fear.
But bringing what he still is to me into a conversation, into view for others to see and appreciate is getting more difficult.
When I mention him, people don’t know whether to be sad or happy, question my sanity or rush past hoping I’ll change the subject.
There’s just no natural seque between the living and the dead.
And it hurts my heart to watch the gap grow wider.
thelifeididntchoose 