See, here’s the thing: to the outside world, my son’s death happened at a single point in time.
But to me, his death is a continuous event.
I must lift the cup of sorrow every day to parched lips. I must choose to take it to the One Who can help me lift it.
Jesus knows this cup.
He knows my pain: My Cup Overflows
When I had a child, suddenly I cared about everything. When I lost a child, suddenly I cared about nothing.
~ a bereaved mother
When I read this comment, I thought about it for a moment to see if it was true for me.
And I realized that, yes, it WAS true at the very beginning.
Mind-numbing pain and soul-crushing agony pressed down so heavily that I couldn’t care about anything other than reminding myself to
In.
Out.
Repeat.
A bit over twenty-eight months have passed and my body, mind and spirit are stronger.
The pain is still great, but I am better able to bear it now.
My heart is bigger because I suffer and it is softer toward those who also suffer.
Trials make great room for consolation. There is nothing that makes man have a big heart like a great trial. I have found that those people who have no sympathy for their fellows, who never weep for the sorrows of others very seldom have any of their own. Great hearts could be made only by great troubles.
Charles Spurgeon
Now I care much more deeply about a few, select “things”.
The ones I can take with me into eternity:
People
And love
And grace
Forever in heaven with Jesus.
One of the “fun” events this summer to happen in my neck of the woods is a set of long overdue road projects.
I’m not sure where the funding came from but my rural county suddenly decided that several roads, including the one leading to my house, would no longer suffer from insufficient patches that wore out in a week and would instead get the full treatment-totally repaved, new stripes and new guardrails.
I admit, it was a bit inconvenient.
Especially when for an entire week I could no longer travel the most direct and timely path toward the closest town because the road was closed.
And, more than once I was stuck behind that “pilot truck” crawling along a mile or so until freed from the restraint and allowed to go on my merry way. Once I was even stuck in my own driveway, unsure of whether or not I could even leave the property due to large and loud machinery blocking my path.
BUT, it was temporary.
It was only going to last so long. These efforts would culminate in a smoother, more enjoyable and accessible way to get from “here” to “there”.
It was not going to last FOREVER.
I learned a few things from those weeks of waiting.
One thing I learned was that I still think (in spite of burying a child) I have some control.
And when that sense of control is threatened, I resent it.
I rarely have to go anywhere that can’t be rescheduled. But when I was sitting at the end of my driveway, trying to figure out if I could even drive out onto the road, I was frustrated. Actually, I was downright angry that these folks were blocking my way.
Silly, I know. But revealing.
Another thing I learned was that I could more easily endure inconvenience or delay when I chose to focus on the eventual outcome instead of my current irritation.
If I looked at the clock on my dash and counted up the minutes I spent waiting, I was indignant that my agenda was delayed. But if I could turn my thoughts to how pleasant it would be for years when they finished this project, the minutes flew by much faster-it didn’t seem like much of a sacrifice.
Some of my waiting was done beside the cemetery where Dominic’s earthly shell is buried.
And it made me think again of how very brief life is-not only his-which was shorter than most-but even my own-should I live the threescore and ten David wrote about in Psalms.
No matter how much I have to endure in this life, it is but a moment compared to an infinite and unending eternity with Jesus and my son.
Eternal perspective is hard to hold onto. Especially when missing Dominic is so much harder than rearranging my schedule or waiting behind a dump truck for my turn to pass down the road.
But the principle stands: when I focus my heart and mind and soul’s eyes on forever, even this awful pain of burying my child is a little easier to bear.
If I can lift my head-or let Jesus do it for me-I can cast my gaze to the horizon of His promise.
The troubles of this life are temporary.
But the joy of Heaven is eternal.
So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 MSG
I wake and you are still gone.
The cats tap-tap-tapping on my arms and face declare the day has begun despite the dark and I need to climb out of bed.
Why?
What difference does it make?
I trudge downstairs, put the coffee on, feed the cats and settle into my chair to read and write.
Habits.
Routine carries me through the day. There are things that need to be done.
The sun still rises-must be soon now because I hear the rooster’s escalating declaration that he, at least, can see the light.
One cat settles into my lap adding weight and warmth to the morning. I remember when I held you and your brothers and sister. I never tired of that sweet bundle bearing down on my heart.
I would do anything to feel it again.
But that can’t be. And I won’t hold your children either.
All of you was taken away.
Every last molecule, every last gene.
Nothing left but flat photos and memories that are increasingly difficult to piece together in rich detail.
The vital essence that sent shock waves through a room, the loud laugh, the snarky comments, the deep, deep voice that made you sound so serious-all gone.
Heaven is a real place and I know you are there.
But I want you here.
I can’t help it.
All the theological arguments don’t fill the hole in my heart where you are supposed to be.
Shake it off.
Here’s the sun.
Get to it.
Another day.
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.
But Jehovah hasn’t abandoned me.
Have you ever wondered why there are lists of names in the Bible? Do you, like me, sometimes rush through them or pass over them to get to the “main part” of a story?
But look again, the names ARE the story.
The God of the Bible isn’t the God of the masses. He is the God of the individual.
He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. He called out to Cain, ‘Where is your brother?”
He took Enoch, guided Noah, chose Abraham and Moses.
He anointed David, spoke to and through the prophets and He CAME, flesh to flesh to bear the sins of His people, redeem them from death and cover them with His blood.
My name is graven on His hands.
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands”Isaiah 49: 15-16a NIV
My life is hidden with Christ.
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life,appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Colossians 3:3-4 NIV
He has a new name for me, a secret name I’ll receive in Heaven.
“To the one who conquers through faithfulness even unto death, I will feed you with hidden manna and give you a white stone. Upon this stone, a new name is engraved. No one knows this name except for its recipient.”
Revelation 2:17b VOICE
The enemy wants to convince me that God has forgotten me.
That He has abandoned me in my sorrow and pain.
That when my son breathed his last, He was looking the other way.
That’s a lie.
And I refuse to listen.
Years ago I heard this song for the first time and it touched my heart:
He Knows My Name by Israel (listen here)
Lyrics:
I have a Maker
He Formed My Heart
Before even time began
My life was in his hands
(Chorus)
He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
And hears me when I call
Not everyone reading this has lost a child.
But everyone has lost something or someone.
And everyone, if they are honest, has experienced moments of anguish wondering if God in heaven cares.
He does.
He hears.
He knows your name.
When my kids went anywhere, I would always ask them to send a text just to let me know they had safely arrived at their destination. They honored that request (most of the time!) and it eased my mind.
My mama heart wanted to know they were OK.
My living children still send me texts when traveling. It’s an easy way to relieve anxious thoughts and I appreciate it.
But my son, who has made the last great journey, is silent.
And that’s exactly what I expected.
I think Dominic is so enthralled with the beauty of Heaven, with the communion of saints gone before and with the fullness of joy at the right hand of his Savior that he does not look with longing at the life he left.
He is in possession of the promise. He knows fully, even as he is fully known.
At present we are men looking at puzzling reflections in a mirror. The time will come when we shall see reality whole and face to face! At present all I know is a little fraction of the truth, but the time will come when I shall know it as fully as God now knows me!
I Corinthians 13:12 PHILLIPS
He has the ultimate assurance that God is faithful and that His lovingkindness endures forever. Dominic (if he even thinks of it at all) has no concern that the same Savior who rescued him won’t also rescue me.
“You must not let yourselves be distressed—you must hold on to your faith in God and to your faith in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s House. If there were not, should I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? It is true that I am going away to prepare a place for you, but it is just as true that I am coming again to welcome you into my own home, so that you may be where I am. You know where I am going and you know the road I am going to take.”
~Jesus ( John 14:1-4 PHILLIPS)
My faith has been tested in ways I never thought it would be. And it has been, and continues to be, HARD.
Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]
Hebrews 11:1 AM
The same God who made a donkey speak and sent ravens to feed Elijah can use the birds of the air and the beasts of the field to encourage me.
And He does- I have found a dozen perfect bird’s nests since Dominic left us. I believe they are signs from my Savior, not my son-tokens of hope sent to bless my broken heart from the Father who loves me.
God still speaks-He makes Himself known through His Word, through people, through nature and in still, small whispers to my heart through His Spirit.
He doesn’t answer all my questions. But I don’t feel abandoned.
Dominic is with Jesus and Jesus is with me.
Jesus Christ is always the same, yesterday, today and for ever.
Hebrews 13:8 PHILLIPS
I don’t feel close to Dominic at his grave. I go to honor him, to give voice to his memory but the essence of who he was and who he still is, lies in my heart and in the hearts of those who loved him and love him still.
And the witness of that enduring love is the sign to which I cling.
Faith is to believe when you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
~Augustine
Advertising works on a simple principle: exposure.
The more exposure a person has to the product, the more likely that person will want to buy it.
My eyes lead my heart.
I go where my gaze rests.
What I stare at changes me.
In the first moments, days, weeks after Dominic’s accident, it was very hard to lift my eyes from the reality of pain and sorrow that began like a hard kernel in my heart and grew to a mushroom cloud of destruction that took over my whole body.
But even then, God broke through to remind me all was not dark, all was not lost, and, in the end, all would be well.
See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?
Julian of Norwich
As the cloud began to lift, I was able, by degrees, to choose where to turn my eyes. I could read and write and focus on truth, or I could fill my gaze with deception, darkness and lies.
I am going to stare at SOMETHING-I have to decide what or Who will fill the horizon of my days.
In my sorrow, I can stare down the black hole of death or I can lift my eyes to the Hope of Heaven.
I can linger long at the grave or I can point my face to the sky and look for His return.
My gaze can rest on the emptiness of today or it can rest secure in the promise of tomorrow.
I can sit at the feet of Jesus and let His Presence fill my eyes and guide my heart or I can turn away and let despair overtake my soul.
I’m asking God for one thing, only one thing: To live with him in his house my whole life long. I’ll contemplate his beauty; I’ll study at his feet.
Psalm 27:4 MSG
When Moses came from God’s Presence, he glowed.
His face was transformed because he beheld the glory of the Lord.
He was sustained in the dry season of leading the Israelites through the wilderness by the abundant life he received in communion with God.
This season of grief is hard.
It is DRY, and if I focus on the sorrow, it will suck the life right out of me.
I feel the sorrow. I feel the pain. There is no escaping reality.
But I can fix my eyes on the truth that this world is not all there is.
I can focus my gaze on the finished work of Christ and the promise of reunion made possible by His blood.
Wearing Michael Jordan’s shoes won’t make me a basketball star.
But spending time in the Presence of Jesus will make me more like Him.
As I expose myself repeatedly to His grace, mercy and beauty , I am transformed.
Our faces, then, are not covered. We all show the Lord’s glory, and we are being changed to be like him. This change in us brings more and more glory. And it comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Corinthians 3:18 ICB
I first learned my son had been killed in the dark hours of morning.
I made phone calls.
I had to be certain there was no mistake in identifying the accident victim. I assured the officer on the other end of the phone I was not in denial, I was just confirming what I knew was true.
That was a lie-my ears heard it as true.
Some part of my brain was acting as if it were true.
And I was passing the information along as true, but it was not until I saw his body that my heart embraced as absolutely undeniable what I had been told.
He was gone, gone, gone. No coming back.
That’s when I knew: Death is awful.
It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. ~C.S.Lewis
Death was not part of God’s perfect plan for the people He made and the world He created.
But sin marred that perfection and we are left to walk this wounded world in bodies that, at best, wear out, and at worst, plunge headlong into darkness due to illness, accident or violence.
Where is the victory in this defeat?
Where is the happy ending to this sad chapter of life?
Victory is declared when I trust in Jehovah-Nissi-the LORD my Banner-to uproot the evil that the enemy seeks to sow into my life.
Victory is displayed in my surviving children who have chosen to lean in and labor on and love and laugh even while grieving the loss of their brother.
Victory is demonstrated when my marriage does not crumble under the heavy weight of sorrow, when my family is made stronger- not weaker-and when our story breathes courage into the hearts and lives of others facing devastating trials.
The ultimate and eternal victory lies in the finished work of Christ.
I need to emphasize, friends, that our natural, earthy lives don’t in themselves lead us by their very nature into the kingdom of God. Their very “nature” is to die, so how could they “naturally” end up in the Life kingdom?
But let me tell you something wonderful, a mystery I’ll probably never fully understand. We’re not all going to die—but we are all going to be changed. You hear a blast to end all blasts from a trumpet, and in the time that you look up and blink your eyes—it’s over. On signal from that trumpet from heaven, the dead will be up and out of their graves, beyond the reach of death, never to die again. At the same moment and in the same way, we’ll all be changed. In the resurrection scheme of things, this has to happen: everything perishable taken off the shelves and replaced by the imperishable, this mortal replaced by the immortal. Then the saying will come true:
Death swallowed by triumphant Life!
Who got the last word, oh, Death?
Oh, Death, who’s afraid of you now?It was sin that made death so frightening and law-code guilt that gave sin its leverage, its destructive power. But now in a single victorious stroke of Life, all three—sin, guilt, death—are gone, the gift of our Master, Jesus Christ. Thank God!
With all this going for us, my dear, dear friends, stand your ground. And don’t hold back. Throw yourselves into the work of the Master, confident that nothing you do for him is a waste of time or effort.
I Corinthians 15:50-58 MSG
Jesus has redeemed and restored what the enemy has stolen.
I will not enjoy the fullness of this victory until I embrace Dominic in heaven.
But I can live confidently in the promise that it has already been decided.
I can walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death without fear, because Jehovah-Nissi-the LORD my Banner (my Victory) is with me. (Psalm 23:4)
I am not alone.
I cannot bring Dominic back-I cannot have my child once again in my arms. I cannot undo the damage death has wrought and the great gash loss has made in my heart.
And so I am left with my pain and my questions.
“Why?” is not a particularly fruitful question (although I ask it still).
“Why not?” is probably more helpful.
If I consider the lives of all the people God chose as examples of His faithfulness and grace there is not one who escapes heartache.
Not even one was allowed to walk this sod untouched by suffering that forced them to lean hard into the only Hope that lasts for eternity.
Adam and Eve reaped the consequences of their sin, were cast from the Garden and buried one son murdered by the other.
Noah watched the world descend into unbelievable wickedness around him and then witnessed the destruction of all flesh on earth.
Abraham left the familiar, trudged for years in a land promised but not given, had a son that he loved but had to send away because he was begotten outside the plan and will of God. He finally received the son of promise but was aked to sacrifice him.
He grew old without the blessing of possessing much of what God had promised him.
Jacob reaped the reward of his deception but lived a complicated and heartbreaking life.
Joseph enjoys a happy ending, but it was a long lonely path that led him there.
David, Moses, Paul, the apostles, Elizabeth, Hannah, Mary, Esther, Ruth-all were called to walk in sorrow as vessels of God’s glory.
Only recently in human history have we been able, in small pockets of abundance, to mistakenly assume this mortal life is as wonderful (or, dare I say it?) MORE wonderful than the promised eternal life provided by God through the ultimate and complete suffering and sacrifice of Jesus.
I want victory without war.
I want harvest without planting and working the fields.
I want to be happy and satisfied here yet still have a heart for heaven.
It is impossible to have both.
Only in light of eternity am I free to live a life set apart for God’s use in the here and now.
Only as a recipient of God’s grace can I be a conduit of that grace to others.
Only in deep sorrow can I find the true value of Christ’s promise that He will never leave me nor forsake me.
Only alone can I fully appreciate the gift of God’s constant companionship.
Only when I am truly hungry can I taste the bread that satisfies my soul.
Simon Peter answered, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You [alone] have the words of eternal life [you are our only hope].
John 6:68 AMP
I’m not the same me I was two years ago.
I no longer look with confidence down the driveway as friends and family pull away, certain that we will see one another soon.
I whisper, “Be safe” when we part, but know that they are not the keeper of their days and that “being safe” doesn’t mean everyone escapes deadly peril.
I don’t have the luxury of emotional distance when I read the newspaper anymore.
I can’t watch the text scroll by on CNN or FoxNews and allow my eyes and heart to glaze over as numbers representing lives flash by.
Burying my son has tenderized me.
My mind drifts effortlessly and immediately to the ones left behind any time there is mention of a murder or a suicide or an accident.
And my spirit rejoices when a heroic rescue uncovers someone buried in the rubble or a passerby stops to help a person who otherwise faced certain doom. Second chances make me cry happy tears.
I have higher tolerance for the failures of others and lower tolerance for hatefulness and unkindness.
Maybe I’m just tired, but I find it easier to extend grace than to fuel anger.
I don’t care what latest or greatest movie, TV show, fashion fad or IPhone App has just been released-ads for a better, bigger, newer anything don’t entice me.
Don’t try to draw me into drama or worry or hand-wringing over politics or social media or foolish disputes. There is no part of my heart with room for that.
I will exhaust myself loving others but not on loving things.
I’m a pilgrim and a stranger on this earth. I’m walking a path in a foreign land, looking forward to my heavenly home.
By an act of faith, Abraham said yes to God’s call to travel to an unknown place that would become his home. When he left he had no idea where he was going. By an act of faith he lived in the country promised him, lived as a stranger camping in tents. Isaac and Jacob did the same, living under the same promise. Abraham did it by keeping his eye on an unseen city with real, eternal foundations—the City designed and built by God.
Hebrews 11:8-10 MSG
thelifeididntchoose 