Hearts full to overflowing with pride, self-reliance, love of power and money can’t find room for a message that suggests they might need saving.
Empty hearts, hopeless hearts, worn, weary and desperate hearts are hungry to hear that help is on the way.
Maybe that’s why God sent a most spectacular birth announcement to shepherds who were considered the lowest of the low.
Read the rest here: Advent: Unlikely Messengers
We are surrounded by hurting hearts. When one of them turns to you and bravely holds out her pain, accept it as an offering.
Because it is.
An offering of trust, friendship and vulnerability.
We’ve all been there-we ask a routine question and someone refuses to play the social game.
We say, “How are you?” and they answer honestly instead of with the obligatory, “I’m fine. You?”
Suddenly the encounter has taken an unexpected turn.
“Oh, no! I don’t know what to say,” you think.
It can end badly-both of you walking away uncomfortable and wary.
Read the rest here: How To Respond When Someone Shares Their Pain
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.
Read the rest here: Transforming Pain
I am always devastated when another parent discovers the heartache of child loss.
They are forced to join a club no one wants to join.
But I’m grateful when that parent has a platform because of fame, fortune or circumstances and decides to draw attention to the truth of this painful path.
The singer Toby Mac lost his son and chose to do just that. He wrote a song that puts words to the sorrow, words to the struggle and vividly shares the heart of a bereaved parent.
Here it is (grab a tissue):
While I don’t identify with every word in the lyrics, I absolutely identify with the deep pain of sudden loss.
Why would You give and then take him away?
Suddenly end, could You not let it fade?
What I would give for a couple of days
A couple of daysTobyMac, 21 Years
I have cried the same tears, begged for the same answers, dug deep to find strength when I wanted to lie down and give up.
Thousands of parents walk around every day carrying a burden most say they would never be able to carry.
But you do.
Because there’s no alternative but to get up and go on.
Even when your heart is breaking, even when your legs feel like they will not make one more step, you get up, face the day and begin trying to put the pieces back together.
And you learn how to love a child that you can only hold in your heart instead of your arms.
Is it just across the Jordan
Or a city in the stars
Are you singing with the angels
Are you happy where you are
Well until this show is over
And you run into my arms
God has you in heaven
But I have you in my heartTobyMac, 21 Years
If you think that time makes a difference to a mama missing a child who ran ahead to Heaven without her, you don’t know as much as you think you know.
Time does not heal all wounds-especially the kind that shatter a heart into a million pieces.
It takes time for the wound to scar over, but it doesn’t undo the damage.
So if you are wondering why your coworker still takes the day off on his child’s birthday or the anniversary of her child’s homegoing, I’ll let you in on a little secret: Years disappear when those milestones loom large.
Read the rest here: It’s Been Years-What’s Wrong With You?
It’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t walked this path.
Deep pain and unfathomable sorrow stripped me of any reserve, any defense, any padding between the wider world and my oh-so-fragile heart.
I was a walking nerve.
Every awkward and less-than-thoughtful word or deed by friends, family and acquaintances rubbed me raw. I was utterly incapable of extending grace even as I knew I should and understood that most often their intentions were kind.
I had suffered a grievous wound and spent most of my energy just trying to protect what was left of my heart.
All I wanted to do was retreat to the safe cocoon of my own home. I unfollowed people on social media, I screened telephone calls, I rarely ventured out for anything but the most necessary supplies. It was the only way I could provide the space and time needed for my heart to heal enough to bear even the slightest brush with folks who might say or do the wrong thing.
It helped.
Eventually I found the strength to venture beyond the safety of home, family and the few friends with whom I felt comfortable and secure.
I could scroll through Facebook once again without reacting to every single post.
I went back to church and even showed up for covered dish socials where I couldn’t be certain which way the conversation would flow or who might get me blocked into a corner and ply me with questions.
I attended a few large gatherings: graduations, weddings and a Stephen Curtis Chapman concert.
So if you are in the early days of this hard, hard journey, do what you have to and find the safe circle that gives you time, space and grace to help your heart toward healing.
It may take longer than you’d like, but resting from the constant pressure of trying to protect yourself from the hustle and bustle in a world where child loss is misunderstood and frequently ignored will make a difference.
And one day, like me, you might well wake up and realize that what once felt like personal attacks are simply folks saying and doing foolish things because they haven’t been forced to learn the wisdom of compassion through unfathomable loss.
I’m still more sensitive than I used to be.
There are times I just can’t take crowds, unpredictable settings, offhand comments about death, dying, grief and heartache.
But I’m finally able to walk in the world without feeling I have to protect my heart at every turn.
It’s liberating and I’m thankful.
For those of us who follow Jesus, perhaps the most difficult and important grief work we must do is deciding how our faith fits into the new and awful reality of child loss.
I’ve encountered so many hurting hearts struggling to square their experience of devastating loss with their faith in a loving and all-powerful God.
I write about my own struggle over and over in this space but this series of posts is an orderly exploration of doubt, pain, faith and the hope I’ve found in Christ Jesus.
I pray it helps another heart hold on.
❤ Melanie
Child loss is Unnatural-no way around it.
Out of order death is devastating.
When my perfectly healthy, strong and gifted son was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident on April 12. 2014 my world fell apart. My heart shattered into a million pieces. And even after all these years, I’ve yet to even FIND all of those pieces much less put them back together.
So what does a heart do when that happens? Because, try as I might, I cannot stop time.
Even THAT awful day only lasted 24 hours.
When the sun rose again, the pain was still there. And behind that pain and mixed with it was something else-disappointment, disaffection, distrust.
Where were You, God???
God is sovereign-He rules.
God is good-He loves.
How do those two truths live together in a universe that includes child loss? How can I trust the rest of my life and my eternal future to a God who lets this happen?
It’s a process. And it takes time. It involves purposeful choices by me to place my heart where it can hear truth even when it doesn’t want to hear and doubts every word.
The first step toward trusting again is to ADMIT THE PAIN.
You may be thinking, “Are you crazy?”.
“Of course I know I’m hurting-my child is no longer here!”
But that’s the easy pain to recognize and own up to. For those of us who have swallowed the western church model of “Sunshine Christianity”*, we will have a much harder time admitting our dismay that as victors in Jesus we feel discouraged, defeated and disgusted.
And should we dare to whisper it aloud we may well be shouted down by voices afraid to hear what they themselves sometimes secretly think but never speak. So we convince our hearts these are phantom pains like those of a lost limb and try to ignore them.
But they will not be ignored.
The Bible is full of broken people bringing their hearts and their hurts to God.
Death is awful! We dare not make it small!
It was the penalty for sin and the price of salvation. To deny the presence of pain is to diminish the power of the cross.
I must admit my pain:
I’m not the first nor will I be the last to wonder about where God is and what He is doing. Nicolas Wolterstorff’s adult son was killed in a climbing accident and his little book, Lament for a Son, was one of the best I have read in grief.
It struck a chord with me both because of the similarity of our loss and his honesty in exploring the edges of pain and doubt.
He writes:
Will my eyes adjust to this darkness? Will I find you in the dark-not in the streaks of light which remain, but in the darkness? Has anyone ever found you there? Did they love what they saw? Did they see love? And are there songs for singing when the light has gone dim? Or in the dark, is it best to wait in silence?
Noon has darkened. As fast as they could say, “He’s dead”, the light dimmed. And where are you in the darkness? I learned to spy you in the light. Here in this darkness, I cannot find you. If I had never looked for you, or looked but never found, I would not feel this pain of your absence. Or is it not your absence in which I dwell, but your elusive troubling presence?
Nicholas Wolterstorff, LAMENT FOR A SON
C.S. Lewis wrote A Grief Observed after the loss of his wife, Joy. And he also is honest and raw-asking aloud the questions that hide in our hearts, admitting the fear that the God we serve may not be the God we thought we knew.
Giants in faith-both men.
Yet they, like us, had to bring the shattered pieces of their broken hearts to the foot of the cross and beg God to put them back together.
Admit the pain.
God already knows.
*Sunshine Christianity is the notion that once one belongs to Jesus the road is smooth (God can make a way), the path clear of obstacles (if you have enough faith), and if I simply claim the promises of Scripture I have victory over every circumstance. It does not square with either Jesus’ own experience nor that of the 12 apostles.
Once the stone was rolled in front of the tomb there was no more denying the fact that whatever the disciples thought Jesus was going to do was not at all what He did.
None of them thought the story was going to end like this and yet here they were having buried their Master and their dreams.
Most of us can relate to a time when we thought our dreams were God’s dreams and we were on the path to victory only to round the next bend and head straight to defeat-or worse.
Read the rest here: Lenten Reflections: Fasting Escapism, Being Present to Pain
Child loss is Unnatural-no way around it.
Out of order death is devastating.
When my perfectly healthy, strong and gifted son was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident on April 12. 2014 my world fell apart. My heart shattered into a million pieces. And after three and a half years, I’ve yet to even FIND all of those pieces much less put them back together.
So what does a heart do when that happens? Because, try as I might, I cannot stop time.
Even THAT awful day only lasted 24 hours.
When the sun rose again, the pain was still there. And behind that pain and mixed with it was something else-disappointment, disaffection, distrust.
Where were You, God???
God is sovereign-He rules.
God is good-He loves.
How do those two truths live together in a universe that includes child loss? How can I trust the rest of my life and my eternal future to a God who lets this happen?
Read the rest here: Trust After Loss: Admit the Pain
What, exactly, is the value of believers in Jesus plastering an “Everything is fine” mask across our faces?
Are we afraid that if we allow someone to see our pain we are letting God down?
And how could that be?
Did not Christ Himself beg the Father in the Garden to take the cup from Him?
Yet we smile and wave and chat our way through encounters with people around us, pretending, pretending, pretending that life is easy when it most certainly is not.
Denying the dark and refusing to acknowledge the depth of our pain diminishes the value of the comfort of Christ.
When David wrote that, “yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me” he understood both the desperate need for and the great assurance of Christ’s Presence.
When we allow others to see our broken hearts, we bear testimony to the sustaining grace of Jesus.
And we extend an invitation for them to meet this Savior that gives strength and comfort even in the darkest hours and hardest journeys.
thelifeididntchoose 