The morning Dominic ran ahead to Heaven, after I made the awful phone calls I reached for my journal.
I knew if I didn’t start spilling the grief onto paper my heart would explode with sorrow.
Since I learned to hold a pencil I’ve been writing.
It’s how I sort my thoughts, figure out my feelings and express my heart.
Read the rest here: Give Sorrow Words.
I don’t often pull the “you never know if today may be the last day for someone you love” card.
But I’m going to do it now.
People. Just stop.
Your need for a latte does not trump the necessity to stay away from potential sources of infection. Your need to socialize with friends because you “just can’t stand to sit inside one more minute” is not an excuse for ignoring requests from health care professionals to stay home.
Your careless and carefree attitude is putting others at risk.
It’s entirely possible that if or when you contract Covid19 it’s no more than a miserable two weeks. But it’s also entirely possible that the person you give it to might die.
Trust me, you don’t want to be the one who brought it home to your mama, your daddy, your spouse or your child.
There is nothing easy about watching someone you love suffer. It’s even harder to be forbidden from sitting next to his or her bedside, holding a hand, wiping a fevered forehead.
Dominic died almost six years ago. It is no easier on my heart this minute than it was then.
This is not a joke, not overblown, not a government conspiracy or a hoax perpetrated by whomever you think might do such a thing.
Do you love your family and friends?
REALLY love them?
If you do, then STAY HOME!
For those of you (like two of my children) who perform essential work during this crisis, thank you.
And may God place a hedge of protection around you and those you love.
❤
There are so many ways to describe grief.
So many ways individual hearts walk this path.
For many of us there’s a sense of being locked in time, stuck in space, unable to leave the moment one received the news or the few days before and after.
It’s maddening that the earth still turns, the sun still rises and people go on with life when in so many ways our world is frozen in place.
Elizabeth Gilbert describes deep grief as a “coordinate on the map of time” and a “forest of sorrow”.
I like that.
Child loss is a place no parent wants to go. I found myself in territory so unfamiliar there was no way to get my bearings.
Left alone, I faltered, would have stayed lost, was doomed to walk in circles trying to find my way out.
I desperately needed a guide.
Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Thankfully some parents, further along in this awful journey, created safe spaces for broken hearts to gather and to share.
I am oh, so grateful to them for that!
Not everyone who finds the way to hope and light chooses to come back for those still wandering in the forest of sorrow.
But some do.
They retrace painful steps carrying a torch and say, “Come with me. I can show you the way to hope.”
Through the fog and dark and limits of my sight
I hear birds singing
as they welcome the day
I still can’t see.
Are they better than me at knowing the edges of inky night?
Or do they simply have more faith?
Either way their hearts are boldly trusting in the sun they can’t yet prove is real.
Oh, that my own heart would always rest!
Assured.
Unmoved.
Confident.
Certain.
Even in the dark,
even in the fog,
even under the smothering blanket of sorrow,
in the Son.
The One who burst forth from the grave to prove He IS the One.
The One who promises night has limits,
that death is not the end,
that resurrection is sure.
Then I could sing for those still in the fog
and in the dark,
those whose sight is dimmed by tears.
And remind them that
morning is coming!
As sure as the sunrise.
As sure as the Son rose.
No matter how much we love someone, we will eventually fail them somehow.
I know I recite my failure as a mother quite often-usually when I’m tired, weak, stressed and especially burdened with this grief I haul around like a bag of bricks every day.
So it’s hard for me to comprehend the unfailing, faithful, never-ending, compassionate love of God.
But it’s true whether I can wrap my mind around it or not: God’s love never fails.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/08/09/scripture-journal-challenge-when-i-cant-trace-his-hand-i-trust-his-heart/
Can we just admit that life is hard?
Can we stop hiding our sorrow and pain and struggles and difficulties and let people in on what’s going on?
I truly believe that if we did, we’d all be better for it.
Because no one-really, truly no one-is spared from some kind of problem. And for many of us, it has nothing to do with our own choices. It’s visited upon us from the outside.
It comes out of nowhere, happens fast and suddenly consumes every aspect of our lives.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/08/09/scripture-journal-challenge-earth-has-no-sorrow-that-heaven-cant-heal/
It seems to be the nature of humans to listen with an ear to respond rather than an ear to hear.
I’ve done it myself.
Jumped right in with all kinds of suggestions designed to “fix” someone else’s problem.
Or worse, heaped my own experience with something more or less (often less) similar onto an already overburdened heart.
I hate that tendency in myself and I’m working hard to try to change it.
Those who feel compelled to just say SOMETHING often bombard grievers with platitudes, comparisons to their own grief or just empty, frivolous words that require we either stand there dumbfounded or find a gracious way to exit the conversation.
It’s especially painful for a broken heart when a well-meaning someone decides THIS is the moment for a theology lesson.
“God has something planned for you in this” or “God will use this for good”. (Romans 8:28-29)
“We don’t grieve as those without hope!” ( I Thessalonians 4:13)
“All our days are numbered.” (Psalm 139:16)
I get it-death is a heavy subject and the death of a child isn’t something anyone wants to talk about, contemplate or be forced to wrestle with. So it’s often easier to simply say something-anything-do your duty and walk away.
But it is hardly helpful.
Deep grief as a result of unbearable loss is not a teaching moment.
It’s an opportunity to listen well, think carefully about if or when you need to say anything and simply offer compassionate companionship to a broken heart.
Grieving felt hardly like the time for being taught, at least initially. Early grief was my time for pulling out of my past those truths that I had already learned — out of my ‘basement — so that I could begin to assemble them together into something even more meaningful to me than before. It was the time for understanding that even though I had always believed in heaven, it now looked to my perceptions to be more real than this world. It was the time when, even though I already believed in God’s control of the world, I now felt dependent upon him being sovereign over it for all my hopes. It was the time for realizing that even though I already believed that Christ conquered death, I now longed to see death die.
Lianna Davis, Made for a Different Land
I wrote this three years ago.
Even writing that makes my heart skip a beat! How can I be heading toward surviving six years after that fateful morning? It hardly seems possible and yet it’s true.
And some days I still find myself on the edge of despair, of anxiety attacks, of deep sorrow and darkness.
But not as often.
For that, I’m thankful.
❤ Melanie
Almost three years and here I am-
still on the edge.
On the edge of an anxiety attack.
On the edge of the cliff of deep sorrow and darkness that threatens to swallow every thing bright in my life.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2017/02/02/on-the-edge/
I wasn’t there when Dominic left the road but I’ve imagined it in detail hundreds of times since that night nearly five years ago.
I can’t help it.
I wonder what he thought, what he felt, whether he knew…
It’s not the only tape that plays over and over in my head.
Read the rest here: https://thelifeididntchoose.com/2019/01/17/feedback-loops-and-grief/
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 recently lost his son and has chosen 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 days
TobyMac, 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 heart
TobyMac, 21 Years
