Tag: sorrow

Can I Feel Joy Again?

In case you’re wondering if joy will ever return, I want to assure you that it most certainly can.

It will take a lot longer than you wish it might, but it is there, waiting for you to welcome it.

At first it just felt WRONG to have a moment of happiness because if the pain of missing Dominic somehow didn’t fill my heart I was afraid it meant my love for him was fading. If the broken pieces were knitted back together then maybe one day they’d mend so well I couldn’t find the spot where he fit in.

But I’ve learned no amount of present joy will squeeze out that space where Dominic lives.

I can love him, miss him, sorrow over his absence and still revel in the beautiful blessings the Lord brings into my life.

Just this week I had the privilege of watching my grandson while his mother and father had a little time away. It was so much fun (and hard work!). I had forgotten how exciting it is to view the world through a young child’s eyes. Everything is new, everything is wonderful, everything is worthy of exploration and comment.

The little fellow walked down the hall my great-grandmother walked, my grandmother walked and my mother walked pointing a finger and asking, “This?” as he passed photos and paintings, doo dads and doorways.

The sixth generation to hear the creaking hardwood and learn about life.

What joy!

We showed him family photos and talked about Uncle Dominic. It raised a lump in my throat each time but it also helped me place Dom in his story-helped me learn how to talk about the uncle he will never know except for what we share.

I’m not going to lie.

More than a few times tears threatened to make their way down my cheek as I held his little hand and remembered holding another one just like it decades ago. Nostalgia can be hard to swallow when it’s all you have left of someone you love.

But I reminded my heart that it is big enough for both.

I can miss what I once had AND delight in what I have now.

Both are gifts I cherish and hold dear.

joy and sorrow | Poetry Joy

Giving Sorrow Words


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.

Trust Me, You Don’t Want To Lose Someone You Love In This Crisis.

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.

stop-sign-nh.jpg | Environmental Health and Safety | Oregon State ...

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.

INTERACTIVE CONTENT: Reported COVID-19 cases and deaths in the US ...

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!

Stay home if you can to help America contain coronavirus, save lives.

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.

❤

Image result for psalm 91 hedge of protection | Hedge of ...

Forest of Sorrow

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

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.

Trusting The Heart Of God


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/

All Our Sorrows Will Be Healed


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/

Hardly The Time For Being Taught

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.

Image result for listen to respond listen to understand

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

Some Days, Still on the Edge

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/

Repost: Feedback Loops and Grief

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/