Every spring and every fall we dutifully make the rounds to our clocks and digital devices, putting them first forward an hour and then back in an attempt to make the days “longer”.
As if time was in our hands.
The sun rises and sets according to the Creator’s schedule, we can neither speed the world’s turning, nor slow it down.
We can only choose whether to be present in the moments He grants us.
Read the rest here: Time Change
A LOT has happened since I wrote this post one year ago to share my husband’s cancer diagnosis and need for surgery.
I am oh, so happy to report that the surgery was successful, the margins clean and he’s had no indication he needs additional treatment. He did, however, develop a hernia that necessitated another (much more complicated and invasive) surgery a few months later.
Still, all in all, we are overjoyed that what could have been the beginning of a long and arduous cancer treatment journey was shortened to surgery and easy follow-up visits to monitor blood work.
I wanted to share this again to remind myself and YOU of how important it is to be honest about our struggles. If I don’t let anyone know I need support and prayers, how can I expect them to show up?
Sometimes the ones we expect to come alongside don’t. But often the Lord provides others who do.
❤ Melanie
Can I just say how very grateful I am for every single person who joins me here and in online groups?
I have been overwhelmingly BLESSED by comments and messages time and time again. It’s definitely been a lifeline when grief, other challenges and everyday living makes this old wounded heart want to give up and give in.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I never take your presence for granted.
Read the rest here: May I Ask for Prayers? Please and Thank You.
I share these musings every so often as much for myself as anyone else.
When we are in the thick of it-whether raising or mourning a child-it’s easy to forget that we are actually making progress.
Now, don’t hear “making progress” as “getting over” because there’s no getting over the death of a child. But there IS moving forward.
Because like it or not, life keeps on keeping on.
And more often than not, so do we.
So, precious heart, don’t despair that there may yet be miles to go. Look at all the miles you’ve covered and celebrate your strength, courage and endurance
I’m proud of you!
❤ Melanie
It’s so easy to focus on the miles left to travel and forget how far I’ve come.
Life has a habit of reminding me that there are hills yet to climb, emotional hurdles still to come and (the ever looming threat) gray hair, wrinkles and an aging body with which to tackle them.
But every now and then I remember to take stock of just how many miles I’ve already traveled.
Read the rest here: Take A Minute To Remember How Far You’ve Come
We think people live to the fullness of years. They begin in spring and pass through all the seasons before the cold winter claims them.
But some survive only one season, or two–never enjoying the fruitful harvest of the latter years the younger years of hard work are meant to produce.
Read the rest here: Falling Leaves
Truth is, no matter how much we may TRY to live life in weeks or months or years, we really are only able to live it one day at a time.
And as Jesus said over 2000 years ago: “Don’t worry at all then about tomorrow. Tomorrow can take care of itself! One day’s trouble is enough for one day.” (Matthew 6:34)
If I never knew it before, I know it now.
I am good for a single 24 hour period-one revolution of the earth.
That’s it.
Sure I put stuff on my calendar. I have to. But I never take it for granted. I never assume that what I think is going to happen next week really will happen next week.
I know better.
Read the rest here: One Day at a Time
I totally get it–we are ALL so busy.
Calendars crammed weeks and months in advance and no white space left over to pencil in lunch with a friend even though we desperately NEED it.
It seems impossible to make that call, write that note or stop by and visit a few minutes.
How can I meet my obligations if I use precious time doing the optional?
But when the unexpected, unimaginable and awful happens, suddenly that calendar and all those appointments don’t matter. Balls drop everywhere and I don’t care.
Because when your family or best friend needs you, you come-no questions asked.
Read the rest here: Being There: No Substitute For Showing Up
Although this specific incident happened some years ago, I experience the same flood of emotions at some point nearly every week.
I turn a corner or open a drawer or smell coffee or (rarely now) aftershave and suddenly memories mix with moments until I’m a mess.
There’s definitely a “before” and “after”-a date I can point to on the calendar when everything changed.
But the truth is that daily life is much more convoluted than that.
3 Melanie
Like most parents who have buried a child, a line is drawn through my life.
April 12, 2014 changed everything.
Whenever I hear a date or a memory drifts across my mind, I think, “that was so many days, months or years BEFORE or AFTER Dominic left us”. I can plot events on a calendar like I’m making a history timeline.
Put this one here and that one there. It seems so simple and straightforward
But daily life is much more complex.
I live in a world where “before” and “after” run together in a mighty torrent. And I can’t control the way they mix and churn.
Read the rest here: Confluence
Years ago I heard a young woman describe a Chinese grieving ritual on an NPR broadcast:
At her grandfather’s funeral, his oldest son was tasked with demonstrating the depth of grief and pain the father’s passing left behind. He stood before the casket, raised a clay bowl above his head and smashed it to the ground while loudly wailing.
The bowl was shattered into fragments too small and too fragile to be put back together in any semblance of what they once represented.
Read the rest here: Fragments
At first grief felt only like sorrow and longing and brokenness.
Then it felt like confusion and anxiety and despair.
A little further along this journey it mostly felt like apathy.
Now it feels like love.
Read the rest here: Grief-It’s Really Just Love
I first shared this post seven years ago when I began writing the blog.
When I read it now, the pain of regret is precisely as sharp as it was when I wrote it. I still wish, wish, wish I had NOT tossed stuff out willy-nilly just a few months before Dominic left us.
I’ve released lots of material things since he’s been gone but it’s been done thoughtfully and with the understanding that I am letting go of one more bit of who he was.
When I was just an overwhelmed ex-homeschool mama longing to reclaim space, I was much less careful about what I threw out.
Time doesn’t always (maybe never?) erase regret.
❤ Melanie
Just a few months before Dominic was killed, this hoarding homeschool mama decided that it was time to finally give up some of the thousands of pages of handwritten, color-crayoned papers stacked in the attic, the storage building and floating in corners and crevices throughout the house.
Four children and twenty-two years of teaching them at home had produced a mountain of memories. I began to sort through the ones I deemed “most important to keep” and “everything else”.
Several loads were taken to the dump and tossed unceremoniously onto the trash pile.
It felt like freedom.
Now it feels like regret and longing.
Read the rest here: A Life in Scraps
thelifeididntchoose 