Wednesday's Woe - Writing About Our Children

Wednesday's Woe

Writing About Our Children

I am in the process of reading and ordering some books by other broken-hearted parents who have written about having lost their precious child,  (Swish: Maria in the Mourning by Pamela Palmer Mutino; Farther Along: The Writing Journey of Thirteen Bereaved Mothers by Carol Henderson; Branch in His Hand by Sharon Charde, Who Is Kim Cress? by Gina Lay, and Beautiful Nate: A Memoir of a Family's Love, a Life Lost, and Eternal Promises by Dennis Mansfield).

Even now, I have tears streaming down for all of these grieving parents. The newest book, soon to appear on the market (March, 2013), is Dennis Mansfield's book Beautiful Nate, about his 27-year-old son Nate who had been struggling with a drug problem before his ultimate death. Dennis had been on the staff of James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" for years. (I was introduced to Dennis by another Christian brother, as soon as this brother learned that Dennis had just lost his son, meeting him on Twitter of all places!)   

Mansfield's excerpt brought tears as it so resonated with mine and Tommy's feelings after having worked in the Christian helping field, trying to save marriages and families all our adult life… only to lose our only daughter to death … A quote from his book description says it so well:

(In regard to) "faith and family…even when you follow all the "rules, "life can go very wrong."

Here is the poignant excerpt from Dennis Mansfield's new book (Click "View Full Note" at the bottom of his entry):

https://www.facebook.com/DennisMansfieldAuthor/notes

You may have to go here first before you can read the excerpt:

https://www.facebook.com/DennisMansfieldAuthor

One of Dennis's readers asked him, 

"I am wondering if writing this book was a healing experience for you?"

Here is Dennis's answer:

Dennis Mansfield "Nancy - a good question. It could well have been a helpful tool that God used in having me see Him more clearly, but not really a 'healing' tool in the sense of accepting Nate's behavior and his death.

"There is no true healing with an amputation. There's only ghost-limb movements that an entire family knows will always be there.

"And there is Heaven, waiting for those who see this life as it is - a vapor, here today and then gone. Yet we remain forever. That's where Nate is and where we'll be."

(highlights, mine)

~May God bless each of you amidst your own severe "amputation"…