When You Have a Broken Heart

Love Never Fails

~Brandon Heath

"Love after all Matters the most."

Love's Mourning Ministry

Love Never Fails

~Brandon Heath

Love is not proud

Love does not boast

Love after all

Matters the most

Love does not run

Love does not hide

Love does not keep

Locked inside

Love is the river that flows through

Love never fails you

Love will sustain

Love will provide

Love will not cease

At the end of time

Love will protect

Love always hopes

And Love still believes

When you don't

Love is the arms that are holding you

Love never fails you

When my heart won't make a sound

When I can't turn back around

When the sky is falling down

Nothing is greater than this

Greater than this

'Cause Love is right here

Love is alive

Love is the way,

The truth, the life

Love is the river than flows through

Love is the arms that are holding you

And Love is the place you will fly to

Love never fails you

After Mother's Day... “Losing My Mind, or Minding My Loss?”

       “Losing My Mind, or Minding My Loss?”

One of my sons sat before me a few days ago (only days after Mother's Day), questioning, in essence, if I am losing my mind…??? 

I sat there, amazed at his impudence, but also amazed at my somber, sober reaction. Internally, I immediately felt, “Of course not!” (After all, I am a therapist who hears people’s hurts, and by necessity, I must be able to remember those vivid details of a person’s life who has risked sharing his or her very deep-seated horrors.) So I wasn’t much moved by his audacious question. I immediately said that if I had not remembered some things he had told me, it was more likely that I was feeling traumatized at the time and just couldn’t take in more information. He was not easily persuaded of this truth.

What is it that Trauma does to us? It can be downright horrific, and for me, especially around this Mother’s Day holiday, I am indeed traumatized by my loss of my precious daughter; to me there is absolutely nothing strange about my reactions to such loss. And when I am dealing with that deep degree of pain, I very likely will not be up to “taking in” everyday chitchat. And, for me, that is Okay.

Tommy and I have found it crucial that we process our ongoing loss; it is more painful than anything this world could throw in our path. Our loss of our child is absolutely the most devastating loss anyone could ever suffer, and the pain does not cease and desist just because time passes. This all-pervasive-loss occurs and re-occurs in our hearts and psyches, often when we very least expect it. Our loss must be allowed to process through whether we are “ready” or not, and it can feel downright horrific as we walk through it. 

But walking through such hurt can also be very healing. We are drawn closer to our child, and closer to our own broken hearts ~ all of which is crucial for our own healing, and for our own connecting with the precious child we lost. May our surviving family members accept our brokenness as part and parcel of the Love we must be allowed to continually pour out, not only for our precious living children, but also for the precious child we lost!

In His Love,

Angie

Happy Birthday Merry Katherine! ~Poem~ "Death's Chalk Line"

Death’s Chalk Outline

Your birthday is coming;

How old would you be?

(You’re still only 19 to me!)

Yet your 32nd birthday is coming!

That’s 13 years I’ve missed with you!!!

How do we fare with the loss of you?

My sadness pervades

Long before your birthday comes…

Grief takes on a life of its own,

Manifesting in my body well before

March 29th comes.

It took me a while to know why I was sad:

The body “knows” before the “knowledge” is had.

Life was frenetic for months before

It all slowed to a stop when I entered Grief’s shore.

Where did all of these years go?

It seems these 13 years were plundered!

Yes, our lives went on (as if in a sleep walk)

But in our hearts, the dark storm clouds still thundered

As if leaving a chalk outline around our hearts,

with our lives now totally plundered.

13 years now, yet the loss never ends…

It manifests in our body as stagnant clouds with no wind.

We still walk, and we talk, yet our hearts never mend.

So it oft feels we are mummies,

lifeless to the end…

13 years now, yet still, it feels like yesterday.

(Non-grievers never could begin to understand

how we are alive, yet still we are slain…)

We walk and we talk, and act like we’re alive

But somewhere deep down in our bodies, 

we know beyond knowing 

that we’ll never thrive.

So here comes your birthday

And where will I be?

Just look for the chalk outline 

manifest in me.

("Death's Chalk Outline ~Angie Bennett Prince, 2/28/2019) 

May God bless each of you,

Angie

~Thanks to Carol Whiseant Rowe of Treasured Sisters for Merry Katherine's birthday picture!