Wednesday's Woe - Who Are We Now? ~Angie and Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Who Are We Now?

~Angie and Tommy Prince

We are almost seven years into our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, yet we are still discovering who we are.

In Child-Loss, you lose more than just your child.

I've lost being able to relate to my family the way I used to, as some family members have gotten so toxic that I had to remove myself from any interaction with them. As I always say, "Trauma Mamas (and Papas) must avoid Drama Mamas (and Papas) at all costs!!!"

I've lost the ability to get a good, full-night's sleep within a consecutive number of hours; I can get the needed amount now, but I can count on there being breaks in between when I will need to process my grief over my child, or the grief caused by my secondary injuries (e.g., toxic family members saying hateful things because they totally misrepresent my grief and what it takes out of me.)

Assumptive beliefs have been challenged, and they have to be faced, re-worked and worked through so  as to discern which beliefs are true and which were a bill-of-goods that we unwittingly bought into but ultimately would yield us no good fruit. For instance, there are different translations of the Bible, God's Holy Word. Generally, that is a good thing, to be able to look at His Word from different perspectives. But there can be error swallowed without realizing it if we don't read carefully and within the context of the passage's original meaning. 

Look at any one version of the Bible, let's take The Message for example: Eugene Peterson wrote it, and the tome is an amazing accomplishment. Peterson seems to be an authentic Christian, loving God and living in a sweet personal relationship with Him, but when I as a griever read his translation of 1 John 5, as I read "the Evil One cannot touch" (our child), I was infuriated! 

Read this excerpt from The Message, out of 1 John 5:18-21:

"The God-begotten are also the God-protected. The Evil One can’t lay a hand on them. We know that we are held firm by God; it’s only the people of the world who continue in the grip of the Evil One."

Of course the Evil One can touch our child; she is dead because of him! The Evil One touched me because he killed my child! But I think the real meaning of God's Word is that the Enemy cannot touch my child's soul: once she belongs to God, which she does, she is His, and Satan cannot touch that relationship enough to destroy it forever. She is God's, and God protects the eternal soul of my child such that Satan cannot "touch" it, in an eternal sense anyway. 

We have made adjustments without really knowing… to try to survive, but the need for these adjustments really come to light when there's a "have-to" out there like a professional seminar that one MUST go to for professional ethics requirements to be met, or a living child's birthday that you don't want to miss just because of your grief and its constraints upon the body. These events, though wonderful opportunities in and of themselves, can at times be very destructive to the equilibrium we have striven to develop. 

For example, I got to the professional seminar today, and realized very soon into it (since I was able to get zero hours of sleep last night) that I could not concentrate to the degree I needed to retain the invaluable information, so I talked with the instructor. The instructor was very kind and compassionate and showed me some online options that have just opened up for this particular seminar which provide a way for me to achieve this professional continuing-education requirement within the confines of my own home!

Child-Loss presents us with many losses. There is the inordinate loss that comes just from the physical loss of our child that seems to throw all of our lives upside down, and turn them inside out. Then we have what we call the "Invisible Disability" that comes with such an inordinate loss with which we must continually grapple to undergo the "normal" constraints of life. Our health becomes compromised. Our daily functions become challenges. Our belief-systems have run amuck, but they are crucial to our facing our grief, finding our comfort, knowing who we are despite our shortcomings, and to receiving our most basic needs for God's love and involvement in our lives, so we find we must expend the necessary energy for our compromised belief systems to be overhauled and reworked. Life itself can be hard enough, but when you throw in all these complications, life itself becomes almost overwhelming.

"The tears flow from my heart and turn into a river.

The river has many bends, rocks and jagged

edges, waves, and reflections.

It reveals to me strength and surrender,

love never-ending,

and the new person emerging 

from this thing called grief.

Grief does not define me but 

it has transformed me."

~Shannon Brooks, grieving mother

~~~

Dear Lord

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Shannon

Dear Lord,

Please teach me how to be a mother to a child that is no longer in my arms but in yours. Teach me how to send sweet kisses up to the heavens to my beautiful baby. Let her feel my love and know how much she is missed.

Lord, please teach me to embrace my child when there is nothing here for me to hold except the memories and dreams for the future that have been shattered.

Lord, please teach me how to release my anger into the wind and let the rage echo into the night until it dissolves into the darkness, so I can sleep and wake with peace instead of pain.

Lord, please teach me how to release my guilt and struggle with my thoughts of what should have been. My thoughts have imprisoned me and taken me captive but I am ready to be freed to begin to allow love back into my life.

Lord, please teach me how to find the strength, to be patient with people when they say things that are so hurtful about my loss. Hopefully, they will never feel this anguish but maybe I can teach them the words that would allow me to feel embraced instead of attacked.

Lord, please teach me to discover the beauty that has been overgrown with pain. Please help me touch the beautiful roses without being pierced by the thorns. Allow me to see the beauty of heaven reflected in my daughter’s eyes.

Lord, please help me to let the tears fall until they form a river which can bring me to a new place of hope and renewal. Please show me how to open my heart and let love from friends and family pour in to display a rainbow of comfort, light, and support.

Lord, please send me sweet dreams where I can hear her sweet laughter tickling the air, where I can look deep into her beautiful eyes filled with pure joy, I can feel her arms wrap around my neck tightly, and I can whisper softly in her ear, “I Love you my sweet baby girl.”

Amen

~Written by Shannon Brooks in loving memory of Skylar Tianna Brooks

1st graphic, thanks to ~ 24.media.tumblr.com
2nd graphic, thanks to ~Grief - How Do We Go On?, and SeasonsOfGrief.com
3rd graphic, thanks to ~ SeasonsOfGrief.com

Tuesday's Trust - Years and Years of Grieving... ~Angie and Tommy Prince

Tuesday's Trust

Years and Years of Grieving...

~Angie and Tommy Prince

Tommy and I were talking about the Bible the other day, and as we were talking about the story of Joseph being taken from his father and seemingly left for dead only to end up as second to the Pharaoh in Egypt, yet everything that is described about Joseph's father Jacob in thinking he had lost Joseph forever, described a man who had been grieving for years and years. He was so grieved that when Joseph's half-brothers asked their father if they could take Joseph's only full-blooded brother Benjamin with them to get grain from Egypt so they all wouldn't starve, Jacob refused and said if anything happened to this son, the only brother to his son he had lost, that he would surely be brought down to the grave in his grief. 

In walking through this story, Tommy heard me say the words, this father, after "years and years of grieving," and stopped me cold. He said, 

"Do you hear what you are saying?" 

And then we both exclaimed, Jacob, the man of God who fathered all the children that make up the twelve tribes of Israel, was certainly a godly man, and yet his grief over one of his twelve children had consumed him for years and years, and years! 

This icon of the Jewish and Christian faith, having had Abraham as his grandfather, and Isaac as his father, and then Jacob himself, God called "Israel"! Yet Jacob, the father of all the tribes of Israel, had been consumed with grief over his child for almost his entire lifetime. 

And these modern-day Christians think we are to be touched by fairy dust and zap, we should be OVER our grief? It is not going to happen… that is, until we see our child again… in Heaven. Jacob was bereaved his whole lifetime until he was rejoined with his son Joseph whom he thought he had lost forever. 

Think about it! God leaves these stories in His Word for our edification. No one needs to apologize for their life-long grief. Life-long grief is just what happens when we lose our child...

~~~

Scriptures Revealing Jacob's Deep Grief:

~Genesis 42

3 Then ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt. 4 But Jacob did not send Benjamin, Joseph’s brother, with the others, because he was afraid that harm might come to him. 5 So Israel’s sons were among those who went to buy grain, for there was famine in the land of Canaan also.

….

29 When they came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan, they told him all that had happened to them. They said, 30 “The man who is lord over the land spoke harshly to us and treated us as though we were spying on the land. 31 But we said to him, ‘We are honest men; we are not spies. 32 We were twelve brothers, sons of one father. One is no more, and the youngest is now with our father in Canaan.’

33 “Then the man who is lord over the land said to us, ‘This is how I will know whether you are honest men: Leave one of your brothers here with me, and take food for your starving households and go. 34 But bring your youngest brother to me so I will know that you are not spies but honest men. Then I will give your brother back to you, and you can trade in the land.’ ”

35 As they were emptying their sacks, there in each man’s sack was his pouch of silver! When they and their father saw the money pouches, they were frightened. 36 Their father Jacob said to them, “You have deprived me of my children. Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is against me!”

37  But Then Reuben said to his father, "You may put both of my sons to death if I do not bring him back to you. Entrust him to my care, and I will bring him back."

38 But Jacob said, “My son will not go down there with you; his brother is dead and he is the only one left. If harm comes to him on the journey you are taking, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in sorrow.”

~Genesis 43

{After their grain had run out, and they were afraid they then would starve, Jacob remitted from his stance…}

13 Take your brother also and go back to the man at once. 14 And may God Almighty grant you mercy before the man so that he will let your other brother and Benjamin come back with you. As for me, if I am bereaved, I am bereaved.

~Genesis 44

19 My lord asked his servants, ‘Do you have a father or a brother?’ 20 And we answered, ‘We have an aged father, and there is a young son born to him in his old age. His brother is dead, and he is the only one of his mother’s sons left, and his father loves him.’

….

25 “Then our father said, ‘Go back and buy a little more food.’ 26 But we said, ‘We cannot go down. Only if our youngest brother is with us will we go. We cannot see the man’s face unless our youngest brother is with us.’

27 “Your servant my father said to us, ‘You know that my wife bore me two sons. 28 One of them went away from me, and I said, “He has surely been torn to pieces.” And I have not seen him since. 29 If you take this one from me too and harm comes to him, you will bring my gray head down to the grave in misery.’

30 “So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, 31 sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. 32 Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’

33 “Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. 34 How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.”

~Genesis 45

…

25 So they went up out of Egypt and came to their father Jacob in the land of Canaan. 26 They told him, “Joseph is still alive! In fact, he is ruler of all Egypt.” Jacob was stunned; he did not believe them. 27 But when they told him everything Joseph had said to them, and when he saw the carts Joseph had sent to carry him back, the spirit of their father Jacob revived. 28 And Israel said, “I’m convinced! My son Joseph is still alive. I will go and see him before I die.”

~Genesis 46

...

 29 Joseph had his chariot made ready and went to Goshen to meet his father Israel. As soon as Joseph appeared before him, he threw his arms around his father and wept for a long time.

30 Israel said to Joseph, “Now I am ready to die, since I have seen for myself that you are still alive.”

~Genesis 48

11 Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see your face again, and now God has allowed me to see your children too.”

Pictures, thanks to ~Angel Graphic Corner and ~SafeHaven For Widowed

Thursday's Therapy A Call to Lament - Part One ~Angie and Tommy Prince

A grief stricken American infantryman whose buddy has been killed in action is comforted by another soldier. ~War in Korea, August 28, 1950

Thursday's Therapy

A Call to Lament

Part One

~Angie and Tommy Prince

In reviewing some Facebook opinions last night, I am appalled at some of the misconstrued views of God that can be summarized by 

"Well, if such-and-such happened, then it must have been God's will!"

Oh my! What a desolation of God's true character. Do these commenters not realize there is MUCH that happens on this earth that is OBVIOUSLY NOT God's will??? Consider, what would I say to my clients whose fathers and mothers decimated them from within the womb to their first day on earth, throughout their toddlerhood, and on into their teens? That just because such horror happened in their lives, that THIS was God's will for them? GOD FORBID! ABSOLUTELY NOT! 

What has happened to our theology that it has become so cheapened as to falsely characterize the very TRUE nature of God so as to explain away grave happenings for the truly mistreated? God is JUST. God is HOLY. God is LOVE. God hates injustice. He hates unholiness. He hates when His beloved creatures are being so grossly abused. 

To seemingly satisfy a simplistic need for a sense of "control," the modernized believer insanely declares, "Well if 'x' happened, then it must have been God's will." NO! 

Tommy and I trained not only to be psychological therapists, but psychotherapists grounded in the Word of God, not just knowledgeable about our manmade ideas of psychology. Therefore, we want to dedicate the next few weeks to a rededication to A Call to Lament that (we think) correctly aligns with God's true, loving nature that is truly appalled with the things that happen that are not according to His divine ordering. He Himself has declared that SATAN is the prince of this world; therefore there will be many things transpiring that are NOT of God's intended design. We are called to have discernment of what those things are, and DECRY those things, not blindly accept them as if they were of God's true will.

We live in a FALLEN world. To not recognize that is a gross injustice to the very CHARACTER AND TRUE NATURE of our God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

We start tonight with words from grieving father Nicholas Wolterstorff, a philosopher at Yale Divinity School by trade, 12 years after the loss of his 25-year-old son Eric who died in a mountain-climbing accident in Austria.

"The wound is no longer raw. But it has not disappeared. That is as it should be. If he was worth loving, he is worth grieving over. Grief is existential testimony to the worth of the one loved. That worth abides. 

"So I own my grief. I do not try to put it behind me, to get over it, to forget it. I do not try to dis-own it. If someone asks, 'Who are you, tell me about yourself," I say, not immediately, but shortly, 'I am one who lost a son.' That loss determines my identity; not all of my identity, but much of it. It belongs within my story. I struggle indeed to go beyond merely owning my grief toward owning it redemptively. But I will not and cannot disown it. I shall remember Eric. Lament is part of life. 

"A friend told me that he had given copies of Lament to all of his children. 'Why did you do that?' I asked. 'Because it is a love-song,' he said. That took me aback. But Yes, it is a love-song. Every lament is a love-song. 

"Will love-songs one day no longer be laments?"

~Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son 

(1987, William E. Eerdmans Publishing Co.)

Next week, we will continue to hear from Nicholas Wolterstorff on the topic,

If God is Good and Sovereign, Why Lament?

an essay by Nicholas Wolterstorff, found in Hearing the Call: Liturgy, Justice, Church and the World (Collection, 2011 Nicholas Wolterstorff, published in 2011 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company). Stay tuned!

Picture, thanks to http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/vintage

Wednesday's Woe - What happens when you tell? ~Angie and Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

What happens when you tell?

~Angie and Tommy Prince

What happens when you tell that your child has died? Does telling it get any easier? 

You make yourself vulnerable to the person who could really undo you. Or, you take the risk of making yourself vulnerable, then find you immediately become speechless to say what happened… 

I even find myself steering the questions away from family so that these kind of questions won't come up: 

How many children do you have? 

Or… Do you have any kids? 

Or… Where are your kids these days? 

I was at a party during the first few months of my grief (yes, I was still in shock, or I couldn't even have attended the party) due to a girlfriend of my daughter's being thrown a party by her family before she left to enter the marines. Someone I hardly knew asked, "How old are your kids?" I was not prepared for this question, so instinctively, I just immediately rattled off, "19, 21, and 23." Then she asked, "Where are they all now?" I had to think and rethink very quickly as I didn't want to say "Two in college, one in Heaven," to shock the poor woman to death at a festive party, so I just rattled off, "Oh, they're all away at college." (All of this had been true just a few months before, after all…)  She nosed her way in even further as I was beginning to realize she had heard, and she knew, but she was wanting to hear me say, "I have a child who died…" Number one, I didn't know this woman that well, and number two, I wasn't ready to deliver that heavy news at a party, so I just brushed her off, "Oh, they're scattered all over!" 

She must have really been surprised then when her husband (who knows me really well) walked up and began telling me how much trouble they were having with one of their sons, and I said to him, "I understand how painful that is," then assured him, "but at least you still have him with you!"

I long to tell, but I do think twice to myself: 

Do you really want to risk everything right here, right now? 

And does this person really want to know, or will what I say just depress them when all they wanted was a little small talk? 

Our lives have descended way below "small talk," all the way down into "death talk." Who is ready to have their lives shocked by our painful truths, especially when our own families can't even talk about or handle our pain. And yet… that is where we live... 

Picture, thanks to Grieving Mother, Jill Compton

Wednesday's Woe, Death All Over Again… ~Angie and Tommy Prince

Wednesday's Woe

Death All Over Again…

~Angie and Tommy Prince

On my blog, at the top of the page, I invite readers to email me. At the end of the posts, readers are also welcome to comment on the post. Tommy and I have a heart for fellow grieving parents. In many ways, we feel their pain.

But oh how woeful it is that we see Death happening All Over Again.

New parents, usually about one a week, sharing new deaths of precious children. We read them all. We grieve with them. Our hearts go out to them.

But when we try to write a word back to them, we are rendered speechless.

No!!!!! Not again!!!!! Not another precious child, Not another precious mother and father to grieve this terrible grief, Not more death upon death!!!

But not one word can we say. At least, not right away. It takes quite awhile for us to settle back down to share our heartfelt condolences with these hurting parents. The pain quite literally leaves us speechless. We are counselors who deal in people's pain all the time, walking through the pain week after week with people.

But the pain that comes upon hearing yet another child is gone, leaving horrific grief for the parents left behind?

We are rendered speechless, time after time after time…

Picture, thanks to FotoSearch.com