Saturday's Sayings - After the Holidays...

Hope you are having a blessed New Year so far...

Saturday's Sayings

After the Holidays...

As we (enter) the "New Year," our thoughts are mixed with every emotion imaginable. We know that turning a page on a calendar and making a resolution will not bring back to us the one thing in life that we long for the most -- our child. Losing a child puts a whole new perspective on the New Year. We will still be traveling the same journey of loss and the reality of that is sometimes overwhelming! God bless every family today in a most special way whose life has been touched by the loss of a child!

~Silent Grief - Child Loss Support

~~~~~

As we have gone through the holidays, there is one thing most of us have been reminded of ...

~My Special Angel

And that is... Grief Has No Holiday!!!

~~~~~

There are times when we simply want to crawl in a hole and give up! Child loss is such a lonely, difficult journey, and so misunderstood by so many. It's exhausting to "play the game of pretend" -- outwardly looking fine, but inside screaming for relief from this ongoing pain of loss. Losing a child heaps tons of pain, guilt, questions, and loneliness on us. And, yet, deep inside we know we must find a way to continue to live. God bless every parent, sibling, grandparent, and family member who is in the midst of this ongoing grief of child loss right now!

~Silent Grief - Child Loss Support

~~~~~

How Important it is to Hear the Griever's Heart...

~Death of a Loved One

If the parents of the children killed in Connecticut are fortunate they will find comfort from friends and family and will have at least someone who will 

listen for as long as it is necessary- 

listen as they sob, moan, cry, scream, blame, deny, question, regret, plead, shut-down; 

listen as they tell the story of their loss, and tell it over and over again, as they must; 

listen as they anguish over whether their child suffered in those last few moments ; 

listen as they question whether they loved their child enough, or were good enough parents; 

listen as they question whether their child was happy and felt loved; 

listen as they question whether they did anything to bring this misfortune upon themselves and their child; 

listen as they question their faith and how a supreme being could have allowed this to happen; 

listen as they wish they were the ones killed instead of their child; 

listen as they question how they can go on living now that their child is dead; 

listen as they blame themselves for not being able to protect their child and not being there to hold and comfort their child in his or her last moments. 

And this is just the beginning for these parents.

~http://tragicloss.blogspot.fr/ 

~~~~

~Betrayed by Love

~~~~~~

~Sun-Gazing

We all need safety amidst our deep grief. Go where there is love and nurturance, not where there is judgment and toxicity...

~~~~~

Our Message to Heaven:

~Grieving Mother, Carol Whisenant Rowe via ~The Compassionate Friends

~~~~~

Our Message from Our Child in Heaven:

~~~~~

~The Social Butterfly

Happy New Year graphic ~from blog, Beautiful and Terrible

Wednesday's Woe - "So Very Much Changed" ~Grieving Mother, Robin Craig, Blogger of "Beautiful and Terrible"

Wednesday's Woe

"So Very Much Changed"

~Grieving Mother, Robin Craig,

Blogger of

"Beautiful and Terrible"

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Another Advent and Christmas Season (Almost) Behind Us

~by Robin Craig

~Robin Craig, married, mom of three, grieving mother of Josh is also a Pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and Spiritual Director in the Ignatian tradition. Robin blogs about her grief in her grief blog, "Beautiful and Terrible." (See blog address at the bottom of this post.)

I wish that I understood the phenomenon to some small extent, but I am at least coming to expect it. 

At these times of year, these times of anticipation and excitement, God recedes further, and further, and further into the distance.

I don't know why that should be.  People speak so frequently, and so eloquently, of the comfort provided by the presence of God.   I wonder what they know that I don't.

Have you ever looked backward through a telescope?  The image is so small ~ a miniature of itself.

We went to what used to be my home church for the midnight service on Christmas Eve ~ my own responsibilities in my own church completed a few hours earlier, I was officially on vacation.  We were last at our "old" church in 2007.  

In 2007, I was still an active elder, and a first-year seminary student who hadn't quite grasped that it would not be my home church for much longer.   And I had, of course, no idea that in 2008 we would want to erase the holiday season in its entirety from the calendar.

This year, the  service was again elegant, the music spectacular, and the milk-and-cookies afterward a wonderful time of seeing old friends.    Much laughter, and a blend of serious conversation as well, as some of the same people who had been at the outdoor memorial service a few nights previous for the young woman who had just died were there also. 

It's good to be with people who don't mind that you simply skipped the last five years.

But as worship began, as the choir sang so beautifully and the pastors spoke with such passion and joy, that was the image that came to mind:  

that I was looking backward through a telescope at a life that used to be mine.   

They all seemed to belong to another universe entirely.  This one is so very much changed.

Thank you to Robin Craig for graciously granting the privilege of reprinting her blog post here on my blog for my readers to enjoy.

"Beautiful and Terrible" graphic, thanks to Grieving Mother, Jill Compton
Robin Craig's child-loss grief blog, "Beautiful and Terrible" can be found at 
http://metanoia-mrc.blogspot.com
Robin's post: http://metanoia-mrc.blogspot.com/2012/12/another-advent-and-christmas-season.html
Robin also has two other blogs:
Well of Hope: Life After a Loved One's Suicide - http://wellofhope-mrc.blogspot.com/
http://revgalblogpals.blogspot.com/

Sunday's Sorrow - Child-Loss Grief Amidst the Holidays

Sunday's Sorrow

Child-Loss Grief 

Amidst the Holidays

Merry Christmas In Heaven To Our Angels

We do not need a special day to bring you to our minds.

The days we do not think of you are very hard to find.

Each morning when we awake we know that you are gone.

And no one knows the heartache as we try to carry on.

Our hearts still ache with sadness and secret tears still flow.

What it meant to lose you no one will ever know.

Our thoughts are always with you, your place no one can fill.

In life we loved you dearly; in death we love you still.

There will always be a heartache, and often a silent tear,

But always a precious memory of the days when you were here.

If tears would make a staircase, and heartaches make a lane,

We'd walk the path to heaven and bring you home again.

We hold you close within our hearts; and there you will remain,

To walk with us throughout our lives until we meet again.

Our family chain is broken now, and nothing seems the same,

But as God calls us one by one, the chain will link again.

~Author Unknown

Picture, thanks to ~I Miss Those Close To Me Who Are Now In Heaven As Beautiful Angels