Monday's Mourning Ministry - All Who Are Thirsty ~Kutless

Monday's Mourning Ministry

All Who Are Thirsty

~Kutless

All Who are Thirsty

~Kutless

All who are thirsty

All who are weak

Just come to the fountain

Dip your heart in the stream of life

Let the pain and the sorrow

Be washed away

In the waves of His mercy

As the deep cries out to deep

We sing, come Lord Jesus, come

Come Lord Jesus, come

Come Lord Jesus, come

Come Lord Jesus, come

All who are thirsty

All who are weak

Just come to the fountain

Dip your heart in the stream of life

Let the pain and the sorrow

Be washed away

In the waves of His mercy

As the deep cries out to deep

We sing, come Lord Jesus come

Come Lord Jesus, come

Come Lord Jesus, come

Come Lord Jesus, come

Come Lord Jesus, come

(Won't You come?)

(Won't You come?)

Nothing but Your will for me

I am only free in You

Nothing but Your will for me

I am only free in You, God

Come Lord Jesus, come

(Nothing but Your will for me)

(I am only free in You)

Come Lord Jesus, come

(Nothing but Your will for me)

(I am only free in You)

Come Lord Jesus, come

(Nothing but Your will for me)

(I am only free in You)

Come Lord Jesus, come

He who testifies to these things says,

"Yes, I am coming soon."

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

~Revelation 22:20

Picture, thanks to Google Images

Video: http://youtu.be/oCwDtSFMjdw

Wednesday's Woe - Child-Loss Grief: As Bad as We Thought it Was… It's Worse than We Thought

A new study has found that mothers who experience a stillbirth or lose a child in the first year of life are more than 4 times more likely to die or become widowed in the following decade than moms who don’t experience this type of bereavement.

Wednesday's Woe

Child-Loss Grief:

As Bad as We Thought it Was…

It's Worse than We Thought

Today, Tommy's sister (a nurse practitioner who is also a child-loss parent, having lost her newborn infant twenty-eight years ago) sent him a recent article from Medscape (dated September 22, 2011) entitled, Loss of a Baby Linked to Increased Mortality in Parents, regarding a new study published online September 1, 2011 in the British Medical Journal of Supportive and Palliative Care about child-loss bereavement being linked to increased mortality! We want to share its findings with you.

Researchers knew from former research that bereavement indeed could affect immune and cardiac functioning. Lead author Mairi Harper, Ph.D. and research fellow at University of York, United Kingdom, and her colleagues decided to research further to see whether this was true for parents who had lost a very young child.

Their study specifically looked at those parents who lost a stillborn or a newborn baby within its first year of life. They found that the mortality rate was significantly higher for bereaved parents than for non-bereaved parents of thriving babies born in the same year. Dr. Harper said,

"The outcome of mortality and death was up to 5 times higher in the bereaved parent group than the non-bereaved group."

Dr. Harper admitted such a large difference came as a "bit of a shock."

The 2-part study was the first of its kind to directly compare parents who had lost a child in the first year of life to parents who gave birth during the same period but whose child lived.

"The analysis showed that fathers of babies who died faced just as high risk for death as the mothers. The level of mortality was the same for both (sexes of the bereaved parents)," Dr. Harper said.

Dr. Harper also found upon further analysis of her study,

"A stillbirth is just as devastating as losing a child who lives for a short time. There was no difference at all in outcomes for (the bereaved) parents in those two groups."

She further concluded in her analysis of their study,

"Cause of death, whether illness or accident, also didn’t make a difference (in the mortality rate outcome of the bereaved parents)."

Picture, thanks to GrievingMothers

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/750262?

Thursday's Therapy - Child-Loss Grief Amidst Our Chauvinistic and Caustic Culture

Thursday's Therapy

Child-Loss Grief

Amidst Our

Chauvinistic and Caustic Culture

Let's face it. We traumatized child-loss grievers are not gonna get any help out there in the civilian world for our "grief war." We have a very chauvinistic and caustic culture when it comes to emotional pain. Not only are we NOT treated tenderly as any grieving parent would deserve, but we are treated downright coldly as my poem yesterday described.

What is behind this "Get Over It" mentality coming at us? Why the push for us to "Move on!"? Why the desire in the naive but "oh-so-wise" who think they need to give us some advice in how to handle our grief?

Our society doesn't want to recognize that death really happens. Our culture and even our churches (or should I say, especially our churches) do not want to recognize that death happens. Or if it does happen, you should be over it in a week or so, so that they won't have to think about it any more.

People in our society would rather deny, minimize, or blow off the death of a child; it hurts too much for them to even think about it ~ so, for sure they don't want us to "make" them climb down in that pain with us. So we get the message,

"You just need to get over it and be happy like I am. (Then I won't have to feel bad for you anymore, and I can get on with my life.)"

Our society also is full of people who do everything they know to avoid dealing with emotional pain in general. We have workaholics, frenetic activity seekers, thrill seekers, or any of a number of obsessive activities in which we can distract ourselves to death. Anything to keep from feeling emotional pain.

From sex addicts to alcoholics, gamblers to those exhibiting eating disorders, to those addicted to drugs of all kinds, it seems we are always finding novel ways to self-destruct, even sniffing glue, sniffing paint, or playing what some call "the choking game"! A case could be made for all of these destructive behaviors being utilized for the purpose of numbing ourselves from emotional pain.

Many even have a blatant and abject disgust for anyone going through a weakened state of any kind. It is like our t.v. mentality has set us up to think that anything bad or painful someone is enduring should be resolved within thirty minutes or less!

Tommy and I are at a Trauma Seminar in Atlanta, Georgia for several days. Today, we heard from Colin Ross, M.D., a premier expert on dissociation, which is the "disorder" that comes when many of us have been exposed to severe trauma such that our systems are so overwhelmed, they have to essentially "run away" from the painful reality just to be able to cope with life itself. Though this "disorder" can be a God-send for the victim of major trauma, there comes a time when we need to put the pieces back together, facing them one by one so that we may become whole again.

Many psychological disorders, Ross says, are the subconscious attempt of our "wounded inner child" to distract us, numb us, even fill our minds with "magical thinking" so that what was evil and bad in our lives can be white-washed into "what we wish the outcome could be" instead of having to face the vile reality into which we often have been thrown. So, unwittingly, we oft may be making ourselves emotionally ill just to avoid the inevitable pain we must face in our lives!

Ross says, like the alcoholic who finally realizes he must "say 'no' to his drug" and set about working through his "12 steps," so too, we must give up, or "say 'no' to" whatever has become our "numbing" agent, and do the real work to grapple with that evil reality which has intruded upon our lives, whatever it is.

We have to learn to rescue ourselves. As he says, the problem with any addiction or numbing agent is that it is essentially an avoidant strategy. And as long as we are suppressing the truth and not dealing with it, there is no "cure." If we suppress the truth, shut it down, and put a lid on it, it cannot come out into the light where it could be healed. Then there is no comfort for it. There is no healing pathway. There is no help to be found.

And it is going to be the rare and exceptional person who can face these toxic realities head on, learn to accept them, and learn to get genuine comfort for our wounded selves.

And it will be the even more exceptional and rare person indeed who can be supportive of, and tender to us in our grappling with the hell into which we have been thrown with our severe circumstances that come with our child-loss.

Picture, thanks to FotoSearch.com

Saturday's Sayings - Please Don't Tell Me... ~When Friends and Family Don't Understand Child-Loss Grief

Saturday's Sayings

Please Don't Tell Me...

~When Friends and Family Don't Understand Child-Loss Grief

“ . . . I could not shake off my grief, although it had been nearly four years since you died . . . I didn’t know that the sadness is never entirely gone; it lives on forever just below the skin. Without it I wouldn’t be who I am, or be able to recognize myself in the mirror. . . . I was as active as always and few people suspected my state of mind, but deep in my soul I was moaning. I developed a taste for solitude; I wanted only to be with my family; people bothered me, my friends were reduced to three or four. I was spent.”

~Isabel Allende in The Sum of Our Days 2008

*****

Please don't tell me you know how I feel,

Unless you have lost your child too,

Please don't tell me my broken heart will heal,

Because that is just not true,

Please don't tell me my son is in a better place,

Though it is true, I want him here with me,

Don't tell me someday I'll hear his voice, see his face,

Beyond today I cannot see,

Don't tell me it is time to move on,

Because I cannot,

Don't tell me to face the fact he is gone,

Because denial is something I can't stop,

Don't tell me to be thankful for the time I had,

Because I wanted more,

Don't tell me when I am my old self you will be glad,

I'll never be as I was before,

What you can tell me is you will be here for me,

That you will listen when I talk of my child,

You can share with me my precious memories,

You can even cry with me for a while,

And please don't hesitate to say his name,

Because it is something I long to hear everyday,

Friend please realize that I can never be the same,

But if you stand by me, you may like the new person I become someday.

~Author Unknown

*****

Don't Tell Me...

please dont tell me not to cry

please dont say there was a reason why

you dont know what i am feeling

or how much i hurt

the wet spots are from tears on the collar of my shirt

you think i should go on with life

forget about it and be strong

but deep down i am sad and i dont want to go along

i dont expect you to understand why

for no apparent reason i break down and start to cry

my life has changed forever you see

and that is why i am not acting like the same ole me

so please dont try to act like nothing happened

because its changed my life forever i will never be the same again

not today

not tomorrow

but never again

the best thing you can do for me is just be there just like always

be my friend

cause my broken heart will never mend.♥

~Author Unknown

Picture - thanks to Grieving Mothers

Poems - thanks to Grieving Mothers

Sorrow...love's legacy picture ~thanks to TeriAnn Sargent

Saturday's Sayings - Crushed in Spirit with Sorrow

Saturday's Sayings

Crushed in Spirit with Sorrow

God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies grey and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to Your honour and glory.

~Augustine

*****

Thus, at the very moment I dreamed of the greatest happiness, I found myself most miserable: and seemed as if fortune wished to give me this taste of joy only to render the reverse more poignant.

The change I now experienced was as painful as it was sudden and unexpected. It was a change indeed from a state of bliss to a scene which is inexpressible by me . . . and wherein such instances of hardship and fatigue continually occurred as I can never reflect on but with horror.

~Equiano, Beyond the Suffering

*****

Grief is itself a medicine.

~William Cowper, Charity

*****

In my Lucia's absence

Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden;

I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear,

And grief, and rage and love rise up at once,

And with variety of pain distract me.

~Joseph Addison

*****

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.

~Henry Maudsley

*****

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

~Colette

*****

Sorrow removes your attention from the active life and focuses it on the things that matter most. When you are going through a period of extreme loss or pain, you reflect on the people who mean the most to you instead of on personal success; and the deep design of your life, instead of distracting gadgets and entertainments. You may be more open to the beauty of your world as a relief from distress. Beauty is always present, but ordinarily you may not notice it because of your priorities or your absorption in other things.

~Thomas Moore

*****

Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self.

~Charles Colson

*****

My groaning has worn me out. At night my bed and pillow are soaked with tears.

~Psalm 6:6

*****

Pain can be exhausting. Feelings of sorrow, depression, grief, and fear can eat away at us internally to the point that we feel our bodies will waste away. We lose strength. We forfeit any sense of balance and control over our emotions. We’re reduced to groaning, powerless, grief-stricken creatures.

Emotions are very fragile things. When you’re working through old hurts or new struggles, your emotions can help you deal with them in a healthy way. Stuffing them, pretending you don’t feel grief or fear, won’t help at all. In fact, it will hurt you in the long run.

~Peter Wallace, What the Psalmist Is Saying to You Today

*****

Help me, O Lord, to throw

myself absolutely

and wholly on thee, for better, for worse, without

comfort, and all but hopeless.

~Puritan Prayer, The Valley of Vision

*****

Learn to trust Jesus always, even when you cannot understand something.

~J. Heinrich Arnold, Discipleship

*****

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

~Psalm 34:18