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Friday's Faith
Does Child-Loss Grief Make Me An Alien?
After going through a Thanksgiving of peace as it was designed around our child-loss grieving needs, not around the expectations of others, my heart is nurtured, and for that I'm so thankful! But there is a heightened awareness of how much I do not "fit in" to the world around me.
One family member took it upon her naughty self to write a rebuking email, heavy-laden with guilt, manipulation and sentimentalism. As if I didn't already have enough of a load on my troubled heart, you felt the need to pile on to a heart-broken bereaved mother?!
Such message from a person one otherwise would expect to be kind, compassionate, and caring adds to the disillusionment of this griever. It also underlines, accentuates, and aggravates the new realizations of how "odd" I am, of how I don't "fit in," of how I feel like I have been dropped onto a foreign planet where no previously-known earthly citizen understands, nor can communicate with this grieving alien.
It is a harrowing experience, like I am living in an Alfred Hitchcock unsolvable mystery --trapped on a planet where no one speaks my language, and expects behaviors from me that I can no longer produce to accommodate the canned-holiday-expectations of decorum. And such unconformity is treated as being right up there with the "unpardonable sins" such as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, as family-get-togethers on man-made holidays are treated as holy as God Himself, barring any exceptions to the rule without threats of disbarring, or banishment from the tribe, if not even incurring the wrath of God Himself.
It is not so much the disappointment of the heaviness of Child-Loss Grief itself I grapple with as I am at a fairly peaceful place in Grief, that "It is what it is" - and that I must do what I need to do to cope with it.
But it IS a very heavy load, and others must simply
"Deal with it or you won't be dealing with me!"
It is more that I struggle with this weird sense of isolation from 99% of the earth's population who don't "get it" when it comes to my severe grief and continued broken heart EVEN though I do bask in God's love and comfort!
Many do not seem to think the two of those are compatible: If I have the latter (God's love and comfort), the first (Severe Grief and a Broken Heart) should not exist at all.
...So now, they feel a need to punish me...
So, I do what comes true to my heart, I turn to my Living Lord who has Living words for me and my troubled spirit.
Does Child-Loss Grief Make Me an Alien?
Here, I do not belong: I'm a citizen of Heaven...
Here, I do not fit in ~ the only "fit" I have here is th' one I've thrown...
Here, make me yeast for this world's leaven,
Here, prepare my soul to bow at Your Throne.
Here, Your child-loss griever is an alien!
Here, use Grief to sanctify (me to be) Heaven's citizen!
To which God assures me,
"I will create a City on that Shore:
Sounds of weeping, crying will be no more!
You will be a people blessed by the Lord;
My chosen ones will long enjoy (My) reward.
None will be harmed or destroyed in that City;
Your work (will) not (be) in vain, nor your children doomed t' pity.
Wait on Me, trust that My work will be done
In you, your work, and in your little one.
"Trust in Me in going through this desert,
Rest in me in this long winter's drought,
For soon you will find your sure treasure,
For here, My ways are past finding out!
"Faith is hope's blessed assurance,
The lack of sight's sure certainty.
Here, you must suffer endurance
of temporary misery,
awaiting Grief's alchemy
w'th paradoxical results achieved
accomplished by My mystery!
"Before you call, I will answer,
While you're still speaking, I will hear,
For you, My child, I have ransomed!
To you, I will ever draw near."
My Lord, though here, I may be an alien,
That is what You've called us to be,
For our citizenship IS in Heaven,
For we were designed to live there with Thee!
Give me grace for Grief's journey,
Knowing I walk through it with You,
Should others around me not understand me,
What's that to me if I'm ever accompanied by Thee?!
{based on Isaiah 65, and Hebrews 11}
Picture: http://www.fotosearch.com/BLD007/ca_42_4/
Poem: Does Child-Loss Grief Make Me an Alien? - Angie Bennett Prince - 12/2/10
