Friday's Faith - If God Had Told Me...

Friday's Faith

If God Had Told Me...

If before you were born, I could have gone to Heaven and (could have seen) all the beautiful souls, I still would have chosen you...

If God had told me "This soul will one day need extra care," I still would have chosen you...

If He had told me "One day this soul may make your heart bleed," I still would have chosen you...

If He had told me "This soul would make me question the depth of my faith," I would still have chosen you....

If He had told me "This soul would make tears flow from my eyes that would overflow a river," I would still have chosen you....

If He had told me "Our time spent together here on earth could be short," I still would have chosen you....

If He had told me "This soul may one day make me endure overbearing suffering," I still would have chosen you...

If He had told me "All that you know to be normal would drastically change," I still would have chosen you...

Of course, even though I would have chosen you, I know it was God who (chose) me for you...

Thank you God for allowing me to be your mommy...

~Author Unknown

~~~

~Journey of the Survivor (From Grief to Survival)

Top graphic with Scripture, I Corinthians 13:7-8: thanks to Grieving Mother, ~Pat Dattoli Wentworth

Friday's Faith - Is It Good to Question God?

Friday's Faith

Is It Good to Question God?

We have shared a post before in which was argued that perhaps asking: "Why?" IS the faith question. (See Friday's Faith - The Cry of "Why?" IS the Cry of Faith ~with H. Norman Wright and Michael Card) found on our blog in the post on March 23, 2012.

Such a concept of allowing ourselves to cry out our questions to God is the very opposite of what we as grievers are so often chastised, in essence: "You shouldn't question God, because we won't know the "whys" this side of Heaven, so don't even go there with God; it's not ours to question."

We grapple with this conundrum in this way:

Perhaps it IS good to question God, not necessarily like Job who wanted to put God on trial…

Rather, we feel it's good to question God with, say, our honest hurts and feelings of betrayal, because now you've got a relationship going with Him, an honest relationship. When you feel hurt and betrayed by God, the emotional intensity of that angst says you have a relationship with God. If you didn't have a relationship with Him, you wouldn't feel hurt by Him.

Grief, Anxiety, Anger, Hurt - these are all what we call "negative" emotions, not negative because they are bad, but negative because they make you feel bad. Positive emotions are not positive because they are good, they are just positive because they make you feel good.

What we tell our clients is that emotions are not "bad" or "good" in the moral sense of the word, they just ARE; it is what you DO with them that is most important. (For another time, we can address the deep-seated, long-harbored negative feelings that can do damage if left to fester and even be acted out by taking out our negative emotions on others, etc.)

To deny having hurt, or anger, grief, or anxiety is a type of lying to oneself. God created us in His image, complete with many human emotions.

Jesus felt anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane; He sweat drops of blood as He realized what He was facing with His upcoming death. Jesus felt hurt, and abandoned by God on the cross and even cried aloud, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" If even Jesus had these "negative" emotions, won't we as well?

God gave us our emotions so that we would have relational capacity with ourselves, with one another, and most importantly, with Him. Without emotions, we would not have relational capacity!

May our emotions be honest, and may they be cried out to the Living God who knows our questions even before we ask, but who longs for us to cry them out to Him so that He can come alongside in relationship with us, especially in heart-wrenching and soul-searching times such as these.

To deny our hurts is to deny our humanity, and it is to deny ourselves any genuine intimacy with our Lord.

Picture, thanks to Google Images

Thursday's Therapy - 45 Major Reactions Spiritually After Your Child's Traumatic Death ~Tommy and Angie Prince

Thursday's Therapy

45 Major Reactions

Spiritually

After Your Child's Traumatic Death

~Tommy and Angie Prince

45 Major Reactions Spiritually After Your Child's Traumatic Death

• Feel abandoned by God or Feeling a much more intense intimacy with God
• Fear God was neglectful~He didn't stop what He could have
• Fear God took your child
• Feel betrayed by God
• Disillusionment with God
• Alienated from God
• When most need comfort, fear trusting the Comforter
• Shattered "Assumptive Beliefs"
• Feel confused by your mistaken "Assumptive Beliefs" about God or how things work spiritually
• Needing to reassess the accuracy of your current "Assumptive Beliefs"
• Spiritual foundation crumbles or is shaken at a time it is needed to be intact and secure
• Confused spiritually
• Fear of God
• Feel angry at God
• Feel scriptural "promises" for "safety for your child" were violated
• Question the true character of God (If God is truly omniscient {all-knowing}, omnipresent {present everywhere at any time}, omnipotent {all-powerful}, how could He allow a child to be killed?)
• Too traumatized to pray (e.g., If you prayed for safety and your child was killed, you think, "How could I ever pray again?")
• Attempting to make sense of God's actions (e.g., "Where were You God?" thinking if He saw what was happening, He surely would have stopped it, and if not, why?)
• Spiritual foundation feels shattered (Questioning if you can trust God, questioning your former notions of God promising protection for you and your children, etc.)
• Avoiding God, or Intense Need for God (e.g., I tell people I need God "intravenously" now~I cannot handle jokes or trite stories or talks of nationalism in a church service; I need "straight-God" to survive what I am going through.)
• Questioning why bad things happen to good people
• Disillusionment with God
• Wondering, if God is a good God, how could He allow such evil as a child's death to occur.
• Fearing that sins or shortcomings of your own could be used by God against you to take your child
• Needing extreme amounts of alone-time with God for survival of Grief
• Either increased desire for formal group worship, or withdrawal from formal group worship
• Clinging to rituals to cope with grief
• Agonizing before God with any feelings of culpability you may have had in or around the time of your child's death
• Negotiating with God
• Wondering about a deceased person's continued interactive presence in the world
• Wondering about meanings of your child's demise, death, current happenings that seem to be "messages" from one's child
• Wondering about the possibilities of one's deceased child still being a part of your current world in some way
• Searching for meaning regarding your child's death
• Reassessing your personal sense of meaningfulness and purpose in the world
• Reassessing meaning in terms of who you are now, and what is now important to accomplish while you remain in the world.
• Current loss resurrects old, unresolved issues you had with God or your faith
• Wondering where your child is now
• Need for developing a transcendent narrative that gives meaning to your child's death and the events and circumstances around that death
• New clarity spiritually in recognizing what is really important this side of Heaven
• Deeper feelings of intimacy toward God and/or empathy for others
• Numbness to God around the loss of your child
• Paranormal experiences pertaining to your child (such as hearing or seeing your child, having a sense of your child's presence, etc.)
• Protesting with God
• Negative reactions to spiritual platitudes about your child's death
• Ambivalence toward God since the death of your child

Spiritual aspects regarding your child's death will be continued.