Wednesday's Woe - The Train Wreck of Our Grief

Wednesday's Woe

The Train Wreck of Our Grief

I dreamed this morning of my little girl, about 4-years-old in the dream, on vacation with us, wanting to wear her princess gown to play with her friends... 

But as I was unpacking it for her to wear, she ran out onto the hotel's patio, and jumped over, holding onto the railing. 

As I stiffened my body bracing it against the railing for strength, I carefully yet fearfully reached over to hopefully pull her up to safety, 

but...

she let go... 

and fell the long distance to the ground. 

As my heart was panicking that she would be hurt, I awakened...

Does the terror ever stop...?

I know the ever trying to save continues...

As our lives seem ever to be in limbo after losing our child, I thought this morning... 

It seems when I lost you, I not only lost you,

I lost me too...

...For I still seem to live in Limbo-Land.

And yet...

Charles Spurgeon captures the devastation of our loss amidst the tender love of our Lord so well in his quote. It seems that despite the worst that has happened, somehow God intervenes as only His Love can do...

“I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me He has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest tenderest love has been manifested to me. Our Father's wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy. Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven.” 

― Charles H. Spurgeon

And his following quote rings so true...

“The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our hearts on the black horse of affliction. Jesus uses the whole range of our experiences to wean us from earth and woo us to Heaven.”

― Charles H. Spurgeon, All of Grace

Quotes from Charles H. Spurgeon, thanks to GoodReads.com

Saturday's Sayings - "What Other Answer Would Suffice?"

Saturday's Sayings 

"What Other Answer Would Suffice?"

~Safehaven For Widowed

“For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? 

"But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? 

"How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, 'I never realized my loss till this moment?' The same leg is cut off time after time.” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

~~~~~

~Safehaven For Widowed

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process. 

"It needs not a map but a history...” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

~~~~~

~Safehaven For Widowed

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. 

"At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

~~~~~

~Safehaven For Widowed

“If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to 'glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her.  

"But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild.” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

~~~~~

~Hers to Treasure

“...My idea of God is a not divine idea. It has to be shattered from time to time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?..” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Reality the iconoclast once more. Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.” 

― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I know now, Lord, why You utter no answer. You are Yourself the answer. Before Your face questions die away.  

"What other answer would suffice?” 

― C.S. Lewis

Pictures, thanks to ~Grieving Mother Dani, ~ Safehaven For Widowed and ~ Hers To Treasure 
C.S. Lewis Quotes, thanks to goodreads.com

Friday's Faith - "A Long Bitter Prayer that Was Answered Finally"

Friday's Faith

"A Long Bitter Prayer 

that Was Answered Finally"

“These people who can see right through you never quite do you justice, because they never give you credit for the effort you're making to be better than you actually are, which is difficult and well meant and deserving of some little notice.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

"(People) make you doubt yourself, which, depending on cases, can be a severe distraction and a waste of time. This is a thing I wish I had understood much earlier than I did. Just to reflect on it makes me a little irritated. Irritation is a form of anger, I recognize that. 

......."One great benefit of a religious vocation is that it helps you concentrate. It gives you a good basic sense of what is being asked of you and also what you might as well ignore. If I have any wisdom to offer, this is a fair part of it."

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“But I believe also the rewards of obedience are great, because at the root of real honor is always a sense of the sacredness of the person who is the object...

"When you love someone to the degree you love her, you see her as God sees her, and that is an instruction in the nature of God and humankind and of Being itself.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

"I don't know what to say except that the worst misfortune isn't only misfortune---and even as I write those words, I have that infant Rebecca in my mind, the way she looked while I held her, which I seem to remember, because every single time I have christened a baby I have thought of her again. The feeling of a baby's brow against the palm of your hand---how I have loved this life... I laid my hand on her just to bless her, and I could feel her pulse, her warmth, the damp of her hair. The Lord said, 'Their angels in Heaven always see the face of my Father in Heaven' (Matthew 18:11).... Many people have found comfort in that verse."

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

......."I don't think it was resentment I felt then. It was some sort of loyalty to my own life, as if I wanted to say, I have a wife, too, I have a child, too. It was as if the price of having them was losing them, and I couldn't bear the implication that even that price could be too high."

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“They say an infant can't see when it is as young as your sister was, but she opened her eyes, and she looked at me. She was such a little bit of a thing. But while I was holding her, she opened her eyes. I know she didn't really study my face. Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was. But I know she did look right into my eyes. That is something. And I'm glad I knew it at the time, because now, in my present situation, now that I am about to leave this world, I realize there is nothing more astonishing than a human face... 

"You feel your obligation to a child when you have seen it and held it. Any human face is a claim on you, because you can't help but understand the singularity of it, the courage and loneliness of it. But this is truest of the face of an infant. I consider that to be one kind of vision, as mystical as any.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

"As you read this, I hope you will understand that when I speak of the long night that preceded these days of my happiness, I do not remember grief and loneliness so much as I do peace and comfort---grief, but never without comfort; loneliness, but never without peace. Almost never."

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

 "I pulled down old John Donne, who has in fact meant a lot to me all these years. 'One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.' There are some very fine lines in Donne. I hope you will read him, if you have not read him yet."

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I'd never have believed I'd see a wife of mine doting on a child of mine. It still amazes me every time I think of it. I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“If we can (be) divinely fed with a morsel and divinely blessed with a touch, then the terrible pleasure we find in a particular face can certainly instruct us in the nature of the very grandest love.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance - for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light .... 

Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? .... 

Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it. I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave - that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

..............Time, like an ever-rolling stream,

..............Bears all its sons away;

..............They fly forgotten, as a dream

..............Dies at the opening day.

"Good ole Isaac Watts. I've thought about that verse often. I have always wondered what relationship this present reality bears to an ultimate reality.

..............A thousand ages in Thy sight

..............Are like an evening gone ...

"No doubt that is true. Our dream of life will end as dreams end, abruptly and completely, when the sun rises, when the light comes. And we will think, All that fear and grief were about nothing. But that cannot be true. I can't believe we will forget our sorrows altogether. That would mean forgetting that we had lived, humanly speaking. Sorrow seems to me to be a great substance of human life. For example, at this very moment I feel a kind of loving grief for you as you read this...."

~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“I am grateful for all those dark years, even though in retrospect they seem like a long, bitter prayer that was answered finally.” 

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Picture, thanks to ~ Safehaven For Widowed

Quotes, thanks to goodreads.com from ~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

Saturday's Sayings - Progress in the Healing Journey… - Part Six

Saturday's Sayings

Progress in the Healing Journey…

Part Six

The agony is great and yet I will stand it. Had I not loved so much I would not hurt so much. But goodness knows I would not want to diminish that precious love by one fraction of an ounce. I will hurt. And I will be grateful for that hurt for it bears witness to the depth of our meaning. And for that I will be eternally grateful.

~Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

~~~

We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven. 

Amidst our Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, when you think about it, we have been assaulted emotionally, physically, and spiritually! We never really "heal" from Child-Loss Grief and Trauma, but we're always in recovery. We can be in a process of healing, but healing will not completely happen this side of Heaven.

~Angie and Tommy

~~~

"The case of a parent losing a child is very special because the most deep-seated protective and nurturant emotions are brutalized. Because this 'injury' is so severe to such primitive emotional processes, the grieving parent is likely to feel and express the pain associated with it for the rest of his or her life."

~Dr Joanne Cacciatore

~~~~~

~Out of the Ashes

~~~~~

~SKTJ Creations via Wings of Hope~Living Forward

Distractions from our grief can be nice, but the old adage of "Just stay busy" is not so helpful because to help our traumatized systems deal with and process our grief, loss, and trauma into our lives, we must allow ourselves to face our horrific and incredibly sad reality one tiny bit at a time, and many times over and over and over. It is as if we have become unraveled by this reality and we must carefully reweave our frazzled foundation back into a tapestry by which we can "live" again, with changes in our lives, yes, but with new meanings for our child's death, as well as transitioning ourselves into a new understanding of our child's life now, and our new way of relating to them now.

~Angie

~~~~~

~Remembering Loved Ones 

~~~~~~~

My life has been

shattered

so (bear) with me while

I pick up the pieces

~Remembering Loved Ones

How beautiful to be able to be honest with one's self that our lives are shattered, and that others simply must bear with us as we sort through and pick up our broken pieces rather than try to shape our lives around what "they think we should be" amidst our terrible grief.

~Angie

~~~~~

When a person loses an arm or leg, they have several weeks off work, they are put into daily physical therapy, and they are often given emotional support to help adjust to life without a limb. When child loss occurs, we are given off 3 days work without pay (if we are immediate family), no time off to learn how to live with part of our heart missing, and we must search long and hard to find consistent emotional support to help us adjust to life without part of our heart. There's just something very wrong about this picture. Losing a child is far more intense than any other loss we can ever experience yet we must continually remind people of how hard this loss is! God bless every family going through the pain of child loss today!

~thanks to Grieving Mothers, Marsha Bell, Leena Landmark, and Isabelle Efstathiou sharing this post from "Silent Grief - Child Loss Support"

~~~~~

When I'm feeling desperate and lonely,

I search for your face in a cloud,

And though my lips may be silent, 

My heart cries out ever so loud

How can it be that you have left me?

Are you safe in heaven above?

Has God in his goodness embraced you

With his sweet, everlasting love?

Do you know that I yearn to hold you?

Can you hear me repeating your name?

Can you see that I'm lost without you

That nothing...no nothing's the same?

In time will I be more accepting?

Will my poor heart begin to mend?

And will I find peace in believing

I'll be with you once again?

I'll be with you once again!

~I Miss Those Close To Me Who Are Now In Heaven As Beautiful Angels 

It is so important for us face our devastating loss and its effect on us. Everyone else is wishing it away, but we truly know it is just not that easy to "move on" when we have lost a core part of our lives and of  who we are. 

The questions in this graphic are questions that help us to transition from seeing our beloved children as being here with us, to not just seeing them as gone, but seeing them in their newly transformed state of peace, surrounded by love in our Father's arms. These questions are typical of ones we will often ask our child, our Father, and ourselves along our journey as we try to grapple with this stark reality that has been thrust into our world.

~Angie

~~~~~

~Out of the ashes

Couldn't say it any better than that! How precious and tender.

~Angie

~~~~~

~Remembering Loved Ones 

The risk of love is loss,

and the price of loss is grief -

But the pain of grief

Is only a shadow

When compared with the pain

Of never risking love.” 

~ Hilary Stanton Zunin

Another beautiful way to say what Dr. Kubler-Ross said...

~Angie

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother, Alice Jay Wisler, graciously sent to ~The Compassionate Friends of Atlanta

Don't ask

what his

name was.

Ask, instead,

what his 

name is. .Don't ask

…………….how much I

…………….loved him.

…………….Ask how

…………….much I love

…………….him still. ...In Heaven 

…………….…………...... love never

………………………….... .dies.

…………….....It is only

…………….....perfected;

…………….....those who

…………….....dwell there

…………….....are more ALIVE than

…………….…………….you or I.

……Their LOVE

……radiates Forever

………………………….~Alice J. Wisler

Top picture, Broken, thanks to ~Death of a Loved one

Saturday's Sayings - Survivors in a Fallen World

Saturday's Sayings

Survivors in a Fallen World

~ Authentunity

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother Jill Compton shared Wings of Hope-Living Forward

~~~~~

~Wings of Hope~Living Forward

The Pain Of Grief

It comes quietly but quickly

Stealing away your breath

A pain in your heart so strong

Caused by a loved one’s death.

It’s cold and harsh and painful

It weaves through your soul and mind

Tears that flow like a river

No peace in your heart you’ll find.

A harsh reality it makes you face

Such an emptiness in your heart

A longing so unbelievably strong

For the love that’s been torn apart.

The nights are long and terrible

Old memories rob you of sleep

Remembering every precious moment

And in the quiet of night you weep.

Sorting through old pictures

And some will make you smile

But then you’re overcome with pain

And you’ll cry again for awhile.

No one can understand it

Unless they've suffered this way

And then they come to realize

That their grief is here to stay.

In time it may get easier

But it always will remain

Inside a broken, shattered heart

And a soul that’s etched with pain.

~ Charlotte Anselmo ~

~~~~~~

~Grieving Mother Dani MarieBernadette D'Angelo

~~~~~

~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

Grief is not your Enemy

Grief surrounds you with no language yet all people and all lands know it. Grief wreaks havoc with your mind and body and soul.

Grief plays nasty head games with you and can take a beautiful day and put it to the depths of hell. Grief does not want you to escape it - ever.

Grief is invisible but becomes loud and present to the grieving parents it visits to and you have to walk in the world as if it is not there. Grief is an unwanted visitor.

Grief is a volcano deep inside your core. It digs, and digs, day after day destroying your inner being.

Grief reminds you of every piece of fragment of your pain and anger and disbelief of what has happened to your child and controls your every emotion. Grief puts a lot of trust in your memory to help it’s cause so to bring up everything bad or things you wish you could change about the relationship you had with your child.

In the beginning, griefs job is so easy. No resistance. The grief moves around in you causing deep valleys of sorrow and pain. Grief can talk you into anything if you let it. Grief tells you life is not worth living.

Grief has very clever and deceptive ways and will go to any means to invoke the rawest, of your emotions. Grief can take the sweetest dream and turn it into your worst nightmare.

We ask ourselves why? Why would grief do such a terrible thing to someone? Why would grief get such pleasure out of someone else's pain?

What else are we suppose to think?

Actually, Grief is doing it’s job.

Grief is there to get you to work whether you want to or not, to work the process of grieving. In addition, do not fool yourself; it is work, hard work and only you can do it. The work is painful but in the end can be victorious.

As you work through the grieving process, you may even find that you are starting to understand and know grief and maybe grief will become your friend. Grief is an on-going job with no end in sight. It is just moments of release from the pain and sorrow.

As you go through the grief process you will begin to understand that a lot of the unrelenting pain, the pictures, and bad dreams will give way to softer memories of smiles and whispers and eyes of love.

~Wings of Hope~Living Forward

~~~~~~~~~~~~

~Death of a Loved one

~~~~~

~Death of a Loved one

~~~~~

~Darlene Thomas via ~Death of a Loved one

~~~~~

~I Miss Those Close To Me Who Are Now In Heaven As Beautiful Angels 

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother Jill Compton shared ~Words of Wisdom

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother Jill Compton and ~Grieving Mother Pat Dattoli Wentworth 

          via ~Wings of Hope-Living Forward

~~~~~

We want to be...

Survivor, not victim. Growing, not ignoring. Authentic, not flawless.

~Authentuity









Lead picture and quote by Annie Dillard, thanks to ~Authentuity

Saturday's Sayings - What is Grief? - Part Seven ~written by grieving mother, Debra Carter and many grieving mothers...

Saturday's Sayings

What is Grief?

Part Seven

~written by grieving mother, 

Debra Carter 

and many grieving mothers...

~by artist Paulette Insall via ~Grieving Mother, Jill Compton

• Grief is wanting to bear witness to and comfort the pain and suffering they experienced.

~~~~~

"My Child Is Gone!"

How will I survive when my only child is gone?
I will have no future to rely on; Why was this done?

I will never make a graduation of any success for you!
No wedding, no parties, No grandchildren; What am I to do?

I think of all what should have been deserving for you today.It's hard to be happy for someone else when I'm feeling this way.

I feel my whole life's legacy has been torn away from me;
Living life hopelessly; How can this be?

I scream to the Heavens, "I'm so hurt, Why did this happen?"
"Will I ever feel the same? My heart is so broken!"

I will live for your honor and celebrate you in every way
But I will be grieving for you forever; each an

~Death of a Loved One 

• Grief is sometimes a vow to fulfill wishes of the dead.

~~~~~

~Grieving Mothers

• Grief is believing every pebble is a gem. 

~~~~~

~Jesus Christ Savior by BeliefNet

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ~Romans 5:8

• Grief is saying you are forgiven or forgive me.

~~~~~

~Ce Thibodeau 

• Grief is turning ordinary objects- a hairbrush, a note, a pin- into Sacred vestiges.

~~~~~

In your light I learn how to love,
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest where no-one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

~Rumi

~Ce Thibodeau 

• Grief is saying thank you. 

~Jill Compton Rest in Peace Gus

~~~~~

~Grieving Mother, ~Ce Thibodeau
Grieving Mother, Joanne Dennis Mason Altizer, via ~Peggy's Photos