Tuesday's Trust - A Mother's Cross

Tuesday's Trust

A Mother's Cross

What can extricate me

From this terrible pain?

I must train my eyes to see

My loss is still her gain…

But O this is such a terrible loss!

(…Yet she sees her Master upon the cross...

He gave His all that her child might live;

She bowed her head and humbly said,)

"Lord, what can I give?"

"My child, you're bearing the world's worst pain

That your child may have Me, her eternal gain.

It's a Sacred Trust you bear for love;

She's resting now in her Home above.

"So remember each time you shed a tear,

I draw your baby ever near:

Your salty tears she helps me collect

For by each tear, your souls connect!"

Paroxysms of grief begin to flow

As my love flows up from here below.

"My painful tears are the least I can give,

You gave Your life that my baby might live!

"The birth pangs from here to bear her There

Are this mother's sacrifice, 

As, Lord, our Sacrificial Love for her,

 Together, we might share."

~~~~~

"I believe that writing is an account of the powers of extrication."

~John Cheever, Journals  

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"What is healing, but a shift in perspective." 

~Mark Doty, Heaven's Coast   

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"I am the only one who can tell the story of my life and say what it means."

~Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

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~quotes gathered and shared by Louise De Salvo in her book, 

Writing as a Way of Healing

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"You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle. You have recorded each one in Your book."

   

~Psalm 56:8 ~ New Living Translation (©2007)

~~~

"But now, like a woman in childbirth,

.......I cry out, I gasp and pant."

~Isaiah 42:14b New International Version (©1984)

~~~

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

'For your sake we face death all day long;

we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.'

"No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

~Romans 8:22-29 New International Version (©1984)

~~~~~

"A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world." ~John 16:21 New International Version (©1984)

Poem - A Mother's Cross - Angie Bennett Prince - 12/10/2012

Tuesday's Trust - Heaven...Remains Closer Than We Know

Tuesday's Trust

Heaven...Remains Closer Than We Know...

Out beyond the silence of eternal night,

within the void of voiceless echoes,

between the folds of dark and light.

In somber streams of starlight.

In the waves of ebb and flow.

Heaven exceeds eternal planes.

Though, it remains closer then we know.

~John French

In John's words:

...Brandon passed away in August of 2009 from an undiagnosed heart condition. The devastation of that one single moment has crushed our view of reality and cast us down into a state of perpetual winter. I’ve been writing all my life, though not publically. Brandon’s death has so overwhelmed me that I can no longer contain my thoughts.

Although my stance is undermined by despair, and frosted by the bitterness that follows the loss of my son, I will labor to plant some seeds of promise in the barren future that I'm so unexpectedly tilling.

Perhaps something beneficial will stem from my mourning. If you can gather even a grain of hope from my reaping, it may help to sustain you through your own emotional storm.

~John French

Thank you to John French for another of his inspired poems.

Readers feel free to click "Comment" below and make a comment or share something about your own grief. I love my readers and would love to get to know you better. (If however, you prefer to just read and glean what you can quietly in your grief, that is perfectly fine too. We care about you in your quiet grief as well! Trust me, I am there quite often.)

John French: http://bit.ly/aUItcb

Thursday's Therapy - What Helps Me As I Deal with Grief

Thursday's Therapy

What Helps Me Deal with Grief:

• • Establish an environment of safety:
  • Quiet time
  • Uninterrupted time
  • Safe people only around me
  • Write out my grief process:
  • Any questions I have
  • Whatever feelings emerge
  • Conversation with God about my loss
  • Conversation with my deceased child
  • Allow the feelings to come; encourage them to come
  • Comfort and receive comfort from other grieving parents
  • Read my Bible

  o Open myself up for God to speak to me

  o Open myself up for God to comfort me

  • Write poems to express my feelings:
  • Express my logical thoughts (left brain)
  • Express my creative side (right brain)
  • Allow the Holy Spirit to minister as I write
  • Intervention (Showing new pathways for my grief)
  • Correcting (His view of my loss)
  • Comfort (Reminding me of who He is regarding my loss)
  • Develop healthy boundaries:
  • Determine what I think I am able to do, and what I am unable to do
  • Determine who I am able be around, and who I am not
  • Take care of my physical and emotional needs
  • Be sure I eat healthily
  • Get good exercise
  • Be sure I get 8 hours of sleep each night
  • Get sunshine
  • Add right-brain activities

  Ø Listen to music

  Ø Ponder and view the beauty of God’s world

  Ø Enjoy the taste of a good meal

  Ø Physical comfort of being close to my husband

  Ø Meditation

  Ø Enjoy the aroma of cut flowers from my garden

  Ø View pretty pictures

  Ø View pictures of birds, flowers, butterflies from my magazines or on the internet

  Ø Sit by a crackling fire

  Ø Hike on a mountain trail

  Ø Garden, enjoying getting my hands in the dirt

  Ø Hold my dog

  Ø Bask in a warm bath or spa

  Ø Take a walk, focusing on the beauty around me

  Ø Jump on my trampoline

  Ø Mow the lawn

  
  

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P.S. Please find pink flowers from this post on left side-bar, and take my Grief Survey! Thank you!

Wednesday's Woe - The Gap

"Consumed By The Clouds Of Grief"

~Danielle Helms

Wednesday's Woe

This week, I received the following writing of "The Gap" from “The Compassionate Friends of Atlanta”:

Sharon Throop wrote on 10/18/09:

WE lost our only daughter, Wendy, 13 years ago the 12th of next month. I was just sent a prose, that sums up so much for so many who walk this road. You may have read it before, but if not, send it on to some of your friends and realize that it sums up the loss of our children.

The Gap

The gap between those who have lost children and those who have not is profoundly difficult to bridge. No one whose children are well and intact can be expected to understand what parents who have lost children have absorbed, what they bear. Our children now come to us through every blade of grass, every crack in the sidewalk, every bowl of breakfast cereal, every kid on a scooter. We seek contact with their atoms - their hairbrushes, toothbrushes, their clothing.

We reach out for what was integrally woven into the fabric of our lives, now torn and shredded. A black hole has been blown through our souls and, indeed,it often does not allow the light to escape. It is a difficult place. For us to enter there is to be cut deeply and torn anew, each time we go there, by the jagged edges of our loss. Yet we return, again and again, for that is where our children now reside. This will be so for years to come and it will change us, profoundly. At some point, in the distant future, the edges of that hole will have tempered and softened, but the empty space will remain--a life sentence.

Our friends will change through this. There is no avoiding it. We grieve for our children in part, through talking about them, and our feelings for having lost them. Some go there with us; others cannot and, through their denial, add a further measure, however unwitting, to an already heavy burden.

Assuming that we may be feeling "better" 6 months later is simply "to not get it."

The excruciating and isolating reality that bereaved parents feel is hermetically sealed from the nature of any other human experience. Thus it is a trap--those whose compassion and insight we most need are those for whom we abhor the experience that would allow them that sensitivity and capacity. And yet, somehow, there are those, each in their own fashion, who have found a way to reach us and stay, to our immeasurable comfort. They have understood, again each in their own way, that our children remain our children through our memory of them. Their memory is sustained through speaking about them and our feelings about their death. Deny this and you deny their life. Deny their life and you have no place in ours.

We recognize that we have moved to an emotional place where it is often very difficult to reach us. Our attempts to be normal are painful, and the day to day carries a silent, screaming anguish that accompanies us, sometimes from moment to moment. Were we to give it its own voice, we fear we would become truly unreachable and so we remain "strong" for a host of reasons even as the strength saps our energy and drains our will. Were we to act out our true feelings, we would be impossible to be with. We resent having to act normal, yet we dare not do otherwise. People who understand this dynamic are our gold standard. Working our way through this over the years will change us as does every experience-- and extreme experience changes one extremely. We know we will have actually managed to survive when, as we have read, it is no longer so painful to be normal. We do not know who we will be at that point nor who will still be with us.

We have read that the gap is so difficult that, often, bereaved parents must attempt to reach out to friends and relatives or risk losing them. This is our attempt. For those untarnished by such events, who wish to know in some way what they, thankfully, do not know, read this. It may provide a window that is helpful for both sides of the gap.

Sharon (Wendy's Mom)

6-18-77 to 11-12-96 to infinity

*Our shining star, yesterday, today and forever*

www.angelfire.com/oh/wls19/index.html

~reprinted from our "The Compassionate Friends of Atlanta" FB Wall and Discussion Board

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"The Gap" describes so well the dilemma we face with our beloved "civilians" who are outside "The Grief War." Some are reaching out to better understand us, always acting "in love." What gifts of comfort they are to us just by loving us at our worst! Others have proven themselves to be unsafe, and for now, we cannot afford to be around them. Our death-poisoned bodies just cannot handle even one iota of toxicity, or we just may go under.

Thank you to Sharon Throop and The Compassionate Friends of Atlanta for "The Gap,"

and a special "Thank you" for the picture and its sentiment to Danielle Helms, a dear friend bonded by "more than the empty ache" for our daughters who died within weeks of one another in 2006. http://twitpic.com/ebsxy