Friday's Faith - Passively Being Changed? ~by Tommy Prince

Friday's Faith

Passively Being Changed?

~by Tommy Prince

"He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength."

~Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Change happens when you are powerless. Going into surgery, there was not a thing I could do for myself. The optimal thing for me to do was to do nothing. The whole control I had was to relax my anxiety through deep breathing exercises. And then I put my hands and my life into the physician's hands. Being powerless and helpless, and then yielding to the surgeon was the catalyst for change.

Now in recovery, I have much more power. Being in compliance post-surgery however, is still a yielding because I am restricted in how much weight I can lift, in the type of exercise I can do, and in the kind of food I can eat. All these activities must be adhered to for the healing --that I cannot see-- to go on. Again, yielding to the physician's orders is my doing my part to facilitate healing.

The overwhelming sense of helplessness (which is part of the definition of trauma) in our Child-Loss experience is also the thing that is going to save me, and that is my yielding to the healing Spirit of God...

Picture, thanks to Heartlight.org

Tuesday's Trust - Thy Presence Through Her Absence

Tuesday's Trust

Thy Presence Through Her Absence

Thy presence through her absence

On that I do rely,

Thy kind and loving essence -

Abba Father drawing nigh.

Lord, I could not stop her slide

Into Satan's icy grasp,

But You did tenderly guide

Me to override vile Asp.

Thy presence through her absence

Is the only way I cope

Thy permanence despite life's transience,

Your love, my only Hope.

Poem - Thy Presence Through Her Absence - Angie Bennett Prince - 8/2/2011

Friday's Faith ~ God Saves...In the Womb and In the Tomb

What the caterpillar sees as the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

~ Richard Bach ઇઉ

Friday's Faith

God Saves...In the Womb and In the Tomb

*****

A grieving mother, Sharon Throop related the following:

We lost our only daughter, Wendy, (14) years ago (11/12/96). 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.

Feel incomplete? Life in suspense? Can you accept the anxiety of not being in control, while trusting in the "slow work of God, our loving Vine-dresser"?

Can you "give our Lord the benefit of believing that His hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete"?

*****

God Saves...In the Womb and In the Tomb

God who saved me in the womb,

Saved my baby in the tomb!

"I will help you. Do not fear.

Call on Me, and I'll draw near."

Draw near when TRAUMA o'ertakes,

Shatters peace ~ my spirit quakes!

"Draw near, My baby girl...

Hide in Me like th' oyster's pearl."

Father God, I'm so afraid,

Thrown down by Satan, flat laid...

"Trust Me. Treasures in Darkness

Will meet you in Death's Starkness.

I who carved you in the womb,

Will not leave you in Death's Tomb.

Follow Me and I will lead,

Come to Me; upon Me feed.

Though you're helpless as a babe,

I'm your God, mighty to save!"

Jesus, hold Your little lamb,

I'm Your child, weak as I am...

*****

"I will give you the treasures of darkness,

riches stored in secret places,

so that you may know that I am the LORD,

the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

For the sake of Jacob my servant,

of Israel my chosen...

I am the LORD, and there is no other,

apart from Me there is no God.

I will strengthen you...

so that from the rising of the sun

to the place of its setting

men may know there is none besides Me.

I am the LORD, and there is no other.

~Isaiah 45:3-6 NIV

*****

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.

~ Rabindranath Tagore ♡

Wednesday's Woe - Helplessness Amidst our Child-Loss Trauma

Wednesday's Woe

Helplessness Amidst our Child-Loss Trauma

A Psychological Trauma is an event, perceived to be inescapable, that confronts a person with actual or threatened death or serious injury (physical or psychological) to the self or other.

Such trauma overwhelms our coping abilities, creates helplessness, anxiety, fear, and other types of psychological distress and dysfunction. It violates our assumptive world (the way we thought things would predictably work). It stimulates physical reactions stemming from built-in fight, flight,or freeze reactions.

~Therese Rando, Ph.D., Grief and Trauma Specialist

The essence of trauma is helplessness.

If the essence of trauma is helplessness, then initially, our losing a child is more about psychological trauma than it is about grief, especially if our child-loss is due to sudden death through violence as in a

• a fatal car crash,
• a homicide,
• a suicide, or
• a sudden medical death.

We need to realize we are not walking simply through child-loss grief –which in itself would be hard enough, but our loss is heavy-laden with psychological trauma due to our beloved child's traumatic death.

Our children are a part of us, a sacred part of us. What hurts them hurts us! If they have been traumatized, we become traumatized. And the immediate trauma of their death is the first thing that hits us in the face.

Something horrific, traumatic, and violent, fatally assaulted our precious vulnerable child, and now we must face what they faced...

The general public has NO CLUE that we child-loss mourners fight a great deal of anxiety, fear, irritability, and traumatization.

Our "job" is to keep our child safe, and we could not.

It does not seem to matter that we are not "at fault," for psychologically we feel at fault anyway if we could not save them...

• We live and relive their violent-death trauma.
• We live and relive any and all relationship-issues that were not quite resolved.
• We live and relive our own inadequacies, whatever our perceptions of those inadequacies may be (or perhaps even what our child perceived them to be, whether accurately or inaccurately).
• And we don't have our child here to successfully launch them into the next phase of their life and be a part of that with them, so their "absence" traumatizes us, and continues to traumatize us.

Personal Disaster

We have been through what the trauma-specialists qualify as a "Personal Disaster" complete with the symptoms of

• shock,
• denial,
• disbelief,
• helplessness,
• distress,
• high arousal,
• shock over images,
• alarm at information trickling in, and
• many times, the confusing, shocking, and emotionally distressing dynamics involved in relating to courts, witnesses, the police, the district attorney, the medical examiner, the firemen, rescue workers, etc.

Too often if we do make it into counseling to deal with any areas where we may find ourselves "stuck" early in our

Traumatic Stress

amidst our grief and mourning, we find counselors who are ready to talk about grief and loss but who are totally unequipped to deal with our massive trauma.

And yet, Trauma is the FIRST thing with which the child-loss parent needs urgent help...

And Child-Loss Trauma, by its nature, renders us absolutely helpless.

Picture thanks to http://photobucket.com/images/grief