Tuesday's Trust - The Greatest Grief

Tuesday's Trust

The Greatest Grief

Every grief is different and comes with its own extenuating circumstances. A homicide may involve police interrogations, courtroom proceedings, and years of additional legal issues before closure can finally be obtained. Some never experience closure. A loss from suicide may result in years of unresolved guilt or anger in addition to the grief. Loss of parents may result in foster care for younger children along with additional legal issues. Each loss carries with it a set of unique issues pertaining to that specific type of loss, even including financial hardships and relocation requirements. However different, however similar, grief is still grief.

After losing his father to renal failure and his teenage daughter to a freak vehicle accident, my uncle David stated, quite profoundly, "When you lose a parent, you lose your history. When you lose a child, you lose your future."

One thing still holds true: Any loss results in great grief.

Although I'm not sure I understand why it matters, there seems to be an un-uttered question resounding in the mind of everyone who is grieving: Is the grief I'm experiencing the greatest of all grief? Is my grief greater than everyone else's? As bad as our grief hurts, we can't imagine it could be any worse under any other circumstances. So we ask, who grieves harder, or longer, or more deeply?

It's as if we need to know: On a grief-scale of 1 to 10, where is my grief? Is this normal? We seem to need something to measure it by. Something to reassure us that what we are going through IS normal.

So, whose loss is greatest? Which truly is the greater grief? While in a small group discussion recently, these same questions arose. Who grieves harder or longer? Is the widow's grief greater than the parent? Is the mother's grief greater than the father's? Is grief greater when it's because of suicide? Or homicide? Or multiple grief?

The answer is really quite simple. The greatest grief of all is your own. It doesn't matter what anyone else says, or how anyone else tries to measure the loss. You aren't the first person to experience grief. But you are the first person to experience YOUR grief. Someone you loved deeply is gone. You can't bring them back. That's the aching reality of it all and there is no greater grief than that.

There is also no greater hope than the hope we have in Jesus Christ. For we rely heavily on His promises that life is eternal and we will be reunited with our loved ones again. This doesn't mean that we won't continue to grieve, missing our loved ones presence in the here and now, but our HOPE lies in the reunion in that place "where there is no more sorrow."

Jesus said, "Love never fails." That means it can never end. It is eternal. For love to be eternal, life must be eternal! As your love for the one no longer with you is eternal, find hope in His promise that "Love never fails."

May this greatest hope give you strength in your greatest grief, and may God bless you and bring you peace.

~thanks to "Grieving Mothers," Facebook

Picture and Post, thanks to "Grieving Mothers" on Facebook

Wednesday's Woe - Early Days of Grief... Compared to "The Rest of the Story..."

Wednesday's Woe

Early Days of Grief...

Compared to

"The Rest of the Story..."

In the early days of grief, yes, emotions are utterly raw. Utterly and agonizingly raw. Yet as devastating as those paroxysms of utter grief, there are saving gifts that come with the body/soul/heart/mind/spirit thrown into trauma.

One gift is the "shock factor": A loss so horrendous as the loss of your own child just cannot sink in totally in the short-term, so there can be an intermittent peace between the raw agonies of the glimpses your heart and mind allow you of your devastating reality. So we find that we adeptly (somehow) can plan a funeral or a memorial for our child, down to every meaningful detail, engaging with many people who come to visit, going through a rigorous face-to-face line of receiving friends just days after receiving the worst news of our lives that will change our lives forever. We find ways to receive comfort and give comfort to one another. After some time, we even find some strength to go back to work doing what we've done for most of our adult lives, at least part-time anyway.

What we don't realize cognitively in those early days is that along with the trauma of losing your child come the body's natural defense mechanisms. One is the outpouring of the body's own opiates to soothe the traumatized system. One premier trauma therapist describes it as if we are almost as numbed as a drug addict with the number of opiates we have swimming through our system. Another chemical defense mechanism sent to us within our body's autonomic nervous system is the stress hormone, cortisol that helps the body prepare for danger by sending us into the necessary fight-flight-or freeze states.

What you don't know early on is that ultimately those chemicals and that "shock factor" will wear out and dissipate, throwing you into withdrawals almost as shocking as those of a drug addict's and quite possibly into a full-blown Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome or Disorder.

In the early days, there are also God's gifts of grace in helping you as you come face to face with your stark loss by giving you a glimpse of the bigger picture long-term, that yes, your child is in Heaven, safe with Him, so you know that she is okay and at peace! Thus such supernatural assurance seems to leave you with only the task of grieving through the terrible agony of losing your precious child. And since you are the parent, it seems then that grief should be fairly achievable because the bottom-line is, your child is safe in God's hands, and you as the adult can take the parent's role of bearing with the repercussions of having to be away from her.

The downside is ~ THAT gift of peace is a grace given to you early on, but it has to be worked out little piece by little piece over the long haul. And THAT is where the devil really is in the details, in a way you would have NO IDEA is coming when you are early on in your grief, as you are engulfed in the Lord's arms and in the arms of all those who come alongside to listen, cry with you, and hold you. And that "working out the devastating details" over time, little bit by little agonizing bit, ladies and gentleman, I'm sure Paul Harvey would say... is "THE REST OF THE STORY..."

Picture thanks to Photobucket.com

Wednesday's Woe - Why Child-Loss Grief is So Different from Other Grief... ~by Tommy and Angie Prince

Used by gracious permission of Artist Crawfurd Adamson

Wednesday's Woe

Why Child-Loss Grief is So Different from Other Grief...

~by Tommy and Angie Prince

When a parent dies, though an extreme bond is there, somehow you are able to go on with your life; you can function.

Tommy lost his mother when he was just 14 years old. I lost my precious daddy in 2004. As much as we loved and were bonded with our parents, we were able to grieve even while we went on with our lives, functioning fairly normally even amidst our grief. Parent-loss is not easy. It is very painful to lose a parent who poured so much of themselves into your life that they basically influenced every aspect of your being: body, soul, heart, mind, and spirit. And the love they gave is beyond compare!

While you love them and appreciate all that they have poured into you, thanks to all of their sacrificial love for you, you can stand on your own two feet to function, face the world, and walk through it.

There is something inside you to call upon, that gives you the "oomph" to move forward, to go on with your life. There is a sweet peace inside you that you know they are okay, as you know they are in Heaven and that we will all be together again someday. So now you must live your life with all that they taught you, and attempt—with God's help—to be faithful now to God's calling upon your life for your time remaining on this earth.

When your child dies, however, grief is traumatic.

In fact, it seems when your child dies, at some level you die too.

Your life stops.

Everything you have stood for, everything you have been about, is stood on its ear.

Your life has been turned upside down.

Your heart has been ripped out of you, so there is nothing left to pull from; there are no resources available with which to function. It seems all systems are shut down in order to grieve and to walk through such heavy loss. "Moving on" is a luxury you don't have.

In Child-Loss Grief, all is geared for walking through the Unthinkable, the Tragic, the Great Loss, the Mangled mind, the Broken body, the Spent Spirit, the Hurt Heart, and the Shattered Soul.

With this loss, there is nothing there to call upon, to say "you can move on from this."

Indeed, as Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. says, with this kind of severe loss, we are learning from the newly-available brain scans that after the severe loss of one's child, the grief-traumatized brain IS DAMAGED. (Whether this damage is temporary or not has not yet been ascertained.) The part of the brain that even helps you to do the routine habits and procedures of everyday life is damaged, so that just walking through a day with its normal functions is almost impossible to do, much less trying to tackle the more complex problems of a demanding occupation, raising children, or other major life concerns.

Child-loss grief is debilitating, for our hearts, our souls, and our spirits are crushed!

The scripture that speaks to this so well is

"A man's spirit sustains him in sickness,

but a crushed spirit, who can bear?"

~Proverbs 18:14

But our Lord says He will be there for us to pick us up...

"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and

saves those who are crushed in spirit."

~Psalm 34:18

Because He Himself has been there...for our sake...

"Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows...He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed."

~Isaiah 53:4-5

He was crushed that we might live; He was wounded that we might heal...

"But for you who revere My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings..."

~Malachi 4:2a

So for the remainder of our lives we will be in a healing process with our ultimate healing culminating when we reach Heaven. At that time, God says,

"(Then) you will go out and leap (for joy) like calves released from the stall."

~Malachi 4:2b

Until then, may God bless us in our very painful healing process...

Feel free to share your experiences with us with a comment at the very bottom of this post. (Just punch the "Comment" button, and post your comment.) If you are not up to it, that is fine. That is the way we are most of the time! I think that is just the way Child-Loss Grief is much of the time. We just appreciate your being here with us...

Painting used by gracious permission of Crawfurd Adamson: "Knot" Oil Painting by Crawfurd Adamson. Website: http://crawfurdadamson.com Email: And thank you to Diane at http://dancindianern.blogspot.com for sharing him with us!