Christmas Prayer

O Lord, how hard it is to accept your way. You come to me as a small, powerless child born away from home. You live for me as a stranger in your own land. You die for me as a criminal outside the walls of the city, rejected by your own people, misunderstood by your friends, and feeling abandoned by your God.

As I prepare to celebrate your birth, I am trying to feel loved, accepted, and at home in this world,

and I am trying to overcome the feelings of alienation and separation which continue to assail me.

But I wonder now if my deep sense of homelessness does not bring me closer to you than my occasional feelings of belonging.

Where do I truly celebrate your birth: in a cozy home or in an unfamiliar house, among welcoming friends or among unknown strangers, with feelings of well-being or with feelings of loneliness?

I do not have to run away from those experiences that are closest to yours.

Just as you do not belong to this world, so I do not belong to this world.

Every time I feel this way I have an occasion to be grateful and to embrace you better and taste more fully your joy and peace.

Come, Lord Jesus, and be with me where I feel poorest.

I trust that this is the place where you will find your manger and bring your light.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Amen.

May you and your family have a blessed Christmas, comforted in His ever-loving arms,

Prayer ~Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak

Thursday's Therapy - “Personality Intensification”

Thursday's Therapy

“Personality Intensification”

from

A TCF Speech – 8 Things I’ve Learned About the Grief of a Grieving Parent

Part Seven of Eight

Sunday, July 6, 2003 - TCF National Conference

Closing Speech by Charlie Walton

Part Seven

7. "PERSONALITY INTENSIFICATION"

I learned a new term recently that helped give a name to something I had observed that happens when sudden grief occurs. A gerontologist at our church was conducting a class on the problems of aging, and specifically, how to deal with aging parents. One of the things he said is that, as people get older,

a phenomenon occurs which is called

"personality intensification."

As the good doctor struggled to explain the meaning of "personality intensification," someone in the class spoke up and said, "Oh, you mean that, as you get older, you just get more like you have always been." The doctor had to agree that that was a pretty good definition.

You've probably seen this in older people. If they were grumpy as young people, they are going to be even more cantankerous as they get older. If they were sweet and loving and forgiving all their lives, they are probably going to be folks who grow old gracefully.

It's just that aging removes some of the motivation to hide our natural characteristics, and "personality intensification" is the result.

Well, I think the same thing happens when grief enters your life.

The motivation to monitor and adjust the way you behave just kind of melts away and your personality characteristics intensify.

For some people, that can be a blessing - they may have needed to open up and be less careful about life. For others, it can be really disastrous.

Sometimes you hear folks say that the death of a child is likely to cause the death of the marriage of that child's parents. That's just not true.

What happens is personality intensification. If there were cracks in that marriage relationship, the stress on those cracks will be intensified by the child's death. On the other hand, if that marriage relationship was a strong one, it will grow even stronger.

It is important for us just to know about "personality intensification," to know that it occurs naturally, and to recognize it when the added stress of grief is making it happen to us. It's not by accident that the customary wisdom of the ages is "Don't make any major life decisions for a whole year after the loss of a loved one."

You are not yourself, and you shouldn't expect yourself to be yourself. You just gotta tell the world to wait.

Thank you Charlie Walton for your insightful observations! May we use these insights to better understand our complicated grief and to take steps to make our lives healthier in the midst of them.

******

Another way to define Charlie’s phrase of “personality intensification”:

Personality Intensification –

What happens in the volatility of grief over your child’s death is that

· Whatever strengths you had before become stronger.

· Whatever weaknesses you had before become weaker.

· Whatever fault-lines were present in your life before, whether in your personality, or in your relationships, or both, those fault-lines become heightened or more intense, and thus your life feels more unstable.

· Sometimes your own intensified strengths and weakness work counter to one another and collide. For instance, your naturally compassionate heart becomes more compassionate so that you begin to help others in their grief, but if you have difficulty with boundaries or with time management, your once-positive work can become overly stressful and at times disruptive. Your strengths and weaknesses, at that point, have collided.

· Other times, your fault-lines are exacerbated by the intensive and pervasive grief process to the point of cracking and creating more chaos in your already over-stressed life. These added stressors effectively create more disruption in your already stressful life.

Stress can create either negative or positive changes in a person. Although

"personality intensification" can create more challenges to our system, even if

those challenges temporarily create chaos, ideally, those challenges can create

a new, positive growth in a grieving mommy or daddy. That is certainly my

hope for you!

Wednesday's Woe - The Heavy Presence of Your Absence

Wednesday's Woe

The Heavy Presence of Your Absence

The emptiness from your absence fills the vapid room;

The Great Void o’ertakes silence like the sonic boom...

Though no one speaks it, your absence brings such gloom;

Yes, your spirit’s in Heaven, though your body’s in the tomb…

How do we celebrate Christmas...when our baby’s left our “womb”?

The Heavy Presence of Your Absence sucks air from the room,

Sapping life-giving air from each person in the room,

Filling hearts with dread, sealing each of us with doom.

The heavy presence of your absence within our room does loom…

And yet the spirit of your presence fills the air like sweet perfume

So despite death’s cold of snow, out peeks the spring thaw’s bloom…

Poem - The Great Void Sucks the Air from the Empty Room - Angie Bennett Prince – 11/21/09

Tuesday’s Trust - “Biblical” Lemons

Tuesday’s Trust

“Biblical” Lemons

“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish He didn’t trust me so much.”
~ Mother Teresa

How many of you know this “saying” is NOT biblical? So let’s just strike through it right now!

“God will never give you any more than you can handle.”

Strike it through because this saying is SO WRONG!

How many of us grieving parents think that the death of our child is something we “can handle”?! And yet, it is definitely in our lap to deal with.

In my opinion,

this assumption that we can handle anything on our own is the biggest deception!

As God clearly stipulates,

“NOT by might nor by power, BUT BY MY SPIRIT,” says the Lord Almighty.

Zechariah 4:6 NIV (highlights mine)

And as Paul correctly states,

I can do all things THROUGH CHRIST who strengthens me…

~Philippians 4:13 NKJV (highlights mine)

If I were to walk into and through this grief over the loss of my precious child in my own strength alone, it would be the blueprint for disaster. As it is,

I feel I am holding-onto-my-mind-only-by-a-thread. It is ONLY by GOD’s grace and ONLY by HIS power that I make it through any given day with ANY semblance of peace OR sanity!

It is like grief’s vulnerability opens me up to any and all of Satan’s attacks, and only by God’s close sheltering AND guidance can I “man-up” to deal with The Great Deceiver.

Monday's Mourning Ministry - See (Our Heart's Not Merry for Our Merry is Not)

Monday's Mourning Ministry - See

Our Heart’s Not Merry for Our Merry is Not…

Pictures are sent of fam'lies intact,

Smiles on faces, arm in arm with glee—

How do our pining hearts counteract

Fam'lies gay, when our fam'ly can't be?

God in Heaven, my heart is breaking...

Holidays are here, but we are not—

Presents this year we are forsaking,

Our heart’s not merry for our Merry is not...

How go on as if our heart were gay?

How go on when life's at a standstill?

How go on - we didn't have a say…

When her heart stopped—our heart was killed.

Mourning, Mourning on Christmas morning,

To do anything else we cannot.

Others at peace while our heart’s warring—

Our heart’s not merry, for our Merry is not...

See

Steven Curtis Chapman

(Lyrics)

Right now all I can taste are bitter tears

Right now all I can see are clouds of sorrow

From the other side of all this pain,

Is that you I hear, laughing loud

Calling out to me, saying,

“See, its everything you said that it would be

And even better than you would believe

And I’m counting down the days

Until you’re here with me

And finally you’ll see!”

But right now all I can say is Lord, how long

Before you come and take away this aching?

This night of weeping seems to have no end

But when the morning light breaks through

We’ll open up our eyes…

And we will see,

It’s everything He said that it would be

And even better than we would believe

And He’s counting down the days

Until He says, "Come with Me!"

And finally

He’ll wipe every tear from our eyes

And make everything new just like He promised

Wait and see

Just wait and see

Wait and see

And I’m counting down the days

Until I see,

It’s everything He said that it would be

And even better than we would believe,

And I’m counting down the days

Til He says, "Come with Me!"

And finally we’ll see...

We will see...

We'll taste and see that the Lord is good

The Lord is good

The Lord is good

Oh taste and see that the Lord is good

The Lord is good

Poem - Our Heart's Not Merry for Our Merry is Not... - Angie Bennett Prince - 12/20/09

Friday's Faith - No Presence I See…

No Presence I See…

Sure of what I hope for,

certain of what I do not see—

Her presence is what I long for

More than presents under a tree…

So we are canceling Christmas

this year—no presents, wreath, nor tree,

And though we long for Christmas past—

It’s through the veil we strain to see…

Sure of what I hope for,

certain of what I do not see—

Christmas busy-ness I abhor,

My present is her presence…soon I’ll see!

So we are canceling Christmas

At least as once we knew it…

Looking back to first Christmas past

God’s Present to us – His presence

Born in a baby…to be born in us…

Later, He’d choose to lose it…

Sure of what I hope for,

certain of what I do not see—

God’s presence is what I long for

More than presents under a tree…

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

~Hebrews 11:1 NIV

Poem - No Presence I See... - Angie Bennett Prince - 12/18/09

Thursday's Therapy - Let People Help You

Thursday's Therapy

You Need to Let People Help You

from

A TCF Speech – 8 Things I’ve Learned About the Grief of a Grieving Parent

by Charlie Walton

Part Six of Eight

First, a Side Note of Interest...

What a "small" world:

This week I received a “tweet” from a new friend I met on Twitter… It reads,

@AngiePrince Hi Angie We served in missions w/ Charlie Walton-His son Don lived with us in Honduras. Great kid! Sorry about ur loss-peace

and then this "tweet"--

@AngiePrince We always remember/miss Don Walton. He helped us drive a school bus from La. to Honduras & lived in our home w/ us in Honduras

How sweet to hear from missionaries I have never "met" but only on Twitter to tell me about a precious deceased child Don, of another man, Charlie Walton, whom I have never "met" but only through The Compassionate Friends, Atlanta whose meetings I have never attended in person and yet they accept me as a member through Facebook...

It seems this huge world is getting smaller and smaller to us every day as we are able to intimately get to know and love others without ever getting to meet them in person! Thank You Lord for Your amazing gifts of creativity like the internet that allows us to "connect" in such deep ways with folks we otherwise may have never gotten to meet!

Sunday, July 6, 2003 - TCF National Conference Closing Speech by Charlie Walton

Part Six

6. YOU NEED TO LET PEOPLE HELP YOU.

And speaking of tuna casseroles, that brings me to something else I have learned. You need to let people help you. Somewhere inside the human brain, there must be a little sign hanging on the wall that says "A tuna casserole will make things better."

People want to do something to help... and bringing food is the first thing that pops into their heads.

And, unless you want a lifetime supply of tuna casseroles, you'd better give them permission to do things, tangible things, things that will make them feel like they are helping.

I have heard a lot of people talk about how their friends came around immediately after the tragedy but never came back. What they usually forget is that those people said,

"If there is anything we can do to help, anything, please let us know."

Now, some of them don't really mean it, but a lot of them do.

Maybe a day comes when you are thinking "There is no way I can face the decisions at the grocery store today." Pick up the phone and tell one of your friends, "Remember what you said about helping? Well, would that include something as weird as stopping by the grocery store to pick up a few things for a basket-case who is not yet emotionally ready to see her child's favorite food on the shelf?"

Let people do things. They don't know how to provide grief counseling... but they know how to mow grass.

A friend of ours tells a wonderful story about going to console a grieving parent and saying as she was leaving, "Is there anything I can do to help?" And that parent said,

"You won't believe this but, on top of everything else, our washing machine just quit working. Is there any way you would be willing to wash a load of clothes for us?"

Our friend says that it was the most enjoyable load of clothes she had ever washed. She washed. She dried. She folded each piece lovingly. She felt so good at being able to do something tangible that felt like it was helping.

So, let people help you.

Thank you to Charlie who ministers to us amidst his deep grief over the loss of his son Don...

******

And, speaking of “You Need to Let People Help You,”

I don’t know who wrote this lovely poem, but perhaps it was written by a loving person who wanted to tangibly show his/her love for grieving parents in the only way s/he knew how. May we “let this person help” our grief with this very special poem, given anonymously!

"I'll lend you for a little while, 


a child of mine" God said,


"for you to love the while she lives,


and mourn for when she's dead.



It may be two or three short years,


or twenty-two or three,


but will you, till I call her back,


take care of her for me?



She'll bring her charms to gladden you,


and should her stay be brief,


you'll have her lovely memories


as solace for your grief.



I cannot promise she will stay,


since all from earth return,


but there are lessons taught down there


I want this child to learn.



I've looked the wide world over


in my search for teacher's true,


and from the throngs that crowd life's lanes,


I have selected you.



Now will you give her all your love?


Nor think the labor vain?


Nor hate me when I come to call,


to take her back again?"



God fancied he heard the parents say,


"Dear Lord, thy will be done.


For all the joy the child shall bring,


the risk of grief I'll run.



I'll shelter her with tenderness,


I'll love her while I may, 


and for the happiness I've known


forever grateful I'll stay.



But should the angels call for her,


much sooner than I planned,


I'll brave the bitter grief that comes,


and try to understand."

~Unknown