Wednesday's Woe - In the Arms of an Angel

I can't seem to get this song out of my mind after listening to it a few days ago; it is haunting and moving. As it so moved me in my grief, may it touch your grieving heart as well...

Angel

~Sarah McLachlan


Spend all your time waiting
for that second chance,
For a break that would make it okay
There's always some reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction-
Oh...beautiful release
Memories seep from my veins
Let me be empty, oh
And weightless, and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight...


In the arms of the angel,
Fly away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie


You're in the arms of the angel--
May you find some comfort here...


So tired of the straight line,
And everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back--
And the storm keeps on twisting,
You keep on building the lies
That you make up for all that you lack

It don't make no difference,
Escape one last time
It's easier to believe in this sweet madness,
Oh...this glorious sadness that brings me to my knees


In the arms of the angel
Fly away from here


From this dark, cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel,
May you find some comfort here.


You're In the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2fyWJ8YQDU&feature=related

Tuesday's Trust - Religious Rain Dance

Tuesday's Trust

Religious Rain Dance

Tommy's Journal Entry From a Year Ago

Last night I talked to Angie about how when she mentioned yesterday about praying for something, my immediate thought was, “It won’t do any good to pray for that.”

One of the biggest changes in me after Merry Katherine was killed was my ‘prayer life.’ I now only pray for comfort from God and that’s all.

The agony and turmoil I went through for months right up to the time she was killed is not something I care to go through again. So, why try, it won’t do any good.

My whole belief and faith in what I was taught and thought about God has been shot all to hell.

I feel as though I was duped all these years into being able to pray for specifics and eventually my prayers would be answered.

I realize now so much of the Western version of Christianity is mixed in with paganism.

• If we pray hard enough,

• If we shout loud enough,

• If we sing long enough,

• If we give money enough,

God will be moved to grant us our ‘favor.’

All that is, is unadulterated paganism.

The underlying assumption is if ‘I’ do something like participate in a religious ritual or do the things I’ve already mentioned, this will be pleasing to God and He will be moved.

That is NOT the Gospel you dumb-a**es.

God moves because he deeply loves us in Jesus not because we do something or don’t do something.

You are going to get f**ked over no matter what you do.

It’s called ‘suffering’ and the New Testament is just loaded with it. The problem is no one is teaching the most obvious aspect of the Gospel.

The beauty of it is that God is there in the suffering.

So take the pressure off and stop the religious rain dance and bask in Him.

Western Christianity thrives on false formulas that need to be spoken or acted on in some way.

• Say these words;
• Raise your hand...I see that hand;
• Come down front;
• Eat this;
• Don’t eat that;
• Have you read your Bible everyday;
• Study the lesson;
• Be on time!”

All of the aforementioned activities are nothing but Tribal Behaviors.

Some big preacher chief and denominational council get together once a year and declare to the tribe the old and new tribal rituals that must be followed or you will be in deep doo doo:

• Don’t follow God;

• Follow the formulas.

According to the big preacher chiefs, we are to be disciples of the formulas not to be disciples of Jesus.

You think this might be the reason you can’t really tell a ‘Christian’ from a ‘Non-Christian’ in our culture?

The only thing Jesus told his followers to do was to

‘Love on each other like I've loved on you.’

That’s it.

direction photo: photo: http://www.funny-games.biz/pictures/501-oneway.html

Monday's Mourning Ministry - Beauty from Pain ~Superchick

Monday's Mourning Ministry

Beauty from Pain

~Superchick

Beauty from Pain

Superchick

The lights go out all around me...

One last candle to keep out the Night,

And then the Darkness surrounds me...

I know I'm alive but I feel like I've died.

And all that's left is to accept that it's over.

My dreams ran like sand through

the fists that I made...

I try to keep warm, but I just grow colder;

I feel like I'm slipping away...

After all this has passed, I still will remain.

After I've cried my last,

There'll be Beauty from Pain.

Though it won't be today,

Someday, I'll Hope again.

And there'll be Beauty from Pain.

You will bring Beauty from my Pain.

My whole world is the pain inside me.

The best I can do is just get through the day.

When life before is only a memory,

I'll wonder why God let's

me walk through this place.

And though I can't understand why this happened,

I know that I will when I look back some Day.

And see how You've brought Beauty from Ashes,

And made me as gold purified through these flames.

After all this has passed, I still will remain.

After I've cried my last,

There'll be Beauty from Pain.

Though it won't be today,

Someday, I'll Hope again.

And there'll be Beauty from Pain.

You will bring Beauty from my Pain.

Here I am. at the end of me,

Trying to hold to what I can't see.

I forgot how to Hope. This Night's

been so long. I cling to Your

Promise, There will be a Dawn.

After all this has passed, I still will remain.

After I've cried my last,

There'll be Beauty from Pain.

Though it won't be today,

Someday, I'll Hope again.

And there'll be Beauty from Pain.

You will bring Beauty from my Pain.

My dreams ran like sand through

the fists that I made...

~Superchick

Someday, I'll hope again,

And there'll be Beauty from Pain;

You will bring Beauty from my Pain.

.

~Superchick

Thank you to Jen from http://jenmagee.blogspot.com/ for this very inspired song that makes me cry... May God hold your baby Ella close to His heart even as he holds you along with the rest of us, His grieving mommies and daddies... (Isaiah 40:11)

song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-GPbYcTDbQ

Thank you, Jen. http://jenmagee.blogspot.com/

Friday's Faith - What If Jesus Had Gone to a Therapist?

Friday's Faith

What if Jesus Had Gone to a Therapist?

or

The Everlasting Longing

In a couple of our blog posts this week, we alluded to the fact that the very foundation of our grief is longing. The foundation of God's love for us is a longing to be with us...

Jesus cried out before He went to the cross as He looked out over the city of Jerusalem and was longing for God's people, the Jews to come to Him,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you,

HOW OFTEN I HAVE LONGED TO GATHER YOUR CHILDREN TOGETHER, AS A HEN GATHERS HER CHICKS UNDER HER WINGS, BUT YOU WERE NOT WILLING.

~Matthew 23:37

Jesus LONGED for them...

If Jesus had gone to a therapist, would the therapist have said,

We need you to 'get over' this grief and longing so that you can 'move on'?

God longs for us. His desire and longing for us was so strong, He allowed the sacrifice of His own Son.

GOD IS GOD! HE COULD HAVE JUST "GOTTEN OVER IT." He chose NOT TO. He chose to remain vulnerable so that He could have complete love for us, and we could freely respond to His love freely given. And ultimately, with His help, and with His great sacrifice of His Son to pay the price for our sins, we could freely respond to that love and ultimately completely return such a love back to Him.

GOD DOESN'T GET OVER HIS LONGING FOR US, HIS CHILDREN. SO WHY SHOULD I "GET OVER" THE LONGING FOR MY CHILD?

We are created in God's image. Our emotions of love are GOD-given, not there for some shrink to think he should remove for us to be "stable." (Are you, oh wise therapist, saying then that the Living God, who created the whole universe mind you--is UNSTABLE?) GOD longs for us because He loves us. Love often involves suffering --that's the price you pay to love someone.

Perhaps the world's longing is for something different. Happiness at all costs? Don't love your child so much that it makes me uncomfortable, so I'll help you to just "get over" them. Perhaps the world's longing is to "be God," not to "be with God." This was the sinful temptation Satan held out to Adam and Eve. He distorted God's truth, tempting them--it's better to be God that to be with God. God is all about LOVE and LONGING to be with us. And we as parents are all about LOVE and LONGING to be with our children.

Jesus knew LOVE was going to demand suffering. He didn't relish the idea of suffering. In fact, He asked God, if there is ANY other way, please take this cup from Me...nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done. But because His Love for us did include the need for His own suffering, He accepted the devastating "cup" of death even though it meant He would be treated as a heinous criminal with the tormenting and degrading death...death on a cross...

(Jesus said,)

"Now My heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father save Me from this hour?' No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name."

~John 12:27-28

Indeed Jesus warned us, we are going to have to die to ourselves many times as His followers out of our love for Him, and out of our love for the people He has put in our lives:

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am My servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves Me.

~John 12:24-26

Though we do NOT hear the message of "Oh no, you should not be suffering!" from Jesus! He just warned us we will indeed suffer if we follow in His footsteps of love. Suffering is all a part of it.

But unfortunately we seem to hear as much from the "Christian world" as we do from the "world" and the "shrink world,"

"Get on!" "Get over it!" (as if something is wrong with us if we don't!)

Guess what? We just love our children. And hurting when we lose them is all a part of it.

When you think about it, Death of your child is what's wrong - THAT is the disorder, or the disease in this world. Our missing our child is what's RIGHT. It just comes with the territory of love! It is the price to be paid for love.

There is nothing wrong with grief and missing your child!

What IS wrong was your child being killed or dying from an illness. This death is the diseased part of this fallen world that GOD DID NOT DESIGN TO BE HERE. GOD SAYS CLEARLY -

The whole creation LONGS to be restored--which God will do some day. Until that day--we will LONG for it to be restored. Restored to its original-creation-beauty, BEFORE sin and death ever entered it.

We will LONG for our baby, our child, to be with us, AND THAT'S OKAY.

GOD Himself longs for us to be restored with Him. It is the very reason Jesus died --

I go...to prepare a place for you THAT YOU MAY BE WHERE I AM ...I will come back for you.

~(paraphrased from John 14:2-3)

--Jesus did NOT say...But don't worry. I'm going to "GET OVER" My longing for you.

In my opinion, there will be an Unceasing Longing in our hearts for our deceased children until our face-to-face-communion will be restored. I carry around that longing inside me. I cannot guarantee that it won't make others around me uncomfortable. But that does not give you the right nor the permission to try to TAKE that longing away from me.

Thursday’s Therapy - Violent Death: Restorative Retelling - Part Five

Thursday’s Therapy

Violent Death: Restorative Retelling

Part Five

Distinctions Between

Violent Death and Child-Loss

As I discussed the findings last week of Dr. Edward K. Rynearson, (a psychiatrist and a victim of his wife’s violent death) in his book, Retelling Violent Death:

Death creates irreversible loss of our loved one. Such permanent separation causes Separation Distress. Such sudden and unforeseen loss of our child through death, a complete separation, creates a longing and searching for reunion with our lost child to relieve our grief and distress.

Dr. Rynearson of course does not separate out child-loss from other losses of loved ones. He generally studies and treats victims of violent loss.

In describing violent loss, Rynearson distinguishes "Separation Distress" from “Trauma Distress”:

Separation Distress is the distress that happens to loved ones of a deceased victim because we are irreversibly separated from this person we love. Such abrupt and permanent loss leaves the grieving loved ones intent on establishing a psychological and physical connection with the living presence, and with the longing for an embracing reunion with the loved one's vitality.

Trauma Distress refers to the added distress we feel because of the violent dying of our loved one due to the violent way in which s/he died.

Dr. Rynearson considers Trauma Distress to be the more powerful and intense of the two distresses, yet he admits Separation Distress is much more complex to walk through as we must reprocess all of our emotional connection with our deceased loved one. (A very arduous, tedious, and emotionally intense process indeed.)

***

I think I would argue with Dr. Rynearson when he says that Trauma Distress is "more powerful and intense" than Separation Distress.

Trauma Stress is induced in me by the violence that my child had to undergo in the car crash on that fateful night that brought her death about. Yes, her violent death is powerful and very disturbing in many ways! It can bring me to my knees in a heart-beat and often does.

However, to me the more powerful impact on me long-term, is that each and every day for the rest of my life, I will be forced to be separate from my precious child, no matter how she died.

Both types of distress are very difficult and powerful, and will crop up to haunt the surviving parent at any given time, each capable of taking you back to square one in your pain, anguish and loss.

We have to remember as we study his very helpful book about the restorative retelling of violent death, that Rynearson is describing ALL types of violent deaths of loved ones, while

We are dealing with

the severest form of grief possible...

the death of one’s own child.

***

Rynearson calls “possession” the state of being so consumed by any aspect(s) of grief, that one loses the “governance” of one’s life – in other words, is so “possessed” by grief that the griever becomes debilitated in returning to life’s pre-death normalcy.

***

{Wouldn’t you say “Possession” in these terms is the very definition of the effects of child-loss grief?!}

***

To reiterate, these are the types of “possessions” that Rynearson cites as events or dynamics that could heighten a person’s risk factor as s/he goes through grief:

• reenactment - playing over and over in our minds the possible features of the loved one’s violent death,

• reuniting - doing whatever is necessary to find and reestablish an idealized attachment to one’s child, or otherwise remaining inconsolable,

• remorse - feeling guilty or responsible that we could not stop the death,

• retaliation - a cold rage and strong desire for revenge for the death, and

• overprotection - going into high alert to prevent (what-feels-like) the impending loss of any other family members after we so helplessly have lost our deceased loved one.

Dr. Rynearson does acknowledge that (some) parents in their child loss are different from other grievers:

"A significant minority of family members, perhaps 30% of parents (Murphy, 1999), suffer persistent thoughts of reenactment, remorse, retaliation, and overprotection, for years instead of months.”

***

Here again, I would beg to differ with the doctor...

Depending on the intensity of the relationship one has with his/her child, I would bet that MOST parents suffer fairly persistent thoughts of reenactment, remorse, retaliation, and/or overprotection, for years instead of months.

The Loss of a loved one is

quite different from

the Loss of one’s own child.

In many ways, comparing the two types of losses – Loss of a family member versus the Loss of a child is, in my opinion, like comparing apples and oranges; they belong to completely different types and severities of loss.

When one has not lost a child (which I believe is true for the above professionals), I believe it is almost unimaginable for anyone but a child-loss parent to even begin to understand the kinds of devastation that are wreaked by such a loss as child-loss.

So unless a professional has actually experienced such a tragic, disastrous loss as child-loss, perhaps s/he should not even think they could capture the severity of child-loss grief anywhere near accurately.

***

I do appreciate however, the contributions Dr. Rynearson is making to help us better understand the particular stressors that come with encountering any violent death of a loved one. These concepts offer vital tools to helping us better grapple with some of the "crazy-making" ruminations that are also part and parcel of child-loss grief.

Excerpts from Dr. Edward K. Rynearson's book, Retelling Violent Death