Monday's Mourning Ministry - More Than Ever ~Gaither Vocal Band / Grief Cannot Be Cured ~ for Grief IS the Cure!

Monday's Mourning Ministry

More Than Ever ~Gaither Vocal Band /

Grief Cannot Be Cured ~ for Grief IS the Cure!

The question was posed to Jesus:

"Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this:

'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'"

~Mark 12:28b-30

Jesus was quoting here from the Old Testament the very commands of His Father to His people. God doesn't expect us to just sign on a dotted line and pray the sinner's prayer to be His children. He wants ALL of us, All aspects of our being just as He loves us with all aspects of His being.

• "Love the Lord your God
• with all your heart, and
• with all your soul, and
• with all your mind, and
• with all your strength."

Since we are made in the image of God and are called to love like He did,

wouldn't you think He would expect us to love our precious children

• with all of our heart,
• with all of our soul,
• with all our mind, and
• with all of our strength?

Certainly! Therefore it shouldn't surprise us that when a child of ours is killed, it would affect all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, and all of our strength?

Thus, as I wrote my poem today, I thought about all the many aspects of our being that have been devastated by our loss of our child, and noted that our Creator God's healing of us would naturally address all those aspects of our devastated being:

• All of our heart,
• All of our soul,
• All of our mind,
• All of our strength.

*****

Grief Cannot Be Cured ~ for Grief IS the Cure!

Please Don't Curse My Grief~It's God's Caressing!

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted..."

~Matthew 5:4

Child-Loss Grief:

Grief's like a baby being formed again,

Re-knit within my mother's womb, Being

healed cell by cell as only my God can:

Grief's overhaul with God's overseeing!

Don't try t' discourage this mommy's weeping...

Grief cannot be "cured" ~ for Grief IS the cure...

Grief's not a curse; God says it's a blessing.

Please don't curse my grief, it's God's caressing...

First, He lets me pour all blood from my heart,

Th' core of my heart's beating, poured 'nto His hands,

He comforts ev'ry mem'ry since her life's start,

Seals them with His tears as His love withstands,

Keeps His hands open for when Grief expands...

Grief cannot be "cured" ~ for Grief IS the cure...

Grief's not a curse; God says it's a blessing.

Please don't curse my grief, it's God's caressing...

He gently holds my brain in His nail-scarred hands,

Sees th' massive scarring, and each shrunken cell,

Plans th' great rewiring a child's death demands,

Th' complex re-knitting t' withstand child-loss hell,

Replete with Truth, Satan's lies to dispel.

Grief cannot be "cured" ~ Grief IS the cure...

Grief's not a curse; God says it's a blessing.

Please don't curse my grief, it's God's caressing...

Then He draws my spirit close to His heart,

Grieves with my grief over His child and mine,

O'er each impaling of th' Fiend's wicked dart,

Then reveals His Love o'er each dart malign:

His Son took her wounds in Love's Plan Divine.

Grief cannot be "cured" ~ for Grief IS the cure...

Grief's not a curse; God says it's a blessing.

Please don't curse my grief, it's God's caressing...

God holds my body like a newborn baby,

Weak in abject vulnerability,

Enwraps in His arms, He suckles me daily,

Nurtures through Grief's mutability,

Enlivens ever-maturing growth in me,

Enables wondrous Creativity!

Grief cannot be "cured" ~ for Grief IS the cure...

Grief's not a curse; God says it's a blessing.

Please don't curse my grief, it's God's caressing!

If Child-Loss Grief engenders (one a) newborn baby...

Be gentle with me, I'm still only three!

*****

Excerpts from my 4/28/10 Post, (More words about how invaluable grief is to the Child-Loss Parent!)

Wednesday's Woe - Would'st Thou Take My Grief Away:

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

~William Shakespeare, from his play King John

And to Shakespeare's poignant words, I add my verse:

Grief fills the heart up of my absent child,

In my minds eye, appears and talks with me,

True to her nature, personality,

Upbeat, laughter, e'er encouraging smile,

E'er reminding me she IS here, alive,

But with spirit whole, in rapt purity!

Then have I reason to be fond of grief...

"Tis my Father's gift, brings me sweet relief!

*****

More Than Ever

Gaither Vocal Band

When I started my journey in fresh childlike trust

I believed that the Lord's way was best.

I would read in His Word how He mothered the bird

And grieved when it fell from it's nest.

How I felt His delight when I chose to do right,

And prayed I would not make Him sad.

We would meet on the way in the cool of the day,

What a pure sweet communion we had.

CHORUS:

Oh, but now more than ever I cherish the cross.

More than ever I sit at His feet.

All the miles of my journey have proved my Lord true,

And He is so precious to me.

The road I have traveled has sometimes been steep,

Through wild jagged places of life.

Sometimes I've stumbled and fallen so hard

That the stones cut my soul like a knife.

But the staff of my Shepherd would reach out for me

And lift me to cool pastures green.

With oil of the spirit anointing my wounds,

There I'd rest by the clear healing stream.

Oh, but now more than ever I cherish the cross.

More than ever I sit at His feet.

All the miles of my journey have proved my Lord true,

And He is so precious to me.

Is Love's Old Sweet Story too good to be true?

Do you find all this hard to believe?

Has the cruel world we live in so battered your heart

That the hurt child inside you can't grieve?

Oh, I can't say I blame you.

I've been where you are.

But all I can say is

It's true!

You're wanted,

You're precious,

You're the love of His heart,

And the old rugged cross was for you.

Oh, but now more than ever I cherish the cross.

More than ever I sit at His feet.

All the miles of my journey have proved my Lord true,

And He is so precious to me.

Oh, but now more than ever I cherish the cross.

More than ever I sit at His feet.

All the miles of my journey have proved my Lord true,

And He is so precious to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kn8I9GK6Pc

poem - Grief Cannot Be Cured ~ for Grief IS the Cure - Angie Bennett Prince - 6/27/10

Friday's Faith - Groans that Words Cannot Express...- Grieving for Another Grieving Mother

Friday's Faith

Groans that Words Cannot Express...

Grieving for Another Grieving Mother

Why is it when I hear a mother's grief,

I am rendered mute, without words, speechless,

Full of pain – like jewels beneath the reef,

Never seen in light for any to witness...

Some pain cannot be expressed in mere words;

Depths of agony, words cannot bespeak.

Th' mother's love sent, silently undergirds

The fellow-grieving-mother rendered weak.

Like a preverbal child calls out her cries

With a yearning she's not yet learned to speak,

Yet her message very adeptly flies

To the heav'ns as swiftly as on bird's beak.

Grieving mother, when you don't hear from me,

Perhaps my heart feels a deeper calling,

To intercede with groans upon my knees

For you, for our God knows when you're falling.

*****

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

We do not know what we ought to pray,

but the Spirit intercedes for us

with groans that words cannot express.

~Romans 8:26

angel: http://www.clipartof.com/details/clipart/88409.html

Artist: bnpdesignstudio

poem - Groans that Words Cannot Express - Angie Bennett Prince - 6/25/10

Thursday's Therapy - Writing and Grief - The Healing Power of the Pen ~by Alice J. Wisler

Thursday's Therapy

Writing and Grief

The Healing Power of the Pen

~by Alice J. Wisler

She? She lost her innocence,

And I? I lost my life.

She? She lost her life,

And I? I lost my innocence.

~Angie Bennett Prince 4/22/10

It's revealing that the titles of Fraser's and Want's books and Hendy's film all end in interrogation marks. The genre of grief memoir is by definition questioning: trying to come to terms with what happened and whether anything else might have been done.

~Mark Lawson, Writing a Way Through Grief

− Grief changes you. No matter how purposeful you are or become it impacts you in ways you can never work out. One of the reasons I started writing again was because I suddenly needed a voice to record the things that were happening, and people couldn't necessarily handle what I had to say.

Even I, a few years on, cannot fully appreciate the state of mind I was in when I wrote. It's just something that happens.

The brain has its bleeding and it must flow somewhere.

~Comment to Lawson's article by "disordered"

Spiritual equanimity is so finely worked that all wild, wounding, or awesome events fire the brain but briefly.

~Robert Dash, Notes from Madoo

My groaning has worn me out. At night my bed and pillow are soaked with tears.

~Psalm 6:6

Pain can be exhausting. Feelings of sorrow, depression, grief, and fear can eat away at us internally to the point that we feel our bodies will waste away. We lose strength. We forfeit any sense of balance and control over our emotions. We’re reduced to groaning, powerless, grief-stricken creatures.

Emotions are very fragile things. When you’re working through old hurts or new struggles, your emotions can help you deal with them in a healthy way. Stuffing them, pretending you don’t feel grief or fear, won’t help at all. In fact, it will hurt you in the long run.

~Peter Wallace, What the Psalmist Is Saying to You Today

Keep a journal. You will be surprised how much relief you will find through writing down your thoughts, questions, memories, fears, letters to your child, or anything else that comes to mind each day.

~Carol A. Ranney, Family Grief & Bereavement Examiner

*****

Often our child-loss grief, even as complicated and traumatic as it may be, is not always grief that needs to go through therapy, especially if that therapist is not extremely understanding of grief, even more especially if that therapist is not seasoned, with a few tragedies of his or her own under their belt.

As you read the following quote from a study of grievers (some of whom had bad experiences in going through therapy with their grief), you will see why I as a psychotherapist am somewhat protective of my fellow child-loss grievers. This dynamic that exists of the possibility that therapy, if poorly done, can also add to our grief also prompts me to find self-help ways that we can utilize to better process our grief on our own. Today's article is one of those self-help ways to enable our grief to flow out in as healthy a way as possible. As I have said to my clients,

Grief cannot be cured, but it does need to flow, and we CAN receive comfort in the process of our grieving. There is a lot to be said for that!

~Angie

...(D)iagnostic decisions ought to be conservative in the circumstances of bereavement to avoid interference in a normal human process and iatrogenic complications with the associated introduction of professional interventions and their accompanying side effects. [Belitsky & Jacobs, 1986, p. 280]

~from Grief Counseling and Grief Therapy by J. William Worden

*****

Writing through the heartache of losing a child is some of the best therapy I have found on this journey.

~Alice J. Wisler

*****

The Healing Power of the Pen

~by Alice J. Wisler

(Grieving Mother and Writing Workshop Leader)

The first year after a death of a child is like having the (worst) noise possible running through your head each day and night. There is no way to turn the horrendous sounds off because there is no off button.

I wrote through that noise. I wrote from the heavy bag of emotions bereaved parents must carry—anger, guilt, sorrow and confusion, all the "what ifs" and "how comes" and "whys."

I wrote of longing for a blond-haired boy with blue eyes (whose) laughter brightened hospital rooms. A quiet spot under weeping willows at a local park is where I carried my pen, journal and pain. As I wrote over the course of many months, I was, although I didn’t realize it at the time, providing therapy for myself.

Some days when the weather did not permit a trip to the park and my body and mind harbored excruciating pain, I shut myself in a room, away from my other children and husband. I’d grab my journal and let the experiences of the day and my feelings freely emerge onto each white page. Grammar didn’t matter, penmanship went out the window. These aren’t a concern when you are writing to survive.

Writing the heartache, complete and honest, is a way of healing.

Our cry is, "Help me with this pain!"

We find ourselves lamenting as King David did in Psalm 13:2, "How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?"

David wrote many of his psalms starting with anger and agony and gradually, ending with hope.

Writing can do that for us. We enter into our devastation, get a good grip on what our struggles are and something about seeing them on paper causes us to realize the pain is not only within us anymore. It is shared, even if only on a sheet of notebook paper. It is documented and the more we write, the better we are able to understand and deal with our intense sorrow.

Some people think only the creative types write, when in reality, writing through the pain is available to anyone who has suffered the loss of a child. "I don’t have time," many say. "What will I write?" others wonder. The blank page scares some because they think they have to fill it with something profound.

But just writing a memory of your child or a few lines about how you felt after he died is a notable start. If we think of writing as a private endeavor and an effective tool, not a paper to be graded by a high school English teacher, we will conquer many of the doubts about our ability. In time, we will see that writing helps us become better in tune with our feelings and thoughts. It clarifies our lives and gives us understanding.

Other reasons to take the time to write are:

• To experience personal growth.

• To leave a legacy or a keepsake so that there will be recordings of what and who our child was.

• To demonstrate a way of cherishing our child.

• To feel a connection to our child as we remember the things we shared here on earth.

We also are honoring our grief, our pain and what has happened to us. We are validating its existence. As studies have shown, writing is healthy for our minds and bodies.

Professor James Pennebaker claims that writing actually helps the physical body when the writer is able to open up, by sharing deep feelings on paper over a period of time. In his study, half a group of students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, wrote their heartfelt thoughts and feelings about a stressful event from their lives; the other half wrote about superficial topics. Each group wrote for twenty minutes a day, for four consecutive days.

Before writing and immediately after writing, blood pressure and heart rates were tested and a galvanic skin response was done. Six weeks later, the students had their blood tested again.

The group that had written about trivial topics showed no sign of changes. But the group that had poured their pain onto paper, claimed writing had actually calmed them. Their skin was drier after writing and both heart rate and blood pressure had decreased. Their blood work even showed an increase in lymphocytes, the white blood cells that work to keep the immune system healthy.

Writing through the heartache of losing a child is some of the best therapy I have found on this journey.

I didn’t know how helpful it was. I just knew I needed to organize any thoughts and get them out on paper. Now, four years since my four-year-old son Daniel’s death, I see that when all the evidence is presented, there is no reason not to write. It causes dim skies to light up when not only the pain, but also the love and cherished memories, are recorded.

~ Alice J. Wisler

(Published in the Durham Herald-Sun in April, 2002)

Picture: http://bit.ly/d2oVtT

Poem - Aftermath - Angie B. Prince - 4/22/10

Lawson: http://bit.ly/d7W0BY

Commenter to Lawson: http://bit.ly/9mVXPg

Alice J. Wisler's blog: http://www.writingtheheartache.blogspot.com/

Wisler's article: http://bit.ly/avtKUb