Friday's Faith - When Assumptive Beliefs COLLIDE with Reality in Child-Loss

Friday's Faith

When Assumptive Beliefs

COLLIDE

With Reality in Child-Loss

The grief and trauma therapist said to us two weeks ago today,

When your child dies or is killed, your "Assumptive Beliefs" have been VIOLATED!

Have you questioned God about why your child died or was killed?

Have you wondered if God was punishing you for having done something wrong?

Have your former beliefs of "being protected" been challenged, shot in the heart by your child's death?

What do we do when our Assumptive Beliefs about God, Our Children, and Their Safety COLLIDE with Reality?

I was reading a Child-Loss Mother's blog* today. This precious mother said that she had an unspoken, one-sided contract with God – I'll take all the sickness and pain onto me so that my children will stay safe:

"If it had to be someone in my family that was sick, I wanted it to be me. I felt that I had an unspoken pact with God that any suffering to befall my family should come to me.

"I never shared my feelings about my pact with anyone. I held it close as my way of keeping my children from harm. Like most parents I wanted my children protected and free from as much danger and pain as possible. Even those times when I was faced with death, I knew should anything happen to me, I had no doubt that Mark would love and care for our children. My silent pact boiled down to its essence simply put was, 'let it be me.'"

She silently held onto this belief that gave her a "sense of control" in protecting her children. Then the police showed up at her door...

"I know how foolish, superstitious and naïve I was to believe that I could have a contract with God that included an immunity clause for my children. It was still the deal that I wanted. I was to be the sponge that dealt with pain, my children would be spared. Intellectually I knew every time I whispered, ("I'm) glad it’s me and not the kids,” that I was operating under an illusion of control. There are no deals with God and he doesn’t offer immunity clauses. The fierceness of my Mother Love however, prevailed over logic and reason. Time and time again I truly believed that I was cocooning my children from harm. 'Let it be me.'

"Then the illusion that was my pact shattered. Our phone rings late at night and two police officers come to our door telling us the words no parent wants to hear. Our son was dead. Jordan was killed in a car accident. He was gone and all of the notions I had about my accumulated pain and suffering being the buffer that would provide my family some immunity from further tragedy was nullified."

All at once, amidst her devastation, she realized the impotence of those silent wishes with which she had hoped God would comply. For some reason, God didn't. It didn't happen...

~Quotes from blog: http://alwaysmomof4.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/let-it-be-me/

*****

I read another mother's blog** today. Another child-loss mother who for twenty years has suffered with the haunting taunts by her (now ex-) husband that their two-year-old son being killed was all her fault. And she herself had taunted herself with two major sins she had committed -- would her sins have caused God to rip this child from her breast? she wondered. Her assumptive belief was along the lines of

If I had led an upright Christian life with which God could have been pleased, then this tragedy would not have happened.

Then, to my horror and disbelief, I read the comments that followed beneath her post. And a person who claimed to be a strong Christian piled on to this precious child-loss mother's fears by telling her, in effect,

Yes, it is your fault. You committed such horrific sins, why wouldn't God take your child; after all, that is what you deserve.

***

When I read this today, I was horrified, hurting for this mother already steeped in her own pain, only to suffer a blog-compatriot coming along by her side to dump the burning lava of condemnation into her lap, even worse, upon her already bleeding heart and war-torn soul...

Paraphrased from ~ Blog, "I Am Barking Mad": http://bit.ly/b8rk32

*****

I too have asked God questions. I had such complete trust in Him that He would keep my child safe, that when I discovered she had been killed, my first question to God was,

What?!

Were You looking the other way?!

Did You not see this coming?

assured that if He had, He would have stopped it. Like me, her mother, if He had known deadly danger was coming, He surely would have intervened, thrown a "pillow of protection" down to cushion her fall. After all, I knew He loved her at least as much as I did, indeed, even more... But it did not happen. God did not break her fall, and she was killed...

*****

– Our "Assumptive Beliefs" –

• What we think we can predictably count on to happen in this world,
• What we assume will be true of God's character,
• What we assume to be true about our child's safety

– are challenged, if not blown to bits, by the death of our child.

We are left in a vulnerable position to begin to put the pieces of our spiritual foundation back together at a time when we most need that foundation to be as solid as a rock.

*****

In the Bible, the book of Job tells us so much about suffering as we watch Job, a man of God, go through deep losses.

Job was "blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had 7 sons and 3 daughters, and he owned 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people of the East."

Job, like us, had assumptive beliefs:

After every party Job's children would throw, Job would ask God to purify them. He would get up the next morning and sacrifice a burnt offering for each of his children, for each of his seven sons, for each of his three daughters, thinking,

"Perhaps my children have sinned and cursed God in their hearts."

The Bible says that this sacrifice for each child was a regular custom of Job's. Was this his protective safety-net for his children?

One day, Job's children all met together at the oldest brother's house for a family celebration when a messenger came to Job and said,

"The oxen were plowing and the donkeys were grazing nearby, and the Sabeans attacked and carried them off. They put all of your servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you."

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,

"The fire of God fell from the sky and burned up the sheep and the servants, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you."

While he was still speaking, another messenger came and said,

"The Chaldeans formed three raiding parties and swept down on your camels and carried them off. They put your servants to the sword, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you."

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said,

"Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother's house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them, and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you."

Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said,

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. May the name of the Lord be praised."

In today's lingo, we would probably be tempted to declare that Job must be in a state of shock to be able to worship God at such a time!

After all these tragedies, Job's problems escalated. He developed

"painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head."

At first Job accepted the painful burden even as he sat among the ashes.

His wife could not believe he could just accept all this misery so she said,

"Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!"

But Job did not.

Then, just like the "friends" coming alongside in today's blog, Job's 3 best friends agreed to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.

"When they saw him they began to weep aloud, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads."

Then they sat with Job in silence for 7 days and 7 nights.

"No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was."

(Good job so far! But hold on, Job's friends begin to turn on him like the blogger's "friend" in the blog I read today began to cruelly turn on her.)

Like the blogger, Job was in touch with his pain and began to turn on himself. He cursed the day of his birth...

Then the first friend spoke up to Job with his faulty assumptive belief and dumped it into Job's already tortured lap with the same sentiment as the blogger "friend" I read today – that

"If evil has happened to you, you must have done some horrible deeds to deserve it!"

"Consider now. Who being innocent has ever perished?

Where were the upright ever destroyed?

As I have observed, those who plow evil and those who sow trouble reap it.

At the breath of God they are destroyed; at the blast of His anger they perish."

All three friends ultimately piled guilt onto Job's head, in essence saying,

Surely, he deserves such punishment.

Job first said he wished he could speak to the Almighty, to argue his case with God.

But to his friends, he lashed out:

"You however smear me with lies; you are worthless physicians, all of you. If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.

"Hear now my argument; listen to the plea of my lips. Will you speak wickedly on God's behalf? Will you speak deceitfully for Him? Would it turn out well if He examined you? Could you deceive Him as you might deceive men?"

Then Job proclaimed,

"Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him; I will surely defend my ways to His face."

He later said to his "friends,"

"How long will you torment me and crush me with words?"

Job eventually asked a question of God very similar to my own to God:

"Does He not see my ways and count my every step?"

Finally, the Lord answers Job...but not really with answers. God told Job,

"Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you and you shall answer Me."

Chapters 38 through 41 of Job found in the Old Testament of the Bible reveals God's amazing words – mostly questions – to Job...

Then, after God talks to Job, showing His own true character (similar to what God does for me in the throes of my grief and despair), Job replies an amazing response...

"My ears had heard of You

but now my eyes have seen You.

Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."

Blog One* http://alwaysmomof4.wordpress.com/2010/07/22/let-it-be-me/

Blog Two* http://www.iambarkingmad.com/spotted_dick_and_other_mu/2010/03/and-so-the-battle-rages-ona-followup-about-my-thoughts-on-christi.html

Pics

http://speckyboy.com/2009/06/22/29-cool-and-creative-text-effects-photoshop-tutorials/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/devosdelphin/3402119464/in/set-72157602180381081/

Job ~the entire book found in the Old Testament in the Bible

Thursday's Therapy - Complicated Mourning ~Therese A. Rando, Ph.D. - Part Two

Thursday's Therapy

Complicated Mourning

~Therese A. Rando, Ph.D.

Part Two

Traumatization Caused by Sudden Death

Challenges Created by the

Personal Traumatization Brought to You by Your Loved One's Sudden Death

(Rando, 2011, In Press)

1. Your traumatic stress responses provoked by your loved one's sudden death intensify and complicate your mourning, and create additional problems for you in other areas.

{In other words, you are not simply grieving over your loss; you are also traumatized by your loss, so Loss + Trauma greatly complicate your mourning, plus the Loss of a Child in and of itself leads to Complicated Mourning as a NORM for processing through your grief.}

2. Your capacity to cope is overwhelmed.

{Trauma overwhelms you, which interferes in your coping with your Loss.}

3. Your assumptive world is violently shattered.

{What you assumed to be true of the way things worked in the world (your assumptive world), the way things worked with God, the way things worked in many ways in this lifetime, are shattered when you lose a child. Assumptive beliefs have to be re-examined and sorted out all over again right when you need a solid foundation of beliefs to help you cope with the sudden loss of your child.}

4. The loss does not make sense to you.

{Your mind is confused and cannot make sense of something as absurd and out-of-the-ordinary as losing one's child. Plus, your rational brain has been stymied by the severe life-and-death trauma so that a part of the brain (the hippocampus) is traumatized and will not allow the material sent in by the senses to be processed through the rest of the brain (as would normally happen), thus leaving your cognitive portion of the brain (prefrontal cortex) incapable of ferreting out what you need to do to cope with such an unexpected death.}

5. You experience a profound loss of security and confidence in the world, affecting all areas of your life.

{When you are left so shattered by your child's death, your confidence in who you are and how the world works, as well as in your safety in general are shattered right when you need them to be solid. Such shattering of confidence and safety impacts you in many facets of your life as well.}

6. Emotional and physical shock prevail within you, in whole or in part, for an extended duration of time.

{In Sudden-Death Loss, the traumatization to your person is so great that the body defends itself by producing a greater "Emotional and Physical Shock" for you to be able to deal with the loss.

This shock enables you to better cope with the early onset of your trauma and loss; the downside, however, is that you can easily get a false sense of security that you think you'll handle this loss and grief fairly well.

Then months, and particularly years later, as the shock wears off and the raw grief feelings and traumatic reactions set in, it leaves you feeling almost "crazy" as you wonder why you seem to be getting worse instead of better.}

7. You feel dissociated.

{The traumatic shock makes you feel "shell-shocked" so to speak, so that all your faculties are not accessible to help you walk through the severe grief. Many facets of your loss, trauma, and grief need to be processed and worked through so that your prefrontal cortex of your brain can help you make better choices for coping and grieving.}

8. Your acute grief reactions persist for a prolonged time period.

{You have been traumatized which sets off cortisol stress hormones in the body that do not go away for a long, long time. These hormones set you up for many seemingly neurotic reactions because you have been so knocked off kilter by the death of your child. These reactions (i.e., hyperarousal, hypersensitivity, increased heart rate, increased anxiety, flashbacks, etc.) compound on one another affecting many different facets of your life in an adverse way.}

9. Your mind doesn't work properly.

{See my response to item #4.}

10. In your traumatized state after your loved one's sudden death, conditions exist for you to make decisions, agree to things, and/or take courses of action that you can later deeply regret.

{This is oh-so-true, leaving us with the mantra, "Don't make any major decisions for the first year after your severe trauma and loss." You also want to avoid as many toxins as possible (e.g., toxic people, for instance who do not understand you nor your grief, and thus do not validate you in the way you know that you need to be able to grieve) so that you don't complicate even further your already very complicated mourning.}

11. You can simultaneously have increased sensitivity, awareness, and/or responsiveness in some areas, while they are decreased in others.

12. The presence of greater anger and irritability, coupled with less patience, causes more family, relationship, and work problems to develop.

{Your "emotional plate" is already filled to the max, so anger, irritability, and impatience will surface readily when you are unnecessarily harassed by anyone.}

13. Your bereavement will not meet the expectations that society has for responses to losing a loved one (which tend to be based upon deaths that are anticipated).

{In other words, you can EXPECT that no one will "get it" when it comes to the depth of your grief and your long-term vulnerabilities, (except maybe other child-loss grievers who have actually lived what you are living). This unfortunate dynamic sets you up for all kinds of unrealistic expectations from family, friends, fellow church-members, even all those folks who may have been extremely helpful to you in the critical first days after the loss.

Such misunderstandings by folks who are so close to you and who have been so helpful to you at another time during your grief can be very disappointing and very confusing to you in your time of deep mourning (usually 2-7 years after the loss of your child). Being let-down by the very people you most expected to help you can cause secondary trauma which can complicate your grief even further.}

14. You have a higher probability of developing complicated mourning, and also developing a diagnosable mental and/or physical disorder.

{You can count on it: as a Child-Loss griever, you WILL HAVE Complicated Mourning! It simply comes with the territory of such a severe and personal loss. As Dr. Rando says however, such Complicated Mourning should be considered the NORM for Child-Loss grief, and should never be pathologized!}

15. There are definite issues posed by the "six-month phenomenon" and the "two-year phenomenon."

{Some people rush right into mental-health counseling in the first six months of grief. However, there is little the counselor can really do for you until many months, and sometimes even years later, usually somewhere between 2 to 7 years after the loss when your shock has worn off and the reality of the raw grief and loss are being more deeply realized. If however, you had already gone to counseling during the first six months of grief when your body was actually keeping you in shock, you are going to think that counseling didn't do much for you then, so how could it help you when you are now feeling so much worse. It is an unfortunate dynamic, but it happens, and then grievers do not get the help that may very well be out there in the professional field for them.

Then unfortunately, two to seven years after the sudden death, the griever is afraid s/he is "backsliding" in grief when the deeper mourning (without the benefit of shock) is actually normal, or to be expected, though it may be very difficult through which to navigate!}

16.Your inability to move forward as quickly on loss-related matters because of your traumatization places you in more situations where your and others' expectations of you are not met (e.g., you think you are not where you need to be since you don't have grief reactions of the type, and at the time, expected), and others think you should be further along or "over it" long before you could be, with your being pathologized as a result.

{This is where self-help grief groups such as Compassionate Friends or Bereaved Parents of the USA (both of these are groups designed for Child-Loss grief support) could be very helpful. Within such groups, as you hear other child-loss parents' stories of dysfunction, you begin to realize your own severe dysfunction within your Child-Loss grief is actually very normal. The people within these groups are typically helpful in accepting you where-you-are in your grief, and therefore, enabling you to accept and love yourself no matter in which Loss and/or Trauma issues you find yourself "stuck."}

{Pink italicized comments, mine}

Dr. Rando is working on a book now, written on Traumatic Bereavement, 2011, In Press, in which the above content should be included.)