Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, Grief and Trauma Life Coach, Psychotherapist, and Mother Grieving. On 8/2/2006, our precious 19-yr-old daughter Merry Katherine was killed along w/ 2 other teens via vehicular manslaughter. Here I share as we agonizingly process our grief and trauma. Email: MotherGrieving(at)gmail(dot)com. Coaching (Tommy or Angie): Call 865-548-4four3four / Counseling (Angie in TN) 865-604-9nine9two. I pray God will minister to you here.
Welcome! I am Angie B. Prince, child of God, wife of Tommy, mother of 3, psychotherapist and Mother Grieving.
Tommy and I met in graduate school in Atlanta, then married in 1979 and started a Christian Counseling/Coaching practice in Knoxville, TN where we still live. We have 1 daughter Merry Katherine, forever-19 in Heaven, 2 sons, Nathan (age 34) (wife Ashley), and Rollin (age 37) (wife Stephanie), and two granddaughters, Ellie and Penny.
In this blog, we process our grief over our Merry Katherine who was killed along with two other teens in a brutal car crash while on the way to the beach on 8/2/2006 (two teens survived). Having lost our daughter suddenly and violently on the cusp of launching her into adulthood, we were thrown into Complicated and Traumatic Grief. We share here our agonizing process of wading through the multiple twists and turns of shattered assumptions, challenged faith, traumatized body-soul-and-spirts, and devastated hearts. May our grief touch some of your own pain as we walk through this difficult but sacred ground together.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Scientifically Documented!
1) Copy the http: address above the line below. . . .
2) Paste it into your web browser's address bar. . .
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080620195446.htm
___________________"Addicted To Grief? Chronic Grief Activates Pleasure Areas Of The Brain"
OR "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted" Has Now Been Scientifically Documented!
. . . . . We now have physiological evidence via Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that such "comfort" is indeed, a fact! In debilitating, complicated grief after the sudden death of a loved one, "comfort" was shown by significant nucleus accumbens activation in the brain's reward network!
We have had two losses among our Christian friends and acquaintances recently. One was a teenage boy who drowned while canoeing, leaving his recently widowed mother and six siblings. Another was a thirty-four year-old mother of two young children who died after a long battle with cancer. Losses like these leave us saddened, stunned, and sometimes even angry. As Christians, though, we can face death and suffering without despair, for our hope is in Jesus Christ, the Giver of Life, the Conqueror of Death.
Yet it seems that Christians sometimes think that if we outwardly show the sorrows we feel, we are somehow demonstrating a lack of faith. In order to honor God, we reason, we must accept His frowning providences without even a flinch, like an abused boy accepts his whippings. This stoicism can become a mere exercise of will, so that what appears to be piety and faith is actually a work of prideful flesh.
God loves life and hates death. He is sovereign over death, and He ordains it, yet He made the ultimate sacrifice--Himself--to secure its ultimate destruction. If we love Him, we should love what He loves and hate what He hates. When we love life, we mourn the loss of it. When we hate death, we are angered by its destructive force.
Grieving like a Christian does not mean we do not grieve. It means we grieve without despair. We crawl into our Father's lap and lay our tear-stained cheeks on His shoulder, and trust that what He ordains is always right, will always work out well in the end, and that all our losses will one day be restored to us. It is running to Him and asking, "Tell me again the story of what You have done and what You will do to destroy this enemy." It is going to Him and asking for the strength and comfort we need to face the new reality of our temporary, mortal lives--a reality without someone we have grown to love, without someone we are used to having as a part of our lives and perhaps mistakenly assumed would always be there. It is knowing that although there is loss, all is not lost.
God does not tell us we will not have sorrows.
He tells us that He will be our comfort in sorrow.
He does not tell us we will not have tears.
He tells us He will be there with us to wipe our tears away.
He does not tell us there will not be times to mourn.
He tells us that on the other side of that mourning is the promise of joy indescribable.
~by Dory, {highlights mine} (Please see bio bottom of page, or click Permalink below)
If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to ‘glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’
A comfort to the God-aimed eternal spirit within her.
But not to her motherhood.
The specifically maternal happiness must be written off.
Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild...
~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
*****
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly.
Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively.
But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.
~C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
Picture: Thanks to www.123rf.com
Dory's bio:
Dory is a 40-something wife and mother who is the principal of a classical Christian school. She enjoys reading, writing, gardening, researching her family history, and taking an active part in her PCA church, all with her feet in this world and her eyes looking toward the next. She believes the Scriptures are the perfect Word of God. She believes she would be undone were it not for the electing grace of God the Father, the redeeming work of God the Son, and the quickening and sanctifying work of God the Holy Spirit.
A child-loss neighbor of ours lost her husband. Another neighbor, himself a widower as of one and a half years ago, dropped by our house asking if we could deliver some food over to Mary, now a new widow as of a couple of days, for him as she was not home when he tried to go by there himself.
~ What do you usually say to such a request?
What does your heart say before your body has a chance to speak to you:
~ ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND? YOU CAN'T DO THAT?!
So I said, "Sure!"
Then I start having second thoughts, regrets, "How am I gonna pull this off?" Later in the day, I look across the yard and down the street to her house. There are eight cars in her yard, so I know the whole family is there... I decide to go ahead and fulfill my now-promised favor.
Before I can leave the house, Angie asks me to make myself more presentable ("Button up your outer shirt so your yard-working shirt beneath doesn't show."), and "Oh, by the way, tell Mary we would be glad to stay at her house for her when they go to the funeral on Monday." (I don't think she had time to listen to her heart either...)
All I can think about on the way over to Mary's house is,
"I hope I can drop this off at the front door without anybody seeing me, and hopefully somebody will trip over the food when they go out to one of their cars."
So now I am walking through the yards, and I see that... Oh no! The front door is wide open with only the fully-glass-storm-door closed, and I can see everybody inside. So,
"O great, now I'm gonna have to knock..."
So now my body is saying to me,
"Hand it off, and run!"
(That's the next best thing to leaving it on the front porch -- Hand it off, and retreat!)
The problem with that was the daughter who answered the door was just beside herself with joy that I had brought something, and as I am leaning backwards (to get away), she is taking me by the arm just insisting that I come see her mother... But once inside, I have to go through five introductions before I even get to Mary (as Mary has five surviving children home for their daddy's funeral).
Now I had just been bombarded with people, lots of noise and activity, and I am trying to discern who are the kids, and who are the in-laws, when I see ahead of me this little body of my neighbor's sitting at the dining room table with her back to me. I walk over to Mary. She and I say our icebreaking comments~ ("Hey! Long time no see!" she says, and we only live two doors away.... Her kids are our age, so she's in her eighties.)
Then I hear her voice, the sweetest voice, and this sweet face looking up at me saying,
"So, it's been four years for you?"
(Feet, don't fail me now! Get me out of here!)
It was the sweetest thing I'd ever heard from anyone in a couple of years. It reminded me of Angie's mother, how sweet she was when she would talk about Merry Katherine. It was just a different voice from any other voice ~
It was the voice of one who had experienced child loss, unlike the voice anyone else has.
They get it when no one else does.
I had already been triggered (back to the days after Merry Katherine's death) just by taking food over there... It was all I could do to function. I just turned around and walked out, saying it was nice to meet everyone.
...I came home, sat on my patio swing, and bawled my eyes out.
*****
This is the song that most describes how I am feeling these days.
Bad thing is, it was also one of Merry Katherine's favorite songs that she liked to play full tilt on her stereo...
Harder To Breathe
~Maroon 5
How dare you say that my behavior is unacceptable
So condescending unnecessarily critical
I have the tendency of getting very physical
So watch your step cause if I do you'll need a miracle
You drain me dry and make me wonder why I'm even here
The Double Vision I was seeing is finally clear
You want to stay but you know very well I want you gone
Not fit to funkin' tread the ground that I'm walking on
When it gets cold outside and you got nobody to love
You'll understand what I mean when I say
There's no way we're gonna give up
And like a little girl cries in the face of a monster that lives in her dreams
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe
What you are doing is screwing things up inside my head
You should know better you never listened to a word I said
Clutching your pillow and writhing in a naked sweat
Hoping somebody someday will do you like I did
When it gets cold outside and you got nobody to love
You'll understand what I mean when I say
There's no way we're gonna give up
And like a little girl cries in the face of a monster that lives in her dreams
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe
Does it kill
Does it burn
Is it painful to learn
That it's me that has all the control
Does it thrill
Does it sting
When you feel what I bring
And you wish that you had me to hold
When it gets cold outside and you got nobody to love
You'll understand what I mean when I say
There's no way we're gonna give up
And like a little girl cries in the face of a monster that lives in her dreams
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe
Is there anyone out there cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe
is there anyone out there cuz its gettin harder and harder to breathe
I found this on my Facebook wall today, and thought it would be a good way to end out our Valentine's Week! This is the post that came in from The Compassionate Friends, USA (you can find them here on this link if you would also like to follow them ~ after you join FaceBook of course, which is, by the way, free! ~
Here is their post and following the post is my response to their answer. Feel free to join in and make your comment on Facebook as well. But please, share your comment with us too here at the bottom of this post! :) Thanks.
*****
2/17/2011 Facebook Post from The Compassionate Friends, USA:
Here's a question from Facebook member Kathleen Kane-Archer that's particularly appropriate with Valentine's Day just past:
How do you sign your cards (for any occasion) from your family? Do you include the name of your child (sibling or grandchild) who died or is there another way to indicate their continued presence as a part of your family?
We'd like to hear what everyone does, even if you feel it's not necessary to include your child, sibling, or grandchild in each card.
*****
Here's my comment back:
Angie Prince Hi everyone, and I am so sorry we are all here in this position of losing our precious child. My heart goes out to each of you!
When I sign a card, I typically name everyone who is living of course (me, hubby, my two sons, my daughter-in-law), and then I add, "and I am sure Merry Katherine is blowing you kisses from Heaven!"
I cannot leave her out; she is a vital part of our family. And as we know she loved her Lord and Savior, we know by faith that Merry Katherine is indeed living in Heaven, ("Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies;" John 11:25). And Scripture assures us "we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1), so I am sure she IS a "part" (by spirit anyway) of all that's going on down here!
Much love to all of you,
Angie
*****
Have a wonderful, peaceful, God-blessed weekend precious ones. My heart is filled with hurt for us all. May our Lord wrap His arms around us all and hold us up with all the power of His love,
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