Saturday's Sayings - Crushed in Spirit with Sorrow

Saturday's Sayings

Crushed in Spirit with Sorrow

God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies grey and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to Your honour and glory.

~Augustine

*****

Thus, at the very moment I dreamed of the greatest happiness, I found myself most miserable: and seemed as if fortune wished to give me this taste of joy only to render the reverse more poignant.

The change I now experienced was as painful as it was sudden and unexpected. It was a change indeed from a state of bliss to a scene which is inexpressible by me . . . and wherein such instances of hardship and fatigue continually occurred as I can never reflect on but with horror.

~Equiano, Beyond the Suffering

*****

Grief is itself a medicine.

~William Cowper, Charity

*****

In my Lucia's absence

Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden;

I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear,

And grief, and rage and love rise up at once,

And with variety of pain distract me.

~Joseph Addison

*****

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.

~Henry Maudsley

*****

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

~Colette

*****

Sorrow removes your attention from the active life and focuses it on the things that matter most. When you are going through a period of extreme loss or pain, you reflect on the people who mean the most to you instead of on personal success; and the deep design of your life, instead of distracting gadgets and entertainments. You may be more open to the beauty of your world as a relief from distress. Beauty is always present, but ordinarily you may not notice it because of your priorities or your absorption in other things.

~Thomas Moore

*****

Victory comes through defeat; healing through brokenness; finding self through losing self.

~Charles Colson

*****

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

*****

Help me, O Lord, to throw

myself absolutely

and wholly on thee, for better, for worse, without

comfort, and all but hopeless.

~Puritan Prayer, The Valley of Vision

*****

Learn to trust Jesus always, even when you cannot understand something.

~J. Heinrich Arnold, Discipleship

*****

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

~Psalm 34:18

Friday's Faith - Death Stops All Clocks

Friday's Faith

Death Stops All Clocks

I wrote the following poem the other night after watching a movie depicting Charles Dickens' classic book Great Expectations, in which the main character put her life completely on hold, stopping all the clocks in her house when her fiance broke off with her the day of her wedding. She never came out of the house after that day and kept all the drapes closed, blocking all sunshine out of her life until the day she died. She became a prisoner in her own home and at her own hands...

Uncomfortably, much of her life resonated with these past almost-five years of my life...

Death Stops All Clocks

Lord, have I indeed, stopped all the clocks

Since her death ~ trying to make Time stand still?

Have I stilled my body ~ locked in a box,

As if, not moving through time, I could bring her back still?

OR, as time stands still, do I help myself mourn,

Giving my traumatized brain time to adjust...

Pacing myself by baby-steps, as, heart-torn,

My body/soul/spirit could otherwise "bust,"

Trying to do "normal" when it flew out with death's gust?

The reality is Death stops all clocks;

Death paralyzes into a tranced-state;

Trauma is sealed in limbic systems with locks;

Caught in a riptide, we give in--to navigate...

(While others look on with attitudes of hate:

Instead of wanting to help, they'd rather berate,

While we must be patient with ourselves--not judge,

For only with love will our grief start to budge

as we overlook those who hold Griever-Grudge.)

Trauma takes time to be walked through;

Within therapeutic limits, grief will break through.

The truth is Lord, my baby's with You...!

Respond to Me, My child;

I'll pour my heart out to you.

The One who died, your child to reconcile,

Is the One who longs to make His thoughts known to you.

The only way through Satan's destruction

Is humbly turning to my instruction:

Some sell their souls

To have lands and gold

Others yield their soul ~

In them, I pour My Love into their soul.

Love heals. Love reveals.

Love, your heart gently seals.

Just as Love now holds your baby close to My heart,

So Love holds your heart, My healing to impart...

Thursday's Therapy - Unpackaging The Princes' Top 10 TRUTHS about Child-Loss Grief - Truth #8) In Child-Loss Grief, there is no such thing as Closure

Thursday's Therapy

Unpackaging

The Princes' Top 10 TRUTHS

about Child-Loss Grief

Truth #8) In Child-Loss Grief, there is no such thing as Closure

Truth #8) Child-Loss Grief will last forever, this side of Heaven. There is no such thing as Closure.

When a child dies, the very ground on which we depend for stability heaves and quakes and the rightness and orderliness of our existence are destroyed. Nothing in life prepares us; no coping skills were learned. Parents who lose children are thrown into chaos. The loss of a child is shattering, unique among losses.

...Our attitudes toward life change dramatically following a trauma. We don't get over a trauma; we adapt our way of thinking and feeling as a consequence...

Along with "overcome," the word "recovery" is often seen in association with grief...

(G)rief, or any major trauma for that matter, is never overcome nor does recovery take place. The course of healing involves integrating that trauma, not overcoming it.

There is a significant difference. To overcome suggests that you get past or get over the trauma and go on from where you left off. But that is not what happens. No one goes on from any major event in their lives without having that event change them psychologically in some way.

The process of integration involves changes in the person's view of the world, in the way they relate to others, in their values, in spiritual feelings, and so forth. It's the difference between stepping over an obstacle and being rerouted by it.

...But if we think recovery means return to normal, can we use the word to apply to conditions like drug addiction, like having been raped or abused, like losing your child? In order to lead a productive, drug-free life after a period of drug abuse, the last thing in the world the individual needs is to return to what was his version of normal. He needs a whole new way of looking at himself, of dealing with frustration, of relating to people, he needs new values, new attitudes. He should not be said to recover, but to undergo a metamorphosis, perhaps like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. That person needs to change, to find a way of sculpting the former life into a new lifestyle.

We cannot be said to recover, in the sense of returning to a former self, from any major trauma. Trauma as shattering and cataclysmic as losing a child, as rape or abuse, as addiction, as natural disaster, and so forth, leaves indelible imprints on our lives. We are not the same having traveled that road as we would have been had we been spared that journey.

Events of bone-crunching intensity inevitably leave us different. The emotional journey people take to regain equilibrium, to be able once again to feel good and value life, to reform themselves so that their loss is somehow integrated into the fiber of their existence--that is the process of mourning.

But if they are expected to recover by friends, family, experts, and ultimately by themselves, and they cannot do so, they wind up with additional self-doubt or worse.

(Recovery) is a misnomer and creates a fictitious mind-set: that major loss is ultimately wrapped in a neat package and segregated from the rest of the experience until it goes away. This, we know, does not happen without serious psychological consequences.

Major loss needs not to be overcome but rather to be put into context. People don't recover; they adapt. They alter their values, attitudes, perceptions, relationships, and beliefs, with the result that they are substantially different from the people they once were.

Mourning, integration, adaptation. These are learning processes...

The bereaved parent has to come to terms with a world in which it is possible for children to die, a world of different hopes and dreams, a world of muted sunsets.

The victim never sees life through the same lens again.

If you look at it that way,

it becomes foolish to ask when victims of trauma should be over it.

If we are to help and understand trauma victims, should we not ask instead where they are in the process of learning to live with what has happened? Where is that process in five, ten, thirty years?

~quotes from the first several pages of When the Bough Breaks -- Forever After the Death of a Son or Daughter (1997) ~Judith R. Bernstein, Ph.D.

*****

Dr. Bernstein also quotes Dr. Catherine M. Sanders:

Catherine M. Sanders, a noted researcher and author in the field of bereavement, wrote in her book Grief: The Mourning After,

"Our culture has not been educated to acknowledge the length of time necessary to overcome a major loss. This lag of information adds to the burden on the bereaved because they themselves feel that they should have been 'back to normal' long before this."

As time goes by, social supports diminish because

"family and friends expect the bereaved to be over the grief in six months to a year rather than the... years that is generally required,"

Sanders continues. Even researchers who are working in the arena of bereavement put time limits such as three or four years for grief to be overcome.

*****

Tommy and I were in a Child-Loss / Bereaved Parents' Seminar led for professionals in the counseling field in working with child-loss, led by a premier expert in the field, Dr. Therese A. Rando.

Rando said wherever she goes to be interviewed, the interviewer always asks,

"How long does it take to get through child-loss?"

and Rando refuses to give them a direct answer. She tries to explain the lengthy process through which a bereaved parent must go, but she said the interviewer always follows up with the dismissive question,

"Yeah, but how long does it take to get over it?"

...and then they start tossing out numbers like it is now a guessing game, and she just needs to give the "answer"...

Wisely, Rando knows, there is no answer, for in Child-Loss Grief,

There is no such thing as Closure.

Wednesday's Woe - ~Death Changes Everything~ - Poem by TeriAnn Sargent

Wednesday's Woe

~Death Changes Everything~

Poem by TeriAnn Sargent

So many lonely nights just struggling to survive

death takes you to places you've never been...

It destroys all your plans and dreams

it takes away your reason for seeking joy

your reason for believing in the future

Years may roll by...

but never a time will come

for your heart to heal and move on...

Death chains what is left of your heart

to that one single moment in time

...and it never lets go

Death steals away a love

you just can't live without

leaves an empty parody

of what you used to be...

Your body lives in the physical realm

but your heart and soul are lost

to another time and place

It's not about the love you still have

for that is cherished as it always was...

It's about the life that is gone

the part of yourself

you have to exist without

when death steals your child it also steals...

a brother or sister

an uncle or aunty

a nephew or niece

a grandson or granddaughter

a cousin

a Godfather or Godmother

a friend

a colleague

a son or daughter-in-law

your future grandchildren

Death steals whole futures

and leaves you with only the past

Pictures and objects

and love in your heart...

Memories to treasure

from which you'll never part

All these...

for long lonely years

you have to make last

~TeriAnn Sargent ©2011

(Grieving mother of Jarred Sargent)

Thank you to TeriAnn Sargent, a fellow grieving mother, for her gracious permission to share her poignant grief poem with you.

Picture, thanks to am digital art

Poem, ~Death Changes Everything~ thanks to TeriAnn Sargent, grieving mother