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Monday's Mourning Ministry
Better Than a Hallelujah
~Amy Grant
~
The White Flag in Grief's War
This week, I was reading about a mother who seems to be fighting her child-loss grief. To be fair to this precious grieving mother, when you have children who are younger than the child you lost, you do feel the responsibility to "keep on keeping on" in a way that sometimes forces you to repress the normal grief surges so that you can function. But the way it was described by this one particular mother made it sound to me that it is possible to squelch the grief and move on with life, like it is simply a choice for any of us child-loss grievers to make...
In my experience on the other hand, the following is true:
Grief WILL "Out."
Our choice is whether or not to let this deep, complicated child-loss grief out in our emotions (to keep it flowing out as I tell my clients), and whether or not we will begin to help our brains process it through the neural pathways in a healthy way...all of which requires
a LOT of Grief WORK...
In my observations of life, if we don't help ourselves to process grief out, it can begin to take a toll on our bodies, on our relationships, etc.
Child-Loss Grief is too huge to simply ignore, squelch, or consciously repress. It WILL come out in one way or another.
So anyway, it was in grappling with all of that conundrum of how do we "live" amidst Child-Loss Grief and also, processing the differences of our grieving styles that I wrote this poem last night:
The White Flag in Grief's War
Father, shall I bear this cross for Thee
Cross of suffering Child-Loss Death and Grief?
You watched Your own Child bear the cross for me ~
Who am I, while earth-bound, t' expect relief?
Is it true Lord, You oft use Suffering's
Crucible through which t' show Your love for us ~
Th' Way of th' Cross, versus from death, buffering...
From th' manger to th' cross, Your Son suffered for us...
If my life's goal is to be more like Thee,
Why am I surprised You'd hand a cross t' me?
Help me embrace this cross, and follow Thee:
Th' cross: Earth's Basic (Training) Camp before Eternity...
"Must Jesus bear the cross alone,
And all the world go free?
No, there's a cross for everyone,
And there's a cross for me."
In this war, I'm not called to fight...
But to surrender to win the victory!
How precious, in a phone call this afternoon from my precious grieving-mother friend, Danielle Helms, she recommended the following very inspired song to me. It was literally "music," in more ways than one, to this grieving mother's ears...
Better Than a Hallelujah
~Amy Grant
God loves a lullaby
In a mothers tears in the dead of night
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
God loves a drunkards cry,
The soldiers plea not to let him die
Better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
The woman holding on for life,
The dying man giving up the fight
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes
The tears of shame for what's been done,
The silence when the words won't come
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
Better than a church bell ringing,
Better than a choir singing out, singing out.
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
We pour out our miseries
God just hears a melody
Beautiful the mess we are
The honest cries of breaking hearts
Are better than a Hallelujah
Are better than a Hallelujah sometimes.
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