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When the Bible Seems to Contradict Life

In 1985 my world was turned upside down when our three-year-old daughter, Becca, was diagnosed with osteogenic sarcoma – bone cancer. Her tiny little left leg was amputated, and she went through nine months of chemotherapy.

God spared her life at that time. However, we found out several years later that an unknown long-term effect of one of the chemo drugs used was heart damage.

She was married at the young age of nineteen and became pregnant within the first few months. Because pregnancy causes such a stress on the heart, it escalated her moderate heart damage to the point of only being given a 50/50 chance of surviving the labor and delivery, whether it was by cesarean or vaginally.

God spared both her life and the life of our precious little granddaughter, and we were very thankful. But from that point on, her weakened heart was a major issue in her life.

For the next nine years she dealt with heart issues. They became so severe she needed to be placed on the heart transplant list but wasn’t healthy enough. On Becca’s 28th birthday, she had major heart surgery, putting in a pump to run the left side of her heart. For the next eighteen months, she had several major life-and-death issues, which caused a dozen ambulance rides and three med flight helicopter trips to her hospital, forty miles away.

On October 12, 2011, our daughter’s heart finally gave out, and she crossed over to meet Jesus face-to-face and to receive her full and complete healing. (Details of Becca’s story can be read by clicking here.)

Why am I sharing all of this? Because as someone who has lost a child through death, and as someone who grew up believing the Bible is God’s Word, the two can be hard to reconcile.

Before my daughter Becca died, there are so many verses that I could agree with, and cheer for as the truth in my life.  But now, there are many verses that I have to dig into for a deeper meaning, because what I thought some of those scriptures meant, no longer made sense in my deep pain and confusion.

For instance, Ephesians 3:20 tells us that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or imagine, according to the power that works in us.” I used to love that verse, because I could imagine a lot of good things, believing God would do even more than those great and wonderful things I could imagine! And that included awesome things for my kids. Yahoo!

But when the Holy Spirit showed me how to see that verse in a totally different way after Becca died, it became very precious to me. When we are in that place of suffocating darkness after the death of our child, we can’t ever imagine coming out of the darkness. We can’t imagine we can learn how to live a life of meaning and purpose without our child here. We can’t imagine living out the rest of our lives in so much pain, just living in a shell wanting and waiting to die to go be with our child.

But God can! God not only imagines all of that, He can do way above and beyond what we thought was possible in our lives. So often we can only imagine darkness for the rest of our time here on earth. But He can do so much more than what we can imagine. He can bring light. He can bring hope. He can give us a life of meaning and purpose again, not in spite of our child’s death, but because of his or her life!

Here’s another one.

1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God has prepared for those who love him” (GW). This was a verse that used to be so exciting to me! God has more for me than I could ever imagine! Wow! How awesome is that? Lay it on me, God!

Let me just say, the darkness and pain of my daughter’s death was definitely more than I could have imagined, and it is not awesome, it is horrible!

But wait…let me share with you what I have discovered. This verse isn’t talking about the great life we are going to have with awesomeness and wonderful things being poured out on us continually. It is talking about the mystery of the death of Jesus, and how God was going to use it so that our “faith would not be based on human wisdom but on God’s power” at work in us (verse 5).  Now that is a real wow; much deeper than the shallow “bless me with all kinds of good stuff, and I will follow You” kind of belief in God.

Verse 12 says, “We didn’t receive the spirit that belongs to the world. Instead, we received the Spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things which God has freely given us.” So what has God freely given us?

How about for a start:

  • Comfort
  • Peace in the storms (or tsunamis) of life beyond our own understanding
  • Hope
  • Joy that goes beyond our circumstances
  • Triumph and victory over tragedy
  • Resurrection power and life from death

I now see these verses in 1 Corinthians and Ephesians as more of a promise for those of us who have been thrown into a place of deep darkness. It is God’s promise that He is going to bring us out in a way that we can’t see or hear right now, and we can’t even imagine how, in our place of darkness. This new understanding makes a whole lot more sense to me than using this scripture as a u-rah-rah-Go-God type of verse to be excited about Him being some sort of Santa Clause bringing us all kinds of fun presents.

How about you? Are you in a place of deep struggle, wondering how God could possibly tell us He has so many good things for us? Is He lying to us? Was that just something to make us think He is good, to deceive us into believing in Jesus as our Savior? Let me answer that with a resounding no! God is good. Not only is He good, but He is perfect in all of His ways, or He would no longer be God. If I could turn Him into a magic genie to make my wishes come true, He would no longer be big enough to be God.

It comes down to a matter of trust. Do I trust that He can see what I cannot see? Do I trust that He can hear what I cannot hear? Do I believe that He knows the full picture, and that what I am going through fits into the plan of eternity, way beyond what my finite mind can comprehend of life here and now on earth?

I choose to believe the richness of the full depth of 1 Corinthians 2:9. My eyes cannot see, my ears cannot hear, and my mind cannot imagine what God is going to do with my darkness, but God can and will do so much more in my life, as He starts to bring glimmers of light into my darkness.

I have chosen to believe not only that He can, but that He will bring life from death itself. After all, that is His specialty! Will you join me?

 

Are you looking for help with your grief from a Christian perspective? We would like to send you chapter nine, A Spiritual Fireside Chat, from Laura’s book When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life With Hope and Healing after the Death of Your Child. (This will also allow you to join over 1,000 other parents who are receiving a Weekly Word of Hope, which you can unsubscribe from at any time.)

 

Expressions of Hope is written by author, speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). Dave and Laura travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, including being invited to hold one-day GPS Hope & Healing conferences.

 

If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event or want more information on hosting a GPS Hope & Healing conference, click here.

 

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Are We Doing It Right?

As bereaved parents, I think we have all experienced the pain of people staying away from us. We feel like we are being ignored. And knowing the reason (because they don’t want to say or do the wrong thing) doesn’t seem to help, does it? We want to scream at them, “Just be with me! Just give me a hug! Just tell me you don’t know what to say but you are praying for me!”

Their silence makes us feel like they have turned their backs on us at a time in our lives we needed them the most. 

Death Doesn’t Care Who You Are…

Death doesn’t care. It doesn’t care about age. It doesn’t care about money or prestige. Death doesn’t care about fame. It doesn’t care about intelligence. Death doesn’t care about gender and it doesn’t care about ethnicity.

And so, with those two thoughts, I believe the Holy Spirit has given a nudge. It is time for me to say something, so that my silence isn’t seen as turning my back on those who need us.

I will admit, I have told myself that people don’t want to hear this kind of stuff from GPS Hope. They come here to be given hope and encouragement in their place of darkness. But the truth is, we are a family, and if it affects some of us, it affects all of us in one way or another.

Division of Any Kind is Never From God

My heart has been so heavy these last few weeks with what has been happening in our nation. I am guessing yours has been, too. Division is never from God, so we know where the root of all this lies. So, for the last few weeks, I have been doing what I can to listen to voices I have not paid attention to before. I want to get a more complete picture, because it’s so easy for us to only listen to one side or the other, based on our backgrounds and upbringings.

It is also easy for us to stay in the shadows, waiting for things to settle down so we don’t have to upset anyone by what we say or share. But as grieving parents, we know the truth of the saying, “Your silence is deafening,” and I just can’t let silence be the voice of GPS Hope on this issue. 

I Didn’t Know This Until I Started Some Personal Research

No matter what your personal view is on what is happening (or the why, for that matter) the fact is that racial tension is rampant in our nation right now.

I also want to say that no matter your skin color, your political views, or any other thing the enemy wants to use to divide us, if you are a bereaved parent, we are united and are on this journey together.

Did you know that African American parents experience a higher death rate in their children (especially their sons) than Caucasians by a significant amount? Based on 2017 CDC statistics, the death rate per 100,000 for black versus white males is 76% higher for those under the age of 45. (The age bracket of ages 15-19 is 90% higher.)  

That is significant in our world of bereaved parents, and I for one, want to say how sorry I am. No excuses, no blame, just a heart that hurts for these parents, both the ones who are part of these numbers, and the ones who have to fight the fear that they will become one of those parents.

My Personal Experience in a Tiny Town called Boynton

I have my own small experience of seeing how some people behave as if skin color makes you less of a person.

When I was younger, we lived in a tiny town in Oklahoma called Boynton, where whites were by far the minority. My dad took a pastoral position, with the understanding of having full support from the church to reach out to the black community. When the youth group outgrew the church basement, it was moved to the community center.

One evening, a church member of one of the white girls came to pick up her daughter who had walked to the youth group meeting. However, that girl had not shown up that night. Come to find out, behind my dad’s back, a youth group for the white church kids had been started by one of the elders, back in the church basement! My dad’s salary was drastically cut so that he had to resign, which is when we moved up here to Wisconsin. That would have been in the mid 70’s.

As a child, I didn’t understand. As an adult, I still don’t!

Have You Been Hearing Stories Like This?

I would like to share a couple more things I have heard recently that tugged at my heart, while learning what I can from as many people and viewpoints as possible.

I was listening to a podcast where a black woman shared how she had received some documents from her mom about the history of their family. All of them had good jobs and even their own businesses. When her son was told this, he got so excited and said, “You mean we weren’t slaves?” How sad is that, for a black child to believe that because of his skin color, it must mean his ancestors were slaves in our nation.

I heard a highly educated black woman talk about her experience of moving from the west coast to a southern state, and how her life changed to moments of fear and intimidation because of her skin color, which she had never experienced before, with stories and examples.

I heard another black woman share about how she and her sister were pulled over six times within one stretch of road in a certain city, for reasons that made no sense, including things I had never even heard of before.

These are all mothers… 

…who fear for their children’s lives, with valid reasons.

The one that caused me to believe it was time to also be a voice in this social issue was listening to a mature Christian black woman say that when all of this recent uprising started, she found herself very angry and siding with “her people.” After a few weeks, she realized this anger was not a righteous anger from God, but her own flesh being stirred up. As she took a step back, she realized how both “sides” were wrong, and both “sides” were right, and that she really needed to pray into what her part is in this, to educate and bring people together.

This is why I felt compelled to no longer stay silent.

It goes both ways

I know there are also plenty of stories of those who have done their part in bridging this shameful gap throughout our nation’s history. There have also been many people rising up these last few weeks to speak out against this injustice, who are either being ignored or “trampled on” by those who just want an excuse to lash out in anger, perpetuating the problem instead of being part of the solution.

We might be able to erase visual reminders of our history, but we cannot erase the effects of it, just like we cannot erase the effects the death of our child has on us no matter how much people around us think we should be over it by now or want us to get back to normal.

Yes, we bereaved parents are doing it right!

I am so thankful to be part of a group of people who look beyond skin color. When we meet someone who has also lost a child, there is a bond that goes beyond ethnicity, political beliefs, religion, and anything else that seems to cause division in the world around us.

Yes, as bereaved parents, we are doing it right! It doesn’t matter the skin color;  we hurt for any parent who has lost a child. No matter who you are, we are sorry, we are hurting with you. You have our hearts, our love and our prayers.

 

Do you struggle with fears you didn’t have before, after the death of your child? We would like to give you chapter 8, “Looking out the Window of Fear” from Laura’s book When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life With Hope and Healing after the Death of Your Child. (This will also allow you to join over 1,000 other parents who are receiving a Weekly Word of Hope, which you can unsubscribe from at any time.)

 

Expressions of Hope is written by author, speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). Dave and Laura travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, including being invited to hold one-day GPS Hope & Healing conferences.

 

If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event or want more information on hosting a GPS Hope & Healing conference, click here.

 

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Is the Enemy’s Objective Working on You?

It’s a good thing that I enjoy hearing from bereaved parents and writing back to them, because I get many emails every week.

Many of those I hear from share a similar struggle.  It is the struggle of doubting God’s goodness, asking questions along the line of:

  • Does God really even exist?
  • Is there really a heaven?
  • How could He be real if He is so cruel by allowing so many terrible things to happen in this world?

I thought I would share my answer to one of those emails here, because it is a struggle I often hear about. I will call her Madeline. She was beginning to doubt if God is even real, or if there is an afterlife when we leave this earth.

Madeline,

When our child dies, we are such a vulnerable target for the enemy. We are confused, angry, and all the other emotions which are very familiar to you now. You have probably heard me say that I had no idea that so much darkness and pain even existed or was possible.

You are right, God would be very cruel if He allowed all of these horrible things to happen to some of us and is selective on who He helps and who He does not. God is in the business of redeeming and restoring what the enemy corrupts and damages. So maybe, we aren’t looking at it through the right eyes. We are trying to humanize God, which just isn’t possible.

One of the enemy’s top objectives is to make us think all of the horrible things that happen to us here on earth is God’s fault, and that He really isn’t who He says He is. The enemy is out to do that by planting doubts in our mind, just like he did with Eve at the beginning of time. His specialty is lying, deceiving, killing, destroying, stealing from us, and then getting us to blame God instead of him.

God’s specialty is restoring, redeeming, peace, loving us through our doubts, anger, bitterness and blaming Him. Here is something I wrote in my book When Tragedy Strikes.

I can choose to believe there is no God or He would have saved my child. I can choose to believe that if there is a God, He isn’t good and He isn’t fair or He would have saved my child. Both of those options leave me feeling angry and empty. I have chosen the third option. There is a God, His thoughts and ways are so much higher than mine, He loves me with a perfect love, and even though I don’t understand why He has allowed this to happen, I still trust Him with my life both here on earth and for eternity. This option has brought me to a place of peace, rest, hope, and life again—even within the pain.

Death is a part of life. We will all die at some point. And as painful as it is, some of us will have children who leave this earth ahead of us. The question is how are we going to choose to live the rest of our lives when they are gone and there is nothing we can do to bring them back?

During grief, people either move toward God or away from Him. But when we move away from Him, we are moving away from the One who can help us the most. God wants to walk with us through this valley of death. He wants to give us comfort. He wants to give us strength. He wants to give us hope. These are all things we desperately need. But if we choose to move away from Him, we will continue to desperately need these things. This is a time to get as close to God as you possibly can. 

As I was writing the last paragraph, I got a picture of a distraught child crying uncontrollably. In the picture, I see a father bending down to pick up that child. The child is so upset he is kicking and screaming and fighting the father, who is trying to pick him up. Eventually the child runs out of strength and relaxes in the embrace of his loving father. And now that child can receive the comfort, strength, and hope he wants and needs. It is the same with us. Don’t fight the One who can give you the very things you need. Surrender, let Him embrace you and carry you in His strong arms of love.

I pray you get to the point where you can choose to believe God is bigger than death, that He made a way for you to be with your child again, and that our life here for all of us is only temporary. As a recent guest on a GPS Hope YouTube video, Wayne Jacobson shared, it’s like we are in the lobby, and the real show is on the other side of the door, behind the curtain.

You are on your own journey, and I am so honored and blessed to be walking some of it with you. For me, I would go crazy if I believed Becca’s life was over, she is nothing but dust now and I will never ever see her again; never be able to hug her or hear her laugh. I get so much more peace from believing that God sees the big picture, that He knew the exact second Becca’s heart would stop and her last breath would be taken, and He knows that about me as well, and He put a plan in place before that ever happened so that we could be together again. He was there to meet Becca when she crossed over, and He and Becca will be there to meet me when I cross over.

If you are struggling with some of these same things, I pray this was helpful to you. Our life is a journey, and we have been placed on a road we never wanted to be on. But you are not on this road alone. There are thousands who are ahead of you, and many who want to walk with you.

Those of us at GPS Hope are here to walk with you. To hear more emails answered about struggles grieving parents are having, you can head over to our GPS Hope YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe and click the bell icon to get notifications when a new video comes out.

You can also join over a thousand other parents who are receiving a Weekly Word of Hope delivered to them by email. Just let us know below where you would like it to be sent.


 

Expressions of Hope is written by author, speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). Dave and Laura travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, including being invited to hold one-day GPS Hope & Healing conferences.

 

If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event or want more information on hosting a GPS Hope & Healing conference, click here.

 

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Deep Grief Leaves Deep Scars

When we are deeply wounded, a scar is left behind. That happens both physically and emotionally.

When I was around three years old, my dad took my sister and me on a bike ride around the neighborhood at my grandma’s house. We had done it before. My sister was sitting behind him, and I was sitting in front of my dad as he was pedaling the bicycle. This one time, when he turned the wheel, I didn’t spread my legs far enough and got my ankle caught in the bike spokes. It took out a chunk of my ankle, and I ended up with a staph infection.

It took me out of commission for quite some time, and I didn’t get to play in the water that summer. I had to sit on the edge of the pool with my injured ankle wrapped in a plastic bread wrapper to make sure it stayed dry. We have a picture of me dangling my non-injured leg in the water while watching my sister and cousins splash around having fun.

I recovered, but I still have a scar on my ankle and always will.

At age forty-eight, my husband, Dave, ended up having quadruple bypass surgery. Recovery took a long time, and over ten years later he still has some effects from it and is on certain medications for the rest of his life. He also has a permanent scar, reminding us what he went through.

If you have been connected to GPS Hope for very long, you know that my daughter, Becca, had her leg amputated when she was only three years old because of bone cancer. (She died at age twenty-nine due to long-term heart damage from one of the chemo drugs given to her at that time.) Obviously, she had a scar on her stump from the amputation.

Becca’s missing leg can be a good illustration for to us, as bereaved parents. Having our child die is like having an amputation; a part of our very being has been cut off from us. The wound is severe, but it will eventually heal, but there will always be a scar, reminding us that a part of our very being is missing.

But the comparisons don’t stop at the scar of the injury.

Did having a staph infection in my ankle keep me from ever riding a bike or swimming again? No way! I loved riding a bike, especially as a kid (although I recently switched to enjoying riding my mini Segway) and I love to swim and be in the water, especially in warm places with beautiful beaches.

Did having quadruple bypass surgery keep Dave from permanently doing things like holding and playing with his grandchildren, or starting new adventures like selling our house and learning how to drive a 38-foot motor home that we now live in? Nope!

Did having an amputation keep Becca from running and playing with the other children? No, it definitely did not! It may have slowed her down and caused her to adapt to how she ran and how she played, but it didn’t stop her.

When these horrible things happen, including something as terrible as the death of our child, does it mean our life is over, and we will never be able to live a full life again? No, it doesn’t.

We need time to go through a “recovery” process (for lack of a better word) and need time to learn how to function with our child no longer here, but it doesn’t mean we will never be able to function again.

  • We will go through times when everyone around us is splashing and playing while we are unable to participate because of our wounds.
  • We will go through times when we can’t function and have to wait for more healing.
  • We will go through times when we have to adjust the way we do things.
  • We will forever bear the scar of our tragedies.
  • We will always have things that trigger reminders.

But we are not permanently injured to the point of being out of commission for the rest of our lives.

Our lives will never be the same. We will never be the same. But within that, we can make sure the tragedies in our lives are not wasted by leaving us incapacitated. And that includes the tragedy of the death of our child.

We can allow God’s love to wash over us, to heal us, and to take this change in us and use it against the enemy who brought death into this world.

And just think, all of our scars will disappear someday, both the physical ones and the emotional ones, when we join our children in that place where there is no more pain, no more sorrow, and all of our tears will be wiped away.

But until then, we need to remember…

Wounds heal so that we can continue living. Yes, our scar reminds us of what happened, of who was cut off from us, but it also reminds us that our life isn’t over. There is still more living to do, if not for yourself, then at least for those who love you and still need you in their lives, and for your child who is no longer here.

We can (and need to) learn to live with our scars in a way that honors our son or daughter, not in spite of our child’s death, but because of his or her life.

 

Are you looking for glimpses of hope in the suffocating darkness of grief after the death of your child? Join over 1,000 other parents who get a word of hope delivered directly to them every week. (You can easily unsubscribe when you no longer need the encouragement.)

Expressions of Hope is written by author, speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). Dave and Laura travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, including being invited to hold one-day GPS Hope & Healing conferences.

 

If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event or want more information on hosting a GPS Hope & Healing conference, click here.

 

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Tips to Help Get Through the First Couple of Years After the Death of Your Child

Here are some specific practical things grieving parents can do to help themselves during those first couple of years.

Some of these things you will immediately think, “I could never do that!” and that’s okay, even expected. But there should be at least one or two things that give hope and seem doable.

There are no shortcuts to this; only ways to help ease the burden of it at times. But before you get to the list of thoughts and suggestions, here are a few things that are helpful to know:

  • Anything under five years for the death of one’s child is considered fresh grief, so it’s okay to be a mess for the first few years.
  • The death of one’s child is considered a trauma (and many parents also have PTSD). Give yourself lots of grace, especially when others around you don’t.
  • You must go through this; there is no way around it. Sorry…
  • There is no timetable.
  • Moving forward does not mean you are leaving your child behind.
  • You will survive.
  • You are not alone!

After sharing those things that are important to know, here is the list of practical things to consider doing, to help you see light in the darkness and hope when you feel hopeless.

  1. Perspective – Ask God to give you His perspective on something that is plaguing you with fear, anxiety or panic because of your limited view. God has done that for me so often, and it really helps to see these intensely painful thoughts through His infinite eternal eyes instead of my own limited earthly ones.
  2. Do your best to stop the “What ifs” and “Whys” – They serve absolutely no purpose, they won’t bring your child back, and they can send you spiraling down further into that suffocating pit. These thoughts just bring torment.Instead, start asking God “How?” How is He going to help you get through this? How is He going to get you to want to live again without your child? How is He possibly going to take something this horrific and bring even remotely good from it? (Those are the questions He likes to answer.)
  3. Start a thankfulness journal – What we focus on will consume us. Allow yourself to start seeing what is still around you. Every night, make yourself write down 3 things you can be thankful for.It could be as small as I noticed a bird chirping today for the first time since my child died, or I walked by the bakery and it smelled really good, or I didn’t start crying today until I got into the shower instead of when I first woke up.
  4. Forgive – When our child dies, there are so many people we need to forgive from the person who caused it, people around us who are hurting us in our grief, ourselves, our child for leaving us, and yes, God. Unforgiveness is extremely heavy baggage we carry around. Forgiveness is not for others, to let them off the hook, but to release ourselves from them, lightening our load. (The Grieving Parents Sharing Hope Podcast has an entire series on forgiveness and those we may need to forgive. Go to www.gpshope.org/podcast episodes 1-8.)
  5. Laughter – You will probably feel guilty the first time you laugh. “How can I possibly be happy when my child died? What kind of an awful parent am it?” It is important to get yourself past that, by thinking about the fact that your child is beyond happy where he or she is! They are full of joy beyond what we will ever be able to experience here on this earth. They are HAPPY, and it is okay for you to be happy again while here on earth. This separation, as painful as it is, is only temporary.
  6. Music – God created music to be a pathway to our soul. I spent hours and hours soaking my soul in music that reminded me how big God is, how faithful He is, how much He loves me and my family, and sometimes just instrumental music as I sobbed, allowing God to comfort my shattered heart. Make sure the music you listen to isn’t about despondency, depression and darkness. That isn’t what you should be feeding into your soul and it will keep you in that suffocating place much longer.
  7. Pick up an old hobby or start a new one – I know someone who got the equipment and went back to the days when she used to make pottery. Another friend started refinishing furniture and making wood signs with sayings and now has her own indoor booth area locally to sell them. Find a hobby that will help take your thoughts off of your loss for a while. (Yes, the sadness will still be there, but it is helpful to be able to have your thoughts occupied with something that your hands are doing.) Sewing, gardening, get back to stamping, coloring, do paint-by-numbers, start a collection of something, take an auto mechanics course… the options are endless!
  8. Get out and walk or do something active – I know we have such a huge lack of energy that even taking a shower can wipe us out for the day. But we need to take care of ourselves and get moving, even if it is just to walk up and down the block each day. I know of at least two parents who started running marathons after their child died. Our physical health affects our mental, emotional and even spiritual health. Being in deep grief has gotten our bodies majorly out of whack, and the sooner we can do things to help our physical health (like move around instead of just sitting in a chair staring all day), the sooner it will trickle to the other areas of our emotions, our mental health, and help our spirits to be more easily strengthened.
  9. Eat healthy and drink lots of water – Even if food has no taste and you have no appetite, you need nourishment. I admit, I am one to run to comfort foods and am still paying the price with the extra weight it gave me. Even if it is one small healthy meal a day, and several small glasses of water, it will start taking an effect and you will be better equipped to handle the grieving process.
  10. Volunteer – Help others. This one is a key that many grieving parents find successful. There is something about helping others that lifts your heaviness a bit and opens your heart to warmth and goodness. Serve in a soup kitchen, volunteer at the local animal shelter, help at a local food or clothing bank. Help raise money for an organization that has a special place in your heart because of your child. There are so many great organizations that need feet on the ground to keep their doors open.
  11. Get a pet – I know of several grieving parents who got a pet to help comfort them and bring some joy into their lives after the death of their child and just can’t say enough about how much it has helped them, both emotionally and physically. (Most of them got dogs – I am a cat person, myself.)
  12. Be aware of your self-talk and your thoughts – His light is still in us, His peace is in us, the seed of Hope is in us. Your mind is active all the time. It is either thinking positive thoughts or negative thoughts. Do your best not to let it become the devil’s playground with fear, doubt, lies and anxiety. When you find yourself struggling with so much overwhelming darkness and negativity, look at the things above and pick something that will pull you out of that place. If that doesn’t work, pick something else. Do what you can to try and not to stay in that place for days and weeks on end.
  13. Think of heaven – our future to come and where our child is. Heaven is a wonderful place! And now that our child is there, we want to skip the rest of our time here and be there with him or her! (Jesus told us that where our treasure is, our heart will be also, so it makes sense that our heart is in heaven with our child.) Books are great for this! There are several great books that bring the reality of heaven closer, which brings our child closer. Fact: God gave us the gift of imagination. We can either imagine the horrible things that keep us in darkness and panic, or we can imagine the joy and fun our children are having right now. It’s our choice. One keeps us in chains, the other can set us free.

I want to end by sharing what may be THE most important practical thing you can do, which is to urge you to connect with others who are ahead of you on this journey.

I know you may feel like you don’t want to be pulled down even more by being around a bunch of other people who have lost their children and are a mess like you. That is exactly what I thought, so it took me three years to meet up with other bereaved parents. And when I did, I wish I had done it sooner, because it did the exact opposite. It was a relief and so healing to be around a bunch of other people who had also lost their child and were a mess like me!

They got it. I didn’t have to wear a mask or explain any emotions. I didn’t have to feel guilty for laughing at something or stupid for crying. I didn’t have to apologize for wanting to talk about my daughter, or for not wanting to talk about her.  And I found out that so many things that I thought were me going crazy and losing it for so long, were all a normal part of grieving the death of my daughter, Becca.

So, I encourage you to look for those who have found their way out of the darkness and are willing to go back in and walk with others in their place of darkness; those who will not only give you hope, but will be that hope for you, until you find it for yourself.

 

If these tips were helpful, you may also be interested in getting a PDF of Thirty Suggestions to Help Bring Ourselves Comfort and Take Care of Ourselves. Just let us know where to send it. 

Expressions of Hope is written by author, speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). Dave and Laura travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, including being invited to hold one-day GPS Hope & Healing conferences.

 

If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event or want more information on hosting a GPS Hope & Healing conference, click here.

 

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