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Our Many Triggers and Tears After Child Loss

Note: This blog was adapted from Chapter Three: The Garage of Tears from the book When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life With Hope and Healing After the Death of Your Child.

Some of the worst times those first few years after my daughter, Becca, died were when I thought I saw her somewhere and got smacked once again with the crashing realization that it couldn’t possibly be her.

For me, the motorized scooter carts in a store still trigger the thought of my daughter. Even just hearing someone the next aisle over in one of those carts can give me a shocking reminder of my loss. I have had to fight tears so many times when I’m out shopping because of triggers like this.

Sometimes I “win” and can escape without crying, and sometimes I don’t as the tears spill down my cheeks. I sometimes wonder, why don’t I ever see anyone else in the store who looks like they’re crying? Or am I the only one who struggles with this?

There are so many bittersweet events now. Almost one year to the day of Becca’s death, we had the blessing of a new little granddaughter coming into this world. She was given the name of Becca as a second middle name. And since then, we’ve had several more grandchildren come into this world, who will never know their Aunt Becca. Like I said, bittersweet.

One of my sons got married six weeks before Becca passed away. This is the only sibling who will have the blessing of having their older sister be part of that major life event. Weddings are supposed to be a day full of joy and celebration. Like I said, bittersweet.

Sometimes when I feel the heaviness of grief trying to come in, I will pause and think of my beautiful Becca inheaven. She is experiencing the greatest celebration of all. I will remind myself that this earth is not my permanent home. “For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18). At some point, life on this earth won’t matter, and we will all be united for eternity. What a glorious day that will be!

But until then, this is where we are, and we have to learn how to deal with life on this earth. The death of a child changes our lives, and it changes us more than anyone can even imagine. Only those of us who have experienced it can know what that means. And it is not that we are trying to elevate ourselves above someone who is grieving a different loss, such as a spouse or a parent. We would gladly not be a part of this elite club if there was any way possible to get out of it.

Is There Such a Thing as Grief Recovery?

In my searching for how to deal with my grief, I came across an article called “Grief Recovery.” As I started reading it, I discovered it was for any kind of loss including jobs, moving, pet loss, death, divorce or any kind of breakup, starting school…

It talked about how recovery is when we can have memories without the pain. I had a hard time reading it without getting angry. It is just impossible to compare grieving the death of a child to all these other things.

I’m not saying those things are not painful and that there is not a level of grief involved. I also know from others, as well as my own personal experience, that we can (and do eventually) get to a place where memories can warm our hearts instead of causing a stabbing pain. However, this article seemed to be saying that after you grieve the right way, you can move on with life and put the past behind you.

I might be able to move forward, but it is not by putting the death of Becca behind me! She will always be in front of me. Our children are our legacy. They are supposed to keep going when we leave this earth. Even if she isn’t with me anymore, I can’t leave her in my past and go on without her.

Even if we wanted to do so, the things that trigger us and remind us of our loss can come unexpectedly out of nowhere and bring back the memory, accompanied by unwanted pain once again.

I am a parent who took a lot of trips to the gravesite for probably a year or more. One day while I was there, the med-flight helicopter flew over me. I totally lost it and found myself sobbing uncontrollably. Later, I wrote on Facebook about what had happened, and a friend told me it was a sign of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I guess it made sense.

For many, many months after Becca passed, whenever I heard an ambulance, I would freeze in panic and my mind would immediately question, “Where is Becca?” And of course, there was always the realization of where she was, and the siren I was hearing was definitely not for her. Some days I am okay with that, other days…

The first year of special dates is always difficult for anyone who has lost a loved one, but for a parent who has a child missing it can be almost unbearable. For us, Thanksgiving came first and brought with it the memory of how the year before, Becca had insisted on hosting the family, even though she was wheelchair bound. Then came Christmas, Becca’s favorite holiday, and then the pain of the first time she was not there to celebrate her birthday, and so on. Eventually it came around to the one-year anniversary of her death. Of course, all of those came with many tears. Some of them still do, years later.

It has taken me an entire lifetime to learn that tears are a gift from God. Yes, I know some people can’t seem to cry. But that is not the case for me. Tears have flowed freely and easily for me all my life. I now know that if I don’t allow myself to cry, it means I have allowed my heart to get hard. I have done that before and will never do it again!

Jesus knew that when His dear friend Lazarus died, it was only temporary. And yet we know Jesus wept. If you want to cry, go ahead and cry as hard as you need to. Park your car in the garage and have a good cry. Let your tears be the gift God gave them to be, allowing them to wash away some of the pain.

You can go back to the garage of tears anytime, and as often as you need to. You have full permission from someone who gets it.

 

This was just part of a chapter in the book When Tragedy Strikes: Rebuilding Your Life With Hope and Healing After the Death of Your Child. To listen to the full chapter The Garage of Tears being read by author, Laura Diehl, click here.

Did you know that GPS Hope has three Guidance Courses based on Laura’s book When Tragedy Strikes?

  • How Do I Even Start to Rebuild My Life?
  • Working Through the Darkness
  • Looking Toward My Future

Click here to find out more about each one.

During the month of July, we are running a special. When you purchase the audio book you can purchase all three courses for the price of only two! Click here to get the promo code after purchasing the audio book from your favorite retailer.

 

Expressions of Hope is provided by Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). The founders, Dave and Laura Diehl, travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, and bringing intimate weekend retreats to bereaved parents. Laura is also a singer/songwriter and the author of multiple award-winning books.

If you would like more information about bringing Dave and Laura to you for an event, please send an email to office@gpshope.org.

If you are interested in bringing GPS Hope to your area for a weekend retreat click here.

 

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What Do You Call Someone Who Has Lost a Child?

After our daughter, Becca, died, I knew there was no word that could even come close to describing my pain. At the same time, I wondered why there is not a word for those of us who are still here after the death of our child. Someone who has lost their parents is an orphan. My son-in-law became a widower, and of course, a woman whose husband has died is called a widow.

This started to really bother me.

I did a search to see if I could find something. Nothing came up at the time. Since then, there is a word I have seen around here and there, which I talk about on the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast (episode 216 where this specific blog came from).

When we hear the word widow or orphan about someone, we know what type of life-changing loss they have experienced. But when telling someone about our loss, it is along the line of, “Her child died.” There is no word that identifies the devastating, horrific, heart shattering traumatic loss in our lives.

When we lose a child, it changes our identity, even if we still have other children still here with us. It especially changes our identity if you have lost your only child, or all your children.

Even though all our journeys are different, when you meet someone who has lost a child, there is an instant connection. It doesn’t matter what different beliefs we might have politically, spiritually, or otherwise. There is something that pulls our hearts together because you are someone who can relate to me in a way very few others can. You know what it is like to experience this loss that is like no other loss.

I think it is important to have a word that validates the fact that parents who have lost a child through death have a weight that is extremely heavy…heavier than most will experience in this life. Not as a label to give us permission to wallow in our deep sorrow, but one that draws us together to be able to strengthen and encourage each other within our life-long club membership that none of us wanted.

So, just who are we after the death of our child? Is there a word that unites us? A word that at least implies the depth of our pain?

I believe there is, and it is the word pareavor.

“Reave” comes from the word bereave. According to Merriam-Webster the meaning/definition of the actual word “reave” is: to plunder or rob, to deprive one of, to seize, to carry or tear away.

I think those are some pretty good descriptions of how we felt when our child died.

So, if we take away the “be” in bereave and replace it with a “pa” (because “pa” comes from the word parent: a person who is a father or mother; a person who has a child (Merriam-Webster)), we get pareave.

Then when you add an “or”  at the end (indicating a person who does something (Wiktionary)) you get the word pareavor.

The word pareavor sounds like a pretty good description of what happens when our child dies, no matter the age of the child. We are parents who have been deprived of our children who were seized and torn away from us through death. We are pareavors.

Who am I? I am a teacher, an author, a podcaster host, a singer/songwriter, full time RVer; I am a wife, a daughter, a mom, a grandma, an aunt, a niece, a friend, a cousin, a cat-lover, and… I am a pareavor. A parent who was violently robbed of my daughter’s life – a parent bereaved of my child.

Let me say that I am sorry you have a reason to even consider this as an option in your life as a description of who you are now as well.

No matter what words we use, either to try and describe what it is like or to specifically identify ourselves as someone who has faced the devastation of child loss, we are still all in this together.

We are pareavors – parents who are bereaved of our child. They may have been ripped away from us here on earth, which causes tremendous pain, but thankfully, it is not a permanent separation.

This was taken from the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast, episode 216. To listen to more than what was shared in this blog, click here, or find the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast on your favorite listening app.

 

Would you like to receive a Weekly Word of Hope written and sent by Laura? Let her know below. Your email address is safe with GPS Hope.

 

Expressions of Hope is provided by Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). The founders, Dave and Laura Diehl, travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, and bringing intimate weekend retreats to bereaved parents. Laura is also a singer/songwriter and the author of multiple award-winning books.

If you would like more information about bringing Dave and Laura to you for an event, please send an email to office@gpshope.org.

If you are interested in bringing GPS Hope to your area for a weekend retreat click here.

 

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Why Couldn’t I Save My Child?

Written by Alicia White

January 29, 2020, was the scariest, most traumatic, life altering, and darkest day of my life and my family’s life, as we lost our seventeen-year-old daughter, Hope, by suicide. Not expecting or ever imagining our sweet, beautiful, Jesus-loving girl to ever take her life, finding her was an immediate out of body experience that left me with the darkest of dark images that are engraved into the depths of my mind and soul.

The torment of the guilt, shame, failure, and “should of’s” and “would of’s” robbed me of peace, and for moments, still does. Along with questioning my self-worth as a mom and family minister who had given her whole married life to raising our four kids in the ways of the Lord and teaching them how to have an intimate relationship with the Father, I questioned my very foundation of belief in Jesus. What I thought I knew about Jesus was abruptly and painfully ripped out from underneath my feet. What remained were questions of the Father’s protection, His word, His sovereignty, and His love.

As the wrestling intensified and I tried to find my footing again, I began to hear the Father speak to me: “Alicia, I am inviting you into a new place of trust. The trust I am inviting you to will shift your entire perspective of My truth and My kingdom. This higher place of trust will demand everything to be consumed at the altar. There will be nothing left in your hands. Are you willing? It’s the road to your healing that I am offering you.”

Abraham and Isaac

This place would be known as abandonment as I began my journey of the road less traveled. In today’s Christian culture, abandonment is not a term we hear much. It seems to carry with it negative inferences and images that we become uncomfortable with very quickly. Surrender is the term preferred, written about, sung about, taught on. At first glance they sound synonymous with each other. Although they do have similarities, they are also much different from each other.

Those tender first steps we walk with the Father as He beckons us to the cross come from a place of surrender. Here we find an exchange of the heaviness of life to the light yoke of Jesus. We find the love of the Father stretched out on a cross meant for us, but Jesus took our place.

As parents, the image of surrender fits inside the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, in an authentic desire to obey and please the Father, takes his child by the hand and goes up to the mountain of sacrifice. Did he do it with a knowing in his spirit that the Father really would not take his son? We do not know. But we do know that he went through the motions of being a good father and parent and surrendered his son into God’s hands. For Abraham, surrender and obedience came with a ram in the thicket. God had provided a “way out” of the imminent death of his child. Abraham’s reward was to hold his promise (his son) in his arms for the rest of his days on earth.

As children of God, we shout out with sounds of joy as we pat ourselves on the back and say, “I surrender all,” as if we have made our walk up to the mountain of sacrifice as well. But what happens when that ram never reveals itself; when the cross is made for you and not Jesus?

What happens when you take your child by the hand and lead them to the foot of the cross and find out you do not get to hold your promise for the rest of your days? What happens when you look in horror at an altar that is marked with your child’s death and the reality that there is no ram to sacrifice instead as a way out?

The More Difficult Way of Abandonment

Abandonment. This is the longer and deeper walk on the road less traveled. Abandonment is to relinquish the right and ownership to what I hold most dear to my heart. Abandonment is to hold no desire or feeling of ownership of a thing or person, willingly giving up all rights and responsibility to another.  One who is fully abandoned to the Father has no desire for ownership of their life or the things they even love. Abandoned children of God do not have a desire to take back what was never theirs to begin with. There is no power struggle between deity and man in this place of holy abandonment.

Abandonment requires the release of all BUTS. We all have BUTS that are some of our best kept secrets of unrelinquished control over our life. They hide in the depths of our soul keeping our flesh in a place of comfort and security. If we dare to unmask them in a place of honesty and vulnerability, they sound a bit like this:

“Take my life, Jesus, BUT not my job. Do what you want, Jesus, BUT do not make me do that. I give you my marriage, Jesus, BUT I am not the one that needs to change. I give you all of me, BUT don’t let me get sick and die.”  And let us be , honest moms and dads, the biggest BUT in the room for us is, “Jesus, I give you my children, BUT keep them safe and from harm’s way.” BUT when the Father takes away your BUT and what you believe contradicts truth, what foundation will you stand on?

In one moment, what I thought I knew about Jesus and the Father was pulled out from underneath me and the mask suddenly came off my BUT that had been there all along. After all the years we spent declaring the word over our children, pleading the blood, interceding, teaching them the Word and taking them places to encounter His presence, the worst of all darkness had just happened? How could He allow this to happen? I trusted Him. Or did I?

Are We Being Honest With Ourselves?

The harsh truth is that I trusted Him on my own terms; the BUTS stood between us. I had to ask myself that if the perfect will of the Father meant that Hope was safer received in heaven than  saved for earth, was I going to be ok with that? Could I trust the Father when no BUTS stood between us? I felt uncomfortable, I felt insecure, I felt no place to stand my footing, until I realigned my perspective with His and came to this resolve:

  • I abandon my right to Hope. She was never mine and I have no rights to her.
  • I abandon my responsibility to save her into the hands of the only One who can.
  • I abandon my rights to receive the answers to all my questions.

God’s ways and thoughts are not mine. I finally released my control to the Father and removed the BUTS. This is the journey of abandonment.

Surrender is to reluctantly give up what you take ownership in; what you feel is yours with a list of terms and conditions to go along with it. When an army surrenders to another, they do it by force or a feeling of “having to.” There is no real trust to the one they surrendered to. Surrender is not necessarily giving up your rights to the person you surrendered to. Just because a nation must surrender land to another nation does not mean they do not feel that land is still theirs.

A feeling of rights, or ownership, often creates a battle of trying to take back what you think is yours. We often do the same thing with our surrender to the Lord. We lay something down, and with a lack of trust and full abandonment in the Lord, the next day we are trying to pick it back up.

For months, I was in a battle with the Father, trying to put a demand on my daughter. I wanted her here with me. I was determined that God was going to answer the questions I had because she was mine and it was not fair. I had surrendered her to Jesus at the mountain of sacrifice and deserved her in my arms all the days of my life.

Giving Up Our Rights Brings Healing

True healing started to come when I decided to abandon to the Father and give up my rights to have her with me, along with not getting the answers I so wanted. The battle between heaven and earth stopped when I began to say out loud, “Father, I give up my rights to Hope, she is yours and I trust you with her.”

The strings attached to the walk of my surrender gave way to the freedom, healing and peace that I found in abandonment.

Although the pain and grief remain, the higher perspective is my gain that earth cannot satisfy. “Take up your cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24-26) was now not just a Christian cliché or my duty of obedience expecting the ram in the thicket, but a call to lay my life and the life of my family on the altar of abandonment, that we may lose our life to gain it.

I have begun the walk of abandoning my rights to have it my way, with my terms and conditions; to truly believe that the goodness of God will prevail (Exodus 34:6), and that all things work for the good of all who are called by His name (Romans 8:28).

I believe this higher walk of abandonment, this road less traveled, will become the walk to resurrection power for all of us who have partaken of His cup of suffering in such a deep sacrificial way. Vulnerability that leaves you before the cross naked, having given the unthinkable ALL, places a demand on a cloak from heaven threaded with scarlet and draped in resurrection power.

When “worthy of it all” becomes your highest worship and there is nothing left in your hands, the Father’s love and goodness will remain. Yes, the road the Father has allowed those of us who have lost a child to walk on, is a road full of pain and suffering. But I also believe it is a road of great honor and privilege that allows us to encounter and experience the Father in way that few get to. There is an intimate communion with the Father and His son, Jesus, who knows what it is like to truly give ALL. He has entrusted us to walk the road less traveled so that we may encounter His resurrection and true life that is found in full abandonment.

This is the hope of His glory; that His children would live a holy abandoned life and that their eyes would be fixed on eternity.

“So no wonder we don’t give up. For even though our outer person gradually wears out, our inner being is renewed every single day. We view our slight, short-lived troubles in the light of eternity. We see our difficulties as the substance that produces for us an eternal, weighty glory far beyond all comparison, because we do not focus our attention on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but the unseen realm is eternal,” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (TPT).

I pray you put on the lenses of eternity and learn to live from heaven’s perspective. The suffering of this world becomes so much dimmer with each step you take, and total abandonment becomes much easier. We will also realize that what we could not “save” our child from, is entering into their eternal home of glory ahead of us.

Some of this was shared in Laura’s recent interview with Alicia on the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast. To hear that conversation, and to have Alicia pray over you, click here.

Do you struggle with guilt, blaming yourself for not being able to save your child? This is not from God, and He wants to release you. If you would like help, let us send you Ten Tips to Help Overcome Grief. (This will also put you on our list to receive a Weekly Word of Hope that you can unsubscribe from at any time.

 

Expressions of Hope is provided by Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). The founders, Dave and Laura Diehl, travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, and bringing intimate weekend retreats to bereaved parents. Laura is also a singer/songwriter and the author of multiple award-winning books.

If you would like more information about bringing Dave and Laura to you for an event, please send an email to office@gpshope.org.

If you are interested in bringing GPS Hope to your area for a weekend retreat click here.

 

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Five Lessons About Grief from Climbing a Mountain

A few weeks ago, the Hope Mobile (our 38-foot motor home that we live in full-time) was parked at a campground in a beautiful valley, surrounded by small mountains. As I would go walking in the mornings, a few of those times I found myself following a trail that took me up one of those mountains.

One morning I realized how my climb up the mountain paralleled several things in my grief journey after my oldest daughter, Becca, died. Here are five of those things.

  1. It’s a lot of work climbing up those mountains. And when you get to the top, it’s wonderful, but you don’t get to stay there. You must work your way back down.

The earlier we are in our grief journey, the harder the climb is and the less time we stay at the top. We find ourselves almost immediately tumbling back down the mountainside, back into the valley. With anything in life, mountaintop experiences are great, even exhilarating. But we don’t get to stay there. It is in the valley where most maturing happens and life-lessons are learned, including how much we need to depend on God to be our guide though this life.

  1. What kept me moving forward and continuing to go up the mountain was not being able to see the full path in front of me. I freely admit I would not have kept going if I could have seen the full path all the way to the top. I kept thinking, “I’ll just go up to that point where it curves, and I’ll probably be at the top.” And when I would turn that corner, there would be more path and I would think again, “Okay, let me get to that point up there,” and I would get there and find more path.

It’s a good thing we can’t see the full path of our lives ahead of time. We can only take a little bit at a time. But that doesn’t mean every corner we turn is bad, it is just unknown what lies ahead. If we keep going, based on what we can see, and not worry about what we can’t see, we will eventually make it all the way.

  1. The last mountain I climbed was taking longer than I thought it would. I was getting quite tired and I started hoping I would meet up with the path I was on the day before, which would be a quicker way back down. As I kept going forward, looking for that other path, I eventually found myself at the very top of this new mountain. As I looked to my right, I was shocked to see that waaaayyyy down below me was the top of the mountain where I had stood the day before. I had no idea that I was climbing that much higher!

As we keep walking on this journey, one step at a time (sometimes one breath at a time) we will one day suddenly discover that we are doing better than we ever thought we could or would. At the time though, it feels like we can’t go on and things will never get better.

  1. Quite often I was paying so much attention to the path and my steps, that I was missing the view, so sometimes I would stop and look out, to enjoy what was around me.

Quite often we are so consumed by our grief (and rightly so, especially those first few weeks and months) that we don’t see what is going on around us. There are good things all around us; things we can still be thankful for. Sometimes we need to force ourselves to put our grief on pause to look for those things.

  1. I also used those times of looking around at the view to get rested before continuing.

Grief is a lot of hard work! It can take everything we have just to be in survival mode. It’s okay to rest when you are weary, when triggers hit hard, and you don’t have any energy to do even the simplest things like take a shower or put a frozen pizza in the oven.

And if you are someone who has faced the death of your child, it is one of the worst traumas a person can go through on this earth. (You will find that experts support this, saying we are going through what is called “traumatic grief” and that five years and less is considered fresh grief for a parent who has lost a child.) You have been through a trauma and can possibly even be dealing with PTSD.

Rest is not only okay, it is what you need, in every area, physically, emotionally, and yes, even spiritually in some ways.

There is one last comparison I would like to share with you, which might possibly be the most important one.

I can show you lots of pictures I took while climbing these mountains. I can tell you some of the things God was speaking to me, but it was my personal climb. Even if you had been with me, we would have seen things through our own eyes and our own thoughts.

In other words, we can be on the same path together, and yet we will be on our own personal separate climb. I would only be able to do so much to pull you into what I was seeing and how I was feeling. I could point something out to you, but you would be seeing it through your own lens of life. You would be having your own experience. It would be with me, and yet separate from me. Some of our climb would be the same experience, and some of it would be very different.

We are each on our own grief journey. Even if you are like me and have lost a child from this earth, there is no way I know how you feel. I know how I felt after my daughter died. I know the suffocating darkness I experienced. I know how I would forget to breath and have to consciously tell myself to take a breath. I know how I wanted to stop hurting so bad and how the darkness lasted for so much longer than I thought it should.

I know how I didn’t want to live, which didn’t make sense because I knew in my head I had so much still to live for. (I had a loving husband, four other children and two grandchildren at the time – one of those being the 9-year-old daughter of my daughter who had died).  None of that mattered. My heart wanted to be with my daughter who was now gone from this earth, and I knew I couldn’t stay here if the rest of my life was going to be this painful. (I wasn’t suicidal, I just didn’t want to live any more and begged God to take me out of here!)

You see, we each have many of the same grief experiences, but it is all though our own personal journey of our personal relationship with the one who died. I know how I felt, but that doesn’t mean I know how you feel, even if you lost a daughter the same way I lost my daughter, through heart damage caused by chemotherapy.

I want to encourage you to keep climbing. If you started and found yourself back down in the valley, go again after you are rested. And even though we each have our own experience, please know that if you are a bereaved parent, we are here at GPS Hope (Grieving Parents Sharing Hope), walking with you every step of the way.

 

For those who would like some helpful ideas on how to take care of yourself on this grief journey, we would like to send you a free resource. To have Thirty Ways to Bring Yourself Comfort and Take Care of Yourself delivered directly to your inbox, just submit your name and email address below.

Note: This will connect you with GPS Hope, including joining over 1,000 bereaved parents who receive a Weekly Word of Hope email on our journey together. If you want to stop receiving it at any time, just hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom of any email.

 

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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I’ll Love You Forever

February is a month where “love is in the air” with Valentine’s Day. Personally, I always used this day to love on my kids, since I didn’t feel like Dave and I needed a day set aside to show our love for each other.

One reason the pain is so deep after the death of our child is because our love for him or her doesn’t go away when they leave us. The love we have for our children lasts forever, which is expressed in the writing below.

Forever

My child,
Flesh of my flesh,
Soul of my soul,
Part of my very being;
I had an instant deep and fierce love when I first saw you.
My heart was yours, and I knew I would give my very life to protect you.

And yet, here I sit, with the suffocating pain and darkness of knowing I was unable to protect you from death.

So now I find that just as deep and intense as my love for you, is the deep and intense pain of my grief in living without you. And yet I know that somehow, I must.

How? How God? How do I go on with a piece of my very being gone from this earth?

And as I ask and seek for this help, God in His tender love, compassion and faithfulness reminds me that I don’t have to live without you.

You are forever in my heart and my thoughts, and forever a part of my very being; that our separation is only temporary. You have just moved on to our eternal home before me and have unpacked and settled in, waiting for me and the rest of us to join you.

This isn’t a final good-by. It is an “I’ll see you later.” When I have the thoughts that I would give anything to see you again, to hug you or hear you laugh, I realize that I will! Maybe not as soon as I want to, but it will happen!

And so, I will wait. I will wait with hope, expectancy and even excitement to see you again. Every day I am here on this earth means I am one day closer to that desperate need that I have as a mother to love on you. 

And while I wait, I will choose to live my life in a way that is full; full of love, full of peace and contentment, full of laughter. And yet I know it will also still be full of pain and longing. For I have now learned that all of these things can live inside of me together.

So, let me say I am honored. I am honored and blessed to be your mom, and I imagine and dream of our reunion someday, filled with love and joy that goes beyond words to describe it.

But until then, I will have good days and bad days. I will have days filled with happiness, and days filled with pain. And all of those days I will continue miss you with every fiber of my being.

We grieve deeply, because we love deeply. That is one of the risks of love. But as the poem reminds us, our child is forever in our hearts and in our thoughts. He or she is forever a part of our very being. Our separation is only temporary, because God, in His deep love for our child and for us, made a way for that to be possible.

Consider praying this prayer with me: Lord, my deep grief is a reminder of my deep love that cannot be poured out on my child right now. But someday we will be together again, and all this stored up love will be dumped on my child! And Father, I ask that right now, you would give my child a big hug from me, and love on them in my place. Thank you.

 

If you were to buy a little Valentine gift to show your child how much you love and miss them, what would it be? I would love to have you share it in the comments below.

 

By the way, Laura has written a song that expresses some of the thoughts above. Click here to listen to the song Together Forever.

 

 

 

 

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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