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Child Loss, PTSD and God

My mom sent me a text Sunday that she was thinking of me and praying for me. We had been at their house the day before. She said, “Hope everything is all right. I see the sadness in your eyes.”

We were at a friend’s house and I had to go to the bathroom and sob for a moment.

I never really noticed what she was talking about until I looked back the day before at some pictures I took after doing my “fall look.” It was an eye opener for me, and I thought, “Wow! The eyes really are the gateway to the soul.”

PTSD is real. Trauma is real. Loss is real.

My daughter Zoey’s 1st birthday is coming up and I have NOT been okay.

Grief is such an important subject. For a lot of people, it is a lifelong journey. I think it may even be safe to say that it is a lifetime process.

For some reason, I noticed that when someone either loses a baby during pregnancy (like we lost Sheldon) or has a baby in the NICU (like when our little Zoey was born), not much is said. Maybe I noticed because they both happened to me, and I was more vocal.

I also noticed that when I was more vocal, others became more vocal. This opened a safe space for conversation and relatability to take place, which is a beautiful thing for anyone who has experienced loss or disappointment of any kind.

The Battle of Our Thoughts

During those times, I battled with a few of these thoughts:

“I don’t want the attention.”

“This is embarrassing that I’m upset; others have been through worse.”

“I don’t want to cause others pain.”

“I shouldn’t feel this way.”

The list goes on.

Zoey’s first birthday is Monday, and I have been feeling similar feelings like the day we found out Sheldon was no longer with us.

On that day, these feelings started even before the ultrasound appointment though, so we didn’t know that our baby was with Jesus at that point.

We had a gender reveal party planned the same day as the ultrasound. I know it’s horrible, but I didn’t buy ANY decorations. I didn’t buy ANY food for the party. I didn’t even clean my house. This is very unlike me. It was as if I knew he was already gone and there was nothing to celebrate.

Those feelings of not wanting to do anything for the gender reveal party are the same feelings I’m having for Zoey’s first birthday. Why? Why would I feel this way? She is alive and well! She is worth being celebrated! So why do I feel this way??

It wasn’t until I began to tell these things to my husband and best friend that I recognized the PTSD and trauma that I had faced almost a year ago. Let me be crystal clear. I am so thankful. I cry all the time because of how thankful I am. So, hear my heart.

We Need to Feel Our Pain and Grief

The redemption and miracles do not replace the feelings of loss, PTSD and trauma. These feelings are very real and when they come, we cannot give in to shame, call our feelings stupid, say we need to just be grateful for XYZ, or to just “get over it.” We need to feel them and process them with Jesus and with our safe people.

You see, Jesus knew I needed to read the story of Lazarus hours before we found out Sheldon was with Him, because He knew the impact that story would have in my life even now. That was a massive miracle in and of itself.

August 7th, 2018, the day of our ultrasound, where nothing was cleaned, decorated or prepped for a gender reveal party, the Lord nudged me to crawl into His lap in our chair and open the Word. He said, “Come be with Me.” And as I did, I flipped through the Word and read about His connection with His disciples. I ended on the story of Lazarus, and I fell asleep. And the Lord is reminding me today that Jesus knew His friend Lazarus was going to be raised from the dead, yet He still wept. He felt the grief and sadness of those around Him and He, too, was sad.

So, He felt, and He cried. He is always the perfect example.

God knows what we need before we know.

He prepares our hearts and reveals His perfect ways through whispers like, “I have a plan. Trust Me.” He reveals His goodness through onesies that say, “tiny miracle.” He redeemed SO MUCH from August 9th, 2018 when I had to give birth to a baby who would never take a breath on this earth.

On September 14, 2019, the nurse who had been with us through every step of Sheldon’s delivery was the same nurse who was in the room during Zoey’s emergency c-section.   My doctor was not on call. She was not even in the hospital, and I so desperately wanted to text her. I had her number from after losing Sheldon, but I knew that would be a breach of something, so I decided that the Lord knew. He knew which doctor was going to be here, and I trusted Him.

As they were about to do the surgery, I had tears of relief as I heard my doctor’s voice! She came in just for me. Was that a coincidence? I don’t believe in them. I believe Jesus cares about what we care about. He is delighted when we put our trust in Him. He also is delighted when we trust Him with our feelings…good or bad.

We Need to Process Our Pain and Grief

The redemption and miracles were not meant to cover the feelings of loss, disappointment, PTSD and trauma. They are meant to carry us through them. Process your feelings with Jesus. Process them with your spouse, and/or a safe friend. This is vital to your spiritual growth. No more feeling bad for feeling! Jesus felt it all for us. Your feelings matter.

When we process and feel these hard, sometimes scary things, there is beauty and new perspective that Jesus brings.

I wanted to exclusively breastfeed and I wanted to deliver our miracle girl naturally. These were 2 BIG DESIRES that I laid at His feet. I remember driving and speaking these things out loud to Him.  I remember saying, “Lord you know what is best for me. You know what is best for her. So, I lay these wants at your feet. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I didn’t get to deliver her naturally. It wasn’t peaceful. It was chaotic. It was traumatic. It was anything but what I had pictured for our redemption testimony. I think we can get so caught up in how we want things to look, that when things don’t look that way, we begin to doubt His promises. Even when there are miracles wrapped around it all, we can lose sight.

I didn’t get to exclusively breastfeed. I’d been pumping from day one. I surrendered those things to Him. Little did I know that those precious desires were my burnt offering to Him, and it hurts! It is so painful to not have things happen the way we want them to.

If we aren’t real with these feelings for the fear of not seeming grateful or being selfish, etc., it may hinder us from experiencing His true joy over us. So, feel my friends. I release you from any expectation you may have of yourself or that others may have of you.

Your Feelings and Your Pain Matter to God

Your feelings matter to the Creator of heaven and earth. And when your feelings haven’t caught up to the truth yet, trust Him. I believe one day they will. Because the truth is, God is good. And He is not only good, He is good to me.

Say that with me. “God you are good to me.” Say it. Sing it. Write it on your mirror. Your feelings will eventually line up with the truth!

I have a memory of breastfeeding Zoey when we first brought her home and she took in three ounces. That was the first and last time she took in that much from exclusively me, and I will treasure and be thankful for that memory forever.

This is my prayer, that I hope at some point you can pray for yourself as well.

Jesus, let the feelings of disappointment, pain and sadness be processed through, so I can experience your goodness, faithfulness and joy. Create in me a heart of thankfulness. And when my feelings don’t line up with what is true, I will trust you enough to process them through until all that’s left is thankfulness, because You are good!

It doesn’t mean I won’t grieve for Sheldon the rest of my time here on earth, but it does mean I don’t have to stay trapped in the trauma of his loss. I will see him again, and for that, I am especially grateful!

Erica Mitchell is a daughter of the King. She loves being a wife of 9 years to Justin and the mother to 3 sons: Shylo 8, Shay 6, Sheldon (growing up in heaven) and rainbow baby girl Zoey. She believes worship is a lifestyle and loves to create with lyrics, music, and makeup. She has a calling and anointing in her words and voice to encourage and bring freedom to others in their personal relationship with Jesus. Her faith and heavenly perspective are contagious and overflows into all areas of her life.

 

If you are struggling, we would like to send you a printable PDF of 30 Ways to Give Yourself Comfort and Take Care of Yourself. This will also allow you to join over 1,000 other bereaved parents who are receiving a Weekly Word of Hope (which you can unsubscribe from any time).

 

Expressions of Hope is provided 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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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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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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Finding the Real Us

Growing up, one of my favorite stories was The Velveteen Rabbit. In fact, I named one of my own stuffed bunnies Velveteen, and would often sleep with it at night. (I memorized a list of all my stuffed animals, and gave each one a turn sleeping with me, cuddled in my arms, so none of them would feel left out. I can still run through that list in my head, almost fifty years later. I will spare sharing with you the names of my 13 cuddle-mates…)

Just a few years ago, I found a beautiful condensed “read-aloud” version of the book, so I purchased it to be able to share it with my grandkids. When we moved into the Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) I had to go through a life-time collection of two shelves of children’s books, deciding which ones to get rid of and which ones to keep. Only eight of those books found a place in our house on wheels, and that copy of The Velveteen Rabbit is one of them.

In case you aren’t familiar with the story, this little “fat and bunchy” stuffed bunny with spotted brown and white velveteen fur and pink sateen ears, becomes a boy’s favorite toy, which he talks to, plays with, and of course cuddles with each night. The bunny thinks he is real, because the boy tells the nanny his beloved bunny is real when she thinks he is making too much fuss over a toy. Eventually, the boy becomes sick with scarlet fever, and the well-worn and much-loved bunny is taken with the bedding to be burned. A real tear trickles down the face of the bunny, which immediately grows a flower with a fairy in it. Because the bunny was so loved and was real to the boy, she turns the velveteen Rabbit into a real live bunny, to live with the others he met earlier who made fun of him for not being real.

Looking back, I had no idea what the meaning of that story would have to me, after the death of our oldest daughter, Becca.

Let me share an exchange in the nursery between the wise old Skin Horse and the Rabbit.

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day…

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you… It doesn’t happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time… Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” (The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjorie Williams)

There are several similarities in this story, to my journey of being a pareavor  (a parent who has been bereaved of my child).

• It reminds me that working through our grief is a process; a journey. And it definitely doesn’t happen all at once. It takes a long time… years, as a matter-of-fact.

• “He hasn’t got any hind legs! He doesn’t smell right!” the wild rabbit exclaimed, jumping backwards. “He isn’t a rabbit at all! He isn’t real!” This is the reaction the live rabbits had one day when Rabbit was on the ground while his boy played. I don’t know about you, but many of us feel like the people around us just don’t get it. They don’t validate our loss, because we are so different than they are. They hop away and leave us, not understanding why we are the way we are.

• It is a story of going from being ugly to being real; from being who I was, thinking I was “real,” to being who I am now, on the other side of the suffocating darkness after Becca’s death. As I came out of the darkness and back into a place of hope and light, I began to see myself differently and I began to see others differently, along with a depth I didn’t have before. And that is a good thing.

• The Velveteen Rabbit is also a story of hope. He went from a place of devastation and being thrown away as useless to becoming real. I certainly felt devastated and totally useless. I felt like my soul died when my daughter died. But I didn’t stay that way. And you won’t either.

In order to become “real,” like the velveteen Rabbit, we have been taken through a very ugly place. And just like he was taken to a community of other bunnies, we are a community. We are a bunch of broken wounded people, doing life together. We are now traveling with each other on this journey, where we can learn how to become our best self and to become more real than ever before, within the pain and deep earthly loss of our children, not in spite of their death, but because of their life.

The book ends with the boy playing outside the following spring, seeing a rabbit that looks very much like his stuffed bunny that was destroyed.

But he never knew that it really was his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.

Our children gave us a great gift. The gift to become truly real. I know so many parents who are much further on this journey than I am, who have said they would not want to go back to being the person they were before their child died.

Why would they say that?

Because our child changed us. Both their life and their death.

We tend to look at how dark our life became after their departure, but there are also ways we have grown and are growing (or will grow), because of our brokenness. For me, I tend to not fret over the smaller things as much as I used to. I am much more aware of the present moment, knowing that is really all I have. My compassion for those who are hurting is way more than it ever used to be.

And because Becca had life, there are things she did that taught me something or showed me the way to being a better person, such as watching how she had a way of accepting everyone (whether she agreed with them in life choices and opinions or not) and how she was able to bring so much laughter while she was deathly ill her last 18 months. And watching Becca live life with only one leg and not letting it limit her, gives me motivation to push through my own difficulties instead of giving in to the obstacles that come my way.

How about you? Some of you may not have gotten to this point yet, because your child’s departure is still too fresh and your grief is still very dark and deep, but is there something you like better about yourself now since your child died? Is it easier to let go of toxic relationships? Are you more aware of what is really important in your life now? Are you now easily able to say “no” when people ask you to do something, when before you always said “yes?” Do you no longer feel guilty about putting your own needs first?

Here is another thought. We often talk about how we are forever changed because our child died, but I want to ask: How are you different now because your child LIVED? What are the new lenses your child’s life gave you, helping you to see the world with a different view than you had before?

As the wise old Skin Horse said: Once you become real, you can never become ugly again.

I would love to have you answer in the comments below this blog. What have you gained through your child’s death? What did your child’s life teach you?

We would like to send you the MP3 download From Pain to Purpose. This is a message Laura Diehl has given at several churches, sharing how God has a plan to take the deepest pain of the loss of your child, and restore your life to one of meaning and purpose once again, if we allow Him to.

 

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.

Laura is a national keynote speaker and has also been a workshop speaker for events such as The Compassionate Friends and Bereaved Parents USA national conferences, along with being a guest on radio shows, podcasts and other media channels such as webinars with Open to Hope.

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.

 

GPS Hope exists to walk with grieving parents through the suffocating darkness of child-loss, guiding them to a place of hope, light and purpose.
 We also support families, friends and coworkers who want to know how to support these parents both short and long-term.

 

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