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Three Shifts in Perspective that Bring Hope in Our Grief

When our child dies, everything goes dark. We can’t think straight, we are numb, and it feels like we are in a nightmare and are trying to wake up.

As strange as it is, even in the numbness we can feel anger and intense emotional pain. All of this swirling inside of us goes on for months, and then even into years. That is normal for a parent who has lost a child, since experts have determined that:

  • most of us deal with what is considered fresh grief for up to five years
  • the death of a child falls under traumatic grief (we have suffered a trauma) and many parents also have PTSD depending on the circumstances of the death (finding his or her body, seeing it happen, etc.)

Our thoughts can get stuck in this place of darkness, and we wonder if we will ever be able to get out.

One of the things I discovered early in my grief journey after my daughter, Becca, died, was to ask God to help me shift my perspective. The way I saw everything was dark and painful, but I knew God saw things through different eyes, and I needed desperately to see what He saw.

Let me share three things with you that God showed me, helping make that shift in how I saw things. And before you read them, may I suggest that you pause and ask God to help you see these things with His eyes as well. And remember, this isn’t coming from someone who is trying to fix you by giving you Christian clichés and pat answers. This is coming from someone who has been right where you are.

  1. This life is not permanent. Thank you, God!!! This is only the blink of an eye, a dot on the line of eternity. Where we are going has none of this heartache, turmoil and separation.

God made a way so that we do not have to be permanently separated from those we love. Wow! That is pretty amazing when you stop   and think about it. And please do. Stop and think about it. This is not a permanent separation.

I remember confiding in a friend a year after Becca died that I felt guilty because I wanted to go to heaven to see Becca more than I did to see Jesus. Her answer? “But Laura, you have made a deposit!” I love that.

And when Jesus says, “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21), I realized that since one of my greatest treasures is in heaven, my heart will be there as well. And that is okay.

  1. To live is Christ, to die is gain (Philippians 1:21). So, I have to ask, if that is true, what did Becca gain?

You and I have children hanging out in incredible glory and perfection; no sickness, no pain (physical or emotional), no hurtful rejections… I think you get the idea and could build on this list. When I take time to think about what my daughter has gained, I can start feeling happy for her, which eases my pain some.

And have you thought about how our children will be the first ones waiting to meet us when we arrive? I can actually get excited thinking about Becca showing me all around, knowing she couldn’t wait for me to get there and join her!

Honestly, when I spend time thinking about my deep loss, I cry and can hardly breath. When I think of her gain, and let my mind imagine what it is like for her, it moves me in the direction of peace.

Would I rather have Becca here with me? Absolutely, especially when I think about how much I miss her and all the things she is not, or will not, be part of as I continue living here on earth.  But since I have resigned myself to the fact that it isn’t going to happen, I have gotten to the point of enjoying picturing her in heaven, imagining the fun she is having, the people she is meeting and hanging out with, what her mansion might be like, etc.

  1. God IS always good. And good doesn’t mean I always get what I want. Good means that He sees what we cannot see, and knows what we don’t know, and sometimes allows natural consequences to take affect because of that.

And in His goodness, He made a way for death not to be final. Plus, He not only walks with us, He will carry us if needed, while offering everything we need as we travel through this very deep, very dark valley.

In other words, we need to see God as one who comes along beside us with deep sorrow and compassion, not as someone to blame who caused the death of our child. It is really helpful when we see God as the rescuer in our story, rather than the cause of our pain by something he did or didn’t do.

Asking God to make a shift in our perspective is so important. When I asked Him to do that for me, one of the biggest shifts God made for me that I so desperately needed was when I thought about getting further and further away from Becca. I could work myself up into hardly being able to breathe when I thought about moving into the new year without her, and then thinking about being three years, five years, ten or twenty years here without her. God spoke to my heart and told me that I wasn’t getting further away from her, but each year (and each day) I am getting closer to her!

Wow! Now I could appreciate that for sure! Every day I am here, every year that goes by, I am that much closer to seeing Becca and being with her again. Thank you, God for Your goodness in changing how I see it, and for making it possible.

What do you need to see differently? Maybe it’s every part of it and you don’t even know where to start. That’s okay. God knows. Just break through whatever is holding you back and ask Him.

 

Another thing that helps, is to find ways to honor your child to keep their memory alive so that others will know who he or she is. To receive a list of Ten Ways to Honor the Life of Your Child, just submit your name and email below. You will also begin to receive each Wednesday our Weekly Word of Hope. (No spamming, we promise!)

GPS Hope exists to walk with grieving parents through the suffocating darkness of child-loss 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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When Life Stands Still After the Death of Your Child

Many grieving parents that I talk to share how hard it is that their life has come to a screeching halt after the death of their child, and don’t understand how everyone else just keeps going.

I remember feeling that way myself. I specifically remember that thought sitting in my car at a stop light. Even though I was out and about, I was numb. I was going through the motions and doing only what was absolutely necessary outside my home. I could see people walking, people in cars around me having conversations, and cars driving past me as if the world was okay. It was hard not to get angry and not start screaming at everyone for acting like things were normal.

Eventually (and by “eventually,” I mean two to three years), I found myself running those same errands without the sense that because my world had come to an end, everyone else’s should, too. Until recently…

On July 15, my husband, Dave, got a phone call from his dad who was having such intense back pain it was causing him to vomit, and asked Dave to take him to the ER to get checked out. Eight hours later, the family was being called to sit by my father-in-law’s bedside, waiting for him to pass from this world with a ruptured aorta that was inoperable.

Not only did we lose the first one of our four parents, but Dave and I became instant caregivers to his mom, whose dementia and other health issues need someone with her pretty much 24/7. For almost two months now, we have been taking shifts, living with her as we jump through all the hoops going through the process to get her placed in an assisted living facility.

Life has once again come to a standstill. I look around at life going on as normal for those around me, while my world has been turned upside down. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother-in-law. We have never had that stereotypical difficult relationship. However, my son and his family purchased their first home and we have not been able to help them move or get settled much at all. My youngest son is moving, and we have not helped him either.

Dave and I were in the process of downsizing, to move into our Hope Mobile (the motor home we recently purchased to go on the road full time for GPS Hope, helping grieving parents). That not only came to a halt, I found myself bringing back to the house things I had already moved to the motor home. Our oldest son is buying our house, and that came to a standstill as well, since we could not move out, taking turns being full-time caregivers.

My writing to keep up with blogs, emails, and so on has been spotty at best. Even our marriage feels like it has come to a standstill, as most of the time one of us is at Mom’s apartment and one of us is home.

Because I have faced the worst thing that could happen in my life, the death of one of my children, and have come out the other side able to live again when I didn’t think that was possible, I know that it will happen again with this new situation that has me at a standstill.

“And it came to pass…” Those can be some of the most encouraging words in the Bible. Some translations say, “in time…” or “after that…” In other words, it won’t always be like this.

If you are frustrated that life is going on while you feel so very stuck, I want to help you think of it a little differently. It is actually a good thing to see life going on around you, because that means you are surrounded by people whose lives came to a standstill, but they have been able to move forward at some point. And that includes bereaved parents like Dave and me, who were once in that same place of suffocating darkness.

I am not saying that life goes on as normal, the way it was before the death of your child. That would be impossible. What I am saying is that if you keep going, one day, one hour, one breath at a time, (and I know sometimes it feels like you can’t), at some point down the road you will find yourself feeling a stirring of being alive again. Just keep watching those who are ahead of you as a hopeful reminder that just maybe, it can happen to you

also.

And I am now happy to be someone you and others can look at, wondering how I ever got past Becca’s death to be able to live again. And a few years into this journey, I believe that you will have others wondering that about you.

We would love to send you a list of thirty suggestions to help bring yourself comfort and take care of yourself body, soul, and spirit. Just fill in the information, hit submit, and it will be sent to you right away.

GPS Hope exists to walk with grieving parents through the suffocating darkness of child-loss 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.

Expressions of Hope is written by author and speaker Laura Diehl. Laura is a national keynote speaker and also a workshop speaker for both The Compassionate Friends and Bereaved Parents USA national conferences. Laura has also been a guest on Open to Hope several times, and has hosted her own conferences, a virtual conference and many webinars. If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event, click here.

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A Gem Hidden Deeply in God’s Word

God’s Word has become so very rich since Becca’s death, even in preparing for what I wanted to say at her funeral. But that isn’t usually the case for those who are grieving the death of a child.

Sometimes it takes two to three years for the pain and fog to lift to be able to even make sense of what is being read (which happened to me for quite a while in the deepest part of my grief). Or, these grieving parents are angry and struggling with their faith, like the woman I heard from yesterday who lost her son five years ago, and just this week walked out of a church service because she still can’t stand to hear people say that God is good.

I have to say that for me personally, many verses I have been taught or have seen a certain way (some of them since I was very young) have become a life-line of hope in a whole new light.

God tells us that His Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to our paths (Psalm 119:105). And in the depth of darkness that we find ourselves in after the death of our child, or any deep loss or tragedy, we desperately need any tiny pinhole of light that we can get.

I would like to share one of those scriptures that has taken on a totally new meaning to me now.

Ephesians 3:20 says talks about God being able “to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”

I have always heard this verse in the context of things like, “When you ask God for a good job, you can claim this verse and He will give you even a better job than you asked for.”

Or I have heard Christian leaders share about applying this verse to something they are praying for (like having a ministry bigger than they could ever imagine) and then adding in a laughing humorous way, “and I can imagine a whole lot!”

As I was reading through the book of Ephesians one day, I realized how much that verse truly applies to those of us who find ourselves in an unwanted and indescribable darkness of deep grief, tragedy and trauma.

We all think and say things like, “I can’t imagine EVER getting out of this pain and darkness.” “I can’t EVER imagine living life without my child.” Or, “God, when will I stop hurting so much?”

And that is exactly where the truth of this verse comes in. God promises that He is able to do more than we could ask for, or imagine! We cannot imagine ever coming out of our painful darkness to a place of living a life of purpose and meaning again. It feels impossible. But He can, and He will do what we cannot even imagine!

Any time we cry out to Him from that place of horrendous pain, even the smallest plea of, “God HELP me!” He goes to work making good on that very promise! Many times, it doesn’t seem like it because often nothing seems to change. We can go days, weeks and even months in the same suffocating darkness and turmoil. As a parent who has to learn how to live again after the death of their child, that grief journey is a long and very slow process to work through. So are other deep tragedies and losses. But God is at work, because we cried out, allowing His power to be at work within us.

So, it’s okay if you cannot imagine ever having hope, light, or purpose in your life ever again. God’s got this! And until that time comes, ask God to send loving, gracious people your way, who will walk with you through the darkness.

 

GPS Hope exists to walk with grieving parents through the suffocating darkness of child-loss 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.
  • If you are not a bereaved parent but want to support those who are, or want to follow us as we give hope to these precious parents, please connect with us at Friends of GPS Hope on Facebook.
  • If you are a bereaved parent, we encourage you to connect with us on Facebook.
  • Subscribe  to Laura’s YouTube channel for grieving parents.

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Evangelism is More Than Just Talking

When we hear the word “evangelism” it’s easy to think about sharing Christ as a thing to “do” rather than a way of life.

I get it, I’ve been there.

Often times, witnessing becomes an “event” and this mindset sticks with us even into our adult years. I remember in youth group we would make events out of passing out tracts, or going into city streets or shopping malls to pray for people, or even put together special services to invite friends to church.

I’m not putting any of those things down, but as we have been ministering to grieving parents, we’ve quickly discovered that love and compassion in action is a powerful way of sharing Christ with those around us. Evangelism isn’t just praying with a person to accept Jesus as their Savior, but it includes planting seeds of His love, and then being willing to take the time to water those seeds.

And often we feel a need to evangelize or “preach” at someone, helping them get the victory in their difficult circumstance, when what they really need is someone to listen to them and feel their pain with them. As a whole, the Christian community is good at rejoicing with those who rejoice, but not so good at weeping with those who weep (Romans 12:15). We would rather find a way to fix them, so we can move on.

Sometimes that means spending time with others, such as

1. Inviting them out for coffee or over for a meal 
2. Recommending a book or move with Christian themes, and follow up with an invitation to discuss it in a comfortable setting
3. Simply being in the right place at the right time

What are some “love-in-action” ways you’ve shared Christ’s love with others? Feel free to tell us in the comments below. Perhaps they would help the rest of us, including Dave and myself in our ministry to grieving parents.

 

 

GPS Hope exists to walk with grieving parents through the suffocating darkness of child-loss 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.
  • If you are not a bereaved parent but want to support those who are, or want to follow us as we give hope to these precious parents, please connect with us at Friends of GPS Hope on Facebook.
  • If you are a bereaved parent, we encourage you to connect with us on Facebook.
  • Subscribe  to Laura’s YouTube channel for grieving parents.

 

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