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To Know and Be Known

Recently one morning, as I was having a time of reflection with the Holy Spirit, I suddenly found myself fighting tears for no apparent reason with what felt like a sense of longing. I asked the Holy Spirit, “Why? What is going on?” and the words came to my mind “to know and be known”.

The tears were released as I realized what a huge longing it is to be known, for who I really am; in all my doubts, in all my shame, in all my humanity of dark thoughts and messing up. But not just to be known in all of that, but to still be loved and wanted.

I suddenly had a much deeper realization; that is who God is in my life! He knows things about me that I don’t even know about myself yet, and still loves me and wants me. He came to live inside me, even in all of that yuckiness.

I suddenly wanted to know Him. I mean really know Him, because who does that? Who sees all the darkness inside me that I try to hide from others, and still chooses me? That is a kind of love I want and need to be part of; to know and to be known. I want to know God in the same deep, intimate way that He knows me.

I was led to turn to Hebrews 12, starting with the verses about a great cloud of witnesses. God spoke so much to me in that chapter (reading from The Passion Translation).

Earlier this week, I shared some of those things in episode 199 on the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast. If you would like to listen in, it’s very simple and easy to do. Just click here, and then click on the play button. That’s it.  (Or you can find the podcast on any of your favorite listening platforms.)

Life here is hard. To be human means to go through suffering. It is pretty amazing that Jesus came here as a human, and faced a depth of suffering greater than any of us ever will.  But God is with us, even when we cannot see or feel His presence. Jesus knows what that is like, because He felt the same way in His place of darkness.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are One. That means that God felt Jesus’ pain as well. On the other end of that, there was the joy of His resurrection power, and that is what our children are experiencing and living in right now!

Someday, we will get to experience that also. Our time here will also be over, and we will be reunited with our children, experiencing the same glorious resurrection power. But until then, I want to encourage you to have hope that it can get better while you are here without your child.

I will even go so far as to say it will get better as you learn to not stay focused on what is missing, and instead begin to focus on the life you still have. Begin to focus on the fact that God not only knows you, He knows you fully and completely and wants to be with you – every part of you; the great, the good, the bad and the downright ugly parts of you. And you have the opportunity to know Him in the depths of suffering that few others can, which means we also get to know Him deeply in His glorious resurrection power (Philippians 3:10).

Let yourself know Him and be known by Him. Allow that longing to be fulfilled. It is one of the greatest gifts you will ever have here on this earth, especially while you are waiting to “go home.” After all, your child who is with Him now knows Him intimately. Why not do what you can right now to know and receive the depths of God’s love, and to be able to experience as much as possible of what your child is experiencing right now?

Laura’s newest book, Reflections of Hope: Daily Readings for Bereaved Parents will be available in a few weeks. To find out more, click here. You can also sign up to be one of the first ones to know when the book is available, along with a few bonus items you can receive if you order it right away.

 

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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Four Things We Can Learn from the Mother of Jesus About Child Loss (Part 2)

This is the time of year we think about and celebrate the birth of Christ. But have you thought about the fact that we can relate to Mary through the eyes of a bereaved parent? I recently spent some time studying this out and discovered quite a bit about Mary that I had not realized or thought about, until I had a child who died.

The first two things are in the previous blog you can read here. In this article, we are going to look at the last two things.

Third observation

One of the biggest things to notice is that Mary completely surrendered to the Lord’s plans for her life, not knowing what that meant and how painful her future would be. In Luke 1:18 we find her telling the angel, Gabriel, “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, (I am the Lord’s servant) be it unto me according to your word.”

As we already noted, I am sure Mary had no idea that her son would die a very brutal death at the age of 33, and she would be there to watch it.

I used to think, “At least Jesus rose from the dead and came back to life here on this earth. I don’t have that with Becca!” But as I was studying this out, I realized Mary still lost him permanently from this earth, because He was only here for 40 days and then He went to heaven.

The permanent earthly loss of her son here on earth was confirmed at the foot of the cross when Jesus looked down and gave his mom to the apostle John to take care of (John 19:26-27). This is also confirmation that his brothers still didn’t believe who Jesus was because the next son in line should have been the one to take care of the mother.

We may not be able to relate to Mary’s exact, unique grief, but she was a mom whose child died and left this earth for her remaining time here, which is something we can all relate to.

 

Fourth Observation

Mary watched her son die. Nothing could prevent this mother from standing by her son to the very end, no matter how brutal it was. I can’t help but think that some of you have had the same experience of being with your child until he or she took their last breath. You know what that is like to be with them.

I didn’t have that experience. My daughter, Becca, was in the hospital, with plans of being dismissed the next morning. The night of October 12, 2011 her heart was crashing, and she was fighting everyone, trying to get out of bed, yelling at them to leave her alone. Her husband told her to lie down and let them do what they needed to do and was kicked out of the hospital room. She died surrounded by a bunch of medical staff trying to save her.

I wish I had been with her, sort of… I think it has to be one of those bittersweet things. Those of us who weren’t with our child don’t have that as another image we have to get out of our heads. On the other hand, we have to fight the guilt that we weren’t there with them, feeling like he or she died alone.

Did Mary have thoughts of “If only I had…” or “I should have….”?

Did she think about the last time Jesus gave her a hug? The last time they had a meal together? The last time she heard Him laugh? The last time she was able to say, “I love you?” I can’t help but think that she did, because that is what the rest of us do.

The last mention of Mary is in the upper room with the other believers (Acts 1:14). Jesus had risen from the grave, but He had also left this earth permanently. What was that like? There must have been some intense grieving, knowing she had just gotten Him back and now He was gone, never to be here on earth with her again.

Knowing that Mary stayed with the group and was in the upper room when the Holy Spirit showed up in a big way, is an example to us that life can be worth living again. Mary knew she would see her son again. She figured out how to keep living, even within the grief.

Our children are alive also! They may not have come back for a few days after they died and then risen up in the clouds in their bodies, but he or she is alive and with Jesus! Thank you, Father that part of Your will for our lives is to reunite us with our children, never to be separated again.

I want to wrap this up by looking at a scripture that talks about Jesus’ mother in Luke 11:27-28. As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.” Jesus replied, “Even more blessed are those who hear God’s voice and make God’s message their way of life”. (VOICE)

If we take this scripture to heart, what is God’s voice to us as bereaved parents? I believe it is that we have that exact same hope as Mary. We will see our children again, and we can fight our way out of the grief. I want to encourage you not to choose to remain stuck in the event of your child’s death, but learn how to live in a way that honors the life of your child, just like Mary did.

And just like the Holy Spirit showed up in that upper room for those who were waiting for Him, I believe the Holy Spirit will show up for you. He will comfort you, and not only comfort you, but give you the strength to live out your life here with meaning and purpose, until it is time to join your child, and Mary and Jesus in heaven.

Until then, you might be interested in listening to the podcast series People in the Bible Who Lost a Child. Just click on each individual episode below to read the description and listen to it directly on the GPS Hope website. (You can also find each one on your favorite podcast app. Just look for the Grieving Parents Sharing Hope podcast.)

49: The First Death in the Bible was a Son Who Was Murdered (Adam and Eve)
50: The Rainbow Baby in the Bible (King David lost an infant son before Solomon was born)
51: Three Things we Can Learn from Jesus’ Mother After the Death of Our Child
53: Trying to Find God in the Midst of Our Deepest Pain (A look at Job)
54: Why Did God Allow Me to Suffer Like This? (Job’s suffering after the death of all ten of his children)
55: From Fullness to Bitterness to Fullness Again (Naomi)
56: Reunited with Our Children (Jacob and Jairus)
57: Our Grief is the Same, Yet Different (two groups in the Bible who had children mass murdered)

 

Note: On each podcast, I announce the name, birthday and forever age of our children who are no longer here with us, the week of his or her birthday. If you would like to share your child with our listeners, just click here to fill out and submit the form with the needed information.

 

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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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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