I posted this blog on MySpace today. I also made a slideshow for families in our church who have lost children through miscarriage, stillbirth, infant death and/or abortion for Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness month. It was shown on a Sunday morning during the week of October 15th. I posted it here on MISS in early October, but did not have permission from each family at the time, so the post was removed. I wanted to post it again now that I have obtained consent from each of the families in the slideshow. I hope it touches you in some way. It was very healing to me and to the families in our church who otherwise would not have their precious children remembered. Here is the slideshow:
And here is my blog:
Sunday, November 09, 2008
"November again ... "
Current mood: sad
November is here again and nothing is as I expected it would be. As I approach Abby's 2nd birthday, I thought for sure my sadness would be replaced or at least lessened by the expectation of another child. That by now God would have filled my empty arms. Yet, here I am still longing for Abby, for the baby I miscarried in June, and the baby that has not yet come to fill our hearts with joy again. How does one heal from such a loss without the hope or promise of another child? When does the longing for a hope unfulfilled end? Proverbs 13:12 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life." My heart is sick from all the praying, hoping, wishing, wanting, waiting and wondering if it will ever happen or if I will have to live with this empty place in my heart for the rest of my life. I am sad and I want to feel the full joy of life and love and laughter again like once before this happened to me. Every picture is a before and after -- "Oh, that was before we lost Abby, when we were truly happy and we had a life full of hope and dreams ahead of us." "Oh, look at that one, that was after Abby died. You can see the sadness in our eyes and that longing to feel whole again." It has been nearly two years and while much healing has occurred, the pain is still deep. In their book, "Warfare by Honor," Qaumaniq and Suuqiina wrote, "Two years later support deteriorates. After a great trauma, there is a heroic phase during which friends and neighbors rise to the occasion. As time pass(es), however, many (adopt) a different, popular credo for dealing with (the trauma): Time to move on. Put it behind us. Get over it. We cannot get over grief, we cannot go around it and we cannot dig our way under it. We must go through it. When we refuse to allow others to naturally (and it is a natural process) grieve, we rob them and can even disable them. Grief is not a sign of spiritual or emotional weakness. It is a sign that we are human beings and that we are but flesh. It is also the ultimate form of honor, in that our grief shows how valuable the person that has died was and is to us." I understand that grief is a process. I never realized how difficult and complicated it can become and how long it can take until I experienced it for myself. And, as Qaumaniq and Suuqiina also wrote in their book, "the deeper the loss and the more significant the person was to us, the deeper the grief we will experience." Somehow early on in this process I convinced myself that I would only grieve for awhile and then it would be all better. That somehow the pain would just disappear for good. I now realize that it is a part of me just as she is a part of me. It is something I will carry until the day I see her again. It is the cross that I must bear. The cross of suffering. "Even though Jesus was God's son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered." (Hebrews 5:7-8). Jesus himself was familiar with grief and suffering. Isaiah 53:3 says, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with grief." I truly believe there is nothing more important to God than to care for those in grief. James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." I am not an orphan or a widow. There is no name for what I am. I am the mother of a child who died. I must go through my life with the memories we never made and the reminders that are and always will be there of a child who is missing from our family. If there is only one thing I can do with my grief, it is to help others to understand that to be truly compassionate and help the hurting, we must "mourn with those who mourn" (Romans 12:15) and "comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God." (2 Corinthians 1:4). Love is the key. There are very few who have been able to walk through the valley of the shadow of death with me and for each of them, I am so grateful. For those who have found it too painful, long, difficult or just plain hard to watch me go through this, I forgive you. But if we are to be like Jesus, we must walk side by side, hand in hand with those who grieve. I heard at church today that compassion is sympathy in action. I want my compassion, my sympathy and my empathy to be shown in my actions and not just my words and pray that with God's help, Abby's death can be used for good. That God will use this heart-wrenching experience to teach others how to help the hurting, but more importantly, that He will use my life and Abby's to touch the hearts and lives of others experiencing the loss of a child. I want to give others the love that I often longed my friends and family could give me as I grieved. I know they all did their best to be there for me. Perhaps I was asking for the impossible. But I do know we are called to love above all else. For "if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 13). And to love someone in grief is a high calling. I love you Abby and I'll miss you forever!!!
