The Portal: Portal-ity Thoughts

Aren't they beautiful? When you lose a child, it's virtually impossible to explain how it feels, how lost and broken you are, how upside down your life and your future have become. It is utterly despairing. The only way you can get close to anyone "understanding" is talking to someone who has experienced it.   And so, over time, you form a new group of friends, they are your Grief Friends.  Today I'm going to introduce you to a few of mine.  This blog post started as a piece on the extra complications of grief, and it is turning out to be so much more.  It's my favorite, and I'm so sorry I have to write it. Losing a child is absolutely heartbreaking and indescribable, no matter the cause.  One loss is not more devasting than the next - it's all horrible.   I do, however, think some of the circumstances behind a loss can add an additional layer or layers of incomprehensible devastation that complicates that loss.   I'd like ...

So, I think I told you that I've been having a hard time keeping myself together.  Well, last Sunday, I felt like I was having a super solid day. I was well rested, the kids were home, it was an okay day. We went to church, I got through the worship songs without breaking down!  Music. That goes straight to the heart, doesn't it?  But I was doing it! I was on my way to a dry Sunday.  Until I saw him. A young boy with his mom.  He came over to her with that look of excitement on his face.  You know the one:  "Mama!" When they are young enough to be excited to see you, to give you a big hug, to still sit on your lap.  You can rub their back and maybe sneak in a kiss on the back of that neck.  Get in a smell.  A nuzzle.  Feel his hair.  I think most of you can relate.  I smiled.  I just watched them interact.  It was so sweet.  And then my mind betrayed my solid day.  It interjected: "What wouldn'...

What does month eleven look like?  How has grief changed, evolved?  To be honest, month eleven feels a whole lot like month one.  I have noticed that my game face is much harder to put on. That I can only handle being out in public for a few hours most days. I felt like I was at work a lot last month, and as it turned out on payday, I was literally there 6 hours. All month.  It felt like it was hard to get there, hard to concentrate, hard to complete the simplest tasks that I've been doing for 18 years.   I find that my tears just fall from my face, abruptly and in unstoppable repetition.  They don't take a few moments to work up to a waterfall, they just start.  Stopping them has become increasingly more difficult.  I find that it's harder to write, still hard to read, and I feel very disconnected and incomplete.  I think a lot about the people in my life, but find it difficult to reach out to any of them.  Occasionally...

If I'm going to have a bad day, it's typically Monday. So, I find myself here, writing. I hope it relieves some of the sadness. I have a confession. I almost got out of church yesterday without crying.  Almost. Then we sang the song "King of My Heart" by Bethel Music. It was this chorus, sung beautifully by the worship team, that got me: "You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down And You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down You're never gonna let You're never gonna let me down" It continues, on and on, you get the idea. In a normal life, this would be an okay song. Sang with a thankful heart and all the feels. But as a bereaved mom, I couldn't help thinking, but wait, I was let down. I was let down in the most heartbreaking way possible.  My son died. So am I wrong to feel let down?  To be completely disappointed?  To question e...

Some losses are not overcomeable. Sometimes no glue exists to fix your brand of a broken heart. Sometimes you are thrown a devastation that you will have to live with for the rest of your life. Some questions won't have answers. There are simply things that you can not understand, get over, or move on from. Sorry to let you in on this unhappy truth. In this culture of instant fixes and #happinessgoalz, we want to believe that people can rise from any heart-wrenching loss and claim victory over it. That the story ends "happily ever after", and we can leave the theater surrounded in all the feels and warm fuzzies, our bellies full of popcorn and our minds delighting in the possibilities of a perfect life! We, myself included, want to believe that people are inherently good, broken hearts can heal, and we are going to live a life immune from great suffering.  And, that if we do have a trial, it will be an opportunity to show the world how strong and amazing we are!  ...

.   Yeah, I know.  It does seem a little final.  But here's the thing, we don't even know each other.  We are not friends.  In fact, I didn't recognize your name or your face, and while I usually adhere to strict rules about not adding strangers to my "friend list",  I have been making a few exceptions thinking you might have a child who is struggling with addiction, or maybe you stumbled on this blog and were curious. Whatever the reason was, it didn't take too long for me to see that you clearly don't have a child that has an addiction, or you wouldn't have posted that meme or quote or whatever that stupid bullcrap was.  In fact, when I saw it, I thought who on earth is so insensitive?  Did you know anything about me about or about our loss when you hit "send a friend request?"  Or did my name simply show up and you saw that we had a few friends in common?     One of the reasons I started a Facebook page for my blo...

This is my desk at the lake. I'm blogging this morning with John and Jesus!   After our loss, we find ourselves fascinated with the subject of Heaven. It makes sense, right? Our son is there and we miss him. We want to know where he is, what he's doing, and if he can see what's happening here. We want to know if he's enjoying his life, and what his days are filled with. Our fear of death is gone, and we look forward to the day we are reunited in our Heavenly Home. For those of you who have never read or studied about Heaven, I think you'd be amazed at what's in store for believers after our life here is done. It's going to be fantastic. In looking back, I see once again the hand of God as He - being detailed and thoughtful, put people in our path and paved the way for us to learn more about his residence and what our lives there will look like. It started with a friend mentioning the book "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn. It was several yea...