struggle

What do you do when you can’t sleep because the sobs keep wracking your body and your pillow is soaked with tears…

I just don’t know how to do this.

This Christmas thing.

There is a tree in my living room with ornaments from every year of his life, from little baby shoes to shiny dinosaurs to workbenches to baseball players to, last year- a weightlifter.  My children and husband put the tree up while I was in bed, too despondent to even think about laying eyes on those ornaments, hanging up the stockings, putting up the decorations…

I finally got up later and went downstairs to see that the girls had only put up four stockings.  I was irate.  “Put his up! Put his up!” I exclaimed a combination of impatience and irritability and pure sorrow.  “He will always be part of our family.” I said with a crack in my voice.

I just don’t know how to do this. It’s too hard.

As I was lying in bed a song began playing in my head captures exactly how I feel.

“Held” by Natalie Grant

(Fifteen years) is too little, they let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling

Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
We’re asking why this happens to us

Who have died to live, it’s unfair
This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
We’d be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell

W’ed be held

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait for one hour
Watching for our Savior

This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive

This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was that when everything fell
W’ed be held

It’s appalling.  It’s unfair.  It’s bitter- when the sacred is torn from your life-

And you survive. I will survive.  I may not make it more than a few hours without the salty tears falling into my coffee.  The lump in my throat may not go away.  My heart may swell with agony until I have reached my breaking point but somehow I know…

I will be Held.

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait for one hour
Watching for our Savior

I do believe that hope is born of suffering.  I believe that suffering is more than it implies; that in many ways it is also a gift.  The harder it is to hold on, the more intense the pain, the tighter we must hold on.  The harder the suffering the more we grow.  The more we change.  The more we are molded- if we let it.

Psalm 34: 17-18

The righteous cry, and the LORD hears And delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.…

grief-n-holidays-3_dvd.original


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