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Journeys To Mother Love

~ Encouragement and healing in mother/child relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Category Archives: grief and loss

Loneliness

05 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in emotional needs, grief and loss, Guest Post, losing mom too soon, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Character shaped by trials, Emotional and spiritual healing, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Losing a spouse, Mother

Driftwood

photo by Tom Burke – Flickr

Loneliness. Life involves times of loss, times when we find ourselves alone with our memories. If you’ve lost a loved one—a mother or father, a spouse, or a child—you know that loneliness can wear at you and tear at you. This kind of loneliness is described in the guest post below, written by my father. He describes his feelings after my mother died.


Guest-Post-logo
In sorting through a box of old things, I recently came across this poem I wrote a few months after my first wife passed away.
~ ~
 LONELINESS
~ ~
The edge of loneliness
Wears at me,
Tears at me,
Wearies me.
Memories of shared moments
Leave me with emptiness.
Laughter of the past
Echoes in the empty rooms of my empty heart.
Fires kindle momentarily
With love’s memory
Then subside
Like burned out coals upon the cold hearth.
A chill creeps over me
As winter winds blow gusty
Against my quavering soul.
Brown fallen leaves
Careen with death rattle along the street,
And my spirit dries and
Blows with them into the gutter.
I feel passed up, unwanted,
Unremembered, unloved.
 ~ ~ ~
About the same time I wrote this poem, I took a walk on a beach in Oregon near my home. I picked up a piece of driftwood in the shape of a whale. One side even had an “eye.” I took it home with me and wrote on a scrap of paper: “The fury of storm and tide has made me what I am.” And, “I am what I have had the good fortune of becoming.”
~ ~
I didn’t understand it right then, but much like the processes of water, wind and sand on that driftwood, the grief process was
re-shaping me. Perhaps the psalmist felt lonely and forsaken when he said, “Out of the depths have I cried unto You.” Then there’s Jonah in the darkness, helplessness, and isolation of the whale’s belly. When Jonah came out, he became one of the most successful preachers of all time. As a result of his ministry, a whole city repented and turned to God.
~ ~
Someone said, “When bad things happen to good people, they
become better people.” Of many an older saint it could be said,
“Once young and carefree, now buffeted into a work of art.”
~ ~
So what is your ocean, and what are you becoming? Sculptured by time and the elements, a thing of beauty? Then someday you can say, “The fury of storm and tide has made me what I am.”
~ ~
~G. H. Cummings

G.H. Cummings is a 92-year-old retired pastor and counselor. He is the author of Making It In Marriage : It’s Worth the Effort (Cladach, 2002). This post is excerpted from his e-book, I Was Just Thinking, available as a free download (pdf) here.

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Holy Saturday

26 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, Jesus on the cross, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Easter, future hope, Holy Week, life and death, Pieta, Sadness

Detail from the Lutin Pieta (Wikimedia)

Detail from the Lutin Pieta (Wikimedia)

 

During Holy Saturday, between the crucifixion and the resurrection, a time of disappointment, waiting, uncertainty, sadness…. I am reminded of what to do with this “weight of sorrow,” these tears: bring them to Jesus …

  • See him kneeling in the garden, overwhelmed with sorrow, in anguished prayer and sweating drops of blood.
  • See him enduring the cruelest injustice, ridicule, and inflicted pain.
  • See him hanging on the cross agonizing, bleeding, and dying, because of my sins. … read more (What to do with sorrow)

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Not Forsaken

12 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, childhood memories, emotional needs, God as our parent, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, Remembering Mother, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Abandonment, Adoption, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Mother

Imogene-just-adopted

I watched an Irish movie that brought tears to my eyes and reminded me of my mother’s story. The movie was based on a true story of an impoverished family where the mother dies and the father runs off and doesn’t care of the children, who are taken into custody by the state and placed in orphanages.

The same thing happened to my mother and her siblings, only it wasn’t in Ireland. It was in Colorado. She was the age my littlest granddaughter is now—almost two years old—when she and her siblings were taken into custody by the Otero County Court. The judge declared them “neglected children” and wards of the state until age 21. Mother’s one sister and two brothers were sent to the Denver Children’s Home, but just in time a childless couple adopted her. And though she never saw her siblings again, she was raised by loving Christian parents and grew up to be a self-sacrificing, loving pastor’s wife. This is an old photo of her the day she was adopted. Her adoptive parents found her dirty and frightened.

Some things have come full circle. Since I moved back to Colorado, I have found Mother’s birth family.  Our son, who is a lawyer, has done pro bono work representing neglected children who have no legal representation.

Though Mother has been gone from us over 38 years now, I never want to forget how God rescued a sad little girl whose mother had died of TB and whose father had run off to find work or something in that dust bowl era. I never want to take for granted the way God rescues us, provides for us, gives us people to love and be loved by.

I remember Mother smiling through tears of blessing as she sang, “A tent or a cottage, why should I care? They’re building a mansion for me over there. Though exiled from home, yet still I will sing, All glory to God, I’m a child of the King.”

~Catherine Lawton

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Anonymous Graveside Flowers and the Eternal Now

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, childhood memories, encouraging each other, grief and loss, Influence of Grandparents, reach out and touch, the healing journey

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Adoption, Family, future hope, Grief Loss and Bereavement, life and death, relationships

Inskeep-graveside

My sister (right) and me at our grandparents’ grave

My sister, Beverly, visited me this month and we took a trip to the town where our grandparents lived. We searched the cemetery until we found their grave sites. Grandpa died about the time I got married. Grandma died just before I gave birth to my daughter. As I was moving forward in my own life, their earthly lives were ending. So the generations go. Walter and Edith Inskeep adopted our mother as a small child. They provided a loving and secure upbringing for her; and they gave my sister and me unmatched affection as the grandparents of our youth.

For Beverly and me, finding our grandparents’ graves and their tiny, now-rundown house, was a pilgrimage. These humble, hard-working, faithful people poured unconditional love and encouragement into our early lives. Since Mother was raised an only child then died quite young (in 1977), we lost contact with the extended family of Inskeeps.

Maybe that’s why it meant so much to see that someone, after all these years, had placed flowers on their graves.

Every Inskeep grave we found had flowers. Seeing those flowers after almost 40 years, did something for my heart. Those flowers made me feel:

  • Comforted. When I am too far away to show honor to the memory of those who loved and prayed for and cared for me, someone nearby is doing just that.
  • Connected, somehow, with the living as well as the dead.
  • Concrete Immediacy. I cherish the memories and the photos of long-ago departed, dear loved ones; but the memories grow more and more distant and far away. Those flowers carefully placed by human hands at the graveside gave me a sense of Now.

I wished for a way to say thank-you to the anonymous flower tender. I pray that every time the anonymous person tends those flowers, God will fill their heart with hope and a sense of the eternal now and eternal connectedness for honoring the memory of such good people.

~Catherine Lawton

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Compassion~ An Upside of Tragedy

19 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in encouraging each other, grief and loss, reach out and touch, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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giving and receiving, Gratitude, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Healing love, responding in disaster

Yesterday, a woman in a rural area of Northern California, where communities and farmers have been stricken by the devastating wildfires, shared her video of help arriving. I’m used to people sharing videos on Facebook, and I often scroll right past them. But when a dear friend posted this video on my wall yesterday, I was compelled to watch it, and my heart was touched on several levels.

The woman who recorded this video was expressing her amazement and thanks for the people from nearby North Lake County and Humboldt County (Fortuna, Ferndale and Eureka)— who caravaned over the hills, south and east to fire-striken Middletown, bringing truckloads of clothing, toiletries, pet food, farm animal feed, hay for horses and cattle, as well as farm equipment and relief workers. Watch the joyful arrival here:

 

My friend shared this with me because she knew my husband’s family has deep roots in the village of Ferndale and I lived during my youth in Fortuna (which was part of my story in Journeys to Mother Love). When my husband and I go back to visit that rugged and beautiful region, we are reminded of the resilience and strength of the people there who have suffered many natural disasters (extreme floods and earthquakes) as well as lasting economic downturns. Those folk know what it’s like to lose so much and be so grateful when help comes. Now they are jumping at the chance to give back.

Experiencing this generosity of spirit truly is an up side of going through such loss as the fire victims have. I relate to this partly because of my own experience as a young child when our house burned down in the night. We lost everything and were “homeless” and dependent on others for a while. But, in spite of the effects of the trauma of barely escaping from a burning house, I am thankful to have experienced the overwhelming outpouring of love and generosity, from the community and from area churches, toward our little family.

This personal video posted on Facebook (with a public setting) definitely touched a nerve with me. I know, there is always more to every story. And we may never know “the rest of the story” of this particular person who took the video. But we can have our hearts lifted by her very real and immediate response to compassionate help arriving on the scene of her need and the needs of her community. And that gives us a glimpse of the goodness that still exists in this world.

The sometimes-uncomfortable but inescapable fact is that compassion is often developed in extremely difficult situations and life experiences.

My prayer: “Lord, help me grow stronger in grace and compassion, more resilient and giving, as a result of the batterings of this life. Thank you for the surprises of help and encouragement you bring along the way.”

~Catherine Lawton

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Healing Grace Like Gentle Rain

18 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in childhood memories, emotional needs, God's healing love, grief and loss, Inner healing ministry, losing mom too soon, mother wounds, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Christian spirituality, Emotional and spiritual healing, emotional wounds from childhood, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Healing love, Healing power of poetry, relationships

In Journeys to Mother Love I tell of how I lost my mother at a young age, and I hint at generational blessings as well as generational sins, “curses,” and weaknesses that needed breaking and healing.

When Mother died at age 48, and my dad went through his own bereavement and grief, it seemed the feelings from wounds he experienced as a boy threatened to overtake him again. A new grief will open past griefs and wounds that have been lying dormant but in need of deeper healing.

Feelings that came as a result of growing up with a mother who was beautiful and gentle but unable to show affection to her son, and an overbearing father whose domination turned to cruelty at times, resurfaced. During those months as a widower, my dad sought and experienced deeper healing by the Holy Spirit that gave him more freedom, joy, and wholeness, so he could move on in life and receive and share God’s love.

During that time, he was writing poems. In my experience, and others I know, poetry can be therapeutic and healing in many ways. I’ll share one of those poems here:

———————————————————————————————————————

The Gentle Life

~ ~ ~

The fine, soft, falling mist

soaks finally better than the deluge.

So the life tender and gentle

in love of God

has force in it

that gets through hardest soil

for lasting good—

better than

the mighty in the flesh.

–G.H. Cummings

~ ~ ~

~Catherine Lawton

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Grace to Mothers (and Fathers) Grieving Aborted Babies

08 Friday May 2015

Posted by Catherine Lawton in emotional needs, forgiving yourself, Free to Love, God's healing love, grief and loss, healing after abortion, Mother's Day, Regret transformed, the healing journey, The power of honest sharing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Courage to be honest, Emotional and spiritual healing, Forgiving yourself, future hope, Healing love, life and death, Mother's Day, Post-Abortion Healing, unresolved hurt, Women's Issues

Sunset sky

Mother’s Day is painful for many people, for the bereaved, the childless, and those who suffer from post-abortion grief.

A few years ago I found my mother’s birth family, including three cousins, living not far from me. Recently I visited one male cousin the same age as me (he’s a Baby Boomer and Vietnam Vet, if that gives you an idea of our age).

Though he’s been married more than once, he has no children. Speaking of that fact, he got a little misty-eyed. Then he pointed to a memento sitting atop his TV: a ceramic baby booty. He said it represents a baby he fathered that the mother didn’t allow to come to birth. I know there’s always more to the story, and it’s true I don’t really know much about this “new” cousin’s past. I don’t know what that young woman years ago was going through, either.

I saw the tear in my cousin’s eye, though. And I heard the wistfulness in his voice when he told me he believed there was a child of his that he would meet in Heaven.

I was touched by the emotions of this man, over something that happened several decades ago.

A huge number of abortions have occurred in the years since abortion was legalized in America. If you believe as most Christians do, that babies and young children who die before the age of accountability go to Heaven; and if you believe that unborn babies are persons with eternal souls; then you believe as I do that all those aborted babies will be in Heaven. Perhaps they’ve been growing and developing in the nurture of Jesus and loving saints. Then, what a host of beloved children are waiting there.

My cousin obviously believes and hopes to meet his one child someday in the heavenly realms.

One of our Journeys to Mother Love contributors, Kyleen Stevenson-Braxton, has written movingly about her post-abortion experiences and healing. To my cousin and to Kyleen and to the many women and men who chose abortion when they felt trapped, hopeless, and helpless … the Lord of mercy and grace has healing, hope, and restoration for you. And He is taking care of your child. May that thought give you comfort this Mother’s Day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This video and the book it is based on, express the emotions that lead to and result from the choice of an abortion:

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Mental Illness and Relationships

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in emotional needs, generational patterns, God's healing love, grief and loss, the healing journey

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

authentic relationship, Courage to be honest, Effects of mental illness on relationships, Emotional and spiritual healing

Ocean-waves-Bodega

Suicide has touched us all in some way, even if it’s seeing the stories and feeling the sadness of a celebrity suicide such as Robin Williams’.

For me it’s more personal, since in the past year my husband and I lost both a relative and a friend to suicide. There are still hurts and unanswered questions.

Much is being said about mental illness, addictions, and suicide by both secular and religious pundits and bloggers.

In her story in the book, Journeys to Mother Love, Ardis Nelson tells of the pain of having a mentally-ill mother. Ardis writes:

“Mom was given shock treatments and she was never the same after that. … Diagnosed with schizophrenia [she] was in and out of mental hospitals. For my own sense of sanity, I kept her at a distance. I didn’t trust what she told me. I pretty much wrote off my mother. It was just too painful to be her daughter. All I could ‘see’ was that she was crazy. … Growing up, I internalized the subtle messages that my emotions were not something I should share and in fact, that if I did, there must be something wrong with me — like my mother.  Fearful of becoming crazy, I learned to shut down my emotions and not share them with anyone.”

Ardis goes on to tell how the opportunity came, at the end of her mother’s life, for healing in their relationship. This opened the door for even wider and deeper healing in Ardis’s life.

In the isolation and pain that depression, mental illness, and suicidal thoughts can cause, what is needed is openness, communication, honest words.

God, help us be bridges of mercy to others.

In her blog two days ago, Ann Voskamp expressed this need — and her own experience with a mentally-ill mother — eloquently. You may want to click there and read her words, and open your heart to grace, and beauty, and hope:

http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/08/what-the-church-christians-need-to-know-about-suicide-mental-health/

~Catherine

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Grief Came One Day

18 Sunday May 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Christian spirituality, Emotional and spiritual healing, Grief and loss, Healing love, life stages, life's upward path

My father and sister after Mother's burial

My father and sister after Mother’s grave

I’ve found it true for myself and for other people I know — that when we go through a period of grief and loss, the deep feelings that need expression may bubble to the surface in the form of poetry. This helps our hearts heal — and helps us minister to others in need of healing.

After my mother died, my dad started writing poetry. Losing Mother so young — she was 48 — was hard for me. But it was also devastating for my dad. Here’s a poem he wrote five months after Mother died. Maybe these lines will help someone going through their own deep grief and “dark night of the soul.”


GRIEF CAME ONE DAY

Grief came to visit me one day
And soon I found he’d come to stay.
He lived with me both day and night
Through darkest gloom and in the light.
He lay his hand upon my heart,
To bring it pain and tear apart.
He cast a shadow on my mind,
He put my reason in a bind.
My inner pain was so severe,
I thought, Could this just last a year?
God send sweet comfort to my soul;
I bid my heart His love extoll.
But still old Grief to me held on,
I hoped in comfort he’d be gone.
Sweet friends poured in affection’s balm.
Still on me was his clammy palm.
He walked along the path with me,
Such dubious, doubtful company.
At meals he took my appetite
And slept with me alone at night.
I longed for love ~ could it dispel
This hold on me so much like hell?
But how could I find love again
With heart and soul and mind in pain?
Will he some day depart from me,
God’s Presence give tranquility?
When will I end my walk with Grief,
And find at last a sweet relief?
I asked God, and He said to me,
“I sent him, for it had to be
To bring you through the purging fire
So that your life can all inspire.”
I said, “O Lord, your way is best;
In your own time you’ll give me rest.”
~ © George Herbert Cummings

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Mother Loss and Connection

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Christian spirituality, future hope, life and death, Mother, Mother loss

Cemetery - near where my mother was buried

A resting – and remembering – and rising place

I have only visited my mother’s grave site a few times. It lies on a hillside, near sheltering trees, overlooking a river valley, facing the rising sun, three states away from where I now live. But those visits have reassured my soul and spoken to me in some mysterious way. I know she isn’t really there, not her spirit, not the essence of Mother. However, her body lies under the ground there in that grassy, flower-strewn slope. And when the Son of Righteousness appears in that eastern sky, she will rise there to meet him. Just being in that blessed place where that meeting will happen, and seeing her name engraved on that stone, touching and tracing her name with my fingers helps me feel a connection to her.

The loss of a mother, and the lasting connection to her, provides a theme that runs through literature and poetry. Reading these works can help us carry the burden, embrace the mystery, and release the emotions of the loss of Mother.

I just finished reading one such novel, The Messenger of Magnolia Street by Jordan River. In this book, the main character, named Nehemiah, returns to his hometown and visits his mother’s grave. There, surrounded by trees and flowers and gravestones, he stands before his mother’s burial place.

Nehemiah doesn’t know what else to say except, ‘Hi, Momma’ and ‘I miss you.’ He thinks about all the times he has needed her advice, all the times he’s thought he’d just reach out and pick up the phone and call her, but then, how silly was that? How many times he’d wanted to call her from Washington and tell her something to make her proud. … If there had ever been a time that he needed her sage words, he felt that time was now….

I can relate to this fictional character’s feelings, as I’m sure other contributors to this blog can. Treva, for instance, lost her mom to a violent, tragic event when she was a teenager. Ellen’s mother died just before Ellen’s birth. My mother died of cancer when I was in my twenties.

We hold and internalize their love for us and the wisdom they left us. And we cling to the hope that has been given to us. We are alive and we must live and carry out our purposes here. That’s what our mothers would want us to do.

Someday it will be our turn to rest — and rise!

~Catherine Lawton

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My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?

19 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, Jesus on the cross, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Tags

Emotional and spiritual healing, future hope, God the Father, Healing love

I have felt forsaken, especially at specific times in my youth. During this Holy Week it really does something for me to know that Jesus also felt forsaken. What this means for all of us who have suffered and felt abandoned, writer Jasona Brown expresses well:

The Deepest Love

I agreed to speak on these words at our church’s Good Friday service.  Then I thought, What have I done? I now must teach on the worst words in the entire Bible?  Campion_Hall_Jesus

Jesus cried these words moments before his death, not long before he screamed, gave up his spirit, and died.

Exposure and Vulnerability

The Romans stripped Jesus of his clothes, exposing his body; they stripped him of his skin by scourging, exposing his sinews and muscles; but with these words, Jesus himself exposed his heart, laying it bare and raw before the human race. He could not have made himself more vulnerable.

So, I move forward with trembling. How can I presume to speak of the mystery of this most excruciating, vulnerable moment in my savior’s life?

Joy Under Despair

I must speak, however, not only because I said I would, but because the longer I sit with these words the…

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Filling the Mother-Loss with Tangible Grace

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Catherine Lawton in Adopted children, emotional needs, encouraging each other, generations coming together, God's healing love, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Adoption, caverns of the heart, Emotional and spiritual healing, future hope, Healing love, life and death, life stages

CG1girl

When your mother dies, especially if she is still quite young, you can feel forsaken and forlorn. And even when your heart embraces the mercy of these true words: “When my mother and father forsake me, the Lord will take me up” — there remains a mother-shaped cavern in your heart that reminds you every day of your loss.

But the Lord has shown me that He wants to fill that hole in my life with the most unexpected, beautiful gifts. I have been wanting to tell my readers about the wondrous gifts that have been coming to me. And I think it is time now. So, with a sense of Heaven’s nearness, a smile of awe, and a few tears, I’ll share the rest of the story….

This week my pastor concluded his sermon with the words, “Filling our imagination with Jesus, we increasingly live in touch with reality, while the whole world is out of touch with reality.” I know this is true. I’ve experienced Jesus working through my imagination to enter and heal the losses and wounds of my life. Our minds can believe all sorts of lies, and our hearts can be oppressed by darkness; but when Jesus steps in to fill a mind and a heart, light shines out the darkness, and loving truth dispels crippling falsehood.

You can read my story — of how Jesus “took me up” and healed my heart — in Journeys to Mother Love. Part of that story is that for many years I have lived with a mother-cavern in my heart since my mother died when I was in my twenties. Since Mother was adopted as a young child out of a large family fallen on hard times (during the Great Depression, her mother died of TB and her father left to find work) … and then, adopted, she was raised as an only child … I have had no relatives on my mother’s side.

Then, 18 months ago, after years of searching, I found my mother’s birth family — living within an hour’s drive of my husband and me! I found a cousin the same age as my mother who had been a toddler in the same home with Mother and always wondered what happened to little Imogene. At 83 she was the last of the generation that remembered my mother, Imogene. So I found her in the nick of time.

This new-found cousin, Mary Lou, was as thrilled to find me as I was to find her. We felt a bond immediately, and the mother-cavern in my heart didn’t feel so empty. And gradually I learned that she was a person of faith who loved the Lord and prayed for her family.

I treasure the times we spent together: visits in my home and in her apartment, sharing lunches together, looking through photo albums, finding so many ways our paths have intersected unbeknown to us, feeling her strong grasp of my hands, her kisses on my cheeks, hearing her heartfelt, “I love you!”

Then this winter she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Long vigils in the hospital brought my husband and me together with her children and grandchildren. And the heart-cavern of impending loss filled with cousins who enfolded me and I have found myself surrounded by family I never expected to have.

Last Friday night my husband and I stood with 16 of Mary Lou’s family members around her ICU bed as she lay at death’s door. We had each had opportunity to sit with her, express our love, and say good-bye. But the grief and sadness were creating a huge cavern of grief in the room, felt by everyone present.

Then this family, with tears, each at various stages of belief and doubt, gathered round the beloved mother and grandmother who had been their strong, caring, faithful hub and, instead of calling the hospital chaplain, asked one of her sons, who had been a steady church attender, to pray. I doubt the family had ever done that before. But as gentle, simple, real, heartfelt words poured from that brother (one of my new-found cousins, who has had much suffering in his life) grace like rain poured sweetness into the gaping cavern of sadness. Surely every heart, no matter how unaccustomed to praying, was touched. … How can sadness be so sweet?!

Soon after that I read my friend Jasona’s blog in which she writes, “I see loss, difficulty, and uncertainty as cavernous places, and I have hope that when we open them to Jesus he fills them with grace so they can become … like settings for diamonds.” (You can read her entire blog post here.) Jasona’s post came to me as another gracious gift that helped me fill my imagination with Jesus, helped me deal with the grief in a way that was in touch with reality — the realities of Life in the midst of death, Light in the midst of darkness, Heaven in the midst of our earthy lives, and the Wonders of God’s ways.

~ Catherine Lawton

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What? You Can’t Stop Crying

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by arcecil in challenges of motherhood, confessing our need, emotional needs, encouraging each other, God's healing love, grief and loss, letting go of anger, reach out and touch, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

a heart filled with love and hope, Emotional and spiritual healing, life stages, life's upward path, Mothering, Women's Issues

Alice-poetry-bookWHAT? YOU CAN’T STOP CRYING

What? You can’t stop crying.
I hear you. Been there.
You say you left your grocery cart in frozen foods.
You’re telling me it was loaded with food
and every kind of whatnot
from all the other aisles,
And then you hightailed it to your car.
There you hid behind sunglasses and drove home.
Did you remember to wipe your fingerprints
off the handle of the loaded, abandoned cart
in frozen foods?
Just kidding.

You complain you couldn’t sleep because your slumber
was interrupted by the need to blow your nose.
David of the Old Testament cried on his bed.
See, we are in good company.

Let’s look at the list of life’s events that can trigger
such an avalanche of emotion.
Just check the one that fits, or mark “Other”
at the bottom.

All right, here we go.
You poured your life into the children.
All the children left home.
The empty nest doesn’t feel as good as you thought it would.

You lost your job.
You’re too old to be hired.
You’re not sure whether this reinventing is right for you.

You moved your mother into a nursing home.
You tried to manage Mom at home.
You moved your mother back into the home.

There is an injustice in your life.
You try to think of ways to address it.
Every idea leads to a dead end.
You choose to remain silent.

You have just received a bad diagnosis.
Many well-intentioned people are offering suggestions.

Someone who is dear to you is very ill.
That loved one says, “Just sit with me.”

An important person in your life passes away.

Other.

Listen, if you weren’t crying, I’d be worried about you.
I sympathize with you.
God empathizes with you.
That’s the reason He included people
like Joseph, David, Job, and Paul in His Book.
Think about them; think about the Lord; and think about me.
And, in the near future,
you’ll be able to leave your empty cart in the corral,
go home, store the perishables in the refrigerator,
and then sit on the sofa and have a good cry.
Now, that will be progress. That will be hope.

~ A.R. (Alice) Cecil

Editor’s note: This poem is taken from the book, IN THAT PLACE CALLED DAY: Poems and Reflections That Witness God’s Love.

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Sorrow and Hope at Christmas

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Catherine Lawton in God's healing love, grief and loss, losing mom too soon, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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Christian spirituality, Christmas, Emotional and spiritual healing, Family, future hope, God's promises, Holidays, life and death, life stages, Mother, relationships

Journeys To Mother Love

Ah, Christmas! Bright lights, hustle and bustle, joyous music and celebrations….

Yet, hidden behind all the glitter, many people feel the pangs of sadness and loneliness more acutely during the Christmas season. If you have ever experienced a great loss at Christmastime, the holiday season awakens that grief again each year.

I know. My mother died on December 19, 1977. My father was the pastor of a loving church at the time, and the people were sweet to us, though they also grieved the death of their beloved pastor’s wife. Our family found comfort in togetherness—my husband and I with our two toddlers, my sister, and our dad. After the funeral, we stayed and spent Christmas in our parents’ home, with everything around us to remind us of Mother. … But no mother. She was not there and would never be again.

At a time when we celebrated the birth…

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A Grief That Can’t be Spoken

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by ardisanelson in challenges of motherhood, God's healing love, grief and loss, the healing journey, when tragedy hits

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future hope, Grief Loss and Bereavement, Healing love, John F Kennedy, life and death

Rose Kennedy, holding Joe Jr., presumably prio...

Rose Kennedy, holding Joe Jr., presumably prior to 1921. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

ARC194183

President John F. Kennedy and his mother, Rose (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When my birthday rolled around this year on November 22, I was reminded again of the significance of that day in history. It was on my fourth birthday in 1963 that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and I remember it well.

I hadn’t heard the word “assassinate” before that day. The sorrow that gripped my family also gripped the nation. I didn’t like it. I wanted it to go away. But every day the television was awash in news stories as the nation prepared to bury our president.

Four days in history. Four days in mourning. Four days that shook our nation and the world, now commemorated 50 years ago.

My birthday link to the Kennedys left me with a fascination for this public family. I collected books and commemorative magazines over the years. The grief of the nation and the grief of the Kennedy family didn’t end with JFK’s death. Less than five years later we witnessed another horrific Kennedy assassination when Bobby Kennedy, JFK’s brother, was killed. Our nation grieved with the passing of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, JFK’s widow, in 1994. Then in 1999, the unthinkable happened when JFK, Jr. died in a tragic plane crash over the Atlantic. More sorrow. More grief.

There’s a song in Les Miserable called “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” that Marius, the sole survivor of the student revolt, sings after the heart-breaking massacre of all his friends. Two lines of that song stand out to me and aptly describe the grief of our nation. “There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on.” Haunting words in his unfathomable predicament—fighting his guilt while also embracing the newfound love of his soon to be bride, Cosette.

These words ring true to me as I think of the Kennedy family and their grief. How does a mother like Rose Kennedy live with the grief of losing two sons to the bullet of an assassin? She had already lost two of her nine children to tragic plane crashes in the 1940s. Surely this was “a grief that can’t be spoken.” Yet she survived and lived to a ripe old age of 104.

It takes an amazing amount of faith and perseverance to endure that kind of loss. As mothers we feel the pain of our children’s hurts and disappointments—from the pain of a scraped knee to the hurt and rejection of bullying words voiced in school. But we were never meant to watch our children precede us in death.

Thankfully I’ve never experienced that kind of grief. I can only provide prayer, compassion, and sympathy to those who have. Like Rose Kennedy, whose faith got her through the pain and heartache shared by the nation, we can turn to the God of all comfort when life turns tragically wrong and we enter into a season with “a grief that can’t be spoken.”

“For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone.” (Lamentations 3:31-33, NIV)

~ Ardis A. Nelson

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