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What Grief Feels Like To Me

I was driving last weekend and the Lord led me to this thought:

Grief is not a problem to be fixed, it is a process to be fostered.

I am in that process.

For me, it is a different type of grief than the death of a loved one, it is the grief of change in relationships. While there are details that make it harder than I expected, I was aware I was going to be grieving at this time of my life. My oldest is about to graduate, and I have home schooled her almost all of her life. There are specific things I am really concerned about for her, things that are for the most part out of my hands and in her’s and God’s. We are very close and she is going away to college in the fall. She won’t even be that far, but I know that I am going to lose a piece of myself not only as she goes, but as she grows. She is becoming whoever she is going to be. I am going to eventually have to get to know her again and what I have with her, and who she is, and who we are together, very well might be very different. The precious thing about this is knowing our attachment is so real…otherwise, my heart wouldn’t feel so happy and sad, excited and terrified, at the same time.

It’s important, in grief work, to understand that there is no going back to normal. I know that sounds really sad, and that sadness, that gravity of reality, is hard. But even that is important in the process. Thinking we can go back to normal should never be our goal; in fact, that would be quite insane, right? We would never actually get there, yet keep wondering why. It’s impossible and we have to eventually accept that. Time, hurt, bringing things to the surface, prayer, understanding people’s real feelings and choices (whether we like them or not), and the process of grief transform us, for the good or the bad, but we never actually get to go back. Instead, here’s the hope-filled part: As we allow grief its rightful time in our life, we catch glimpses and ideas and even dreams of what the next phase, the next “normal”, can look like. There is a life beyond this one, even here on earth. Phases and seasons…we can learn to love them.

God made us resilient. He really did. That is in each of us, by the grace of God. There are gifts I have found in grief…Here are a few:

-The gift of allowing myself to feel everything, without guilt or cheering myself up

-The gift of tears

-The gift of sleep (especially important in the early hours of traumatic events)

-The gift of unexpected silliness or laughter, which is never anything to feel guilty about

-The gift of time, how remembering events, words, and sensations becomes gradually less shocking, jarring, and stabbing (Depending on the severity of the trauma or loss, the longer this takes, but it does happen, by God’s grace.)

-The gift of truth to hold onto

-The gift of the closeness and comfort of God, and the knowledge that we don’t have to do anything but let Him be there with us

-The gift of friends, family, and community

-The gift of counseling

-The gift of acceptance

-The gift of faith

-The gift of slowing down

-The gift of just sitting and looking out the window and letting it all pass, as uncomfortable as the stillness might be

-The gift of knowing such a love in the first place

-The gift of knowing perfection was never needed, regrets can dissolve, there is grace

We don’t have to know it all. We don’t have to contain in ten steps how to grieve properly and get back on our feet again. We just don’t get control like we want. But there is good, there is God, in it all.

“Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21

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Freedom, Day Four: Acceptance

Hello Friends!

Here’s my statement for the week–I’ve been dwelling on this for a while actually, especially on days that my Enneagram-labeled-Perfectionism tries to strangle me(!):

“I am free from the shame and disappointment of all that I am not. I accept my self and my life as it is.”

In adopting three little girls over the past nine years, I have spent a lot of time learning and then teaching them how important thoughts are–how important it is to feed our own minds! We have many coping skills and many short mantras to drag our thoughts and feelings out of the valley when frustrations, guilt, or other emotional dilemmas want to take us down.

We have to speak truth to our dear selves! God did not make mistakes in making us…and neither did He make mistakes in what He has called us to do or what our lives look like- past, present, and future. I am often plagued with this overwhelming thought that I should have went a different path with my life, that I would have been more valuable and usable to God if I had done things differently. I wonder why certain parts of my life didn’t “take off” like people thought they would. I blame myself for not working harder or accomplishing something I can be known by. I let my mind wander into confusion, guilt, blame, sadness at what I’m not…until I can no longer see the truth.

But here is truth we can speak to such accusations:

God has written our stories and we are deep into one of those Handwritten chapters right now. He has a plan!

When we gave our lives to God, those lives became HIS.  If we are growing, listening, and obeying to the very best of our knowledge, we can rest in His design and ability to change things when HE wants to.

There are different seasons. Some of the things that are on the back burner might come to the forefront again someday. We aren’t failures just because there is some untapped potential in there!

And lastly, the Holy Spirit. I mean, really. Who do I think I am feeling frustrated that I haven’t done more, been more? I am NOTHING! I am whatever the indwelling Jesus–the Holy Spirit–wants me to be! I do whatever the indwelling Jesus–the Holy Spirit–wants me to do! Unless I am living in known sin, do I really think I can surpass what my friend HS wants to do and be in and through me? What a relief to be free and let the Holy Spirit really have control. To be aware of His presence. To see HIM produce HIS fruit in me. To see HIM change me and make more more like Jesus (which mainly looks like me learning humility as I mess up and apologize 10,000 times).

We can accept our selves and our lives as they are as we stay in connection with Him because He is big enough and good enough to lead us if and when it is time. Our life is not a frantic race to do things for God. It is a daily opportunity to be loved, love the Lord and others, and live in specific obedience.

No regrets!

 

 

 

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No Longer Orphans…but Daughters

One of the most wonderful things God has shown me this year is the peace enveloped in the privilege of being His daughter.

 

If I had to say what I long for the very most as a mother it would be that my daughters would have victory over any barriers that would keep them from reveling in the love and protection their family and their Heavenly Father provides them. I know that was a mouthful of a sentence there, but the reality is that adopted children often have a very hard time truly relaxing in the simple gift of love. Their hard past makes it a little (or even a lot) complicated to enjoy all that they now have.

 

And doesn’t that sound a little like me and you, too?

 

This summer the Lord allowed me to swallow a seed and it’s been growing…the seed of confidence that what He says about my being related to Him really is true! Let me share an excerpt from my journal…I’ve been waiting for just the right time.

 

(I wrote the following on June 26, 2015, in Haiti, after listening to Melissa’s Story, a podcast from Jonathan and Melissa Helser)

 

“This is the day God delivered me from a spirit of fear and made me to really understand what was standing in the way of my joy and peace. I was living from an orphan’s heart, a heart full of disappointments and fear of more, a heart of distrust. I was a daughter of the King I just wasn’t letting my heart feel and my mind think from that status. I thought and felt and acted like an orphan just not quite believing God was good. It’s the great lie whispered in every tragedy: God is not good.
When a child doesn’t trust their parent, all kinds of mental and emotional problems happen, and when that parent is actually wonderful, what a sad story that the child would miss out on enjoying that stability they could have had.
 I decided I would not waste another minute of my life consciously doubting whether or not God was good.
If He loved me, and adopted me, it was time to let that carry its full weight and set me free. No more saying I believe it but it having no real effect on my feelings of dread.
This is the happiness of the believer–to let go of how your life has to be and ENJOY being His beloved, highly favored, cherished child, whatever He decides that should look like!
I’m ALL IN. I’m tired of being a worry wart. I’m tired of wondering if He’s good or if He makes mistakes. I need my Abba and I’m choosing to trust Him and know I’m not forgotten…know He is coming back for me, know He never stops thinking about me, know He weeps when I weep and rejoices when I rejoice, know He can see and orchestrate things in the future that I can’t comprehend, know He really is good and He really does love me, know I can be little me because He is Who He Is. If I know all of that, and I can honestly say that I do, then regardless of what He allows me to face, I really do not have anything to fear because He is the One Thing I must not–but could never–lose.
And every single sentence I just said about ME choosing to dwell with God AS A DAUGHTER NOT AN ORPHAN is happening before my very eyes in the seen realm…what will it take for these little girls to know they are no longer orphans? That there’s a room prepared for them like they’ve never imagined? That everyday half a dozen grandparents are whispering their names to the God they entrust their beloveds to? That their place at the table sits open and ready and no one else can fill it but them? That I dream of snuggling under covers and eating ice cream and helping them find their callings and really knowing them like only family does?
They don’t know these things…yet. It’s just words to them right now. And it really will take faith for them to believe it. And it really will take faith for me to believe He is speaking these same beautiful thoughts over me. I’m no longer an orphan; I’m in. Not even as a slave or a worker bee, but a precious child. There’s a room prepared, and a life to live until then carefully planned as well. In Heaven, the cloud of witnesses spur me on, the Holy Spirit intercedes with groans words cannot express on my behalf, and Jesus Himself, my dearest brother, goes to the Father for me and pray God’s will over my life. He says my name to the Father daily! I’ve a place at that table and His banner over me is love. He loves the story of my life, and revels in knowing me, behind the eyes.
My ability to speak it and write it is sadly inadequate, but just like with me and my Abba, my girls can either trust us and have a happy childhood…or not. They’re not gonna get everything they want or always be happy with us, but they can trust us and have a happy childhood…or not. There will be a huge transition of going from a disappointed, distrusting orphan to a content, relaxed DAUGHTER, but this is my prayer for us both. Healing matters, but you know what it really requires is faith. I’m choosing to accept that seed of daughtership, that seed of confidence to believe He is good, perfect in all of His ways, and worthy of my trust.
I pray that I will never be the same and that I will enjoy and relax and sink deeply into being my Daddy’s girl, and let Him fight my battles, write my story, and meet my needs. I pray I can LIVE that trust, seeing the fruits of joy, peace, security in who I am, and be that example by God’s grace to these girls, until they relax in our arms without a care in the world as all children should.”
I can honestly say in the months since I have truly been changed. Active petition and thanksgiving, with true surrender and excitement about what my Abba will do in His great love for me and others I am praying for, is the scene of my prayer life now. Worry is displaced by the choice to trust Him, and He makes me carefree when I come to Him and am renewed by His Word and truth. Trust has led to surrender, which has led to peace, which has led to joy, which has led to thanksgiving, which has led to having light even on the dark nights. And when I get lost again, it’s trust that I have to go back to. It’s square one.
That seed is the beginning and as Matthew 13 describes, the smallest of seeds can become strong arms, a plentiful home for the birds of the air to find refuge. May it be so in our lives, because the world is full of sparrows, looking to know their worth.