When we are in a place of emotional stress, it is usually all we can do to handle life day-to-day (or even minute-by-minute). It is very common during that time to stop taking care of our bodies.

But I have discovered, unfortunately, that is one of the worst things we can do. Our emotions are so tied up in our physical health. Think about it. When are getting enough sleep, eating healthy food that is fuel for our bodies and moving around (even if it is just getting out for a walk), we feel so much better. I know I sure do – like I can take on the world!

I know at first, when the tragedy takes us to our knees, we don’t have much of a choice. Our body just kind of seems to take over as a response to the intense grief. Some of us find ourselves eating unhealthy “comfort foods” constantly. Others discover they don’t eat anything at all for a couple of days. Some of us can’t seem to stay awake and all we can do is sleep. Others want desperately to sleep, but even with sleep aids it often still seems to allude them.

Me? I slept a lot and grabbed the comfort foods, which put an extra 30 pounds on my body. Over five years later, I am still struggling to get my health back under control.

But we all get to a point where the fog starts to lift, and we are left with the reality of the depth of our pain and horrific loss. Most of us continue in the pattern we found ourselves in, convincing ourselves we are helpless to stop.

I want to encourage you that is not true. What is usually happening, is that we see ourselves as a victim of the circumstance and let that become our identity. (My identity became, “I am the mother of a child who died.”) As long as that is our identity, we continue to believe things won’t change, and we will always struggle, both emotionally and physically.

At some point, we will come to a place where we start making the choice. “Do I want to stay a victim and let that become my identity? Or do I want to figure out how to climb out of this pit of darkness and back into a place of hope and light and life?”

If you are ready to start climbing out of the pit and get back to living again, here are three suggestions to help you start going in the right direction.

1. Take a daily stroll. I know we don’t feel like it, but it does so much to release stress and keep our bodies in better working order.
2. At least once a day, chose something healthy to eat instead of reaching for that indulgent item that you will pay the price for later. I know that is easy for me to say and much harder to do. Something that might help is a change in perspective. I can either “treat” myself to those brownies or that ice cream, or I can “treat” myself to something that will be fuel for my body. Usually once I take the first bite of the healthy item, it tastes good because my body is craving the nutrients and I am glad I chose what I did… usually….
3. Build in times of rest, including going to bed early or sleeping in late. Whenever we face a crisis, our adrenal glands (the built-in “fight or flight” mechanism we each have) are working overtime in a big way. You can become critically ill if they burn themselves out. Rest is one of the only things that counters the work they are doing on your behalf.

We don’t get to choose how our body reacts to a shocking tragedy. But what we can and need to do is look to God for how to not abuse our bodies during this time, and ask Him what we can do to help our bodies come back into alignment with being healthy. He knows what we need, each day, each moment. And then be sure to follow through with the nudges of the Holy Spirit.

The last thing I want to say is to not be hard on yourself for letting your body somewhat fall apart. You have been in survival mode. Just take one day at a time, and keep stepping in the right direction. It is a process to become healthy again after a tragedy strikes our lives. And probably one that will take longer than you want it to.

Remember that choice of either staying a victim or climbing out of the pit of darkness and despair? I urge you to start making your way out with baby steps by taking back your health. And keep going, because it is worth the climb!

 

 

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Expressions of Hope is written by author and speaker Laura Diehl to bring hope, light and life to those struggling in darkness after a tragedy, especially bereaved parents. If you would like more information about Laura as an author or a speaker for your next event, click here.

Extreme trauma and deep bereavement, such as the death of your child, changes a person. It literally makes physical changes in us, and it totally effects our thoughts and how our minds operate.

I became so forgetful it drove me crazy, especially the first two or three years. I would get so frustrated with myself at the things I would forget, at the things I didn’t or couldn’t remember, at my constant confusion and fuzziness. It took me quite a while to find out that was a normal part of intense grief.

I started speaking over myself according to 1 Corinthians 2:16 (“I have the mind of Christ”) and 2 Timothy 1:7 (“I have a sound mind”). Eventually the fog began to clear and I wasn’t quite so scattered and forgetful.

After several years, I have to be honest and say I still don’t have a clear mind like I did before. It can be very frustrating at times. Friends have tried to encourage me by saying things like “Oh, I forget things too.” But this isn’t the same thing as just getting forgetful with age. We have been through a traumatic event, and our minds just freeze, forgetting how to function at times. I keep giving it to God and don’t allow myself to be stressed out about it.

What was happening with me physically and in my mind during the worst of my grieving period those first couple of years seemed so much greater than my strength to get through it. In a very real sense, the mental and emotional “energy” of grief saps brain power and leaves a person quite disoriented and unable to hold a thought for very long.

There are those who would tell us it is our choice to either lean on God for strength or fall apart, but that wasn’t the case for me. I did both.  I leaned on God as I fell apart. Only those who have lost a child can understand there are times when the intense grief of those first few months and years will emotionally and physically take over, and we really have no choice in the matter. We can’t function no matter how much we try or how much we might want to.

On those days I would cry out to God. It was the only thing I could do. And in that place of trauma, God has never rejected me. I still occasionally have times like this, and I can still call out to Him with the tiniest cry at any point, and He comes in to give me the strength I need, moment by moment, until I can function again.

Don’t you love it when people become our cheerleaders, telling us we can do this because we are such a strong person? Or when someone tells us they admire us for how strong we are? Or that they could never go through what we are going through in losing a child. WHAT? News flash: we had no choice in the matter! We are being forced to go through this. And just because you see us in survival mode doesn’t mean we are being strong.

We need to find ways beyond just the spiritual to bring ourselves comfort in our time of grief, and it is very easy to do so in unhealthy and even harmful ways. Doing things to numb ourselves from the pain will only prolong the grief and even intensify it. Obviously, we know the dangers of excessive drugs and alcohol, but there are lots of things we can do excessively that are not good for us. Things like excessive shopping, excessive Internet or TV, and excessive eating or sleeping. Sometimes we may do some of these things because we just need to shut down for a while. And that is okay! But we want to monitor ourselves to make sure it is not a substitute for going to God to help us get through this.

One thing God so graciously shared with me in all my times of sleeping was the reminder that He never sleeps or slumbers. He could still minister to me while I was sleeping. And He can and wants to do the same thing for you. Ask Him to bring healing to your soul while you are sleeping. He doesn’t need us to be awake.

Here is the last thing I want to encourage you with. This is a process! It takes time. Do the next thing you can do, whatever it is, no matter how small it is—that’s it. Just one thing at a time. Don’t try to look too far ahead. It is exhausting and overwhelming. You have permission to give yourself lots and lots of grace, especially when others do not!

This was taken from chapter six of Laura’s book When Tragedy Strikes. To receive the full chapter as a gift from GPS Hope, just fill in your name and email address, and it will be sent directly to you.

Expressions of Hope is written by author and speaker Laura Diehl to bring hope, light and life to those struggling in darkness after a tragedy, especially bereaved parents. If you would like more information about Laura, as an author or a speaker for your next event, click here.

 

My child,
Flesh of my flesh,
Soul of my soul,
Part of my very being;
I had an instant deep and fierce love when I first saw you.
My heart was yours, and I knew I would give my very life to protect you.

And yet, here I sit, with the suffocating pain and darkness of knowing I was unable to protect you from death.

So now I find that just as deep and intense as my love for you, is the deep and intense pain of my grief in living without you. And yet I know that somehow, I must.

How? How God? How do I go on with a piece of my very being gone from this earth?

And as I ask and seek for this help, God in His tender love, compassion and faithfulness reminds me that I don’t have to live without you.

You are forever in my heart and my thoughts, and forever a part of my very being; that our separation is only temporary. You have just moved on to our eternal home before me and have unpacked and settled in, waiting for me and the rest of us to join you.

This isn’t a final good-by. It is an “I’ll see you later.” When I have the thoughts that I would give anything  to see you again, to hug you or hear you laugh, I realize that I will! Maybe not as soon as I want to, but it will happen!

And so I will wait. I will wait with hope, expectancy and even excitement to see you again. Every day I am here on this earth means I am one day closer to that desperate need I have as a mother, to love on you.

And while I wait, I will choose to live my life in a way that is full; full of love, full of peace and contentment, full of laughter. And yet I know it will also still be full of pain and longing. For I have now learned that all of these things can live inside of me together.

So on this day of honoring bereaved mothers, let me say I am honored. I am honored and blessed to be your mom, and I imagine and dream of our reunion someday, filled with love and joy that goes beyond words to describe it.

But until then, I will have good days and bad days. I will have days filled with happiness, and days filled with pain. And all of those days I will continue to miss you with every fiber of my being.

 

 

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Expressions of Hope is written by author, speaker and singer Laura Diehl. She and her husband, Dave, are the founders of Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope). Dave and Laura travel full time in their Hope Mobile (a 38-foot motor home) to be more easily available for speaking and ministry requests, including being invited to hold one-day GPS Hope & Healing conferences.

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Many people don’t realize, as someone who has had a child leave this earth, how many occasions that should be filled with joy, are now a painful stab to our hearts.

Our thoughts are constantly going to who is absent. It is like a slap in the face that our child should be a part of this celebration, sometimes smack dab in the middle of it, which makes the event even more difficult. That is what I mean by “bittersweet”.

For instance, we have two daughters. The oldest, Becca, was married in 2001, and her sister was her maid of honor. Five and a half years ago, Becca died. This month, the other daughter is getting married. There have been many tears shed (from both of us) that her sister has not been with us to help plan and be part of the wedding shower, the wedding preparations, and will not be there to be her matron of honor.

What is supposed to be one of the happiest days of a woman’s life, is now also one of the most painful. Bittersweet.

Every time a new grandchild is born (and we just had number five, our first grandson, born February 1^st, and exactly one month later on March 1^st, another granddaughter was born). While we were ecstatic at these new blessings, there is a deeply painful reminder their Aunt Becca will never have the joy of holding them, watching them grow, being part of their lives, and these children will never know their Aunt Becca or hear her contagious laugh. Bittersweet.

A graduation is the same way, especially if your child should have been one of those getting a diploma and having a party. You are happy for those who have reached that milestone of accomplishment, but there is the glaring reminder of our child who is not there and should be. Bittersweet.

I don’t have to go on. We all know what it is like now.

Sometimes we can avoid the event altogether and just not go. But what if we can’t? Obviously, I am not going to stay home when my daughter is in her beautiful gown and is given to a man who loves her deeply and she becomes his wife.

Painful reminders of our child not being here because of celebration events, is literally a never-ending battle we will be facing until our own departure from this earth.

So the question is, how do we deal with it?

Here are four suggestions that I hope will help.

1. Before the event, find someone you can talk to about the turmoil you are feeling. Someone who will allow you to grieve without judgment, and even grieve with you. Because let’s face it, that is what we are doing. We are grieving the loss of our child… again… (and again, and again, and again…). That is NORMAL!!! It will help to find someone who will validate that grief and allow you to get it out.

1. During the event, if painful thoughts threaten to leak out of your eyes (and you don’t want them to), distract yourself. Go in with a plan of what you will start thinking about instead.
   • Is it a wedding? Study every detail of the bride’s dress, her veil, her hair, etc.
   • Is it a shower? Start making guesses at how much each gift cost, or guess what is in the wrapped packages and see if you are right.
   • Is it a graduation? Start counting. Count how many in the audience are wearing the school colors.

3. Excuse yourself, and have a good cry! Sometimes that is just the best thing to do. Lean into your grief. Lynn Breeden, founder of Mourning to Dancing had this to say recently, at the Hope & Healing Virtual Summit.

I remember going to a concert once, when I was away from home, and I was by myself, with just other friends and people that (acquaintances, not close friends), and we went to a concert, just to kind of pass the time. And…and I thought it was going to be safe, you know. We…we assume that. And this was only three or four years ago, so it was twenty-some years into this process.

 And what I didn’t know was, this man who was doing the concert had lost a child. And so, as he’s doing this concert, I… realized that he’s leading in, and a lot of his music that he wrote was about this loss of a child. And so, a long story short, I…hear him, and I’m trying really hard to talk to myself, “You can do this. This is okay. You don’t have to, you know, make a spectacle …you don’t have to cry, you just kind of…” and then he went to a song that was incredibly heartfelt for me, and then you have to make the decision, “Am I going to stay here and blubber and cry in this concert, or am I going to walk out?” And I walked out, and I had a good cry.

 4. Just let people around you know, so they can share that sacred moment with you, of remembering your child and how much you love and miss him or her. Once again, I want to share what someone said at the GPS Hope & Healing Virtual Summit. This comes from Kathi Wilson.

So, there is … an element of embracing where your heart is, and sometimes I refer to it as surfing the waves of grief. Because there’s this ebb and flow, and sometimes, years after a loss, we could be in the midst of something crazily fun. And something will trigger a memory, and there will be a wave of grief wash over you. And you can … tell people that are around you, ”Wow.  I just remembered… this picture, and this is what I’m feeling at this moment.”

And then you’re being real. You’re being true. And then the people that you’re relating with, have a bond with you, over that moment in time, which you could have shut down, but instead, you said, “This is part of my life. This is part of my story. And we’re together now. Let me share it with you.”

Not putting prayer in the list doesn’t mean I don’t think it is important. To me, that is a given. But having God in our lives does not take a giant eraser and remove that pain of no longer having our child here with us to share in all of these things they were supposed to be a part of with us.

We need tools to help us, because like I said, unfortunately, we will be dealing with these kinds of bittersweet situations for the rest of our lives.

May God give you the comfort, peace, wisdom, hope and light that you need, each and every day, and each and every event you find yourself facing.

Let’s help each other out. Do you have any other ideas, or is there something you have done that helped you get through one of those bittersweet events? Please share it below.

In my book, Come Grieve Through Our Eyes, I talk about how even the word “family” is bittersweet, and share what other bereaved parents have to say about it. To have that chapter sent to you, along with the two pages about family from My Grief Journey: A Coloring Book and Journal, just fill in the information below and submit.

Expressions of Hope is written by author and speaker Laura Diehl to bring hope, light and life to bereaved parents. If you would like more information about Laura as a speaker for your next event, click here.

“I will say I am still very angry at God. I’ve not been able to pray any longer.  My heart aches for God at the same time my anger prevails.” This was part of a recent email I received, from someone who lost her son over four years ago.

One of the things I hear about the most from pareavors (parents bereaved of their child) is how much they struggle with anger, which is why I am writing about this topic again.

Lynn Breeden and I talked about this at the recent virtual summit I hosted, in her session When Your Faith Has Been Shattered. Lynn’s life was forever changed in October of 1987, when her son Joel Brian died of cancer at the very young age of only five years old. After coming to terms with this loss, her greatest desire is to help other moms through their own loss, so they do not have to grieve alone.*

Here is some of our discussion, in relation to being angry with God about the death of our child.

Laura: One of the things I hear the most is how angry they are at God for allowing their child to die. Because, we all know, God could have stopped it. We all know that. So many of these parents are so angry at God, because He didn’t. Is it okay to be angry at God?

Lynn: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that’s a healthy, normal reaction to something that happens to us that is so earth-shattering, and life-altering. And I talk to a lot of moms that are grieving, and they don’t have the same experience where my foundation of God gave me that knowledge that God didn’t do this to me. God didn’t take my child.

And so, their natural reaction is to be angry at God. And I think God wants us to. God wants us to vent and to share, to pour out our hearts; to wail, to cry, to help us understand why. And I think the hardest part of this, is we long to know the answers why. And we don’t get to know those answers. And in our humanness, we have to understand it. Somehow, we’ve got to make sense of it. And I don’t know that there is a “make sense of this.” I don’t think that we get to always know the answers. Most of the time, ever, this side of heaven. And so, obviously, it is easier to be angry at God, because He seems to be the one that is in charge of all of this.

Laura: And He can take it.

Lynn: Exactly. Absolutely. And I think that’s probably why I say that’s the best person to be angry at, because He understands us. You know, he can take that. His shoulders are pretty broad. And He can handle that. And when we’re crying out to Him, we’re talking to Him. And that’s what He wants, is that communication, whether it’s good, bad or ugly, it doesn’t matter. He just wants us to talk to Him. So, I kind of love it when people do that, honestly.

Laura: Yeah. It’s like when we’re angry with our spouse or something, we kind of have to have it out with them. We have to work it out. And it’s the same thing with God. It’s a relationship. And so, if we’re angry at God, we need to have it out with Him, and work it out.

So, Lynn, when someone comes to you and their faith has been shattered by the death of their child, is there anything that you tell them they can do? Some steps, or some things that they can do towards getting that faith back? What can they do proactively?

Lynn: You know, sometimes we get in such a rut of the anxiety of life, and we’re so consumed in our pain and our grief; and it is consuming, especially in those first couple of years, it’s incredibly consuming.  And it’s hard to step outside of yourself. And, you know, there’s a lot of mental in all of this. And to quiet ourselves in the presence of God, and to try to empty our minds…the pain that we’re feeling…I think there’s a lot of ways we can do this.

I would want you to do it in the way that speaks best to you. Maybe it’s music. Maybe it’s art. It’s not necessarily just sitting down and praying. But it’s immersing yourself in something that is constructive, not destructive. And I think that we tend to gravitate to bathing our pain in pain. And sometimes we have to step outside of that, and figure out how to steep ourselves in something that’s good.

I also want to remind you of that Scripture, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.” That’s a verse that I’ve hung onto over the years. Because it tells me, “I can do anything with God’s strength.” And that’s a big deal in this whole process, knowing that we have a God that is stronger than anything, even when we feel pretty weak in this deal. But to immerse yourself in things that are good. When we immerse ourselves in positivity instead of negativity, it changes how we look at things. And I think that’s a powerful place to start, in changing some of our rhythms of life. ‘Cause everything has changed.

Obviously, there is so much more in this discussion than what I can put in a short blog.

Lynn went on to talk about

• Meditating – getting control of our thoughts
• The process we go through to process the death of our child
• How we are all on our personal grief journey so it will look different for each of us
• Coping skills when blindsided with a grief attack
• That after being on this journey for 30 years, there is HOPE, and that God will keep His promise to you to take you from a place of mourning to a place of joy

We also talked about being blindsided when God did not answer our prayers in healing or protecting our children and had a discussion on unforgiveness within our anger.

The bottom line is that it is normal and okay to be angry with God for allowing the death of your child. But it is something you need to go through the process to work out with Him.

To hear the full interview, which ended with Lynn praying a beautiful prayer over all of those watching, just fill in your name and email address below.

Expressions of Hope is written by author and speaker Laura Diehl to bring hope, light and life to bereaved parents. If you would like more information about Laura as an author or speaker (or to contact her) click here.

*Lynn Breeden founded Mourning to Dancing, which is a non-denominational ministry, with the sole mission to offer comfort, hope, and encouragement to mothers who have suffered the loss of a child. She also currently serves as a Pastor for Lambs Chapel United Methodist Church in LaPorte Indiana.