When death takes our child from us, we can be surprised and even scared at how much anger there is inside of us. It can be even more shocking to realize who the cause of our anger is, as it is often not just someone who was directly involved in our child’s death (like a drunk driver or an actual murderer). We can also be angry at

• Our family and friends for telling us things like we need to “just get over it”
• Someone indirectly related to the death (like a spouse or babysitter for not keeping a closer eye on our child)
• Ourselves (if only I had…)
• God (why didn’t you stop it?)
• Our child for leaving us

Did I just say that? Yes, if you are angry at your child, let me say as awful as that sounds, you can breathe a sigh of relief because it is NORMAL! Especially if the death was by his or her own doing, either directly or indirectly.

And if you are angry at God right now, that’s also typical. We all know God could have stopped it. I have so many testimonies of times in Becca’s life when He did step in and miraculously spared her life. So why didn’t he do it again on October 12, 2011?

There is no answer that will satisfy that question. Even if God reveals the answer this side of heaven, it won’t be a good enough reason. I would find myself acting like a teenager, telling my Dad it isn’t fair, and that His answer isn’t a good enough one to cause this kind of anguish and pain in my life.

So how do we get past that kind of anger and blame? Is it even possible?

Yes, it is, but it is a choice we must make. This choice is not based on our feelings. It is not based on if that person deserves it. It is based on the fact that I don’t want to stay in this suffocating darkness any longer, and I will do whatever it takes to step toward hope and light for my life.

Dennis Apple, who was a pastor when his son died, shares in his book Life After the Death of My Son how he was disappointed and angry with God. Dennis says he was “hanging out near the back door of my faith,” and for a long time he refused to say or sing the phrase, “God is good all the time.”

How did he get past that? Dennis states as he came to a crossroads, he asked himself a couple of questions: Do I believe there’s a sovereign God who knows and sees all, including my suffering over the loss of our son? Am I going to trust in this sovereign God whom I don’t always understand? After wrestling with these questions for a long time, he was able to say through painful tears, “Yes, I believe in Him, and yes I will trust Him”.

His wife Beulah also made a conscious decision after several years of deep grief. Did she want to remain in this same dark place she had been in for almost five years, or did she want to come out of it and make the best of her life and her family that was still here? She chose to “lay aside the garment of grief and mourning, sweep up the ashes that surrounded her, and go on.” It was a turning point for both her, and their marriage.

Angela Alexander, Executive Producer of the documentary movie Miracles in Action, based on her book with the same title, believes one of the keys to getting past the anger is to share with others. “We overcome by the Blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony,” Revelation 12:11.

“What testimony?” you ask? The one God is still writing in your life. Angela has had to overcome the death of two brothers, the loss of a baby during pregnancy, a husband who miraculously survived a brain aneurysm (only to have to learn how to do everything again from eating, talking and walking), a brother murdering their sister who was Angela’s life-long very best friend, and then the death of two of her sons in a bizarre car accident (while she was on military duty in Japan). Wow! How can she possibly write a book titled Miracles in Action after all of that?

Because Angela believes a testimony comes from being tested, and that we can come out the other side filled with God’s love, forgiveness and mercy, which are truly miracles in action.

However, in the time of deep dark testing for the testimony, we have to grasp the truth that our anger  and unforgiveness can block God’s blessings from us. Too often we think by remaining angry at someone, we are holding them hostage. But forgiveness is actually a gift you give to yourself. You will remain a prisoner of your anger until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of change. And that means making the choice to forgive, and releasing yourself from your crippling emotional prison.

And don’t believe the saying, “Forgive and forget.”

Angela readily admits, “Some pain you won’t forget, but through forgiveness, understanding, and love, you can remember the events from a different perspective.”

The founder of Grief, Grace and Gratitude and author of Grief: A Mama’s Unwanted Journey, Shelley Ramsey talks about how angry she got at how other people treated her after the death of her son that she basically isolated herself for five years. How does Shelley recommend getting past that place of anger? If you are angry, let God have it! Yell at Him. “Go outside and scream at the top of your lungs. Say whatever you need to say. Cry as long and as hard as you want. Throw something if you need to.” He can take it! And then, ask Him to bring people into your life who will hold you, cry with you, and remember your child with you.

I address the issue of anger in several of my books as well. In My Grief Journey: A Coloring Book and Journal for Grieving Parents, here is what I wrote about the word anger:

There are a few who don’t get angry at God, but most parents who have lost a child through death definitely feel this emotion toward Him. And it’s okay. He can take it. Yell at Him; have it out with Him!

Yes, He could have moved His hand and stopped the death of your child and mine. But He didn’t do it, for reasons we cannot see or understand.

Most often, our anger at God comes when we think of our loss more than our child’s gain; our pain keeps us from trusting that God can see the big picture, and knows something we don’t know.

There are others we can be angry with as well, for all kinds of reasons.

It is okay to be angry, and to work through it. But for your own sake, please don’t camp out in this place.

Dennis, Shelly and Angela are speakers at the Hope & Healing Virtual Summit, that you can watch on video in your own home via the internet, along with sixteen more sessions with other bereaved parents who are speakers, authors, grief experts and founders of grief organizations and ministries.

Click here for more information on the Hope & Healing Virtual Summit.

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 click here.

When our child dies, it can make us feel like our very identity has been lost.

You see, a very important benefit of Christianity is the tremendous sense of identity we have that comes from knowing Jesus Christ in a very personal way. As we grow in knowing Him, we grow in that identity. We grow in knowing how much God loves us, and how each one of us is created uniquely, for a special purpose.

All of that comes crashing down around us. It seems we only thought we knew who God was, and that if He really did create us for a special purpose, He was very cruel in that purpose for us.

Families also give us a sense of identity and purpose. Once again, when our child leaves this earth before we do, it shatters our sense of identity as a parent and our purpose in that role (even if we have other children).

Believe it or not, the worst tragedy of my life brought one of my greatest revelations. For quite a while after Becca died, I could only see myself as a mom who had lost her child.  The intense grief was suffocating.  My huge loss did become what I allowed to define me as a person.

The first year was such a fog. The second year the fog started to lift, which actually caused even more intense pain, as the reality that my daughter was no longer here on earth started to hit hard.  The third year became a painful resignation of trying to figure out who I am with that piece of my life stripped from me.

Since everything was such a blur for so long, I can’t tell you when or how it happened, but by the grace of God, I finally had a breakthrough of understanding that my identity was not tied to my circumstance of being a grieving mother.

And also by the grace of God, that started to release an even deeper revelation; that my identity is not based on anything but who Christ is in me – that hope of glory.

You see, most of us have somewhat of a grasp that we are in Christ.  But it is extremely rare to hear anyone talk about how we also need to live from the revelation that God, in all of His glory, is living inside of us.  Yes, we know that in our heads, but do we really get what that means?

When Jesus died, His blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat in heaven once and for all, on our behalf.  God’s very presence no longer remained behind a curtain, which is why the veil was torn in two from top to bottom!

We are no longer separated from God by a curtain. Those who accept the work of the blood of Jesus are seen as righteous (right with God) and the very being of God dwells, or “tabernacles” , inside of us.  WE are now the temple where God’s Spirit rests.

That means we don’t have to try to reach “out there” somewhere, trying to get ahold of God.  When we believe in the price Jesus paid for us on the cross, His Spirit comes to live, or dwell, inside of us.

We only have to quiet ourselves and listen to Him from within our own spirit.   I can live from a place of rest, knowing He is inside of me and will comfort me deeply, and guide me with His wisdom and loving kindness.

God has so much to say to us – to you, and to me.  And much of it has to do with who He is inside of us, and how to live from that place of rest and identity in Him.  It isn’t about what I do or don’t do. It isn’t about what has happened to me. It is all about who I am, with God Himself residing inside of me.

In order to go forward in the fullness of God’s identity in us, we have to let go of our own identity.  The one that has been shattered, by the death of our child. How do we do that?

One way, is to do something God told us to do.   “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).  Another version of the Bible says, “Stop your striving and recognize that I am God” (NET).  I think some of us hesitate to do that because we are afraid God wants to tell us everything we are doing wrong.  Or we are so angry at Him, that the last thing we want to do is sit still in His presence and let Him love on us. I mean if He really truly loved us, He would not have let our child die, right?

But when we choose to come to God, not based on what we feel towards Him, but on what we so desperately need from Him (comfort, peace, wholeness, etc.) it opens the door to the breakthrough we are crying out for; who am I now with my child taken from this earth?

I truly believe more than anything, God just wants to love on us.  But we won’t know that for ourselves, until we come to Him in the stillness within our hearts to hear Him speak to us and feel the warmth of that love in the depths of our soul.  The more aware we become of His Spirit living fully in us, bringing healing to our deeply wounded hearts, the less aware we become of our own shattered identity.

Let me ask you something.  When you “go to the feet of Jesus” where do you see yourself?  At the cross?  That is a place of forgiveness, which has already been given to us.

Jesus isn’t on the cross.  He is sitting on a throne at the right hand of the Father (Heb. 12:2).  We are told that is where we are seated as well – in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6).  And, that is where my daughter is, and your child as well. (And if you struggle with not knowing if that is true for your daughter or son, )

When I started seeing myself at the feet of Jesus at the throne, which is where He is now, it put me in a totally different place of identity!  His throne is a place of majesty, power, and authority.  His throne is a place of glory, and my daughter is right there, seeing it all with her own eyes! That makes me want to live from that place of identity even more.

I don’t want my identity to come from where Becca was, but where she is now. I don’t want my identity to be “my daughter died”, but “my daughter is alive”!

I understand that it takes time to get to that place. I know full well that we are each traveling our own journey of grief after the death of our child. I know it takes way longer than we want it to, and the darkness closes in on us, whether we want it to or not.

But I also know there is light on the other side of the darkness. I am here to poke a hole in that darkness so that a glimmer of hope can get through; so that eventually you, too, can have one of the deepest, most fulfilling revelations possible on this earth; so that your identity is not based on earthly circumstances, but on who Christ is IN YOU.

Much of this article was taken from Laura’s book, Triple Crown Transformation. Would you like to hear Laura, herself, read it as an audio book? Let us send you an MP3 download, available for free until April 1, 2017. (After April 1^st, it will be available for purchase in our web store.)

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 click here.

Everyone has hopes and dreams. And when our child leaves this earth ahead of us, our lives are shattered, including those dreams.

Some of our dreams were for that child, and we know quite painfully that those are dreams that will never become a reality.

What about the rest of our “someday” dreams? Most of us just can’t see those ever becoming a reality, either. Our grief leaves us in a suffocating darkness. We now find ourselves in survival mode, much less having some sort of inner drive and energy to pursue something bigger than ourselves.

But I am here to tell you that it is possible to dream again. Maybe one or two of those same dreams will eventually resurface, and you will have new purpose to fulfill them.

However, many of us pareavors end up with a new set of hopes and dreams that are based on keeping our child alive in the hearts and lives of others, including people who never knew or met our child.

That is what happened to me.

Before our oldest daughter died, I had an international children’s ministry, and had no idea God was about ready to make a huge shift to totally phase out that ministry and start a completely new one.

After Becca died, I was on auto-pilot for the first couple of years, still ministering and traveling nationally and internationally. But the reality of the deep loss and the suffocating darkness of the grief eventually began to seep through, and I could no longer function physically or emotionally, and had to step down.

I spent hours, weeks and months in isolation while trying to find other bereaved parents ahead of me on this path who could pull me back into a place of hope, light, and life again. But almost everything I found (books, Facebook groups, etc.) was all darkness and hopelessness, telling me I would never get past it and life would never be worth living again.

However…

• I refused to believe and come into agreement that the rest of my life here on earth would remain in darkness and not be worth living.
• I refused to remain emotionally crippled in a way that kept me from being part of the lives of my other children and growing clan of grandchildren.
• I knew God was not blindsided by Becca’s death the way I had been.
• I did not believe the death of my daughter was where God reached His limit, and He was unable to pull me out of my black pit and back onto the path of life again.
• I knew there was a Seed of Hope living inside of me.
• I knew there was still a calling on my life.
• I did not want to just survive in a shell waiting to die, but wanted to get to a point where I could thrive in my life once again.

I didn’t know how, or what my life would look like, but I didn’t want more death; I wanted life! After all, bringing life from death is God’s specialty.

Not only did God come through with these things, but He made me an author (which was totally unexpected) and birthed a new dream of a new ministry, Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope) in the process!

And this new dream after Becca’s death is a really big dream, and it keeps getting bigger. It is a dream that is bigger than me, bigger than any one person. It is a God-sized dream.

The month of January celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day. He was famous for his “I have a dream” speech, and I recently found myself wondering if I were to give my own “I have a dream speech,” what would that be like?

In writing it out, I came up with six things.

1. I have a dream that no pareavor is left feeling alone, isolated and abandoned.
2. I have a dream that all grieving parents can quickly and easily connect with other pareavors for encouragement.
3. I have a dream that any pareavor who has his or her faith in God shaken has a safe place to share their hurt, their doubts and their anger without judgment or being shunned.
4. I have a dream that the family and friends of pareavors know how to give true comfort and support, both physically and emotionally, and treat the parents’ grief as the long process it is, instead of an event.
5. I have a dream that even before a parent loses a child, they already know who they can contact for support and help in their pain and confusion when their own child leaves this earth.
6. I have a dream that every grieving parent who feels shattered and hopeless has the immediate opportunity to have other pareavors in their life who can be a light of hope in their place of darkness.

How about you? Do you have any dreams stirring around? It could be one that was in you before the death of your child that God is stirring in you once again, or it might be a completely new dream.

If you can’t see any dreams, my next question is, do you want to? If your answer is not really, or you aren’t sure, I suggest you go to the list of statements I made (refusing to believe my life was no longer worth living, knowing there was still a calling on my life, etc.), making them your own.

Say them out loud.

“I refuse to believe… “

“I refuse to remain…”

“I know there is…”

“I do not want to…”

Print them out and post them some place where you can see them, reminding yourself every day of the truth; truth that will bring a new level of freedom within the grief.

I am not saying these things will cause the pain to go away, or put you on some fast-track of getting to the other side of the deepest darkness. But they can be a spark or a key, cracking open the door to light. And as you continue, that door will open further, revealing hope, dreams and purpose once again that goes beyond the death of your child. 

These six things are truly much more than a dream for me.

They are my God-given calling. They are the vision and mission I am taking action on, moving forward in, one step, one day at a time.

They are now my reality.

Once you start dreaming again, what does it take to put those dreams into motion? I have written a short eBook titled Three Things to Put Your Dreams in Motion. Just tell me where to send it, and I will be happy to give it to you.

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 click here.

A grieving parent, who is barely two years into this journey, recently shared with me that God obviously knew their child’s death would bring so much darkness and pain into their lives and yet He allowed it anyway, and then asked if I thought their child could “be happy with our Lord in Paradise, seeing the unending heartbreak and tears left behind.”

I thought it was a great question, and decided to share my thoughts on this with other grieving parents who might be wondering the same thing.

Yes, God knows what losing our children will do to us, both short term and long term. For most of us, the first two years or more is full of a suffocating darkness that cannot be put into words. And it is impossible to see yourself back in any kind of light to live a life worth living, much less ever feel happy again.

So does this cause your child in heaven to be sad for how much you are hurting?

I believe your child sees the same picture that God sees; the same one that you cannot see right now. She or he is now on the other side of eternity, and can see beyond the darkness of our “now” here on earth.

Our children who have left this earth ahead of us are living out Romans 8:18, which tells us, “We have sufferings now. But the sufferings we have now are nothing compared to the great glory that will be given to us.”  I think it is very possible that our children are so busy dancing and laughing in that glory, being in a state of absolute perfection, and rejoicing at being face-to-face with Jesus, that they are not in heaven grieving the pain of our loss one bit.

In fact, I think it is possible that the exact opposite (of them being sad for us) is happening.

I picture my daughter ecstatic in joyful anticipation, knowing what I will be gaining, and super excited beyond what can be put into words that someday she will be there to actually meet me upon my own arrival into that glory God promised. Can you see your child that way as well?

How many kids get to greet their parents at heaven’s gates? That is actually pretty special. Talk about a change in perspective!

What I have learned in my time of being here on earth without my daughter, Becca, is that we eventually get to a point where we can choose our perspective. Am I going to live every single day for the rest of my life here on earth in the intense pain of my loss? I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to. Yes, I still go there from time to time, and the tears flow and my heart feels like it is breaking all over again.

But more and more often, instead of mourning my loss, I am choosing to be happy for her gain… picturing her with both legs (her left leg was amputated at age three because of cancer) in total perfection and joy that is beyond what I can even imagine here on earth. I picture her worshiping Jesus – which she loved to do here on earth (and wrote many incredible worship songs), but now she can actually worship Him at His throne!

Wallowing in the pain of my loss and how much I miss her, feeds the suffocating darkness and pain, allowing it to continue consuming me.

Meditating on her gain, causes that pain and darkness to lift to a place of making life bearable once again.

And the more I spend time thinking about her gain in heaven (how she must look in wholeness and perfect beauty, how great she must feel both physically and emotionally, how she must absolutely love being in the very presence of the actual throne room, etc.) the more it brings me to a place of my life here on earth being full again. I not only realize she is okay, but she is better and more full of life than she ever was here on this earth.

I think that heaven is so incredible, our children can no longer relate to pain here on earth. How can there be broken hearts in heaven? If that is the case, God has lied to us. Heaven is supposed to be where we are going to finally be made whole in every area of our lives, including both physically and emotionally. Would it really be heaven, if our kids were looking down on us and feeling totally broken that God decided to allow them to go there before we did, and are angry at God for letting us be in such pain upon their departure from earth? That sounds more like the absence of God, not being in the presence of God.

Several scriptures in the Bible tell us that heaven is where we will be rewarded for how we lived our lives here on earth. (As Christians, we will not be judged, as Christ took that judgment for us.) So are the rewards for our children kept from them until we arrive? And until then, do they have to suffer in heaven with deep sadness, knowing how all we want to do is die and go be with them?

Please believe me when I say I know the pain. I told God to just kill me, because I didn’t want to be here anymore without Becca! But in His totally amazing love and grace, He allowed me to continue here on this earth. Yes, I said that. And I will say it again.

It is His deep love and eternal grace that keeps us here, when all we want to do is be done and go to our eternal home.

Several years down the road, I can honestly say how thankful I am that God did not answer my plea for death to take me. Why?

• My other children would probably be really struggling if that had happened, even as adults. It has been enough of a struggle with them losing their sister, much less losing Dave and/or me on top of that.
• I am not missing out on watching my children blossom in adulthood. I get to see and be a part of who they are becoming and things like whom they are marrying.
• I get to love on a bunch more of my grandchildren, who are a huge blessing in my life! Since Becca died, two more have been born, and another two are on the way. These grandchildren are my legacy, and I am excited to be part of their lives! We are all sad that they will never know their Aunt Becca, but they won’t also be sad because they didn’t know their Grandma Lolli and Pop.
• I wouldn’t be here to encourage you!

Along with thousands of other pareavors (bereaved parents), I have turned the corner, and you can, too.  You can have HOPE that it won’t always be like this, unless you continue to choose to remain here on earth in the blackness of deep grief.

I know at the beginning there isn’t a choice – grief just overtakes us because death is a huge loss, and the death of a child is not normal (and the most devastating loss we can experience on this earth according to most experts).

But the death of our child is not where God reaches His limits, nor did it blindside God. He has a plan we cannot see. He has light for our darkness, and brings life from death. He can and will help you come out of the darkness and back into light and life again.

It will probably take longer than you want it to, and there can be many “setbacks,” but I can tell you, it is worth the fight, when you are ready to learn how to live again here on earth until you are greeted by your child with a huge hug and the words, “Welcome home!”

Losing a child is a trauma and working your way through the suffocating darkness is a long hard road. Grieving Parents Sharing Hope (GPS Hope) is here to help navigate you through the journey. We would like to continue, by sending you (from our free resource library) a list of “Thirty Ways to Comfort and Take Care of Ourselves.”

This will also allow us to send you a Weekly Word of Hope, which you can unsubscribe from at any time, by clicking a link at the bottom of any email.

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 click here.