grieving parents Archives

November 2, 2016 by Laura Diehl 2 Comments

Our Scars Mean We Will Never Forget

Around the age of three, I got my ankle caught in the spokes of a bicycle. The injury turned into a staph infection, taking me out of the world of childhood play for quite a while. We have pictures of me sadly sitting by a pool with my foot and leg bandaged up, while my sister and cousins are having fun playing and splashing around. Even though I totally recovered, I still have a scar on my ankle and always will.

A few years ago, I needed surgery, and was quite surprised when it took me many weeks to be able to function and take care of my family again, instead of them taking care of me. Once again, I have a permanent scar, reminding me of what I went through.

Just like a physical scar, there are things that happen in our lives that cause emotional scars. The scar of the death of our child is definitely one of those events.

Our daughter, Becca, had her left leg amputated when she was only three years old, due to bone cancer. The scar on her stump from her missing leg is a lot like the emotional scar we carry when our child has been cut off from us on this earth (much more than the scar on my ankle).

But the comparisons don’t stop at the scar of the injury.

Did having a staph infection in my ankle beach keep me from ever swimming again? No way! I love to swim and be in the water (especially in warm places with beautiful beaches).

Did having an amputation keep Becca from running and playing with the other children? No, it didn’t. It may have slowed her down and caused her to adapt to how she ran and how she played, but it didn’t stop her.

Does the death of our child mean our life is over, and we will never be able to live a full life again? No, it doesn’t. We need time to go through a “recovery” process (for lack of a better word) and need time to learn how to function with our child no longer here, but it doesn’t mean we will never be able to function again.

We will go through times when everyone around us is splashing and playing while we are unable to participate because of our wounds.

We will go through times when we can’t function, and have to wait for more healing.

We will go through times when we have to adjust the way we do things.

We will forever bear the scar of our amputation. We will always have reminders that part of us is missing. But we are not permanently injured to the point of being out of commission for the rest of our lives.

If you are in the first one to three years of grief, this may sound impossible. But I assure you, it isn’t.

May I remind you there are still people who want and need you in their lives; God still has a plan and purpose for you.

kneippen-860135_960_720 Don’t give up. Don’t give up on life. Don’t give up on hope. Don’t give up on happiness, laughter and joy. Hang on, one day, one minute, one breath at a time.

When it is time to do nothing but rest, that’s okay; do nothing but rest (and cry, or whatever else you need to do).

When it’s time to get up and push your way through, do it. Fight for it.

And make sure you have people in your life who have faced the same “injury,” who are further on the path ahead of you. Knowing others have been able to live beyond the death of their child reminds you that it is possible, plus, they will be your greatest encouragers, understanding the process because they have been through it themselves.

Yes, we will forever bear the scars of our amputation. We will forever be reminded our child is no longer here with us. But we can also learn to live a full life with part of us missing.

I know, because I have the scars to prove it.

If you would like a free copy of Thirty-six Scriptures of Hope to print out and meditate on, click here. You will be taken to a page to access our free library, which has many useful items.

Expressions of Hope is written by author and speaker Laura Diehl to bring hope, light and life to bereaved parents, which she call pareavors. (Pa from the word parent, and reave from the root word bereave which means “plundered or robbed, deprive one of, seized, carry, or tear away.”) This is a pretty good description of who we are and what has happened to us.

March 23, 2016 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

From Death to Life When Tragedy Strikes

Have you ever faced a tragedy, finding yourself in a very dark place as a result? You are confused, broken, in despair, and lost?

I have, more than once. (And many of you know about some of those experiences from my book Triple Crown Transformation.) But the one that left me in the deepest, darkest pit by far came from the death of our oldest daughter.

Many professionals say that experiencing the death of one’s child is the greatest trauma a person can face. Those who have faced the death of their spouse, a sibling, or other losses and have also faced the death of their child, say losing their child takes them to a much deeper darkness than other losses, and it lasts so much longer.

When Becca died (you can read about her story by clicking here), I didn’t know anyone who had lost a child, and had no one to guide me through the darkness that made me think I was going crazy. I started reading books from other parents who had experienced the loss of a child, and most of them seemed to carry the message that our lives are forever a black mess we can’t get out of.

I would read how angry and bitter these parents were; just waiting to die so they could rejoin their child.

I would read how their living children would say they also lost their mom when their sibling died.

This just wasn’t acceptable to me.

I knew I had the seed of Hope living inside of me. I knew I wanted to be part of the lives of my other children and my precious grandchildren. I knew God still had a calling on my life, with a purpose.

So I fought!

I grabbed ahold of God with everything I had, and I fought. It took months, even years, because of how deep and dark that pit is when you have to bury your child. Sometimes I would feel the Lord reach down and help pull me up a bit, and other times I felt like I was fighting and clawing to the next foothold on my way up while He was under me, giving me the boost I needed.

It was messy, it was difficult, and it was painful beyond words. But I was victorious, because God’s specialty is bringing life from death!

Let me say that again. God’s SPECIALTY is bringing life out of death!

ANY death, when put in His hands, will birth life!

And not only did I receive life, but during the battle, the Holy Spirit taught me so many things about myself, and about Him. Things about how I was living out of a false identity. How I didn’t really know how to live from a place of resting in Him. How I had a deeply rooted sin of judging the heart and motives of others, and would try to manipulate them into doing what I thought they should be doing.

So not only did He bring me through the fire, He lovingly refined me in the process.

I must share that I still have the pain of grief. I will always feel my daughter’s loss deeply, and my life will never be the same with her gone from this earth. But I have life again, beyond her death. And it is a life richer in God’s love than I could have ever imagined.

If God can do this for me, He can do it for anyone. He can do it for you. He can do it for other parents who have lost a child from this earth through death.

And that is now a passion I have; to reach out to those parents behind me who have been thrown into that deep black pit, and offer them a hand of hope. I didn’t have anyone to do that for me, and I don’t want that to happen to anyone else on this dark horrible path of the death of a child.

About a year and a half ago, I woke up in the night with the title of a book (When Tragedy Strikes) and many of the chapter subjects. I got up and wrote everything down. It seemed the Holy Spirit was directing me to write a book, so I started. My plan was to learn how to publish the book myself, having no intent of pitching it to any publishers.

Apparently, God had His own plan which I wasn’t aware of. In February of last year, Dave and I were at a conference in San Diego, where I met David Hancock, who is the founder of Morgan James Publishing. We had a conversation, and by the time we were done, I had his business card with a request to send him what I had written so far with the book I had started.

Five weeks later, I was offered a book contract, and signed it on what would have been Becca’s 33^rd birthday. I am still in total amazement of this!

I never knew how much work is involved in writing a book and getting it published. And unless you are already a big name person with a huge public following, the greatest part of the leg-work of promoting and marketing a book falls on the shoulders of the author. And when you think about it, no one else is going to have the heart and passion for what was written on the pages more than the person who wrote it, so it makes sense that the author should be the strongest promoter.

SO…. In my passion for getting this message of hope and healing to as many hurting and grieving parents as possible, I am putting together a team of people who want to help.

I am seeking those who firmly believe in the power of unity! Those who know how God can move mightily through a group of people who are moving as one in Him, sharing His message of hope and healing.
I am looking for those who hate seeing the darkness Satan keeps people wrapped up in, and want to shatter that darkness with the light and life of the Risen King.
I want people who carry that seed of Hope within them and want to help me plant it in these precious ones who have lost their hope when they lost their child from this earth.
I need to be connected with those who have a passion to give others a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a mantle of praise instead of a spirit of despair and heaviness (Isaiah 61:3).

If that is you, please click here, to find out how to join our When Tragedy Strikes Book Launch Team. There will be lots of benefits, including a free pre-release copy of my book.

And if you are a bereaved parent, let me first say how very sorry I am! You have my heart, as we have an instant connection. I would be so honored, and absolutely love to have you join us on the launch team.

We are here to be a light of hope, in a time of deep darkness for those who have been shattered by the death of their child. Please help us spread that light of hope!

Gems from the Crown is a weekly blog from Crown of Glory Ministries to strengthen and encourage believers in Christ in their walk with God, especially in the areas of vision, authority, and identity. If you would like to have Gems from the Crown delivered directly to you, please click here.

March 9, 2016 by Laura Diehl Leave a Comment

How Can I Get Hope When I Don’t Have Any?

How do you get hope when you don’t have any? That’s a huge dilemma, isn’t it?

When our oldest daughter died, I found myself in a place of depression, blackness, and hopelessness. As I kept crying out to God for help, He not only brought me out of that place of hopelessness, but He used it to birth the ministry of GPS Hope and turned me into an author. (I wrote four books within 13 months, and it hasn’t stopped yet as I have almost completed book number five!) I now have a passion to bring others out of that place of hopeless darkness and into hope, light, and life.

You may be surprised, but there are actually many things we can do to open the door to hope in our lives. In this article, I am only going to talk about four of them. They are things you probably already know in your head, but I am praying after reading through this, you have a new revelation of them in your soul that you will act put into action.

Find things to be thankful for
Don’t be a slave to your grief
Connect with others who have hope
Take care of yourself

1. Find things to be thankful for.

As Christians, we are told so often to be thankful that we tend to tune it out. But it is so true! I have been in some extremely dark situations over the years. (I share some of them in Triple Crown Transformation.) My discovery over the years is that when I force myself to find things to be thankful for, it may not bring an immediate response to my soul; but as I continue and I build on it, a spark of hope begins to stir inside me.

Here are some suggestions on practical ways to make sure you find things for which to be thankful to God.

Keep a small notebook by your bed. Every night before lying down, write at least five things you can be thankful for. It might be a big event you were blessed to be a part of. It might be something as simple as, “I woke up today and got out of bed.” Hearing your children laugh, you have a place to live, you had money to get a haircut, you got to eat your favorite meal; these are all things to thank God for. It doesn’t matter how trivial others may see it. This is not for anyone else but you!
Set a timer for every hour or two hours. When it goes off, pause for a few seconds to thank God for something.
Before getting out of bed, take a minute to give a prayer of thankfulness to God. Be specific, and once again, it doesn’t matter how “trivial” the things you share with Him may seem. Start at whatever level you find yourself.

2. Don’t be a slave to your grief.

If you feel hopeless about a situation, there is probably grief involved. You have lost something important, whether it is a life-long dream, your financial circumstance, a job, an actual person, etc.

Any kind of slavery steals hope. When you’re hopeless, you are lost and in bondage.

May I present to you the thought that there is a difference between grief and self-pity? It is normal to have an initial shock, numbness, anger, intense sadness (or other negative emotions) to a deep loss of some kind. But there comes a point where it can cross over from grief to self-pity. The loss becomes our identity, and we let people around us continually know what happened to us. Some people identify this as a victim mentality. We allow ourselves to become a hopeless victim of the circumstance.

If this has happened to you, you need to make a conscious decision, a determined effort, to let go of how the loss wounded you. This includes obeying the command to forgive anyone involved in this unjust loss. (I address the struggle of forgiveness in a two part article, Giving Yourself the Gift of Forgiveness.) It is not a decision based on how you feel. It is a decision based on how you want to get out of the darkness and into a place of hope, and will do whatever it takes to get to that place.

Then you need to replace those lying negative thoughts in your head.

Find scriptures that speak hope (I have made a list which is available in our free GPS Hope Members Library). Copy them and post them in prominent places.
Find sayings that speak hope and life, and once again, copy them and post around your house, in your car and your work area.
When negative images come into your mind, force yourself to imagine the opposite. See pictures of yourself doing something full of life that you want to be able to do in the future.

3. Connect with others who have hope.

I cannot stress enough how important this is! The saying, “Misery loves company” is so true. If you spend your time with others who are in darkness, you are going to stay in the dark. If you spend time with others who are in the Light, it is going to shine into your darkness, giving you the beacon of hope you need.

Here are several suggestions to guide you in this.

Stay away from negative people! Remove them from your social media platforms. Don’t stand around and talk to them at church (yes, I said at church). Don’t sit with them in the breakroom at work. (I highly suggest doing this as discreetly as possible, not with some announcement that you are getting rid of the negative people in your life.)
Find generic Facebook pages (or other social media platforms) of Christians who have a calling and anointing on their lives as encouragers. (People like Joyce Meyers, John Maxell, Lisa Terquest, Max Lucado.)
Connect with people who have overcome in the specific area you are struggling in. There are many people who are throwing out a lifeline to those around them. They are on social media, writing books and blogs, making podcasts, putting videos on YouTube, and all kinds of other places.
Find a group of people who are walking in the Light, and plug in to it. (Organizations like Celebrate Recovery is a great place to start.)
Look for conferences and retreats. There is something about getting away where you can focus on allowing God to bring the hope you need through direct ministry, and time with the Holy Spirit. It catapults you in a way like nothing else seems to do. Ask God to lead you to the right event, and pray for Him to provide the finances, if that is an issue.

Obviously, making a choice to do these things means you have to put in a bit of effort. And once again, you might not see immediate results. But if you keep putting yourself in situations where you are seeing, hearing, and reading about life and light and hope, it is going to begin to draw you out of your hopelessness.

4. Take care of yourself.

The two things I am going to share may seem contradictory, but hear me out.

Exercise. This is something I fought for a long time. When you feel hopeless, discouraged and depressed, it can often be the last thing you want to do. I have been to the place where I didn’t have the emotional or physical energy to exercise, even if I wanted to (which I admit, I did not want to).

It has taken me years to have a recent breakthrough in this area. I believe it is because once hope started trickling in, it gave me the desire to want to take care of myself. It still took months for the desire to turn into a committed decision that I am actually following through on, not allowing how I feel to dictate what I do, or don’t do. I started out doing very little. Just 20 minutes of light exercise while listening to an encouraging podcast. However, the combination of the exercise and positive input has pushed me to a new level of going from just having hope, to anticipating what God has for my life.

You need to rest. Not just a physical rest, but an emotional rest along with it. When our daughter died, I spent countless hours in my prayer room, learning how to just rest in the loving arms of my Father God. The writer of Hebrews tells us to work hard to enter into a place of rest (Hebrews 4:11). I will confirm with my own experience, it is work, but it can be done. Learning to rest in God will bring hope into your life like nothing else can. The only way to receive this precious gift is to just do it. Make time for it. Keep at it. Don’t give up. To learn how to live life from a place of internal rest, peace and contentment, no matter what comes your way, is a valuable treasure worth the fight!

As I said at the beginning, there are actually many things we can do to set ourselves onto the path of hope. Please share in the comments below something God has shown you to do to find hope, when you don’t have any.

I want to end by speaking Romans 15:13 over you. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”