I write this with a heavy yet hopeful heart <3 I don't need to even know your very names to tell you already, how truly sorry I am for your loss'. Among the many messages that have been delivered to you by way of others in your own communities, I am sure you have hear about "The Club". It was one of the first messages I received after losing our son Joel at the all too young age of 16. In an envelope from my sweet aunt, there was a message for me...One I am sure she wishes I would never had needed to hear. That I am in this club now. A club who's membership rates are too costly, and that I cannot un~join. That we aren't accepting new members and so on. I wrestled with the "why's", I screamed and kicked like a child more often than not. I wanted to tear this club down to its very foundation and dismantle it brick by brick, as though it could change my painful reality. Months of the hard work of grieving passed by. "New normal" conversations resounded within our four walls, and tears spoke so very loudly for us as a family in great desperation. So desperate for the way things were BEFORE, and desperate to know what was to come in the AFTER. I couldn't see outside of the very moment I was in for what seemed like forever. My eyes had adapted to the permanent wall of tears that welled all hours of every day, perhaps this was my spirits protection from watching others lives just carry on as usual after things had "settled" around us. What did settled mean anymore? In fact, I felt as though all I was doing was settling. Settling for the sharp and overwhelming fact that this indeed WAS our reality and that Joel was never going to come home. This was certainly a time in my life when I needed to hear that I wasn't crazy or losing my mind because there were days that I truly did believe Joel would come walking through our front door. That by a huge stretch of the imagination, this was all just a nightmare and I would soon wake up. Acceptance. Never before did I ever ignore a word so much. Accepting would mean living forward, letting go of this pain piece by piece along the way. I had this fear that I would forget to miss him. That all the love, and tears and prayers I had poured into Joel as I raised him wouldn't count for anything. I have never been so glad to be so wrong. It has been one year, eight months and 11 long days without my boy. I have reached the seemingly impossible point where I can smile at our memories together...it's not to say that there aren't tears because there are many. I haven't forgotten a thing, and I thank God for enabling me to still hear his laughter. I thank God for giving me the gift of memory <3 These memories I consider the treasures of my very heart.
"Not many people would ever intentionally stick their hand into a fire, but that's what we have to do, in order to begin to heal '. ~ A dear friend of mine who is also an angel mom said this to me while sharing our stories with one another. Those words are so profound, so heavy with meaning, so laced with purpose. We have a choice to make. Every day is so different now, and I find it so important to take a day off from week to week. Not a day off from work, but a day off from doing anything other than grieving. I encourage you to make this choice <3 On my day off, I awake and let the flood gates open up. All the suppressed tears, longings for my son, and the ugly cries must be let out. I have to feel that pain so that I can table my grief at other times in order to be available to my other two beautiful children. I also need to create space for my husband and children to come to me with their pain...oh this delicate balance. There are rainbow days and not so rainbow days. There are days where all four of us are in the valley and the lights go out...But God. In all of His Glory He illuminates any darkness that exists. To be held by God during a time that would otherwise steal your breath, never to return it, well that my dear loved ones is His Grace. I have never read the poem footprints through tears of such grief and despair, and oh how those words saturate the page much differently at this time in my life. I only see one set of footprints, and it is at Jesus' feet that I lay all of this.. I lay my brokenness down for Him to make whole, I know that only He can. I cast my anxieties of losing our other children in the very palm of His hand because that fear alone might very well crush me. I look to His promises each morning, and am a witness to His redemptive provision over my life. "I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow." Jeremiah 31:13 God can do this for all of us, There is no place we can fall where our Great God won't catch us, and give us beauty from the ashes <3
Love, Sarah
"Not many people would ever intentionally stick their hand into a fire, but that's what we have to do, in order to begin to heal '. ~ A dear friend of mine who is also an angel mom said this to me while sharing our stories with one another. Those words are so profound, so heavy with meaning, so laced with purpose. We have a choice to make. Every day is so different now, and I find it so important to take a day off from week to week. Not a day off from work, but a day off from doing anything other than grieving. I encourage you to make this choice <3 On my day off, I awake and let the flood gates open up. All the suppressed tears, longings for my son, and the ugly cries must be let out. I have to feel that pain so that I can table my grief at other times in order to be available to my other two beautiful children. I also need to create space for my husband and children to come to me with their pain...oh this delicate balance. There are rainbow days and not so rainbow days. There are days where all four of us are in the valley and the lights go out...But God. In all of His Glory He illuminates any darkness that exists. To be held by God during a time that would otherwise steal your breath, never to return it, well that my dear loved ones is His Grace. I have never read the poem footprints through tears of such grief and despair, and oh how those words saturate the page much differently at this time in my life. I only see one set of footprints, and it is at Jesus' feet that I lay all of this.. I lay my brokenness down for Him to make whole, I know that only He can. I cast my anxieties of losing our other children in the very palm of His hand because that fear alone might very well crush me. I look to His promises each morning, and am a witness to His redemptive provision over my life. "I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow." Jeremiah 31:13 God can do this for all of us, There is no place we can fall where our Great God won't catch us, and give us beauty from the ashes <3
Love, Sarah
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