Live Every Moment

No words can grab hold of the emotions, questions, and thoughts that swirl around in my heart and mind at the moment.  For me and my family, my brother’s death 2 years ago today wasn’t “news”.  It was the most glaring, life-changing reality that sent me one a roller-coaster of emotions and gnawing emptiness.  I’ve come to see those feelings as being okay, though.  I can have those feelings, and at the same time, fully, deeply trust in the God whom I love.  The God who wept.  The God who mourned the destructiveness of sin and how much it infects our world. 

I’ve learned a lot about grief over the last 2 years… Time doesn’t take it away, either, as we are led to believe.  But it does make the pain more bearable as you learn how to live with it.   

Grief Potatoes

So many well-meaning, wonderful, loving people offer the token advice of “time heals wounds” whenever a loss or tragedy occurs.  Unfortunately, it happens to be one of the worst things to tell the bereaved.  Not only does this saying de-legitimize what the grieving are feeling, it also holds no truth to it.  Time does not heal wounds.  In fact, it is a dangerous phrase, one I easily fell into during the early days of loss. 

So why is this phrase so dangerous, you may ask inquisitively (if you are not asking this then pretend you are, for my sake)?  Well, in essence this saying tells us that we can sit around and be a grief potato— a term I coined to describe society’s couch potato approach to grief.  Not only is this unhealthy, but it sets people up for depression when time never heals their wounds… a depression that can have destructive results. 

Children Never Forget

I am obediently sharing this on my blog, as requested:

Children never forget. 

You know, as much as we think that things don’t affect children like they do adults, we are dead wrong. They understand way more than we give them credit for. They are very in tune to things.

Elianna showed the affects of losing Samuel in many ways. They were very different than the rest of us, but they were obvious reactions to the loss of her brother.

For example: Elianna loved being in Samuel’s room. It’s where all the action happened. We were in there all the time and she adored her brother. He was hers. Talk about a little nurse in training. Elianna had her routine down pat. If she wanted to get up on the bed to play with brother, she knew she needed to use Germ-X. She’d get a pump of sanitizer and then away she would go with a hand washing motion, rubbing it all in.