My husband and I lost our precious ten-year-old son, Riley, on April 19, 2016. It was sudden and unexpected and it left us completely heartbroken and lost. For the first month or so, we felt like we were living in a nightmare that we could never wake from. To be honest, even now I feel like that at times.
One thing is for sure, grief is not a linear journey, it ebbs and flows. One day you may be fine and the next a complete wreck. This is where FAITH can truly save us. Our faith that the Lord has promised to carry us through this agonizing journey is what my husband and I are hanging onto.
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." Psalm 34:18
Fortunately, in this day and age, there are many excellent grief resources available to us. I have many of them listed here on the Grief Resources page of the foundation website we have created for our son to honor his legacy, Riley's Rainbows. I will also be referring to many articles from these resources throughout this blog and am happy to help answer any questions you may have here on our Contact page.
I do not, in any way, profess to be an expert in the field of grief. Far from it. But I can speak to you straight from the battlefield. My husband and I have been in the trenches for fifteen months now. We have friends that have been through this agonizing journey for much longer that have given us trusted guidance along the way, and friends that have been grieving for a shorter amount of time. It is crazy how when you experience this type of tragedy (that I would, of course, wish on no one!) you end up meeting other people that are facing your same situation. This has been such a blessing to us. As one of our friends put it, "Being a bereaved parent is an club that no one wants to join."
When I mention joy in the midst of grief, I am referring to your loved one's presence in heaven. I am talking about the joy and peace that your loved one is experiencing as he or she resides with God in His Kingdom. Our loved ones are experiencing a happiness and peace that we can only imagine right now. I don't know about you, but that image helps bring me peace when I am having a difficult time getting through the day or going through a particularly rough season such as holidays, birthdays and angel-versaries.
Here's the thing, as much as my husband and I love and miss our son, and we do with every single fiber of our being, and as much as we grieve and cry and scream and shout in absolute agony, we know that he is happy and peaceful in his home with our Heavenly Father. That is the good news.
You see, it is not truly an ending for any of us. If we have given our life over to Christ, we will be reunited with our loved ones in heaven once the Lord decides it is time to bring us home. It is hard to think about experiencing any joy or happiness when we first lose a loved one, I will admit there are plenty of days that I feel like any sense of joy has abandoned me and that my "new normal" could never be one of happiness, but that is simply not true. It is not true because of this reason: The Lord will never abandon me. He won't abandon you either. He loves each of his children in a way that surpasses our understanding! Remember that and try to picture your loved one in the presence of our Heavenly Father and my hope is that you will feel peace, if even for only a few moments.
If you are early into your grief journey, first of all, I am truly sorry for your loss. Being fifteen months into this journey myself I can tell you that you will be feeling many conflicting emotions that, unfortunately, come along with the territory. I can also tell you there is no timetable for grief, so it is hard to tell for how long you will be experiencing these feelings. I have friends that have told me that with time these emotions turn into something more tolerable and that there are more moments of joy than there are of pain.
Note: If you are a newly bereaved parent you may want to wait a while before you read this post. However, I do have an excellent article that can help you at this time as well that I would like to share with you. Still Standing Mag is an excellent grief resource that I have found and their article entitled "Dear Newly Bereaved Parent" proved to be very helpful to me early on in my grief journey. I pray that it does the same for you.
"I am sure what we are suffering now cannot compare with the glory that will be shown to us."Romans 8:18
I love this quote from an article I found on the website What's Your Grief:
"Grief is hard work for so many different reasons, but one of those reasons is because it forces you to stretch your heart and mind to create enough space for all your thoughts, emotions, and desires to exist alongside one another."
It is an excellent article and you can read it in full here. I like this quote because it is so true and it speaks words that I could never explain to someone on my own. It is so difficult to talk with people about your grief. I could write a whole other post on that and probably will at some point, but here is another article from WYG to give you some perspective on the language of grief.
