Author: joyfuldomesticity

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One Year Later, Same Place

A year ago (plus a few days) I began reading Nancy Guthrie’s book, The One Year Book Of Hope. I started crying before I even got through the introduction, and declared that it was my new lifeline. And it really was. I gleaned so much blessing and encouragement from that book!

I read it off & on, sometimes doing just one page a day, and sometimes cramming five pages (which is considered a week’s worth, in its layout) into just one day.

And then suddenly, I was done with it. Finished.
That was three weeks ago.

I hadn’t realized that it had taken me just about exactly a year (slightly less) to read it. To chew on it. To swallow it. To digest it.

And now it’s done.

But here I am, feeling like I am still standing in the same place I was standing a year ago. I am not done.

I think a large part of it has to do with the fact that many people (I was going to say most, but don’t want to go that far) experience one event of grief, and then get to work on healing and eventually do find hope and even move onward & forward. That just isn’t part of my story. My story isn’t one event of grief. It is recurrent. It keeps coming. It keeps happening. And the next event happens before I have been able to heal and find hope and move onward or forward.

When I began reading the One Year Book Of Hope, I think I assumed that after a year of plowing through these pages, I would be different. That I would find my grief balmed. That my heart would actually be more hopeful.
And while I do feel like some things are different, I have grown and changed and matured some… many things (this is a place where I probably could get away with saying most) are still the same. And some things are worse.

But I still love this book. I still give it away when I can. And I always recommend it.

The last section of the book was the hardest to read. I am still chewing it, unsure how I will swallow it, and wondering if I can ever actually digest it properly. Here are some glimpses from that section:

[Written to her daughter, in heaven] I want to wake up and find you here. But you are so far away and becoming even more distant in my memory, and it is so painful… Forgive me for going on with life without you… It just keeps moving farther and farther away.

Some days I wonder if the letting go will ever stop. After Hope’s death, I had to let go of her physical body, my dreams for her, and so many of her things. I let go of her room and turned it back into a guest room. Then came Gabe, and I had to let go of him along with my hopes for Matt to have a sibling… Every ripping away takes a piece of us with it, leaving us raw and stinging with pain.

They say you find out who your friends are when the chips are down… My expectations of those around us were high, and I was often disappointed… I learned that some people are called by God to minister grace in the hard places. Some people aren’t… But don’t think I’m naive. I know that some people are just too self-centered to share your pain. But I’ve come to realize that so much we label as uncaring is simply an inability to overcome the awkwardness and fear of doing or saying the wrong thing.

Those of us connected to the body of Christ experience the tangible love of Jesus through the care and concern of others. Our needs become their concerns… Don’t be afraid they’ll forget. Don’t be afraid they’ll think you’re fine when you are still hurting deeply.

It takes a conscious choice to turn conversations away from my pain, to stop trying to make sure everyone understands my hurt and has considered my feelings. But it is a step toward normalization, and a step closer to Christ.

There is a tyranny in grief. We realize at some point that we have to figure out how to keep on living, how to incorporate the loss into our lives. We want to feel normal again, to feel joy again. But the energy and emotion of grief keep us feeling close to the one we love or connected to what we’ve lost. Letting go of our grief feels like letting go of the one we love… The very idea of it is unbearable.

As I continue to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and as I mourn the death of my youngest son, I realize that the steps I had taken forward after losing Mercy (I was pregnant with her when I began this book) were lost as I went backwards when I then lost Victory. And while I took some steps forward again after that, I have now again moved backwards in my grieving journey as I grieve my Hosanna-boy.

So while I just finished reading The One Year Book Of Hope, I am kind of thinking it’s time to start all over again. From scratch. Because that’s what my grief has done.

Started all over again.

From scratch.

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Second Sunday of Advent

We sang “Wake, Awake, for Night is Flying” (by Philip Niccoli, written in the 16th century) in worship today, and the last verse really catches me. I like both of these translations of the verse:

Now let all the heavens adore thee,
and saints and angels sing before thee,
with harp and cymbal's clearest tone;
of one pearl each shining portal,
where we are with the choir immortal
of angels round thy dazzling throne;
nor eye hath seen, nor ear
hath yet attained to hear
what there is ours;
but we rejoice and sing to thee
our hymn of joy eternally.


Now let all the heav'ns adore Thee,
Let men and angels sing before Thee,
With harp and cymbal's clearest tone.
Of one pearl each shining portal,
Where, dwelling with the choir immortal,
We gather round Thy radiant throne.
No vision ever brought,
No ear hath ever caught,
Such great glory;
Therefore will we
Eternally
Sing hymns of praise and joy to Thee.



Something about those words reminds me of how we ascend into the heavenlies on Sunday when we worship, and that it’s then that my family is complete, and where I get to worship with all my  sons & daughters gathered around the radiant throne of God, and how  someday I will get to hear the great and glorious praise, and join in  it eternally with the saints. That thought is grand.


Also… the sermon was on Psalm 80. I call and cry out these words to  God myself. Plus I really love the refrain from that song of Asaph:


Psalm 80:3, 7, 14


Restore us, O God;

let Your face shine, that we may be saved!

Restore us, O God of hosts;

let Your face shine, that we may be saved!

Restore us, O LORD God of hosts!

Let Your face shine, that we may be saved!


We are doing our nightly (or close to it…) routine of reading (we’re in this book this year), singing, praying, and eating Lindt Lindor truffles. Gabriel  loved it last year, and of course the passage of time has not changed a  thing in that regard. 🙂


Lord Jesus, You are the light that  shines in the darkness. Remind us to turn to You, to call out to You,  when we feel we’re being swallowed by darkness, by doubts, by troubles  and frustrations. Thank You for the very fact of our being.

~G.K.C~


And just so you know… this is a must read from Mrs. Wilson, if you haven’t already done so.


Christmas is an emergency! Get a thousand bucks out of your savings and whoop it up with your kids.

~Mrs. W~
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Charlie Brown Christmas

After discussing it with my hubby, we decided to cut down a tree on Thanksgiving at my parents’ house, according to our usual tradition. We almost didn’t, and then we changed our mind. So we walked down the hill and cut down a pretty Charlie Brownish tree; it all took about six minutes. I figured that if I got home and decided my heart just really couldn’t handle putting it up in our house, we didn’t have to. So we put it in the garage that night, and by the next day I knew I did want to put it up. So we did. I didn’t want the empty space “where the tree would have been” connected to all those horrible what-ifs and shoulda-beens. The tree is the less of the two stings, I guess.

We usually do lots of decorations and make our whole house really festive, right down to the potholders, hand towels, and dishes. This year, nope. As hubby puts it, we’re doing meager decorations for a meager year. Maybe next year will be different (and maybe not).

I think the tree is very representative of my heart right now: not the biggest, sparkliest, most festive thing in the world… but doggone it, I’m sure trying to fake it till I make it!

So it’s low key, but it’s there. And it’s a good compromise. And I did put out a couple other decorations (Advent calendar, Advent candles, snowglobe, and a wreath) and pulled out 3 of our Christmas mugs. Everything else went back in the boxes and back to the basement. Someday, I will do the whole shibang again. Someday.

So for this year, we are having a Charlie Brown Christmas. And it suits.

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Interlude

God’s hard words are never His last words.
The woe and the waste and the tears of life belong to the interlude and not the finale.
~F.B. Meyers~

Today I am praying for grace to endure the interlude… and trying to look ahead with even the smallest bit of hope to seeing what God’s next words & last words will be.

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First Sunday of Advent

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas, where we remember Christ’s first coming and look ahead with hope to His second coming.

As we were reading Scriptures and singing hymns for this first day of this Advent season in church today, I was overcome with the idea of death in Advent. Maybe that seems backwards to you. We tend to think of life and birth associated with Advent — the anticipation of life and birth, at least. Personally, I don’t think of death in Advent as naturally.

But why did Jesus come? He came to die.
Why did God give life to His Son? So He could experience death.
He came and lived in order to die in order to vanquish death.
He experienced life & death so that we may experience life eternal.
And how does that happen? By overcoming death.
The Advent season is the beginning of death. Advent leads to the vanquishing of Death.
Life happens so that death may happen so that true life may follow resurrection.

As death is so heavy on my heart and burdening my shoulders, it is comforting to see the theme of death in Advent in this way. To see that even Advent includes the theme of death. That Advent is not apart from death, but that death is somehow actually a part of Advent. They are connected. They are both part of God’s story.

From the Father forth He came
And returneth to the same,
Captive leading death and hell
High the song of triumph swell!

~from “Savior of the Nations, Come”

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of hell Thy people save,
And give them victory over the grave.

O come, Thou Day-spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here;
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

~from “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

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Thankfulness & Contentment

People put lists of things they are thankful for all over the place. They put them on blogs and in emails (and I assume they are more than splattered all around the world of facebook). They share them with family members around the feasting table. I even saw someone at the store the other day with a list of “thankful for” items on a bookmark pinned to their uniform.

You know the typical things people include. We all hear about them. Over and over and over.
And that’s good.
It’s excellent, in fact.
Go, thankfulness.

I mean, we should be thankful for God, Christ, salvation, redemption, our families, our friends, our churches, our jobs, our homes, our clothing, our food, our toys, our gardens, our hobbies, our safety, our nation… You name it, we ought to be thankful for it. Right?

Okay. So how come nobody writes lists like this:

I am thankful for:
three more babies in heaven this year (which makes seven total)
seven handmade little wooden caskets that sit in the china hutch in our dining room
being pregnant six times in the last twenty months
thousands (& thousands) of dollars spent on medical treatments that didn’t save our baby’s life
empty, unused baby paraphernalia
unworn baby clothes
unworn maternity clothes
grief
crying six times a day
a womb that knows how to start the job but not complete it
specialists around the country who are desperate to work with me, but still haven’t found our answer

Anyway… if we are supposed to give thanks in all things (and yes, yes, we are…), then these things top my list (which nobody wants me to put on my blog, write in an email, or read out loud at the feasting table). But I don’t think I can honestly say “I am thankful for” any of these things. I can say the words. But that’s just about where it stops.

I am thankful for heaven.

Yes, I am. For a thousand reasons. Seven of them are redheaded reasons.

Our best friends are reading a book that I read a few years ago (The Rare Jewel Of Christian Contentment), and they shared this excerpt with us for Thanksgiving that I will now share with you:

[Contentment] is not opposed to making an orderly manner our moan and complaint to
God, and to our friends. Though a Christian ought to be quiet under God’s
correcting hand, he may without any breach of Christian contentment complain
to God. As one of the ancients says, Though not with a tumultuous clamor and
shrieking out in a confused passion, yet in a quiet, still, submissive way he may
unbosom his heart to God. Likewise he may communicate his sad condition to his
Christian friends, showing them how God has dealt with him, and how heavy the
affliction is upon him, that they may speak a word in season to his weary soul.
~Jeremiah Burroughs~

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Words fitly spoken

Proverbs 25:20

Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart
is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day,
and like vinegar on soda.

Matthew Henry’s concise commentary on this verse:
“We take a wrong course if we think to relieve those in sorrow by endeavouring to make them merry.“

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Blessed

Blessed is he whose faith is not offended,
When all around his way
The power of God is working out deliverance
For others day by day;

Though in some prison drear his own soul languish,
Till life itself be spent,
Yet still can trust his Father’s love and purpose,
And rest therein content.

Blessed is he, who through long years of suffering,
But off from active toil,
Still shares by prayer and praise the work of others,
And thus “divides the spoil.”

Blessed are thou, O child of God, who sufferest,
And canst not understand
The reason for thy pain, yet gladly leavest
Thy life in His blest hand.

Yea, blessed art thou whose faith is “not offended”
By trials unexplained,
By mysteries unsolved, past understanding,
Until the goal is gained.

~Freda Hanbury Allen~

Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me.
~Luke 7:23~