Day 7: Myths
October 7, 2016 ♥
Day 7. Myths: Have you discovered any myths about this grief experience?
For today's prompt, I'm going to share something I wrote a few years ago....
A myth I've encountered along my journey is that it's unhealthy to continue talking, writing, thinking about your baby and that God is honored more in "getting over it."
Quite often, well-intentioned people subtly say something along the lines of me needing to "put what happened to me" (losing my child) in the past and step forward into the future.
What I hear when people write/say something like this is that I need to "get over" my child. You see, I will never get over loving Lily, therefore I will never get over losing her. I will never be the person I was before having and losing Lily. And you know what? I wouldn't want to be. This is not something I will "recover" from, as if I have the flu. I don't ever want to forget her or "move on" from her.
To move on from her would mean to forget her which would mean I don't love her. That isn't possible. To move on would mean I don't embrace the calling God has on my life and the ministry He's called me to. To move on would mean forgetting everything God did in me because of her.
I lost not only my baby, but my 6 1/2 year old - the age she'd be today. I lost her at every age. But I've gained so much more than I've lost. God gave me the gift of her life. A brief, yet beautifully brilliant life that has changed my own forever.
Just because I grieve "out loud" and write and speak publicly does not mean I have not stepped forward into the future God has for me. I step forward and carry her with me every step of the way. I am more thankful for my own life because of the brevity of hers.
Even if people think it strange that I talk about Lily as much as I do, I will not be silenced. I am a mother and mothers love their children every day, not just some days. I will always grieve and miss Lily, but that does not mean I cannot live fully and joyfully and grasp a hold of the future God has planned for me.
This quote by John Piper (from a letter written to a mother whose baby was stillborn) is a favorite: "But there is another way God is honored in our grieving. When we taste the loss so deeply because we loved so deeply and treasured God's gift - and God in His gift - so passionately that the loss cuts the deeper and the longer, and yet in and through the depths and the lengths of sorrow we never let go of God, and feel Him never letting go of us - in that longer sorrow He is also greatly honored, because the length of it reveals the magnitude of our sense of loss for which we do not forsake God. At every moment of the lengthening grief, we turn to Him not away from Him. And therefore the length of it is a way of showing Him to be ever-present, enduringly sufficient." 💕
-Click here to see all of my photos from CYG 2016.
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