Lean In To It

The grief of losing a child is immeasurable. It is a weight that lays over me like a heavy heavy blanket. Having other children I have learned, multiplies that grief because I am also grieving for the hearts of my living children. I am broken by the hole of losing my daughter and also bearing the burden of her three siblings who have lost a little sister. I am watching my 3 year old play that her baby dolls are dying and being buried… I am sitting with a 6 year old who wants to know why Jesus didn’t let Ellie come back like in the book “Heaven is for Real”… and explaining to a 9 year old that just because we didn’t get the answer we wanted, God is still sovereign. I am watching a 5 year old just a whisper away from death, and wondering if I still believe in miracles.

I know how this story ends, but that does not stop the enemy from planting doubts.

Mark and I started attending a Grief Share group this week. We had some challenges getting there, and almost didn’t make it, but we sure know now that there is something special in store for us. We met a young couple whose baby girl was born at the same hospital the day Ellianna died, and their baby girl, Lily Grace, died ten days later. What an amazing source of comfort it is to have someone who almost literally stood in our shoes. God places the right people in our lives at just the right time. It has been frustrating to us to feel like we are stuck while everyone else has moved on with life… our group is a place where we can be in that spot with others who are walking the journey right along with us. If you are grieving, or need to grieve a loss that you haven’t yet, find a Grief Share near you… it is a powerful resource for an impossible hurdle… http://www.griefshare.org/.

Someone told us grief is something you have to go THROUGH. You can’t go over it, you can’t go around it, you have to go through it…so LEAN into it. Like an ocean wave. That is what we are doing. Sometimes the waves are gentle, sometimes they knock us off our feet, but we are in a journey we can’t avoid.

Please don’t stop praying for us…