Immediate CPR For Parents
Parents who have lost a child face an immediate crisis and likely have no idea where to turn or what to do. There are a few things that should be communicated with a bewildered parent to help them get through their horrible first week that I call Immediate CPR for Parent's HeartsMore...
Major Decisions
If you have just lost a child, your heart is spinning, falling and tumbling. You have lost a huge part of your center, your desire and your will. Your decision making is and will be hugely different than it has previously been because you care very little about anything else other than being with your child. Therefore, it is important that you recognize that you are not in the frame of mind to make big decisionsMore...
You Are Not Alone
Unfortunately, others have been on this sad, sad road ahead of you, and you are not alone in this terrible experience. Perhaps the experiences of others could help you bear the incalculable burden you now bear.
Early on in my own steps in this canyon of grief, I realized that I was learning things in the process; profound things. To ensure that the things that I was learning stayed with me long enough to be able to build a foundation upon, I started to write them down. Over time I realized that together, the things that were of comfort and solace to me, might similarly be as helpful to others.
Eventually I built my notes into paragraphs and then chapters. What resulted was a book that I call You Won't Cry Forever. More...
Read Now From the Book
Your Goal
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Just Get Through This One Day M T W T F S S « Yesterday Tomorrow » x x x x x x 7 x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
"I Lost My Child"
I-694 (How'd I Get on THIS Road?)
Chapter 5 (from: You Won't Cry Forever)
Like yourself, this isn't the situation that I signed up for. All those moments, all those special days and nights, all those special events, every meal, every school day, every cartoon and never once did it cross my mind that one day in the near future I would be without my son. I never imagined a world without him. I never contemplated my world without him.
It's like if I were planning a trip through Wisconsin, into and through Minnesota on I-94. As if I had plans to see certain things, visit certain places and make certain stops. But all of a sudden, somewhere near St. Paul, I find myself on I- 694! How did I get here? I am no longer on the path that was planned out. All the sights are unfamiliar. All is uncertain. I am faced with territory strange to me. I am not on the road that I planned and expected to be on. I no longer have places to stop at that are familiar to me. I cannot visit the places I had expected to visit. The whole road is different, the place is different, and I am in territory that is uncharted for me.
Do you feel like that? Do you feel like this unfamiliar road is also one that you did not sign up for? Have your plans and expectations, too, been altered and do you, yourself, find that you are on an unplanned road? Of course you do. We are both in unfamiliar territory; completely unfamiliar. This isn't how we saw things happening. This isn't what we had in mind. We find ourselves on a road that is the last place on earth that we would ever want to be on.
And on top of everything, it is night time and it is raining hard. The wind is whipping the trees and we cannot see anything but the road directly in front of us. As unbelievable and unfathomable as this situation is to us, there is no denying that we are undoubtedly here.
I don't know if you are on I-694. You might be on I-494, or I-205, I-280, I-535 or I-690. But I am certain that it is a road that you did not plan on being on at this point in time. I do know that things are strange and that this has brought you completely out of your comfort zone and that your surroundings are not what you are used to or what they used to be. I also know that you have no idea what to do or where to turn.
What I can tell you, though, about the road you are on, is that there is good news. What do you know about most bypass freeways? They take you around the interior of the cities, but then where do they go? Yes, you might have guessed it; they eventually meet back up with the main road. Did you get that? Their path eventually is, once again, reunited with the main freeway! And the reason I am mentioning this is to share with you the hope that you will not be on that bypass forever. There are only a certain amount of miles you can travel on it before, once again, you intersect with the road you had been on, and you will be reunited with your child!
Yes, that secondary freeway will lead you right back to the other one down the road a little. And knowing this can really help us to go about our daily lives on the strange road until we are once again reunited with our child! Kind of makes you want to drive faster, doesn't it? But regardless of when they intersect, we must indeed accept that some changes to our plans have occurred. Simply wishing that we were on that other road does nothing to get us there. We must bear up and adjust, as best as we are able, to the conditions ahead of us in the situation we now are in. We cannot change the road we are on. We cannot look back. We must only look at the traffic we are in and persist until our tires finally connect with the road that we know is up ahead. We must keep our eyes on what is ahead, not what is behind. Our hope is in front of us, not behind us.
As for our behavior on this new road, we owe it to our child to do everything we can to stay on the pavement. Our child is waiting for us. The Lord also awaits. We want to show up in good condition, ready for what adventures lie ahead with our child on that precious, unseen intersection ahead. In fact, we should charge ahead in full expectation of the joy that also awaits that blessed reunion, which will dim the futile promises of this world. It's ok to do that. It's alright to be unsatisfied with earthly things and be hungry for heavenly things.
Up until this point perhaps we have been too satisfied with the charms of this earthly life and given less mind to spiritual, heavenly things that deserve much more of our attention and focus. So we do not want to pollute our lives with excess so that our character is unrecognizable to our child upon that future meeting. Rather, wouldn't it be a pleasant surprise for our child to see us again with an improved character, one that we have let Jesus polish up?
Furthermore, I must not forget an important point: that Jesus Himself also promises to be present with us behind our steering wheel out on that foreign road in the midst of the terrible storm. That is how we're going to make it through this ordeal; we should be letting Jesus have His way in our lives, thus preserving His abiding presence in our unthinkable circumstances. For He will indeed give us peace - His peace. I do not just think this in theory, I have lived it in experience. I can testify that His presence and His peace have repeatedly comforted my family's hearts daily, even during the most wrenching, painful times.
That is not to say that it has been easy. You know that it has not. But when the pain was so bad that I thought my own heart was going to physically burst, we, or friends of ours, have prayed for His comfort and we have felt it pour over us like a waterfall. I felt the physical pain lift off of me and I could get through the hour.
My good friend Ron Mesiroff, one of the best men I know, repeatedly made himself available to our grieving family. He came over a number of times and prayed for us in this manner. He asked the God he knows so well to pour comfort upon our hearts. God did just that in a powerful way and His Spirit fell on us immediately bringing very noticeable comfort. I suspect that I might not have made it through some of these times without Ron's prayerful intercession and God's rapid response.
God's presence and His comfort are very real. And He does respond to the broken-hearted cries of us, His children. He has done this countless times for me and I trust that He will continue to do so. He has to; I am unable to get through this on my own.
And as my Heavenly Father, He is well aware of my need. He asks me just to trust Him and to obey Him. Indeed I do. For on this alien, unplanned road, I am left with nothing else to hang on to except His Word and His promises. But how mighty are those Words, how mighty are those promises, and how mighty is His presence with us!