Your story matters.
I Googled this phrase recently and got 627 million results. It’s so common, it’s almost cliché.
It’s also true, though.
This is the week that I usually link up with Heather Gerwing for a look at Something Loved, Read, Treasured and Ahead. This time, though—after a month that hasn’t really turned out how I expected—I decided to share four random (and probably obvious) somethings about life instead.
Simply putting these thoughts into words settled my soul; perhaps reading them will do the same for you.
We have what I call birthday season at our house. It starts in early November, when two of us have birthdays one day after the other, and continues through early January, when we celebrate the fourth and final birth date.
Add in Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it’s roughly two months of cake, presents, special meals and the making of warm memories. With the house decorated and holiday music playing continually, it’s my favorite time of the year, hands down.
Since my parents passed away in 2019, I’ve discovered a second—though much less festive—season on my life calendar. I haven’t figured out when to call it yet—death anniversary season sounds crass; maybe parental remembrance season is better.
Whatever title I give it, it starts on Good Friday, which was observed the day my mom died and will forever be connected in my mind with the actual date of her death, and continues through June 14—my parents’ wedding anniversary and the day we buried my dad. This stretch of time—also roughly two months—includes Mother’s Day, both parents’ birthdays and the date my dad died (one day after his birthday).
As I was trudging my way through these weeks for the first time last year, my gratefulness that God called my parents home before the Covid-19 pandemic somehow muffled the intensity of the experience. I wasn’t denying or stuffing my grief; it was more of a quiet realization that God’s timing for our family—as hard as it was to accept at times—really had worked out for their good.
This year, though, the sadness was more acute and my tears were much closer to the surface. On my mom’s birthday, after crying for the second time in one day, I told Randy I didn’t know where all this emotion was coming from.
“You’ve cried about 1 percent of the tears I expected you to cry since your parents died,” he said as he hugged me in the backyard.
Grief is communal in some ways, but also so very individual. Ask any of my six siblings about the way they’ve processed my parents’ deaths and I’m guessing you’d get six different answers.
I’m not a big crier; I never have been. But I am a processor—through thinking, talking, writing, even listening to music. The important thing—for me and probably for you too, when you experience a deep loss—is to keep processing, whatever that looks like for you.
For me, it includes making relevant references to my parents in conversation with friends and family members who knew them. Thinking and writing about their lives in relation to my own. And yes—especially these last few months—letting the tears flow when they will.
There’s a starting point to grief, but I’m learning there may not be an endpoint—not this side of heaven anyway. It won’t always be as heavy or as sad, but in some ways, it will always be there, especially if the person who is no longer here was near and dear to our hearts.
According to author Ronne Rock, who lost her own mom 21 years ago, that’s not a bad thing, either.
“I’ve come to be okay with the unlikely friendship of grief,” she writes in an article for The Redbud Writers Guild. “The wash of it over a tender moment is the reminder that we are made for more than the dirt under our feet. The sound of it in a bird’s song is the reminder that our stories are still being written even as the ink on the page blurs from the tears. The presence of it in dog-eared picture books or fading photos is the reminder that death is the very thing that God uses to plant his new seeds of life in us, the way the soil in the field hides the seeds of hope—hope waiting to be baptized.”
I don’t know what that’s all going to look like in my own life, or yours either. But as we learn to trust the Author of our faith with the details of our stories, I have a feeling the flame of eternity will only grow brighter and brighter in our hearts.
And that can only mean good things for the remainder of our days here on earth.
♥ Lois
This post is part of a collection called Help for Parent Loss. To read more, please click here.
There’s a starting point to grief, but I’m learning there may not be an endpoint—not this side of heaven anyway. Share on X Grief won’t always be as heavy or as sad, but in some ways, it will always be there, especially if the person who is no longer here was near and dear to our hearts. Share on X
Several weeks ago, while I was running on the paved trail by my house, my foot hit an unseen knot on the wooden bridge and I went flying—headfirst—onto the bridge.
I mostly landed on my left knee and the left side of my face and forehead, which resulted in some significant bruises and abrasions, along with a sizable goose egg above my left eye.
Several people on the trail stopped to see if I needed help. They urged me to call my doctor in case I had a concussion. One sweet lady even walked back to her house, returned with her car and drove me home.
This all could have been very embarrassing, but along with inheriting my dad’s propensity for falling, I also seemed to have inherited his tendency not to get embarrassed much.
I fell, but it was an accident. I looked bad, but so would anyone else who unexpectedly crash landed on his or her head on a wooden bridge.
Mostly, I was grateful. That nothing was damaged too badly, although it took a solid week for the painful abrasions on my knee to heel and several more weeks for the lump on my head to go away completely. That, after consulting with my doctor’s office and monitoring myself for neurological symptoms, it didn’t appear that I had a concussion. That, even though the inside of my eye turned black several days later, I didn’t break my nose in the fall.
And also that there are still kind people in the world who stop to help a middle-aged woman sprawled out on a bridge.
We hear so much about all the hatred, outrage and angst that readily pours forth these days. It happens online, of course, but also in person—sometimes subtly, sometimes not.
But there’s still good in the world. There is.
And, as Samwise Gamgee tells Frodo in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, “It’s worth fighting for.”
What that fight looks like in real life differs from person to person. But it starts with what we think about. What we read, listen to and watch.
We can focus on the bad—there’s certainly enough of that to keep us occupied for a good long while. Or, as we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, we can turn our hearts, minds, eyes and ears toward things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, morally excellent and praiseworthy. (Philippians 4:8)
I don’t care how much pressure anyone feels to keep up with all the latest things on social media and YouTube. The truth of the matter is, nobody can make us watch or read material that we don’t want to watch or read.
It’s up to us to choose well and wisely, every day. And if we fill our heads with good, there’s a pretty good chance that what flows from our mouths and lives also will be good.
It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Worth fighting for, even.
Some—perhaps many—of us are called to do more, to go farther, to dig deeper. To boldly speak up, to run for office, to stand firm in the public square or in the marketplace, to graciously take unpopular stands even when every aspect of our culture is going the opposite direction.
But we’re all called to fight on our knees, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus (rather than our Instagram stats) as we shine the light of God’s love and truth in this crazy world.
There is good in the world, and it is worth fighting for.
Let’s fight together, shall we? And when we stumble and fall—as we all will eventually, one way or another—let’s help each other up. That might be the best way we can show a hurting world what real love looks like.
♥ Lois
When we stumble and fall—as we all will eventually—let’s help each other up. That might be the best way we can show a hurting world what real love looks like. Share on X We’re all called to fight on our knees, to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus (rather than our Instagram stats) as we shine the light of God’s love and truth in this crazy world. Share on XP.S. I’m linking up this week with #tellhisstory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee, Inspire Me Monday, #HeartEncouragement and Grace & Truth.
Every time I start one of these monthly posts, my first inclination is to go on about how fast the last four weeks have gone. It’s true, every time. Maybe even more so in the summer.
Here in Kansas, we’ve already had one heat wave, followed by a cooler spell. The rain came back last week, but more always makes me happy. (And all the other Midwestern gardeners said “amen.”)
Several years ago, we took the family to see comedian Tim Hawkins perform. The auditorium was packed. We were high in the balcony, surrounded by people who—like us—were all laughing so hard they were crying.
It was a fun, memorable night.