Category: Grieving

“Everything is Grace” at Christmas

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Reblogged from “Where Peter Is”

We sat in the car, my husband and I, still stunned, trying to eat a quick dinner before we drove to the hospital. I was avoiding looking at the medical building we had left earlier, the one with the unfamiliar doctor’s office where I’d heard the terrible words: “I’m so sorry, I see your baby’s heart…but it isn’t beating.”

I broke the silence, plaintively: “I just don’t feel prepared for this—spiritually prepared. I should feel more ready for something so big. I haven’t been praying as much, doing what I should. I’m tired. I feel completely unready for what is going to happen.” In my head, I was running through all of the heroic stories of saints and other Catholics I’d read about who had faced losses of children or spouses and terminal diagnoses with expressions of their trust in God. How could I possibly do that?

He nodded. As usual, we were of the same mind, perceiving what lay ahead—the stillbirth of our fourth child—as a kind of spiritual challenge to which we felt we should be able to rise. We should know how to pray through it, or “offer it up,” or explain it to others in spiritual terms, including our other children.

But we couldn’t.

The experience was a crisis. It was the traumatic loss of a child who we never got to know, one that upended our lives and changed the future we expected for our family. In the words of Pope Francis, describing “crisis” in his recent address to the Roman Curia, it is “an extraordinary event” that creates “a sense of trepidation, anxiety, upset and uncertainty in the face of decisions to be made”. Crises prompt our response, whether we face them as individuals or as a society.

This year has undoubtedly brought some sort of crisis into all of our lives, to be honest. “If we can recover the courage and humility to admit that a time of crisis is a time of the Spirit,” this pope with the heart of a spiritual director tells us, “whenever we are faced with the experience of darkness, weakness, vulnerability, contradiction, and loss, we will no longer feel overwhelmed. Instead, we will keep trusting that things are about to take a new shape, emerging exclusively from the experience of a grace hidden in the darkness.”

God in his mercy allowed my husband and me to be disarmed and disquieted and completely vulnerable in the crisis we faced. There was simply nothing we could do: nothing could change the fact that our child had suddenly and inexplicably died before birth, at 22 weeks gestation. All we could do was to feel ourselves completely at the mercy of the situation, to accept what would come next, and to allow others to guide us and minister to us.

It felt foreign and exposing. We were powerless. In our privileged lives, we’d never experienced anything quite like it, not to that extreme, and there was no way out but to go through it all. This reality tested the limits of our ideas about how faithful people respond in suffering and tragedy. I had heard the expression before—from St. Therese and Bernanos’s country priest—that “everything is grace,” and it sounded beautiful and meaningful. But did I really know what those words mean?  Did I truly believe that God is love and is always with us?

The truth is that God uses these moments of profound vulnerability to draw closer to us. At the edge of our inadequacy, in his goodness, he comes to us. This can only happen when we put down (or are forced to put down) our defenses and accept the realities in which we find ourselves—in my case, beyond the ability to understand or explain—and allow him to come to us.

It was in our great need and only because we were forced to accept things as they were that God was able to break through our attempts at self-sufficiency with his love. “God always loves us with a greater love than we have for ourselves. This is his secret for entering our hearts,” said Pope Francis in his homily on Christmas Eve. “God knows that the only way to save us, to heal us from within, is by loving us: there is no other way.”

It is into this space that God enters and is with us: the concreteness of our reality when we accept it and allow him in. “He knows that we become better only by accepting his unfailing love, an unchanging love that changes us.” And he comes as a child, as a son who is given to us, and who has a name: Emmanuel. “Only the love of Jesus can transform our life, heal our deepest hurts, and set us free.”

Francis returned repeatedly during this Advent and Christmas season to the tenderness and weakness of the child Jesus, the son given to us who is the source of our strength and courage to accept things as they are and to therefore enter in more deeply to the place where God meets us. “Jesus’ appearance in our midst is a gift from the Father,” he wrote in Patris Corde, his letter on St. Joseph, “which makes it possible for each of us to be reconciled to the flesh of our own history, even when we fail to understand it completely.” It is the coming of Emmanuel which has the power to open our hearts to God’s love and to prompt our love in response. “In the Child Jesus, God shows himself to be lovable, full of goodness and gentleness. We can truly love a God like that with all our hearts.”

The coming of Jesus in his lovable littleness is proof for us of the goodness of God whose love gives us life. It is only in our vulnerability and neediness that we can begin to accept this gift, because we knew then that “this is pure grace, not by any merit of our own.” Christmas reveals to us present to our painful reality that “Everything is grace, a gift of grace,” said Pope Francis in his catechesis on Christmas. “And this gift of grace, we receive it through the simplicity and humanity of Christmas … in the rediscovered awareness that that humble and poor Child, hidden away and helpless, is God himself, made man for us.”

All night long, we tried to rest while the induction of labor began. I listened to music—lullabies like I the ones I played every night to put my three-year-old to sleep—and prayed, feebly begging God for peace when I couldn’t sleep. I wanted the peace of Assisi, a place we visited on an Easter pilgrimage in 2018 and left me with an imprint in my memory of what can grow from a single life radically given over to God, even centuries later.

That night, I wanted to escape, and I filled my mind with thoughts of quiet, warmly-lit streets that wound their way to the basilicas on either end of the medieval Italian hill town. I thought of how easy it had been to feel God’s presence there, in the very stones of Assisi. Throughout that painful night, I longed to feel his presence again. “Give me the peace of Assisi” was my prayer. God would not fail to answer it.

With his Ignatian heart, Pope Francis always draws our focus to how our feelings and our senses respond to our human experiences. The emotions are indeed where Our Lord can speak, and Francis at Christmas drew our attention back to that place inside ourselves where the response to a crisis begins: “Do you have a feeling of failure or inadequacy, the fear that you will never emerge from the dark tunnel of trial?  God says to you, ‘Have courage, I am with you.’”

I always had the impression that courage was a human virtue, something we did because we knew something others didn’t. I thought courage was how, when we were beyond our strength, God would fill in the gaps with his love and grace. But looking back, I learned that night that God’s presence with us doesn’t remind us to be strong or courageous; rather, as Francis reminded us, Christ is our strength and our courage. “Only the Lord can give us the strength needed to accept life as it is, with all its contradictions, frustrations and disappointments,” Pope Francis writes in Patris Corde. And the courage we receive does not come from a show of power, or only in special places, but from presence, the presence of a child: “He does this not in words, but by making himself a child with you and for you.” Again, Emmanuel.

In reflecting on St. Joseph in Patris Corde, Pope Francis called this “creative courage”: engaging with the reality of our own lives and stories, no matter the crises they entail so that in hope we may creatively move forward with God. “In the face of difficulty, we can either give up and walk away, or somehow engage with it. At times, difficulties bring out resources we did not even think we had.” This is not drawing on our own strength, but on God’s. When God is with us, he acts by trusting that we will lovingly receive him and courageously and creatively act with him. Joseph did this when God trusted him to care for Mary and Jesus and to flee Herod’s slaughter:

Our lives can be miraculously reborn if we find the courage to live them in accordance with the Gospel. It does not matter if everything seems to have gone wrong or some things can no longer be fixed. God can make flowers spring up from stony ground.

While laboring later that morning, we heard a knock on the door and the familiar, though subdued, voice of our pastor outside. It had been a difficult few hours and I wasn’t sure I could bear to see anyone. My husband left the room to talk to him and soon returned—with a pyx.

Emmanuel. God with us.

And peace. Christ, our Peace, the peace of Assisi.

Our child was not born silently during a dark sleepless night. He was born in the late morning, a few hours after sharing in the Eucharistic feast with his parents.

My midwife asked after wrapping him in a tiny blanket, “are you ready? It’s a boy,” and to us a son was given.

We named him Francis.

This is the undying heart of our hope, the incandescent core that gives warmth and meaning to our life. Underlying all our strengths and weaknesses, stronger than all our past hurts and failures, or our fears and concerns about the future, there is this great truth: we are beloved sons and daughters. God’s love for us does not, and never will, depend upon us.  It is completely free love.  Tonight cannot be explained in any other way: it is purely grace.  Everything is grace.  The gift is completely free, unearned by any of us, pure grace.

— Homily on Christmas Eve

Christ is already next to you

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CHRIST IN THE DESERT

by 

On Saturday, I watched good friends carry a miniature white casket up the aisle of our parish church, to be laid before the altar for a funeral Mass. Their son was stillborn last week. Our parish had come to the church to pray for them as they laid their son’s body to rest.

My friends have entered the season of Lent in a profound way.

During Lent, we remember Jesus, fasting and praying in the Judean desert. We remember that Jesus was weak, and tired, and alone, and that, relying on the word of God, he overcame the empty promises of Satan.

Like Christ, my friends will likely feel weak, tired, and alone this Lent. C. S. Lewis said that grief feels much like fear, and I suspect they’ll sometimes feel afraid. He also said that grief is an amputation, and I suspect they’ll sometimes feel crippled.

And like Christ, my friends will face temptations. They may be tempted to turn on each other. They may be tempted to turn from God. They may be tempted to pretend they don’t need help—human or divine—when, in fact, they surely do. I suspect my friends will overcome those temptations, by grace. But if they don’t, I know they’ll seek God’s mercy, and I know he’ll give it freely.

During Lent, most of us offer up small sacrifices—pittances, really—to spend more time in prayer. We limit our comforts, just a little. We give alms, usually from our excess, and rarely from our need. And somehow God, in his mercy on us—his pity for our pitiful sacrifices—gives these tiny sacrifices meaning, and uses them to draw us closer to him.

Sometimes, though, we see Lent as a proof of our endurance, an annual test of our strength and resolve as believers. It is easy to think that during Lent, our little sacrifices take us out into the desert to be with Christ. We don’t readily see that Christ is the one who has come out into the desert, to be with us.

We often have trouble admitting that we are already in the desert, already weak and without food, and already tempted. Often we forget that Christ conquered temptation not for himself, but for us—so that we can rely on him to conquer Satan’s lies, which are whispered to us in the moments of great suffering, in the desert of this life.

Lent, at its best, is a discovery that Christ is already next to us. We silence our distractions to discover the Lord’s love, his steadfast presence, the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

My friends have been driven into the desert of loss this Lent; I hope they will find that Christ is there with them. I hope that in their weakness, they will encounter the savior who can “sympathize with our weakness,” who “in every respect has been tempted as we are.”

Many of us are in deserts of loneliness, or mourning, or despair, or fear. We are thirsting for living water. I hope this Lent we will find the Christ who has come out to the desert to meet us.

J. D. Flynn is a canon lawyer in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Light in Darkness

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Light In Darkness

Author: Rónán Johnston

Light In Darkness

Depression, grief and unemployment: Having experience these hardships, Rónán Johnston shares how he found light in the midst of darkness and where we may find hope.

How often do things seem to be working out for us, when suddenly, out of the blue, some disaster, large or small, seems to put paid to our hopes and plans?

During my time, there have been a number of these experiences, such as the first time I was unemployed. One week, I was a national TV presenter, and the next I was collecting the dole. People pointed and whispered. In 2004, my mother died after contracting a post-operative hospital infection. Later in the noughties, the international economic downturn wiped us out for a decade.

Each disaster made us ask the questions: “Lord, are you really here? Do you still love us? Do you still have our best interests at heart?” In other words, just like in the Garden of Eden, the enemy has us wondering if God is true to His word.

It is, I fear, the human condition. We live in a “valley of tears” (Psalm 84:6), and yet we resolutely hang on to the idea that life should somehow be simple and straightforward. If we constantly run into opposition, there is surely something wrong with us.

Longing For Wholeness

However, is this viewpoint biblical? From the start, the Scriptures make it clear that life is difficult. We are told the man will labour (Genesis 3:19) and the woman will long for her husband (Genesis 3:16). This continues right through to Revelation when John sees a new heaven and earth (Revelation 21:1). Jesus promises us: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5) We get the feeling that things are not quite as they should be in our world.

Each of us have a longing for the wholeness of Eden within us, like a great genetic imprint put into us by God. The motivational writers of the world rightly tell us that it is a sign we are made for more (true) and, in order to attain it, we simply need enough discipline and “want it enough” to follow through (false).

The scriptures, as well as the devotional writers, remind us that we will see Eden again. However, we need to learn that there is darkness in this valley, where we live and move and have our being. One of our principle needs must be to learn how to experience the redemptive light of Jesus in that darkness.

Hold Tight

How, then, can we see the light in the darkness? These three principles may help us:

1. Feel it. Allow the grief of the pain. Pretending to ourselves that everything will be okay, while secretly broken-hearted, is not the same thing as “giving thanks in all circumstances.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

2. Dig in to the promises of God. Find them-they are in there. For example:  I will never forget you (Isaiah 49:15); I will not leave you orphans, I will come to you (John 14:18); My God will supply all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19); Even if we are unfaithful, still he is faithful, because he cannot be untrue to himself (2Tim2:13). Learn them, inhale them and get them deep into you.

3. Hold tight! He is coming, and He will vindicate you. No pain lasts forever, and it will eventually come to an end. The troubles will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Having come through all things victorious, we develop resilience and build up trust. We press into Him, and we do not hide from Him during the most painful times.

  • Rónán Johnston is a psychotherapist, a writer of soundtrack for film, TV and theatre and a worship leader from Dublin, Ireland. Further information about his work can be found at http://www.ronanjohnston.com

 

Christmas Card

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(This is a previous post, but it’s just worth reposting every year . . . )

I don’t usually post Christmas music videos before Christmas.  (Trying to keep Advent Advent.)  But this one is special.  And it’s for all of you who are having a hard time during this Advent season, finding it hard to be joyful like all of those around you.  This one’s for you (from Steven Curtis Chapman).

And here’s his story behind the song.

Now, go back and listen to the song again, written just for you.

“When you can’t find the Merry in your Christmas”

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When You Can’t Find the Merry in Your Christmas

by  • December 19, 2016

It’s here whether we like it or not—Christmas.

For many this season is filled with the fullness of family togetherness. The turkey with all the trimmings. It is the time for unwrapping the red-ribbon-gift we placed first on our list. It is the season of sparkly lights and the steady fragrance of evergreen. Cut trees dressed and centered in our homes displaying ornamented memories and present day mementos of our own Christmas present and pasts.

For others—like us— it will be the first without our most cherished loved one (R.I.P Dad Brown). It is the season of skipping to pay the rent in order to afford to put something under the Christmas tree. The homeless among us will seek to find a warmer cover, an even hotter cup to grip away the cruelty of the cold.

Christmas can fill you with joy and wonder and Christmas can make you feel marginalized and alone.

I’ll never forget the Christmas Mommy and I were all set and packed to visit my Grandmother Patricia in Kalamazoo, Michigan for the last time. It would be the last time because cancer… well,  cancer said so. “Gabby” had battled hard and surrendered even stronger to the fight. She was still trying to hold on for us though. Mommy and I had our tickets ready on the dining room table. We were sad but excited to have the opportunity to say our final good-bye. We were flying out of Portland bright and early the following morning, but we didn’t make it in time.

Just a few hours before “the call” I sat in our family living room, wrapped in the strong arms of my brand new fiancée. My then boyfriend of two years had popped the question and presented the ring on Christmas Eve. The same ring I was staring at when down the hall I heard my mother scream. Her daughter-griefed-weeping followed, and I knew Gabby was gone.

The sparkle of my new ring and the glare from my streaming tears were both there at that moment, right there at the same time.

Christmas can give you your most desired longing, and it can deliver your greatest heartbreak.

This season, once again I feel like I’m holding a little bit of both possibility and grief. Possibility in that this same Jewish baby Jesus who made His way through oppression, homelessness and rejection will continue to find rescue, covering and favor for me. Grief in knowing that I can’t control the timing of death, the depths and disgust of man’s broken humanity or the schemes and snares of our raging enemy.

But like my ring and my tears I will continue to hold both. This tension of both possibility and grief are calling forth a deeper vulnerability in me, a deeper desperation to both be cherished and rescued.

This Christmas I am desperate to find true meaning in both the unwrapping and the grabbing hold of our Immanuel—God with us, God with me. I’m being drawn to get closer to the Christ child and not Christmas, the holiday. You don’t have to find the “merry” in your Christmas if it’s not there. Just draw near to Him.

Jesus of our possibilities.

Jesus acquainted with our grief.

Jesus of Christmas who knows each of us—that Baby from the manger who knew just how to “be.”

Originally published here.

Spoon Chimes

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Originally posted on Mary Ann Morgan’s blog:

365 PROJECT 2016

Day 91 Spoon Chimes

April 2, 2016

Singing

You wouldn’t notice them except on windy days. They are hidden in the weeping cherry, hanging by the garden and dancing on the lowest branches of the oak out front. There are spoon chimes all over our yard. He made them for me from a box a spoons leftover from a church project. He knows how much I love the sound they make.

I want to be a chime, sitting at the ready for the Spirit to move me. But I need to bump into other chimes to actually sing. A chime will never make a sound swinging solo on the most blustery days. We need each other. That’s the way God set it up. He designed us for dependence on him and for community.

I think about this on the lonely days.

There are days that this house echoes with a quiet that is hard to bear. What keeps me from the friendship I crave? Probably fear. It is strange that when we need others most, we feel the least presentable. My house is in utter chaos with 9 puppies and all the poo and pee that comes with them. I wash blankets from morning until midnight daily. On top of that the normal housework has been seriously neglected as well as our own laundry. Inviting someone into this mess feels preposterous.

This adds to the grief I am already sorting through. To surrender to this fear might bind me to a silence that was not meant for me. I was made to sing within a beautiful community, offering a song while rubbing elbows with others.

Like the spoon chimes we need each other to truly become what we were made to be.

Psalm 133 ~”How wonderful it is, how pleasant, when brothers live in harmony! For harmony is as precious as the fragrant anointing oil that was poured over Aaron’s head and ran down onto his beard and onto the border of his robe. Harmony is as refreshing as the dew on Mount Hermon, on the mountains of Israel.”

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Straining for the Light

by  • January 4, 2016

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For a long time the threat of a new year brought with it an onslaught of more darkness, more enervating melancholy, more long, gray days ahead to suffer through. It was nothing to celebrate.

At the end of one of those especially difficult years I met Alece Ronzino online. She too had experienced a year (or more!) like that, punctuated by loss and betrayal and hopelessness. In 2009 she decided to find one word to focus on in the new year, instead of a list of resolutions that were quickly and quietly abandoned. One Word 365was born.

One word can change everything. Forget New Year’s Resolutions. Scrap the long list of goals that you won’t remember three weeks from now anyway. Choose just one word. One word that sums up who you want to be or how you want to live or what you want to achieve by the end of 2016. One word. 365 days. A changed life. ~Alece Ronzino

The last four years I’ve participated brought some incredible changes to my life. I became more focused, more hopeful, more inspired to hold fast, keep going, and expect good things. I’ve been challenged to be fearless. I have committed to believing. I have thrown myself into creativity. Most recently, I have spent a year contemplating possibility and what that looks like fleshed out in real life, and right now it looks like The Mudroom. I doubted it was possible a year ago, yet giving space for possibility to bloom made it a reality.

I’ve been brought low and robbed of energy by chronic pain. I’ve spiraled into dark depression. Anxiety has left me dizzy and breathless. I’ve been facing childhood sexual abuse head on and I have the bruises and scars to show for it. I’ve been humbled by my own darkness, my secret sins that cast a shadow over my heart and steal the light from my eyes. I’ve staggered under the weight of loneliness and grief and fear and despaired of ever feeling strong again.

My One Word for 2016 is restore.

rsz_onewordcollage2016

The locusts have ravaged me, leaving me bereft. I hardly know what plenty, abundance, fullness feels like. I find myself returning to that field of devastation, the locusts leaving nothing of worth behind. But there is a promise and I am claiming it.

Joel 2:25-32 (ESV)
25 I will restore to you the years
that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army, which I sent among you.
26 “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
and praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has dealt wondrously with you.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
27 You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else.

In these verses God is not telling his people to buck up, man up, cowgirl up, grow up, deal with it, get over it, or pull yourself together. He is acknowledging that this is a straight-up disaster, a full-on calamity. He sees and validates the wreckage and the ruin that has devastated his people, who have been left desolate. He tells them that it was his great army, obeying his command, meting out justice, which caused this cataclysm.

But God.

God is a God of restoration, redemption, healing, and deliverance. He is a God of double portions and spacious places. He removes shame and exchanges it for radiance.

Jeremiah 30:17
For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the Lord
Isaiah 61:7
Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion
Hosea 6:1
“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.”

He will not leave us as orphans. He will not treat us as our sins deserve. He will not ignore our cries for mercy. There is no shadow of turning in him.

In Life Together, Dietrich Bohoeffer penned a paragraph that all of us should write on our mirrors. He was referring to the morning, but I have replaced day with year.

For Christians the beginning of the [year] should not be burdened and oppressed by besetting concerns for the [year’s] work. At the threshold of the new [year] stands the Lord who made it. All the darkness and distraction of the dreams of night retreat before the clear light of Jesus Christ and his wakening Word. All unrest, all impurity, all care and anxiety flee before him. Therefore, at the beginning of the [year] let all distraction and empty talk be silenced and let the first thought and the first word belong to him whom our whole life belongs.

My proclamation for 2016 is to not be oppressed by the besetting concerns for this year’s work, but to face it with excitement and expectation. I will remember that God stands at the threshold of this year, like a sentry, offering protection but also reminding me that every day is a battle, but one I don’t fight in vain or alone. Darkness and distraction are no match for the light of Jesus and his wakening Word. Restlessness, impurity, worry, and fear have no place in this year. My first thought and first word of this year, and every morning in it, belong to God who has “destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

The onset of a new year isn’t a threat to me anymore. It doesn’t hold the same bleakness and grim prospects as it did previously. I’m determined to wrestle until I’m limping. I’m done with ashes and mourning and shadows and death. I’ve had enough of despondency and gloom. I’m aching for the light.

Who’s aching with me?

Tammy Perlmutter

Writer at Raggle-Taggle
Tammy Perlmutter writes about unabridged life, fragmented faith, and investing in the mess at her blogRaggle-Taggle. She founded The Mudroom to make room in the mess and create a space for people to beheard. Tammy guest posts a bit, writes flash memoir, personal essay, and poetry, leads writing groups, and preaches on occasion. She is also an advocate for women and mental health, an alum of the Voices and Faces Project testimonial writing workshop, The Stories We Tell, for survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and trafficking, as well as the Social Media Director for Threads of Compassion, an organization offering comfort to recent victims of sexual trauma. She will have an essay included in the book Soul Bare: Raw Reflections on Human Redemption, being published by InterVarsity Press in 2016.
 . . . reblogged from Mudroom