How it is "supposed to be"

Last week I was able to meet the author/artist, Elizabeth High who made this piece. Elizabeth is a family friend of Libby (who we live/work with in Thailand). We had breakfast together in Rockford, MI and she shared a bit of her journey with us about losing her father to cancer. She met him when she was 36 years old and he died seven years later...far too soon. If you are interested in seeing any more of her work, click here.

yoga.

I received this e-mail a few weeks ago and it meant so much that I wanted to share it...


Dear Lynette,

This is odd, writing a complete stranger... I know of you through some mutual friends,  and have been following your blog since right after Olive was born. I've always been too shy to comment, but I've been there, checking in and reading and tearing up...

I also wanted to tell you that last winter, I took a yoga class. A wonderful, touching, satisfying yoga class. Each week, our instructor would say, before we began: "Offer up this moment to someone. Someone who perhaps needs strength, or cannot move in the ways that you can." I always offered up my yoga sessions to Olive, and thought of her the whole way through, during every hard pose and in every quiet moment. I am not religious, but it was wonderful to connect (in some small way) with Olive on a more spiritual level through the practice of yoga...

tears.

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love.”
-Washington Irving

In his book Lament for a Son,  Nicholas Wolterstoff who lost his son to a climbing accident says, "But why celebrate stoic tearlessness? Why insist on never outwarding the inward when that inward is bleeding? Does enduring not require as much strength as never crying? Must we always mask our suffering? May we sometimes not allow people to see it and enter it?"


Another book I'm reading is "Experiencing Grief" by H. Norman Wright. Here are a few exerts from it...


Tears.
Those tiny drops of humanity. 
Those round, wet balls of fluid that tumble from our eyes
creep down our cheeks
and splash on the floor of our hearts...


They are miniature messengers; 
on call 24 hours a day to substitute for crippled words.
They drip, drop, and pour 
from the corner of our souls
carrying with them the deepest emotions we possess.


They tumble down our faces with announcements 
that range from the most blissful joy to the darkest despair. 
The principle is simple; when words are most empty
tears are most apt.

a friend's words.

Some words that were written by a friend of ours who lost her son at 28 weeks. He was born without a heartbeat.

"Here is something I never knew before July. If you ever hear that someone has lost a little one, pease take the time to ask questions...

• what did he/she look like?
• did you name him?
• was she just beautiful?
• tell me about the delivery.
• do you have any pictures I could see?
• who was there with you?
• who was the nurse you left her with at the hospital?
• what was the kindest things someone's done for you in this grief?
• show me, with your hands, how big your baby was.
• so when you held him, he was about this big?
• tell me about how you first found out.
• what were some of the things you'd done to get ready for her?
• did you have a crib waiting?
• was there something very special you'd gotten just for him?
• something you'd made?
• what did you pray over your baby while she was in the womb?

I start to wonder how many people i haven't done this for. i hope i remember this from now on."


Just thought this might be helpful for the rest of us including myself. 


I think we often shy away from bringing up more pain and try to say positive things like, "Well, I'm sure you will have many more healthy ones to come"...etc. But it's strange how much it means to people/myself included who have lost a loved one when someone asks questions about them. It reminds the one grieving that the one they lost matters and hasn't been forgotten.