Monday, August 4, 2014

Anchor in Heaven

http://www.sullengers.com/search?q=anchor+in+heaven


I love this post.  As we hit the five year mark of our sweet Joshua --- I see pieces of this.  There is still the very hard moments when things bring you back to the what could have been....   My two youngest have really taken an interest in our Joshua lately.  Neither of them have a remembrance of him on this earth.  Rachel was 2 1/2 and Jarom wasn't born.  We were driving on errands recently and Jarom pipes up out of the blue with " you know our Joshua looks just like our Daddy"   and I just smile and say yes he does. We moved this year and were in a different house and with different people.  I never know exactly how much to bring and what to say.....  Joshua and his sweet spirit is an important sacred part of me and people do not always accept him as here and real.      Joshua is our anchor in heaven.  At Christmas and at his birthday we always use these times to mark what we are doing to make sure we are in our chair in heaven and can spend time with our sweet boy.  5 years closer.  Love you son..

Saturday, August 31, 2013

4 years and soo......

Joshua,   Your birthday came-- we celebrated... I cried and cried during church.  I presented the birthday prizes to the primary kiddos one who is your exact age.   I love 4 year olds.  It is such a magical time.  I have often said it is the perfect age.  You can take care of yourself.  Your responsibilities are to have fun, play, enjoy the world around you and just grow.   I love four.  Miss you my little boy. Thank you for bringing a perspective to my life I  would not have without your short presence.  Your spirit is felt by all of us in your family.  We love you and are doing everything we can to join you when our earthly journeys are through.  Love you baby boy.  Be obedient and enjoy the heavens....  Mom..

Monday, June 3, 2013

My favorite Grief Poem/article. Explains so well the game



STEVEN KALAS:
When you lose a child, grieving is a lifelong experience
When our first child is born, a loud voice says, “Runners, take your marks!” We hear the starting gun and the race begins. It’s a race we must win at all cost. We have to win. The competition is called “I’ll race you to the grave.” I’m currently racing three sons. I really want to win.
Not everyone wins.
I’m here at the national meeting of Compassionate Friends, an organization offering support and resources for parents who lose the race. I’m wandering the halls during the “break-out” sessions. In this room are parents whose children died in car accidents. Over there is a room full of parents of murdered children. Parents of cancer victims are at the end of the hall. Miscarriages and stillbirths are grouped together, as are parents who have survived a child’s suicide. And so it goes.
In a few minutes, I’m going to address Compassionate Friends. This is the toughest audience of my life. I mix with the gathering crowd, and a woman from Delaware glances at my name tag. Her name tag has a photo of her deceased son. My name tag is absent photos.
“So … you haven’t … lost anyone,” she says cautiously.
“My three sons are yet alive, if that’s what you’re asking me,” I say gently.
She tries to nod politely, but I can see that I’ve lost credibility in her eyes. She’s wondering who invited this speaker, and what on earth he could ever have to say to her.
My address is titled “The Myth of Getting Over It.” It’s my attempt to answer the driving questions of grieving parents: When will I get over this? How do I get over this?
You don’t get over it. Getting over it is an inappropriate goal. An unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different.
You don’t want to get over it. Don’t act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, you know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. Your grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to your child’s life. To give up your grief would mean losing your child yet again. If I had the power to take your grief away, you’d fight me to keep it. Your grief is awful, but it is also holy. And somewhere inside you, you know that.
The goal is not to get over it. The goal is to get on with it.
Profound grief is like being in a stage play wherein suddenly the stagehands push a huge grand piano into the middle of the set. The piano paralyzes the play. It dominates the stage. No matter where you move, it impedes your sight lines, your blocking, your ability to interact with the other players. You keep banging into it, surprised each time that it’s still there. It takes all your concentration to work around it, this at a time when you have little ability or desire to concentrate on anything.
The piano changes everything. The entire play must be rewritten around it.
But over time the piano is pushed to stage left. Then to upper stage left. You are the playwright, and slowly, surely, you begin to find the impetus and wherewithal to stop reacting to the intrusive piano. Instead, you engage it. Instead of writing every scene around the piano, you begin to write the piano into each scene, into the story of your life.
You learn to play that piano. You’re surprised to find that you want to play, that it’s meaningful, even peaceful to play it. At first your songs are filled with pain, bitterness, even despair. But later you find your songs contain beauty, peace, a greater capacity for love and compassion. You and grief — together — begin to compose hope. Who’da thought?
Your grief becomes an intimate treasure, though the spaces between the grief lengthen. You no longer need to play the piano every day, or even every month. But later, when you’re 84, staring out your kitchen window on a random Tuesday morning, you welcome the sigh, the tears, the wistful pain that moves through your heart and reminds you that your child’s life mattered.
You wipe the dust off the piano and sit down to play.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Primary teachers

Tonight I went to a training for teachers and leaders of Primary (church class for children 3-12).  One of the speakers shared the experience of a leader taking care of her  and teaching her about the plan of salvation when she was so devastated by the death of her sweet little sister.  Here a grown woman recalling with complete clarity the pain of her baby sister not coming home from the hospital, her funeral, and the kind hopeful words spoken to her by kind woman who was her primary teacher.  I know my children had this experience and I am grateful to good people who love my children and helped them through our sweet Joshua's birth and death.  Truly you do not get over the death of a child/sister/loved one/brother.  You just learn to hope for the future with them in heaven.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Beam Me up Pink


There's a whole n'other conversation going on
In a parralell universe
Where nothig breaks and nothing hurts
There's a waltz playing frozen in time
Blades of grass on tiny bare feet
I look at you and you're looking at me

Could you beam me up,
Give me a minute, I don't know what I'd say in it
Probably just stare, happy just to be there holding your face
Beam me up,
Let me be lighter, tired of being a fighter,
I think, a minutes enough,
Just beam me up.

Some black birds soaring in the sky,
Barely a breath like our one last say
Tell me that was you, saying goodbye,
There are times I feel the shiver and cold,
It only happens when I'm on my own,
I tell ya, tell me, I'm not alone

Could you beam me up,
Give me a minute, I don't know what I'd say in it
I'd Probably just stare, happy just to be there, holding your face
Beam me up,
Let me be lighter, tired of being a fighter,
I think, a minutes enough,
Just beam me up.

In my head, I see your baby blues
I hear your voice and I, I break in two and now there's
One of me, with you

So when I need you can I send you a sign
I'll burn a candle and turn off the lights
I'll pick a star and watch you shine

Just beam me up,
Give me a minute, I don't know what I'd say in it
Probably just stare, happy just to be there, holding your face
Beam me up,
Let me be lighter, tired of being a fighter,
I think, a minutes enough,
Beam me up
Beam me up
Beam me up
Could you beam me up.

Friday, July 27, 2012

3 years

Wow.  I have felt really good about the grief game this go around.  I have felt you near me and feel calm and collected about the place you and I are together.  I think of my son daily.  I have little thoughts and feelings and I know you are watching and guarding our family as well as doing the other things you have been assigned.  I have been asked recently what do I know about my Joshua.  Well I know he is obedient to a fault.  I know he wanted to come to earth and wanted to be part of our family.  I know he has a calm, big presence.  I know he adores his family brothers, sisters and parents.  Our extended family talks of his presence also. 

Joshua dear the grief is palatable today.  I feel the terrifying feeling of letting you down and not protecting you from the danger that took your life.  I feel so inadequate  lost and even betrayed by my body.  The pain is raw today and probably will be as we go through your angel day tomorrow.  Know that your mommy loves you. You just get to have heaven before I do.  I have learned so much from your brief visit in my life.  Love you forever, like you for always.  As long as I am living my baby you will be.

LOVE forever, Mom

Monday, May 28, 2012

Memorial Day

Memorial Day:
The day that used to be a day off to get the summer started.  A day to honor vets and others who were very old and then died.  I never thought it would be me needing to place flowers on my child's grave.  My children who were with me today commented on the age of some of the people.  15,18,26,85 etc... Derrek and I both said NO one should have to bury a child.  No matter the age they are Children are supposed to die after their parents. 

Also I have noticed the gentle pull of the 'grief" starting to make it's way onto center stage.  I am much more aware of my faults and my short comings.  I look at Joshua's short life and analyze again what I could have/should have done different.   I also count the blessing of having my four other children in my life.  SO grateful for their spirits and joy.