No answers.

[GloryBe!]

10 months ago, I was lying in a hospital bed, carrying our fullterm son, who was dead. At that time I still had faith, and love in my heart. Slowly, it has faded. I've lost my faith along with my only child. The longer I go, the further away from hope I go. God is not who I was raised to believe he was. How am I supposed to be happy? My purpose is gone. Why do I have to still be here if I have no reason? I wish every day my mother had killed me that day like I begged her and God to. Very few understand, and very little gives me comfort. Prayer is to no avail... That was proven with my son's death. I don't even know why I'm writing this.

Glory be!

 

[1watchman]

Dear friend. You are writing because you want some help and encouragement. You deserve that.

Just remember always that God is love, as He has said many times over. He does things that are good for us and also according to His plans. We may not see that for several reasons, but God is the same and we are only failures in most things. Coming to God must be a personal thing, not just an intellectual thing.

Let me suggest that you not give up, but start reading your Bible --beginning at John 1, then John 3, then John 14, and ask God to teach you what He has for you in that. You will be pleasantly surprized to find the answer is love and care.

If one goes into one's private place (see Matt. 6:6-7) and thanks God for sending His beloved Son --the Lord Jesus, to suffer and die for our sins, and receives the Lord Jesus into one's heart, He will come; and that one will receive the Holy Spirit of God to seal one as a "child of God". Come to Him in real faith and you will see. Look up always!

 

[RuthD]

I believe the power of prayer works even if you have lost faith at this time. I am praying for you.

 

[footballmommy]

It is so hard when our faith is rocked to the core. It takes time and healing to understand and it's okay to veer away and come back to your faith. Time does heal the wounds and it might be good to get some further counseling from your pastor. I had to when I lost my grandmother. Sometimes God seems merciless versus merciful...

 

[razzelflabben]

When our son died, I kept wondering why it couldn't have been me, sometimes I still do. What we learned was that there is healing in the truths of scripture. Let me explain...scripture tells us to take our thoughts captive and put them on the good things...that day our son died, haunts us still, I remember seeing him lay there lifeless and blue and knew in that moment that he was dead. The terrorizing moments before when everyone was looking for him tore my heart from me. Job calls these memories, the dreams and visions that haunt. In the earliest days, when these visions and dreams assaulted our sanity, we took them captive and purposed to replace them with good thoughts, for me, it was the memory of our only vacation as a family, the two oldest boys, climbed one on top of the other and made a mark on the St. Louis arch, it was the highest one up and they were so proud...lol...that good memory worked to change our hearts and minds, it was the inward change we needed to survive the trauma of our loss.

In addition to that, we also would take our feelings, and look at them as if they were God's...for example when we got angry, we would think about Gods' anger, in this we learned much about God and His anger and grief, a grief we seldom think about.

There is nothing anyone can say to ease your pain. Nothing anyone can do to comfort wounds so deep they threaten to destroy you, but in Christ, there is hope, comfort and healing. I pray that you find that in the depths of your grief there is a joy waiting to burst through, a joy that can only come from yielding even this to our Lord. It is there, it is waiting for you to cry all the tears you can cry and yell all the anger you can. Under all that hopeless despair, all that anger and hate is a tiny glimmer of hope, a renewed joy waiting to be flamed back into existence in your life. May you find it there, may you have the courage to flame it into full existence.

 

[Child of JC]

In Jan 2005 God revived me. He called me to a 40 day fast and I found myself in full blown revival. I hung out with God every day. I woke up in the morning with joy and expectation. It was my dream come true. I lived like that for the whole year. New Years Eve 2006 I saw "it" spread. Others were catching on fire. Within months there were 50 new converts and I was living what I had prayed for since the day I got saved.
In August 2006 division came and a time of sorrow overtook the time of joy. I've always said it felt like my "baby" died. I carried this promise inside of me and it died. I've been grieving ever since. I've been waiting for God to "fill my womb" again with promise. I've been waiting to feel joyful again.

Have you read The Shack? There's one quote in there that helped me have faith again. The woman, Wisdom is speaking to the Dad who lost his little girl. She says to him "Isn't the real source of your Great Sadness the fact that you don't trust God?" I cried when I read that because it was true for me. He didn't spare me the pain so I believed He couldn't. I didn't trust that any good could come out of the loss. I believed it was all out of His control. My first step was to sit at His feet and accept that He is the Lord of me and of all creation. I repented for blaming Him and accusing Him of hurting me without any good cause. I accepted that the situation was in His Control and that He let it happen. I didn't understand the whys but I decided that I could trust Him to know what's best for me. And I tried to accept His Will as the better thing for me. There was a peace that came in just knowing that God had my best interests in mind and that I could trust Him to care for me and get me through it. That was step one.

 

[razzelflabben]

In Jan 2005 God revived me. He called me to a 40 day fast and I found myself in full blown revival. I hung out with God every day. I woke up in the morning with joy and expectation. It was my dream come true. I lived like that for the whole year. New Years Eve 2006 I saw "it" spread. Others were catching on fire. Within months there were 50 new converts and I was living what I had prayed for since the day I got saved.
In August 2006 division came and a time of sorrow overtook the time of joy. I've always said it felt like my "baby" died. I carried this promise inside of me and it died. I've been grieving ever since. I've been waiting for God to "fill my womb" again with promise. I've been waiting to feel joyful again.

Have you read The Shack? There's one quote in there that helped me have faith again. The woman, Wisdom is speaking to the Dad who lost his little girl. She says to him "Isn't the real source of your Great Sadness the fact that you don't trust God?" I cried when I read that because it was true for me. He didn't spare me the pain so I believed He couldn't. I didn't trust that any good could come out of the loss. I believed it was all out of His control. My first step was to sit at His feet and accept that He is the Lord of me and of all creation. I repented for blaming Him and accusing Him of hurting me without any good cause. I accepted that the situation was in His Control and that He let it happen. I didn't understand the whys but I decided that I could trust Him to know what's best for me. And I tried to accept His Will as the better thing for me. There was a peace that came in just knowing that God had my best interests in mind and that I could trust Him to care for me and get me through it. That was step one.

No offense, but you haven't a clue in all this world what the loss of a child is if this is the experience you base your understanding on.

 

[Child of JC]

No offense, but you haven't a clue in all this world what the loss of a child is if this is the experience you base your understanding on.

Sharing my own pain and story. Do you only have empathy for people who have lost a child???
Unreal..........

 

[razzelflabben]

Sharing my own pain and story. Do you only have empathy for people who have lost a child???
Unreal..........

I would be happy to "compare" painful stories if you really want, I have some real doozies to share, but the point is that your pain doesn't even come close to comparing to the loss of a child. don't try to make it something it is not.

 

[Child of JC]

I don't know why see us in competition and I don't know why you think you know enough about me to judge my story.
I was addressing the OP. Shared what I could. If it helps then it helps, if not then it doesn't. Why my story got under your skin is beyond me. But know this, you're arguing with yourself.

Note to self: hurt people hurt other people. Dust off and move on.......

 

[razzelflabben]

I don't know why see us in competition and I don't know why you think you know enough about me to judge my story.
I was addressing the OP. Shared what I could. If it helps then it helps, if not then it doesn't. Why my story got under your skin is beyond me. But know this, you're arguing with yourself.

Note to self: hurt people hurt other people. Dust off and move on.......

It hurt because having lost a child and having been hurt beyond what words can say in other ways as well, I know first hand that when someone tries to compare their pain from the world to the loss of a child, they are not even empathizing with me, in fact, the most comforting thing that was said to us during our early days of grief, was, "I have no words to say"...this is comforting to someone in that much pain, because it doesn't try to assume to know what you cannot know. To compare the pains of the world to the loss of child or the loss of a spouse, is to lack Love for the hurting and in place of sharing in their pain, you put self...that is why it hurt.

I do not wish to argue with you, nor tell you how to conduct your business, all I want to do is share with you that this type of comparison does more harm to the grieving than it helps and you are more wise to say nothing than to cause more pain with such comparisons. I spoke to you out of Love and knowledge...nothing more, nothing less...the pain is severe enough without adding this type of lack of concern to the grief already being felt.

 

[GloryBe!]

It hurt because having lost a child and having been hurt beyond what words can say in other ways as well, I know first hand that when someone tries to compare their pain from the world to the loss of a child, they are not even empathizing with me, in fact, the most comforting thing that was said to us during our early days of grief, was, "I have no words to say"...this is comforting to someone in that much pain, because it doesn't try to assume to know what you cannot know. To compare the pains of the world to the loss of child or the loss of a spouse, is to lack Love for the hurting and in place of sharing in their pain, you put self...that is why it hurt.

I do not wish to argue with you, nor tell you how to conduct your business, all I want to do is share with you that this type of comparison does more harm to the grieving than it helps and you are more wise to say nothing than to cause more pain with such comparisons. I spoke to you out of Love and knowledge...nothing more, nothing less...the pain is severe enough without adding this type of lack of concern to the grief already being felt.

Thanks, Razzel. People who don't understand hurt the hurting. Why did I even write this post? I was stupid to do it.

 

[razzelflabben]

Thanks, Razzel. People who don't understand hurt the hurting. Why did I even write this post? I was stupid to do it.

You wrote it because you needed to talk and because you needed to have people know that your hurting beyond what is possible to hurt. You did a good thing for you, don't let others take that away from you right now.

I think in our culture, people simply don't have a clue how to grieve or how to let others grieve. If you want to just "unload" I'm here and if you don't want to do it publically, PM me. I am pretty good at listening. Wish I could take your pain and give you back your child, but that isn't mine to do, listening and crying with you, is mine and I do it willingly and readily and with tears that know all too well the horror of your life right now.

May you find strength for the day, courage to confront whatever today holds, and the grace to look only on today and the wonders of a God who will not abandon you no matter how hard you push Him away right now.

 

[footballmommy]

Very well spoken, Razzel. It is very very hard for our society to know how to help people with grief. I don't think it's that people don't want to make it go away per se - more so that they don't know what's RIGHT to say or what's the wrong thing to say. And GloryBe - good for you for writing the post. Never a bad thing and no regrets.

 

[razzelflabben]

Very well spoken, Razzel. It is very very hard for our society to know how to help people with grief. I don't think it's that people don't want to make it go away per se - more so that they don't know what's RIGHT to say or what's the wrong thing to say. And GloryBe - good for you for writing the post. Never a bad thing and no regrets.

From our experience, and after talking to several people who have had great loss, the best way to "grieve" with the grieving, is to be in unity as Christ tells us to be, united in Love. When they cry, cry with them, when joy returns, rejoice with them, don't keep bringing it up, or constantly ask "how are you doing"...we won't be fine, these are wounds that leave scars that are so deep they never really heal. If the one who has died would be a normal in your conversation, speak it, but don't bring it up on purpose...bottom line, we are the same people, treat us as such, but don't add to our pain just because you can, don't keep bringing it to our minds, or try to compare it to your griefs, there is no comparison, not even if we both lost children, or spouses...each is uniquely different just as the person we lost is uniquely different and when we can no longer push it away, share our tears with us, understanding that even many many years later, tears will still flow, because that is the very nature of the devastating loss of a child or spouse. Oh, and if you don't know what to say, just be there, just let us cry, just share those tears as a brother or sister in Christ, that shows the very heart of Christ, a Christ that wept....(John 11:35) He said no words, He just wept...we can do the same.

 

[footballmommy]

There is often times solace in the comfort of people crying with us and simply being there. I know it isn't easy but it will get better with time. Try to have no expectations other than getting through one step at a time.