processing my grief

My lovely friend, April, passed on to me a blog she thought I might enjoy. The mom has a bunch of kids on earth and one daughter in heaven. www.mollypiper.com

She posted this after posting a happy picture of her and her husband when she was 36 weeks along with her baby girl a few years ago.

Today, memories like this [picture] make me cry—hard. We had no idea that we were a few weeks away from one of the worst tragedies we’ll ever face.
So if you’re a mom like me, living without one (or more) of your children, take heart that this is indeed one of the hardest things you will ever live through. But that also means that you lived.
The lines around your eyes will deepen. But that also means you’ve seen. You’ve seen the chaos of pain. Your eyes have and will shed tears for people in their pain that you could’ve never understood before. This is a blessed gift.
Hold on with me. We’re gonna make it. We might not be the happy-go-lucky gals we used to be, but our lives here will tell stories of indescribable loss and the love of a God who made us to be exactly who we are—every line, every gray hair. None of it is wasted.

I'm reposting that because it helps me right now. I'm having a rough morning missing Brody and missing the what ifs and the could have beens and memories that we were going to make with him on earth.

Here's another post where I put my name in where appropriate: 

I want to assure you that I feel really held by the Lord. I feel safe. ... So there’s got to be something for me in this. There has to be. ... I want to see the beauty of what God has for me here. It means that some days are really hard. It means that I’m going to places in my soul that I didn’t know existed before this. It means that I’m a different person. But I’m getting more comfortable with the [Laura]  who’s been asked to bear this grief. I’m relaxing into the transformation a little more now.
I wish every day that [in the future] I would get to hear [Brody's] new words, listen to [his] post-nap singing, change [his] stinky diapers. Yet I know that losing [him] has changed me more than getting to raise [him]would have. That’s a hard reality, but it’s the reality I live with.
Lord, make it something beautiful.

I'm reading through her blog backwards (recent posts first) so I still have plenty of posts I can read that will surely help me as I walk through missing Brody.

I just wrote to someone, I feel guilty for being happy that he's safe with Jesus, but I feel selfish for wanting him here. It's an odd paradox that I'm just not sure what to do with. This author who I quoted has had almost 3 years I think to process her loss, and I'm going on a few weeks, so I know I have a long way to go, but I remind myself of a few things.

1. One of our good friends told us in the hospital on Tuesday morning (the day after my water broke) that God believes in us. He believes we can make it through this journey. He believes we can make it through without falling away from Him or become a worse-off person than before. That phrase "God believes in me" has stuck with me.

2. God will never give us more than we can handle - 1 Corinthians 10:13. Yes, I sometimes feel like screaming out, Are you kidding me? I can't handle this! But God obviously thinks more of me than I think of myself. (Again, see point #1.)

3. One of my pastor's favorite verses in James 1:2-4. It tells us to consider it joy when you fall into various temptations/tests/trials because the testing of your faith worketh patience. I get that. We can be happy when we grow in our faith, even if it means going through a difficult time. Beyond that though is verse 5. I've never really made the connection between verses 2-4 and verse 5, which says that God gives wisdom to those who ask. The time of a trial in your life is exactly when you need wisdom, because any time you go through something difficult, you will hit those times of "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now." That's when you can ask God for wisdom.

My mom is here now to make lunch. I think we'll watch something on Food Network too. All for now~