Sometimes well-meaning people do bad things. Let’s work together to not be one of those… i have two good friends who have recently faced different kinds of grief – one is desperately sick at the moment and the other lost his mom a couple of weeks back. They are surrounded by a lot of well-meaning people. Which sounds like a good thing. But sometimes it’s not. Here are a few things i’ve learnt/observed: [...]
their pain no words just empty-feeling niceties exchanged after the service has ended and possibly a small plate of scones. [for more Micropoems, click here]
My First Motherless Mother's Day Being a Mother I want to be angry. I usually reserve this day [Mother's Day] as my right to be secretly bitter and jealous. You all go on and on about how great your mother is all day long while historically I would hide in my room with the covers over my head, counting down the hours until it was safe to emerge. I am allowed to do this once [...]
DAY 35 John 11.35 is often quoted as the shortest verse in the Bible - 'Jesus wept' - but in actual fact that honour should really go to Job 3.2 which simply states, 'He said' [less strokes on a keyboard!] However, 'He said' is a lot less interesting. Task: Take some time to consider this story where Jesus is moved to tears. Take some time today to express some grief for something. It might be [...]
Nothing can prepare you for that moment when your perfect world is shattered into 1000’s of little pieces. When you receive that phone call to say that a part of your heart ‘”didn’t make it”… My sister, first team swimmer had drowned in a freak accident, walking around our pool, having a seizure, falling in and waking up in the arms of Jesus. Lauren and I were more than just sisters, we were the [...]
Grief is such a huge and too often taboo topic, possibly because different people grieve in different ways and so it is often hard to know what to say or do when someone has lost someone they love. We have already looked at some powerful stories from people who have lost a baby and those who have lost a child, but what about someone who has lost a person who has been in their life [...]
DAY 8 Woke up to some really bad news this morning. A close friend had suffered one of the hugest losses imaginable. Task: Weep with someone who is weeping. If you don't know someone personally that is weeping, then pick up a newspaper or go and visit a website, because there is enough corporate weeping going on that you can join - the families and friends of the missing airplanes, the people in the various [...]