SUKKEL-VOORT - LIVING WITH GRIEF

I was reading Exodus 33... Thinking, Yoh! this Moses has got courage. I wish I had this amount of courage. Courage to demand a face-to-face with the Lord. Then I realized its not that I don't want a meeting with the Lord, it is really that I am afraid of what it might reveal about myself. It's not that I am afraid that God might find something the matter in my life, but rather that God might say, "its OK my son, I blame you not". Somehow I feel like I need to blamed, punished even!!! That me feeling guilt or pain somehow makes it OK for Judah not to be here with us. I know its silly... nothing will ever be able to justify the LOSS that we have experienced as a family  Help me Lord That I might get over myself and find you! Wont You do as you did with Moses and cover me with your hand so that I might see Your Glory and not just my own ego or need to be in control.

I have always prayed this prayed, but never really meant it as much as I do right now. You see... I have been lying here for the last hour trying to fall off to sleep. Before this I watched tv... Tried to read my Bible (I must admit I struggle with that at the moment - maybe I shouldn't have said that, but I am trying to be real) and took a rescue tablet, but nothing. I am still lying here trying to explain to myself that... It will be OK. Eventually I will learn to live life again. There was a moment tonight when life made sense. A fleeting moment. It was when I led the worship service at Church. In that moment I felt like I had the courage to face the pain and experience some joy. But now I lay here wondering what happened to the strength? Where did the courage disappear to? Will I ever get through this? Whoever you are reading this blabber of grief, please say a prayer for me... Thank you for sharing in my pain.

I have always been a firm believer in. "What you sow, you will reap", and so I have always given my best to all circumstances even if my best wasn't so great. I always believed that the harvest will be better than the seed and that the harvest will sustain the seed. In other words, “if I continue to do my best, things will get better”. Today I feel exhausted... like I have nothing left to give. It feels like someone or something came in when I wasn't paying attention and burned down the entire crop. How will I survive this? This is the worst feeling ever...  There I go again… Feeling sorry for myself… I hate it when I do this... I guess the questions remain.What am I going to do about this?  What can I do about this? I guess the same thing I have been telling others to do in similar circumstances... Trust the Lord! The Psalmist says in Psalm 27:13, "In this I have confidence, that I will see the goodness of the Lor...

This morning my son, Jeriah, forced me to sit with him at the breakfast table. He said, "Daddy, you didn't eat yesterday, that's why you were sad." These words pierced my soul. I thought I was doing a good job fooling him that I am OK. It was really tough yesterday... for no apparent reason my heart was just very down. The only way I can explain it is by saying that I felt like 'Judah's holiday' is just too long now. Somehow, I guess I convinced my heart that Judah just went to visit a friend and he'll be home any moment, but yesterday out of the blue I realized... He is not coming back. This truth is hard for me to accept. This is a truth that I can not accept... I keep re-living the 6 April over and over in my mind. I feel like I am stuck and I do not have the willingness to get myself unstuck. Why can't I just let go? Should I let go? What must I do? I just don't know... So in all my confusion and pain, today, I chose to have breakfast...

Last night I watched as my daughter just broke-down for no apparent reason. In the middle of doing homework she suddenly realised that Judah was no longer with us... I know the whole "he is always present in our lives" thing, But he is not here for us to hold, to kiss, to just... whatever. That's when it hit me... this is our condition now. We live between breakdowns. All that we can hope for is that the moments between now and then would extend a little longer every day. Realising this I went on-line to search for a poster that says "breakdown in progress, approach with caution" but all I could find was, "Quiet please...Nervous breakdown in progress". This got me thinking. NO! I do not want quiet! I need a friend... someone who doesn't expect me to breakdown any moment now. Someone that can just help me forget this pain. I do not want to deal with this. I want to forget. I want to go for a walk, play pool, do anything except live between b...

Waiting is tough! I absolutely am not good at waiting… yet that seems to be the only thing that I can do at the moment. Maybe I should explain what I am on about… When this tragedy struck I did everything I knew and understood so as to be able to make sense of it all, but it was all in vein. All my knowledge of scripture and ministry seem to give me nothing more than questions. I began to question my Faith and the validity of Scripture, my existence and the reasons for pain. I got angry and depressed, as if there were no other emotions in between.  But as much as I tried, two things remained…   Two things remained a certainty no matter how hard I tried to discredit it…  The Reality of Jesus and the authenticity of my Call… The more I wrestled with the “why” and “how come” questions the more I got confronted with Jesus and my Calling. It did not make sense… you see these were the very things I sought out to discredit. I wanted to hurt God just as much as I wa...