Tag: losses

When Our Hearts Are Overwhelmed

Trudy Den Hoed28 Comments

This year has been a roller coaster of emotions for many. Unprecedented changes hard to accept, violence and injustices hard to stomach, losses in so many various ways that are so hard to process.

Friends, I am so tired. Physically, emotionally, mentally… The storms around me and within me are driving me to deeper layers of pain I dismissed as not as important as others’ pain. I am becoming more aware that I lack compassion for myself and my own pain, the same compassion God has shown me and given me for others who are hurting.

I’m too often white-knuckling my way through life. I easily conform to others’ preferences or try to live up to their expectations rather than acknowledging my own preferences or needs out of fear of their anger, their disappointment, or their rejection. I can’t get past this fear of being hurt again without facing it head on and processing the deep reasons why my body sometimes tightens up and my stomach clenches and my mind says, “Run for your life.” I especially get anxiety, dread, and feel shame heaped on me in situations and around people who dismiss the deep pain abuse victims go through, who don’t support or validate them, and who even heap more false guilt on them, including myself.

“From the ends of the earth,
I cry to You for help
when my heart is overwhelmed.
Lead me to the towering rock of safety,
for You are my safe refuge,
a fortress where my enemies cannot reach me.
Let me live forever in Your sanctuary,
safe beneath the shelter of Your wings!”

Psalm 61:2-4 NLT

I have decided I need a longer break from blogging to acknowledge and process this mess of emotions storming and overwhelming my soul. I need to pause and allow God to help me heal more deeply. I just know God wants me to step back and allow Him to lead my heart and my life wherever He chooses, even if it means the way will be even more difficult. It fills me with anxiety and fear, but I feel God is nudging me to step past the wall I build around myself and take the risk, trusting He is my ever-present Rock of Safety, my Safe Refuge, and my Shelter.

I don’t know how long I’ll be pausing from posting. And it may be that I will still sporadically post. I’m just so filled with uncertainty right now. But I wanted to let you know. Thank you for your love, caring, and support.

I commit each of you to Jesus who knows infinitely better what we need than we know ourselves. And remember, even if your abuser or others you love don’t believe you or support you, it doesn’t eliminate the truth of your story. And even if others don’t understand why you can’t just “get over it already,” God does understand. He knows the truth and He cries with you and loves you so much.

My Prayer For You

by Alisa Turner

“For anyone who’s prayed a thousand prayers
And still can’t find the answer anywhere
Fighting off the lie that no one cares
For anyone who’s out there losing hope
Feeling you’re forsaken and alone
Clinging to the last strands of your rope
May God give you eyes to see, He’s still greater
Courage to rise and believe He’s able
May God be your peace in the fire you’re walking through
This is my prayer now
This is my prayer for you…”

Love That Never Hurts, Betrays, or Abandons Us

Trudy Den Hoed24 Comments

“The world today is hungry
Not only for bread
But hungry for love;
Hungry to be wanted,
Hungry to be loved.”
~ Mother Teresa ~

Is your heart aching when you think of Valentine’s Day? Did you lose loved ones recently? Or do you feel unwanted and unloved?

There are many legends surrounding the origin of Valentine’s Day, but many of us see it as a day set aside to show others we care and to remind them they are loved and appreciated.

It’s always a comfort to be remembered, but many will experience that ache of loved ones lost either by death or some other way, even after many years. Others feel all alone in the world and unloved with not even a memory of ever being loved.

Perhaps some of you carry a distorted view of what love is because of abuse or neglect, whether in the past or the present. I know I did. Often it takes time to heal and trust even God because of suffering devastating betrayal from someone we trusted. Because of someone who was supposed to value, nurture, and protect us instead of hurt us.

People can hurt, betray, or abandon us. But Jesus’ love is like a bottomless ocean. It will never, ever empty. It will always and forever remain faithful. It will always nurture, not hurt.

Jesus willingly took on the heavy burden of sin. Our sin and the sin of those who have hurt us. All our sins are washed away and all our hurts can be healed and redeemed through Jesus and the blood He shed for us. He willingly died in our place because He loves us so deeply. He suffered excruciating, unbearable pain as whips slashed His flesh and nails pierced his hands and feet. Unspeakable anguish as the Father withdrew His presence. He was forsaken by God so we would never have to be forsaken. Incomprehensible, immeasurable, immutable love. So beyond our understanding that it can never be understood by our human minds. So infinite it can never be measured. So firmly established that it will never change.

“Greater love has no one than this:
to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
John 15:13

heartoflove

What Is Love?

by Helen Steiner Rice

What is love? No words can define it—
It’s something so great
only God could design it.
For love means much more
than small words can express,
For what we call love is very much less
Than the beauty and depth
and the true riches of
God’s gift to mankind—
His compassionate love.

God Loves and Understands

by Helen Steiner Rice

It’s amazing and incredible,
But it’s as true as it can be,
God loves and understands us all
And that means you and me–
His grace is all sufficient
For both the young and old,
For the lonely and the timid,
For the brash and for the bold–
His love knows no exceptions,
So never feel excluded,
No matter what your past has been,
Trust God to understand,
And no matter what your problem is
Just place it in His Hand–
For in all of our unloveliness
This great God loves us still,
He loved us since the world began,
And what’s more, He always will!

No Greater Love
by Colton Dixon

“What kind of love would stand in the flames
And choose to remain there beside me?
What kind of love would go to the grave
Give up everything just to find me?
Of all the treasure that this world would offer me
You’re the only thing I need…

Your love is never changing
Your love will always be my home
And though this world will fail me
Your love will never let me go
No greater love
No greater love
No greater love
Than Yours…”

“May your roots go down deep
into the soil of God’s marvelous love;
and may you be able to feel and understand,
as all God’s children should,
how long, how wide, how deep,
and how high His love really is.”
Ephesians 3:17b-18 TLB

When the Burden of Grief Makes Gratitude Harder

Trudy Den Hoed28 Comments

Thank you for your prayers concerning the tragedy I wrote about in last week’s post. We appreciated it so much! Though Tad opens his eyes, he is not allowed company right now. All the nurse would tell our son is that he gets very agitated when he gets visitors, and that’s not good for him. So we don’t know too many details of his condition, but we are so afraid he will have some lasting brain damage. We continue to pray for his healing.

Yesterday morning was a funeral for a young husband and father, only 33 years old. Three small children, 5-year-old twin boys and a 3-year-old girl, will not grow up with their devoted dad. The wife is a granddaughter of the couple that live across the hall from us.

The day after my neighbor heard about the loss of a granddaughter’s husband, she had to take her husband to hospice because of cancer.

Do you ever get overwhelmed by all the suffering and death there is in this world? It’s hard, isn’t it?

I know some of you readers are personally dealing with the death of family or friends only recently and will be experiencing your first Thanksgiving and Christmas without them. It will be so difficult to have missing places among you. May God give you strength!

There are others of you whose loss I don’t know about, whether a loved one, a relationship, or a loss of who you really are.

Maybe you have no family to share these days with. Or your families are so dysfunctional that it devastates you and fills you with anxiety to get together.

Whatever your loss and however alone or misunderstood you may feel, I am so sorry. But infinitely more sorry than I am is our God who knows, cares, and understands. Even when grief clouds our vision and it’s hard to grasp that truth, it is still the truth. Even when life changes drastically for us, He never changes. He is faithful. Even if we sometimes have a hard time being grateful, we are still precious to Him and He will never leave us.

Someday when we can look back to the times of great sorrow, we will see one set of footprints in the sand. It was in those times that He carried us. Thank You, God, for Your unconditional love, Your never-ending compassion, and Your unchanging faithfulness!

“Because of the Lord’s
great love we are not consumed,
    for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
    great is Your faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:22-23

I hope to be back here the first Tuesday of December.

Footprints In the Sand
by Leona Lewis