grief work

Please keep my sweet Charlie man in your prayers right now.  The next few months are going to be difficult for him.  He has been dealing with a lot and some of his buried grief is surfacing in ways that are so difficult for this mama’s heart to take.  Charlie started working with a grief counselor last month, very willingly.  He has been just a little down and sad, with intermittent episodes of anger.  I suspected he needed to talk about his daddy but that he is reluctant that I be the person he talks to because he fears making me cry or causing me to be sad.  He is such a tender-hearted boy, like his daddy.  And I sometimes forget that I had months and months of counseling and the support of my weekly GriefShare group at church to help me understand, process, and learn to move forward (not move on, just move forward) in healthy ways.  But my children, largely, have wanted to just be normal kids and were thriving with their routines and family support.  And my counselor assured this paranoid mama that that was okay.  Kids grieve differently and they may not even fully grieve until later in their lives.  I was told as long as they were doing well in friendships, in school, in social situations, etc,, to just let them grieve as they choose and to step in when/if their behavior were to shift towards anything not typical for their personalities.  Sometimes children really just need to find the security and stability of a routine and a new normal before they can feel safe enough to explore the difficult, deep emotions of a loss.  But that is where Charlie is at - he needs to address the issues buried down deep in his heart as they start to seep up.  The painful emotions can cause confusion and sorrow that my children may not have learned the skills to navigate on their own.  My heart aches that my sweet eleven year old has to navigate these at all, but Charlie is such a brave and strong boy.  He amazes me.  He and his counselor are tackling the emotions of grief, suicide, moving forward, sorrow, and acceptance.  It is important for my little guy to have guidance in sorting through these emotions and I am SO thankful for the amazing lady so dedicated to working with him through this.  His counselor is amazing and has put up with me asking a zillion questions with such love and grace.  I have come to pick Charlie up from a session to find both him and his counselor teary-eyed together but often playing a game too.  Sorrow and joy, always both together, that is life.  It is just so hard for my heart to know my children have felt such pain and loss in their lives.  If I could somehow take the pain for them, I would in a heartbeat.  Watching them struggle on their journeys is so much harder than my own journey often is.  So please keep Katherine and Charlie in your prayers, and especially my little Charlie man these next few months as he so bravely keeps returning to his counselor sessions to put in the hard work of grieving.  In my GriefShare group we called it “grief work” because it is so completely exhausting - mentally, physically, and emotionally - to pull up each emotion, fully feel it, and then put it into a healthy and truthful perspective.  I see the exhaustion on Charlie’s face.  Oh, I see it and it hurts my heart, but also makes me so proud of him.  The process, however, is so, so important.  So please pray protection over Charlie’s tender heart as he does his grief work, talks about difficult things that bring such sorrow and tears, and bravely learns the steps to sorting through those emotions in healthy and truthful ways.  

May God, our loving Father, bless and protect the precious hearts of my children, strengthen them in the most difficult of their sorrows, gently guide them to peace, truth, understanding, and joy, and comfort them through that arduous process with His abundantly loving presence. Amen.