More from Molly Piper’s blog..

April 30th, 2008 by Mariah

How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 8

About a year ago, friends of my family lost their 27-year-old son in a motorcycle accident. He died instantly. Not living close to them, I wanted to send a card so they would know that I was thinking about them and praying for them.

Buying this card was a first for me. Not because I hadn’t ever bought a sympathy card, but because, now that I’m a parent, this was the first time I could imagine this kind of pain in some measure. I have a little boy.

Hallmark was just not cutting it. I looked and looked. Eventually I think I settled on one that was blank inside. I remember being frustrated that all the sympathy cards were just…so…pretty.

I’ve come to use a phrase since Felicity’s death: Hallmark answers.

Hallmark seems to offer comfort and explanation too quickly or lightly. Unfortunately, real people do this too sometimes. I think this tendency, even when offering “spiritual” comfort and explanation, comes from an inability to accept or understand grief.

I know that I was this kind of well-meaning comforter before we lost Felicity. People in too much pain made me nervous. I wondered if they might be losing their faith, so I felt the need to say something quick to patch up their brokenness. I was unable to easily reconcile my view of God with the pain I encountered.

The result of this kind of nervousness and discomfort is often Hallmark answers—flippant comfort. It’s as if when we say something like, “God is good. God is good,” we’ve fixed the problem for ourselves. But where does that leave the brokenhearted?

Hearing that God is good doesn’t always feel good. For people who are walking through deeply painful times, knowing that God is good can actually make things feel worse, because if this is goodness….

Hallmark is too pretty; Hallmark is too decisive; Hallmark is too composed.

None of the things your grieving friend is feeling can be described with these adjectives—pretty, decisive, composed.

The problem isn’t that Hallmark answers are false. They’re just inadequate because they don’t get deep enough to touch the pain. If you haven’t entered the person’s pain, even declarations of God’s goodness or sovereignty can feel like Hallmark answers.

Speaking into someone’s pain requires empathy. Choked words through tears are empathetic. Offering supplications and prayers with loud cries and tears, like Jesus, is empathetic. Speaking a verse with a posture of “I don’t understand how this all fits with your pain, but…” is empathetic.

A few months ago I attended my first baby dedication since we lost Felicity. I knew this would be hard, but our dear friends were having their beautiful little boy dedicated. I wouldn’t have missed it.

Right before the service began, I was really struggling. I’m sure it was obvious to anyone who saw me in the commons. At that moment, a woman passed by with her family. I knew her story a bit, but I’d never had a conversation with her in my life. What I knew is that they have a twelve-year-old, blind son with severe autism and stunted growth. And I knew that this woman nearly died of breast cancer a few years ago. She hugged me tight and spoke through teary eyes, “God is faithful.”

That was all. And it was incredibly powerful for me.

The point is not that you have to have suffered more than someone to comfort them; you just need to empathize. There was no question in my mind that she knew my pain. I discovered that once you have entered someone’s pain, then you are in the place to offer comfort, and it won’t be from Hallmark.

All things work together for good. He gives and takes away. God is faithful and good.

Posted in Uncategorized || No Comments

How to Help A Grieving Friend

April 27th, 2008 by Mariah

These are a series of articles written by Molly Piper, daughter-in-law to John Piper (the pastor). Anyway, many of you who read our blog know about our family loosing Riley and I thought these articles would be helpful. they were helpful to me in understanding that I am not the only one who has felt/feels this way. Molly also lost her baby and that is the topic of her articles. If you are interested, please read! She is GREAT at saying what - in most cases - I could not.

How to Help Your Grieving Friend

Not surprisingly, I’ve had lots of conversations with other families who have grieved a tragedy like ours and reflected on my own experience in the past few months.

For those of you just arriving on the scene, we were expecting our second child, a daughter, to arrive somewhere around September 25, 2007. We went into the hospital on Saturday morning, September 22nd, because I couldn’t shake the feeling that I hadn’t been feeling the baby move as much as I would have expected. We arrived in the triage, were hooked up to monitors and ultrasounds and told that our baby was no longer living. We delivered her that day. We named her Felicity Margaret.

It’s been six months since she left us, and I’ve had good and bad experiences since. I thought I would try to relay some of the helpful things you can do to understand and help your friends who are grieving. Of course this is all from my own experience, and I certainly am not a grief expert in any authoritative way, I just know what I’ve gone through.

So if you think this would be helpful to you now or in the future, I hope you’ll read along, think, comment, pray, and act on behalf of your friends or family members who are grieving. You can be a profound blessing to people you may not feel like you understand.

How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 2

We’re going to begin this series with some of the assumptions you can probably make about your grieving friend. That way, if you understand some of what is going on with her physically and mentally, you can help in an informed way, and not just be grasping at straws for what you think might be helpful.

It’s been helpful when my friends have been aware and understanding of how tired losing Felicity has made me. In my experience, grieving took more out of me physically than I was expecting.

At first we were so wired and numb that we were staying up until 2:30-3:00am every night, just wasting time. Life felt really pointless, and we had little motivation to take care of ourselves. Not that we were on a terribly self-destructive course, it’s just that life feels so trivial and small.

So, obviously we were feeling pretty tired when we were staying up until the wee hours of the morning. But did that stop us from doing it? No. Eventually the pendulum swung the other way, though, and we were going to bed around 8pm. And I could sleep until 8am the next morning and still want to go back to bed by 11am.

(Confession time: Abraham still lets me sleep until I wake up (around 8am) and gets our son out of bed every morning and gets his breakfast so I can get sleep. We’ve found that I require more sleep than he does, normally, but especially in this time of grief.)

Also, sleep disturbances were really common for me. Once I got to sleep, if I woke up for any reason, getting back to sleep was really difficult. Everything from waking up to go to the bathroom to horrific nightmares would interrupt my night, and once I was up, I could count on not getting back to sleep for a couple hours.

In the loneliness and quiet of the night when you are the only person awake in your house, thoughts come fast and furious. So even if I was sleeping, it was often extremely fitful. I felt like I was sleeping in 1-2 minute segments. Thankfully I’ve been experiencing less of that now.

And of course, if your friend is grieving over a later miscarriage or infant loss, they have the physical recovery of delivery to deal with and hormones that are attempting to re-regulate.

It’s hard to know what to do when your friend is this exhausted. It might mean that you bring dinner or go to the grocery store or babysit her kids—we’ll get to some of these incredibly important practical helps soon. But it’s important first to just know your friend’s physical struggle.

We are weak human vessels. When there is a lot going on in the mind and heart, the body just can’t sustain a normal activity level. Know that for your friend.

How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 3

Forgetfulness and disorganization are also things you should assume your grieving friend is dealing with. Before losing Felicity, I was the organized one in our family (and I’m not even that good at it to begin with). I just tend to be the one who takes care of the details of life, anticipates events on the calendar, and makes the lists.

Since losing Felicity, I’ve had a very difficult time keeping my appointments, remembering a conversation with someone that required action on my part, returning phone calls, etc. Sometimes I lack motivation, but often I have good intentions; I just can’t follow through.

Just like tiredness consumes the body, grief overpowers the mind, making it what I like to call “scrambled eggs.” I know, it’s very technical language.

There are things that I used to take for granted, like being able to organize my family to go on a trip. So when our Christmas voyage was upon us to go out east to visit my family and friends, less than three months after Felicity’s death, I wandered around my room at the last minute, listlessly throwing things into a pile that would eventually get packed into a suitcase. And when I ran out of suitcase space, things started getting thrown into plastic bags and jammed into whatever space my forbearing husband could find in our trunk.

So how does this affect you, the friend? First, if you make plans with her, hold them loosely. Second, if you can remind her in a way that is not overbearing, do so a couple days out, or maybe the day before. I personally wouldn’t recommend phone calls. Just find out from her if she’s an email or phone person. And if she says she will remember, and then forgets, don’t take it personally.

How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 4

Grief is not necessarily linear. You can read the Wikipedia entry as easily as I can about the stages of grief, and even there you will find that “normal grief” doesn’t always progress in a certain order.

There are grief cycle theories all over the place, I’m sure. That’s not my area of expertise, so if that’s something you want to explore further on your own, I would encourage you to, but know that just because it can be explained in a book doesn’t mean that’s exactly how it will work itself out in the life of a real person.

Your friend might seem to have it together just fine in public. She’s not always walking around with mascara streaks and constantly beating her breast, so that must mean she’s fine, right? She may have just had moments or hours of intense grief in her personal time, and somehow, by the grace of God, managed to make herself presentable enough to go to church and not be a blubbering mess. Respect that—it’s a major accomplishment for her.

And if she doesn’t make it to church or playgroup or the moms’ group for a month or more, don’t freak out. It’s difficult to reenter life as you once knew it, feeling like a completely altered being. I remember wondering,

“How do I fit in with my single gal friends in their early twenties? I feel even less like them now than I did before.”

“Am I allowed to go into a group of acquaintances who are having a lighthearted conversation and just be a part of it like I used to be, or is that weird?”

“Am I betraying the memory of my child—am I letting her disappear—if I go to work today and have work-related conversations?”

(As a side note, my single gal friends in their early twenties have been some of the most remarkable supporters.)

For a couple months after losing Felicity, I was in perpetual motion when I was in public and even in private sometimes. There always seemed to be plans and people that kept life going. And though I was feeling extremely sad sometimes, the reality of our loss did not hit me for some time.

There may be a relative calm before the storm. At first you’re dealing with empty arms, your milk coming in then drying up, stitches healing, your dark line down the middle of your once-full belly disappearing—those are acute grief experiences. As time goes on, however, there are all kinds of realities that your friend will have to face. As the finality of the loss begins to sink in over time, grief can actually become more devastating than it was at the beginning. For me, that was sometime in mid-January, almost 4 months after Felicity’s death. Another friend from church who experienced a stillbirth 20+ years ago recalled to me that months 4-9 were just awful for her.

I’m not saying that this is the formula—months 4-9 will definitely be awful. I’m saying that you need to be in tune to and vigilant for your friend, even if a couple months have passed and she seems to be okay. Her private moments probably contain a lot of agony. And when the acute grieving experiences are past, chances are it’s just the beginning.

How To Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 5

Talking with a grieving friend is like entering a minefield. You’re treading very carefully, weighing each word-step, wondering if this is going to set something off.

I’ve had questions from people about what specific things to say or not say, and I’m afraid I can’t speak definitively about how all grieving women want to be talked to. To be honest, I can’t even speak definitively about myself. It varies for me from day to day and sometimes moment by moment.

I remember being with family and friends on Felicity’s 2-month birthday. I was feeling like I wanted to talk about her all day, but no one asked. In those moments, the grieving person is really trapped.

If I bring this up, and steer the conversation away from politics or the weather, am I going to be seen as trying to dominate, or make the conversation all about me, or seen as trying to bring everyone in the group down?

If I bring this up, am I going to make someone else uncomfortable?

If I bring this up, the conversation changes drastically. Is that okay with everyone? Is that socially acceptable in this group right now?

I want to put this forward as a possible rule of thumb based on my own experience:

• More often than not, if you’re close friends with her and are having a one-on-one conversation or if it’s a relaxed group situation and your friend feels pretty safe with the people around, it’s okay to tell her that you’ve been remembering her baby or have been praying for her.
• When she’s in the lobby after church and she’s trying to manage her other children or corral them from the nursery or running through the aisles at the grocery store, it’s probably not the time to bring it up.

The grieving woman lives in a constant paradox—I am no longer the woman I used to be, and therefore, I am not “normal,” but also, I’m just another woman/wife/mother trying to live my life like everyone else.

In your conversations, it can be really refreshing if you help her feel normal. And other times it’s best if you make sure she knows that you are thinking of her special circumstances and have by no means forgotten her or her child.

It doesn’t always have to be a conversation. You can write a card. It can be 2 lines long! It can say something like, “I thought of you and your baby today. You are a good mom to your children.” Don’t worry about it having to be deep or ultra-spiritual. Chances are your friend will feel blessed knowing she’s not alone in remembering her baby (who she thinks of all the time).

I think a lot of people are afraid to bring up their friend’s loss, because they think they’ll set her off or make her cry. Something I’ve said jokingly, but mean with all sincerity is, “My tears are just below the surface. If you make me cry right now, it’s no major accomplishment.”

The grieving woman is well-acquainted with tears. They’re not as scary for her as they may be for you. So if you feel like you might “cause” her to cry, it’s not so much about whether she’s okay with it, but whether you can handle it. Is it okay with you if she cries?

Conversation with your altered, grieving friend can be really hard to navigate. She’s probably feeling out this new navigation thing, too. She’s not normal, but she is normal. If you would’ve gone up and talked to her after a service before her baby died, go up and talk to her after a service now, too.

She may be a minefield, but she probably won’t explode. And even if she does, it’s worth it, right?

How To Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 6

I tend to be a rule-follower. I like to follow instructions. That’s why I knit and I don’t do interior design. I get to follow a pattern when I knit. I get to check off the boxes in my mind as I go down the pattern—DONE! Wow, that feels good.

That’s not how it is when you’re grieving. That’s not how it will be if you persevere in friendship with a grieving person. It’s more like a spontaneous dance or some kind of unfunny improv. And if you’re like me, that can be anything from annoying to downright infuriating.

In my last post I said it’s often good to talk to your grieving friend about her loss. Now I’m going to turn around and tell you it’s not good. Sort of. It’s complicated.

I’ve had a lot of people come up and ask me how I’m doing because they want to know me in this hard time. Sometimes I’m able to engage emotionally. But when someone asks me how I’m doing and in that moment I’m struggling to just be a normal woman (as opposed to a weepy one), I don’t know how to respond. I don’t always want to grieve or open up.

I really appreciate their concern and prayers. What I’ve discovered, though, is that this kind of conversation can accidentally place a burden on the friend grieving to “have a moment” right then.

I try to receive graciously, because I know that it comes from my friend’s genuine care for me. I know it, but I don’t always feel it. Often all I feel is a huge expectation from that person: “Grieve—now!”

I know these kinds of interactions happen because I don’t get to see these friends regularly and they are trying to seize the moment to let me know they care. But it’s just not possible for me to turn it on. I can’t grieve on command.

So if you are an acquaintance of a grieving person and you try to find out how she’s doing (out of sincere love and concern) you might get a response like, “Today’s a good day. Thanks for asking,” or “Today has been kind of hard. Thanks for asking.” This might not be what you expected. Perhaps she’s not letting you in emotionally the way you were hoping. But please accept whatever she can give you even if it’s not much.

Just be sure to hear the second part of her answer—“Thanks for asking.”

How To Help Your Grieving Friend, Part 7

What do you say when someone asks you “How are you doing?” I usually give the knee-jerk, no-brain response, “Good,” or “Okay.” If you’re grieving, it’s a strange question: are they just using it as a greeting where they expect me to say “fine,” or are they really trying to get at how I’m feeling? Both are okay. It’s just hard sometimes to know which one it is.

You can make it clear by asking specific questions when you talk to your grieving friend. This is especially helpful because, remember, she’s a scatterbrain.

I’ve been helped by friends who ask me well thought-out questions. When I sit down with them, I know that I won’t have to synthesize something out of the mush that is my brain to answer that wide-open “How are you doing?” question.

They’re specific. They ask about my last visit to the cemetery. They ask if Felicity had a lot of hair. They say what they imagine I’m feeling so I can say, “No, it’s more like…” or “Yeah, it’s kind of like that.”

This kind of conversation is relieving to me. Not only does it take a lot of the pressure off, it helps me know that they really think about me and they’re trying to imagine themselves in my shoes. They’re not afraid to take conversational risks, put thoughts out there, and steer the conversation.

“How are you doing?” has it’s place, but the most meaningful interactions for me have been the ones where I haven’t had to come up with answers from scratch. It’s a relief when someone else brings the energy to the conversation by guiding it with perceptive and specific questions.

Posted in Uncategorized || No Comments

blog-mania

April 27th, 2008 by Mariah

If you are wondering why there are suddenly a few new posts after nothing for a long time… We were having an issue w/ the blogging software.  But, Shaun figured it out and here we go again!

Posted in Uncategorized || No Comments

My Birthday (Mariah)

April 27th, 2008 by Mariah

Well, it happened.. I got another year older. The combination of loosing Riley and breaking my foot, made this a hard b-day. BUT, Lorri was here to visit and we went out to dinner with her and the Hussey’s to celebrate my birthday and Jordyn’s b-day. It was so fun. We went to Golden Corral. Got to love the buffet baby!!!

After dinner, we came back and played a family game night. It got cut a bit short due to some unruly children up way past their bedtime. The daddy’s didn’t help by coordinating living room chicken fighting. You have to see this. It is one of those things you have to see to believe. (who are the kids and who are the grownups?)

All in all it was a pretty fun day. I feel blessed to be surrounded by my husband, my children and my brother and sister in Christ. (nieces and nephews too!)

Posted in Life in Idaho, Thoughts by Mariah || No Comments

Zoo Trip

April 27th, 2008 by Mariah

Today we had our first family trip to the zoo. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for the season passes Boyers!

The tigers were awesome! The glass viewing area allows the tigers to come right up close. Tyler loved it and wasn’t scared at all. I thought it was a bit creepy to be so close though!

The snake was soo gross! It was shedding it’s skin and the cage was full! ewww.

The weather was great and we all had a good time. Shaun and I even managed to have a picture together. That rarely happens!

Posted in Brandon, Life in Idaho, My Hubby, The boys, Thoughts by Mariah, Tyler || No Comments

It’s Tyler’s Birthday

April 5th, 2008 by Mariah

oh wait… That was in January.

The weather was cold and yucky around Tyler’s birthday. His Auntie Tasha, Uncle James and “cuzzies” gave him a big boy tricycle. We didn’t put it together because he wouldn’t be able to use it outside. Now that it’s spring and warmer weather - he got his big boy bike. He even helped Daddy put it together. Somehow we haven’t yet gotten pictures of him riding it yet. But “Auntie Sasha and Unkie (aka daddy)” got to see him riding in person. Thanks guys! He loves it!

Posted in Tyler || 1 Comment

April Fools Day

April 5th, 2008 by Mariah

April Fools Day is one of Brandon’s favorite “holidays.” He will never admit it, but he love to have practical jokes played on him. This year was great because he forgot it was April Fools Day. hehe

I started by grabbing out his math for the day from his math binder. I told him he was behind. He IS a bit behind due to the time I had to take off when I lost Riley. Anyway, I pulled out 17 worksheets that were front and back. he wined and complained. He asked if I was serious. Somehow I was able to keep a straight face. He slunk over to the dining room table to begin his mound of math when I shouted APRIL FOOLS! It was great because he had totally forgotten!

This has probably been my favorite April Fools Day yet. This is because this was the 1st year that Brandon was actually able to do some pranks of his own. He stuffed his dirty socks in my bed, his boxers on my door handle and plastic fake ice in my pillow case. But his best one was with the water. He filled a cup with water. Then he put it in the cabinet. He waited until I went in the kitchen. When I did, he asked me to get him a glass of water. I totally fell for it! When I opened the cabinet, the cup of water fell on me and I got soaked! Way to go Brandon!

BUT, it was not all being a prankster. He also fell victim to many of my pranks! I put soap on the door handle in his room and bathroom. I put salt on his toothpaste, ice in his shoes, salt in his water (he caught me on that one and didn’t drink it.) I did a few more things, but I can’t remember them. I guess what Brandon and Shaun are saying is true… I’m getting old! All in all Brandon and I had a ton of fun for April Fools day. And, if you know of any great pranks, feel free to email me so I can start my list for next year. moohahahaha……………

Posted in Brandon, Thoughts by Mariah || 3 Comments

I Believe

April 2nd, 2008 by Mariah

Although not all the words in this song are completely relevant; it made me think of Riley and how blessed I am for my faith in God. I don’t know how I could endure this world without Him!

Enjoy

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLA06UmFg0s

Posted in Thoughts by Mariah || 1 Comment