Our November guest post is from Stephanie Shingleton sharing her and her husband's stories of surviving burn injuries, the challenges in the days that followed, and the happily ever after in store! Theirs is the most beautiful love story, a Thanksgiving post you will want to read!
My heart has been heavy approaching this day of Thanksgiving. I’m thinking of the mother facing the holidays for the first time after the tragic loss of her daughter; the family who lost their baby this week; the daughter whose holiday gatherings have been years without her mother and just recently will now be without her father; the wife waking up for her first holiday morning without her husband of over twenty-five years; the woman who lost the anticipation and excitement of her baby’s first Thanksgiving in a miscarriage; a family welcoming a precious new healthy baby but losing the young, beautiful first-time mother. One can’t help but grieve with these who are hurting.
Grief has been known in my family. We’re familiar with the breath it takes out of you, the way it changes you, how it can overwhelm you and make your body feel physically ill. And we know that it never completely goes away. Every birthday, date of death, every milestone moment, and yes, this time of year, each holiday celebrated accompanied with traces of grief.
Someone is missing. How unnatural it feels to keep living life when life no longer feels like the life we knew. How bewildering it is seeing people go about their daily business, not even aware that someone so special, and so significant, is no longer on this earth. How empty it feels sitting down to a table with all our family, except our loved one lost.
After loss, I picture grief taking up a large part of our heart. Through healing, the element of grief becomes smaller and smaller, yet remains. Why?
The Lord uses the sorrow in my heart to believe for His healing, His joy, and His peace for others. These losses grieve me so deeply because I know how I’ve grieved for those I’ve lost. It’s so painful. It hurts. It’s dark. However, my losses fuel my intercession for others who mourn. Romans 12:15 ESV says it’s one of the marks of a true Christian, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
How has my family been able to be thankful in, through and after tragedy?
It’s difficult to praise God when so much is wrong. It’s a challenge to worship with a heavy hurting heart. However, praise, worship and thanksgiving are vital to healing.
Think about Paul and Silas sitting in prison. What did they do? They began to sing. Sorrow can feel like a prison. The release comes through the worship. Worship shakes the foundation to our grief, doors are swung open and bonds are unfastened. (See Acts 16:25-26).
Worshipping the Lord in our grief is a sacrifice. God honors the sacrifice of worship. Worshipping not because we feel like it, but worshipping because He is worthy. I remember being in church two days after my Dad’s funeral. Imagining his casket at the front of the sanctuary was hindering my worship. I was so grieved. But then we began to sing “Blessed Be Your Name.” Yes, there was pain in the offering, but that is authentic worship. Hebrews 13:15 ESV “Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name.”
The act of sacrificing thank offerings to God—even for the bread and cup of cost, for cancer and crucifixion –this prepares the way for God to show us His fullest salvation from bitter, angry, resentful lives and from all sin that estranges us from Him. – One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
Thankfulness doesn’t negate our grief. Thankfulness brings joy in the grief. How? Thankfulness brings us closer to God and as we are closer to Him we receive of His glorious riches. His light, His love, His joy, His peace. This isn’t denial. This isn’t fairytale, make-believe. This isn’t lying to ourselves. This is walking, not in the natural tendency of our nature, but in His supernatural power to transform our hearts in His presence. Habakkuk 3:17-18 ““Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
Rejecting joy to stand in solidarity with the suffering doesn’t rescue the suffering. The converse does. The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest of Light to all the world. When we lay the soil of our hard lives open to the rain of grace and let joy penetrate our cracked and dry places, let joy soak into our broken skin and deep crevices, life grows. – One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp
I pray for you, sweet readers to be the “change agents.” Our place is not in this world. Our place is destined to be with the Father. In the imperfections of this life we live, I pray for your heart of Thanksgiving to transcend every trial, displaying the light of His glory through your joy.
Much love.
Much sympathy.
Much hope.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Visit the link for the song: Blessed Be Your Name by Matt Redman http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTpTQ4kBLxA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTpTQ4kBLxA
*If you are waking this day with pain and loss, I invite you to read this touching post my friend shared. https://abedformyheart.com/grateful-and-grieving/ *
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One of my Dad’s favorite movies was Fiddler on the Roof. You might be inclined to think my Dad was a fan of musicals. He wasn’t at all. My Dad admired the leading character’s value for tradition and family. Dad had such respect for the customs of the Jewish people, and while there are multiple themes from the story, it was the father’s strong desire to preserve those customs and traditions that made this movie a household favorite. While I didn’t grow up in a home with strong religious customs, we did have, what I would consider, a few traditions. And those traditions were always associated with this time of year. My Mom loved to host a big Thanksgiving for our family and friends. Dad and I would tease her that she wasn’t happy unless fifty people were there. But there was a bit of truth in it. Mom loved large gatherings. On Christmas Eve we always went to my Aunt Sarah and Uncle Roy’s. Again, it was a large gathering with delicious food. Everyone would visit and laugh; it was so loud, but with the happiest sounds heard when families come together. It was the sound of delight to be together, joy in one another’s company, and love.
Seasons change and so did our traditions. The first big change occurred when my husband and I married and we attempted to blend it all together. More changes came along with each child. And the last big change took place when I began working as nurse. Our holiday festivities are tailored around my unit’s holiday schedule, but it’s an accommodation my family makes out of their support and vision for what I do.
Throughout all the changes, adjustments and accommodations, my husband and I have been able to maintain one tradition we set on our very first Christmas back in 1999. Cutting down our Christmas tree. I grew up with an artificial tree, so it was quite exciting to me to experience picking out a tree, tying it to the roof of the car, and bringing it home, smelling the aroma of a fresh tree throughout the Christmas season.
And keeping with tradition, that is what we did yesterday. We kicked off the Christmas season at the Christmas tree farm. On the drive, random thoughts filled my mind. One of them was about the dad who thanked me for taking care of his baby the day before, on Thanksgiving Day. I spent Thanksgiving maintaining my focus on the fact that I had four healthy children at home. My shift would end and I would leave to drive home to a relaxing, comforting place. Many families didn’t have such a blessing this year. And there was one of them, expressing his thankfulness for people to take care of his sick baby. It was so touching to me that in the midst of his baby being in intensive care, he acknowledged that I was away from my family to be there with his.
Whichever tradition, whether it was Black Friday shopping with the girls, putting up lights on the house, catching another football game, conjuring up recipes from Thanksgiving leftovers, or getting a Christmas tree, it all comes down to who you spend it with. Sometimes modifications are required, but it’s a small adjustment to make considering the big picture.
The Grinch had to steal Christmas to think “of something he hadn’t before!
‘Maybe Christmas,’ he thought, ‘doesn’t come from a store.’
‘Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!’”
The Whos down in Who-ville still had something to sing about when it was all stripped away. So whether or not there's lights and presents, food and games, whether it's an official holiday or a postponed gathering, we all have a reason to sing!
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