(As time passes and God heals my heart, my writings venture off the path of grief
and onto the path of a new life without my son. Each day brings new healing and new
experiences in the world God has created, but along the way there are times when
"slivers" of grief come to the surface and become painful-they need to be removed by
the Great Physician. This is explained in greater detail with this message.
After this "sliver" was removed, I no longer felt its pain and I was allowed to pass
through this valley and move on. How grateful I am for God's tender loving care as He
heals my heart in new ways.)
Just A Sliver
Sometimes, it's just a sliver that will irritate and cause pain. Nothing big, nothing that the world may even notice, but it hurts. My friend had one of those-a sliver. He injured his hand and thought he had gotten all the fragments of wood out of his palm but over time it still hurt, and as time went on the pain got worse. The wound was no longer open, but bulged from the inside, and it needed to be dealt with. Of course, he called the doctor and made an appointment, and when the doctor opened up the palm of his hand he found quite a large sliver of wood still there underneath the skin. He removed it and the pain went away--the irritation was no longer there and the hand healed, as it should.
I found a "sliver" today. A sliver that had started to fester. Something deep inside that I didn't realize was there, but it was, and God knew it even when I didn't. I share this with you because we all have "slivers"-things buried deep inside that can start to hurt. Things that cause us to flinch when life comes to close to it and we shrink away from it to save us from the hurt that we may feel.
I started to experience that hurt, and it needed to be removed. It needed to be dealt with honestly with God, because that is what I desire with Him--an open, honest relationship where nothing is hidden.
I read a sign out in front of a church recently, it said, "God can fix your broken heart if you'll give Him all the pieces." That has been in my prayers recently. "Here is my heart God, I don't want to keep any part of it. I want to offer it all up to you-every piece." I offer Him the good, the bad and the ugly. God already knows anyway, and as I found out again today, He knows more than I do about myself and He loves me anyway, and He wants to help me when I ask Him for His help.
So I keep asking, God please heal my heart-and He keeps working on it. Sometimes it hurts because He has to dig deep and bring up what's buried there. Sometimes it starts to fester and it causes me pain as it comes to the surface and I'm not even aware that it is God working on me. It feels very uncomfortable, like in these last few days--my mind has been going so many places I'd rather stay out of. It keeps traveling back and remembering all the things Phil had to endure, all the times in the hospital, all the sickness and the weakness. I've been remembering the week he had such terrible headaches and he would awaken in the middle of the night and come into our room and tell me he had another one, and I would go with him back to his room and give him some Tylenol and talk to him, and help him relax until he went back to sleep. There have been more things running through my mind than I could ever write about, and it reminds me of reading in John 21:25, "And I suppose that if all the other things Jesus did were written down, the whole world could not contain the books."
Our lives are probably like that, each one of us. There is no way we could write down everything that happens each and every day, especially our thoughts. The "world could not contain the books," but the mind seems to be able to contain it all. Thoughts can run through our mind at lightening speed and it can take us down fast! It is a trick of the enemy to tempt us to go there. When this started happening more than normal in the last couple of days, it became so difficult. I finally said to myself, "Okay, each time I think of some painful memory, I will at least balance it out with a good memory." That worked for a day, but then it was like this flood of terrible things starting rushing into my brain faster than I could keep up with until I became exhausted with my thoughts.
It's not that I wasn't spending time with God and staying close to Him, but He was not revealing to me what was going on with my mind and it seemed to be getting the better of me with increasing speed each day-until today when I had finally had had enough. It started to become overwhelming and exhausting and I could not take much more.
"I thought I had moved past this God, I thought these thoughts of missing and all that had happened with Phil would now come and go, and bring tears from time to time, but not be so all-consuming. What is happening here?"
The "sliver" was festering and coming to the surface. It needed to be revealed and removed by the Doctor. It was another "piece" I needed to give to Him to be free of it, but what was it? Did this sliver have a label on it? A name? I found out it did...GUILT!
But God, haven't I dealt with this? I mean, I have relinquished the fact that
even though we tried to dot every "i" and cross every "t," Phil still died. We
understand that You are ultimately in control, and we can live with that. It was
his time to go "home," You alone decide that. We believe You know what is best. So
what's this all about now?
Then God begin to reveal it to me--it's about a relationship where a great trust existed. It's also about love, and how when we love someone we will do anything to protect that person, whether it is between a parent and a child, a husband and a wife, a friend with another friend, whoever it might be...when you love, you protect. You do everything you can possibly do so the person you love won't be hurt, won't feel pain...won't die-and I had failed to do that in my own mind. I had failed to protect my son who trusted me and who I loved with all my heart. I was responsible for him and I had not kept him from hurt and from pain and most importantly, from dying...and I when I thought of Phil and how he would look to me for help through all that he had to endure, I felt like I had failed him because I could not help him and maybe HE thought I had failed him. I could deal with my own failure, but if he thinks I failed him, that thought alone tears me apart. Talk about guilt!
When our children are sick, we put them in their beds, and give them chicken soup, or orange juice, or anything else that we think will make them well. We give them all the tender loving care they need until they are back on their feet again because surely they will get back on their feet again. They look to us as "perfect" because they are young and they haven't learned any better yet. They think we know it all and that we can fix whatever ails them, and usually we do help them get better and they think somehow we were the ones who did that for them, and they love us for it.
And somewhere deep inside of me, I guess I thought that Phil thinks I let him down. That I didn't care for him well enough, that it was my fault that he couldn't continue to live here with us on earth, and wherever he is in heaven, he might be mad at me.
Now, those of you reading this may be shaking your heads saying, "No." You may think this is crazy thinking, that anyone in their right mind wouldn't even have such thoughts, but I'm here to tell you that these thoughts do happen, and I may not be the only mother or loved one left behind on this earth that feels this way. If this was buried deep inside of me, it might be buried deep inside someone else, and that is the reason I share this message with all of you. These are lies of the enemy, and they are meant to destroy us and they will if we are not willing to let the "Doctor" remove them from us.
We have to offer our hearts to God, every single piece, so He can do His work on them. Watching one of my favorite teachers on TV lately, she has said repeatedly, "feelings lie." I see God's hand on this message and what I have been dealing with these last few days. For one thing, I didn't even realize I felt this way, but I just knew something was wrong. My mind was way off track, my thoughts were dwelling on things that were destructive and I was even having trouble sleeping. The "sliver" was making its way to the surface but I couldn't see it until it was brought out into the light of day by God.
The piece of grief that was making its way to the surface was that Phil depended on me to protect him, and I failed to do that, or so the enemy would like me to believe. The Truth that God showed me about this "sliver" that was buried so deep inside was that Phil's pain and suffering were about his walk with God and about his path "home," not my neglect. They were allowed by God because they were what God had designed for Phil's life. I did not let him down and Phil knows that better than I do now. Just as my pain of living without him has drawn me closer to God, Phil's pain also drew him closer to God, and these are not mistakes. They are not pleasurable, but there is a good reason for it all.
Phil's path "home" was not meant to cause me guilt because I had failed my son, those are just lies the enemy would like me to believe. Phil is not mad at me, those are more lies--he probably understands his life on earth perfectly now that he lives in heaven. I did what I could do with the time we were given together, and that is all that God or even Phil would ask of me!
This sliver of GUILT was removed today by the Great Physician, the Physician of Truth. He called me into His office, behind that torn curtain and into His Inner Sanctuary, and He said, "Have a seat my child, we have some work to do. Put your heart here in my hand and let me have a look at it. Ah yes, there is some infection in this wound. I can see plainly that the devil has planted a sliver of guilt deep inside of you to try and destroy the joy that lives in you and steal the peace my Son left with you when He ascended into heaven. Let me remove this from your heart so that your wound can heal cleanly. I will wash it with my Living Water so it will no longer fester and cause you pain. It is good you came to Me so quickly. This could have started to eat away at other parts of your life if you had not trusted Me with it on this day."
Of course these words are mine, but that is what it seemed God was doing with my heart today, and on this long journey of healing my broken heart another piece seems to have been mended by a loving Father who knows what it is to have a Son die.
In one of Phil's favorite movies, which I have written about in the past, the character is always in trouble and he repeatedly says, "It wasn't me, I didn't do it." I thought of that today and what it might be like if Phil could send me a message from heaven to reassure me that he doesn't blame me for "letting him die." He would probably say, "Mom, it wasn't you, you didn't do it. And I still love you more." And then he would probably toss me down a grilled-cheese sandwich that he had made on a heavenly skillet because he knows it would make my day a little easier.
Another piece of my heart has healed; another "sliver" of mourning has been removed and tossed into God's refining fires today. The enemy would have liked it to fester in me and cause pain and dysfunction all the days of my life, but God has better things planned for my life and for all of our lives if we will only give Him all the pieces of our heart to work with.
These times of growing and learning are not easy, but they sure beat the alternative-- wounds that are filled with slivers of guilt and condemnation that were never meant for God's children. No matter what has happened in our lives, God can make it "all better" because He IS the Perfect Parent. We can put Him on a pedestal and worship Him. He will never fall off, He will never disappoint us and He will never fail us. I'll eat His "Chicken Soup" any day!
Living in greater peace each day,
Diane
