dear grieving parent.......

"....please know that I know I don’t know what it is like to give birth to a lifeless body. Only a small, sad band of mothers know that. I say “lifeless body” because, as you made clear, your son is not lifeless. He simply skipped earth. For now. But in the new heavens and the new earth, he will know the best of earth and all the joys earth can give without any of its sorrows."- John Piper

a letter from John Piper to a mother grieving her stillborn son...a MUST read for the hurting mom and dad. or anyone who has experienced such loss.....please click on the highlighted words to read the letter in his fullness...

how beautiful the reminder that long suffering is NOT a bad thing related to grief, that HE can and WILL use it to show his faithfulness in our suffering.....and show himself to be a God that keeps us close to him, never letting go of his hurting children that grieve theirs....and there is HONOR in that, that in it, we point to Him and choose Him over and over in every hurting moment.

i needed to hear this today. YES, thank you LORD.

"When we taste the loss so deeply because we loved so deeply and treasured God’s gift — and God in his gift — so passionately that the loss cuts the deeper and the longer, and yet in and through the depths and the lengths of sorrow we never let go of God, and feel him never letting go of us — in that longer sorrow he is also greatly honored, because the length of it reveals the magnitude of our sense of loss for which we do not forsake God. At every moment of the lengthening grief, we turn to him not away from him."