A New Normal...

My New 'Normal'

Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your family’s life.

Normal is reliving that day continuously through your eyes and mind.

Normal is every happy event in my life always being backed up with sadness lurking close behind, because of the hole in my heart.

Normal is staring at every baby who looks like she is my baby’s age. And then thinking of the age she would be now and not being able to imagine it. Then wondering why it is even important to imagine it, because it will never happen.


Normal is telling the story of your child’s death as if it were an everyday, commonplace activity, and then seeing the horror in someone’s eyes at how awful it sounds. And yet realizing it has become a part of my “normal”.


Normal is each year coming up with the difficult task of how to honor your child’s memory and her birthday and survive these days.


Normal is my heart warming and yet sinking at the sight of something special that my daughter would have loved, but how she is not here to enjoy it.


Normal is having some people afraid to mention my child.


Normal is making sure that others remember her.


Normal is after the funeral is over everyone else goes on with their lives, but we continue to grieve our loss forever.


Normal is weeks, months, and years after the initial shock, the grieving gets worse sometimes, not better.


Normal is not listening to people compare anything in their life to this loss, unless they too have lost a child. NOTHING. Even if your child is in the remotest part of the earth away from you – it doesn’t compare. Losing a parent is horrible, but having to bury your own child is unbelievable.


Normal is trying not to cry all day, because I know my mental health depends on it.


Normal is realizing I do cry everyday.


Normal is being impatient with everything and everyone, but someone stricken with grief over the loss of  their child.


Normal is a new friendship with another grieving mother, talking and crying together over our children and our new lives.


Normal is wondering this time whether you are going to say you have four children or three, because you will never see this person again and it is not worth explaining that my baby is in heaven. And yet when you say you have three children to avoid that problem, you feel horrible as if you have betrayed your baby.


Normal is knowing I will never get over this loss, in a day or a million years.


And last of all, Normal is hiding all the things that have become “normal” for you to feel, so that everyone around you will think that you are “normal”.


-Author Unknown   




A friend posted this on her blog. A lot of what the Unknown Author writes about I can relate to, but not all do I necessarily agree with. I know Emily is in heaven, and I know all things will be restored, made new, tears wiped away when Jesus returns- hence I will get over the loss someday. 




Joel and I are learning and relearning that "normal" is very relative. So much happens that everyone is constantly adjusting. It doesn't take a big event (ie: loss, diagnosis, new child) to throw our old normal out the window. Usually it's just the mundane things- like a child eating 3-4 times more than usual because of a growth spurt, or a wave of sickness hits the house, or getting to bed late too many days in a row, I could go on and on. And all these things happen one after the other. That's the part I can't get over: Our family is in the middle of dealing with one episode of Something and then Another Thing comes along and we need to deal with that and then look out! Here come Something Unexpected and then Not That Again in the same week. It's a whirlwind. And through all of it there are the daily chores we all need to keep up on. Whew!  It's so very easy to get caught up in this whirlwind. And then get irritable about it. It doesn't take much for me these days. Last weekend I pretty much had a permanent look of exasperation on my face. 



Doesn't God say, 'Children do not exasperate your parents or they will become discouraged?'


Um, no. It doesn't. I think what God says is, "Rejoice always, pray continually, in everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."


Seems impossible, Lord.


"With God, nothing is impossible."
"The fruit of the Spirit (italics mine) is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control."


Oh, humility. Where art thou? Thou art shy and fleeting, yet without you, I cannot walk in the Spirit.
May we all find this humility that Christ spoke of.

"Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 

who, existing in the form of God, 

counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, 

but emptied himself, 

taking the form of a servant, 

being made in the likeness of men; 

and being found in fashion as a man, 

he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, 

yea, the death of the cross. 

Wherefore also God highly exalted him, 

and gave unto him the name which is above every name; 

that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, 

of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, 

and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 

to the glory of God the Father."