Motherhood’s Defiant Joy

           

            IT’S NOT easy being a mother. While it is unquestionably one of the greatest joys and rewards in your life, it can be laden with frustration and many types of heartache.

            And it’s to those mothers—the ones who have suffered the heartache of loss—that I dedicate this blog post.

            Just how do you survive the loss of a child, especially a young one? How do you survive having all of your dreams smashed and your faith challenged and come out on the other end of the black hole laughing, hoping, and moving forward?

            In her book and Still She Laughs: Defiant Joy in the Depths of Suffering, Kate Merrick writes:

“All I have endured and traveled through over the last six years has brought me much closer to Jesus, even while it has simultaneously flung me into the deepest crevice of loneliness and pain and confusion.”

            

            Ever feel like Merrick? What strikes me most in the book title, (along with her nod to Proverbs 31), is her use of the word “defiant”. Someone who is defiant is resistant, obstinate, uncooperative. Someone who resists defeat.

            Merrick refused to cooperate with the emotions that materialize in the depths of suffering. The bitterness that comes hand-in-hand with heartache; the anger that lashes out in an attempt to lay blame at someone’s feet and insist on answers to the question “why”.

           

            After watching her young daughter, Daisy Love, suffer through cancer treatment for three-and-a-half years, Merrick endured Daisy’s death in 2013. In this book, she tells how she’s making her way back toward laughter and finding life to be filled with good things.

            In the blog post I have linked below—an excerpt from her book—Merrick shares insight to the shock, the chaos, the pain and the tears. She shares how, in spite of it all, she chooses to move forward. Toward Heaven. It’s an attitude that equates to action; to living life in spite of the gargantuan wound in her heart.

            So, on this upcoming Mother’s Day (May 14) in the U.S., remember those mothers who must persevere despite having an empty place at the table. Those mothers who have given their all to win, and still suffered loss. Those mothers who had to dream new dreams when the first ones were taken away.

            Those mothers who choose to laugh in spite of it all, and look toward Heaven.

           

            http://www.faithgateway.com/losing-daisy-cry-laugh/?utm_source=fgwomen&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fgwomen20170321#.WP5QZbvys6U

Until next week,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

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