Notes From A Broken Heart

"I must tell Jesus all of my trials, I cannot bear these burdens alone.  In my distress He kindly will help me; He ever loves and cares for His own." Believe me or not, I find comfort in words that greet me from the pages in a Hymnal.  Although I declared my tone deafness from second grade on, music teachers always pooh-poohed my "I can't carry a tune in a bucket" lament.  I know I can't sing! (I believe they did, too, although they couldn't bring themselves to admit it).    Nevertheless, solace comes to me in songs, gleaned from forced attendance at Sunday worship and Wednesday night prayer meetings.   I had no idea  how songs had soaked into my psy che while comforting a woefully shy eight-year old's pains and pangs.   For me, the subliminal peace and enlightenment living in hymns, anthems, and gospel music lay dormant for years.  Especially after college courses introduced me to the genre of classical, chamber, and other "high cla

Grief takes myriad configurations, especially when we experience the physical death of a person, animal, or even a favorite fiscus. We grieve the once-living in countless ways as we wrestle with the movements of grief. Shock and suffering engulf us as we stumble, stand still, or are rendered impotent on the journey to recovery and tenuous acceptance.  Or as much as we can.   Many of us end up comfortless and confused.   However, others of us grieve still-alive-and-often-vibrant people who squander time, talent, and opportunity. For no apparent reason.   How often as the relative, friend, or even teacher, have I  sighed and thought, "What a waste!" The "whys" we ask about death differ markedly from the questions we wonder about the living person who appears to be uninvolved, detached, or indifferent.  Life stands ready to empower them.  Yet, they just mark  staccato time in the drumbeat of life.  Why? Why?  Why don't those who appear to have the most pr

When I was younger, I'd half-jokingly explain away social shortcomings by initializing the behavior.  "I'm a ".SL" Slow Learner, I'd explain, which became a one-part litany until I couldn't use it anymore.  I never used the acronym to describe skills or status of others, only myself.  It didn't work well in high school and not at all during undergraduate years.  Nonplussed,  I zipped my lips, afraid I'd sound like a simpleton. "SL" applied only to social situations.  Maybe I grew up on the wrong side of history, since now, acronyms are de rigueur,  at least on social media.  I digress, however, because this blog seek to address ways I circumvented the cumulative pain of grief and sorrow. Or so I thought. When you're a young child, say seven or eight years old when a trauma occurs, you probably don't have the words to describe it,   if   you even understand what has happened.  At least, that's how it played out for me.

"Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened." Matthew 7: 7-8 Make no mistake about it.  I used to believe in magic and miracles, although magic seemed easier to embrace.  Miracles, I saw as Jehovah parting the Red Sea and holding up each side until over two million emancipated Hebrew slaves crossed over on dry land.  Because I lived through books as a child and teen, I couldn't, or didn't, consciously separate magic from miracle. While life on the Near North Side of Chicago wasn't idyllic, it certainly wasn't dismal enough to want to escape reality.  Books were just easier.  I could sit on the stoop of our home and be subsumed into the 17th century with the opening of a book or the turning of a page.  Nothing drab or dreary about that! So, miracles and magic became conjoined twins most of the time.

I'm not sure why or what you expected from this blog. Perhaps, you stumbled upon notesfromabrokenheart.blogspot.com. as you navigated the Net. The title might have arrested your attention. You might have been in the contractions of fresh grief or even nudged by imperceptible, unreconciled, decades-old sorrow.   You might have read a blog because a friend recommended it or a title intrigued. No matter, .  I'm inordinately blessed that you have read---once or multiple times.  Thank you, a thousand thanks  for letting me into your life. Indeed, Notes From a Broken Heart erupts, seeps, oozes, or screams from the moment doctors in a set-aside-for-that-purpose-hospital-room told me as gently as they could that they had been unable to stop Courtney, my younger of two precious daughters, from dying.  While there was nothing they could have said that would have penetrated the vacuum that separated me from that moment, they tried valiantly.  As if I was listening or could comprehen

"I am healed by the wound in His side.  I am healed by the wound in His side.  I am healed by the wound in my Savior's side.  I am healed by the wound in His side." Make no mistake about it:   Grief work   is hard work.  Heart-breaking.  Spirit draining. Wily.  Furtive.  Slippery.  Calculating. Hurtful.  Exhausting.  Strange.  Incapacitating.   Demoralizing.  Paralyzing.  Enervating.  Crippling.  Soul-searching.  Disabling.  Tormenting.  Mysterious.   You get the picture? And that's only the tip of the Loss Iceberg.   Too, it's useless  to wonder which is less catastrophic: the death of the chronically ill whose demise can be predicted by medical technology almost to the hour.  No, I didn't believe the doctor who told me my sister would be dead in 48 hours.  I clung partly to denial,  all the while wishing for a miracle.   Just this one time, Jesus, for my sister! She's always been so good to everyone, even those who didn't like her!