In all due respect sir I think this is going to be our finest hour

Fiscal cliff, school shootings, shorter days and longer nights, economic uncertainty are just some of the things that cause us to despair.  As I laid in bed trying to sleep I remembered the famous words uttered by the Apollo 13 chief to quiet down all of the naysayers in the mission room.

It seems that at times misery likes company.  It is easier to come up with reasons why something cannot be done than it is to come up with a solution to the problem.  What if Thomas Edison had given up on ever inventing the light bulb as failure after failure occurred?  What if Alexander Graham Bell gave up on inventing the telephone as he saw his experiments fail? What if our government had decided to give into the south and instead of being one great nation we remained two smaller entities?  

Some of the greatest accomplishments have occurred in the 'finest hours'. Some of the greatest political accomplishments have occurred when there are known deadlines approaching.  In regards to the fiscal cliff 24 hour coverage the media isn't telling us all of the closed door meetings that are currently going on to work out a deal.  All we are seeing are short quotes from both parties which are design to maximize the media coverage.

After our daughter passed away I discovered through my season of grief that God has been and continues to be the master of comeback stories.  It doesn't matter which book you read, old or new testament, you will notice many come back stories.  If we trust God and believe that He can do what he says in the bible we will come out stronger at the end of our season of grief than we first went in.

If you are in a season of grief where it is hard for you to be positive try watching movies like Apollo 13, It's a wonderful life,  and Rudy because these are all comeback movies where against impossible odds great things were accomplished.  

As you see your self getting discouraged imagine that you wife turns to you with a smile on her face and says, "In all due respect sir, this is going to be our finest hour",

As a dad who lost a child this is what I think will play out in Connecticut

This coming week is going to be hard on anyone touched by the tragedies coming out of New Town, Connecticut. Who can ever forget the breaking news of a deranged gun men breaking into a elementary school and killing 20 impressionable children and 7 adults who tried to prevent him from the attacks.


Who can ever forget seeing the faces of distraught and emotionally exhausted mom's and dad's as they walked away from the school having just learned that their child was one of those who died in the attacks. Grief will not be easy for any of these families.


This week many of these 5-10 year old's will be buried. These families will be riding a supernatural strength as they make their funeral arrangements so much so that many of their friends, untouched by tragedy, will remark about how well they are doing despite losing a child. Some of these families will experience financial havoc along with their emotional pain as some of them won't have life insurance to pay for the funeral and burial expenses. In a conversation I had with a funeral home director following the death of our daughter I was surprise to hear this fact. None of us expect to bury a child.


They will continue to ride the supernatural strength through the day of the funeral where some of the dad's will want to say something about their child despite the Pastor cautioning him about the possibility of being overcome with emotion and not being able to finish their speech. Only when they agreed that the Pastor can step forward to finish what he was saying do they agree on this arrangement.


Once the final clump of dirt has been tossed into the grave of their child and everyone goes their own ways do the parents begin to feel the supernatural strength leave them and a significant depression overtakes them. That first week they will have problems sleeping. Tossing and turning they will be unable to escape the images of what they imagine are their child's final moments before he or she died. Some parents will sleep with an article of their child's clothing hoping to smell their scent in disparate attempt to feel their child's closeness. Husbands and wives will begin to grieve like polar opposites. Husbands vent their anger and try to place blame what caused these tragedies. Wive's will desire to attempt to get through the grief by crying. Because of their anger husbands will not be able to provide the comfort their wive's will need at this juncture of their grief.


The surviving children in these families will struggle as well. Many of them will wonder why mommy and daddy stopped loving them. They see mommy sleeping long hours and when she is awake her eyes will be puffy red. They will noticed that their mom doesn't wear her contacts and how different she looks with her glasses on. Their children will struggle for many months when they return to school. They will go to school wondering why all of their classmates are happy while they have this stomach ache and this overwhelming sadness. Gone is their child like innocence that others untouched by tragedy still have. The good news, if there is one, is many of these children will have a delayed grief. It is almost as though a protective sheathing has been placed around them until mom and dad have completed their painful grief process.


If there are teenagers in these families many of these will attempt to delay their grief by being a parent in these homes. Watching their mom and dad deal with their grief they will attempt to put on a macho exterior and pretend that everything is normal. They will take out their grief by playing video games or worst experiment with drugs and alcohol. Some may become addicted to alcohol because it helps deaden the pain they feel.


Some of these families may even reject God because 'why would God allow my child to die in this horrific manner? Some will draw nearer to God and continue to go to church. Church will not be the same for them as it was when their family was healthy and they were dropping their children off at Sunday school. They will sit in the Sanctuary on Sunday being unable to sing certain songs because they were songs about praise and for them they have nothing to praise God about in the midst of tragedy.


These families will need friends who are willing to travel the entire distance of their grief, no matter how long it takes for them to get through the grief. They will need friends who are willing to sit in silence and provide comfort when comfort is needed. The father's touched by tragedy will need good male friends who are willing to listen to him tell and retell the story of their loss, no matter how many times he has heard it. These dad's will need friends to allow them to ventilate the anger they are unable to vent with their wife who is processing her grief differently.


Recovering from grief and trauma will be hard to do without some psychological intervention. Practically of these families will need to be involved in individual therapy and grief groups to help them recover. Their surviving children should be encouraged to participate in children's grief groups the same night mom and dad attend.


For our family it has been 5 1/2 years since Maria died. Our family chose to draw near to God in this time of crisis. In the beginning it was painful going to church and hearing people talk about their vacations and what each of their children are doing while we continued to be in the throes of grief. Simply putting one foot in front of the other we began to enjoy the friends we had before our daughter's death We were comforted with the thought that Maria had beaten all of us to heaven and that one day we would see her again.


The families that were marred by this tragedy must cling to the same hope. It is this hope of seeing their deceased child again one day that will enable them to continue living.

Posted by Todd Gabrielson at 4:33 AM

"Nothing can replace the empty space left by a lost child"

When I first heard about the senseless tragedy coming out of Connecticut where 20 children were shot dead and 7 others, including the shooter's mother who was found dead at home I was beside myself  thinking of all of the families who now must grieve for these lost children.  

Empty beds, endless crying, sleepless nights, an ache that simply will not go away, feelings of loneliness as people around them grapple for words they cannot find to offer solace they may never give are just some of the flood of words that come to my mind.

Gone are the lost dreams of these children: birthday parties, sleepover's at the grandparents, field trips, growth charts, first permit to drive, first dates, prom, college admissions, graduations, weddings, grand children are additional words that flood my mind as I reflect on this senseless tragedy.

Each time I read about or hear about one of these senseless tragedies my mind draws me back to the early morning hours of June 10th, 2007 when the emergency medical technician informed us in the presence of our children's pastor and police chaplain that they did all they could, but Maria could not be revived. It was at that point that like many of these Connecticut parents we collapsed under the weight of our grief wanting to know answers why if we supposedly have a 'good' God would He allow for this to happen?

Only after many months of traveling the road of anger and depression did I finally see that it wasn't God that permitted these things to happen.  No, the hard reality is we live in a fallen world where man chooses to follow an appetite of insatiable greed and idolatry rather than care for the most vulnerable among us. 

There are no winner's in this senseless tragedy.  The shooter had problems of his own with being a  younger son of a broken marriage and the lost child who hadn't spoken to his older brother in two years. There is no justification for anyone to walk into a school and senselessly murder children between the ages of 5 and 10, but had this family made a conscious decision to work on their marriage and build their lives into their children I have a feeling that the tragedy in Connecticut may never had occurred. 

Finally, I was reminded today of the professionalism and dedication of the these teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary school. Many of these teachers put their own lives in harms way to keep their students safe.  They pursued a profession knowing that with their intellect they could have chosen a career that paid 2 or 3 times what they would make as teacher's, but yet they chose to pursue a profession that would help prepare today's young people for tomorrow's jobs.

If you do anything in the coming days please hug your child and tell them how much you love them and then turn to your spouse and in their presence hug your spouse and tell them how much you love them. Our children need to feel secure and as they become independent they need to know that their parents are at the very circle of their existence much like the planets revolving around the sun.  

There are lessons to be learned today. It isn't how big your bank account is, or whether you can afford that summer home up north. No, the lesson we learn today is the importance of providing a secure family for our children where they feel loved every day they walk through the front door of their  home.