Life After Loss: Finding Hope Again In God

96 Pages·2006·0.3 MB·English

by  Pam Dressler

Life After Loss
FINDING HOPE AGAIN IN GOD
by
Pam Dressler
Harrison House
Tulsa,Oklahoma
Unless otherwise noted all Scri p t u re quotations are taken from
the King James Versionof the Bible.
Some Scri p t u re quotations marked “A M P”a re taken from the
Amplified® Bibl e.C o p yright © 1954,1 9 5 8 ,1 9 6 2 ,1 9 6 4 ,1 9 6 5 ,
1987 by The Lo ckman Fo u n d a t i on . Used by perm i s s i on .
(www.Lockman.org)
Scripture quotations marked “NIV”are taken from the Holy Bible:
New International Version®.NIV®.Copyright © 1973,1978,1984
by International Bible Society.Used by permission of Zondervan
Publishing House.All rights reserved.
Some quotations from the Scriptures contain words emphasized
by the author.These words are not emph a s i zed in the ori g i n a l
Bible versions.
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Life After Loss:Finding Hope Again in God
ISBN 1-57794-747-9
Copyright © 2005 by Pam Dressler
e-mail:[email protected]
Published by Harrison House,Inc.
P.O.Box 35035
Tulsa,Oklahoma 74153
Printed in the United States of Am e ri ca . A ll rights re s e rve d
under International Copyright Law.Contents and/or cover may
not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the
express written consent of the Publisher.
C o n t e n t s
Introduction:From Tragedy to Testimony..................4
The Questions............................................................5
Looking for Answers..................................................9
Family,Friends,and the Church:
The Blessing of Fellowship ......................................19
A Funeral and a Burial..............................................30
The Aftermath..........................................................38
Guilt,Blame—Warding Off Their
Effects on Marriage..................................................47
Letting Go and Letting God....................................57
The Biggest Issue of All............................................63
The Test....................................................................80
Endnotes..................................................................94
Introduction:
From Tragedy to Testimony
“Some friends are here to see you.”
Those words changed my life foreve r. M y
youngest ch i l d , my thre e - year-old baby girl , m y
Al e x a n d r a Joy,had been kille d . Not h i n g ,ab s o l u t e l y
no t h i n g ,could have prep a r ed me for that news or
for the horror of it all and the loss that I fel t .
My prayer is that through the telling of my
s t o ry and by showing how the Lo rd walked me
t h rough the days , w e e k s , and months after that
terrible event,as He does still,you will be encour-
aged and changed as you see this example of
G o d’s ch a racter and glory shining bri ll i a n t ly in
the midst of life’s difficulties.
Ma ybe you lost a child too. Ma ybe you lost a
sp o u s e , or a paren t , or a ver y close frie n d . I want
my experience—my re s p on s e s , my family’s walk
t h rough it with God in the midst—to give yo u
hope when hope seems lost,di r ec t i o n where there
is con f u s i on , c om p a s s i on where there is pain,
en c o u r agement where there is sorrow,the Wor d of
Li f e— J e s u s — w h e r e there is death.As you read my
st o r y,pe r haps you will rec o g n i z e it as yours as well.
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The Questions
At her young age, A lli was starting to gain a
measure of independence, and the night she was
k i lled was no diffe re n t . E ven after being gently
c o r rected at the beginning of a midweek ch u rch
service,she still somehow managed to walk out of
the church building never to be seen alive again.
Alex was killed instantly when a freight tra i n
running on an unprotected nearby tra ck hit her.
The moment of impact,she was with Jesus.
I was not present before or immediately fol-
l owing the accident. Police officers, a l ong with
my pastor, came to tell me of the accident at
w o rk . A ft e rw a rd , t h ey took me to the ch u rch .
Looking back,I remember that so many thoughts
ran through my mind…
“Had I been there,she would not have died.”
“Did I do something that caused this to happen?”
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Life After Loss
“Why didn’t God mira c u l o u s ly keep her safe
from harm?”
“Why didn’t God bring her back to life when
those who found her prayed over her and spok e
life back into her body?”
“How is it possible that her purpose on earth
is fulfilled at age three?”
“Why did God allow her to die?”
Even now I cannot answer all those questions,
and I’ve come up with many more since that
a b s o l u t e ly horrible night. H ow eve r, I know the
One who does have those answers,and I believe I
can know the truth, perhaps not in my time but
in God’s time. As Christians, as religious folk,as
born-again believers,it is very easy to spiritualize
d e a t h . But the plain fact is that how ever we
choose to explain it away and pra c t i ca lly forc e
o u r s e lves and others to almost ignore the issue,
death has a ve ry real impact and is emotion a lly
painful to all it touch e s . When your loss is as
great as that of the death of your child,the impact
shatters your heart.
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The Questions
Looking Forward
As human beings, it is natural for us to
demand to know the cause or re a s on for just
about everything.Never is this more evident than
when we experience loss and death. Ir ra t i on a lly,
we tend to place blame on the doorstep of
Heaven.There is no doubt whatsoever that it was
the enemy, Sa t a n , who was re s p onsible for the
death of my baby, not the Lord. God didn’t “call
her home”or “need another angel.”Satan is out to
s t e a l , k i ll , and destroy,1 and he will stop at
a b s o l u t e ly nothing to wreak havoc eve ry w h e re,
especially among the Church and believers.
But “…thanks be unto God, w h i ch alw ays
causeth us to triumph in Christ….”2 Praise God,
we have power over the devil!
It has been a lon g, h a rd road to come to a
place of looking ahead and not back.Reliving the
horror and terror is always just at the edge of my
c on s c i o u s n e s s . With hardly any effort , I can go
back to that place of receiving the news and expe-
rience the first impact of the loss.I see the scene
and the sequence of events that followed begin to
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Life After Loss
play out in my mind, then again I see them start
to replay,running over and over as if I’m watching
the most terri f ying horror film I’ve ever seen
again and again.
Obv i o u s ly, it isn’t a good idea to revisit the
past,but when it sneaks up on me,I make a con-
scious choice not to go there . When I am at a
funeral, for example, I have to work very hard at
controlling my thoughts so that I will not react to
the reminder as if Alli’s death just happened.
Those of us who have already experienced a
deep loss know what it’s like to appear on the
outside to be functioning well but who are, i n
reality,only going through the motions.Once we
reach a point of embracing God in the midst of
our pain and begin receiving all that He wants to
g i ve us to help us through it, our desire to live
a g a i n , to active ly participate in life, s t a rts to
re t u rn . And I found that once I started living
a g a i n , I had to intention a lly keep on living so I
wouldn’t fall back into my previous state.
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Looking for Answers
The Lo rd spoke to me in my spirit a few
months after Alli’s death to show me that if I try
to apply everything I know and learn in order to
understand “what happened back there, ” I will
not find answers. Instead I will find con f u s i on ,
condemnation,and guilt. I found myself writing,
“LOOK FORWARD NOT BACKWARD,” in my Bible,
in notebooks,on bookmarks,everywhere.Writing
this down didn’t mean that I didn’t have to con-
tinue making a conscious choice to look forward
minute by minute,hour by hour,and day by day.
It was a habit I needed to develop in order to
steer clear of the confusion,guilt,and condemna-
t i on that alw ays threatened to break in and
shatter my peace of mind.
This brings me to a couple of import a n t
points to share with you re g a rding gri e f.G rief is
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Life After Loss
a legitimate human emotion.The Bible does not
tell us that as Christians we are not to grieve. It
tells us we are not to grieve as the world grieves—
without hope.3The Bible also says in 2 Corin t h i a n s
7:10 (AMP):
For godly grief and the pain God is permitted
to direct,produce a repentance that leads and
contributes to salvation and deliverance from
ev i l ,and it never brings re gre t ;but worl dly
grief (the hopeless sorrow that is characteris-
tic of the pagan world) is deadly [bre e d i n g
and ending in death].
G ri eving is gri eving whether you are a
C h ristian or not. Jesus even experienced gri e f
d u ring His time on eart h , p ro b a b ly more fre-
quently than we do today.The Bible does tell us
that He wept at the tomb of Lazarus.4
G rief can manifest in both phys i o l o g i cal and
psychological ways. I do not intend to talk about
the diffe rent stages of gri e f ; that is not my
p u rp o s e . T h e re is, h ow eve r, a myriad of phys i ca l
symptoms that you may experience,and it is good
to know that grief is most likely the source.They
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