How Can I Live without My Baby?
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Chapter 6
How I Learned to Laugh Again
“Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21). My remarks may mean little to one who does not believe in life after death. When his daughter Sophie died, Sigmund Freud, an atheist, wrote to a friend that he had no one to blame and no place to go for comfort. Nine years later, his grief was as sharp as when his daughter died.
To Love Is to Risk
Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. The pain of the leaving can tear us apart. Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking. (Henri Nouwen Quotes, internet).
I have dared to risk loving more than once and found the risk worth the suffering when death took my beloved from me. Some of those occasions have been described. I have been asked, “How have you been able to overcome the sorrow and laugh again?” To me life is not worth living without loving. Paul wrote, “Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Here are several things that have helped me.
I Had to Face the Fact My Loved One Is Dead
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
Life gives us many losses. This book deals with only one kind of loss, the loss of a loved one by death. Death comes to everyone, but usually behind many broken hearts. The author has suffered this loss many times, but the hardest has been in the loss of his three wives. His reactions to these are told in graphic detail from a heart that has been broken more than the average has had to bear. Yet there is an optimistic faith that says the best is yet to be. One who has suffered or is suffering the loss of a loved one will find words of comfort.
About the Author
The writer has lived for 94 years and experienced many heartaches. He has had his father, mother two brothers and a sister precede him in death. He has had to bury three wives- one of whom he lived with for thirty four years, a second for thirty one years and the last for eight years. Yet he has weathered these storms and can still see the sublight of life. His faith has sustained him, and he believes the Lord has spared him to do his work that he plans to do until the lord calls him home. The author exposes himself and his inner feelings in such a way that a fellow struggler can relate to them and hopefully gain courage to struggle on, wounded but not defeated. He with Paul affirms, “I know whom I have believed” 2 Timothy 1:12.