Today, on the Dr. Phil Show was a married couple who has had one loss after another. Prior to their marriage, they found out that she was pregnant so they moved the wedding up 6 months.
One week prior to their wedding, they had a miscarriage. Right after the wedding they found out that they were pregnant again, but that baby was still born. 2 successful pregnancies followed, and they believed they were past the worse of it. Good news, she was pregnant again.
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| Courtesy of Oprah.com |
The newest baby made it through the birth, but had a heart condition, which required that him to have a heart and breathing monitor on at all times. One morning, mom gave baby his 4:30 am feeding, and she fell asleep with him in her arms. The worst thing happens. She had not put his monitor back on, so when she woke up 2 hours later, the baby wasn’t breathing.
The baby made it too the hospital, but his brain had been without oxygen for so long, the baby was brain dead. After some time, they made the excruciating decision any parent has to make, they took him off life support.
At this point, if they both walked into an insane asylum, no one could blame them. How much can a marriage take? Through it all they stayed together, although they grieved very differently for their collective losses. She wanted to talk, and talk, and talk because this is what women do; and he became introverted and internally dealt with his grief.
This put additional strain on the marriage, and then what they thought was bottom, dropped out from under them.
Within several months, their 2 ½ baby girl came home and told mommy, “poppy licked my butt”. WHAT!!!!! She asked the baby to repeat it, thinking that what the baby meant to say was, “poppy kicked my butt”. But she had heard it right the first time, because the daughter repeated it again for her, and then later to her father. Her husband called his parents, and too make a long story short, his father admitted to it. WHAT!!!! What a tragic story; you can’t listen to the details without having your heart strings pulled.
They were guests on the Dr. Phil Show to save their marriage.
It left me realizing that I haven’t been through anything this tragic over and over again. What right do I have to bad about anything that has happened to me? In comparison, my life has not been nearly as terrible in such a short amount of time.
I know that we are supposed to count our blessings every day, because someone always has it worse then you. What a lofty exercise. We usually feel that the bad things going on in our own lives if far worse than anything anyone else is having, so forget about seeing someone else’s problem.
But there are some things that we can do. Taking your head out of the sand for a few moments, may just be what we need to realize that our problems, even the ones that are big too us, are peanuts to someone else’s. Let me be clear, when you are going through something, and perhaps it is the biggest thing you have ever dealt with, it is overwhelming. We all hurt deeply about one thing or another.
So my advice is that when you are feeling really down and overwhelmed take a few minutes to put it aside, like it doesn’t exist, and look for other people (TV, internet, church circle, friends, etc.) who have something going on. It may be something you have already gotten through, or just have circumstances worse than your own. Use this exercise to put your issue in perspective.
Say all the corny ‘isms like:
What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger
This too shall pass
Put one step in front of the other
Be a warrior not a worrier
Do whatever it takes. I am working on me, you work on you. And we will meet in the middle!
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