When parents grieve over their children, they will not live a healthy life. They’re not going to enjoy their life, they won’t do well in life. It physically and spiritually and emotionally impacts them.
Category: PARENTS
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But rather than this let us suppose a happier case. The danger of childbirth is past; a child is born to them, the very image of its parents’ beauty. Are the occasions for grief at all lessened thereby? Rather they are increased; for the parents retain all their former fears, and feel in addition those on behalf of the child, lest anything should happen to it in its bringing up; for instance a bad accident, or by some turn of misfortunes a sickness, a fever, any dangerous disease. Both parents share alike in these; but who could recount the special anxieties of the wife? We omit the most obvious, which all can understand, the weariness of pregnancy, the danger in childbirth, the cares of nursing, the tearing of her heart in two for her offspring, and, if she is the mother of many, the dividing of her soul into as many parts as she has children; the tenderness with which she herself feels all that is happening to them. That is well understood by every one. But the oracle of God tells us that she is not her own mistress, but finds her resources only in him whom wedlock has made her lord; and so, if she be for ever so short a time left alone, she feels as if she were separated from her head, and can ill bear it; she even takes this short absence of her husband to be the prelude to her widowhood; her fear makes her at once give up all hope; accordingly her eyes, filled with terrified suspense, are always fixed upon the door; her ears are always busied with what others are whispering; her heart, stung with her fears, is nearly bursting even before any bad news has arrived; a noise in the doorway, whether fancied or real, acts as a messenger of ill, and on a sudden shakes her very soul; most likely all outside is well, and there is no cause to fear at all; but her fainting spirit is quicker than any message, and turns her fancy from good tidings to despair.
—St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 3 -
Many people do not feel the value of something until after they have lost it!
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The son who neglects to honour his parents mistreats them and only feels their value after he has lost them, whether it is through their death or by losing their approval or blessing…
In general, a person is not aware of the value of life and the importance of eternity until after he has lost that life and eternity both together…
How nice it is if a person wakes up to himself and perceives the value of his situation before he loses it, especially something which cannot be retrieved once it has been lost!!
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life -
65. Nothing is more precious to man than intelligence. Its power is such as to enable us to adore God through intelligent speech and thanksgiving. By contrast, when we use futile or slanderous speech we condemn our soul. Now it is characteristic of an obtuse man to lay the blame for his sins on the conditions of his birth or on something else, while in fact his words and actions are evil through his own free choice.
—St Anthony the Great
On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life
One Hundred and Seventy Texts -
Living in the world, surrounded by your family, you cannot possibly give away all your possessions. So you must aim at finding the golden mean, and strive to keep to it: never turn your back on the world, but see to it that the world does not engross you.
Letters of Elder Macarius of Optina -
Here’s the part that will make you cry. Try to see this moment as though it’s actually in the past, and this person is gone now. You’re remembering this one ordinary moment, in perfect detail, from that precious window of time when your lives still overlapped.
It’s important that it’s an ordinary moment, because those are the kinds of moments that often seem neutral in value. Abundant and unremarkable. You might be tempted to spend it checking your phone.
But if your mind can find that place, even for a just a second, where you see that this might not be so, you’ll break that sense that nothing special is happening.
Then there will be a moment when you come back to reality. And the reality is that the precious, fleeting time when you got to be near this person, the time you’d do anything to revisit, is happening right now.HOW TO CREATE GRATITUDE
David Cain -
People who do not know where they are going or what kind of world they are heading toward, who wonder if bringing forth children into this chaotic world is not an act of cruelty rather than love, will often be tempted to be sarcastic or even cynical. They laugh at their busy friends, but have nothing to offer in place of their activity. They protest against many things, but do not know what to witness for.
—Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer
