Messages of Hope: Life After the Death of a Child

By Vickie Oakley

Messages of Hope: Life After the Death of Your Child is not just a story. It is the account of Dr. Oakley's traumatic experience in the tragic death of Hope, her youngest daughter, how her faith in God helped her to rise above the sorrows of life and learn to live again with hope and joy.
Dr. Oakley tells of her journey from complete brokenness to restoration, and ultimately transformation. She will give readers insight into ways that she discovered that worked for her. The ultimate gift being her relationship with God.
If you have suffered the death of a child or if you know someone who has. Then this book is a must read. Dr. Oakley encourages you to acknowledge and embrace your grief. Grief is a normal part of life when you lose a child or a loved one. She will give insight to the habits she developed for her to help her cope with her grief. Mostly, she encourages you to understand you never truly get over the death of a child, but you will learn their death becomes part of who you are, and you are able to move beyond their death to a new life by celebrating the life they lived with you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667868837

Book preview

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© 2022 Vickie Oakley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66786-882-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66786-883-7

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my children, who taught me about courage, faith, and strength, and how to be a mother.

To my husband, my best friend, who is the wind beneath my wings.

And to God who created me in His image.

Dr. Vickie M. Oakley

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Hebrews 11:1 NLT.

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1: This is the Day

Chapter 2: Formless and Empty

Chapter 3: The Thief

Chapter 4: WHY?

Chapter 5: Sifting Wheat

Chapter 6: Trials or Opportunities

Chapter 7: Forgiveness

Chapter 8: My Patch of Wilderness

Chapter 9: Restoration

Chapter 10: From Restoration to Transformation

Chapter 11: A Place

Conclusion: Hope

Suggestions on How to Handle Questions, Observations of Holiday, Family Gatherings, Experiences, Etc.

Introduction

Grieving doesn’t have to be a process that keeps us rooted in our thoughts of fear and sadness . Giving ourselves permission to be with whatever arises actually creates space for us to begin the healing process. This is because the act of grieving is a natural process, allowing us to sort through the range of emotions that are present in our everyday existence. Even though it may sometimes seem easier to involve ourselves in activities that take our minds off of our sadness, this will only make the route to healing more difficult. Unless we listen to where we are in the moment, the emotions we experience will only grow in intensity. Our feelings will manifest themselves in more powerful and less comfortable ways. Once we consciously acknowledge that these emotions are present, however, we are more able to soothe the sorrow of the moment. In so doing, we become more open to our natural ability to heal ourselves.

Grieving doesn’t have to be a process that keeps us rooted in our thoughts of fear and sadness. For the moment, we might feel despondent, but by expressing and coping with our true feelings, we face the sadness head-on. When we allow ourselves to accept and deal with our loss fully, we will then be able to continue our life’s journey with a much more positive and accepting outlook. This will make it easier for us to see that our grief is ephemeral and, just like our moments of happiness, it will also come to pass.

Grief is a strong, sometimes overwhelming emotion for people, regardless of whether their sadness stems from the loss of a loved one or from a terminal diagnosis they or someone they love has received. Some individuals might find themselves feeling numb and removed from daily life, unable to carry on with regular duties while saddled with their sense of loss.

Grief is an emotion. A strange emotion. An emotion that is not easily described. At times it can be very painful and intense. Other times it can be painless (as some would consider pain) and dull.

Grief is an emotion that you will feel when you encounter loss or a life-changing event. When you think about a life-changing event, you often consider birth, marriage, divorce, catastrophic illness, financial loss, and death. Most life-changing events will fall into one of these categories.

I have experienced one or more of these categories, and based on my experience, the death of a child is the worst by far. No parent should outlive their child. I do not care how old or young the child or the parent are at the time of the child’s death. No parent should outlive their child. It is an unnatural state of being. It happens, though, and has happened since the beginning of time. The death of a child does not affect just the parent, but it affects the family as a unit. In many cases, even to the extended family, such as stepparents, stepbrothers, stepsisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Friends, classmates, and the list goes on and on. Death affects our society in a very profound way in that death changes everything that we always believed to hold true. Death will make you doubt all things. Death will make you distrustful. And death will make you think or believe that all your dreams are dead. Death will make you believe that all hope is dead, that hope died with your child when they died.

This book is about my experience with the death of my daughter. How I learned to rise out of the ashes of her death to live my life and dream again. How God as my Redeemer, taught me to live life through her death by putting a new song in my heart and teaching me to dream as well as live again. It is not a theological document, but it does contain my spiritual beliefs and the experiences I had, which allowed me to arrive at them. My beliefs are just that, my beliefs, and they are not meant to challenge religious beliefs but simply a statement of events that led to my beliefs. The death of a child will challenge every belief you ever held to be true, including the very existence of life as you know it.

In my writings, I believe you will come to see I did not get over the death of my child so much as I arrived at the place of acceptance of her death. Her death became part of who I have become. Through these experiences, I have learned more about life, and the learning process continues to this day.

I sincerely wish readers, who may have lost a child to death may find comfort, hope, and encouragement from the written events. Learning to live after her death has been the most horrific experience of my life. Yet through her death, I have come to have one of the greatest experiences. The experience of walking daily with God, my Heavenly Father. Learning to live day to day, sometimes hour by hour. I am like Job; I now know Him face to face(Job 42:5) and call Him Abba-Father.

Some Statistics……..

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in 2019, approximately 2,400 teens in the United States aged 13–19 were killed in motor vehicle crashes. This means that approximately 7 teens die every day due to motor vehicle crashes.

Motor vehicle crashes are the second leading cause of death for teens in the United States.

At least 48% of teen drivers and passengers aged 16–19 years who died in passenger vehicle crashes in 2019 were not wearing a seat belt at the time of the crash. Research indicates that seat belts reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half.

The CDC also confirms the following important teenage driver statistics:

In 2019, the motor vehicle death rate for male drivers aged 16-19 was over two times higher than the death rate for female drivers of the same age.

The presence of teen passengers increases the crash risk of unsupervised teen drivers, and that risk increases with each additional teen passenger in the vehicle.

Crash risk is particularly high during the first months of licensure (data from the 2016-2017 National Household Travel Survey indicates that the crash rate per mile driven is about 1.5 times as higher for 16-year-olds as it is for 18-19-year-olds).

Some additional teenage driver statistics provided by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) include:

52% of motor vehicle crash deaths among teenagers in 2019 occurred on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

Teenage motor vehicle crash deaths in 2019 occurred most frequently from 9 p.m. to midnight (18%), followed closely by the time between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. and between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. (both 15%).

Young drivers are less likely than adults to drive after drinking alcohol, but their crash risk is substantially higher when they do.

The IIHS reports that in 2019, teenagers accounted for 7% of total motor vehicle crash deaths, and about two out of every three teenagers killed in crashes were males. However, since 1975, teenage crash deaths have actually decreased more among males (76%) than among females (64%).

The CDC identified eight ‘danger zones’ representing the leading causes of teenage driver crashes and injuries.

Those danger zones include: Driver inexperience

Driving with teen passengers

Nighttime driving

Not using seat belts

Distracted driving

Drowsy driving

Reckless driving

Impaired driving

The CDC also identified six specific risk factors that can lead to motor vehicle crashes among teenage drivers. Those risk factors include inexperience, nighttime/weekend driving, not using seatbelts, distracted driving, speeding, and alcohol or drug use.

According to the investigative report filed regarding my daughter’s vehicle accident, the inexperience of the unlicensed driver of the secondary vehicle was the cause of death. In other words, the driver of the vehicle that hit my daughter’s car, causing the accident, was an inexperienced driver; she was 15 years old. She was not old enough to obtain a legal driver’s license in the state.

Chapter 1:

This is the Day

This is the day the Lord has made.

We will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24

The day was June 2, 1993. I got up extra early that morning as I planned to be at the beauty shop by 7:00 a.m. Then on to work. Hope, my youngest daughter was still asleep. She had graduated from high school the week before and did not have to be at work until later that morning. She worked part-time during the school year, but now that she had graduated, she had planned to work full time until starting college completely. I had thought about waking her up, but she had been out late the night before with some of her friends. So, I let her sleep. I did leave her a note on the dining room table telling her where I had gone. I would call her later.

After leaving the beauty shop, I decided to go back to the house before going to work. I needed to re-style my hair. My hair stylist had been cutting my hair for several years, but she always liked to style my hair a little provocative. The organization I worked for appreciated a more professional, conservative appearance.