WIN OUT IN YOUR BATTLE WITH GRIEF

(New ideas are added each Monday and Thursday)

Grief hurts. It hurts bad. It is an agony of the soul. It is a knife that cuts and rips and slashes and makes us cry out in terrible pain. All of us have experienced it for one reason or the other: death, divorce; the loss of a career, terrible sickness in our own bodies or the bodies of those we love. It comes in different guises, but it always comes.

How best then can we deal with this emotional winter storm when it surges over and through us? Some weep until there are no more tears left. Some try to repress their heartache and, like a kettle with no escape valve, eventually explode. One thing is for sure, we all handle this emotion of anguish differently.

A husband and wife spent many week-ends fishing together. When she asked for a divorce and left him – he gave up fishing.

A father and son played golf each Saturday morning. When the boy was killed in an automobile accident – the father put their clubs out with for the trash man. Two friends enjoyed hiking together. Then they had a terrible fight and never spoke again. Afterwards, one of them never entered the woods again.

When what was is no more, many in anguish cry out into their darkness over and over again, “Why me?” Some grow bitter and are overcome by galloping fear.

Would you ease your own grieving time? Then go out, and though still hurting or remembering how badly once you hurt, use your knowledge of pain to help others. Willingly search for some other hurting survivor. Hold the palsied hand of someone old and alone, or give patient love to a little lad or lass who obviously gets very little of it at home. Be a loving friend who takes a day off from work to stand in those final moments by a grave. In other words, move from the theological to the practical.

Helen Keller was deaf, dumb and blind, but she didn’t sit alone in her dark, dumb, dingy silence and feel sorry for herself. Did not burden herself by grieving for a life that might have been. Rather she got up every morning and went out. Went out where the birds were singing, and people were talking and the world was living. Went out to pour the sweet perfume of noble thoughts on others and feel some of it splashing back upon herself.

Thomas Caryle suggests that the ultimate question every person must ask of himself is, “Will I be a hero or a coward?” There is a thin line between those who have conquered life or been conquered by it. What then to do?

First – get a good physical each year, and learn what can make your health even better. If you are sick, and tired of being sick and tired, honestly look for the reason why, and then if the only answer you can find is that you must endure, pray for the strength to endure.

Second– get a good purpose in life. One you could be proud to have reported on the streets of heaven

Third – believe that when one door slams shut it does not mean all doors are in this condition. And the worst can turn out to be the best. Some clouds really do have not just one silver lining, but two or three.

Fourth - When I used to run in cross country races I figured I hadn’t given my all if I wasn’t almost in a state of collapse at the end of the race. When I took biology, which was not one of my best subjects, from a professor who didn’t believe anybody deserved an A, I didn’t just give up, I gave it my all. Actually, while I ran pretty good I never ran a race and I never did get an A in biology, but oh the satisfaction I received from knowing I had not settled for something less than I was meant to be.

Fifth– make friends and forgive enemies.

Sixth – watch a funny movie. Read a funny book. Laugh at a funny cartoon. It is a prescription from the book of Proverbs, “The cheerful heart is good medicine.” (Proverbs 17:22)

The grief of growing old? It can be put to rest by remembering some words the late General Douglas MacArthur once wrote:
You are as young as your faith,
as old as your doubts;
As young as your self-confidence,
as old as your fear;
As young as your hope,
as old as your despair.