SOME WAYS TO HANDLE GRIEF rather than letting it handle you

(First in a new series)

(Thoughts added to each Monday and Thursday)

Grief is a wall that blocks out the sunshine, a weight that makes us weigh a thousand pounds. Someone we love dies or gives out the words "I want a divorce" and at that moment singes the air. One day there is health and the next day sickness and frustrated, in denial, angry we wonder how and if we can survive.

And what is God’s special solace? “It is the gift of being that allows us to laugh in the face of time and bow in awe at the opening of Eternity.” (anonymous) And we read the words and all is not instantly well but we have taken the first step of a trip that can "yes" sometimes be a trip of a thousand miles. But we have taken a step forward...and that is what counts.

And as we journey, carrying our emotional burden, we can help ourselves so very much by reaching out to help others, even offering to help someone carry theirs. To give when it is the last thing we are in the mood to do. We who are seeking understanding giving it as well. To search out another anguished soul and say "If I can do something please let me know" and then following through with the offer.

In other words, move from the polite to the practical. Study the Sermon on the Mount and start building your own little hill of concern. And now we are still climbing the hill and not easily done but we are no longer climbing it alone.

More than once I have placed my hand on the shoulder of another human being bent low with hurting and said, “Weep…cry…. Slowly siphon it out of your system. Then turn and begin to walk away from your wounding. Otherwise, you but nurture a ghost that will haunt you the rest of your days.” In short, when pain and problem come, pray deeply and then deeper still, do all you can and then get on with living.

He sat before me – a forty-year-old who looked sixty. He began to share, “I’ve been downsized. I was a top salesman and now I can’t sell a dollar bill for 50 cents. I’ve never been so miserable in my whole life.” And as we talked, I found out his father had died when he was only seven. I learned how a loving mother had shielded him the rest of his childhood and adolescent years from all pain and hardship. He told me that he had never been allowed to play any violent sport - “Mother was afraid I’d get hurt.” And as we talked he began to understand why he was filled with such grief and self-pity. He began to realize he had spent a lifetime expecting to be cared for - by his mother, by his family and later by his business. Even expecting to being taken care of totally, completely by his God, without ever doing very much to help himself.

Before he left my office we read together Philippians 4:13 “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

This scripture that he had heard many times now shouted at his senses and he got the message. Daily he now repeats it and he always pauses over the first five words - I can do all things…. He has finally learned that having first knelt in prayer, he must also stand on his own two feet.