GRIEF AND SURVIVAL

(These thoughts are added to three or four times each week and cover a wide variety of subjects and insights)

This is much longer than anything I usually write on this blog but as I began to write I realized that to do justice to the subject I could not do otherwise.

It is largely a rewrite of what I wrote several months ago. Are there some new thoughts below newly expressed? Yes, that too.

I am presenting it again because it has now been buried in time and new readers may not have read it.

In my counseling I have seen first hand, so many times, how sorrow, for whatever reason rips and tears at the human psyche. And I have seen how some of the insights below have touched particular needs in a practical and positive way. There are FIFTY FIVE YEARS of listening and learning and studying behind these comments. I can but hope they have some of the healing balm in them.

GRIEF HURTS. It is a knife that cuts and rips and slashes and makes us cry out in terrible pain. It is an agony of the soul. When it comes, we feel out of control.

All of us have experienced it for one reason or the other: death, terrible sickness in our own bodies or the bodies of those we love, divorce, the loss of a career, the loss of a child. It comes in different guises, but in some form it ALWAYS COMES TO EVERYONE. It always does.

HOW BEST THEN CAN WE DEAL this emotional winter storm? This ripping and tearing at our stability. Some weep until there are no more tears left to cry with. Some try to drown their sorrow in a bottle or the impact of a pill. Some try to repress their heartache and, like a kettle with no escape valve, eventually explode.

But some…some take their wounded selves to God. And there, before the compassionate throne of grace, cry out, “Dear Lord, let them debate the psychology of loss in the classroom, trying philosophically to dissect it - I am beyond that. I ask now only for YOUR SPECIAL SOLACE.”

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)

One thing is for sure, WE ALL HANDLE THE EMOTION of anguish differently.
A husband and wife spent many weekends fishing together. When she asked for a divorce and left him – he never fished again.

A father and son played golf together each Saturday morning. When the boy was killed in an automobile accident – the father put their clubs out for the trash man.

Two friends enjoyed hiking together.
Then they had a terrible fight and went their separate ways. Afterwards, one of them never again walked the forest.

Would you ease your own GRIEVING TIME? Then go out, and though still hurting or remembering how badly once you hurt, use your personal knowledge of pain to help others. Sharing your remembrances will hurt, but it will remind the one to whom you speak that thay are not alone and that someone is now caring enough to give their very best.

Yes, 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 with someone who knows you went out of your way to show you care. You are too busy? Oh, yes...if this is a speed bump on your way toward active compassion...you are indeed too busy.

In other words, move from the theological to the practical. Study the Sermon on the Mount and start building your OWN LITTLE HILL OF CONCERN.

Helen Keller was deaf, dumb and blind, but she didn’t spend her life sitting alone in dark, dumb, dingy silence feeling 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 to where the birds were singing, and people were talking and the world was living, all of which she could neither hear nor see. Went out to pour the sweet perfume of noble thoughts on others and feel some of it splashing back upon herself.

Don’t misunderstand me, she wasn’t born with this wonderful attitude. In her youth she would literally flail at family and teachers, making loud almost animal-like sounds of frustration. She was daily angry and allowed herself to be filled with hopelessness. Then one day, her teacher got through to her that there is more than one kind of blindness. That, yes, there is physical blindness that cannot see light, but there is also spiritual emotional blindness that will not search for light. And so she decided to make the most of life and not the least, to look for the best and not the worst. She decided not to daily grieve over her misfortune, but instead deal with it with a multitude of positive actions minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day until she had lived out a lifetime of service.

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.

Over and over again we must seek to turn our stumbling block called grief into A STEPPING STONE.

Would you find healing or advise someone else how to find healing? Sup then on those things that feed and soothe your soul. Walk outside and breathe in the spirit of CREATION speaking to you from the existence of millions of blinking stars. Look up at the universe and feel the eternal extension of it. Walk quietly where there is the roar of an ocean shouting its power against the shore, or the rippling of a stream playing its musical notes against the stones, or the hint of a new day blushing the horizon. Plant a seed. Hold a leaf in your hand. Henry David Thoreau in his little house by Walden Pond once wrote, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush (is) aflame with God.”

Do not succumb to thoughts that are TATTLE GRAY. When tears are falling, the first thing you need to do is paint the dull, dead landscape of your thinking with colorful thoughts and a colorful faith. Things are not going well so you are not thinking bright yellow or bold red? It is understandable.

Should you attend a funeral service in PULSING PINK? Probably not, but permanent black for an incessant forever isn’t a good idea either. You want to be alone when your world has come apart at the seams? Quite likely. But this is why you shouldn’t give in to giving up. Rather unclench your fist and reach for heaven's radiance. Let loose the vigor of God on the lethargy of your sorrow.

“Grief,” said Disraeli, “is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief is the BLUNDER of a lifetime.”

There is a thin line between those who have CONQUERED LIFE or been conquered by it. Each additional year of living does not necessarily bring maturity, sainthood and sweetness, or spiritual wisdom. Strength is not an automatic.

What then to do?

Believe God chose your day of birth and knows your day of death as he did and does for those you love and are or were loved by. These are two very important decisions that are His and His alone. And accepting this knowledge is A GOOD PLACE TO START in the battle for stability.

It’s the last thing you want to do when you are overcome with grief but force yourself to 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)

Go for the gusto in mind, body and spirit and it pays off. But when you have done all you can, in ever way you can to solve a problem or a pain, don’t beat your head bloody and your soul ragged continuing after the impossible.
Learn to finally say and mean, “I am thine Lord. I present myself as a spiritual sponge. Ready to absorb at whatever pace solace comes. Give me patience for I DO NOT HAVE IT and it looks like I am not going to find any immediate. You are mine and I am thine. Stamp this truth upon every fiber of my being.

If grieving is caused by what we no longer have, cannot thanksgiving for what we do still have be of help? There is much truth in the words, It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

James Barrie put it this way, “God gave us memories that we (might) have roses in December,”