Transition and Grief

Hello Readers,

I wrote the blog below in the past year.  Last April it was posted on The Aurora Crossing blog, but I realized that I'd never posted it here.  

Enjoy (wait, can I encourage you to "enjoy" when it's a post about grief?)

……….

Here’s a little insight into how I operate.  I’m an avoider.  I don’t like going into my pain.  It scares me.  No. It is more accurate to say that it terrifies me.  I’ll do anything I can to numb out and ignore the big, sparkly pink elephant in the room (he also may or may not have flashing lights in an elaborate headdress).  That is, until the grief will no longer be contained.  As much as I hate, hate, hate when this happens, I’m also relieved.  Whatever pent up emotions I hold onto weren’t meant to stay put and the process of releasing them feels freeing.

I’ve begun to think that grief is a normal part of life.  Now, not every experience will elicit the same level of grief, but if I really think about it, I am saying goodbye to people, places, and things all the time.  Unfortunately, I live in a society that does not value grieving.  In America, we value moving forward.  Progress.  Pushing through adversity.  This can be a good value to have.  However, when the focus is purely on moving forward, saying goodbye is often seen as clinging to the past and even labeled as a weakness.  These beliefs can result in defining grief as acceptable or unacceptable.  You can grieve over the death of a family member, but don’t you dare grieve over the loss of a community due to moving.

Our grief in America is also privatized.  We emulate the Marlboro man, as we walk off alone into the sunset of our own sadness.  At the last Winter Olympics, an athlete from another country was killed in a luging accident.  I remember seeing video of the community grieving together.  The people were walking around and wailing for this person they didn’t know.  My initial response to this open display of sadness was “Why are they crying for this stranger?”  It struck me as so odd and foreign.  But then my next thought was, “This is a culture that values grieving.”

In the Bible, we’re given glimpses of the grieving rituals in Israel.  At times, this included hiring a professional mourner.  Yes, that is a person hired to cry, wail,  and beat their breast when a person dies (but the real question is, does it have good medical benefits?).   Again, this is a culture that values grieving.  Jesus was no stranger to grief.  One of the most personally moving examples of Jesus’ grief is when his good friend Lazarus died.  What did Jesus do?  In one of the most succinct and powerful verses in the Bible, Jesus wept (John 11:35).  Then he rose Lazarus back to life.  But not before he grieved and acknowledged the deep sadness in death.

I think one of the challenges in grief is entering into the tension of feeling the sadness, anger, and guilt over what can no longer be, while still clinging to the belief that the story does not end here.  It’s not ignoring the pain, but it’s also not letting the pain be (ultimately) the tragic end.  Sometimes, I get lost in my grief, or I avoid it for fear of getting lost in it.  It is in those moments when I see that I was not made to walk this path alone.

Grief is to be journeyed with others.  It has been scary to let safe people into my grief.  I often have to start by just stating my experience and as I begin to trust those people, the emotions eventually come.  This has been a process for me and I still have a ways to go.  Just this week I had a good friend over for dinner.  I was talking about my experience of singleness lately and she mentioned how disconnected my facial expressions were from the clearly painful story I was telling.  I took a risk, and allowed myself to really feel my sadness with another.  These are messy places for us to go, but I truly believe that as communities, this is one of the most significant gifts we can offer to another: the gift of company.

Isaiah prophecies Christ, calling him a man of sorrow, acquainted with grief.  Even in the times when it feels like no earthly human can meet me in my grief, I am not alone.  Jesus, who experientially knows grief is there, with me, loving me.  In the midst of grief, he is our divine company.