In our culture,

and particularly our church culture,

typical responses to grief

most loudly communicate,

not comfort, but discomfort.

 

It's as if the one grieving

has sounded a discordant note -

and those responding can't rest

until they've resolved the chord.

Deborah P. Brunt

 

A woman sent me an email one day to tell me her grown daughter had died in an auto accident. In the same breath that she informed me of the tragedy, the woman gave a glowing report of the funeral, describing in detail the testimonies of her daughter's character and accomplishments that greatly honored God.

 

Two months later, the same woman wrote me another email about a different subject. That is, she thought she was writing about a different subject. Yet what she did not even mention screamed at me from every paragraph: This mom hasn't let herself grieve.

 

I do not know the woman intimately. I did not know if I had permission to speak into her life. Deeply concerned, I prayed. Then, I wrote her back, suggesting: You need to give yourself permission and time to grieve.

 

Several days later, she replied: "You hit the nail on the head."

 

So now, may I suggest the same thing to you?

You need to give yourself permission and time to grieve.

You may know instantly what losses you need to mourn. Odds are, you do not. Either way, it's likely you have grief stuck inside you somewhere. Not grief that you haven't finished processing. Rather, grief you didn't let yourself process - or didn't realize you needed to process.

If you're a US Christian or you hail from the Deep South, that likelihood increases to a strong probability. If you're Christian and Southern, the strong probability borders on certainty.

I'm both Christian and Southern - born and bred, saved and baptized in Mississippi. I'm neither licensed nor certified in grief counseling. However, God has provided me different credentials: He's taken me through some tough stuff in order to show me things about who we are and how we operate.

Even if you're thinking of casting this article aside as not credible or not applicable to you, please ask the God of all comfort to speak to you, Spirit to spirit. Ask him to show you anything you need to give yourself permission to grieve. Then, read on - and see what happens.

You're not inviting new grief. Rather, you're seeking healing and release from any festering heartache that has poisoned your life and relationships - quite likely, without your realizing it.

In 30 years of writing articles, I've written perhaps a handful expressing grief. Each time, I received several replies that on the surface seemed kind. Sweet, well-meaning people quoted Scriptures, or told cheerily of things having nothing to do with the article, or asked cautiously, "Are you okay?" Each carefully avoided any mention of the Grief. 

I delight in receiving encouraging Scriptures, cheery messages and expressions of love and concern. Yet, these particular responses carried a disquieting undertone. Gently, politely, they seemed to scold me for airing my grief. Only recently did I realize why.

In our culture, and particularly our church culture, typical responses to grief most loudly communicate, not comfort, but discomfort. It's as if the one grieving has sounded a discordant note - and those responding can't rest until they've resolved the chord.

If you've faced significant, visible loss - the kind of loss people around you acknowledge as profound and, however awkwardly, try to share - you've probably had a similar experience. The tears, hugs, sympathy cards and compassionate looks of others have validated your loss and, to an extent, encouraged you.

Yet, primarily, people were encouraging you to "cheer up." They probably didn't use those words. But they likely wanted to see resolution of your discordant feelings ASAP. They knew and you knew the response expected from you: a few tears discretely shed, no wailing, strong verbal affirmation of God's presence and goodness and a quick reentry to life as usual.

If that's what you gave them (or appeared to give), they probably went away commenting how well you're doing. Ah, but if you cried too publicly or spoke in anger or withdrew or otherwise expressed unresolved grief, your comforters' discomfort increased. Their attempts to help you decreased. When asked how you were "holding up," they likely shook their heads and intoned, "Not well."

So what if you've experienced a more subtle, but no less painful, loss? What if the thing that so grieves you doesn't seem to others worth mourning? What if the source of your grief  can't be divulged publicly? What if you yourself don't understand what, exactly, you're mourning?

In such cases, you'll likely receive an even more blunt and emphatic message to "get over it." Say, for example, that you try to express your pain in Sunday School. Averted eyes and a quick change of subject may signal you not to bring up the matter again.

And while we're getting gut-level honest, you may have to admit, as do I, that we've been on the leading, as well as the following, end of this little resolve-your-grief-quickly dance. Sometimes, we even do it to ourselves.

Recently, a man approached my husband and me at church and began to chat. Ten days earlier, the man's dad whom he loved had died. When we mentioned the father's death, the man responded, his face all smiles, "Oh, you know, we aren't to grieve as those who have no hope."

All of which teaches us: Grieving is not good. Those who grieve are neither okay nor well. Indeed, they are letting Christ down.

Everyone experiences grief. It enters with loss or betrayal, including those losses we do not recognize as loss. It arrives with sorrows experienced years ago, including those of earliest childhood. It comes through distressing situations in our family background or ethnic history from which earlier generations never healed.

Whether grief sneaks in, or bursts in, whether it comes early or late, it does not simply dissipate with time.

If left unacknowledged and uncomforted, grief remains. Inside us, it becomes like the can of tomato sauce that sat unnoticed on a cupboard shelf for years. The ruined sauce ate a hole in the can and then spewed black gunk on everything around.

Emotionally, many of us have closets full of ruined tomato sauce cans. Yet, we've never identified and removed the source of the gunk corroding every aspect of our lives.

Thing is, we see the dangers of wallowing in grief. We know how grating, how maddening it is to repeat endlessly the same measure in a minor key, like a phonograph with its needle stuck. We know how unhealthy, how destructive it is to keep drowning in loss, never able to accept a hand up.

We do not want to wallow in grief. We try valiantly to avoid it. Yet, swerving to miss one ditch, we plunge into the other. We do not see the dangers of failing to grieve. We do not see the blessing in taking the path of mourning.

The Bible does tell those who know Christ as Lord not to grieve as those "who have no hope" (1 Thess. 4:13). But it does not tell us not to grieve. In fact, our Lord himself says in Matthew 5:4, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted."

Further, Romans 12:15 instructs us to "mourn with those who mourn" - not to goad them to instant cheer.

Isaiah the prophet described the genuine comfort God gives, the comfort we're able to minister to one another by his Spirit: "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me ... to bind up the brokenhearted ... to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair" (Isa. 61:1-3).

David the shepherd-king experienced this comfort. He cried to God, "You have turned my mourning into joyful dancing. You have taken away my clothes of mourning and clothed me with joy, that I might sing praises to you and not be silent" (Ps. 30:11-12 NLT).

On whom does God bestow this beauty, dancing, joy and praise? On the despairing, the grief-stricken, the heartbroken. All these blessings come to those who walk a path that looks anything but blessed.

Paul the apostle wrote, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God" (2 Cor. 1:3-4).

Notice: We cannot comfort others until we ourselves receive God's comfort. And we cannot receive God's comfort until we face and feel grief.

Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted.

Ah, but in our church culture, we count expressions of grief as sin, and suppressing grief a virtue. We expect the God-fearing mourner - whether ourselves or someone else - to skip mourning and instantly assume the role of comforter.

Eager not to dishonor God, distress others or embarrass ourselves, we have thus perfected the art of short-circuiting grief.

Notice how the American Heritage Dictionary defines short circuit: "A low-resistance connection established by accident or intention between two points in an electric circuit. The current tends to flow through the area of low resistance, bypassing the rest of the circuit."

A quicker way to a desired end sounds like a good thing - especially when the quicker way appears to avoid pain. But when an electric current finds a shorter path of very low resistance, the current becomes very strong. Damage, overheating and fires result.

Thus, in electricity, short-circuiting temporarily takes a shorter route to complete a circuit. Yet soon, short-circuiting destroys the circuit and shuts down anything dependent on it.

In a similar way, short-circuiting grief may temporarily appear to resolve it. Yet denying and stuffing grief - thus taking the path of least resistance - only strengthens the "current" beyond what you were wired to handle, bypassing resolution, impeding healing and causing damage you would not have suffered if you had given yourself permission to grieve.

Short-circuiting grief never moves you past grief. Rather, it shuts you down. It leaves you stuck in the very place you're trying desperately to avoid.

Grieving involves both your soul and your spirit. Grief becomes blessing when you do two things: let yourself feel what you're feeling, and let God lead you through it and out the other side.

You mourn. He comforts.

That sounds easy. In reality, it's tough. Letting yourself feel what you're feeling involves pain. It requires paying attention to emotions you wish would go away. It means refusing to try to reason yourself out of grief, refusing to pretend it's not there.

In his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, Peter Scazzaro tells about Jane, a member of a small group that had spent three weeks "exploring how both our families and ethnic histories have impacted our present lives." Scazzaro says, "For the first time in her life, she was turning toward her losses, not avoiding them." When he asked Jane how she was doing, she confessed, "'Pete, I keep thinking that if I continue going down this road of truly grieving my losses, I might die.'"

Yet, that way alone lies life. Scazzaro says, "emotionally healthy faith admits the following:

·         I am bewildered.

·         I don't know what God is doing right now.

·         I am hurt.

·         I am angry.

·         Yes, this is mystery.

·         I am very sad right now.

·         O God, why have you forsaken me?"

It is good to grieve. You're doing well when you mourn. You are blessed when you do not ignore the emotions that accompany loss, but rather acknowledge them, embrace them, express them, learn from them - and watch God transform them.

That's where your spirit comes in. With your human spirit yielded to God's Spirit, you take what you're feeling to God, not just once, but again and again. Honestly, openly you tell him what he already knows but you desperately need to express. You resign from trying to take over his role of comforting. Instead, you mourn, opening the way for the Comforter to come.

He knows when you have grief stuck inside you that you haven't even recognized, what it's done to you and the most redemptive way to reveal and dislodge it. He knows when to let you rant, when to hold you while you cry, when and what to explain, what to leave unsaid. He knows when and how to expose root causes. He knows what you're still trying to clutch and when you need to let go. He knows how to work inside you so that grief does not eat you up, but rather enlarges you.

Never leaving you for a moment, he will shepherd you through the valley. As much as you long to find yourself beyond the pain, you will reach the other side only by going through with him. By his voice, his touch, he affirms, informs and ultimately transforms your emotions. Gently, lovingly, he fills the deep places grief has carved out - bringing healing and release into your spirit, soul and body. In his time, his way, he turns mourning into dancing. He crafts from ashes a thing of stunning beauty.

Blessed are those who mourn. They will be comforted.

Concertos are lovely musical pieces performed by an orchestra and a solo instrument, typically in three movements. Concertos take time. Resolution comes, not in the first few bars, but at the end.

Expressing grief is like playing a concerto's second movement, written in a minor key.

It's a solo none of us wants, but all of us gets.

Of course, you can try to reject it. You can try jumping from the first movement to the third, believing you can - and must - resolve grief without playing the whole song.

Or you may recognize how desperately you need to mourn - and to let God comfort. But when you start playing those minor tones, people around you will often skip to the finale. Then everyone will look at you like you're the one who messed up.

Don't be fooled. The comfort, the blessing, the joy, the dancing come only from playing the whole song - including every minor chord. You don't want to needlessly repeat the second movement, but you simply cannot hurry past it.

As you express your grief, the Comforter will not withdraw, repulsed. Oh no. He will receive your raw emotion and distill it into a song of solace. At just the right moment, he will give you grace to change keys and move on.

In the big middle of the mourning, ask the God of all comfort to send you comforters who have themselves been comforted, people who've walked through their own dark night of grief into the God-sent dawn. They will give you permission to grieve. Gently, they'll assure you, "New joy will come."

. . . . . . .

short circuit. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/short circuit.

Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Thomas Nelson, 2006, 140, 122.

 

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