Author: melissamagdsick

What Platitudes are Telling the Griever

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Sometimes I wonder if there is a group of people who have lost a loved one, and they hear a platitude, and they sigh with satisfaction and say, “That is just what I needed to hear.” Maybe there are. I haven’t met any yet. It doesn’t mean they aren’t out there. So far, I and my fellow grievers I’ve had the pleasure to join hands with are in agreement: platitudes hurt.

What’s the big deal with platitudes? Or sharing God’s word with someone experiencing loss? Or pointing them to the hope in Jesus? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? I’ve heard 1 Thessalonians 4 read at Christian end-of-life services, most often with a tone of positivity. The message is, “We shouldn’t grieve without hope! They will rise again.” Doesn’t sharing God’s promises with the grieving fall under 1 Thessalonians 4:18, “Therefore, encourage one another with these words”?

I’m guessing many of us believe so. However, grieving and walking with those who are grieving is more complex. This is one section of Scripture that informs how we grieve. There are many more we need to consider. As a Bible teacher, one of the tools we use is to let Scripture interpret Scripture. This won’t be an exegesis on 1 Thessalonians 4, though I will also draw our attention to a verse that seems to be the banner verse for this blog series, Romans 12:15. “Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” We’re not great at the weeping with each other part. So let’s look at what sharing platitudes, Bible verses, the “at least” statements, and the like are telling the griever, and what would be a better comfort.

Megan Devine is an author, psychotherapist, podcaster and grief advocate. In her book, “It’s OK That You’re Not OK” she talks about one potential problem behind the desire to give said platitudes. On page 20, Megan says,

“Most people approach grief as a problem to be solved. Your friends and family see you in pain, and they want to relieve your pain. Whether that aim is stated clearly or not, it’s the sole reason why words of comfort usually feel anything but comforting to you in your grief. Intentionally or not, by trying to solve your grief, they aren’t giving you the support you actually need.”

This can be a common motivation. Let’s get you out of your grief! Out of your pain! The problem with this, as Megan goes on to say later, is:

“Grief is not a problem to be solved; it’s an experience to be carried.”

When 1 Thessalonians 4 is used improperly, it’s used as a cover-up for grief, a reason to rejoice. It directs the bereaved to mask their pain, not bring it to Jesus, who is grieved with them.

Another thing I wonder is how many Christians today, if they were transported back to Lazarus’ tomb when Jesus arrived, would have scolded Jesus for weeping. “You know he’s going to rise again! In fact, it’s going to happen in the next three minutes! What’s the big deal? Dry those tears; it’s Resurrection Day!”

So many grievers today get that message, and I firmly believe it angers our God.

Another point Megan brings out in her book is the hidden message behind these words of comfort. She calls it the ghost sentence, or the second, unspoken half of the sentence.

“The problem is, there’s an implied second half of the sentence in all those familiar lines. That second half of the sentence unintentionally dismisses or diminishes your pain; it erases what is true now in favor of some alternate experience. That ghost-sentence tells you it’s not OK to feel how you feel. Ex: “At least you had her for as long as you did. (so stop feeling so bad).”  If you cringe or feel angry when friends and family try to comfort you, it’s because you hear the second half of that sentence, even when they don’t say it out loud. The implication is always there, speaking louder in its own silence: stop feeling how you feel.”

  • “At least she’s not suffering” (so stop feeling sad)
  • “You can have other children” (so stop feeling sad)
  • “He died thirty years ago” (so stop feeling sad)

Think about 1 Thessalonians 4 again. When used well, it will free people to do what Paul is saying: grieve with hope. Unfortunately, it’s often misused with the ghost sentence: “They will rise again” (so stop feeling sad), telling people they shouldn’t grieve at all.

Megan continues,

“Friends and family want you to feel better. They want to take away your pain. What they don’t understand is that in trying to take your pain away, they’re actually dismissing and minimizing the extent of your grief. They aren’t seeing your reality for what it is. They don’t see you.“

Here is the main problem with these platitudes and the ghost sentence. It’s not how God responds when we hurt.

I have been combing my Bible since Mom died to see what God says about pain, grief, sadness, lament, and death. I felt terribly wrong for feeling so devastated. Especially when I would get these kind of statements. It felt like I was sinning. Thankfully, I chose not to listen to that guilt but to seek what God actually says. I’m not done, but let me tell you, I have found nowhere in Scripture that tells me to avoid my pain or to stop feeling sad. In fact, I’ve found the opposite. I’ve seen that God grieves, God laments, counts my tears. Jesus weeps and wails, he’s well acquainted with our grief, is ever present in my sorrow. The Holy Spirit groans on our behalf. The psalmists and prophets hurl their unfiltered pain at God. Grievers are in good company with the God of the Bible. He knows. He sees you. He sees your pain. And he feels it too.

Isn’t this a better way? To see the one who is grieving? To bear witness to this part of their story? Megan agrees.

“To truly feel comforted by someone, you need to feel heard in your pain. You need the reality of your loss reflected back to you — not diminished, not diluted. It seems counterintuitive, but true comfort in grief is in acknowledging the pain, not in trying to make it go away.”

Mark Vroegrop, a pastor and the president of The Gospel Coalition, wrote a book on lament called “Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy”. In it, he shares how his church began to transform as they learned how to lament together. One thing he observed was that as lament became an option, grieving people started coming out of the woodwork. There are many hurting people who have had no avenue to bring their pain to church, or even to God. They stay silent, because it seems no one wants to hear that part of their story. How unlike God that is. He wants all of it. Raw form. Every part of us. Including the most devastating and most ugly.

I’ll wrap up this post with one more quote from Megan Devine. She says,

“It is an immense relief to be able to tell your story without someone trying to fix it.”

Isn’t that true? It is part of the process of grieving. We need our story to be heard, and to be witnessed. We don’t need anyone to fix it. Thankfully, Jesus does this for us, no matter how terrible we are at doing it ourselves. But again, if we’re his body, this is something in which we should be growing. If you don’t know how to help a grieving person, start by listening. Simply ask them to share. Get curious about their loss. If they feel safe sharing, know that you don’t have to say anything. You’re being asked to witness and to enter a sacred part of their heart. So witness it, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll be strong enough to feel some of their pain along with them. Perhaps you’ll even weep with those who weep.

Avoiding Versus Facing

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A friend of mine (we’ll call her Billie) shared a story with me a few weeks ago. Her friend, struggling through addiction and significant mental health issues, was in a dire place. Billie came, sat with her friend in her mess, and offered what she believed would have given her a way toward health. A better option than the alcohol.

Still drunk, Billie’s friend stopped and looked at her through the haze.

“You have no idea what my pain feels like.”

Billie blinked. She was right. She had no idea what her friend’s pain felt like.

Billie did an about face. She sat with her friend while the alcohol wore off, and instead of offering advice at that moment, she offered presence. She knew her friend had a painful story, but this stopped her to consider its impact. Billie began putting herself in her friend’s shoes. And compassion for her grew.

Grief is similar. While grief is universal (we will all grieve), it is also incredibly unique. No one else beyond God knows our particular pain. Yet that not-knowing does not mean we can’t help. The community around a griever is a key ingredient in their integration process (integrating this unwanted chapter into their story). Unfortunately, pain-avoidant people and churches often react to grievers in a couple unhelpful ways.

  1. They will avoid the one in pain.
  2. They will try to get you out of your pain (through reasoning, platitudes, Bible verses, truths about God’s goodness or plan, attempts to cheer the grieving person to look at the bright side).

Both options are opposite of how God responds to our grief and pain, and both are painful to the hurting. When someone attempts #2 with me, I want to look at them, and like Billie’s friend, say, “You have no idea what my pain is like.”

(Side note to grievers: when someone avoids your pain or tries to rescue you out of it, it’s likely because it will make THEM feel better. People who are uncomfortable with prolonged pain often don’t know what they are doing. They need help knowing how to walk through significant pain with God and others.)

When we’re deeply suffering, the goal, especially as Christians, is not to rid ourselves of our pain, but to enter it with our Savior. To feel it, to cry out to him in it, as Jesus and the psalmists teach us. To let him do with it what he will. Our goal should be to submit to him in it, not try to escape from it.

How does God respond to our pain?

God does not try to rush us out of our pain but meets us in it. God draws near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18), and saves the crushed in spirit. He invites us to enter a process with him. He welcomes struggle and our raw honesty with him. He does not hit us with untimely truth but is patient in our process. He hurts with us. He cares so much about our pain that he’s numbered each one of our tears. He never leaves us alone in it. He bears our broken hearts, and yes, over time, he will redeem our losses.

I can hear some objections already. What about when the hurting need this one particular reminder? What if they aren’t believing a truth about God that would really help them? What if I share this one piece of advice which really worked for me?

There certainly is a time when grieving people need words of exortation, or reminders of what is true of God and them. Consider with me, however, for a moment how often these reminders come to mind when you encounter a grieving person.

  • “Jesus hates the death of your brother.”
  • “Let me weep with you.”
  • “Because God is near to you, so too will I be.”
  • “Death is wrong and ugly.”
  • “Tell me what you went through, and how you’re feeling right now. I will just listen.”

These are truths and concepts from God’s word that offer compassion. Ask a grieving person how many Christians have approached them with presence and acknowledgement of their horror. It’s sadly not a large number. Instead of a variation of the above examples, grievers tend to receive messages like, “God is good”, “You are loved”, “At least they’re not suffering anymore”, “God needed an angel”.

Words of encouragement from the Bible are not what a deeply grieving person needs first, because that’s not how God initially meets them in their pain. He feels it with them. He draws near. He gives his presence, not answers or reasons. When a time does come to speak, words are best given and accepted in the context of a relationship, where the giver has first seen, known, and felt the bereaved’s pain. Personally, I will listen to the people who have allowed me to grieve, and who have grieved with me. I don’t let in people who are yelling truths about God at me from a distance. The people on Sunday mornings who approach cautiously to offer a verse or a prayer when they haven’t asked, listened, wept, sat, or just been with me, don’t get a voice at my table. The people who have, do. If you want to help, first get close. Get dirty. Feel. Grieve. Get messy with me. Then we have relationship where comfort, correction, encouragement, support, and love are welcomed.

Job’s friends did the first part beautifully. They heard of his devastation, and they came, they mourned, and they sat with Job in silence. Exactly right.

A lot of what grievers hear if they go to a church that has little space for grief is that Jesus brings victory, joy, hope, and resurrection power. I’ve heard various pastors say something to the effect that every Sunday should be Easter Sunday; a celebration of the triumph of his death and resurrection. Since Jesus rose from the dead, we have every reason to rejoice. While this is true, it is very unbalanced. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead does not negate suffering, mourning, death, loss, and trauma. The resurrection does not mean we should not grieve. Indeed, we’re called to grieve with hope (1 Thess. 4:13). Positive churches have no problem with hope. They have a problem with grieving. Romans 12:15 tells us to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. We have the rejoicing down well. We need to grow in our weeping. Yes, even on this side of the cross.

When the good news of Jesus is used as an escape from pain (ex: telling a mother who lost a baby that her child is in heaven), it cheapens the good news of the resurrection. I know it sounds like trying to give this mother hope, but it actually shallows the gospel. It’s misapplied. It tells her not to address her grief, but to ignore it, minimize it, or mask her grief with a smile. You may not realize it, but escaping from her pain harms her and others. Un-addressed grief negatively affects our relationships with others and our relationship with God. It leads to unhealthy coping mechanisms, skewed theology, and more brokenness. If you try to eject her from her pain, you’re also trying to eject her from the presence and work of God that he has for her through this horror.

That mother first needs to know the depth of her grief. She needs the courage and strength to name it and feel it, and those positive words will not help. They will hinder. To actually encourage someone means filling them with courage, helping them face what they are reluctant or timid to face. “Your child is in heaven” types of platitudes are an attempt not to encourage her to enter her pain with Jesus, but to escape from it. To make her feel better. Yes, the thought that Jesus is holding her child may bring some hope, but it’s incomplete. She is living her worst nightmare. She will bear that pain of the loss of her child the rest of her life, though it will change over the years. She will need presence, patience, witnesses to her pain and her process, ongoing support. She will need to know how to wail her anguish to God. She will need people who help her face it, to learn to bear what feels unbearable. Through her aching heart, she may learn to ache for Jesus in a way she never did when her child was with her. It is in the depths of our sorrows that the riches of Jesus are found.

Instead of telling someone who is walking through the valley of the shadow of death that the sun is out where you are, think of how Jesus responds to our pain. He is in the valley with us. If we’re his body, the touch of Jesus on earth, we should also walk with each other through our valleys.

There comes a point, when the bereaved has lived with the ripping away of their loved one long enough, when they’ve tasted and known how horrible life can be, that the promises of God become very precious in a deeper way. Jesus himself becomes more and more of a desire of your heart. Not because you minimized your pain, but because you are living out your pain with your suffering Savior. It is an extremely costly place. Waiting for justice. Waiting to see your loved one again. Waiting for the rest of your life while aching for your faith to be made sight is a tall order. But because the darkness is much darker than you’ve ever known, God’s promises in Jesus shine brighter than you’ve ever realized.

This is a process. And you can’t rush the process. You can’t shove God’s promises at a hurting person and expect them to light up with hope and stop hurting. It doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t work that way. He knows what it is to live with continual pain. Tears with faith. Weeping and trust. Longing and living. They’re not opposites. Sorrow and joy hold hands. God allows pain to be a process, and he is in it with us. He never asks us to only have a smile. He, above all else, understands what it is to live with so much wrong in the world.

What is so hopeful to me about this process of change is that none of us will get it right. Just like life. We’ve already all failed at loving others in their pain at some point. The ultimate question here is that if we’ve blundered and unknowingly hurt grieving people, do we see that? Do we want to learn and change? Like Billie, all we have to do is admit we have some learning to do, and begin. Listen to grieving people. With no agenda. Read some books. I have a great book list if you’re interested. Above all, ask God to make your heart for the hurting more like his heart. I like how Tim Keller ended his sermon, “Praying Our Tears.” He prays, “Father, make us happy enough to weep.”

Amen.

Introduction

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This post marks the beginning of a series of what traumatic grief has taught me about loving God and loving others.  

If you told me I’d be writing about grief, trauma, death, loss, and lament, and its relationship to Christian faith and church life, I think I would have laughed outright.

And here I am. Ironic, isn’t it?

It’s a difficult subject. To lay it out there right from the start, it’s a subject I have been living intensely for over two years. It’s a deeply painful one, and would be easy to avoid. Believe me, a part of me does not want to write any of this. Yet I write because it has the potential to bring healing to the hurting, a voice for the voiceless, growth and health for the church, and hope in the darkest corners life has to offer us. Above all, I write so that people will see and know God more fully through pain. 

Faith in Jesus Christ comes with many paradoxes that blow our limited understanding of him out of the water. Through defeat comes victory. Through our weaknesses we know God’s strength. Through losing everything, we gain everything. This is no different. I am finding the richest of treasure as I lean into the deepest pain I have ever known. 

Sadly, I’ve been discovering these treasures in spite of my church. It has broken my heart, because I believed that I could and should find them because of my church. Yet it’s not the case. There are many reasons for this which I will expound later, but for now, we need to start by naming a problem. It’s not a problem with every church. In fact, I’ve been delighted to hear some friends share how deeply loved and supported they have been by their home churches in times of great distress. But a common narrative I’ve heard and experienced is that most churches in our culture don’t know what to do with pain, loss, trauma, and death. 

J. Todd Billings, an author and professor and father of two, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in his 30s. He shared this in his book, Rejoicing in Lament. “Since my diagnosis with cancer, I’ve found that my fellow Christians know how to rejoice about answered prayer and also how to petition God for help, but many don’t know what to do when I express sorrow and loss or talk about death. In some sense, this lack of affective agility in their faith is not surprising since our corporate worship has lost many of the elements that are so prominent in the psalms of lament. Somehow, expressions of deep grief and loss have been evacuated from the sanctuary.”

It’s not only the sanctuary. The problem runs deep. You may be familiar with Eugene Peterson, best known for his paraphrase of the Bible called The Message. He wrote a forward for Michael Card’s book, A Sacred Sorrow, in which he asks this: “Why are Christians, of all people, embarrassed by tears, uneasy in the presence of sorrow, unpracticed in the language of lament? It certainly is not a biblical heritage, for virtually all our ancestors in the faith were thoroughly “acquainted with grief.” And our Savior was, as everyone knows, a “Man of Sorrows.” 

Why, indeed?

Many have testified to this problem, myself included. The ironic thing is: I have been part of the problem. Before my mother’s illness and death, I had certainly known grief and loss. But I, too, was embarrassed by tears, uneasy with sorrow, and did not know how to lament. As a committed church volunteer, I responded poorly to people’s pain. Over time, I realized the way I handle other’s pain is closely related to how I handle my own. My unhealed wounds and my unhealthy coping mechanisms were influencing how I navigated any sorrow. For example: one way I dealt with significant pain was to avoid feeling it. Numb the pain. I would unconsciously then seek to avoid others’ pain as well. Feeling their pain would mean feeling my own. And that would be unbearable. So I would avoid it with unhelpful platitudes such as, “At least you have ______.” Or I would simply avoid people in deep sorrow, because I didn’t know what to do.

Our personal, unhealthy coping mechanisms are not the only reason churches and Christians handle pain poorly, but it certainly is one of them. 

My beloved mother’s diagnosis of tongue cancer, her suffering as I cared for her, and her death six months later, changed me. Trauma, grief, and loss were now part of my life. I began to see the problem. I saw how clueless I had been. And I began to see how we could help.

Sheldon Vanauken writes on the death of his wife in A Severe Mercy, “That death, so full of suffering for us both, suffering that still overwhelmed my life, was yet a severe mercy. A mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as love.” 

I cringe to say this. I don’t like it. And I have found it to be true. That hell-ish season of our lives, of losing Mom, is proving to be a severe mercy. 

There are many good works already written on grief, lament, death, and navigating loss. Nancy Guthrie, Mark Vroegrop, Rob Moll, Clarissa Moll, Michael Card, J. Todd Billings, and Jerry Sittser are a few of my favorites. I don’t mean to replicate their work but move it a step forward. Grief and lament are a vital part of our Christian life, and one that is often undertaught, misunderstood, and absent in our church life. It does not have to be this way. How do we open the doors to the lessons grief, lament, death and loss have for us? Particularly if we are in a culture that avoids pain so intentionally? How do we reclaim our biblical heritage of sorrow and lament? Not as a masochistic exercise, but by acknowledging and entering the reality of brokenness and devastation we currently endure? How do we groan while we wait for the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23-25)? How do we learn to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15)? How do we grieve with hope (1 Thess. 4:13)? How do we better image our God, who is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18)? 

When we choose to enter both others’ pain and our own, God, through his word, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit in us, offers us so much more of himself than we have ever known.

The church needs grieving people. And grieving people need the church. Unfortunately, many churches avoid pain and use Jesus, the gospel, and the Bible to do so. Among the many problems with this, the most serious ones are: 1. This misrepresents who God is and how he responds to sin, pain, and death. 2. This reinforces damaging theology. 3. This tells hurting image-bearers that their pain doesn’t belong in church or with God.

Nothing could be further from the truth God gives us in Scripture. 

In this series, I’ll be writing to two groups: the helping and the hurting. The Christians who want to better help the grieving, and those who are in the midst of their pain. Both are essential, and both are struggling. And both need each other.

Easter For A Bereaved Daughter

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It has been almost two years since Mom died. Never having gone through this intense of a loss, I don’t know what to expect. As the church builds their anticipation toward Easter this year, I find myself increasingly frustrated and hurt by the imbalance (more on that later). So much victory, so little heartbreak. Where do I belong?

Our worship band tends to pull out “Easter Sunday” songs before the actual day in order to get the congregation familiar with them. Revving the engine, so to speak. I know. I used to be part of it. It never bothered me before. After grief, worship music is different. One song in particular has rubbed me the wrong way: Dead Things Come Alive by Brandon Lake, Chris Brown and Elevation Worship. It’s a gloriously positive song, highlighting that Jesus is a healer, savior, all-powerful, the one who crushes the serpent’s head, the one with dominion over death. Yes and amen. I believe that. The end of the song repeats these couple things: “Where, oh death, is now your sting? And where, oh grave, your victory?” This quotes 1 Corinthians 15:55. The other refrain repeated is “Dead things come alive in the name of Jesus.”

All true statements. All things I believe and are great cause for hope as a Christian. But it’s incomplete. It’s out of balance. It’s overwhelming victory with little to no grief. I can already hear the argument: “But there’s the Good Friday service.” Yes, there is. One time a year we allow ourselves to look at sin’s effect on us and the world, and to grieve it. Once a year. That is, if our church allows a minor key service for Good Friday. Some can’t hold the tension even on that day, and put in victorious worship songs. Assuming we do it well, once a year is not enough. It is a symptom of our pain-avoidance as a church that we cannot grieve, mourn, weep and lament together on a regular basis. The lament psalms are around a third of Israel’s public praise songs. We are not even close to that. It’s a great miss, considering how much difficulty and pain we walk through in this life.

C.S. Lewis also experienced this death-aversion, and had this to say in A Grief Observed. “It is hard to have patience with people who say ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter. I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?”

We celebrate births, and ask how the mother and father and child are doing as he/she grows. We check in, we celebrate milestones. We know that life matters. When someone dies, we don’t know what to do. We get uncomfortable. After the funeral, we never mention that person’s name. We don’t check in on how the bereaved are doing. We don’t recognize milestones or anniversaries. We don’t remember the dead in our services or conversations. We don’t sing their grief. We don’t pray their groans. Perhaps your church does. Most do not.

I was in a GriefShare group when our worship band began rehearsing that song. Over and over, I could hear “Dead things come alive in the name of Jesus” while we were grappling with the pain of our mother/daughter/wife/father’s death. The irony was not lost on me. While some people can worship to that song, it hit me like an arrow in the heart. What I heard was, “Dead things come alive in the name of Jesus, except your mom. Maybe you didn’t pray in the name of Jesus enough.” Another part of me fought back and said, “No, dead things don’t come alive. Not now. I know my mother will rise again, but dead things also stay dead. For years.”

It wouldn’t be as painful to hear this song if we would actually acknowledge the sting death brings in the present. But all we do now is celebrate that death has no victory or sting. Then what is this agony inside me? Jesus never meant for us to live only celebrating. Faith and tears coexist. Trust can look like bringing doubts and questions to God. Weeping does not mean there is no hope. Can not both be true? Can’t we weep over death while believing there is resurrection coming? I can weep with great sorrow because my mom is dead, while trusting God will raise her from the dead. I can ache and ask God all my questions while believing his promises are true.

1 Corinthians 15 was written to some people who didn’t believe there was a resurrection of the dead. Paul was writing to convince and explain to them what is true of Jesus’ death and resurrection and what will be true of us when we rise. Our church context today has no trouble remembering we will rise again, but spends almost no time mourning or grieving death, disappointment and loss. The grave is empty, but we’re not sad it was filled in the first place. We’re out of balance, and that alienates people who are deeply grieving. More than that, it hurts the church, who is not equipped to walk through great trials, who don’t mourn the things God mourns, and who have no deep comfort to offer those whose lives have blown up. It’s a shallow worship when we don’t weep over our Lazarus’ death. 1 Corinthians 15:55 was not written so people would not mourn. It was written so that they could “stand firm” and “let nothing move you (1 Corinthians 15:58). It was written so they could continue on in their faith.

Sometimes faith is celebration. Sometimes it is weeping with great sorrow. Sometimes is it living with a continual ache, with part of you missing until you meet Jesus yourself. That’s a long time to wait. And living with that deep ache is exactly what your victorious Savior is an expert in. He not only rose from the dead, he suffered. He groaned. He wept. He lamented. He knew grief intimately and deeply. He knows your story and walks through every moment of it with you. Yes, on Easter Sunday, many people’s expectations of worship will be rejoicing with loud singing, smiles, hands raised, celebrating the victory of Jesus’ resurrection. Your Easter offering may be tears, weeping, aching, and groaning, seeking to continue on when the weight is heavy. Even if the church doesn’t recognize your weeping and groaning as worship, Jesus does. He sees it, and it honors him. It’s a beautiful Easter offering.

Is Crying “Wrong?”

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I’ve heard it so often, and said it so often when tears are present. “What’s wrong?” It’s one of the most common phrases people say when they move toward someone visibly hurting. Another common thing we hear around tears is, “I’m sorry.” The one I am thinking of specifically is said by the hurting person, apologizing for their tears. However, if someone is talking to a friend and that friend begins crying, sometimes you’ll also hear “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry”.

The other thing crying, or tears, will do is act as a repellent. Every Sunday that I had energy and the constitution to be in our church building the first year after Mom died, my tears were plentiful. They still are, though not five tissues a morning anymore. I can certain tell you that my tears, physical evidence to my grief, acted like Deet to a mosquito swarm. People avoided me. Not always. Sometimes someone would see me and instead of avoiding eye contact or ignoring the obvious, they attempted to connect. I appreciated the effort. And I would often hear, “What’s wrong?”

It is a trying question to answer when a wave of grief has hit you. And you know the person means well, and they actually approached you instead of busying themselves with something else. You don’t want to scare them away with your current emotional state, but you also want to be honest. What do you say? “Well, a memory just hit me of when I was in the ICU with Mom, seeing her torn apart and in continual agony, and I’m struggling to see how God could have allowed this, and I’m missing her dreadfully while also feeling so grateful for her life. So I guess what’s wrong is that my mom is dead, people treat me as if I have the plague, everything in my life has changed, I don’t know who I am anymore, and I desperately miss my mom.”

Should we say the brutal truth? Do we give a small hook into our reality and see if they “bite”, wanting to know more? Do we simply answer, “Grief”? What do we say? Honestly, I don’t believe this question has one answer. It depends too much on the individuals, the context, the interwoven stories at play as two people connect. However, I share this to bring up a point about tears. When someone is visibly hurting, we tend to 1. apologize 2. ask what’s wrong, or 3. avoid. These options fall short of what is very much needed.

APOLOGIZE

We must be very careful to note that the tears are a healthy response to suffering, grief, loss, and death. They are appropriate and fitting. Tears aren’t wrong. Tears are right. They are a sign of something that has gone wrong. They are a sign of pain. They should never be apologized for. I understand the discomfort. People come up to me, begin talking to me, and then when they see me crying seem to feel responsible for causing my tears. They apologize. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you cry.” I have heard this same experience over and over from others who are grieving, and here’s what we want to say. “You didn’t cause our tears. You helped me cry them. They were under the surface. You saw me, you cared enough to stop and acknowledge my pain, and you gave them a path to flow. You are helping me grieve. You are helping me bear my sorrow.” If you’ve helped us cry, it is something not to apologize for, but to hold as precious and sacred. So many people and circumstances tell us our tears are unwelcome. You just made space for them. That’s significant. And when you cry, you have done nothing wrong. Chances are you’ve done something very brave and good: you’ve felt some of the pain in your life. You have acknowledged the reality of something broken. If Jesus indeed saves our tears in a bottle, counting every one, what does that tell us about how precious they are to him?

ASK WHAT’S WRONG

Of course, the heart behind the “What’s wrong?” question is usually a good one. We sense that something has indeed gone wrong. Something isn’t right. We want to to know what it is. Asking “What’s wrong?” can imply that tears are wrong, but also that there is a problem, and to every problem there is a solution. As any person grieving a death could testify, there is no fixing this problem. No one can bring our loved one back. And we don’t expect any listener to fix. We want presence in our sorrow, not a solution. What I would love to be asked instead of “What’s wrong?” is “What are these tears for today? Or, “What are you grieving?” “Where are these tears coming from?” These are more inviting. It helps the grieving one know you want to see their pain, not solve it. Hurting people desperately want to be seen and acknowledged in their pain.

AVOID

The more I’ve lived with my grief and talked with other grieving people, I see the same thing. People want their pain to be seen and acknowledged. Not fixed. Presence, not practicals. Many of us, myself included, have left people alone in their pain, because 1. we don’t know what to do, 2. we don’t want to make it worse, 3. we assume someone else is looking out for them, 4. we assume they want to be left alone, or 5. we simply don’t want anything to do with such pain.

The trouble with reason 1 (not knowing what to do) is a belief that we should be able to do something to help, or to fix it. The irony is that what actually helps is acknowledging you can’t fix it. Where else in life is that true? If our car was in the shop, and we talk with our mechanic about our options, and he says, “Sorry, ma’am, your car needs a new transmission, and I can’t put it in for you.” That doesn’t help us at all. But with grief, when someone sees your pain and makes space for it, when they are willing to feel some of it with you, it does help. It brings a little bit of healing. It helps them bear their sorrow. Realizing you can’t fix it and making space for pain is exactly what grieving people need.

The second reason (we don’t want to make it worse) falls apart quickly when we understand that neglect tends to be more painful than a beginner’s attempt. This is confirmed in the psychology world. I have read that neglectful/emotionally distant homes cause similar traumatic childhood wounds as physically abusive homes. Neglect is terribly harmful. One pain I wasn’t prepared for was the pain of avoidance from so many. In our culture, it’s rare to have pain held well. It’s another loss the bereaved mourns. I remember a few different people who responded to my grief insensitively. I told both of them that it hurt, and recommended a resource that helped others know what to do when someone is grieving. One person took my advice, read the book, learned, and began to respond helpfully. The others kept silent, and haven’t tried to reach out again.

To the third reason (assuming someone else is taking care of them), don’t assume someone hurting is receiving presence and care. Chances are, in our society and particularly in churches, people willing and able to support and love a struggling, grieving person well is the exception, not the rule. In our experience, our family was strongly supported practically while Mom was sick, yet as soon as she died, we were left alone in our grief. There are a few exceptions, a few who did move close to us in our pain. The majority did not. Of course, everyone has a unique experience, and this isn’t a blanket statement. Sometimes I hear beautiful stories of how people drew near to the grieving and allowed their friends’ pain to change them. Ask a grieving person about their experience, if you’re curious.

The fourth reason (assuming they want to be left alone), is also damaging. How do you know that’s what they want? Have you asked? People grieve differently. Also, it is such a process. It is never done. It changes, and the griever changes over time. It is always better to ask, not assume. What if you approached a hurting person to check in with them? You can offer what you have, so they have less of a load on them. An example is, “I see that you’re in pain. Would you like to talk about it, or would you like to be left alone right now?” Don’t take their answer today to be their answer tomorrow. They may need to be left alone today, and may need to talk tomorrow. Another helpful question is, “How is your grief journey today?” Avoid the “Let me know what you need” statement. Grieving people often don’t know what they need, don’t know what you’re able to offer, and will probably forget who said that to them. Most of all, it puts the load directly on the griever to reach out to you, when they are the one who needs to be pursued, over a long period of time.

To reason 5, simply not wanting anything to do with such pain, I resonate. I understand so deeply. Before Mom got sick, I had become an expert at avoiding pain. Despite my broken story, I saw the silver lining in my own life, and sadly, I’m sure I tried to spread that silver lining to hurting people. I hate pain. I don’t want to hurt. Now, not by choice, I am now a reminder to others who were like me that their loved one could also be gone at any moment, that life is fleeting, that pain is severe and impartial, that life really can get this hard. My nightmare could also be your nightmare. I think people often avoid me not to hurt me, but to avoid the reminders I bring them. If you are wanting to avoid such pain, I get it. No human wants to hurt, particularly like this. Why in the world would we choose to feel pain, to lean into grief, to open ourselves to suffering, to aches so deep it feels like your heart can’t go on beating? Why would we want to bear another’s suffering along with them?

This is a greater mystery than I can expound. There’s a reason the “Why?” cry has been debated and expounded throughout human history. However, I’ll leave you with a few nuggets to consider. Nugget 1: what other option do we have? How well does avoidance/distraction/numbing/pretending work with the deep pain and wrong of this world? It doesn’t take long to discover that those may help for awhile, but do more damage in the long run. Nugget 2: to love and to lose are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other. If we give up the pain of losing, we give up the joy of loving. Then what becomes of our hearts? Nugget 3: Only one world religion tells of a God who suffers intensely, profoundly, completely. A God who takes all the pain of humanity onto himself, who gets in the pit for the sake of the ones he loves. He suffers to produce salvation and rescue for all who want it. That same God says any who would come after him will suffer likewise in this life, in order to share in the glory of the next.

Opening my heart to my own pain and others is the best and hardest way I have known of living. It’s awful and wonderful. Horrible and beautiful. Joyful and sorrowful. It’s being human, and being alive. It’s living with the ache of the day when all my tears will be wiped away for good. A verse I cling to these days is Revelation 21:4. 

‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’

Tears are not wrong. They are good. And praise Jesus, they are temporary.

More of the Story – November 2023

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Mom’s tongue had swollen so much she couldn’t speak clearly. Her drool was sporadically uncontrollable, making social situations even more uncomfortable. She couldn’t eat well. Her diet was rapidly becoming protein shakes and puddings. Even swallowing was getting harder. Her right ear pain was worsening, the sore on her tongue widening. We were looking for answers. On Monday, November 20, 2023, three days before Thanksgiving, after multiple misdiagnoses and mistreatments, answers came. It was squamous cell carcinoma: cancer. Stage 4, we were to find out in January. Nine days later on 11/29, I was there at the surgeon oncologist’s office when the bomb went off. That day is one of the traumatic moments I’ve been working through in therapy. We walked in, knowing it was cancer, but we were clueless about what treatment or options looked like.

It was worse than we could ever have imagined.

Mom would need a glossectomy (removal of her tongue). How much was still unknown, left to the surgeon’s wisdom when he got in there to see how far the cancer had spread. It could be part of her tongue or all of it, the surface level or into the base. Spoiler alert: it was all of it. They would then take tissue from another part of her body (it turned out to be her leg) in order to rebuild a mound of tissue in her mouth to resemble her tongue. She also needed a neck dissection to remove lymph nodes (a large incision from underneath one ear, along the jawline to the other ear. Very dangerous and delicate. The swelling would be intense, as tissue from her leg would also be added to the neck dissection area as well. This meant a tracheostomy in order for her to breathe, and a PEG tube for her to eat and drink. As soon as she recovered from surgery, which was supposed to be the easy part, she would need to immediately start radiation and chemotherapy in tandem, to give her a chance of making it. Mom would need someone caring for her 24/7 for the trach and the PEG tube, and incision care after the surgery. PT and OT to get stronger, eventually speech therapy to try to learn how to talk without a tongue. She would most likely need her PEG tube for the rest of her life.

We were given this information within a few minutes. I think we were both in shock. I was taking notes, as Mom sat there, being hit with it. Her life as she knew it was over. And it wasn’t the first time. In the last four years I had watched her her grieve the end of her 38-year marriage. She struggled with serious depression and will to live, while doing the bravest work I have ever seen: looking at herself and the reasons she has lived the way she lived. She hadn’t gotten up from that massive hit, now here comes another one. This one felt like a death blow. I remember feeling sick to my stomach, looking around for the best place to throw up if need be. I remember dissociating in order to survive. It was very clear to me that I needed to write down the horrible information coming at us. Mom wasn’t capable. I had to get this info on paper so we could process it later. I remember watching Mom’s face, as she began to take it in. She asked a few questions, and as soon as the oncologist left the room, she put her head down in her hand and started weeping.

I didn’t. I went over to her and hugged her. I sat there with her, feeling sick. I don’t think I said anything. What do you say when that happens?

In the next hour, Ryan the PA came in and helped us process what we just heard. I will always remember how he cared for us by giving us the time we needed to ask our questions. One thing Mom asked from our list of possible questions was what would happen if she declined surgery and treatment? He was very frank, and said Mom would face a slow, painful death. He acknowledged how overwhelming the news was. He connected us to our first social worker. When we left, Mom told me, “Ryan earned his paycheck today.” I agree.

One of the things Ryan asked me was if I had the capacity to care for my mom’s trach and PEG tube. I said yes immediately. I had no idea how to do it, but the staff was very clear that family members or loved ones could learn. The experts train you in hospital. Mom looked at me and asked, “Are you sure?” She had a nursing degree and probably knew much better than I did what I was agreeing to. I said yes. I didn’t need to think twice. And despite the trauma that come with that decision, I’m still honored and grateful that I got the chance to care for her in that way. In the moment, though, as soon as I said yes, there came a heavy fear that my mom might die on my watch. What if I do something wrong? What if I can’t clear her airway? What if she dies, and it’s my fault? It felt like too much to bear. But I had to figure out how to bear it.

We drove home to my house. We had carpooled that day, Mom driving to me so I could take her to and from the appointment. We were still digesting all this in the car on the way home. There we were, the same car, the same people who had driven to the oncologist, but everything had changed. I remember at one point trying to relate to her, and saying something pretty stupid, considering the situation. I said, “Well, I know what it’s like to have to not eat certain foods because of my gingivitis problem.” True, and so pointless and unrelated to what we were taking in. Unhelpful, and I’m sure painful to Mom, though she didn’t say anything about it. I didn’t know what to do. With the exception of a few spurts of conversation, like Mom asking me to tell everyone because she wasn’t up for it, we silently kept taking it in.

It was ugly. Horrific. Traumatizing. To have your only options being a slow, painful death aided by whatever medications available, or a massive surgery that would best case leave you unable to speak or eat the rest of your life. There was nothing else. No other choice. To realize you had been misdiagnosed for months, maybe years. To hear from your oncologists that one of the meds you were taking to help the tongue issue was actually making it worse. To kick yourself for not pushing for a biopsy sooner. To know you were going to be a tremendous burden on your daughter as caregiver. To wonder, if you even made it through surgery, what life would look like afterwards. At 63 years old.

After we got home, Mom collapsed on our couch. She called a friend, and started crying. I stepped in to take over the communication for her. It was yet another moment that day where I put aside whatever I was feeling in order to function for Mom. It became my norm: Mom needs me, so I will do whatever I need to do for her sake. Whatever I was feeling or needing would need to wait. It helped me function, and it also hurt me and Mom (more on that later). After Mom got off the phone, she looked at me with all her tears and feelings at the surface. She told me, “You know, it’s okay to cry.”

In that moment, I heard her words like you hear an echo from the other end of a long tunnel. It registered as true; it didn’t touch me. I had already dissociated from my feelings so strongly in order to take notes, say yes to PEG tube, trach and 24 hour care, drive home, and communicate the news to Mom’s circle of support, that I didn’t know how to both feel and function. How could I cry and also do what needed to be done? How could I face the horror of what was certainly coming, if I allowed myself to feel the horror? I couldn’t do it. I looked at her, and I tried getting in touch with my feelings, but I didn’t know how.

And while I understand that was a normal response to trauma, and while I don’t blame myself in the least, I look back now and I regret it. I wish I could have fallen apart with my mom. I wish I had thrown up in the oncologist’s office. I wish I had cried with her. I wish I had learned how to care for her and grieve with her at the same time. Is that even possible? I don’t know, but on this side of it, I can see ways where it might be. Where you allow the waves of grief to hit, and enjoy the light moments when they come. Where you do what you need to do, but also cry or scream when you need to. Mom did this better than I did in her last 6 months.

This inability to grieve with her kept us from some very valuable conversations, like how she wanted to die, and what she wanted to make sure to do before her life here was over. What relationships needed her attention? What did she need to make sure to tell her loved ones? Who did she need to forgive? Cancer treatment pursues life incessantly, and never talks about the end until it’s clear the cancer has taken over and there are no more options. For us, and for many, by then, it’s too late. When we found out how far it had spread, Mom couldn’t communicate except by hand signals and mouthing. It kept us from helping her prepare to die well. It kept me from more intimacy with her, sharing in our suffering together. We were in it together, going through hell together, with very different roles and experiences in it. There is so much more we could have shared.

It’s never perfect. Like we all are our whole lives, Mom was in process. There were things she wasn’t ready to do. Even before surgery, she and I were working together during December 2023 to get me on top of her finances and legal matters in case she died during surgery. Even in all those appointments, I saw her reach her limit. At one point, in a meeting with a banker, she said she felt like she was dying, and she couldn’t handle it. She had to stop the preparations. Getting my name on her accounts, giving me her passwords and codes, etc. made her so uncomfortable. She wanted so desperately to live. I couldn’t force her to plan for dying. We both were where we were: in process. And I don’t fault either of us for that. I grieve for the missed tears and conversations, and I give us a whole lot of grace for where we were when the bomb hit.

I don’t have a bow to wrap on this. It doesn’t need one. While they make us humans a lot more comfortable, pretty bows or happy endings are not reality for so many of us. This story doesn’t have a bow. It’s a horrible chapter. I’m okay leaving it undone. It’s not the last chapter.

More to come later.

Grief in Year 2

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If this is helpful for you, I’m grateful. Reading other’s processing through their suffering is thirst-quenching for my soul these days. So I’ll share some of my personal processing in the hope that it might encourage someone else.

What does life look like now?

In Robert Moll’s book “The Art of Dying”, he includes wisdom from Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge. First Rob says, “Proper grieving takes time, and taking that time recognizes the importance of the person’s life. When two people…….have intertwined their lives together, it takes time to undo those ties. The grief process acknowledges the depth of the relationship.”

“Any person who loses a loved one needs to recognize, Susan says, “I was attached to this person. I walked through life with this person, and this person has interwoven his or her life with mine. I’m hurting in all the ways that this person was in my life. I have to make some really major adjustments.”

I have a deeper realization that I will continue unpacking, processing and grieving Mom for the rest of my days. This is a snapshot of 17 months after the fact. It is never done. We don’t move on. We continue moving, changed forever by grief. After the first year marker, I struggled under expectations that now all the firsts were over, grief would subside. It would be tamer. I thought I would struggle less and the waves would settle down. At the end of the day, I thought I would hurt less. I desperately wanted (and still do want!) to hurt less. While a lot of this has happened (grief is tamer, and the waves are less violent), I am also experiencing deeper and more painful grief. In many ways, I’m becoming able to hurt more. Part of this is because of the uniqueness of our story (ex: who Mom was to me, our relationship, my age and circumstance when she died, and the insane season of caregiving that preceded her death). The first year for me was full of the firsts, yes. It was also full of unaddressed trauma, executing her will and dealing with her belongings, coming home to grieving children who don’t know what to do and lost their mom as she was, a husband who hung on to single parenting so I could collapse but is also grieving and wounded, learning about grief and trauma, dealing with continuous health issues due to intense caregiving and loss, and more. All of these things are ongoing. It was, and still is, complicated. Layers upon layers. I remember one person’s statement to me at church after her funeral: “At least you’re home now, so life can get back to normal.” I think I smiled and nodded at her, not knowing how to explain that the old normal is gone. Our old normal was buried with Mom. It’s never coming back.

This second year has ushered in the ability to continue grieving with more perspective. The trauma counseling has helped move the trauma so the grief is more free to flow. Craniosacral therapy has been a huge help with this. I had no idea how much grief is held in our bodies. One example is my right lung. A week or so after Mom died, I went down with my first bout of many of fever and congestion. Side note: I think I got sick on average every three weeks for the first six months. After the fever broke, my right lung hung onto a hacking cough. Over a year later, I still have it. After multiple doctor visits, bouts with antibiotics, and x-rays to rule out cancer or other complications, my naturopath explained why right lung congestion is typical and normal for grief, and gave me a way forward to address it. She’s worked with my therapist to help me grieve well. It sounds crazy, as I told my kids the other day, but along with certain supplements, as I learn to welcome the waves of grief and lean into the pain, letting the tears come, my right lung has become more clear.

Some days I just want the pain to stop. It takes so much encouragement for me to keep leaning into the pain. I want it to end. I’m tired of hurting. When I’m “doing well”, it means I’m allowing myself to feel the pain I need to feel in order to grieve. Doing well means feeling pain. Pain I wasn’t able to access in the chaos of the first year. My cranio appointments have been superbly helpful with this. It is one of the few spaces in my life where my grief is welcomed. My therapists understand how much strength it takes to feel this kind of loss. The hard work I do isn’t visible. It’s not attractive. Like I said, I don’t like living with continual pain. But it is incredibly important.

I get why so many of us are terrible companions to the hurting. People quickly become experts at avoiding feeling this way. The TV shows or other distractions are continuously beckoning, signaling “RELIEF” to you. Christians in particular can be experts at using parts of the gospel to avoid grief or attempt to “speed it up” in others. Again, quoting Rob Moll (pg 132), “Mourners can use heaven as an excuse to avoid necessary pain, pretending that the loss of death isn’t real because we will be reunited with our loved ones in heaven. Christians sometimes impose a kind of ban on mourning, using the hope of heaven as an excuse to avoid being confronted with someone else’s pain.” The trouble is, avoidance never delivers healing. When I turn the show off, the pain is waiting for me. Christian positivity isn’t any better. Even though it spouts some truths I do believe about Jesus and life after death, the toxic positivity pushes me both away from grief and away from God. If I ignore grief too long, it grows and affects all areas of my life. It appears the only way out is through the pain.

It’s exhausting to contemplate. I can’t handle more than one day at a time.

Trauma connects to trauma, so unsurprisingly, as I address the trauma moments of caring for Mom and watching her die, older traumas are also rising to the surface. They ask to be addressed. It feels like the reward for pursuing health and recovery is more pain. More fire. You’re obeying God? Great. Here’s more pain. My therapist calls it a gift. Deep down, as much as I fight it, I agree with her. Addressing these wounds is ultimately a great and wonderful thing. It’s one way to take up my cross. The rewards will be worth it. She also has helped me see that I have a choice of how much I address and when. She knows I went through hell before Mom died. She’s listened to my story of what it was like. The trauma is there. It’s waiting for me when I’m ready to look at more.

People are so interesting and messy. Myself included. The most common thing I’ll hear now in regards to my grief is something like, “It’s good to see you smiling again.” Or, “You look great.” Apparently I look better to people. This coincides with a lack of questions about my grief. The unwritten message blares out to me: “We knew you were grieving, and didn’t know what to do with you. Now that you’re smiling more often, you’re obviously fine, and we won’t mention your mom or that horrible season again.” They don’t understand that I’m continuing to grieve, that functioning doesn’t mean I’m fine, or how I need to talk about my mom and the suffering we went through. The only people who ask my how grief is doing now are the ones who showed themselves as helpers at the beginning. My circle of support knows, and asks, and has no timeline on my grief. Everyone else has moved on. While I still ache for this enormously significant part of my life to be acknowledged and seen, I understand better that not everyone is able to. I’m thankful for the small circle of people who do. I am very passionate now about helping others in the same way I have been helped.

The small moments in life I took for granted are now very precious. I do smile and laugh, along with crying and groaning. My time with my kids is precious. Still draining as it ever was, but I see the value of it so much more deeply than I ever have. Joy and sorrow are definitely related. I think of them as fraternal twins. They don’t look alike, but I’m convinced they are joined at the hip until our final tears are washed away. I see it everywhere now: in my own life and in others. I saw it a couple weeks ago watching Robert Irwin’s dedication dance to his mom on DWTS. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it, and watch the preparation of his dance. You see joy and sorrow intermingled. I cannot live now without opening the door to both. I can’t divorce one from the other. Living fully means loving and losing, and I am learning to welcome both, however painful it will be.

I still wrestle with God. Funnily enough, when I “have it out” with him, he and I get closer. Go figure. I have never felt such a sense of welcome from God when I bring him my messy self. It’s so clear he wants me to bring it. All of it. So we wrestle. My prayers are full of cries and questions and anger and “Help me” and naked honesty. I’m learning it’s worship. Vaneetha Rendall Risner agrees. In her book, Walking Through Fire, she shares how lament became her language in the midst of her compounded losses (pg 111), “….my brutal honesty pulled me toward God. And the closer I was drawn, the more my lament transformed into worship–and even trust. Actually, it wasn’t transformed. I learned that lament didn’t need to be transformed–lament itself was an integral part of genuine trust and worship.”

Yes. Amen, sister. Thank you for putting it so well.

There’s more. There’s always more, but that’s a decent snapshot for now. If you followed along, I thank you for listening.

Seven Ways to Respond When It’s Not Your Turn

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I have been following the Texas floods, as I’m sure so many people have as well. I read as a parent, as one going through grief, loss, and effects of trauma, but primarily as a human. It’s heart-breaking. I pray for the families who have lost someone regularly. I check the news when I can. I’ve cried, ached, and continued life, sometimes feeling guilty for continuing life because I know so many people’s lives have seemed to stop with their loved one’s death. What right do I have to live when their life has crashed? I’ve listened to the various ways people have dealt with their grief. I’ve been thinking of all they may be going through right now, knowing I won’t ever know their particular story.

And I do this from afar. I don’t know anyone affected by this horrible disaster. There is no one I can draw near to. I can’t sit in someone’s living room and weep with them as they reel from the reality of their loss. Sometimes, when horror strikes and we feel the weight of it, we also feel a sense of helplessness. Yes, we feel terrible and want to help, but have no idea how. What do we do? Can we help from a distance? Also, how do we let this tragedy shape us, instead of passing it over and thanking God it wasn’t our turn this time?

While I’m sure there are many more ways to help from a distance, here are seven ideas to get us started.

Pray.

Never underestimate the power and value of coming before the God who holds all things in his hands. It’s not only what we are asking him to do, however, but how God changes us through prayer. Yes, ask God for comfort and healing for the broken-hearted. Ask for him to provide all the resources people need. Ask for long-term help. I am also praying for redemption of the horror, for emotional support for the bereaved, for presence, for purpose in this time of suffering, for grief to be welcomed, felt, and received as the teacher it is. And we must not neglect bringing our questions, our pain, our anger to God. Mark Vroegop says in Dark Clouds Deep Mercy, page 28, “Throughout the Scriptures, lament gives voice to the strong emotions that believers feel because of suffering.” Now is a time to lament.

Help financially.

If you are in a position to give, there are multiple foundations started by the families of the little girls who died. There are so many heroes and organizations on the ground working toward relief and restoration. More than I could could list here. People are dealing with long-term effects and will need ongoing support. Consider finding and supporting an organization or group who has feet on the ground and doing good work.

Let your heart break.

In his novel, Theo of Golden, Allen Levi writes as the voice of Theo,

“My expertise in sadness is hard-earned. But I realize more and more that it is a gift. Living with sadness, accepting it, is easier than trying to pretend it isn’t there. It is another of life’s great mysteries that sadness and joy can coexist so compatibly with one another. In fact, I wonder if, on this side of heaven, either one can be complete without the other.” (pg 224)

This isn’t easy or popular, particularly in Christian circles, but it is absolutely in line with how Jesus responds to suffering. It is part of how humans look like God on this side of heaven. God draws near to the brokenhearted; Jesus mourned and lamented. Part of how God draws near to the hurting is through people who come near and weep tears along with them. We can believe with all our hearts that Romans 8:28 is true, that he will work all things (tragedy & trauma included) for good AND grieve that these people should not have died. When grief and sorrow hold hands with joy and hope, we get a clearer glimpse of God’s character. Together, this side of heaven, both of these are Christian. To isolate one from the other creates either a toxic positivity or a spiral of despair.

Some Christians object strongly to weeping, to the negative emotions, believing they are sinful. Or, perhaps, that feeling and expressing them may mean they don’t trust God or have weak faith. It’s an obstacle I am passionate about removing because it’s simply not true, and it keeps suffering people wounded and their faith weak. As Rob Moll says in The Art of Dying, pg, 139,

“Christianity does not shrink from death. It does not force a smile on the grieving. Christianity does not ignore death or say that it means nothing. Death is the last enemy, says Paul. It is evil, the greatest and most complete of evils. And if Christians are to know the greatness of Jesus Christ’s victory over death, they most know that death is evil.”

See people around you.

Consider the people in your part of the world. You may not be friends with the bereaved in Texas, but I guarantee you have grieving people in your circles. Let your heartbreak shape you so you may begin to see them, to know more of their story. Ask how their grief is doing. It doesn’t matter if it’s been three months or 30 years. It is always part of them and so rarely acknowledged well in our culture. Seeing their grief as part of them brings healing.

Learn to weep with those who weep.

I am fourteen months into my own traumatic season of cancer, deep grief and loss over the death of my mom. Through this time, I’ve begun building a library of books that have been a desperately needed resource in a culture that doesn’t know what to do with grief. If you were like me before Mom got sick, and don’t know how to help someone who is grieving, you’re not alone. The best way to start is to acknowledge that you don’t know, and begin to learn. Nancy Guthrie’s book, “What Grieving People Wish You Knew about What Really Helps (and What Really Hurts): about what really helps (and what really hurts)”, is a great place to start. Ed Welch’s book, “Someone I Know is Grieving” is also good. I’d also recommend Jennie Allen’s podcast “Made For This”, season 9, episode 8 with Bethany Barnard, titled “Grief & Unanswered Questions”. Tim Keller’s sermons, “Praying our Tears”, “Praying our Fears”, “Praying our Anger”, “Praying our Doubts” are great resources. Below are a few of the other books that have been a lifeline to me while grieving.

  • A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
  • A Sacred Sorrow and The Hidden Face of God by Michael Card
  • Beyond the Darkness by Clarissa Moll
  • Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Vroegop
  • God’s Grace in your Suffering by David Powlison
  • The Art of Dying by Rob Moll

Talk about death with your loved ones.

This is also an unpopular option, but a necessary and helpful one. As counterintuitive as it sounds, talking about and planning for death helps us live better. Ecclesiastes 7:1-2 says,

A good name is better than fine perfume,
    and the day of death better than the day of birth.
2 It is better to go to a house of mourning
    than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
    the living should take this to heart.

We all have an expiration date, and we all don’t know when it is. It could be in utero, 110, or somewhere between. I’ve learned it is foolish to assume our death will be when we’re old and gray. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is all too early. Make plans for your own death, and as far as you are able, know the plans of your loved ones. If you have kids, talk about it with them as appropriate. My mom’s death prompted our family to begin preparing for death in ways we had never seen the value of before. Now I know my 9-year-old wants to be buried in the same cemetery as my mom, my husband and me. My husband and I began work on our end-of-life wishes, wrote them down, and had conversations about them. We’re working to get both our names on all the bills. Fight the temptation to have a once-off conversation due to feeling uncomfortable, then never bringing it up again. If so, you’ve missed the value of planning for death. This is an ongoing process, and may change as people and circumstances change. If you don’t know where to start, cemeteries often have helpful literature to get you started (e.g. funeral service preferences, grave markers, etc.). And while a health directive is a great idea, when you’re in the moment at the hospital, in the ambulance or at home, no one is pulling out papers to check what the dying person wanted. This is one reason why it is crucial to have these conversations when your loved ones are healthy and lucid. In that moment when a decision is needed, the loved ones being prepared is a great gift. It is loving, honoring and helpful to all to prepare for death.

Hug loved ones.

I’ve heard this often on social media when the news about the Texas flood victims became public news. “Hug your loved ones tighter tonight.” Parents in particular could relate to sending a child to camp and never having them come home again. Yes and amen. Don’t take them for granted. And don’t stop there. Hug others who are hurting. They are someone’s loved one, too. Grieving people who receive comfort from the presence of another will then turn and comfort another later on. Perhaps, over time, our culture will shift from the avoidance and minimization of pain to being able to enter another’s pain as a sacred place. Perhaps the presence of God will be better known because brokenhearted people are experiencing his comfort through his people drawing close to them in grief. Perhaps, some day, there will be less bows, less toxic positivity, and more of the real comfort that only comes through feeling deep pain. Perhaps, one day, more of us will learn through our greatest pain of the greatest gift. Michael Card says about Job in A Sacred Sorrow, pg. 43, a man who knows what it is like to have everything and everyone dear swept away suddenly,

“The man of Torah obedience is forced to a painful place wherein he realizes that, though he might not have seen it by any other means, indeed he does love God for Himself and not simply as the source of all His blessings……..Without the pain, Job might never have realized either the depth nor the dimension of this kind of relationship with God, and perhaps never would we.”

Music as a Ministry

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Two years ago, one of the places I was eagerly serving in our church was our music ministry. I had been involved for almost eight years. While some call music ministry worship, I will use the term “worship” more broadly, as worship entails more than singing. I played keys, sang occasionally, and was learning guitar. I loved it. Whether on stage or in a pew, I would eagerly sing the songs in our repertoire. My heart agreed with the words. Music has been a part of me as long as I can remember, and my kids will attest that I believe life is a musical.

Then my mom got sick. Diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and after a traumatic five months of treatment with me as her primary caregiver, she was dead. And my life as I knew it shattered.

During that time, I experienced a jarring shift. All of a sudden, everything in my life was different. With music ministry in particular, I could not sing anymore. My voice was physically capable; my heart was not. At church, the music became shallow. I had listened to Christian radio before. I could not do it anymore. My heart was ruptured. Emotionally, physically, spiritually I was bleeding out. And none of the songs I heard on Sundays or in the car echoed my agonized cries for God.

“Where are you? Why did you let Mom suffer so much? We obeyed you and you crushed our family. I’m crying every hour, every day. I can’t sleep. The trauma wakes me up, or sometimes the grief. My body feels it, and is wasting away. I don’t want to eat. If you love me, why did you give me this? If you love me and can give us so much suffering, what else are you going to give me? I’m left alone. No one understands. I am surrounded by miserable comforters. If life is full of this much sorrow and ugliness, I don’t know that I want to keep living it. I am so angry! How could you take her away when there was so much more life to live? We need her here, God. How much longer are you going to beat us down? This isn’t getting better. The burden is still so heavy. How much longer do we have to struggle?”

These are just a few of the honest heart cries I was aching to express. But since these cries were not present in Christian music, circles, teachings, or relationships, I thought they were wrong. They must mean I have weak faith. Since I was so rocked by the season, I must be doing something wrong. Strong faith in God means being able to sing with confidence about God’s goodness, and being able to rejoice during my loss. Right?

Wrong. I was dead wrong. And thank God he didn’t leave me there. He gave me guides: grieving friends & authors, grieving artists, and most of all, his Word. God used all of these guides to right my incomplete theology I had picked up from Christian culture about grief. I learned how God also feels incredibly strong emotions. He laments and grieves. He also understand the condition of the fallen human heart and invites our cries, our theologically incorrect anguish, our anger, our broken hearts. Unlike so much of our culture, he wants it. He wants the ugly. He wants us to bring him all of it. He draws near to the brokenhearted. That is where transformation begins. That is how faith deepens. The darkest parts of our lives is where God’s greatest work happens.

In the book of Psalms, I heard my cries. I remember the first time reading Psalm 6 after Mom died, and bursting into tears in the first few verses. The writer’s cries were my cries. I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t crazy. The relief was profound, and the comfort in those tears was real. God saw me. He heard. And he knew I needed to cry my cries to him.

Seeing God lament to Jeremiah was another profound moment to me. God hurts. He hurts deeply. More deeply than I was ever aware before. So if God hurts, and expresses it, and he is without sin, so may I hurt and express it, though I will certainly not be without sin until my remaking is complete. I could also mention Habakkuk, Job, David, Ezekiel, Jesus in the New Testament, and others. Our Bible is filled with suffering and the human response to it. Should not our music also be?

Tim Keller preached multiple sermons that freed me up to be raw and unfiltered in my cries to God. “Praying Our Anger,” “Praying Our Doubts”, “Praying our Tears” and “Praying Our Fears” gave me more Scriptural evidence that God wants all of me. Here are just a few of the honest cries from the Bible that echoed my bleeding heart and moved me toward God in my grief:

  • “He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy; though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer; he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked.” Lamentations 3:7-9
  • “I did not sit in the company of revelers, nor did I rejoice; I sat alone, because your hand was upon me, for you had filled me with indignation. Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail?” Jeremiah 15:17-18.
  • “I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes.” Psalm 6: 6-7
  • “In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord; in the night my hand is stretched out without wearying; my soul refuses to be comforted. When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints. You hold my eyelids open; I am so troubled that I cannot speak. I consider the days of old, the years long ago. I said, “let me remember my song in the night, let me meditate in my heart.” Then my spirit made a diligent search: “Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable? Has his steadfast love forever ceased? Are his promises at an end for all time? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has he in anger shut up his compassion?” Psalm 77:4-9

There are many more, but just to give you an idea of what my soul was and still is crying. These aren’t what we tend to hear on Sundays or put on our wall hangings, are they? Yet they are and should be a precious and vital part of our diet as Christians.

One pastor I knew noted the importance of music ministry. He said that people don’t leave a Sunday service reciting the sermon; they leave singing the worship songs. This is why music ministry is crucial to theological formation. Much of what we believe is caught, not taught. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Christian music unintentionally teaches an incomplete, shallow theology. It teaches a praise-heavy response to God, which feels like a diet of cotton candy to a deeply grieving person. It’s shallow. From my new perspective, these primarily positive songs are true of God. For example, yes, God is a way-maker and miracle worker, a promise-keeper and light in the darkness. Yes, he is our living hope. But if that is all we sing, we give no direction or example to the bleeding heart of how they should approach God in their sorrow. We imply instead that they should be able to sing these types of songs in their pain, and if they can’t, the problem is with them. Positive praise without the devastating sorrow is unbalanced, and unrealistic. Music ministry in churches must include lament in the same language as the Bible does. It is striking that so much of Israel’s songbook was made up of laments. Cries to God in their anguish, in the injustice, in their deserved punishment, in their undeserved sorrow. We need songs that also say things like, “How long? Why have you crushed me? Where is your hand, because I don’t see it?”

It is not only the songs. It is the leaders. Worship leaders need to not only know how to praise but how to mourn. If not, they will continually put Christian bows on painful realities that instead need the grace of lament. Even if a church begins to introduce lament into their liturgies, if the worship leaders do not know the sacredness and importance of lament, they will naturally lighten what needs to be weighty, or cheer those who need to be sad. This brings unintentional harm to the already wounded. If worship leaders don’t lament, they must first and most importantly admit they don’t know how to lament. I firmly believe one can learn how to do so. They must humble themselves to listen to those who have wrestled with God in their unbearable pain. They must study what God says about lament, perhaps starting with Lamentations and Psalms. They must begin to ask the hard questions and be willing to be uncomfortable. They must learn to wrestle with God. They must be okay with the process of grief, and the undone nature of struggle. They must listen to the lessons and the deepness of faith God gives them through their own wrestling. In short, they must be willing to grow more like Christ. As the end of Romans 8:17 says, “…provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

Once I began to learn this language of lament, life started showing up. I could see God at work. Most importantly, I knew his presence with me. He drew near when others shied away. He let me be messy without slapping a theologically correct answer on my aching heart. It’s not a science. God does not operate based on a formula. My experience will be different from another’s experience with God due to the uniqueness of who we are as people. Yet I believe the constancy that is true for all of us is that when we open the door to grief and pain, and learn to direct it to God, he meets us and does the miracle of bringing life from death. I’m still grieving. I still can’t sing on Sunday mornings. I still ask “why”. I still wrestle with God. I will probably never be done this side of eternity. I don’t have all the answers. But I have him. Lament to God in my life-shattering sorrow has brought me more of God. More presence. Deeper faith. More intentionality with life. More empathy and compassion for the hurting. More anger with the sin and brokenness around me. More pain, yes. And praise Jesus, more glory.

Easter for the Grieving

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It’s almost Easter. Holy Week, as the liturgical calendar calls it. Christmas and Easter: the main two holidays Christians make much of. The Christian church mourns on Friday for the cross, the death of Jesus, and how our sins put him there. Then they rejoice on Sunday because the grave is empty and Jesus is alive. “He is risen!” they will shout tomorrow. “He is risen indeed,” will be the reply.

I firmly believe that. I’ve participated in an Easter service as long as I can remember. But this year is different. No one chooses when God allows the hammer to fall on your life and everything you knew is shattered. The hammer fell for me when Mom got cancer and died. I will never be the same. While I’m still figuring out who I am, I can say with certainty that I see Easter from a new perspective. And I’m writing this down for the hurting. For my friends who have lost their mother, their father, their unborn child, their son, their daughter, their brother, their sister, their aunt, their friend, their spouse. For those who live with grief. For those who have also been changed by it. Perhaps it will help you to know you’re not alone.

If you have tears in your eyes this Easter season, or that ongoing ache in your heart that comes in waves, if you are not the same person you were before and are feeling at odds with everything, if your grief has added an additional burden because now society doesn’t know what to do with your pain and would rather just see you happy than see your real hurt and sit with you in the mess – I’m there, too. A couple aspects of Jesus’ death and resurrection story are hitting home this year, and I want to present them to you in hopes that you see how your tears, your ache and your grief are your Easter worship.

I’ve told a few close friends that this new reality I’m living without Mom often feels like a nightmare. To be frank, though I’ve already tasted some amazing riches from God in this horror, I would trade them again if I could only go back to my old life with Mom. God knows this. We’re talking about it, and I know he doesn’t despise my honest heart but is present with me in it. I know this, too, because the Friday before Easter Sunday, Jesus gives God his honest heart. He says, “I want out. Anything but this, God, please. If there is any other way, I want you to do it. Please just take it away.” His anxiety was so intense, his sweat became blood. It felt like he was dying before he was dying. It was ugly. It was raw. It was honest. And he ended it with total submission to God the Father. “Yet not my will but yours be done.” The hardest, most costly thing Jesus has ever done.

If you are struggling to submit to your new reality, you need to know it’s okay. Jesus did it for you. God knows your struggle. Bring it to him. Be honest with him. Be so honest that your friends at church blush or try to theologically correct you. God doesn’t. He wants that kind of honesty. If you don’t believe me, read the Bible. Perhaps start with Psalm 39 as an example of an honest cry to God out of terrible pain.

Another aspect of the resurrection morning that jumps out to me is Mary’s grief. Only those who have felt it know what she was feeling. To lose all your hope, to lose the person dearest to you, to be completely undone. The ugly cry, the utter mess she was in. I would guess she didn’t sleep Friday and Saturday night, or if she slept, perhaps she too had nightmares of the horror she witnessed. She was in violent, strong grief, coming to anoint Jesus’ dead body as she mourned the loss of her hope and who she thought was going to be her Messiah. Out of all the people Jesus could have chosen to appear to, he waited to show himself first to Mary. To his grief-ridden, foggy-brained, hopeless friend who stayed in the garden after her friends left. Perhaps the angel’s message to her didn’t register through the fog. Perhaps she didn’t yet believe it. We don’t know why she hung back, but we do know Jesus found her in her grief. So too will he find us in ours.

He does not despise our tears; he joins us as we weep them. He does not ask us to put a smile on because it’s resurrection morning. He asks us to be real. He doesn’t theologically correct our cries to him; he sees them as the worship they are. If all you have to offer Jesus this Easter are tears, questions, anger, an aching heart, a struggle to submit, you need to know that is your worship. That is exactly what you should offer.

You have a Savior who suffers. You have a Savior who asked for any other way. You have a Savior who not only died for our sins, but for cancer, for broken relationships, for Alzheimer’s, for Parkinson’s, for miscarriages, for stillborn babies, for depression and suicide, for heart attacks, kidney failures, sepsis, stroke, paralysis, old age, and all the rest. He hates it. He died for the untimely deaths. He died for the senseless murders. He died for the power-hungry, cruel leaders. He died for all of it.

To grieve and mourn the things God hates is part of our worship of him. So if that’s your Easter Sunday, let that be your Easter Sunday. Sit in your grief, be undone like Mary, and let Jesus find you in it. And if a joyful Easter service feels like too much for you this year, that’s okay. Joy and sorrow are intermingled so much more than we tend to allow on Sunday mornings, particularly Easter morning. Pray about how to mark your Easter this year. I know that’s not easy, and I’m doing it with you. Remember: your tears, your ache and your lament to Jesus about them are your Easter worship. It’s only through the darkest trials that true faith and hope and worship actually come.

Thank you, Jesus, for not despising but treasuring our broken hearts and our cries to you.