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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.

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.

What Do We Do With the “No”?

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One night, a previous pastor of mine texted a group of friends from our church. His wife was in the emergency room. It wasn’t looking good. He reached out for prayer. Of course we all prayed for healing, for strength, for God’s will to be done. The husband reached out with updates, saying her health was improving. “It looks like God is answering our prayers,” he typed.

I love and respect this man. I understand what he was saying. What he was really saying was, “It looks like God is saying yes to what we are asking.” His choice of words is a common one in Christian circles. “It looks like God is answering our prayers” is a typical response when God works according to our will, or more bluntly, when we get what we want. However, it reinforces a damaging and warped theology of God, prayer and suffering. What if her health didn’t improve? What if this was the end of her life? Would it look like God was answering our prayers then? What do we do?

Over a year ago, our family was reeling from my mom’s exploding health issues. It was cancer. It was advanced. Later we were to find it was stage 4. The Sunday before her surgery, we asked for prayer from our pastors at church. We, too, prayed for healing. Over the next months of surgery, treatment and decline, we prayed. She wasn’t healed. Six months after diagnosis, we held her hands and sat by her bedside, watching her spirit exit her cancer-ravaged body. What about her? What about the prayers that went up on her behalf for her healing and restoration? Did God answer our prayers?

I firmly believe he did answer. He always answers. He told us, “No.” He declined our request for this cancer to be removed. In my mom’s words in her final days, “Cancer has owned me.” God answered. It was not the answer we wanted.

You may argue with me that God does not cause evil. He did not give my mom cancer. I agree with you. But the nuance here, which we find in the Psalms of lament, is the understanding of God’s ultimate responsibility of our tragedies. He could have intervened. He was certainly able to heal her. But He did not. At the end of the day, God is responsible.

This creates a most serious conundrum. This is a problem. One of the most important, vital issues human beings have with God today. Many people call it “the problem of pain and suffering”. You most likely have heard it (or like me, have said it) something like this: “If God is good, why would he allow such a terrible thing to happen?” This can be a lively issue to debate. Until it happens to you. Or someone you love. Then it hits home. We can’t understand it. When suffering hits us, the theological arguments turn into this problem. We can’t think of a possible good reason for such devastation. We struggle to reconcile a good God with our tragedy.

(By the way, this post isn’t the proper place to really dive into the philosophical legwork needed with such a question, but if you’re interested in it, the best work I’ve read and listened to up to this point in my life is by Timothy Keller. One option is “Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering”, but he has also preached multiple sermons on the topic, available through Gospel in Life. I am forever grateful to him for his work on suffering.)

This discord we feel when pain and loss hit our lives is not new, and is part of being human. The questions, doubts, anger, fear and distress the deeply suffering feel are not a sign of weakness. For the Christian, nor are they inherently sinful or a sign of weak faith. Perhaps they may be, but to jump there first is evidence of an ill-formed theology of sin and suffering. If anything, these questions and strong emotions when sorrow hits are first and foremost a sign of being alive in a broken world.

When God answers opposed to our will, we feel a gap between God’s goodness and our painful reality. “If God is good, why did He allow ________?” So what do we do with the “no”? Especially my Christian family: what do we do when God gives us or someone around us exactly what we don’t want?

Sadly, the common Christian response to pain is unlike our Savior’s. With some exceptions, my experience and the experiences of others has confirmed this. In this gap, we don’t know what to do. We know how to rejoice with those who rejoice. We don’t know how to weep with those who weep. Christian funerals are now “celebrations of life”, with the expectation of joy while excluding sorrow. Many Christians show great discomfort with strong feelings, filling the gap with Bible verses, “at least” statements, or platitudes like, “God did heal them, just not in the way we wanted.” “God works everything for good.” Our worship avoids sorrow. There is an overwhelming “toxic positivity” in the church.

I too believed this toxic positivity, until deep grief found me. Then I began seeing everything with new eyes. We bring meals to help the struggling but don’t know how to bring presence. When tears, emotions, accusations and questions for God arise, we don’t know how to direct that to God: corporately or individually. We are so very uncomfortable with pain, that we attempt to minimize it, downplay it, normalize it, distract from it, or put a bow on it. And since there are few examples of biblical lament in our churches, it’s easy to believe our strong feelings and questions for God are wrong. The twisted theology given through these positive attempts to cheer the sorrowful is that God does not grieve the pain of people and his creation gone wrong. And since he doesn’t, we shouldn’t either. The damaging theology says the godly response is a smile in the face of tragedy.

And the ensuing carnage is great. This is one the reasons many grieving, hurting people don’t feel like they belong at church. Once Mom’s cancer came on the scene, I began meeting more people who loved Jesus and had left the church because they felt out of place with their grief. Christian authors like J. Todd Billings, Randy Alcorn and Clarissa Moll also shared similar experiences.

Unlike the religious response of avoiding or downplaying pain, God shows us a different way to deal with this gap. There are enough examples of this to fill a book, but one of the many places to start discovering this better path is the lamenting Psalms. It doesn’t take long to understand that David and Asaph, to name two of the writers of Scripture, loved God very much. These men felt severe doubt, violent anger, and horrendous pain. They questioned God’s goodness. They accused him of inactivity. They demand that God work. They cried so much that they lost sleep. Enough tears fall down their faces that they say “tears have been my food”. They know significant pain, suffering, and injustice. They ask God all the questions. “Why? How long? Where are you? What are you doing? How could you allow this? Aren’t you righteous? I don’t get it!”

And that’s just naming two writers of Scripture. I haven’t even started with the prophets.

These men were human, and dealt with the same pain, questions, doubts, fears, anger that we do. But they choose to deal with them quite differently than I have, or our culture has, or the church has. What do they do with their emotions, their problems, their fierce anger, their demands for justice, their agonized cries of pain?

These songwriters not only acknowledge these feelings, but direct their anger, questions and pain to God. They cry out to the one who could have stepped in, but for reasons beyond our understanding, did not. In doing so, they do two very helpful things for us fellow suffering humans.

  1. They acknowledge the problem we feel. God could have stepped in to stop it. He did not. And we won’t understand why. Nowhere in Scripture does God spell out his reasons for allowing them. It is as if knowing why is not what we need. And while it hurts me a bit to say this, it’s true and I need to hear it: If God operated according to my understanding, he would be a very small god indeed. It is nothing short of pompous arrogance to think that if I can’t come up with a good reason for _______ to happen, then there must not be a good reason for it at all (more of what I’ve learned from Tim Keller).
  2. They give us a model to follow. In a culture that either represses our strong feelings & questions or simply expresses or vents them, these songwriters show us that A. feeling them is human, and B. we need to pray our strong feelings and questions to God.

As Mark Vroegop says in “Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy”, “To cry is human. To lament is Christian.”

As the psalms of lament illustrate, grief and loss take us on a journey. A very long journey. It is the nature of lament. Psalm 6 became one of my immediate cries after Mom died. I could relate to it and cry out those words, while I still cannot sing the rejoicing praise songs at church.

“Have compassion on me, LORD, for I am weak. Heal me, LORD, for my bones are in agony. I am sick at heart. How Long, O LORD, until you restore me?

“I am worn out from sobbing. All night I flood my bed with weeping, drenching it with my tears. My vision is blurred by grief; my eyes are worn out because of all my enemies.” (NLT, verses 2-3, 6-7).

Most of the lamenting psalms show a pattern: cry out to God with all your feelings and questions, remember what is true of Him, and trust. The trouble is, our own process is not as simple as this initially sounds. We don’t cry out once and arrive at trust. As much as we’d like it in our pain-averse culture, lament is not quick, linear, smooth, one-time-fix-all. Our hearts are more complicated than that. Grief is more complicated than that. Some psalms do not even follow that pattern: like Psalm 39 and 88. They end in a way that shock us. I would not be surprised if Christians today would approach David and the sons of Korah and chide them for their “lack of faith” or for not being more positive. Through these Psalms, I began to learn this about lament. While others may rush me, God is patient with my heart and does not hold me to a timeline.

It is unloving and wrong to point hurting people to the awesome truths of who God is and expect them to just “get it”. It’s akin to asking a seven-year-old to comprehend calculus without giving them the time they need to wrestle and search and learn the language of mathematics. For example, a well-meaning person sent me some texts a few days after Mom died. They were Bible verses about God’s goodness. I suppose they thought I needed reminding of that. Another kind friend sent me a Christmas card with Proverbs 31 cited, telling me to read that, while I should remember that Mom is with Jesus and all is well. While well-intentioned, these messages told me to fast-forward the grieving process and arrive at trusting God. They didn’t know that I needed to weep. To wrestle. To scream to God, “Why?” To doubt and question God. To enter the grieving process He has set out for me. Tim Keller pointed out in a sermon titled “Praying Our Doubts” that while we tend to brand doubt immediately as “sinful”, doubt also has tremendous positive energy. When we dismiss doubt, or other parts of the lamenting process, we shut the door to growth and depth of faith. Pain compels us to go on a journey with God. We need to enter the reality of our valley of the shadow of death, and with deep trembling, call out to God there.

Instead of crippling silence and isolating those who are holding deep sorrow, we need to learn how to lament. Both as a church and as individuals. It is the bridge from despair to trust when God gives us our “no”, and life as we know it shatters. Lament is the godly response to death and suffering. It is walking in Jesus’ footsteps as he suffered. What if, instead of platitudes or distance, we actually entered our own pain and the pain of others? What if we joined hands with the suffering and cried with them? What if we allowed us space to wrestle with God? What if we welcomed our doubts and questions, anger and fury, guttural cries of agony? What if we remembered “through much suffering we must enter the kingdom of God”?

It is through these kinds of things that we make space for a hurting world to seek God. Unlike our culture, God welcomes our questions, our anger, our outbursts, our honest cries, our doubts and fears, our wailing. He shares in our pain. He grieves along with us, just more deeply, violently and thoroughly than we do. It only took my kids and I a few chapters into studying Jeremiah to see that God is a lamenting God. He meets us in the darkness in a way that words can’t describe. Only one who has been thrust into their pit and cried out to God with much fear and trembling knows what I am talking about. We don’t get our answers to “Why?” in our valley. We get God. We get him with us, because He knows darkness, too. And it is precisely there, when we have nothing left, that we realize we need nothing else but him. And if that is not true worship, I don’t know what is.

True worship comes from the pit. It comes out of darkness, not by avoiding it. It comes from entering our pain and wrestling with God there. Anything less than that tends to be shallow.

You see, the cry of lament is not only ours. There was another who suffered greatly. Someone who didn’t deserve the wretchedness that came his way. Someone who did cry out “Why?” to God in his greatest agony, and received his “no”. In his dark moments, Jesus lamented. Unlike us, he was totally abandoned by God in his suffering. He was abandoned and rejected in order that we would never be alone in our sorrow. His rejection guaranteed our inclusion. It’s a mystery beyond us: God uses pain to save all who would believe in Jesus. Yet we still cringe and shy away from treading the road of suffering in our Christian lives.

We’ve forgotten that the way of Jesus is the way of pain. It is a tear-strewn and bloody path. The more we grow to resemble Jesus, we must remember that we will resemble the Man of Sorrows. As Tim Keller points out in another sermon titled “Praying Our Tears”, the more we become like Jesus, the more pain we will feel. The more we will weep. This “only victorious”, toxic positivity neglects the whole gospel. It keeps people from growing in their faith. It holds back healing. It slams the door for those suffering to begin the all-valuable process of wrestling with God, asking the hard questions, seeking truth amidst all the doubts and conflict and confusion.

What if churches realized that lament itself IS worship? What if we began to learn lament once again? What if we made room on Sunday mornings for weeping and grief? Songs that reflected not just the hope and joy but also the harrowing cries of being a suffering human being? What if we welcomed people wrestling through doubts, anger, frustration, fear, and those hard questions for God? What if we told them they were in great company with writers of Scripture, and Jesus himself? What if we not only held thanksgiving services but lament services as well? Took time to remember the dead who went before us and are still part of the body? Sought to become trained in grief care? Learned about dying, death, loss, and how to walk well through them? Moved toward people in pain? Acknowledged that God’s answers are both what we want and the very thing we don’t? Cried out to God for our own pain and others?

I firmly believe it would open doors that have been barred shut, keeping deeply wounded people out of churches and away from God. People would begin to heal. A deeper, more profound, more precious understanding of the gospel would begin to shine. It would give us a more accurate, biblically rounded view of our Savior, instead of the toxic positivity of only victory, joy, trust and goodness. Making room for lament and sorrow may seem counterintuitive, uncomfortable, perhaps even “wrong”. So did the cross. Yet it is precisely through the pain Jesus didn’t want but to which he submitted that God chose to save us. How could he not also use our sufferings, if we would only enter them? Without suffering, worship remains shallow. Without bringing our unfiltered questions and strong emotions to God, people continue to be shut out from the kingdom of God. It is only in the greatest of depths that the greatest of praise to our suffering Savior rises, and the roots of faith grow deep.

Perhaps, someday, when we get the answer we didn’t want, we may learn to lament like Jesus.

Moving On vs. Moving Forward

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As time passes after Mom’s death, I have become aware of an unwelcome intangible. Somewhere there is an expectation that at some point in this process, I will “be over it”. Or if not “over it”, at least “past it”, where my grief and loss is something not talked about anymore. A friend and I were talking about this a couple days ago. While she was sharing, I began to think about it more. I’m guessing those of you who have experienced a close loss can relate. Where it comes from I don’t know. Perhaps it’s a combination of ourselves and our culture. Maybe it’s a side effect of us pushing death to the perimeter of our lives instead of how it used to live in the forefront. But whatever the source, this expectation of what healing looks like brings more damage than healing. I’d like to do what I do a lot of lately: take the expectation, look at it and examine it, question whether it is logical and true or not, and if it is not, replacing it with what is true. It’s part of how I keep my sanity in a culture where grieving is foreign.

First let’s look at this expectation more closely. It’s most often heard in the silence after a loss. Often there is an onrush of help and support in the first few months following a death, for example. Then, naturally, as people resume their regular rhythms, the help wanes. And so do the questions and conversations for the bereaved about their loved one and their grieving process. I have yet to find an example where this has not been touted as the norm. This wax and wane of people is a natural one. People will offer what they can, and for most of us, the short-term is most feasible. The trouble comes after the dust settles and the bereaved is left with their new reality, grappling with how to do life now. In this comes a lot of silence. You aren’t asked about how you are coping. They don’t bring up your loved one anymore. While their life went back to normal, yours did not and never will. C.S. Lewis compares bereavement to an amputation. And on top of that loss, you live in a culture that avoids your “amputation” after a certain point. One thing that bereaved people hear in this silence is that the broken part of themselves is not a place others want to go. Or they’ll hear that it’s not where others should go.

My personal experience with this happened most recently after Christmas holidays. I reached the eight month mark, and realized I am just dipping my toes into the extent of the damage done from Mom’s cancer journey, death, and subsequent executor role. One thing piled up on top of another, and the load kept increasing with few breaks, and I haven’t stopped since this whole thing started over a year ago. It’s been insane. Eight months in, I am just realizing this. And when that happened, I felt nervous, and a little guilty. It felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I wasn’t processing it fast enough, because the one-year marker was coming up and it feels like I should be farther along than I am. One year means it gets easier, right? And while some aspects are indeed getting easier, others are getting harder. Therapy digs up wounds that need to be healed. The body still knows and feels the effects of grief. Often there is trauma that keeps the bereaved trapped. The griever needs to figure out each day, each season, how to live in their new reality.

When I talk to people who have been bravely facing their unwanted reality for longer than I have, they confirm for me that the expectation to “move on” exists for them as well. The ones where it’s been years past their loss or major change. Grief doesn’t wave goodbye to us after a certain time frame: she travels with us the rest of our lives. We grow around our grief, yes. It’s not an always intense force; it ebbs and flows like waves. But it does not leave us. Our loss and our pain is just as much a part of us as our nose. It changes us, and will be part of our lives until our last day. Sadly, we have not done a good job seeing this part of our fellow humans. We know our neighbor lost their spouse a few years ago, but we’ve stopped asking about it. We don’t want to make them sad, we rationalize. Maybe we don’t want to get our hands dirty. Or maybe we just don’t understand deep grief. In the meantime, our neighbor walks with their grief every single day, trying to figure out how to do another day without their person. And while it may bring tears to their eyes, asking “How are you doing with your grief?” gives a chance for that sacred part of themselves to be seen and heard. Being seen for who you are, all of you, is priceless and healing. No matter how many years it’s been. Treating the loss of a loved one, or any other loss (divorce, for example) as old news, is damaging.

So as I examine this expectation, I see a term that needs to be defined. What is “being stuck in your grief”? Both the wounded and the helper can fear that this is happening. “Am I grieving, or am I stuck?” As I and others have wondered, is being stuck experiencing signs of grief years after the tragedy? Is it rough holidays, or grief triggers, or the need to talk of them long after others have stopped asking how you are doing? Also, what does moving forward look like? Is it feeling like you used to? Being more happy than sad? Feeling as if you have “gotten over it”? Arriving at a point where you never speak of your loss?

It’s safe to say that health includes moving forward in life. It does not mean living controlled by your grief for the rest of your days. Continuously reliving it, letting it define you, lack of healing are some of the signs of getting stuck in your loss. GriefShare talks about moving on versus moving forward, which is a vital distinction to understand. Moving on is a false assumption that we will somehow get past our grief. It ignores the fact that our grief travels with us, as an amputee travels without their limb. Moving forward is learning how to live without our loved one, or without our leg. Moving forward means addressing any trauma experienced. Life will never be the same, but we still have a life to live. So we learn how to live with our grief, not controlled by it. We learn how to move forward.

People who expect you to revert to who you were before, and think that you are stuck because you are not the same or because you continue to walk with grief long after, do not understand loss. They most likely have the definition of being stuck = being affected by your loss, post-loss. Often with a certain time limit (3 months, 1 year, 3 years, 10 years). These people are also quite uncomfortable with pain and are quick to give solutions or advice. They believe that faith in Jesus means mainly happy emotions, bows on top of tragedy, what our culture calls “positive thinking”, just with a religious spin in the Christian realm.

In order to help more hurting people, our culture needs a reset on how we handle pain, tragedy, grief and loss. This “toxic positivity” brings more damage than we realize. The Disney/Pixar movie “Inside Out” illustrated this better than I can do with my words. Remember Sadness and Joy trying to find their way back to Headquarters? Remember when they met Bing Bong? How he was devastated at the loss of his rocket he and Riley used to ride. For him this loss was ultimately an ending of his precious time with Riley. Joy tried to cheer him up, to fix him. It didn’t help. Sadness sat with him and listened. There were tears. It was painful. And it was healing. If you continued watching, you saw the same thing happen with Riley. She needed Sadness in order to experience Joy. The two go hand in hand in this life. They just do. Whether we like it or not. We cannot have one without the other. We should not reject the hard, painful parts of our lives, however much we hate them or don’t understand all the reasons why. If we have the courage to lean into all of life, the good and the horrible, it is there we experience the fullness of being human. It is also there where we draw closest to God. It is there where faith grows.

For my Christian siblings: this is near and dear to God’s heart. I didn’t realize how much so until my heart was utterly broken and I began to know Jesus’ presence in my suffering. I started seeing how linked suffering and salvation are. The seemingly contradictory truths that God hates death and suffering while he also uses it to accomplish his purposes, redemption and ultimate restoration. I started seeing lament & suffering all over the Bible.

Unfortunately, we’ve allowed a poisonous positive spin to infiltrate our churches. In our discomfort or ignorance with pain, we shut the door to hurting people who need to know that God invites our groans. I know it sounds crazy, but He is a suffering God! From Genesis 3, He’s known pain beyond what we can claim. And I’m seeing all over Scripture that He not only wants our anger and pain, he shares our anger and pain. He laments with us. He invites our questions as a loving parent invites their child to share what’s wrong. Aching for his broken creation, He comes so near to his brokenhearted. He invites them into this process, which I’m finding leads to depths and riches of God I have never known before. Hurting people need this good news, and instead are met with shallow messages of God’s goodness apart from their pain. The questions devastated people ask are not found in our churches. Their cries are not welcome on Sundays. Their anger is called sinful instead of part of their process of lamenting to God. Their questions are not tolerated. Their doubts are not acknowledged. The picture of God we portray to people is shallow. We try to fast-forward a grieving person to trust in God, skipping the hard parts. All this is flat-out wrong, un-Scriptural, and harmful. This is not who God is, what He says, how He responds to our suffering, or how Jesus suffered. This is a large part of the book I’m writing in my spare time. We need to do an about-face with regard to suffering, Church.

The “positive gospel” does not tell a suffering world many things it needs to hear. The most lamentable miss in my heart lately is about our suffering Savior. I’ve grown up in church, and I knew Jesus died on the cross for my sins, but I had no concept for Jesus as God’s son living a sorrowful, tear-filled, grief-acquainted life. Some of the things I’m learning are astounding and comforting. For example, in a sermon entitled Praying our Tears by Tim Keller, he pointed out that only one perfect human heart walked this broken earth, and that perfect human heart wept. A lot. Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, close friends with grief. And to the degree Christians grow in their resemblance to Jesus, they will grow in their heartbreak. They will hurt more. They will ache more. They will suffer more.

So we now need to ask the hard questions. Take a look in the mirror and be brave. And I mainly address these questions to my Christian friends. How do we respond to the loss in our lives? How do we process the pain in our lives? Do we feel it and face it with God? Are we doing the hard work of looking at it? Are we learning how to lament? Are we studying what God says about pain and suffering and grief? Do we care most about comfort, or Christ? Are we willing to feel the heartbreak of being alive in a beautiful yet busted up world? Why do we so quickly put a positive, religious spin on it? “But God…..” “At least…..” Ill-timed Scripture aimed at reminders of God’s goodness while ignoring their pain. Trying to clean someone up instead of being present in their mess, because perhaps their mess touches on something unhealed in our own hearts. Or perhaps we really want to be comfortable more than we want Jesus’ road.

While there are so many facets at play here, one thing seems obvious. We need to be willing to face the pain of our own life; only then can we begin to bear the pain of another. Hearing about the horrible way someone’s reality changed permanently is very hard. In some cases, heartbreaking. And that discomfort and heartbreak needs to be felt. For us and for others. God does not ask us to put a silver lining on it. He never puts a silver lining on it. Instead, He invites us to share in his pain, into the depths. Not simply for the sake of feeling it. Not because He’s sadistic and enjoys inflicting pain. Because He’s there with us in it. Because there is so much more of Him to know through it. Because He knows suffering on an intimate level. He both weeps with us and works through the pain. Because His suffering brought redemption. Because through the depths come the greatest of heights and hope.

Suffering and loss do what comfort cannot. It has purpose beyond our understanding. That’s easy to say until you’re in severe pain yourself. While I shy away from it, Jesus did not, and does not. His presence gives me the strength to learn how to live with my grief instead of shoving it down. Dare I say that’s the best part about this horrific season: however horrible it gets, I’m never alone. Someone greater and better than me is in it with me, feeling it with me, drawing close to me. Someone who will never leave me or be taken away. Someone who will finally heal it all. And that makes all the difference in the world.

Balance

/ melissamagdsick / Leave a comment

Hi. I’m blogging less often due to doing more writing and journaling offline. I think there’s a book or two in there somewhere. We’ll see once the dust settles.

Most often, when I’m with other people, there’s a draw I feel to be “okay” for their sake. Sometimes it’s a helpful draw. My kids, for example, draw me into fun and cuddles and comforting moments. My husband draws me into similar things with an adult twist on life and God and grief. My friends draw me into distractions, enjoyable moments, reminders that not all of life is horrible. I’m thankful for the breaks.

I’m finding, though, that there needs to be a balance in order for this griever to be healthy. Sometimes that draw to the positive is unhealthy. To process the death of my mom and the last months of her life, to heal and move forward, requires time to go back, to remember, to revisit, to consider. There needs to be time to be drawn out of my grief, and time to be drawn in. The lighter moments are a breath, a gift, a refresher. They are given as a respite, in order that I may plunge back into the processing pool once I’ve caught my breath. I need both: breaks and plunges.

What I’m coming to understand about my own story is that the last year of my life, and the last 6-7 months of Mom’s life, were full of trauma and grief. I am just beginning, eight months in from her death, to see the landscape and name the destruction done. Things went from zero to sixty with her health, what I needed to do to take care of her, her decline, her death, and then my executor role heavy in the first three to four months afterwards. I’ve barely been able to come up for air. Neither has my family, in very different ways. We’re now at a place where the ground under our feet seems stable enough to stop and take a look around. Pursue counseling. Give our bodies a chance to come out of fight or flight. That’s a whole other issue: the way our bodies hold grief and trauma, and how it manifests itself with various health problems.

With all that we’re facing, it’s becoming clear that we need both draws. Draws out of our grief and draws in. The trouble in our culture is that the vast majority of people live in a “draw out” kind of manner. I’m starting to see it everywhere. It’s in how we talk to each other. How we do church. It’s even in my journaling prompts for my “Tell Me Your Story, Mom” book. I’m not finding any questions like, “What was the hardest part of childhood?” Or ,”Tell me about your most painful moment as an adult.” It’s all about favorite moments, accessories, school, dating, work, etc. in an upbeat fashion.

Nope. We want to hear what’s good in someone else’s life. We want to hear the positive spin, the silver lining. Perhaps that’s where the “at least” statements come from. I used to use them often. When a child goes into surgery and suffers, “at least it was successful.” The conversation with someone you bump into at the grocery store: “What was your favorite part about your trip?” One one hand I get it: who wants to expose their messy, hurting, broken, anguished parts to a friend in the cereal section of Trader Joe’s? Not me. But when we never ask the other side of the question (ex: What was the hardest part of your trip?), or held the suffering child’s pain along with them (ex: How do you feel about getting surgery and missing basketball season?), we neglect caring for the whole person. We send a message that the only presentable, worthy parts of a person are the happy parts. The good news parts. When the reality is that our whole lives are going to be a blend of both: a mix of happy and horrific, difficult and easy, good and bad, joys and sorrows. This “stay positive” thinking lends itself to ignoring, minimizing or stuffing the harm, leading to long-term damage and unhealed wounds. Which leads to a culture of people who do not know how to help a hurting person because they are an unhealed hurting person.

I’ve struggled lately telling people what I need. My needs aren’t as practical as they were at the beginning. We’re good with meals, groceries, errands. We have two drivers again for kids’ activities. We’re on stable ground with the practicals. Prayer is always our top need, so I do ask for that the most. However, as I’ve thought about it, I discovered another gap. I need people who can draw me INTO my grief. People who aren’t afraid to see my mess, hear my undone anger or fear, and who can sit with that. Someone who will listen, let me cry, and bear it with me for a little while. Not try to change me or quote a proverb or verse or silver lining. Those are draws out. If all I have are draw outs, they won’t help me heal. At times, I need draws in. I need a safe place to be my broken, hurting self. I want to be seen. All of me, especially the anguished parts with which most of us are uncomfortable. Psalm 34:18 tells us God is near to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Jesus also tells the mourners that they are blessed, for theirs is the kingdom of God (Matthew 5:4). When a person is able to sit beside their hurting friend, ache along with them, they make space for this very holy place. For God to be present with them and their broken heart. They allow blessing to come. Platitudes and verses and silver linings rob us of that beautiful process that takes place in our agony. I get it. I hate this. I would never choose to swim in this pool. I wish all of life were positive and happy. But it’s not the world we’re living in. There’s bigger things going on than our personal comfort. There’s war and eternity and salvation at play, to name a few of the intangibles beyond our understanding. There’s meaning and purpose to the pain we feel.

So now I have a new need. I’m praying for people who can bring some balance by drawing me into my grief. Being able to sit there with me. No fixing. No positive spinning. This isn’t an easy ask. It’s painful. It’s the harder road. It’s much easier to avoid. And I could really use someone to join Jesus and me in the pool.

Thank you to my “draw out” crew as well. I need you, too.