“My soul weeps because of grief. Strengthen me according to your word.” (Psalm 118.28 ESV)
I am a student of grief. The classrooms for my grief studies have primarily been four – my own grief experiences, studies of the writings of grief experts, observing others as they grieve, and especially studying the Bible. Forty-five years of ministry as a pastor have put me in position many times to watch and study people as they grieve the death of someone special to them. I have often pondered what enables some people to grieve well, while others struggle hard to survive emotionally. I’ve seen many over time move forward to their new normal. I’ve seen others pitch a tent somewhere in the grieving process and camp out there.
The purpose of this article is to share some of what I have learned that I pray will help others as they grieve. I’ve entitled my article “After the Shock Wears Off.” An initial impact that God has designed into the grief process is a period of shock (some would say numbness) that cushions the blow somewhat when a loved one dies. Shock is a gift from God. A mother who had just lost her adult daughter to cancer described that period of shock well when she said, ‘I’m operating on autopilot.” While the length of time that shock will continue varies from person to person, as the shock wears off, the reality of what has happened begins to sink in. It’s what a person does after the shock wears off that determines the quality of his/her grieving process. Persons may not have had any real control over the circumstances which caused them to lose a loved one, but they are in control of how they respond to the fact that the loss has occurred. So, how can we grieve in such a way that we move forward and not just move on?
Choose to see grief as a friend not an enemy. Grief is the emotional price we pay for choosing to love someone. The deeper our love the deeper our grief. At first glance grief may seem like an enemy, but it is not. Death is our enemy, except when it ushers us into heaven. Rather than seeing grief as an enemy to be resisted, we should see it as a friend. We can do that should we view it as God’s emotional gift to us which enables us to acknowledge, face head-on, and manage both our love and our loss in a healthy way.
Pursue God’s primary goal for you in your grieving. First let’s establish what God’s goal is not. It is not for us to somehow just get over the death. A number of years ago I visited a woman who was really struggling in her grief over the death of her adult daughter. During the visit she said, “Jerry, I just don’t know how I am going to get over my daughter’s death.” Led by the Holy Spirit, I responded, “Your purpose is not to get over her death, because that would suggest her life didn’t matter all that much. Your purpose is to figure out how to live a meaningful life in spite of the fact she is no longer with you.” God’s goal for our grieving is much loftier than just getting over it. His goal is that: (1) that we make it through our grief experience (“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death….” (Psalm 23:4 ESV), and (2) that we emerge on the other end stronger and mre ab;e to “comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we are comforted by God.” (2 Corinthians 1:4 ESV)
Choose to believe in life after death. Now, I don’t mean life after death the normal way we think of it, but in the way that a NYC Fire Department Chaplain meant it when he met with Fire Department widows and their families after 9/11. Once he had asked a widow if she believed in life after death, he would say, “Now I don’t mean life after death in the sense of a person going to heaven. I mean it in the sense of, ‘Do you believe in life after your spouse’s death for you and your family members who have been left behind?’” That Chaplain was on to something. To experience good grief, at some point we must truly believe that we can still “live” in spite of the fact that our loved one is gone. Even more, we must give ourselves permission to allow life to happen. With that meaning in mind, let me ask you again, “Do you believe in life after death and are you willing to give yourself permission for it to happen?”
Allow grief to take you to school. Grief can teach us a lot of important things – for examples, the innate value, meaning and purpose of human life and human relationships. It can teach us what we genuinely believe about God versus what we claim to believe. It can teach us to accurately identify and label our “stuff” – i.e. the unhealthy emotional and relationship baggage we carry from day to day and place to place. Grief can help us identify our stinkin’ thinkin that fosters such emotions as anger and bitterness, jealousy and envy, and selfishness and self-seeking. But most of all, it can convince us of the necessity for us to have genuine hope in the face of death – a hope found only in the person of Jesus Christ through faith in His death, burial, and resurrection. Nothing can help us more when the shock is gone than the hope He provides.
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