I read a Facebook post recently from a parent of a child whose departing this earth to be with the Lord was high profile and covered in much prayer and emotion from a wide audience. I am in awe of those parents whose child went home after a long battle because throughout the journey, they have been raw in their honesty yet true to their faith in the Lord. That is why they can speak the bold things they do about the Lord in the midst of their own grief and are not destroyed by the tragedy. These parents have shared with anyone who will read the status updates, the process of moving through their grief and sorrow over what I think has to be the most painful loss there exists…that of your child. Father God knows that pain Himself as He sent His Son Jesus for the very purpose of rescuing His future children through the death of His beloved Child.
In reading the mother’s post which was a “Happy Birthday” to
their little girl, I felt moved to address grief in this post. I think it is something so personal and mistreated. I think there is much attempt on our parts to
avoid it ourselves because it’s so painful.
We also exert much effort trying to get a bereaved individual to be
encouraged and not in sorrow because it’s uncomfortable to be with someone
going through that pain. We are awkward
because we really don’t know what to do or say.
In our smallness of mind, we well meaning ones try to “help” by saying
some very foolish things, like, “God needed another angel so He took your
baby.” What fruit is produced by saying
something like that? First of all,
angels are entirely different created spirit beings than humans and humans do
not transform into angels upon death.
There is absolutely nothing scriptural about that statement. Secondly, and probably most importantly, it can
cause a heart to hate God for taking that precious person from our lives. Sometimes the best thing to do with someone
experiencing pain from grief is to be quiet, saying more through our holding
them, or just being present, then expressing well meaning but foolish words.
I once heard a well known preacher/teacher tell of
his own family’s loss of a dear one and he proceeded to address their tears
with an exhortation and correction to not cry or grieve that loss. To do so, he instructed, was to show lack of
joy in the Lord and in His goodness to have taken their born again loved one to
heaven and denies the fact that Jesus took our sorrow to the cross. He continued that the knowledge of the loved
one being a born again Christian should have produced nothing but rejoicing,
knowing he was in heaven! What this
person didn’t understand, was that he was denying his family the right to
grieve and move through it.
If we don’t move through and eventually release grief in a
healthy way, it will manifest in other ways:
unresolved anger, bitterness, loneliness, irritability, touchiness,
depression, anxiety, or even as severe as suicide, at the thought of not being
able to go on without that loved one.
What that man did in his instruction was forget that Jesus Himself
grieved with weeping with Mary and Martha over the death of His friend,
Lazarus, John 11:33-36; and over the loss of His dear Jerusalem who would not
come to Him, Luke 19:41-44. If Jesus
Himself grieved, why would we think we should not go through the process
ourselves?
Grief is as personal as each individual. Different personalities, life experiences,
equipping, knowledge, will create diverse ways of coping with grief. There is a good way to move through it and a
bad way. I have experienced both.
In the early 90’s I suffered the loss of my dad at a time in
my life when I had endured loss of so many other things: my marriage,
relationships, health, career, earthly possessions, reputation, freedom. The marriage never was healthy and so was
gone before it began as I married out of God’s will by marrying an unbeliever. The
other elements of my life I lost were due to toxic exposure to chemicals in a new
school building in which daily contact destroyed my immune system. This created a “bubble girl” kind of effect
in my life. I became a social isolate
and had to guard everything I ate, breathed or touched or I would experience debilitating
symptoms which rendered me disabled.
Throughout that grueling experience, my one and only support was my
father, with the exception of one compassionate friend who likewise was
experiencing the same thing, just not to the degree that I was affected. My dad was my “go to” because I did not have
the relationship with God I do today. My
father was my “god”. I idolized him as
the one who was “all knowing and wise.”
He was an exceptional man, but I put him in a position he and no man
deserves. Instead of running to the throne
I ran to the phone. I didn’t understand
to seek God first and let Him lead in who He would use to minister to me. I just instinctively counted on my dad for
everything. In the midst of the battle
for my own life, the call came that he too would now face a battle…one with
cancer.
How I wish I had known then what I now know about our
weapons in Christ instead of accepting the traditional yet passive doctrine; “If
it’s God’s will I’ll be healed.” How I
wish I’d known then that you can fight with weapons through Christ which are
mighty for pulling down strongholds, how you have authority over your body and
evil spirits which cause sickness and disease, how you can lay your hands in
faith on the sick and they will recover, how you can change the very course of
nature with your words, (2 Cor. 10:4, Luke 10:19, Eph. 6:10-18, 1:17-2:6; Mark
16:18, Romans 4:17, James 3:6; Prov. 18:21).
For lack of knowledge, My people perish,
Hosea 4:6. (Sidebar: As a contrast, years later, my
mother was likewise stricken with incurable cancer; pancreatic, and given 3-4
months at most to live, but at that point I knew what to do in Christ and how
to battle with His instruction and guidance.
She is alive today, years later, cancer free.)
I entered the fight with my father ill equipped and we lost
the battle. He passed before my very
eyes. From that moment on, I entertained
and agreed with a spirit of grief. Camping
out in grief’s parking lot initiated a level of depression to the point I
became even more immobile than I was prior to dad’s passing onto heaven. I couldn’t seem to have any good memories of
him; only the scene of death playing over and over in my mind as I would hit
the rewind button and relive that morose scene. I grew darker and darker on the inside. Instead of finding a healthy way to pass
through this valley of the shadow of death, I let it consume me. As my health continued to decline, I suffered
seizures in addition to all the other incapacitating symptoms. I grieved Dad’s loss for a couple of
years. Every time anything brought a
memory of him, I would cry for long periods of time. I felt the loss so deep it literally felt
like a knife cutting into me daily in the very depth of my being. I felt so alone without his understanding ear
or strong shoulders of which to lean. Except
for my will to be alive and functional for my beautiful children, I’m not sure
how deep of a pit I would have sunk, but believe God gave me such treasure in
them that I refused to give up completely.
God, in His mercy, allowed me to slip into obscurity,
to the point that I finally found myself in a place I knew I had to escape or I would
perish. The Lord was right there,
illuminating my way and lifting me out of that dark pit. I no longer wanted that mindset capturing my
emotions and body. I wanted out and He
brought me to a wonderful refuge of safety and hope in Him. I was finally free in spirit, soul and body. My heart was no longer broken, my mind
refused to think of things which brought me back to dark places, and my body
began to manifest health again.
In the process of deliverance, and over time, I was then able
to allow Him to take me step by step through all the places of grief of which I
suffered over the years since childhood.
Some of which I didn’t recognize as loss, was actually foundational for my
understanding of why I seemed to grieve to an inordinate and harmful extent. In equipping me with Himself, His Truth, His
understanding, I began to walk in a new place of freedom from unhealthy grief
of which I am eternally grateful.
With grief, we need to understand that it is normal to have
sadness from loss, but if we are Christians, we have a Way for healing of our hearts,
minds, and emotions from the loss. Although
we can grieve loss of anything, ie. job, friends, health, opportunities, house,
relationships, family pet, etc., one of the most painful is the loss of a loved one. If the loved one was a child or born again
Christian, we can have the assurance we will see them again if we too are born again. I gained a glimmer of understanding of this
when I had to move away from my kids (which likewise includes my beloved son
and daughter in law) and grandkids to relocate in a different state. I felt so far away and cried as I unpacked
the pictures of them from the boxes which held my belongings. I didn’t think I would make it without having
them close by. I thought it unbearable
to not be able to see each other when ever we wanted and to share the simple
spontaneous things we so enjoyed together.
Then God, in His mercy, opened the way sooner than I expected to be able
to move back to my children, and even placed us right in the same neighborhood
as one child’s family and only ten minutes from the other! This was far better than I had imagined and
my heart is so full of how good our God is and how He tends to the details of
our lives with such affection and care! The
homecoming has been full of peace and joy immeasurable. I just had to be patient for His timing and
ways which were far better than mine anyway.
This move away and back again gave me a small picture of how
our Homecoming will be when we all meet together in heaven with our loved ones
who went before us. When we say the
cliché, “they are in a better place” we know that’s true but because we can’t
relate, it doesn’t really help our own sorrow over the departure from us. We
can, however, fix our thoughts on the knowledge that we will be with them
again. We can rejoice in their Homecoming; they truly are in a place that is
beyond our imagination. We have never
experienced something so magnificent , so we don’t have the capacity to
understand how truly joyful it is to be there nor how glorious our elation will
be to see them again, in perfection, with our beautiful Lord and His majesty. Some may not have the assurance that their loved one was born again. I will tell you that we do have some loved ones who are born again, believing in the Lord to save them, but they did not show much evidence because they didn't spend time in the Word, letting it transform them. For those who we don't know with all certainty they were born again, we have to commit that to the Lord and trust Him. No one knows what transpired between that individual and the Lord just prior to their death.
In the meantime, we need to press into God, for He is the
Healer of our wounded hearts. He is no
stranger to sorrow and grief and took that upon Himself. No one understands better than Him what we
are individually encountering and experiencing.
We can therfore accept His embrace as we go to Him to release our pain
and ask and expect Him to heal us. We
can actually get to a place in Him whereby we still miss our loved one, but we
don’t sorrow over the loss, knowing He is holding both them and us…forever.
As the holidays are upon us, if any of you are experiencing
grief, which seems to occur more this time of year than any other season, I
pray the Lover and Comforter of your soul, stirs and awakens you to a new level
of comfort in Him.
As I finish this post, I am stricken with sadness over
something that is trying to paint the holidays with melancholy because of the
way this season currently has to be navigated by us.
I could feel my joy slipping and then heard the Lord tenderly whisper,
“Can you just let that go and worship Me?”
As I surrender to the beauty of this moment of worship, I know that
although He is always worthy of our worship, He is also doing this for my
release from what is trying to occupy my heart and mind. In His presence is fullness of joy. I abandon all to You, my Love…
