You will get through it

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

You will get through it


Rev. John read the following at last week's grief support meeting and I wanted to share. John and Donna McDowell are bereavement specialists and grief counselors who have started their own grief ministry called "By His Grace Ministries"

There were so many things in this writing that just struck me, things that I wanted my dear friends and loved ones to know. If you already know, then let the words be a reminder to God's faithfulness to us. The Lord will get us through the darkest days when we feel like no one else in the world could possibly understand the depths of our grief. And may you be reminded that there are others like you that have been through it and are still struggling 2,4,6 years later (for some even longer). It's ok.


You now know how hard the bag of sorrow is to bear. It is hard to bear for not everyone understands your grief. They did at first, they did at the funeral, they did at the graveside. But they don't now! They do not know how grief lingers. Nor for that matter did you until this grief grabbed you by the throat and tried to squeeze the life out of you.

As silent as a cloud drifts by between you and the sun, memories drift between you and joy, leaving you in a chilly shadow. No warning! No notice! Just a whiff of cologne, a song, a place, a time, and at times nothing in particular triggers it and you're saying good bye all over again. Why won't the sorrow leave you?

Because you buried more than a person. You buried some of yourself. John Donne said,

"Any man's death diminishes me", as if the human race resides on a huge trampoline. The movements of one can be felt by all. And the closer the relationship, the more profound the loss. When someone you love dies, it affects you, it affects your dreams.

Why does grief linger? Because you are dealing with more than memories---- you are dealing with unlived tomorrows. Your grief is for what you lost and what you will continue to lose. The hopes, dreams, plans, todays, tomorrows & forever's you once saw. You are not just battling your sorrow- - you are battling disappointment. You are battling anger. It may be on the surface, it may be subterranean. It may be a flame, it may be a blow torch. But anger lives in sorrow's house. Anger at self, at life. Anger at the hospital, doctors, friends, family and others. Indirect anger or direct anger.

But most of all anger at God. It does not matter, if it was disease, an accident, age, or other we feel as though that life was not long enough. While God knows every life is long enough. If God wishes your loved one in Heaven more than you do, God gets His wish. Isaiah 57:1-2 may give us part of that answer. "Good people are taken away, but no one understands. Those who do right are being taken away from evil and are given peace. Those who live as God wants are given rest in death." God's ways and will is not ours.

Is God taking them away from a disease, an addiction, evil, or a dark season of rebellion, we don't know. Is God taking them away to avoid something worse? We don't know, none of us do. But we can stand on this promise, "The Lord is good and right." Psalms 25:7-8 We must begin there. While we do not understand God's actions we must trust his heart.

God does not want us to deny or dismiss our grief (there is a time to mourn Eccles. 3: 1, 4, 7). Solomon explained using that verse at the death of Saul and Jonathan. Solomon's father David and the entire army tore their clothing, wept loudly and fasted. Death was not soft peddled or ignored.

So we face the shadow of death as we grieve and in all that pain our Heavenly Father is there to carry us as we do until we can once again walk on our own. Trust the Lord even through this pain of grief. The Lord has never given one soul more than they could bear. Satan may try and tell us that and interfere so much he makes it very difficult on us. But what God brings us to, God will bring us through.