Dealing with Grief

Most people who have written about grief have discovered a natural process unique to each individual. Time required to grieve is different for each person--also the intensity. The most important thing is to recognize when you are grieving. Some people who always feel bad are grieving and don’t even know it!

Big griefs like loosing a beloved spouse, child, relative, or friend knock us over with their appearance. No one can miss them. There are also “little griefs” like a child losing a favorite toy or having your beautiful car dented. Enough little griefs add up to equal big grief. Today, with bad economic news everywhere, it is multiplying rather than adding. Grief and suffering are everywhere from mansion to shack.

Some people with negative attitudes spend their days looking for things to generate grief. These people are usually miserable and desire to make everyone around them miserable--not the kind of person you want around when you are hurting.

Step 1: Shock and Denial
It is like bashing your thumb with a hammer: no instant hurt--soon nerves kick in.
It is like a dream--you want to wake up and find it not true.
Isolation and feeling you are the only one being hurt so badly

Step 2: Anger
You are mad this awful thing happened to you--Why ME???
You want to curse God and Die--recommendation of Job’s counselors
You want to get that Doctor / Hospital / driver / etc. for letting someone die

Step 3: Bargaining
If God will just spare (fill in the blank), you will be more faithful, give more, become a missionary, etc.
Take me, the parent, rather than my child
Just give me one more chance to do this over

Step 4: Depression
Leave me alone in this dark house--I just want to die
No one knows how I feel--leave me alone
I just want to take pills/alcohol/drugs and go to sleep

Step 5: Acceptance
God is in this after all
Now I understand what the plan was for me
It is just one of those awful things in life and I must go on

The above steps were discovered by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross in her famous book, On Death and Dying. Other writers like Grainger Westberg--Good Grief, Edgar N. Jackson--You and Your Grief and Telling a Child about Death all form the basis of my “books to share with hurting people.” If you are hurting and cannot seem to move through your grief, I encourage the reading of such books to enhance understanding and compassion. Anything simply promoting “positive thinking” likely will not address the more serious and deep grief situations. If grief is not moving behind naturally in 6 months, seek professional help.

Remember the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept?” Remember the beautiful description: “He was a Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief?” These few words tell us God knows of our sorrow. His own Son experienced the depths of sorrow, yet moved on to face life again. Anyone who experiences grief is now uniquely prepared by life and God’s help to undergird those just being hit by the hard bricks thrown at us by life.

Is Professional help necessary along with heavy medication like Valium/Lithium? The answer might be “yes” in very serious cases lingering for years. A quick “pill pop” will not help anyone work through real grief. Instead, it will prolong or cover up steps necessary to go on with life resuming the smiling and singing a song. I am just as suspicious of the “quick fix” as I am the “counselor dependent” approach to grief. Both cost great sums of money and neither gets at the core of grief. It is a journey enabled by Faith in God.

Maybe we need more good old Country Stores! As a child I went with Granddaddy Williams to Cousin Leonard Williams’ store just outside Greenville, SC. I listened as they talked and joked, cursed weather, government, price for crops, and considered which tractor was best. Finally, after about 30-45 minutes, they decided without saying it: “We are all in the same boat so we might as well get to the field and start plowing. This is just talk which won’t solve anything. Weeds need hoes and plows rather than lazy people praying for God to do it for them.”

What if we started helping one another rather than depending on “professionals” and “miracles” to do it for us?

What if our SS classes dealt with sharing our hurts in light of the Scripture lesson rather than parsing Greek verbs?

What if we all realized with 1 mouth and 2 ears God might be telling us to listen twice as much as we talk?

Let’s help one another. Sometimes it is better to go as a group from 1 field to another rather than separate, each to his own field. “By this shall they know you are my disciples: If you love one another,” said Jesus.

Talk is cheap---we need action in these tough, grief-filled days.