Good Grief?

Good Grief?

Lamentations

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

Chenoa Baptist Church

11-12-2023

Kimmy’s Gone

She called me Jeff and I called her Kimmy. Unless, she was mad at me and she would call me Jefferson and I would respond with Kimberly.

December 12, 2014, 13 days before Christmas, seemed like any other day until I got a call that changed everything.

Kimmy was coming back from a funeral in Fairbury when she lost control of her car, sliding off the road and into a field. Her car flipped multiple times, and because she didn’t have her seatbelt on, she was ejected from the car through the sunroof, killing her instantly.

I drove home and found Maxine distraught and sobbing. We drove to the ER where we met her parents and all stood around her body in shock.

On December 17, I co-led the funeral in a daze. Over 700 hundred people crammed into the church to celebrate the life of one of the most wonderful, ridiculous, Jesus lovers this world has ever known.

We were in the process of trying to sell our house and the Christmas tree was up. That afternoon, Maxine canceled Christmas. It was all too much for her and the thought of Christmas without Kimmy was too much.

Even the next Thanksgiving was tough. On Thanksgiving, Maxine would always make Kimmy her own bowl of mashed potatoes and she would eat them with a wooden spoon. If you tried to take any of the potatoes, she would hit you with the wooden spoon.

The Holiday Blues

Psychologists tell us that the holidays can be depression-producing times for some people.

Dr. Gary Collins writes,

“Christmas…may not be a time of joy and happiness for people who are separated from loved ones, without friends or the money to buy presents, worry about relatives who drink too much at the holiday celebrations, pressured by the demands of the season, or reminded of deaths or other traumatic events that took place in a previous December.”

Suicide rates spike during the holidays. At the psychiatric hospital I worked in during seminary, the assessment office would be overwhelmed during the month of December with people in distress. Christmas is a time of great sadness for many people

But the Church is Different, right?

The holidays are a time of joy and hope. Surely no “good” Christian could be depressed during such a festive time, right?

So, week after week, we walk into the church doors and put on our church faces. We feel guilty and lie and say we are okay when we are falling apart. We play the part, quote the right verses, and swallow our tears.

Enough! Enough, I say! If you can not be real here, where can you be? If you can not struggle here, where can you struggle? The church is a group of fellow humans walking a long, sometimes disheartening, journey toward home together.

Listen to Paul’s heart as he writes to the church in Corinth:

“If one part of the body suffers, all the other parts suffer with it.” (I Corinthians 12:26, NCV)

And to the church in Galatia, he wrote this command:

“Share each others troubles and problems and in this way obey the law of Christ.” (Galatians 6:2, NLT)

We are created to be in community. That’s why it is so important to be in a small group. We serve together, worship together, cry together, and learn together. Let’s do that right now, shall we?

Good Grief?

What was it that I experienced after Kimmy's death? The clinical word for it is “grief.” Grief is our natural reaction to loss. It is highly personal and no two people grieve in exactly the same way.

Recently, I sent out an email and asked this question, “How would you describe grief?”

The answers I received prove the variety of reactions we have to tragedy and trouble. See if any of these sound like your experience.

“A roller coaster ride that you can never quite get off of. You experience the highest and lowest of emotions, and sometimes within minutes and hours of each other. Never knowing when it will take you for a wild ride. It comes with great love for a person… the deeper the connection with them, the more intense the ride of grief.”

“Sometimes like a tsunami when the water goes out to sea and seems to have left and then seemingly out of nowhere, it comes rushing back in and overwhelms you, especially if you're not looking out for it.”

“Wearing a heavy, wet blanket, trudging through mud.”

“A never-ending fog. Or comes in waves. It never goes away but there are days when you feel you can "live" and others where you feel like you're suffocating.”

“Grief is like a lifelong separation from a piece of your own heart like a fraction of your own existence has crossed a barrier the rest of yourself cannot.”