HoHum:
Start with some family information:
I grew up in a tight knit family spending my Sunday afternoons after church with all my extended family at my grandparent’s house. I am the eldest grandchild and my grandfather spent a lot of time with me growing up. I had trouble reading so before my grandfather began his day, he came to the bus stop at the end of our driveway and helped me to read my homework. My grandfather was the life of the party, he made everything fun. I remember going to cut wood with him one day and he made me laugh so hard that I had trouble loading the wood into the trailer. I remember going fishing with him and his brother, my great uncle, and they made me laugh so hard that I almost fell out of the boat. When things were hard at my house, I trip to my grandparent’s house and a visit with my grandfather always made things better. The holidays were the best. For example on Thanksgiving my grandmother would be working feverishly in the kitchen while everyone else would be in the living room enjoying the antics of my grandfather. If things got too heated or heavy, my grandfather would always have a story or a joke that would just make everyone laugh. After my grandmother finally got everything cooked (she is a great cook) we would gather in the kitchen, have the blessing and enjoy the best food this side of heaven. My grandfather would wait until you had the drink in your mouth and then do or say something funny and the drink would come out of your nose. Oh, what good memories!
These holiday traditions are vivid in my mind. What also is vivid is the contrast that come when my grandfather died. My grandmother is a strong willed woman and she was determined to keep the traditions just as they were before my grandfather died. Let me say this, as far as my perspective, it didn’t work. My grandmother was doing her normal holiday meal in the kitchen. My grandparents’ house is an old fashioned closed floor plan. There is a sharp distinction between the kitchen and the living room. Things were normal in the kitchen but things in the living room were very different. Gone was the life of the party. There was much weeping and sorrow in the living room. My grandmother finished her fabulous meal but our appetites were lagging. Nothing was the same even though we tried to keep it the same for my grandmother. Since that time, we have changed our holiday traditions. My grandfather had difficulties leaving the house for very long so when he died we changed the place to my mother’s house. My grandmother is more fatigued so others of us have taken up making the various dishes. We have watched movies which we would never have done when my grandfather was alive. My Uncle Wendell, taking after my grandfather, turned into the life of the party. However, even my uncle Wendell is not my grandfather. Interesting to see how things will be this holiday season because my Uncle Wendell’s wife, my aunt Lynette, died this past year. Things change whether we like it or not.
WBTU:
Death is never in season. Holidays frequently seem to serve as markers of the event. Holidays are, for most people, special times of the year. They come with the regularity of the calendar. We look forward to them, wanting to make each one special and significant. But the holidays will be different for many this year. Grief has ripped from us the uncompromised joy and celebration.
I grew up in the country. Had an interesting conversation with some nurses about castrating hogs- this is the environment where I grew up. When I was a boy we had a large forest in the back of our property. Spent many hours in the woods hiking and making trails to ride my bike. One time we had a fire in our woods and the fire department came and put it out. Several years ago, there was a large fire in Yellowstone National Park that burned many acres. That is what death is like, a firestorm in the forest. The fuel for that fire are the feelings associated with holidays.
Grief is tough enough, but when the holidays come around, grief becomes all the more complicated. After all, this is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Grief is viewed as the opposite of that with sadness, emptiness and loneliness and this is unacceptable for the holiday season.
Death, like fire, devastates, destroys. Death seems to leave nothing but ashes in its wake. Landmarks are destroyed. A sense of hopelessness overwhelms. We are not certain whether we can find our bearings again. Death, like a forest fire, leaves ashes- ashes of loneliness in the absence of our loved one. A holiday celebration makes us face the reality of death all the more directly. The loneliness and deep pain threaten to engulf us. Our heart and our soul feel burned to the core.
Thesis: Discuss 4 thoughts on viewing the holidays for those who are grieving
For instances:
1. Sorting through the ashes
When there is a forest fire, ashes remain- often hot for days, slowly cooling in air filled with the smell of charred timber. Funeral rituals following the death of a loved one are like that. The visitations, memorials, flowers, and casseroles delivered by friends and family slowly taper off. The whirlwind gradually comes to a halt. Other people’s lives return to normal. After the forest fire, there are only remains of smoldering ash. This is where grief puts us- with the painful emptiness of our loss. Holidays make the feelings of devastation, grief, anxiety, fear, anger, guilt (and many more) all the more pointed. We are on our own now. Someone who was an important part of our life has died. We miss that person and the life we had together.
Those grieving probably don’t feel at all festive or eager for the holidays. We may be looking for an escape, a Rip Van Winkle sleep. Good to downsize our celebration or to travel over the holiday. Moving in slow motion won’t hurt anything this year, especially the first year after the loss. Plan some time to be by ourselves so we can grieve and reflect on our memories without the pressure of family or social obligations. Tackle a few things at a time, and leave some activities for another time. Eventually we will have to face the pain. Need to give ourselves permission to do what is best for us on these special occasions, but know that we cannot avoid the holidays forever.
Might be thinking, “I don’t want this holiday season to come. I just want to avoid it this year. Let’s just skip it. Flip the calendar and move into the next month.” Time doesn’t work that way. Time moves in a 24 hour sequence, a fact that can be a comfort. It is just one day, you know- with only about 18 waking hours. Encourage ourselves with that thought. We can live through 18 hours.
“A maskil of the Sons of Korah. As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”” “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God.” Psalms 42:1-3, 11, NIV.
Those who know God’s presence in their lives during the “normal time” can also sometimes sense a great gulf between themselves and God during tough times. Death not only separates us from our loved one but can, in some cases, give us the sense that we are also separated from God. The writers of this Psalm (Sons of Korah) yearned to be close to God, but they also knew how difficult it was to get near God at times. Their soul pants for God, their soul thirsts for God, all the while hearing others taunt them saying, “Where is your God?”
Death often throws us into the dark night of the soul, a phrase used to denote those periods of life when we seem far from God. Sometimes we cannot draw near to God because we are simply burned out- emotionally and spiritually. We feel abandoned, alone, downcast, and disturbed.
Along with these feelings and the overwhelming emotions of grief, Christians might also feel guilty for feelings of abandonment, anger, frustration, or lack of closeness with God. Somehow we may have come to believe that Christians are supposed to be victorious, happy, powerful, and positive all the time. Somehow we have been led to believe that emotions (especially the “negative ones” such as anger, fear, a sense of abandonment, and the like) really have no place in our faith. However, emotions are neither good nor bad. Emotions are merely part of our existence. Even Jesus had emotions, and he was not afraid of expressing them whether they were positive or negative.
During the holidays we may find it even more difficult to worship and draw near to God. Our anger may stand in the way. Or regret, a sense of guilt for what we think we could have done, might be the obstacle. Return to Psalm 42. The call is clear: “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God” (Vs. 11). The Christian holidays ultimately remind us of the victory of God’s grace.
2. A Time to Remember
Someone who had made frequent trips to Yellowstone might remember, standing in the center of a scorched field in the heart of the park, what it had been like. They might reminisce, to think back to how the fields once looked, and be able to sort through a storehouse of memories to recall brighter days. This holiday season it is good to journey back to previous years, gather the memories, and begin the sorting through them. Memories need to be revisited and sorted. Memories are designed to free us to move out of the night into a new day. This is the message of the well-known refrain from Cats, which encourages us to remember the old days while a new day and life begin. Memories, all alone in the moonlight, I can smile at the old days, I was beautiful then, I remember, the time I knew what happiness was, let the memory live again.
This holiday season provides us with a challenge and an opportunity. We need to sort through our memories. Not as bad as we remember and not as good as we remember. Learn to cherish them. Find a place to store them in our minds and hearts. Make sure our memories are as accurate as possible. Not as bad as we remember and not as good as we remember. Remember the joy, the fun, the laughter, but also remember the tears, the strained tones, the idiosyncrasies that may have annoyed us. Keep those memories in balance. Remember it all, and store the memories in such a way that we can retrieve them at will- similar to what we do with childhood memories.
We can find memorials, statues, and plaques in almost every park in the United States. Many of them honor war heroes. Who hasn’t stood in awe when seeing for the first time the representation of the soldiers raising the flag on Iwo Jima, or when standing face to face with the black granite wall of the Vietnam Memorial, containing thousands of names of war victims? Many of our memorials are associated with war, with death, with victory, and with memories.
Interesting companions, aren’t they: war, death, victory and memory? We hope the parallel is not lost when we think of the death of our loved one. There was the battle with disease. Then came the death, the heart wrenching reality that the physical body of our loved one had ceased breathing. But for Christians, death is also associated with victory and memories through Jesus Christ.
Many who grieve find that the phrase often used, “Well, at least he/she is in a better place,” does not provide comfort. As a matter of fact, such a comment often produces a negative reaction. Feelings of unworthiness, guilt, or abandonment by God can overwhelm the bereaved person. “Why couldn’t it have been me?” “Why does he/she get to go to heaven, and I have to stay here to deal with this mess?”
This holiday may be painful right now. They are painful because they serve as an occasion for memories- memories of what our loved one meant in our lives. Christmas, for example, is certainly more than decorating trees, songs of snowmen, and hectic shopping and gift giving. Christmas is a time to recall God’s great love for us symbolized in the birth of the Christ child. As we grieve the death of our loved one, us the Christmas holiday to remember God’s gift of His Son.
Right now we have the opportunity to begin collecting memories. The time has come to move the battle and the death into our memories. Creating memories is, by definition, moving an event into the past. Memories are things that have happened. They are no longer present. We can relish remembering them as we choose. They become a part of our historical lifeline. But memories allow us to move on as well.
We may visit memorials every so often. We remember the battles, the deaths, the victories. But we do not live at the memorials or at the grave. We get back into our car, return home, and take up our life again.
3. Planting the Seeds for New Life
Need to see again the charred forest floor blackened and dead. If we visited Yellowstone a few years after the fire, we would have seen the growth, the new greenery, the lush vegetation that had sprung up again. Ecologists know that this is necessary for new life and growth. This is part of the environmental system. It is the way nature recycles and replenishes itself.
As much as we liked “the old way” of our life, death has changed it. The old forest is gone. Our loved one’s death has altered the picture of the past landscape. Life will never be the same again. But we also have a new beginning. Our life goes on, and we need to decide how that will happen. In some ways, grieving is a solo journey- a journey we eventually need to walk intentionally by ourselves. Out of the devastation, a new chapter can begin. We like things to stay the same, comfortable, known. We want to hold tight to our families and friends. But if we as bereaved people hang on and continue in our grief, if we never relinquish the pain, if we continue to feel that moving on in our life might be disloyal to the one who died, then we are saying that the one who died is of more importance that we are. Often ask how would our loved one want us to continue, to live? Perhaps we think that things will never be beautiful again. It does take a while. The same is true following the death of a loved one. But eventually we can feel differently. Our loved one died, not us. We are individuals of worth and value. Now is the time to identify and reaffirm who we are as people- people of much value and worth, even without our loved ones who have died. Our loved one has died; but we are still here. How do we want to live this holiday season?
Grief is a process. Working through grief is like the gradual coming of daylight. It will likely occur in small bits and pieces, like puzzle pieces, until eventually all aspects come together to signify healing, and we will no longer be in intense pain. We need to take charge of our life as individuals, and become deliberate about what we need to do.
Realize the need to let go. Not, of course, to forget the deceased person, that cannot happen anyway. But we do not want to keep looking back and hanging onto the past. Remember the goal is to let go and move on. Like a toddler letting go of the furniture that has steadied his or her gait, we can begin again without hanging on- in order to move toward new horizons and adventures in the life that awaits us
Some Christians may be confused about the concept of self esteem, or feeling good about one’s self. Somehow the Christian faith, perhaps with the emphasis on sin, has left the impression that we are unworthy. Or we have twisted Scripture so that we think being humble means demeaning ourselves, thinking we are nothing. The truth is that God loved us so much that he gave His Son for us (John 3:16). If God has loves us so much that He gave his best for us, and he wants us to love others (“love your neighbor”), then we must also love ourselves (“Love your neighbor as yourself”- Luke 10:27).
An important part of the grieving process is developing the capacity to say, “I am special.” Each of us is a unique creation of God with a special blend of talents, perspectives, emotions, and dreams. There is no one else like you. Even though our loved one has died, we are not dependent on that relationship to define us.
The change in focus for the deceased loved one to myself may be a difficult transition for one to make. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day cane be challenging times for someone grieving the death of a loved one. On the other hand, the movement from one year to the next may serve as a beneficial point of transition in the grief journey. The new year could be the time for you to reclaim and redefine your place in life.
The time has come for us to separate ourselves from the past and turn our face toward our future. The time has come to reinvest in life, to create our own “new year.” Join with the Apostle Paul in the confidence that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6, NIV. This means that we need to “press on” (Philippians 3:12, 14) in our journey, confident that everything is under God’s control.
4. Beauty From the Ashes
Grieving is not a passive process. Grieving is an intentional and active process that requires time as we work through the pain. Hold tight to the notion that we will get through this holiday or other special occasion. We can have hope. Believe that it will not always be this way, stricken with grief and aching for our deceased love one to reappear. Life can be good again. Notice, I said can- because it doesn’t just happen. People can get stuck in their grief- and they call what they are doing, “loyalty” or “love.” More rightly called misunderstanding, or merely existing.
Choose between yesterday and tomorrow. Each of us can focus on only one direction at a time. We can either look backward with eyes fixed on what used to be or we can look forward to what the future may hold, searching the landscape, looking for signs of new growth appearing after the fire, envisioning the wealth of opportunities that have not yet been tapped. Pick one direction- either yesterday or this present moment, which is the beginning our new future. We can’t control everything in our lives, but we can choose which direction we are going to face.
Flowers are growing again in Yellowstone. The fire couldn’t kill all life in that place. We too are alive, even though we’ve journeyed through the firestorm of death. Don’t let our loved one’s death kill our spirit. We can experience hope and promise of new growth. Remind ourselves that we are valuable people who may have a good part of life’s journey ahead.
Regardless of our age, look around with eyes wide open to see who else may be in our life right now who cares significantly for us and wants a relationship with us. Life might feel empty right now. We may recognize the desire for new friends. Reaching out may be difficult but this is a step in a healthy direction. We can begin. Start with small steps.
I didn’t want this. Nobody does. But now that it has happened, use this as an occasion to grow, to change, to become stronger and wiser. Life can be exciting, energizing, and even fulfilling after grief. Grief changes us; hopefully it can change us for the better- make us more insightful, more understanding of what life is all about and what is important to us. Take hold of our life. Believe our life is not over. We still have reasons for being here. Begin to find out what those reasons are.
Leave us with these thoughts: “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your love, O LORD, endures for ever--do not abandon the works of your hands.” Psalms 138:8, NIV. Contained in this short passage is both a promise and a prayer.
1. The promise is that God has a purpose for you. You are his child, his servant, his ambassador. At the very least, the apostle Paul points out that as we receive comfort and encouragement from God, then ““we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” 2 Corinthians 1:4, NIV.
““For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep...” Acts 13:36, NIV. God has us here for a purpose and, like David, once our purpose is completed, then as Christians we go to glory. Seize the day and fulfill that purpose!
2. The prayer is that God will not leave us alone. God will not abandon you, even though you may feel that way right now. God holds you in the palm of his hand. Our purpose for still being here goes well beyond the relationship with our loved one. The person we loved, the person who has died, was not the only important person in our lives. God has a bigger purpose for you- a purpose that goes far beyond what he was able to do through your relationship with your deceased loved one. Be encouraged with this: “God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”” Hebrews 13:5, NIV.
