Grief is typically treated as something to be "gotten over with" as soon as possible, or certain things are not seen as worthy of grief. If others were not impacted the same way as you then you have the problem. There doesn’t seem to be any room for people responding differently when it comes to grief.
We are also taught that "real men don’t cry", or "don’t be a baby".
Our culture trivializes tragedy and loss. We watch all the devastation on the evening news, but are just given the facts, but no opportunity to grieve. Children dying of starvation, masses killed by an earthquake or Tsunami SHOULD break our hearts. We should pause to grieve such tragedies.
I. WHAT IS GRIEF?
in 1974 "The Handbook of Psychiatry" defined grief as "...the normal response to the loss of a loved one by death."
In 1984, Dr. Terese Rando---a noted grief specialist, researcher and author---defined grief as "...process of psychological, social and somatic reactions to the perception of loss".
In 1991, the Grief Resource Foundation of Dallas, Texas found that, for them, a good working and practical definition of Grief as "the total response of the organism to the process of change".
Although grieving the death of someone dear to us may be the most universal and most intense grief, it is not the only cause of grief.
So what is grief and what produces it? A helpful equation, which proves itself daily in all instances is: Change=Loss=Grief. (TLC Group, Dallas)
Basically, grief is about coming to terms with the fact that things will never be the same again. Something is lost and is never coming back again. It may be something more obvious or tragic like the death of a family member or friend, divorce; disability; rape, or it may be the more "natural" loss of health, youth, beauty, having kids in the house; infertility, the shattering of a lifelong dream, retirement from work or a position or a sport; moving, leaving home, friend, neighbor or family member moving away; loss of financial wealth, moving, house burning down, loss of valuable due to fire or theft; last child out of infant stage, toddler stage, teenage stage; loss of status
The intensity of the grief depends on how the loss is perceived. If the loss is not perceived as significant, the grief reaction will be minimal or barely felt.
II. PROCESSING GRIEF
What do we do with our grief? The most common response: Avoid, escape, get over, medicate. Yet in John 11 we find Jesus himself weeping over the death of a friend. Why? After all, he knew that he would raise Lazarus within minutes?
"The answer is because He is perfect. He is perfect love. That’s perfect love. He will not close His heart even for ten minutes. He will not refuse to enter in" -- Tim Keller
1. GRIEF IS NOT TO BE AVOIDED BUT ENTERED INTO
We need to accept the reality of the loss and the pain that it brings -to actually cry, weep, express our pain, disappointment, regret. For some of you that might mean going way back or deep down and uncovering the pain you buried a long time ago but never dealt with -- divorce of parents, molestation, loss of innocence, the loss of childhood itself.
Another biblical example is David after Saul and Jonathan die. He writes a song, a poem--a moving, beautiful, detailed lament of the horror that has occurred. "Your glory, O Israel, lies slain on your heights. How the mighty have fallen.... Saul and Jonathan, in life they were loved and gracious.... O daughters of Israel, weep for Saul." He will anguish over the catastrophe three times: "How the might warriors have fallen." David, consumed with grief, addresses Jonathan directly, "I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother."
Next David orders the people to memorize and sing a lamentation he had written (2 Samuel 1:17-27). Can you imagine? When Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle, David pours out his grief with tears about the enormous loss Israel now faces. He recognizes that something precious in Israel is gone and will never return.
David ordered that this song of lament be taught to all the men of Judah. He wanted them to learn it, memorize it and sing it, as their experience, not simply his. Why did David force the people to stop and pay attention? Why did he want them to express sorrow over the death of Saul and Jonathan? Wasn’t there a lot of work to do now that there would be a transition to a new government?
"David understood how indispensable grieving is to spiritual maturity. David knew we are deepened by taking the time to grieve our losses before moving on. He knew how important it was for the people to stay connected to reality and not run from their pain." -- Pete Scazzero
2. Pour out your heart to God.
A Christian doesn’t just EXPRESS her grief but DIRECTS it. Prayer enables us to process our grief in God’s presence.
"God approves of your tears", writes Paul Tripp. See the Psalms (half are laments or songs of mourning), Lamentations, Job, Jeremiah.
3 My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, "Where is your God?" 4 These things I remember as I pour out my soul ... 9 I say to God my Rock, "Why have you forgotten me? Why must I go about mourning, oppressed by the enemy?" (Ps.42)
1 I cried out to God for help; I cried out to God to hear me. 2 When I was in distress, I sought the Lord; at night I stretched out untiring hands and my soul refused to be comforted. 3 I remembered you, O God, and I groaned; I mused, and my spirit grew faint. (Ps.77)
The comfort for the Christian: Someone is listening. Someone sees our tears. Someone sympathizes.
5 "Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, ’This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you. (2 Kings 20:5)
Psalm 147:3, TLB. "[God] heals the brokenhearted, binding up their wounds."
The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them ... The Lord is close to the brokenhearted (Ps.34:17-18)
When you come to Jesus you come to the one who is the "man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering". (Is.53)
Practically: Use the Psalms and other laments to get you started. (eg. 13, 22, 38, 42, 55, 59, 61, 73)
3. Focus on the hope of Christ in the midst of your grieving.
If you don’t you may end up entering into sinful despair.
I Thessalonians 4:13-17: "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. .
What is that hope? Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." (John 11:25-26) Death itself will dies and its affects reversed. What happened to Lazarus is but a foreshadow of a greater resurrection. One day God is going to fix everything that was broken and restore everything that was lost.
1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." (Revelation 21:1-4)
God will wipe away EVERY tear from our eyes. It is the FIRST thing that he will do because it is what he is most anxious to do. Like any good and compassionate parent when he hears his child crying in pain.
ILL. Tears In Heaven
A few years ago, four-year-old Conor Clapton fell to his death in New York City. After the tragedy his father, rock guitarist Eric Clapton, said, "I turned to stone. Then I went off the edge of the world for a while." In time, Clapton put his tortured feelings in a song:
Time can bring you down,time can bend your knees.Time can break your heart,have you begging please.
Beyond the door there’s peace I’m sure,And I know there’ll be no more tears in heaven.
There will be no more sorrow, that is no death, separation, disappointment, sin, regret, pain. All we will know throughout eternity is health, love, righteousness, dignity, wholeness, life, peace, satisfaction, glory, astonishment. Heaven is the place where nothing will ever be lost, and things will only change in the sense that they will improve through learning, revelation -- "from glory to glory"
Christianity offers the good news of the God who weeps with us, over us, and will one day wipe our tears away once and for all. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus is the incarnation of grief, as well as compassion and mercy. The cross is God’s response to grief -- His as well as ours (through the fall God lost US). On the cross Jesus "bore our griefs and carried our sorrows"(Is.53), felt his own sorrow ("my soul is sorrowful even unto death") but he also caused great sorrow. The cross is the greatest grief causing event in history, since it is when and where the most was lost: God lost his Son! What a testimony of His love! There was no other way in which we could be restored to him, and no way all that we lost could be restored.
4. Allow the old to birth the new.
John Milton in Paradise Lost describes the evil of history as a compost pile--a mixture of decaying substances such as animal excrement, vegetable and fruit peels, potato skins, egg shells, dead leaves, and banana peels. If you cover it with dirt, after a few years it smells wonderful. The soil has become a rich, natural fertilizer and is tremendous for growing fruit and vegetables. But you have to be willing to wait five to ten years! Milton’s point is that the worst events of human history that we cannot understand, even hell itself, are only compost in God’s wonderful eternal plan. Out of the greatest evil, the death of Jesus, came the greatest good. God transform evils into good without diminishing the awfulness of the evil.
WHY GRIEF IS IMPORTANT (or THE GOODNESS OF GRIEF)
"[Embracing grief] is THE only pathway to becoming a compassionate person like our Lord Jesus." -- Pete Scazzero
Jesus is the "man of sorrows". "Blessed are those who mourn", says Jesus, "for they will be comforted"(Matt.5). There is no joy without sorrow. Whereas we want to get the pain of grief over with as soon as possible, God is seeking to use our losses and the grief of them to enlarge us and mature us.
Gerald Sittser lost his wife, daughter and mother in a car accident. What effect did such loss have on him? This is what he concluded about grief:
"Catastrophic loss by definition precludes recovery. It will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same. There is no going back to the past ... It is not therefore true that we become less through loss -- unless we allow the loss to make us less, grinding our soul down until there is nothing left. Loss can also make us more. I did not get over my loved ones; rather I absorbed the loss into my life until it became part of who I am. Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it ... One learns the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain, by turning inside oneself, by finding one’s own soul ... However painful, sorrow is good for the soul ... The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering." -- Gerald Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss
Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him. (Ps.126:5-6)
Pete Scazzero: New, inner births, or changes, resulting from grieving include:
We become compassionate as our Father in heaven is compassionate. Henri Nouwen rightly says grief is the way to compassion. "There is no compassion without many tears....To become like the Father whose only authority is compassion, I have to shed countless tears and so prepare my heart to receive anyone, whatever their journey has been, and forgive them from the heart." Absorbing our own pain, we learn to forgive.
We have a greater concern for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the marginalized, the wounded. We understand them.
We are less covetous, less idolatrous. We rarely say, "I’ve got to have this or I’ll die." Life is stripped of its pretense and non-essentials. We are more apt to rid ourselves of the unimportant things in life others so desperately want--power, control, money, or approval.
God really is at the center of our lives, not superficial, trivial pursuits.
There is an enhanced sense of living in the immediate present, rather than postponing life until retirement. We easily now rearrange life’s priorities to be with our spouse and friends.
Heaven is real, something I long for on a new level. I begin to understand I’m an alien and sojourner. We will finally be at home with ourselves and with God.
