How Can I Stand It? Processing Your Loss and Grief

Resurrection

Resurrection is preceded by a violent death and a season in the grave.

Having been in war, you know something about violent death. So does Jesus – His was among the most violent ever. If you’re reading this, odds are good that you have not personally died a violent death… or have you? Though your body is still functioning, there may be parts of your being that feel real dead. And it feels like they were killed violently. The gravestone has “PTSD” on it. And you are experiencing your season in the grave right now.

But there is hope. There is a resurrection scheduled for you. As Tony Campolo says, referring to the days of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection: “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming!”

Understanding Grief

Grief is the normal process of natural emotions and feelings which are uniquely experienced after any loss of any relationship. Please note carefully the first characteristic listed: it is normal. It’s built into us. God invented it. God experienced it. Everybody experiences it.

The word “grief” comes from the Latin verb meaning “to burden.” That’s exactly what grief feels like, doesn’t it? A heavy load that you wish you could set down – but you can’t.

Grief is always triggered by a loss of some sort – losing someone or something we had an attachment to. Grief has different levels and intensities. We grieve a little when our favorite shirt is ruined and we have to throw it away. We grieve a little more when our favorite team has its hopes dashed for championship glory. More profound grief comes when a beloved pet dies, when a cherished relationship ends, when dreams we’ve held for our futures evaporate, or when someone we love passes on.

But, as grief and trauma counselor Dr. H. Norman Wright tells us “Loss is not the enemy. Not facing its existence is.” Loss is the fuse that triggers the bomb. The loss has irretrievably passed – now comes the process of dealing with the crater that’s left.

Grief is neither a problem to be solved nor a problem to be overcome. It is a sacred expression of love…a sacred sorrow. – Dr. Gerald May, M.D

The Purpose of Grief

God built the grief response into us for the purpose of mentally, emotionally and spiritually processing loss-producing events, integrating those events into our altered world, and helping us move on to a state of greater strength, resourcefulness, resilience and faith. If we are not willing to face the grieving process, or if we try a short-cut, we’re left adrift in our sea of pain, never reaching the shorts of strengthening that the Lord intends for us.

As drill instructors love to mention to new recruits, “Pain is simply weakness leaving the body!” In a similar fashion, “Tears are a way God has provided for sadness to leave our body.” If we resist this mechanism, our sorrow may never lose its intensity.

When We Grieve

• We’re authentically engaging the emotions that come with loss – rather than stuffing or denying them. As many grief experts say, “You can’t heal what you can’t feel.”

• We’re protesting the injustice of the loss, which we are truly convinced of – rather than acting like it was OK with us.

• We’re expressing that we deeply wish that the loss had never occurred – rather than minimizing it.

• We’re facing the devastating impact of the loss head on, absorbing it and eventually mastering it – rather than running from it, deflecting it or pretending it didn’t happen, only to have its effects hit us again and again.

• We are allowing our right brain to replay the tapes of our traumatic episodic memories in a safe environment, thereby robbing them of their terror and integrating them into our rebuilding life.

• We’re inviting Jesus to enter the dark forest of our pain, experience it with us, comfort us in the midst of it and walk us out the other side of it – rather than sitting passively alone and paralyzed at the edge.

When We Refuse To Grieve

• Unresolved grief has been found to be a factor in the development of a wide range of psychological problems, including outbursts or rage, restlessness, depression, addiction, compulsion, anxiety and panic disorders.

• Unexpressed grief has been linked to the development or worsening of medical problems such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, cancer, asthma and a variety of allergies, rashes, aches and pains.

• We are at odds with our body’s built-in physiological processes to deal with a traumatic event.

• We are at odds with God’s spiritual intentions to meet us in the midst of the fire of our trauma, missing out on His plans to deepen our faith and strengthen our relationship with Him.

What You Can Expect To Experience – “Normal” Grief

• Fear: You may fear that loss will occur again, that you won’t be able to care for yourself, that you’ll be alone, that your friends will reject you.

• Anger: You could be mad at yourself, your circumstances, your friend who dies, your CO who ordered you into battle, at God for allowing your trauma, the paperboy for bringing more bad news from the front, your neighbor for being intrusively helping and caring.

• Rage: Sometimes you feel better afterwards. Sometimes you don’t.

• Weeping: You may cry some and then more at other times. Your tears may range from controlled to uncontrollable.

• Guilt: You may blame yourself for what happened, even though you didn’t cause it and couldn’t do a thing about it.

• Loneliness: You may feel that no one can understand what you’re going through now – and that no one wants to, either.

• Blaming: The blame can range from yourself, to others or even to God.

• Running away/numbing. You may try drugs, alcohol, work, travel, ministry, sex, food shopping – anything to get away from your difficult environment.

• Other symptoms may consist of: loss of appetite, loss of sexual drive, dehydration, sleeplessness, nightmares, overly talkative, no feelings at all, emotionally overloaded…

If these symptoms persist for a long time (many months or years) it means something has “hung up” the process. But for now, it’s OK! What you feel is normal and you need to welcome these feelings, not try to fend them off!

What About “Loss Of Faith?”

A person may know the answer to that question. And yet, when your world is crashing around you, and you’re one, huge tangled ball of emotions, excellent theology isn’t always the greatest comfort. It’s a pretty common response, based on a common assumption. As psychologist counselor and educator Dr. Larry Crabb writes in his book Shattered Dreams:

In our shallow, sensual way of looking at life, we tend to measure God’s Presence by the kind of emotion we feel. Happy feelings that make us want to sing, we assume, are evidence that God’s Spirit is present. We think a sense of loss or confusion or struggle indicates His absence.

Dr. Larry Crabb has written: “When God seems most absent from us, He is doing His most important work in us. He vanishes from our sight to do what He could not do if we could see Him clearly.”

Remember when Jesus Christ hung on the cross, and cried out to His heavenly Father in confusion and despair, “My God! My God! Where are you?” God was silent. But it was at that exact moment that God the Father was closing the transaction that was the number one reason the Son had come to earth – reckoning His death as payment for our sins. And this is what brought Jesus the greatest joy of His eternal existence!

What You Can Expect From Others

When you have experienced a great trauma or loss and your grief is assumed and evident to all those around, you will be treated differently for a while. This is to be expected – but some treatment we receive is helpful and some we could do without.

The less-than-helpful things: Especially in the Western world, social taboos have been invented that make us try to avoid or deny any discomfort from loss. We look with disdain at the outpouring of grief in other cultures and accuse them of “lack of control.” We don’t realize that we are the foolish ones, holding in something that would better be let out.

It’s important to remember that your friends mean well. Their insensitivity is not because they intent to hurt you or prolong your grief – it’s just that they’re uninformed about what to do and how to help.

The helpful things: There are going to be a few of your friends who are wise in the ways of grief – either because they’ve experienced it themselves, have been trained, are particularly intuitive or have read a lot of books! When you find these people, do whatever it takes to keep them around!

How NOT To Grieve

We humans will sometimes do anything rather than to undertake the hard work of grief – then think we’re accomplishing something. These actions may make us feel a little better temporarily, but it doesn’t move us out of our despairing state. Following is a list of ways people attempt to cope with their situation without actually facing their grief.

• Act out – giving in to the pressure to misbehave.

• Aim low – to what seems more achievable.

• Attack – beat down what’s threatening you.

• Avoid – stay away from anything that causes you stress.

• Compensate – make up for weakness in one area by gaining strength in another.

• Deny – refusing to acknowledge that the event occurred.

• Displace – shifting an intended action to a safer target (like kicking the dog).

• Fantasize – escaping reality to a world of unachievable wishes.

• Idealize – playing up the good points of a desired action and ignoring downsides.

• Identify – copying others to take on their desirable characteristics.

• Intellectualize – avoiding emotions by focusing on facts and logic.

• Passive aggression – getting your way by passive avoidance.

• Project – seeing your own undesirable characteristics in others.

• Rationalize – creating logical reasons for bad behavior.

• Regress – returning to a child state to avoid problems or responsibility.

• Suppress – consciously holding back unwanted urges while ignoring the root cause.

• Trivialize – making something small when it is really something big.

How To Grieve

Be aware of the process. But it’s not a precise process. Everyone will process their grief a bit differently than the next person. However, there are some generalized descriptions that are useful – kind of like milestones along a journey – to let you know that you are making progress. Or not.

The person starts out in a state of relative stability and then the bomb goes off. Over unspecified periods of time, he or she progresses through these stages:

• Immobilization stage – Shock; initial paralysis after being exposed o the crisis or trauma. It takes a while for the enormity to register and sink in.

• Denial stage – Trying to avoid the inevitable.

• Anger stage – Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion. Rage seething below the surface at all times; lashing out at anyone for the slightest reason; blaming others; sometimes cold, icy anger; self-isolating to avoid blowing up.

• Bargaining stage – Seeking in vain for a way out. Making promises to God if He’ll fix things; setting conditions for healing.

• Depression stage – Final realization of the inevitable. A sad time, but also the turning point, because the griever is finally resolved to the fact that he or she won’t be able to restore life to the way it was.

• Testing stage – Seeking realistic solutions.

• Acceptance stage – Finally finding the way forward. They are now fully acknowledging the trauma or crisis.

How To Have A Good Mourning

When we’ve experienced a traumatic event, grief is what we feel. Mourning is what we do about it. It is the action side of grief, the externalizing of our internal pain. And Jesus Christ – who knows everything – says that when we do it we are blessed and will be comforted. Here are a few principles to keep in mind as you work out your grief through mourning.

• Remember Where God Is: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit. - Psalm 32:18

• Remember the past and remain optimistic: How hopeless the naked wood of a fruit tree would look to us in February if we had never seen the marvel of springtime. - Lilias Trotter

• Aim steadily at faith’s target and know what you have faith in: The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. - Thomas Merton

• Don’t try to be the lone ranger: Grievers cannot extricate themselves from their cistern called grief. They need a rope. Grievers need someone on the other end to pull. But they really need individuals to pad the ropes - not with pat answers or spiritual cliches or even Scripture promises but with hope. - Dr. Harold Ivan Smith

• Do something with your anger: In your anger do not sin. - Ephesians 4:26

• Go with the flow (of tears): My soul weeps because of grief; stengthen me according to Your word. - Psalm 119:28

• Keep a grief journal: To journal is to heal. This may be the biggest favor you do for yourself. - Chaplain Ray

• Write a lament: My God, my God, why have You abandoned me? Why are You so far away when I groan for help? Every day I call to You, my God, but You do not answer. Every night You hear my voice, but I find no relief. -King David (Psalm 22:1, 2)

Signs That Your Mourning Is Working

As the magnitude of trauma and its effects sink in, a person in crisis asks a lot of “Why” questions. These questions are normal, typical and expected. No one faults you for asking them.

As universal as they are, the frustration of the “Why” questions is that most of them will never be answered this side of heaven. We don’t ask those questions lightly and we really do expect answers. But they just don’t come.

When you start asking the "How" questions, that will be a good sign that you are making good progress. These questions look to the future, rather than the past. They spark action, rather than mere contemplation. They invite help from God and from others.

Grief Memorials

Researchers in the field of grief and mourning have learned that memorials play a very important role in starting the grief process and facilitating continued healing. That’s why we have funerals and memorial services. That’s why we have gravestones. That’s why the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Wall is so sacred and meaningful to all who visit it. These things are tangible experiences and symbols of our grief. We humans need them.

How can you memorialize the grief that’s attached to your trauma. What can you do or construct that will provide a touchstone for your pain, something that will symbolize your loss? We’re not talking about erecting a shrine in your dining room or anything – or maybe we are. This needs to be a personal gesture that you and God decide upon. It could be as subtle as a smooth stone from Afghanistan in your pocket, a poem that you write and put on the wall, or as obvious as the Taj Mahal. You and God decide.