Painbearing

Times of sorrow and suffering can be powerful experiences that invite reflection on Jesus' own sufferings and facilitate His presence and comfort. 

He was betrayed, abandoned, slandered, imprisoned, tortured, falsely condemned, and executed. In fact, the first disciples to follow Him left nets, family, indeed everything to follow him; but those same followers abandoned Him. And the last disciple to forsake Him (Mark 14.52) fled naked, a symbol of the total abandonment of Jesus by his disciples, ultimately leaving even his clothes in his frantic haste to get away from Jesus. 

What does a healthy man or woman go through when they are treated this way?

What angers and resentments tested Jesus? 

What bitterness? 

How did Jesus handle this even when it was his free choice? 

Jesus could have retreated into his divine nature and blocked off the psychological and physical tortures and remained in infinite peace and calm.  Instead, He "hid" His divinity and fully experienced the pain and horrors of the cross in all His sinless humanity. 

Jesus went through this suffering for us, because of our sin to save us from the destruction we inflict on others, ourselves, and the world. Deep heart pain comes when those closest to you are suffering or inflict pain upon you. The way of entry to minister to those who work among the persecuted and least reached is the way of deep heart pain.  

When we suffer slander, abandonment, rejection, attack, persecution, we enter into Christ's sufferings, and while that is "Christlike", it is also extremely painful. Yet somehow, by His wounds our own wounds are healed (Job 36.16; Is 53.5; I Pt 2.24)

As we picture ourselves coming to join Mary and the other women standing at the foot of the cross, watching His tortured death, there is little to say that will comfort them. Only a wordless presence of compassion, tears, and grief is all we can imaginatively offer her. 

The ministry of silent compassionate presence.

The Ministry of Presence has increasing scientifically validated research behind it. "[When we create a place and time to sit and compassionately listen to people], the openness experienced throughout the body, listening from increasing stillness; fewer thoughts and less planning [reliance on the Holy Spirit!], a deepening trust develops that such holding [of their story allows a place where healing begins]..."

Physical pain constricts our reality. What is beautiful even in the horror of the cross is Jesus' clear presence of mind despite immense physical pain to create a new family of disciples of those who do His will. "Woman, here is your son. Then He said to the disciple, here is your mother" (John 20.26-27).

Resurrection Day can't come too soon! 

Works Cited: 

• Raymond E. Brown, Crucified Christ in Holy week: Essays on the Four Gospel Passion Narratives. 

• Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology)  

• James Tetlow, Choosing Christ in the World

The 6th Stage of Grief...Meaning

Elizabeth Kubler Ross and David Kessler did a great service in putting forth the theory that Grief has 5 stages.  (See their book: On Grief and Grieving). 

These are: 

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Another way to look at grief in 5 stages is through the Sharpening Your Interpersonal Skills picture of grief: 

I've even seen 7 stages of grief!  

There are important things to know about grief: 

• Grief is carried in the body, and all of us carry it differently. 
• Some of us get headaches, our stomach gets twisted up.  
• Breathing may feel constricted, or a tightness is felt in one's chest. 
• Grief can be felt in the body as a sluggishness or exhaustion.  
• It can be a part of how we are doing psychosomatically.
• Grief is not linear – people experience and express grief very individually based on who they are and where they are and what they are grieving.

It's necessary to see whatever loss we have experienced (not just a death) as a disruption in our system of meaning. Something in our story changes when we go through grief, and we grapple with it. What is our story, and how does this loss impact our story? What is the meaning behind this change, this loss, and how should we move forward? 

This leads us to the 6th Stage of Grief, according to David Kessler, in his book, Finding Meaning: The 6th Stage of Grief. 

Here are some of my favorite quotes: 

• He offers the hope that post traumatic growth happens more often than post traumatic stress.
• However and whenever meaning is found, meaning matters and meaning will heal us. (p15).  
• And healing doesn't mean that the loss didn't happen, it means that it no longer controls or dominates us. 
• All of us get broken in some way. what matters is how we get up and put the pieces back together again. (p. 28). 
• Grief must be witnessed. Grief should unite us, not be experienced in isolation. He tells the story of a researcher on an indigenous village in Australia. In that village, the custom is that the night someone dies, everyone in the village moves a piece of furniture or something into their yard. The next day, when the bereaved family wakes up and looks outside, they see that everything has changed since their loved one died - not just for them but for everyone. That's how these communities witness and mirror grief. They are showing in a tangible way that someone's death matters. Loss is made visible. (p.30)
• It's important to realize that "the grieving mind finds no hope after loss. But when you're ready to hope again, you will be able to find it." (p14). 
• The act of witnessing someone's vulnerability in grief can bring the person out of isolation if the witnessing is done without judgment. (p.30)
• When people ask me how long they're going to grieve, I ask them, "How long will your loved one be dead? That's how long. I don't mean you'll be in pain forever, but you will never forget that person, never be able to fill the unique hole left in your heart. 
• Hope has a very close relationship with meaning. In the same way our meaning changes, so does hope. Sometimes when someone is stuck in grief, I'll say, "It sounds like hope died with your loved one. It seems all is lost." Surprisingly they perk up. "Yes, that's it!" They feel witnessed.  But then I'll tell them their loss of hope can be temporary. Until you find it, I'll hold it for you. I have hope for you. I don't want to invalidate your feelings as they are, but I also don't want to give death any more power than it already has. Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope." (p. 33)
• The story we tell ourselves about the death or the loss shape our grief and help us heal or keep us mired in suffering. What story are we telling ourselves? (p.51)
• The first step in finding meaning is acceptance.
• Next is deciding if we will allow ourselves to heal from the loss. Not making a decision is making a decision. Healing doesn't allow for neutrality. It's an active process, and we have to decide if we will live again. 
• Many people spend years looking for the why of the loss, the why of the death. However, it is often more helpful to look for the why of the life. why did the loved one live? What did you get out of knowing the loved one. Sometimes we just need to reframe the question! 

He states, 

"Each of us has the ability to choose how we respond to even the most terrible circumstances. 'We who have lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken fro a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.' Frankl suggested that when we are faced with a situation that is hopeless, unchangeable, 'we are challenged to change ourselves.' When we make the choice to do that, we can turn tragedy into an occasion for growth."

Resources

The Sixth Stage of Grief, David Kessler

Man's Search of Meaning, Viktor Frankl

Other Grief Blog Posts

• Job's Wife: Authenticity in Suffering
• Grief
• My Grief Bag
• Embracing the Gift of Grief 
• 4 Aspects to Not Being Overcome By Evil 
• I Went To The Woods 

Caught Between the Nails

 

This post is by Betty W. Skinner

As we all endure this new sorrow and uncertainty; as we seek common ground in a world shattered by disease, hostility, and violence; as we stumble under the weight of loss and grief, how can we know and believe that God is with us?

Oh, Good Jesus, 

Hear me, hold me, love me

in this, the season of

my spirit's loss and grieving, 

in the anguish of my waiting, 

in the silence of familiar voices gone, 

in the pain of all the change, 

in the twilight of my years

before Perfection dawns 

and I am gone. 

Oh, Good Jesus, 

I try the letting go, 

to understand my weakness,

to trust You in my darkness,

to make room for Your grace to heal.

Yet there is no return, 

only the echo of my own crying.

It seems I, too, with you,

am caught between the nails. 

Oh, Good Jesus,

in this holy place of crucifixion, 

broaden the boundaries of my heart. 

Soften the hard places that defend, define, deny. 

Teach my heart to love.

Make it a refuge for others who, too, 

are caught between the nails. 

My dear Friend, Jesus, eases the intensity of the pain and helps me stay focused on love, enabling me to go forward and release everything to him, knowing that no matter how circumstances unfold, all shall be well. 

Jesus was always talking about love - nothing else mattered to him. Everything he did was about setting the example of love. He fed the poor and healed the desperate sick - never to show off his power or gain a following, but because He was moved to tears by their suffering. 

He refused to bend to the hypocrisy of the religious without love. When an angry mob of churchmen threw a woman caught in adultery at his feet, he rose powerfully to her defense in a very volatile situation, daring the one without sin to throw the first stone. After they slunk away, he helped her to her feet and totally without judgment, called her to a higher way. 

The way of love. 

On the quiet Thursday evening before Passover, Jesus, knowing it would be their last time together on earth, called his little band of friends together for supper. When they came in, he bent down and tenderly washed their dusty feet to demonstrate for them once more, the great humility of love. After supper, he did another strange thing - he lifted a loaf of bread and told them it was his body which would be sacrificed for them. Then he raised his glass of wine and told them it was his blood which would soon be poured out for them. The very last thing he said to them before he went to crucifixion and death for the was, "My dear friends, I only have a brief time left to be with you. So, I give you a new commandment: Love each other just as much as I have loved you."

Love. 
The great imperative is to love.

Loving others is the only thing that lasts and the only thing that changes anything. Such a simple thing, yet we miss it. As God's children, chosen and beloved, we are asked to watch carefully and learn from Jesus how to receive the love, and then go out and offer it to the hungry hearts of others. We are asked to stand together in the midst of a broken world, redemptively available, open and vulnerable to all its sorrow, suffering, and pain. Our goal is to be true to Him, to carry out His plan, to be captives in the procession of His triumphs. 

Grieving the Impact of A Global Pandemic

There is much to grieve in 2021, now that the shock of the pandemic and resulting months and months of quarantine are wearing off. 

Not acknowledging through naming and feeling and facing the grief and loss we've experienced results in not being able to move on and forward with hope and joy in the future. 

Here are some named losses, but what would you add to the list? 

• We grieve the deaths of loved ones - permanent losses. 

• We  grieve the future we have to face without those loved ones who died because of the pandemic, whether from the actual disease or because they could not get medical attention due to overwhelmed medical systems. 

• We grieve not being able to grieve together at the funerals of these loved ones. 

• Even when the pandemic ends, our world is forever altered. We can never go back to how it was before. We grieve a lost world. 

• We lost a year of in-person relationships and being "present" in key events of loved ones. Graduations, weddings, births, bridal showers, dying (last moments) and death. We grieve all of those losses. 

• We grieve how our lives were disrupted. Our personal and global narratives are forever marked by "the pandemic." 

• Future loss will often find their roots to losses in the pandemic. We grieve what is to come directly due to the pandemic. (Anticipatory grief)

• We grieve the loss of finances due to loss of work. 
• We grieve the loss of our desired routine. 
• We grieve the loss of opportunities 
• We grieve the loss of traditions we could not engage in due to quarantines. 
• We grieve the fear now pervading the world. 
• We grieve the changes of public life and having to wear masks. 

It's important to realize that "Grief stays with us in some profound way. Our relationship with it might change, and to the extent we haven’t processed it, another big grief down the line may trigger a prior grief. All of our grief has a past and a future. It finds its place on the timeline of our life.  One loss triggers another loss that preceded it." (Nicholas Collura)

This past year has produced heightened sense of 

• loneliness
• being out of control,
• concern about our mental health
• feelings of isolation, chaos, uncertainty
• feelings of our life was being waster or passing us by because we couldn’t do what we want to do,
• a unique time of personal and collective trauma
• feeling despair for the earth, society, and the world
• the feeling that the pandemic and resulting tragedy is keeping us from participating in something meaningful

These feelings and the losses associated with them - a loss of the innocence of not having them are all significant results of the pandemic to grieve.  

We all have grief work to do, and it's crucial to recognize that doing this work is fundamentally an invitation to growth and healing; it won’t be easy or pain free.. It's also important to recognize that grief is not the enemy; rather, grief is our own spirit’s best attempt to respond to the antagonism of loss.

Grief is natural, normal, not easy, but it’s sacred. It is a time to turn to God, the God of all comfort, and grieve with Him.  He grieves these losses that we experience and he is present in our losses and griefs. 

What do you need to go and grieve today? 

Silence in Grief

Job became silent. 

Heaven was silent. 

God's presence brings silence. 

The Holy Spirit groans when I can no longer find words. 

Within the 5 stages of grief.

Denial-Anger-Bargaining-Depression-Acceptance...

There is also:

Silence.

Grief so pervasive,

So continuous,

So deep,

How long, Lord? 

Perhaps Friday and Saturday were like that. 

After You died.

An end of one life, one hope, one dream
not knowing even that the next one will begin.

Silence.

From the depths of painful death and loss

I stand silently before the Throne

face-to-face with Justice 

and demand Mercy. 

In the silence  and bitterness
of not knowing when it will end

To be like Him means 

continuous grief and pain

but also

compassion, loyalty, faithfulness

Walking thru 

the world of souls

Accepting healing means

 accepting new Life 

Accepting He always cares.

In the Sacred Romance 

Longing is fulfilled

Lament is comforted

Beauty arises from ashes

Belovedness imparts identity

My heart and soul is comforted

By the Lover of My Soul

Who always Sees Me with Delight

He Stays with Me 

In His Delight in me I focus
The eyes of my soul 

On His face 

No longer estranged from the soil of my soul,

I swim in the river of light

Radiance returns

Beloved acceptance

Known in

Delight in.

(Author unknown)

Rend your heart and not your garments; turn back to God. Joel 2:13