Faith and the Grieving Process | The Emotional Journey of Grief

Hello, Redeemer Church.

This is Pastor Matt Armstrong.

This is our second talk in the faith and the grieving process series we have uh we did in June and July of this year.

These were uh gatherings we did on a couple different Sunday evenings.

Um the recording equipment uh did not work, so uh we are recording them here after the fact.

Uh if you listen to this and have any questions or or comments, uh I'd love to hear them.

You can email me uh here at the church.

We recently uh experienced um some significant loss here as a community and a congregation in our church, which kind of spurred on these two talks.

Uh, but also just in our community, there are many individuals and families who are undergoing their own unique experiences of suffering and loss.

And so this uh is a great opportunity for us to talk about uh the emotional journey of grief and how to process grief well.

Because the truth of the matter is that most of us are not good at it.

We don't like talking about it, and we seek to avoid it at all costs.

Um, and that that leaves us uh kind of in a dangerous place when uh grief and loss inevitably come into our lives, or when they come into a loved one's life and we want to come alongside them, but we often feel ill-equipped or unsure of what to do.

So I hope that you find this talk helpful.

The first thing I want to talk about is is related to this very point that we live in a culture that does not process grief well.

Um we tend to run from pain and loss.

Uh, this is kind of a byproduct of a couple different things.

One is that pain hurts, suffering is unpleasant.

And so it makes sense that it's not something we gravitate towards, it's sort of counterintuitive.

But on top of that, we live in a culture that has in many ways built itself on running from grief and loss.

Through the development of technology and entertainment culture, we uh we really do whatever we can to run away from it, to avoid it.

Uh, but the truth of the matter is that none of us can escape grief or loss.

It will come into our lives, and so it is a wise and important thing for us to learn to process it, right?

We have a choice, uh, not whether we will experience grief, but whether we will process it in a healthy or an unhealthy way.

Now, Scripture tells us that we will all experience grief and loss.

In John 16, Jesus said to us plainly, In this world, you will have trouble.

Now, we often think of that verse because of the comforting thing, Jesus immediately says next, which is, but take heart, I have overcome the world.

And that is absolutely good news.

But we've got to hear and receive the first part of that verse.

In this world, we will experience trouble.

You could translate that word, tribulation.

He also tied this experience to our discipleship.

In Matthew 16, he said to his disciples, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.

Peter also sought to encourage the church when he wrote this in 1 Peter chapter 4.

1 Peter 4 · chapter mention

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange was happening to you.

I take a lot of comfort from this verse because even 2,000 years ago, uh God's people were surprised when trial and suffering came into their lives, just as many of us are today.

But Paul, Peter clearly encourages us not to be surprised.

It is not strange, but it is a normal part of the Christian life.

Paul too wrote, The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him, in order that we may also be glorified with him.

That's in Romans chapter 8, verses 16 and 17.

Romans 8:16

The point here is that suffering and loss are part of life in this fallen world, and so grief is a normal part of life as well.

We as human beings have worked really hard to alleviate suffering and loss through medical advancements and technological developments.

And these are wonderful things.

This is not to speak poorly of them, but in some ways we've created the illusion that we can escape grief and loss.

If that's not true, we need to learn what grief is and how to grieve well before we're forced into it, as we inevitably will.

So, how do we begin to learn to process grief if we live in this culture that fights against it?

I would argue that first we need to meet and get acquainted with grief so that eventually we can befriend and even embrace our grief.

But I don't want us to get ahead of ourselves too quickly.

The word grief comes from the Latin word for heavy or weighty, and I think this is a great entryway to begin to understand what grief is.

To experience grief is to experience a great weight.

You can uh feel it more than you think it.

And it can often feel like a great weight upon your chest, making it hard to breathe.

And sometimes it can feel so heavy that it threatens to swallow us up.

Again, it's no wonder that we seek to run from our grief.

But if we said that running from or ignoring our grief is not the answer, then what is it?

Well, in a word, I would say we are to receive it.

Whether it is loss of a job, a marriage, an unexpected move, a displacement, or the death of a loved one, the first step is to acknowledge the pain that we have suffered and lost.

And it's important to name that being a Christian does not make our pain any less.

There's a unique kind of Christian way to avoid pain and loss.

We can sometimes think, and sometimes we're even told, something like, hey, don't cry.

She is in a better place.

You should be rejoicing rather than grieving.

And I just say, absolutely not.

Absolutely not.

I've spoken with many Christians who have felt guilty as if they are showing some kind of lack of faith because of how much they were being affected by their grief.

I think we also see this trend uh with funerals being replaced with things called celebrations of life.

And let me be clear, it's it's wonderful to celebrate our loved ones, um, especially after they've passed away.

Uh to remember them, to tell funny stories, meaningful stories about them, is vital to the grieving process.

But to cut ourselves off from experiencing or processing grief by trying to substitute a funeral with a celebration is not a good thing.

So, why is that?

Well, the main reason is because grief is the process God has given us to heal us from suffering and loss.

In that sense, grief is like when we're sick as kids and our parents gave us that yucky medicine that we didn't like.

Uh it's not something we enjoy, but it helps to heal us and eventually make us feel better.

And that's why we need to hear the voice of our Father in heaven calling to us in our grief.

Jesus opened the Sermon on the Mount with these words.

He said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

These words echo God's words to his people through the prophet Isaiah when he foretold the Messiah's coming.

In Isaiah sixty one, it's recorded The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are in are bound, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit, and they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

When Jesus foretold his coming, he did so by framing it in terms of those who mourn, those who have lost, and those who grieve.

Jesus came into this world to meet with, to be with, and to lift up those who mourn.

It's a very normal thing when suffering and loss come into our lives, to believe that it's actually evidence that God is either punishing us or aloof from us, or it's just cruel.

But scripture tells us something very different.

Again, that when we mourn, God is near.

It reminds me of a beautiful scene from C.

S.

Lewis's book The Magician's Nephew.

Diggory, one of the main characters, has a mother who's dying of cancer, and he meets Aslan, the lion, the Christ figure in the story.

When he meets him he asks him something.

He says But please, please won't you can't you give me something that will cure mother?

Up till then he had been looking at the lion's great feet and the huge claws on them.

Now in his despair he looked up at its face.

What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life, for the tawny face was bent down near his own, and wonder of wonders, great shining tears stood in the lion's eyes.

They were such big, bright tears compared to Deguri's own, that for a moment he felt as if the lion must really be sorrier about his mother than he was himself.

My son, my son, said Aslan.

I know.

Grief is great.

Isn't that often the way we are?

In our grief and despair we look down.

We look at the claws of God, and we wonder if he cares, if he's kind.

But when we lift our eyes and bring our grief to the Lord, what we find is a compassion so great that it threatens to drown us even more than our grief.

And that last line he says, My son, my son, I know grief is great.

It reminds me of another Isaiah passage describing in the Messiah in Isaiah 53.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we disdeemed him not.

Our God is different from all other gods, because he has himself experienced grief and loss.

He was rejected by those he created, loved and saved.

And one of the most revealing passages in the life of Jesus is his interaction with Mary and Martha after the death of their brother Lazarus.

We know that Jesus knows what's going to happen.

He knows he's going to raise Lazarus from the grave, and yet he sits with both sisters and meets with them in their pain, their anguish, their anger, and their questions, very much like what we see in the Psalms.

And then he goes to the grave and he weeps, and he's deeply moved at Lazarus' death.

It doesn't necessarily make sense to us, but the message is clear.

The Lord weeps with us in our suffering and loss.

So what does all that mean?

Well, it means that we can, first of all, move toward the Lord in our grief.

And really, we're free to move toward our grief as well.

Knowing that the Lord weeps with us and loves us in the midst of our loss, that he came to comfort those who mourn, invites us to bring our hurt to him.

So, as simple as it sounds, the first step in the journey of grief is to allow ourselves to feel our loss, not to diminish it, thinking things like others have suffered more than I have, or explain it away, but to acknowledge what we have lost, or what has happened to us, or what we ourselves have done to cause our grief.

I love this quote from Henry Nowen.

He wrote, For in our suffering, not apart from it, Jesus enters our sadness, takes us by the hand, pulls us gently up to stand, and invites us to dance.

We find the way to pray as the psalmist did.

You have turned my morning into dancing, because at the center of our grief we find the grace of God.

End of that quote.

This is the promise of Scripture that the Lord will meet us in our mourning.

Similarly, I love the imagery of a quote from a book called A Grace Disguised by Gerald Sitzer.

Listen to what he says.

I love the beauty of that imagery that our instinct is to chase after the light, to chase after happiness, to avoid the darkness and the sadness.

But in truth, Jesus invites us to head in into the valley of the shadow of death, into our grief and loss, because there he will meet us, and it is the fastest way to the sunrise.

Here are some practical ways to help process our grief.

First, as we've been saying, bring your grief to Jesus.

You can do this in prayer, you can do this with the help of a counselor or a spiritual director.

You can do this quietly in your room, or you can do it loudly outside.

The question my spiritual director asks me on a regular basis as I bring him my struggles, my fears, my suffering, he says, Have you brought this to Jesus?

The Psalms are a wonderful place to find all sorts of laments and outcries to the Lord in desperation, in sadness and in anger.

It can help put words to our own suffering.

And remember the promise of Romans 8 26, where Paul wrote, Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.

But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

So not only should we move towards our grief, but let's take our grief to Jesus.

Let's name it specifically.

Let's lay it at his feet and invite him to mourn with us.

The second practical thing we can do is journal.

Blaise Pascal, a French theologian and mathematician and philosopher, he wrote this very profound statement.

He said, The heart has reasons that reason does not know.

Oftentimes we don't know what's going on in our own hearts.

Often we're the last to know as much as our culture, and we would like to believe differently.

Journaling can be a great way to find out what is in our hearts.

We carry so much deep inside of us.

Don't assume that you know what's in your heart.

Here's a great exercise.

It's called Daily Pages.

It was uh this was kind of coined by um uh an artist or a teacher of artists.

Um you're in a hard place, try this.

Sit down each morning with a journal in hand and simply write three pages in your journal.

It can be anything, it can be stream of consciousness, it can be prayers to God, it can be random thoughts, it can be a grocery list.

The point is, is we carry so much in our minds and in our hearts that we are unaware of, so much that it kind of gets jumbled up.

Often the process of writing down our thoughts uh gets it out, um, and and it can be a very helpful process.

And you may find in that process that you actually do, uh you are able to express some deep and hidden uh thoughts.

Third, get help from a good Christian counselor.

I just mentioned that I see a spiritual director, I've seen counselors over the years.

We all need help, and there's no shame in going to someone who is has been especially trained to help you talk through your grief.

Fourth, friends and community.

Grief and loss are inherently isolating.

No one experiences your loss as you do.

Even if you are uh a sibling who has lost a parent, each sibling will experience that loss in their own unique way.

And so it's important that we fight against the temptation to isolate, to believe that no one knows or can understand what we feel.

So if um so what if they can't understand?

You shouldn't be alone too much through your grief, and you'd be surprised what others have suffered that you don't know uh until you have had the opportunity to share your grief with them.

That's part of my own personal story.

When I was going through a particularly difficult time, uh I was also meeting uh with certain people for other reasons, uh, but and when I would open up when I would be vulnerable and share with them what I was going through, uh I heard incredible stories of suffering in their own lives that became kind of a life preserver to buoy me in the midst of the grief I was going through.

Fifth, don't put a timeline on your grief.

Be careful of shitting on yourself, as my wife likes to say.

Saying things like, I should be over this by now.

Grief takes time and it's always unique to the individual.

And the larger the loss, the longer the grief may last.

So be careful never to say to a grieving friend or a loved one, I thought that you'd be over that by now.

No.

And again, if you're in a situation where there are different family members going through a shared grief, each one is going to go through it in their own time.

Let each one do so.

Sixth, create rituals of remembrance.

If you have lost someone, create a creative rite or ritual that allows you to regularly acknowledge the one you've lost.

I heard uh an interesting story recently about a non-Christian family uh who um uh went through some difficult times together, and at the during that process, the the wife and mother uh ended up committing suicide.

And and the the family itself was was pretty fractured at that time.

Uh but through their grief, um they developed this rite that that every year about the anniversary of her death, they would get together.

It was it was during the holidays, so they would often be together anyway, and they would just go into the corner if there were other people around and they would share a shot of liquor together.

Um and it was their special way of remembering this person whom they loved and whom they had lost.

Uh now, when you do that, it can it can help alleviate some tension that often arises within a family who's lost a loved one, which is, you know, is everyone remembering them?

Are we all remembering them equally?

You know, that that's never the case, but if you have a shared ritual like this, it can really help to carry that grief together.

Seventh, uh, and finally, I want to uh encourage you to look into something called contemplative or listening prayer.

This is something that has been particularly helpful in my own life.

This is a type of prayer where we sit in God's presence, simply offering ourselves to the Lord without expectation and without words, remembering that we are his beloved child and that he rejoices over us with singing, listening rather than speaking, receiving rather than bringing or giving anything to the Lord.

Now these are just a few thoughts of practical things you can do in your grief.

This is by no means an exhaustive discussion on the topic, but I hope that it's helped you to think through your own grief or how you might come alongside someone else in their time of grief.