This week has seen me enjoying a bit of
space to simply be, in between the usual commitments.
What a treat.
It has enabled me to do a little processing
of recent events such as the sudden death of a young woman. This has also tapped in to the death of my spiritual
mother.
I was aided in my ability to engage on
a heart level with these deaths via a book a friend lent me. It is called Love, Interrupted, by Simon Thomas.
It is an incredibly honest account of Simon’s
experience of losing his wife, the mother of his child, within the space of three
days. It is quite simply, heart rending.
It serves as a painful reminder of how
utterly cruel life sometimes is as well as illustrating the subsequent suffering
that such heartache inflicts upon those experiencing it. Not just the death but
all the losses that ripple out afterwards; the loss of how it was, the loss of no
longer being like others or having what others have. It is almost a series of mini
deaths of life as it was known, that follow the initial death.
And, due to the lack of honest conversation around the reality of death or loss, those losses that follow often go unnoticed. At least they do by those not experiencing them. This can really add pain to a process that can already feel unbearable.
I haven’t quite finished reading this
book yet and part of me doesn’t want to. Ironically I’m avoiding it ending! I just
find it so refreshing and reassuring to read of someone being so honest about the
harsh reality of death, the losses that follow and the messy impact it has upon
the human heart.
It is rare for someone to resist the urge
to down play such a process for fear of whether others can handle it. But I have only the utmost respect for the writer’s
courage in sharing this deeply painful, isolating, lonely, angry, messy experience
whilst also managing to find moments of utter beauty and joy as him and his son
continue to create new ways of living alongside the ongoing loss.
For anyone wanting a better understanding
of how grief can be, I would totally recommend this book.
Death and loss are of course an unavoidable
part of life.
As much as we don’t like to talk about
it, death will come to us all and none amongst us know when.
And whilst death is the most obvious form of loss, it is most certainly not the only form. Loss comes in many guises, lots of which are not visible or acknowledged. Loss may come via the ending or death of a certain situation being what it once was whether a career, health, relationship or anything else. It may also be present via the loss of something that has not happened or been the way we have wanted or anticipated.
Loss infiltrates our lives subtly by continuously.
Things change, situations change, we change.
Death happens.
Life happens.
Change is unavoidable.
And loss runs throughout these realities.
I was reflecting upon these themes during
my precious free moments this week. Loss
and death are such inevitable and yet painful aspects of our experience of being
human.
And yet, all around us, new beginnings
and life are equally at work. They don’t cancel one another out or render each other
any less meaningful or painful, they simply co-exist.
It has given me great pleasure this week to see the new buds of life that continue to appear in my garden at the moment, from roses to sweetpea’s to clematis. They symbolise such hope. For whilst parts of life are constantly ending and changing, my garden reminds me that new parts continue to emerge and develop.
I love this.
Well, I love the new growth more than
I love the old endings and loss! But I do love the way both make up the whole picture.
It is not always easy when there is a
loss of the way things were but the more we allow ourselves to engage with the emotional
reality of this, the more we become able to notice and embrace the new life that
begins to peak through.
I’ve experienced clear moments of the
spark of life and joy erupting back through me this week following the stunned haze
left by the recent death.
Following my fun fuelled holiday
extravaganza, I crash landed back to reality.
I eased myself back in to my
responsibilities over a luscious lunch in a coffee shop where I caught up with
my email and voicemails.
What I could not have anticipated was
a message informing me that an individual I had worked with for six years, had
died three days after their ending session. They were 30.
I could not comprehend it.
I listened to the message three times
before promptly bursting in to stunned tears.
How could it be?
I was utterly shocked and saddened.
Initially I thought I would hold my
practice as planned for two hours that afternoon and then allow myself to
absorb this news. But I quickly realised that was ridiculous and most certainly
not practising what I preach.
I cancelled my practice.
And I called the one who had left me
the message. The person in question had awoken one morning in pain and died
within the hour. The funeral service was being held the next day.
I couldn’t contain my sadness and my
stomach immediately began having pains, partially from the big lunch I’d just
had and partially from the shock and emotion of this news. My body was struggling to digest everything on
every level.
I cried out to God, ‘How could you
allow it?’.
I just felt overwhelmingly saddened
by the unlived life I had imagined they were being launched in to living as
they left my practice that last time.
Some people really commit to doing
the work and this was one of them.
Subsequently they experienced the benefits and left the process in a very
different place to where they started it.
And they had their whole life ahead of them.
Or so I had assumed.
My strongest defences; reason and
rationale immediately did what they do.
They reminded me that I know that life can be cruel and unfair and that
it is all too often the real givers of this life that get taken early or unexpectedly. They added that none of us are entitled to a
certain amount of life as much as we like to imagine we are. Every minute of every day is a gift we cannot
take for granted.
In short my defences attempted to
divert me from the emotion.
The shock.
The pain.
The disbelief.
The sorrow.
The whole, but how can it be? I only
saw them a few short weeks ago; smiling and being who they were.
How could they no longer be here?
How could their life with so much ahead be wiped out in an instant?
Whilst my head knew there was no
explanation, no reason, no sense to be made of the situation, my heart still
sought it.
As I spoke to my best friend who I
trained with, she asked me, ‘Jo, are you angry with God?’. I said quite possibly, but I couldn’t access
it if so.
Later that evening as I drove to meet
another friend, I discovered that yes, I was actually very angry indeed. I was angry at the injustice, the cruelty,
the loss, the senselessness.
I realise God doesn’t have to justify
Himself to any of us but at that moment, I felt angry about that. I wanted to understand something that quite
simply cannot be understood. It can only be grieved. And I wasn’t about to deny or suppress the
anger aspect of my grief.
The service was the next day less
than twenty four hours after I heard.
The tears came as soon as I saw the
hearse and they didn’t stop coming throughout the service. I hid away at the back.
It was beautiful and full of
humour. It reflected the character of
the one whose life it celebrated. But it was of course desperately sad too.
Such an enormous gap would be left for so many people. I couldn’t begin to imagine their loss.
There was a wonderful line read out
at one point which jumped out at me. It was a reminder that when grief comes,
not to ever push the feelings down or away but allow them to come and to go as
they need to. I loved the simple truth and
wisdom of these words. For we must indeed
learn to welcome our sadness as we welcome our happiness, for each are fleeting
emotions worthy of our acknowledgement and compassion.
Anyway, nearly two weeks later I am
still struggling to get my head let alone my heart around this.
My stomach continues to play up,
reminding me that I am not leaving enough space to digest or process anything. After this weekend, I’ll be in a position to
have more space and I’m looking forward to that.
Death is such a painful reminder of
the fragility of life. None of us know how long we have. Any of us can be taken
in an instant.
The challenge to balance living life
to the full, with a refusal to ignore the painful aspects of grief, remains
sharper than ever.
I’ve stopped asking God why and
started asking Him where He is in this. I still don’t understand and I never
will. But I see His hand right from the
moment I heard the message. I could see two friends in the coffee shop who I
had intended to speak to after finishing my messages. I could speak, cry and have
a hug with them before leaving. I saw Him in the subsequent phone calls and
meetings with friends.
He was there when the person unhesitatingly
responded, ‘I’ll be there’, when I asked them to accompany me to the service. He
was there in so many other ways too. Whilst I will never understand why these
things happen, I know that when I’m willing to really look, I will find God
right there in the midst of whatever with me. And that knowledge and experience
humbles and breaks me every time.
Death has a way of forcing a re-evaluation of
that which is important in life and that which is not.
All it really seems to come down to
is trying to be as loving and kind as possible to the people around us,
including ourselves, especially when they or we are hurting. To attempt to spread something life enhancing
that recognises the value of each human being and the fragility with which our
lives hang. And to give of the gifts of our truest selves, without holding back.
No sooner
had I written my blog about Mother’s Day when an internal grief bomb exploded.
Not exactly surprising.
Initially it appeared in sparks of severe irritation at every little thing that I was doing. Whilst I did stop to ask myself why I was so angry, I moved away from the question before finding any answer.
Instead, I threw myself into preparing for a weekend away where I was attending a training event on loss!
I felt smug
and sensible when I got in to bed at 9.30pm in preparation for my 6.30am
departure. Whilst I was probably asleep by 10.30pm, I awoke at 4.30am and remained
awake. A fact that I felt decidedly unsmug about.
However, after
a straight forward journey, I had time for a Costa coffee and a read of the
newspaper before my course. What a treat.
The course
venue was situated by a beautiful harbour where the blue skied sunshine made me
temporarily wish I wasn’t committed to a day inside.
Anyway, the
course was fascinating.
Whilst death
and loss aren’t the most light hearted of subjects, I am a firm believer that the
more we are able to engage with the reality of death, loss and endings, the
more we are able to engage with the reality of living, love and new beginnings!
And when my time for death comes, I certainly want to know that I have given
and received as much of life’s opportunities as possible!
As I
listened to some of the speakers talk about how we humans can process and work
with our grief, I was reminded of my granddad. Having recently signed up to run
a half marathon to raise funds for the hospice my spiritual mother benefitted
from, I realised that my own granddad had also been in this hospice. On his last
day, he waited until his family were gathered around him before he gave himself
to death. In that respect it was a good death; he chose his moment, surrounded
by those who loved him.
But in
remembering this, I realised that although this happened over twenty years ago,
I have not grieved properly. It was as if I had totally blocked his death and his
life, despite him being such a significant and beloved part of my childhood.
As I
attempted to hold my sadness down to focus on the course, I became more and
more exhausted and irritable. It really is so exhausting suppressing emotion yet
equally exhausting to engage with them!
By the time I
left for my overnight seaside accommodation my eyes were stinging with fatigue.
Although I managed a pot of tea and a slice of carrot cake on the pier, I had to
go to bed and surrender to sleep straight after.
Whilst
Sunday dawned with a bright blue sky and beautiful sunshine, my own temperament
was quite different!
I loved sitting
in the sea facing cafes enjoying my breakfast and newspapers but I could not
stand the increasing presence of other people! I was holding in too much pain
which was threatening to slip out in the form of general horribleness!
Fortunately for
everyone in the vicinity, I managed to find a quiet place sheltered from the wind
but in the sun, from which to devour my newspapers, coffee and sea view. Heavenly.
But of course,
underneath my irritable horribleness was the raw pain of ungrieved, grief. And it
was only once I arrived back home that I could allow this grief to pour forth once
more. After which I felt decidedly lighter and less prone to snarling or spitting.
I remembered
that I needed to be kind to myself (and others!) when the grief comes and so I took
some time out of my day on Monday to simply be still in the sunshine of my garden.
I also let my
key people know that I was in a painful space.
And by Tuesday,
I felt more like a human being and less like a wounded animal and I could therefore
resume my full responsibilities again.
The grief does
of course continue.
But so does life.
All I get to
choose is whether I will be kind to myself when I am hurting. My attempts to do
so included a trip to a local garden centre where I enjoyed the feel of the sun
on my skin, the sound of birdsong and the sight of the flowers. I was even joined
by this cute little fella!
As I reflected
on the ever changing weather this week; glorious warm sunshine on Monday and cold
rain on Tuesday, I realised that this was in direct contrast to my ever changing
emotions of misery on Monday followed by a renewed calm on Tuesday.
Like the weather,
my emotions come and my emotions go and the more I accept the inevitability of this
and ease up on myself accordingly, the more quickly they pass and the better it
is for everyone involved!
As if to seal
my experience, I saw a rainbow outside my house on Tuesday evening, reminding me
that whilst the weather constantly changes as do my emotions, God remains my one
true constant throughout both internal and external changes.
Because our, or at least my natural instinct, is to move away from that which hurts.
What I would like to say, especially in view of my profession, is that I’ve got this stuff nailed. But of course, this is real life and I am one of those real live, messy, imperfect humans! One that has to learn, learn and learn again, how to be with the inevitable. The ouch.
None of us like the ouch.
Yet to refuse it, is to allow it to cause a whole heap more ouch’s until we turn to face it.
I experience this again and again with the ouch of grief.
Every time a new wave knocks me to the ground, I just want to dust myself down and return to normal duty’s as if it didn’t and it doesn’t, hurt.
Like most of the human population, I don’t want to register the pain because I don’t like feeling pain and I do like not feeling pain!
So every time, I have to re-learn all over again, that the only way to live with the ouch that accompanies grief, is by acknowledging its presence and effect and responding with compassion rather than frustration.
Yet my first instinct is still to fight it. I want to ‘win’. By winning I mean, I want to be ok and not let the grief leave me feeling not ok.
But, it is only when I can own, accept and embrace my ouch inducing not ok, that I begin to become a little more ok!
It’s a paradox.
One that is eased when I am reminded that it is ok to acknowledge my grief. I can then relax and stop fighting it. I remember that this does not mean that I am failing, it is not a sign of weakness, it does not mean that I am wallowing, or that I will feel miserable for ever more. It simply means that the grief needs some care and attention.
I’ve had a few reminders of this recently.
I arrived at my house group the other week to discover that we were watching a Nooma DVD (short Rob Bell film on a life theme), called Matthew. None of us knew what it was about. But it turned out to be on death, grief and the importance of making time and space to allow WHATEVER thoughts and feelings need to come out. It wasn’t talking about just allowing the nice/positive/good/acceptable/Christian thoughts and feelings but ALL the feelings, especially the ugly and unwanted ones.
It was a timely reminder.
And it came only two short days after a colleague had reminded me of exactly the same thing about making time and space to allow grief. Not banishing it. Not distracting away from it. But actively inviting it to come and take up its rightful place within my being and my day.
Both of these served to remind me that I do not need to FEAR my grief or any of the feelings that accompany it.
What I do need is to keep practising over and over again what it is to recognise, allow, value, respect, accommodate, trust, welcome and tend to my grief.
As in every time it arises.
Because I have noticed that whenever I finally stop fighting and say to myself, ‘Ok, you feel miserable/angry/resentful/whatever and you are allowed to feel that, just be with it’, it begins to dissipate.
And when I remember to go easy on myself and change down a gear, life becomes so much easier to manage.
I’ve been reflecting on this recently whilst out on my bike. I’ve taken to cycling to work once a week. It allows me to incorporate a bit of physical activity with time out in the fresh air amongst what is otherwise a day spent sat on my backside, inside. I like it. The cycling that is.
Anyway, as I was huffing and puffing my way up a hill recently, repeatedly changing in to lower gears, it occurred to me that this is like life. As in, when things get difficult, or the pressure is on, or we have an unexpectedly high work load, or we are simply dealing with emotional stuff, we, read I, can sometimes expect myself to just keep travelling in exactly the same gear at exactly the same speed.
How ridiculous.
If I don’t even do this to myself on the bike, why do it to myself in life.
What I really need of course is to change down a gear, slow down, make allowance for the new situation and reduce my expectations accordingly. In other words, to partner with myself to be able to keep going but at a realistic pace, rather than setting myself up to fail by attempting to continue in the same gear and at the same pace.
Sigh.
No matter how much I think I know this stuff, I still have to learn afresh every time the new wave hits. Ugh! I wish I was a faster learner!
But, there is another side to facing death, grief and the accompanying ouch. For if we can face it front on, it can urge us to complete an ongoing reassessment of life. What is important and what is not. What gets squeezed out or constantly postponed and what am I going to do about it.
As a result, one of the steps I have taken is to book my return flight to New Zealand. The place where the family I lived with and the beauty and culture of the land was so significantly life changing and healing. It was here that I entered in to a relationship with the living God. Life has never been the same again. Thankfully.
But, it has been a whole decade now since I’ve managed to return. Afterall, NZ is a long way to go and it is expensive. Legitimate reasons right? But this year, when asked to go, I didn’t hesitate. No more delaying what is important.
None of us can guarantee how long our future will be or how much time lay ahead to see the places or people we love. And so, I booked my ticket. Not for next year or the year after or in another decades’ time. I don’t want another single year to pass without doing this so important thing.
Nothing will be the same of course. All will have changed in the past decade. The people, the place and of course me. But I need to go. And I want to go. So I am going.
A few months after booking said flight the tax man very kindly granted me a generous tax rebate to fund my trip. Result! The plus side of my reduced capacity to work and thus to earn this year!
Whilst discussing this NZ trip with my supervisor, who was able to own and express their envy (!), they shared with me how a friend of theirs who was rather wealthy, had always had a dream to go to a particular country. They put it off and put it off until the unspeakable happened. They got a terminal diagnosis and were in too poor health to go. Whilst this friend was looking head long in to the face of death with no choice to go back and do the things they had wished to do, they urged my supervisor not to make the same mistake.
Wise words.
Ones we would do well to heed whilst we still can.
It is all too easy to busy and distract ourselves from anything unpleasant for the entire duration of our lives only to arrive at the shores of death to realise that we never quite got around to doing what we really wanted.
I don’t want that.
No matter how short or long, how painful or how unpredictable this thing called life is, or how utterly awful the death of someone I love is, I still want to try and of course at times fail, to look both life and death square in the eye. I want not just to see the ugliness of pain, suffering and premature death but also to see the great beauty that life still offers.
I don’t want to miss what is possible because of what is not. And if I have to slow down again and again and again to allow more healing to happen to facilitate the longer-term goals and desires, then that is ok. (Sometimes!).
I don’t want to drift through life and in to death. Instead I choose to proactively engage, embrace and take steps towards that which is important. Even when this means slowing down AGAIN to allow for more healing.
At least I’m trying to.
What is it that YOU have delayed and postponed and not made the time or space to make happen in your life?
Grief never really goes away but sometimes it feels closer than others. And these past few weeks have been and continue to be one of those times when its presence is unavoidable. And perhaps that is it, I’ve been avoiding it, happily whiling away the summer immersed in the wonders of denial. I don’t know. But what I do know is it has hit me again with full force. And it hurts. A lot.
First off it got triggered through a seemingly innocent Pixar film. ‘Brave’, in case you were wondering. So much rich material around the mother/daughter relationship, much of which reminded me of the lessons and gifts that Margaret gave me in her mothering of me. By the end of the film, I was sobbing. A good healthy release I thought.
But it continued to simmer beneath the surface for a few weeks. And then an unexpected encounter with the sister who looks so like Margaret, left me totally floored. KO’d they call it in Boxing terms. And it was only the count down on the alarm and the call of my responsibility’s that dragged me back up to face it all again.
I just wasn’t prepared to be knocked clean out by the weight of the grief again. Not that I’m sure we can ever really be prepared. And if we could, perhaps we would simply duck out of its way.
But when these grief phases hit me, those individuals who have been there and just get it, become TOTALLY invaluable. Because grief is painful and lonely enough without being surrounded by people who don’t get it. So when you find those who do, talk to them!
Because grief isn’t something we simply ‘deal with’ or ‘get shot of’.
Grief is something that comes to us and we have to walk it through, feeling it, until it dissipates again. Not that it ever goes away entirely. But it does move out of the foreground at times. At least, that is my experience.
And herein lay one of the difficulties in understanding mental and emotional health.
We live in an age of the instant. Most things can be accessed in an instant.
We want something.
We get it.
Now.
No waiting.
Whether it’s the latest box set online, a car on credit or any other stuff.
No one wants to wait for anything anymore.
We want stuff. And we want it now. Even if we have to work so many hours that we pay with the quality of our life/health.
But when it comes to our health, we can’t have things in an instant. We have to wait. We can’t simply buy our health to be as we want it to be. We have to engage with the process of healing. Even if you can afford to skip some queues by going private. And this process takes time and it brings frustration and a whole bunch of other usually unwanted feelings.
It’s how it is.
There is no other way.
Sure, we can get meds to take away this or take away that but even they come at a cost of side effects.
Health is one of the few areas where no matter how much money we have or how hard we pray, we still have to walk the path of healing and growth. (And ultimately, the path of deterioration in to death!)
There is no short cut for healing.
No quick fix.
No miracle pill.
Or even prayer.
It’s just hard.
And any denial or glossing over of that fact, makes it harder.
Unfortunately, our culture just wants to pay or pray to get rid of anything it doesn’t want to feel. And this applies as much to a broken limb as to a broken heart.
We want it better and we want it better now. And we’re willing to pay.
But there are no instant magical cures.
The human body and soul can break. And when they do, they need time and care to heal. No amount of money can pay to fast track this.
We don’t like this. We want the meds to spare us or God to heal us in an instant. And when these don’t happen, we often just don’t know what to do with ourselves and our frustrations, disappointments, resentments and plain sorrows.
We haven’t learned. We want health given to us on a plate. We don’t want to engage with a process that can evoke more pain, to reach the place of healing.
We don’t like it.
And I am no exception.
I don’t like feeling full of sorrow. I don’t like the emotional fatigue that accompanies it. I don’t like the loss of energy. And I don’t like not knowing how long it will last.
I just don’t like it. In fact, I totally ****** hate it. (And of the course the anger part of grief is SO socially unacceptable!). I Understand it. But that doesn’t afford me a fast pass through it.
However, I am learning not to waste my currently diminished energy reserves on fighting the process. Some of the time!
If I feel crap, I cut myself some slack. Mostly! I let myself off the hook a bit. I pull back. I say no. I take any self imposed pressure off. I tend to myself in the way that I need. Just as I might encourage another to do.
Because sometimes, this business of being a human can really hurt.
And what none of us need when we’re hurting is to put ourselves under unnecessary pressure. Sure, life doesn’t stop for any of us. But we can look at our loads realistically and decide what can wait.
We can in short, look after ourselves with compassion and understanding rather than impatience and condemnation.
I’ve experienced a lot of sorrow these past weeks and I continue to do so. I’ve also heard about a lot from others. From friends. From neighbours; a suicide at the train station. And from a film, A Star is Born. Beautiful but devastating and topical.
Death.
Grief.
Loss.
Endings.
Disappointments.
Life.
Sometimes it just hurts.
Pretending this is not so is more damaging than finding the courage to face it.
We all love instant gratification.
But we seldom grow through it. Anything worthwhile having, especially our health, takes time. Time to nurture and care for and time to heal when it gets damaged, hurt or broken in some way.
We don’t get to choose how long the process will take. We get to choose only how we will treat ourselves whilst going through it.
Patience, compassion and a capacity to recognise the presence of God, are absolutely key.
Grief isn’t a nice, tidy, or by any means short process that comes with any kind of manual or end date.
Nor is it something we can control.
It is unique and unpredictable.
But, over time we can learn to recognise and surrender to it rather than resist and prolong it. Not that it ever ends but more that the loss becomes integrated and the absence adjusted to, even when it still hurts.
Ultimately we have to learn to trust the grieving process.
Because when that fresh wave of grief hits, it hits.
You know about it.
There can be no denial of its arrival.
At least not for long.
In fact, we’d do well to notice it coming.
I saw mine on the horizon. Or rather I felt it. The tears that came at inappropriate moments. The stuffing them back down with sugar or salt laden rubbish, the extended and more frequent need for an afternoon nap, the struggle to smile in the presence of so much stifled sadness.
The signs were all there.
I simply refused to read them.
It took a meeting with my best friend and fellow psychotherapist to point out the unwanted obvious.
This was another wave of grief.
I’d come out of the fog of the first few months and people had commented on how much better I looked. I felt better too.
So when the grief began to hit again, I tried to resist it by carrying on as ‘normal’. I liked feeling ‘better’. And I didn’t want to feel sad again. I’ve already had too much sadness for one lifetime.
I resisted, denied, refused and fought this new wave of grief.
I didn’t want it to take me over.
I wasn’t trusting it to do its work of transformation or to deliver me to where I need to be.
All this despite knowing that something as important as the process of grief cannot be ignored. At least not for any real length of time before your body starts protesting via the language of illness. For some, even hospitalisation.
But, like most humans, I also like to buy in to all those palatable ideas about how having the right thoughts, beliefs, or pills, means we don’t have to be ‘so weak’ (read human) as to experience unwanted feelings. I get it. I want this to be true as much as the next person. And if swallowing these ideas came without the consequences it would certainly be a lot easier and less painful.
And so I allowed myself to indulge in a little delusion, despite my training, despite my knowledge, despite the reality that stifled sadness (or any other unwanted emotion) is a great stealer of smiles and obstructer of the internal well of joy.
I know this stuff but like most humans I still sometimes opt for the comfort of denial. No matter how shallow or short lived.
As a friend of mine says, denial is a very long river.
And for a while, I just wanted to swim in it. I didn’t want to get out to face much less engage with the reality that ‘the only cure for grief, is grieving’. (I nicked that expression off some one else but can’t remember who – possibly Kubler Ross).
But anyway …
Grief cannot be fast tracked, thought or prayed away.
Grief has to be grieved.
No quick fix.
No short cut.
No way out, over or above.
Just the long and at times lonely, walk through.
Sometimes it hits so hard, we come to a standstill. One which reminds us afresh of the lost one. Of the pain of having loved that person and no longer having them here in our midst in the way that we used to.
It hurts.
All I can do is ride it out.
And cut myself some slack. Re-check my schedule, re-assess what is really necessary right now and what can wait. Reduce my expectations. Listen to my body and respect its messages.
Ultimately, I can practice a little extra self-care. Experiment with when to push and when to let up. Trial and error. Learning along the way. Making adjustments where necessary.
After all, what really is the rush for anything? Do I have anything if I don’t have my health, if I refuse to stop and allow myself to heal?
Nothing is more important than health.
So I’m prioritising mine right now.
Not ministry, not the housework and not my finances. Because actually, without my health, what use are any of these?
I’m also letting my people know that I’m struggling. That I need a little extra encouragement right now. Because when my world becomes dark with grief, it’s the light of my people that breaks through and reminds me to keep trusting until my own light can shine again.
The finger of God
As I reflect upon my grieving process, I am reminded of how grieving has worked in my life previously, having experienced rather a lot of it. Not always related to death but always to loss.
What I recall is that it goes in cycles. I feel consumed by the grief for a period, then I experience a respite which feels wonderful in comparison, then another round of grief hits, feeling worse than the last because it’s now in contrast to feeling good and so the cycles repeat. Except that each time, the period of grieving becomes less severe and the period of respite becomes longer until the two eventually amalgamate in to a new norm.
It’s a process. One that I’m well versed in. So I know I can trust it to do its work of healing and transformation.
Yet I still need reminding when I’m in its midst for I can lose sight of the purpose of the pain.
This is the pain of healing.
Just like when a physical part of the body is healing and growing in strength again. It too can bring pain as part of the process.
I refuse to bypass this process.
I will not settle for Society’s short sighted offer of a superficial, intellect only healing. Tempting as it may be. I will not force my body to communicate through illness. When it starts warning me through the coldsore, sore throat, headache, nauseau or the really big warning sign, lack of appetite, I stop. I acknowledge my body’s message and respond accordingly.
Which means giving myself permission to do nothing. To simply be. To listen to the birds, to walk amongst God’s beautiful creation, to admire the buds of new life, to watch the sun’s rays bounce off the stillness of the river. I take these moments to just be still and allow myself to reconnect to the joy and privilege of simply being alive. Even when it hurts.
Because at the end of the day, I want a heart level healing. Or more realistically, a healthy heart level adjustment to the absence of the one who made such a difference to my world and my life.
Gosh I miss her.
Her smile, her expressions, her sense of fun and mischief, her laughter, her seeing, getting and reaching me with her love.
A mother’s love.
I want her back.
Now.
I don’t want to accept that she’s not coming back.
And I don’t want to wait until I get to Heaven to see her again.
Yet that’s the price I signed up to pay when I allowed her in to my heart; to mother me, to be a friend, a confidante, an encourager, a supporter, a stabiliser, a security provider, a champion of my dreams, a trusted one to share the day to day with, one to laugh with, cry with, share meals and pray with.
I signed up for this whether I consciously chose to or not. I signed up for the reality that when I allow myself to love someone, I must also accept that I may lose them.
It’s a non-negotiable part of the deal.
The possibility of losing love is part of the package of enjoying the love in the first place.
It’s just how it is. Sometimes we lose the people we love.
And the subsequent loss brings a painful grieving process with it.
It’s the price we pay for loving.
And I wouldn’t change it.
So instead of forcing my sadness deep within assisted by an onslaught of crisps and cake, I’m making a renewed commitment to myself to make time to grieve. Time to allow my tears to come forth, my sadness to be released. Secure in the knowledge that I will come through this with my heart still intact. I refuse to separate or cut off from my sadness or reduce myself to being half hearted. I will not settle for that.
I am choosing to remain full hearted. Even when it hurts to do so. Because this is the only way that I can remain fully connected and fully alive. And for however long I am gifted with the opportunity to live, I want to remain fully connected, fully feeling and fully living. Even now. Because I know that I will come through. I’ll be different as a result but I’ll still be fully alive.
And this business of staying fully alive is absolutely vital to me. Because I don’t believe for a nano second that my Jesus endured what he did on that cross for me to lamely settle for some little half hearted life where I’m shut off from everything that I don’t want to feel. Where in effect, I shut down the centre of who I am, the very lifeblood of my existence; my heart and soul. I just won’t do that.
And subsequently, I am trusting my Jesus to walk me through this. Every step of it. However long it takes. Whether I’m skipping, dancing or dragging myself. Because I believe that Jesus will help me to walk through my grief without relinquishing my ability to remain connected or whole. Or rather as whole as it is possible to be whilst this side of heaven.
It’s been a big wave. And it’s not done yet. But as I allow myself to engage more fully with my pain, I notice my joy for life, begin to filter back through. And somehow it’s sharper, clearer, more 3D, richer and fuller.
Grief hurts … but grief also heals.
It’s a paradox.
But one that it’s worthwhile engaging with.
At least if one wishes to continue living whilst living…
As I consider the call to new life as reflected through nature, I cannot help but be drawn to Jesus and the Cross. I recently watched Mary Magdalene and with Easter all around us, I am reminded that Jesus is the ultimate invitation to new life.
His surrender to death on the cross was an act of total trust in God the Father. Jesus trusted God with His life and God turned around the pain of his death on the cross to bring great hope and healing to all people. Ultimately, as an invitation to a new life with God via Jesus.
So if we strip back all the Christianese surrounding the Cross (not to mention all those chocolate eggs and bunnies), what happened went something like this.
Way back when, Adam and Eve lived in perfect connection with God, in the garden of Eden. They had access to everything they could have wanted. But, like us in the present day, they fell in to the trap of believing that it was not enough and subsequently they bought the serpent’s lie that they should have MORE.
This led them to eat from the one tree that God had asked them not to. By disobeying God, they broke the perfect connection between them. In came the culture of blame. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent.
The innocence, trust, unity and peace they had enjoyed with each other and with God, got broken. In its place, shame, fear, selfishness, strife and division entered humanity. Things got proper messed up.
After this fall out between Adam, Eve and God, the shame they felt about what they had done, caused them to hide from God in fear. But God did not punish them in whatever way they thought they deserved or had expected, for God loved them so much that he wanted to help them find their way back to him. He didn’t want them to be separated by fear of punishment. But, their disobedience was not without consequence for they were banished from the garden of Eden.
Ever since then, our relationships with each other and with God, have been problematic. Without a perfect connection with God, us humans make mistakes, do things we shouldn’t and fail to do what we could, usually out of fear, greed, pride or selfishness. It is now in our nature. There is no such thing as a perfect human. These don’t exist. Not since the fall out. Not now. Aside perhaps from in the minds of the more deluded. But these traits entered during the big fall out in Eden and they don’t fully disappear until we are reunited with God in Heaven.
None of this means that us humans don’t also do some pretty amazing, selfless, pioneering, wonderful things too though. Because we do.
But we all get hurt and we all do wrong and we all have wrong done to us. And all too often we turn away from the very God who wants to help us because we’ve learned to either blame Him for our own actions or those of others, or for the hardships that come our way, or we simply dismiss Him as fantasy.
Anyway, these wrong doings that started with Adam and Eve were rectified by the sacrifice of animal life and in doing so, temporarily reconnected the people to God. But as we’re constantly messing up if only in small ways, this was a continual process of making animal sacrifices, meaning the connection between God and the people was constantly dropping out. A bit like a poor internet service.
This wasn’t good enough.
God wanted a better connection with his people. Although He is often painted as being a God who awaits the chance to punish us, He doesn’t treat us as we may at times deserve. He is too loving a God for that and instead He seeks ways to connect with us by revealing his love for us in spite of ourselves. But as we have seen, our poor choices are not without consequence.
So, because God was unsatisfied with the poor connection between us, He devised a cunning plan. He sent Jesus to show us what God looks like in human form and in action. Jesus was able to showcase the heart of God by demonstrating his love and power through healing humans during his life and ministry. Jesus even raised a few people from the dead. Miraculous.
But God also sent Jesus to re-establish the connection between us and God once and for all by paying the price for our wrongdoings (past, present and future) so that we would no longer be dependent upon an unreliable, unchanging, dropping out regularly type of connection. Instead we could each become and remain connected to God anytime we want. This means that because of Jesus, we can each tap in to God’s love and power to bring healing to our own and others hearts.
Wow!
No more continual sacrificing of animals to pay for our mess ups. Jesus became THE sacrifice, through his death, that gives us ongoing connection to God, His love, His power to heal and the new life that He has for us. Awesome or what?
But how did this come about?
Jesus trusted God.
(NB that Jesus is also God because God is made up of three parts; Jesus is the human part, God is Father, creator and so much more and the third part is the Holy Spirit which was given to us after Jesus left, to speak God’s divine wisdom in to our hearts. See the film The Shack for some creative ideas on this.)
Anyway, God asked Jesus to submit to the authority on earth, despite the fact this authority led Jesus to the cross. Jesus, being God too, could have said ‘no thanks, I’m not really up for that’. Let’s face it, who amongst us could blame him. But he didn’t. Even though, like us, Jesus had the free will to choose, he chose to obey God because he trusted him.
Let us not pretend that this was easy for him. The bible tells us that Jesus sweat blood and tears during the night before the cross. He knew how easy it would be to turn away in fear and that the only way that he could face what He had been called to do, was by calling upon the help of God in prayer.
In surrendering to God’s will to submit to the authority, Jesus freely chose to be led to the most unimaginable pain of the cross. At which point Jesus fulfilled his purpose here on Earth. In life, he showed us the Father’s love in action through healing. In death, he reconnected us to the Father forever more.
Jesus basically rather generously paid through his death for us to have the new life that connection with the Father brings. He has paid the price for everything any of us have, do or will do wrong, so that nothing can ever disconnect us from God again. Jesus is the middle man of all middle men.
We all still have the freedom to ignore the invite to connect with God through Jesus. And let’s face it, Society certainly encourages us to overlook the meaning of Easter by wrapping it in a mass of Chocolate, coloured eggs and cute bunnies.
And if we didn’t come to God freely, it wouldn’t be love but fear and that’s not what He’s looking for. Whilst many have unfortunately bought in to the lie that God is a petty, punitive God looking for chances to punish us with trouble, the truth is that although pain and trials undoubtedly come (Jesus knows all about that), it is God Himself that empowers us to overcome them. So, if we’ve fallen for the lie that God is to blame, we will miss out on the help he offers to bring us through and heal us along the way. (As to why God allows bad stuff to happen, that’s another whole matter – ask your pastor about that one).
Basically it all comes down to trust. Because when we trust God, like Jesus did, no matter how awful things look or are in life, we know that God will turn around the worst situation to bring something of great goodness from it. But that requires us to persevere. Sometimes for a very, very long time before that good thing happens and if we don’t really trust we’ll probably give up before we get there.
So, this Easter, take a moment to consider the meaning of Jesus willingly going to the cross for us. Irrespective of what we’ve come through, how we may have messed up in life, how others may have mistreated us, how broken we are, how desperate for real love or whether we’re simply seeking greater purpose and meaning in life, Jesus knows. He gets us and he gets suffering but he offers to connect us to the God who can help us to find our way out of our old lives and in to the new life that He is calling us to. The God that helps us to fulfil our respective purposes here on Earth, in spite of the rubbish life hurls our way.
What an offer.
Jesus died on Good Friday, which really didn’t look too good at that point.
Rather, it looked like the new life that Jesus taught and promised had died with him.
But no, God raised Him up again on Easter Monday to bring him in to new life.
In doing so God extended the invitation in to new life, through Jesus, to every single one of us.
And God is still extending His personal invitation to us all …
All we have to do this Easter to enter in to this new life, is believe and receive what Jesus has done for us.
And yes, it really is that easy and that’s why it’s called Good News!
I’ve struggled to write following my last post. I mean, where to go after death? Death has happened to someone I love and with whom I would share all my news. This leaves a void that I cannot avoid. Yet in the mix of resuming my usual responsibilities, I find myself attempting to do just that. Trying to avoid the unavoidable void. (That’s a lot of voids!)
Death is literally everywhere. Whilst it’s not always a physical passing of someone, it appears in many guises through endings, change and loss. It is an unavoidable part of being alive. No one can avoid or dodge this reality. Including me.
Despite my past weeks’ best efforts at avoidance, I’ve heard about death within my practice, I’ve seen it in the nakedness of nature and it’s been there in the films I’ve watched; Nicholas Gift and Darkest Hour. It’s all around us. It’s part of life.
When I stop avoiding and look back, I see how the process of dying was eased for the one going through it, by the presence of those who love her, accompanying her on the journey.
I was struck through this by the reminder of the simple truth that what makes the unbearable bearable, is the love of those around you.
I reflected upon how this is not just true in the face of death but also for every trial and trauma of life. What makes the losses, the changes, the endings, the challenges, the fears, faceable, is having people around us that will simply be there with us. It doesn’t always have to be physically, but just knowing there are people around for us should we need them. This is what makes life not just bearable, but liveable.
Within my own friendships, it is those individuals who offer a place at their dinner table, or who pop in with flowers or who reassure me that I can call or come over if I want to, or who just sit with me whilst I weep, that help me to feel that I’m ok. That I can walk through this post death void. That I can bear the loss, the absence, the unfillable gap. That I can and will learn to adjust, without just avoiding or distracting. For it is these people that show me that I am loved and not alone.
I can’t help but wonder if we must wait for death, to draw closer to one another. Or whether we can apply death’s lessons to our living now.
As I reflect upon this I realise that it is death that exposes our vulnerability. It strips us of all pretence. There is no option to just be strong. No hiding place for our frailties, fragility, needs or limitations. No chance to feed our delusions of invincibility or to keep up appearances. In death, we are all released from the prison of stiff upper lipped thinking and living. For in death we are laid bare in all our vulnerable humanity, just as in birth.
In contrast, life can become one long culture driven exercise in hiding the very vulnerability that makes us human. We can learn to clothe our naked humanity in strength and self-sufficiency, blind to the truth that these characteristics can delude and divide us from our need for God and each other. We do of course need these qualities but without the balance of human weakness and interdependency, we cannot remain whole.
What if we were to admit our human vulnerabilities during the time in between birth and death? To actually acknowledge our shared human frailties in life and to support one another accordingly. For isn’t this how we truly connect with one another? Through admission and confession of our vulnerability and pain, not just our strengths and achievements?
There is a vulnerability surrounding death that can actually bring us closer together. A vulnerability that our culture dangerously dismisses as weakness, in life. But such thinking serves merely to succeed in keeping us within isolated prisons of pretence. And it is only in honesty and unity that we can all remain free to continue to heal, grow and live fully and whole heartedly irrespective of the deaths and endings that meet us along the way.
Life brings deaths, endings and pain.
Pretence about this creates barriers.
Vulnerability tears them down.
And only in vulnerability can we continue to truly meet one another in love, both in life and in death.
Let us not wait for death, to admit to the shared vulnerability of our humanity. None of us can choose how we will die but all of us can choose with whom and how we will live.
