Saturday, November 05, 2011

Grief

I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow (Jeremiah 31:13).

People don’t handle death well. Some won’t go into a hospital room to visit a dying friend. Others cannot bring themselves to look into an open casket and say goodbye. Some people behave very badly at the funeral home, screaming at others instead of embracing them. Other people seem to disappear after the funeral; they hide in their homes and shy away from anyone who reaches out to them.

It all comes from grief—deep sadness over the loss of a loved one. Death tears us apart like nothing else in life—no betrayal, no tragedy hurts as much as the death of a person held tightly in the heart. The grief caused by death is something everyone goes through many times in life; it is devastating in the amount of hurt that it causes. And yet our society discourages grieving; you are supposed to get a funeral organized within three or four days, have a good cry with a group of friends, and then get back to work. If you want to talk about your lingering grief, people get uncomfortable; they try and change the subject, while wondering why you can’t just let it go and get on with your life. And so you hide your grief behind an artificial smile; you try to ignore the ache in your heart and pretend that everything is just fine.

My friend, grief does not go away in a week or a month; it takes time to sort things out and find happiness again. Some people are weighed down with grief for years, especially if they try to ignore the pain instead of working through it. Some people become so oppressed by grief that they lose all sense of purpose; they merely exist when they should be living. And the grieving process is complicated by other feelings that death stirs within us.

For one thing, death makes us afraid. As the years go by after a funeral, we start to forget things. You look at the calendar and realize that his birthday was last week. Your wedding anniversary slips by unnoticed. You have trouble remembering what her face looked like or how she smelled when you went out to dinner. You struggle to recall what his voice sounded like or how his skin felt when the two of you held hands. You are forgetting someone who meant the world to you, and the realization terrifies you.

Death makes us afraid in other ways too. We fear letting our grief show. No one likes to be the object of pity; better to hold the pain inside and pretend to be okay; that way, other people will treat you like normal instead walking on eggshells when they’re around you. Also, there are other people who are depending on you to be strong; you don’t want to show weakness when they need you to comfort them. Finally, we fear the truth—that the person we loved is really gone. Looking into the casket makes you face reality—that person is not away on an extended business trip or vacationing overseas. It is a truth that we are afraid of facing.

Jesus knows that death makes you afraid. Jesus knows how much it hurts to say goodbye as the coffin is lowered into the ground. When His friend Lazarus died, Jesus wept—He shed tears even though He had the power to raise Lazarus back to life (John 11:35). Jesus wept because death happened, and death is the enemy of everything that lives. But Jesus did more than just grieve at the tomb; our Lord and Master allowed Himself to be nailed to the cross so that He might die for us. His body was laid in a grave, but on the third day He rose from the dead to live once more. He rose to open heaven’s gates for us. By rising, He proved that He can lift us from our graves to live forever at His side. 2 Timothy chapter one tells us, Christ Jesus…has destroyed death and has revealed life and immortality to us.

You don’t have to be afraid of death. Heaven is real. Everyone who died while believing in Jesus is there right now, enjoying peace and happiness that we can scarcely imagine. Jesus has washed you of your sins by His blood shed on the cross; because of that holy cleansing, you are invited to join the saints in paradise when you die. Your loved ones are not gone forever; a reunion is coming and it’s really not all that far off.

I have one thing more to say about forgetting. At many funerals, you will hear someone say words along these lines: "So long as he lives in our hearts, he is never really gone." That idea was front and center in the movie Titanic and Celine Dion’s song My Heart Will Go On. Such words put a terrible burden on us; if we forget a loved one, are they lost forever? Most emphatically, the answer is no! Even though our memories get faulty with age, the blessed in Christ are safe at His side. So go ahead and treasure your memories; leaf through photo albums and put mementos on the shelf. But don't become trapped by the past; go ahead and make some new memories too.

Death also fills our lives with regret. You know that heaven is wonderful and that your loved one is better off being there than here. But you have a selfish desire; you’d rather have that person here with you, even though life on earth is far from perfect. And so you feel guilty, because you are putting your own desire for happiness first.

Maybe your dearly departed passed on after suffering through a long illness. If that’s the case, you might have felt relief when he died. You were worn out from watching him suffer day after day; you are secretly glad to be done with the role of caretaker. But these feelings bring a sense of guilt as well; you feel terrible for being happy that your loved one finally died.

Others walk away from funerals filled with regret over opportunities wasted. Why didn’t you visit or call or write more often? Why didn’t you mend fences after that last fight? Why didn’t you say "I love you" when you had the chance? And so you feel guilty for letting the other person down, and now it’s too late to do anything about it.

First of all, you need to remember that Jesus forgives you—forgives you completely. John tells us the blood of Jesus…purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:7). No matter how selfish you have been, no matter how badly you have messed up your relationships, Jesus can take all the guilt away. You can’t change the past, but Jesus can free you from its burdens so that today is a new start and tomorrow is full of fresh possibilities. And there is one more thing that I want you to consider. Heaven is a place of perfection; no one living there is afflicted by sin in any way. That includes the sin of harboring a grudge. This means that not only are you forgiven by Jesus, but everyone in heaven forgives you as well. So you don’t need to feel guilty about the past; ask Jesus to take away your sins and to help you do better with the relationships you have today. Spend time with the people you care about, even when the situation is uncomfortable or the timing inconvenient. Patch up broken relationships now, not next week. Say "I love you" without hesitation or embarrassment.

There are situations where death fills people with anger. For some, it is anger over old hurts that were never set right; now that death has ended the relationship, you suddenly realize that you’re never doing to get an apology for the wrongs done to you. You have waited for closure, but death has stolen the possibility away, leaving you with hurt and anger and no resolution. For others, the anger is about feeling abandoned—how dare that man just give up and die, leaving me to deal with all this stuff on my own? In our grief we want to lash out in pain, and sometimes the target is the person whose death has caused that pain.

If you have anger in your heart for someone who has died, please consider this. Every one of us is a sinner from cradle to grave. Every one of us violates the laws of love and inflicts hurt on everyone around us, even those we cherish. The one who hurt you and died was no different. She was a sinner who needed God’s mercy in Christ, just as you are a sinner who needs God’s mercy in Christ. Sinners don’t treat us as we deserve to be treated, and they don’t necessarily give us closure when they leave. But Jesus died to forgive that person, just as Jesus died to forgive you. And so Paul tells us, be imitators of God…and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us. Forgive as the Lord forgave you (Ephesians 5, Colossians 3).

Forgiving others is hard, but terribly important. It is so important that Jesus put it into the Lord’s Prayer: forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. So long as you hold a grudge, you can never be free of the emotional pain; the only remedy is to let it go by forgiving the other person from your heart. Thankfully, Jesus helps—His love can soften the hardest of hearts and free us from sin’s deadly grip.

Very often, the death of a loved one leaves a person feeling disoriented. The old routines are disrupted. Sitting in church with no one beside you. Setting the table for one. Suddenly having to take over the checkbook, the laundry, the yard work, the repairs around the house. These kinds of changes can make you confused. What needs to be done? Who can you go to for help? Will things ever settle down to some semblance of normalcy?

In times of confusion, it is important to remember that God is in charge. He knows you personally; Jesus said, even the very hairs of your head are all numbered (Matthew 10:30). God has plans for your life; listen to what He said through the prophet Jeremiah (chapter 29): I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. God has tasks for you to do in His service, as Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 2: we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Even though you might be unsure of what the future holds, God has things for you to do. He can clear out the mental cobwebs; He can give you patience and hope and courage. These gifts come through His Spirit, and His Spirit speaks through the Word. So when death has left you feeling lost and unsure of what to do next, turn to Christ. Immerse yourself in God’s Word by attending church regularly and reading the Bible every day. Pray to God frequently for comfort and direction. Take time to grieve, but don’t wall yourself off from others; get out of the house and let God surround You with the love of your fellow Christians!

As you deal with grief, there are a couple of important questions to ask yourself. The first is this: do you regret the years you cannot share with your departed loved one, or are you grateful for the years the two of you did have together? The other question is: what will you choose to remember about the years you shared? Will you focus your attention on the good times or the bad? Feeling grief after someone dies is inevitable, but being a slave to grief can be avoided. How grief impacts your life depends on how you respond to it. If you try to deny grief and just soldier on pretending to be fine, it can eat away at your mental health like an untreated wound that eventually gets infected. If you wallow in your grief out of continuing self-pity, it can smother you and isolate you from everyone else. But there is a third alternative—trust in Jesus. Turn your regrets and fears and anger and loneliness over to Him; He will forgive you, He will dry your tears, and He will stay by your side as you go on living the life that God has given you. Grief is normal and it has to be wrestled with—but with Jesus at your side, grief will not dominate the rest of your days on earth.

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