Hints for Coping with Grief During the Holidays

Life is never the same after experiencing the death of a loved one and neither can the holidays. However, one can learn to cope with the holidays by:

*Acknowledging the holidays cannot be the same again

*Lowering expectations-the goal is to survive

*Anticipating that emotions will intensify

*Giving yourself permission to feel

*Expressing your feelings

*Planning ahead

*Being flexible, abandon the plan if it doesn't feel right

*Telling others what you need

*Take Care of yourslef

The Why of Suicide

Two teenagers in the Stillwater area died in a suicide pact this week. The questions will forever remain questions for their family and friends. Sometimes we can live into the answers to life's biggest questions, but the questions surfaced from the wake of a loved one's suicide continue to come crashing over one's life.
The whys are disturbing and abrasive, perplexing and confusing. The whys are an unwelcome guest that continues to knock at our door. The door must be opened. The questions must be asked even though the answers may not be found.
There is little comfort in the unanswered questions, but I do find hope in knowing that I am never alone in the asking. People have been asking the difficult questions of life for centuries. Whether one is a believer or not, the unanswerable questions are often addressed to God. I take comfort in knowing that God holds the questions for us. God is with us in the asking and in the waiting for answers.

Ann Weems in Psalms of Lament writes:

O God, explain to me the cruelty of your world!
Make sense of those who make no sense!
Tell me why the faithful are shunned,
and the self-righteous point their fingers!
Tell me why the wounded are wounded,
and sorrow falls on the the shoulder of sorrow!
Tell me why the abuse are abused,
and the victims victimized!
Tell me why the rains come to the drowning,
and aftershocks follow earthquakes.
O God, is this any way to run a world?
O Merciful One, let us rest between tragedies!

Speak to us for we are your people.
Speak to us of hope for the hopeless
and love for the unloved
and homes for the homeless
and dignity for the dying
and respect for the disdained.

Speak to us, O God,
of the Resurrected One!
Speak to us of hope,
for in spite of the tidal wave of tears,
we remember your story of new life!

Tell the world again,
O God of creation!
Tell us that winter will fade,
and spring will wash us anew,
and the world will green again,
and we will be new creations
in the garden of our God.
Free us from these tentacles of sorrow,
and we will fall on our faces,
and worship you,
O God of goodness,
O God of a new green world!

Learn to Dance with a Limp

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It is like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly-that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with a limp." Anne Lamott

The South Dakota Prairie

Grief is like the South Dakota prairie, endless.
Stretching in every direction, expansive.
A weather beaten abandoned house sits empty, lonely.
Cows seek shelter from the sun's brutal rays, exposed.
The Badlands, a baked rocky desert, relentless
The Black Hills, a refreshing reprieve.
Then the expansive, endless Wyoming prairie, grief returns.

Soul's Soil Shared

Gardens growing side by side
incarnate beauty with brilliant brightness
sharing color in life's shades of grey.
Powerful, positive, presence,
like a sunflower seeking suckling sun's rays,
calling forth life's light.

Gardens growing side by side.
Yours, well tilled with nurturing toil, in fed soil.
Nutrient sucking weeds discerning destructive,
pulled, giving life's light to budding blossoms uncovered.

Gardens growing side by side.
Mine, pale comparison,
with wild weeds deceptive.
I, from you,wise weeding woman,
learned to be an earth tender.
Pulling, old rooted weeds.
Discovering, my garden's beauty beneath,
like wild flowers under the forest's blanket.

Gardens growing side by side.
Sharing plots, poised and planted.
God the Gardener,"Grace."
Fed in freindship,
watered in Word,
growing in splendor.

Gardens growing side by side.
Yours, now, transplanted.
Love lingers,fertilizing my soul's soil,
with your eternal beauty.

Words worth pondering

A friend shared this thought with me after her brother died. They are the words of A. Powell Davies from his book, Prayers for Healing.
"When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as part of life. Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it. All the evidence we have says it is the better way. An open heart never grows bitter. Or if it does, it cannot remain so. In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss. but anguiish, like ecstasy is not forever. There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness. This, too is a door to life. Here, also, is a deepening of meaning-and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul, conquering of the wilderness and in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning all is well."

Caregiving, The Paradox

Caregiving, it gives life.
Compassion shared,
patience granted,
empathy bestowed.

Life is given.
In hearing other's stories we are invited onto sacred ground.
Life is honored.
While engaging others, we encounter God.
Life is drained.
Caregiving, the paradox, it drains life.
Powerless to stop it, death comes defying our efforts.
Helpless to fix it, the pain of grief consumes.
Grief drains, questions plague, energy flees.

Life is paradox, death the teacher.
to celebrate simplicity,
to live the questions,
to embrace the essence.

Death, friend and foe, helps me,
to focus on the essentials;
faith, family, friends
to honor the Holy within and without
to cherish the gifts of living and loving

Give sorrow words...

"Give sorrow words..." Shakespeare
Shakespeare certainly had a better grasp on the written word than I do, so maybe that is why I find it difficult to give sorrow words. Sometimes there are no words.

Presence in the Valleys

Valleys are:
dark
long
cold
scary

Presence brings:
light
endurance
warmth
courage

Spirit Blow Through Me

Spirit blow through me
blow away stagnant staleness
blow away road worn weariness
blow away faithless fear

Grace wash over me
Soften the hard edges
refresh the parched places
shine the dulled luster

Spirit blow through me
blow in fresh starts
blow in new energy
blow in perfect peace

Suffering Silences

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words." Romans 8:26

Suffering silences,
feelings choke words.
Only sighs speak.
Sighs,
welling up from soul's darkness
Speak,
spirit to spirit
without words, nor voice.
Suffering steals words
Sighs confessing helplessness
Sighs expressing connectedness
Spirit speak
with my sighs,speak.
Say something...
of comfort,
for healing,
about peace,
for I have no words...
only sighs
Suffering silences, sighs speak

Recipe for a Life Well Lived

What is the recipe for a life well lived? I found it in a woman who died at the age of 88. Her recipe was an overflowing cup of family, a full measure of friends and a bountiful cup of faith mixed together with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.
The recipe resulted in a family who loved her, friends who surrounded her and a faith that sustained her. She treasured wonderful memories, lived with great satisfaction and had no regrets.
What is your recipe for a life well lived?

Enfolded in God's Embrace

Today, as I rejoiced in the lessons that I was taught by a dying woman over the past several weeks, my teacher was enfolded in God's eternal embrace. She is at peace in God's love.

Dying is Like Giving Birth

Dying is like giving birth. One does not know exactly when it will come or what one will have to go through to reach the end result. A person can experience pain and suffering in the dying process just like a woman who is giving birth. Once a baby is placed in the mother's arms the pain and suffering become a distant memory. I think that is how it must be when the dying are placed in the mothering arms of God, the process of getting there is quickly forgotten.
Heaven is God rejoicing at the child enfolded in God's eternal embrace and the child is at peace in God's love.

Cocoon to Butterfly

My first grade teacher has spun a cocoon around herself; a deep coma, a place of peaceful rest. She waits like a butterfly bursting out of the cocoon. We wait with her watching for the newness of life to burst forth. The dying body cocooned will become the butterfly of new life as it flys to eternity.

See Spot. See Spot run.

I visited my first grade teacher today. She is dying.
I was filled with warmth as I remembered her tender kindness and gentle patience as a teacher of energetic 6 and 7 year olds. Affirmations abounded for each child in her class.
Gratitude washed over me as I held the hand of the woman who taught me to read. Irony overwhelmed me as I wondered how I was called to care for this wonderful woman who had cared for me 44 years ago. The shoe was now on the other foot and it felt uncomfortable.
Once again, in her dying, she has become my teacher. I sit at her bedside and learn lessons of gracious gratitude. She lives out her gratefulness with polite please and thank yous said with a gentle smile and soft eyes. In her dying she teaches me about living with dignity, integrity and quiet courage as she does not complain while her positive and hopeful spirit continue to shine.
Today she taught me that the vale between this life and the next is mysteriously thin as she spoke these words with the same kind of deliberate communication style that I remembered as a child: "Pastor, I want to speak to you about my death," which was followed by a long moment filled with intentional and yet comfortable silence. She continued, "It will be Sunday." I wondered what she saw and heard that I did not as I waited for Sunday to come.

With Gratitude

It is often difficult to find the blessings in one's grief, but one blessing that emerges is that our own grief calls us to be more compassionate toward others who are hurting.
Marva Dawn wrote a poem to a family that blessed her with compassionate understanding. It is entitled "With Gratitude."

You said,
"Call us, any time you need us,"
and I felt at home in your words,
I poured out my grief,
and you hugged me.
I told you my fears,
and you prayed that I would sleep protected.
I expressed my confusion,
and you helped me sort out the parts.
I tried to face my ugly self,
and you kept on caring.
I gave you my pain, and you gave me a kiss.
How can I thank you?
How do I express this awareness
that I have found a home in your love,
that I have been adopted in your grace?
It is like the Resurrection, promising life
and healing and hilarity.
It is just that Easter is incarnated in your care.

Disaster, Destruction, Devastation, Death

The earthquake in Haiti on January 12 brings one emotional aftershock after another. The images streaming across the television are earth shattering-mothers screaming for their babies, children wandering helplessly, the dead laying in the street,buried under ruble, piled in mass graves.
The devastation became personal with the news that one body buried in the ruble was Ben Larson, who was a shy little boy with melt your heart eyes when I met him at the age of 5. With the blink of an eye he grew up to be a passionate, joy-filled, young man who sought to serve his loving God by accompaniment with those Jesus chose to hang out with; the poor, the disenfranchised and the excluded. His life flowed on with endless song as he sang God's Good News into the hearts of all.
Ben, a senior seminarian at Wartburg Theological Seminary, traveled with his wife, Renee, and his cousin, Johnathan, to Haiti to learn and walk with the people of the Eglise Lutherienne d'Haiti (Evangelical Lutheran Church in Haiti). All three were in trapped in the ruble of the earthquake. Renee and Johnathan escaped and heard Ben singing God's praises as he died.
My mother's heart weeps with Ben's parents, Judd and April, and aches for Ben's sisters, Katie and Amy, who have lost the ability to create more memories of their brother and whose children will not be able to bask in the playful spirit of their Uncle Ben. Renee's pain with all the hopes and dreams of young love is beyond my comprehension.
Both Ben's passion for walking in accompaniment with the poor and his death, call me to accompany the people of Haiti through the process of rebuilding and it also renews my passion to accompany those who are grieving. Both the people of Haiti and Ben's family are in the life long process of rebuilding their lives, lives that are forever changed. They need people to walk along side them, to sit with them on the mourner's bench, to bring God's love in the flesh.

Death Revisited

It has been 5 years ago today that I got the call that my brother died in a plane crash. It feels like it is yesterday. Conversations, experiences, emotions replay like an old 8 track tape. Raw pain is like an unwanted guest knocking at my door. I expected murmurings of grief, but the rawness renewed caught me unprepared. It feels like a Minnsota winter wind chill without a coat-a chill that goes bone deep with a bite that lingers.
Once again I turn to Psalms of Lament by Ann Weems. She captures the long night I experienced as death revisited the door of my heart.

Lament Psalm Sixteen

O God, will this night never end?
Give me sleep, O God!
Give me rest!
Erase from my memory
the moments of his death.
Blot out the terror
and the ever-present fear
and let me sleep.
I lie upon this bed
tortured by thoughts
that come unbidden.
The night is full of demons.
They stand uon my heart
until I cannot breathe.
There is nothing in my world
this night except his death.
O God, bring the morning light.

Is it not enough
that he is dead?
That there is nothing
I can do
to change what is?
Must I spend each night
revisiting the unlit
corridors of death?

O God, be merciful!
Bring the dawn!
Come into this night
and tear it into day!

Another year of grief

On Monday, January 11, it will be five years since my brother died.
A poem from Cathedrals of the Heart will mark my loss,and his
life.

NOTHING IS THE SAME

Nothing is the same.
Thoughts of heaven, eternity are heavy on my mind.
Dying is a new image
front and center,
very personal.

My equillibrium has come unglued.
when out of balance,
how do I stand?
where do I stand?
with whom do I stand?
where do I take refuge?

Thoughts take me everywhere and nowhere.
Flashbacks, dreams and visions exhaust me,
stir me, propel me.
New reality seems to emerge.
Worlds pass through my mouth before my brain.
I miss him so. Everything everywerhe seems empty.
Can anything be rational at this moment?

I wait for peace and balance.
It's a time to celebrate memories and mourn losses.
A time for emotion to settle.
A time to place one foot in front of the other,
step by step.
Emptiness is deep and dark.
Each day is a year.