| Oh, what will the people say? © Betty Sue Eaton |
When you lose someone dear to you, friends, relatives and maybe even your fellow
church members urge you to get over it and go on with your life. Of course, they mean
well, but it is so unthinkable to you that you resent anyone thinking that you COULD go
on, even if you wanted to.
Having at last been able to survive the loss and begin to think of doing something fun
again, my friend wanted to go to lunch with her fellow employees and just relax, maybe
even laugh a little. She did just that and it felt great to be happy, at least for the moment,
then that awful feeling struck her: What will people say if they see me laughing and
enjoying being alive again! That old nemesis, Guilt, had jumped up and bitten her!
Guilt is garbage that you should not attempt to carry around for the rest of your life
because you lost someone very precious to you. What could you have done to change
the outcome of whatever took him or her away. God says that we are not to second
guess Him in matters of life and death. Those states of being are His alone to decide
according to His plan for us, and there is absolutely nothing under the sun that we can
do to change that.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the famed authority on the different stages of grief states in her
acclaimed book, On Death and Dying, identified the five basic stages of grief: Denial,
Anger, Bargaining, Acceptance, and Reaching Out. She says that people do not
necessarily go through these stages in order given, but eventually, they must go through
them all. The second stage, anger, includes guilt because we feel that we should have
been able to have prevented this terrible event. Bargaining is almost totally expressed as
anger, wherein, we must try to arrange a deal with God to somehow take our guilt away
for allowing this to happen, to try to make ourselves feel better, and to some way shift
the blame to someone else for us to be angry at. After all, it makes no sense to be angry
with the one who died and left us to cope with that loss all alone.
In Kubler-Ross' latest book, she identifies a sixth stage: Journey to Beginning. She says
this is the stage where true healing takes place, and that no real healing can take place
until we face this journey, the most important one after the Reaching Out, or fifth stage of
grieving. She states that the Journey to Beginning is the expression that there has been
a real change in thought about the loss of a loved one, and the first real demonstration of
a change in our heart about going on with our lives.
To that end, I want to stress that anger is the most destructive of all emotions and it
accomplishes nothing but debilitation of our souls! It does not motivate us to try to
recover; it does not endear us in our grief to those who would try help us; it does nothing
to prepare us for renewed life after we accept that the situation at hand will never
change no matter what we do or try to do. What is just is, by God's action, not ours.
So go out, go on, and laugh! Laugh heartily and long! Find places and things to be
involved in that will allow you to enjoy yourself and those around you. It matters not what
people say, that it's far too soon for you to be 'behaving this way'!
At my mother's funeral wake in the home of my sister and her family, the seven of us
began to sing, slowly and doleful at first, but soon, we were letting our voices ring in a
joyous chorus. My aunt, who never smiled at anything ever, was aghast that we should
do that! It was a sacrilege, but the pastor came in on the scene and was greatly moved
at the courage expressed there to accept Mom's death and be glad that she was no
longer suffering the terrible pains of heart disease.
There was no anger, no guilt, no bargaining present that day, only God's blessing that
would allow us the freedom to sing instead of mourn at His calling our Mom home at last.
church members urge you to get over it and go on with your life. Of course, they mean
well, but it is so unthinkable to you that you resent anyone thinking that you COULD go
on, even if you wanted to.
Having at last been able to survive the loss and begin to think of doing something fun
again, my friend wanted to go to lunch with her fellow employees and just relax, maybe
even laugh a little. She did just that and it felt great to be happy, at least for the moment,
then that awful feeling struck her: What will people say if they see me laughing and
enjoying being alive again! That old nemesis, Guilt, had jumped up and bitten her!
Guilt is garbage that you should not attempt to carry around for the rest of your life
because you lost someone very precious to you. What could you have done to change
the outcome of whatever took him or her away. God says that we are not to second
guess Him in matters of life and death. Those states of being are His alone to decide
according to His plan for us, and there is absolutely nothing under the sun that we can
do to change that.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, the famed authority on the different stages of grief states in her
acclaimed book, On Death and Dying, identified the five basic stages of grief: Denial,
Anger, Bargaining, Acceptance, and Reaching Out. She says that people do not
necessarily go through these stages in order given, but eventually, they must go through
them all. The second stage, anger, includes guilt because we feel that we should have
been able to have prevented this terrible event. Bargaining is almost totally expressed as
anger, wherein, we must try to arrange a deal with God to somehow take our guilt away
for allowing this to happen, to try to make ourselves feel better, and to some way shift
the blame to someone else for us to be angry at. After all, it makes no sense to be angry
with the one who died and left us to cope with that loss all alone.
In Kubler-Ross' latest book, she identifies a sixth stage: Journey to Beginning. She says
this is the stage where true healing takes place, and that no real healing can take place
until we face this journey, the most important one after the Reaching Out, or fifth stage of
grieving. She states that the Journey to Beginning is the expression that there has been
a real change in thought about the loss of a loved one, and the first real demonstration of
a change in our heart about going on with our lives.
To that end, I want to stress that anger is the most destructive of all emotions and it
accomplishes nothing but debilitation of our souls! It does not motivate us to try to
recover; it does not endear us in our grief to those who would try help us; it does nothing
to prepare us for renewed life after we accept that the situation at hand will never
change no matter what we do or try to do. What is just is, by God's action, not ours.
So go out, go on, and laugh! Laugh heartily and long! Find places and things to be
involved in that will allow you to enjoy yourself and those around you. It matters not what
people say, that it's far too soon for you to be 'behaving this way'!
At my mother's funeral wake in the home of my sister and her family, the seven of us
began to sing, slowly and doleful at first, but soon, we were letting our voices ring in a
joyous chorus. My aunt, who never smiled at anything ever, was aghast that we should
do that! It was a sacrilege, but the pastor came in on the scene and was greatly moved
at the courage expressed there to accept Mom's death and be glad that she was no
longer suffering the terrible pains of heart disease.
There was no anger, no guilt, no bargaining present that day, only God's blessing that
would allow us the freedom to sing instead of mourn at His calling our Mom home at last.
| A Christian Grief Ministry |
100's of Inspirational Grief Poems and Stories |