Getting Through the Funeral

A funeral service is a time to remember the life of the person who passed away, celebrate some of the memories that are particularly special, and find comfort from our family and friends who gather with us. Funerals give us time to say a final "Goodbye" and move just a little closer to accepting the unwelcome reality that the person is truly gone.

Funeral services bring an overwhelming mix of emotions like these:

• Sadness - part of coming to grips with the loss
• Anger - part of reacting to this tremendous emotional pain
• Uncertainty - questions of "what now?"
• Peace and joy - if we believe our loved one is now in heaven
• Relief - if you have been caring for a sick spouse, death can bring a sense of relief that the work of helping them is now at an end
• Guilt - over things not said or other such missed opportunities

These are just a few of the ingredients in the "emotional stew" at the time of the funeral. I liken it to stew because you can see the separate ingredients, yet they all blend together.

One important thing to keep in mind through this time is this: everyone is grieving, though the mix of emotions for one person will be different that those of another. In times like this people may say or do strange things. If family relationships are already tense, a funeral usually exacerbates that tension. A person may say angry words that they would never say under normal circumstances. One person's emotions explode and hurt others who are dealing with their own emotions. 

As the funeral approaches, I would encourage you to...

• Use this time to draw together with family and support each other
• Set aside past family tensions to help each other in this moment
• Allow people to help you, from gathering pictures to making meals to watching your children
• Show grace to yourself for all the emotions you feel and the strange things you may say or do during this high-stress time
• Show grace to others for the same things
• Avoid making decisions that are not essential to the current day or week

Try to put aside anything that can wait until after the funeral is over. During the days leading up to the funeral don't dwell on issues like finances or jobs. Don't worry about what kind of relationship you will now have with your parents-in-law. Set aside these kinds of issues and then face them one by one over the next month (or longer). 

For now, just allow yourself time to grieve.

Does God Care?

In the midst of the challenges of life, we may sometimes doubt the goodness of God. Does He really care? How can I know?

First, we can read the precious promises of His Word. 

• Nahum 1:7: The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; he knows those who take refuge in him.  
• 1 Peter 5:7: [Cast] all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.
• Matthew 28:20b: "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
• Psalm 34:18: The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Second, we can celebrate that He sent Jesus so we could have a relationship with Him. This is God's greatest expression of love for us!

• 1 John 4:10: In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son....
• 1 John 5:11: And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

Third, we can remember what God has done in the past.

• Psalm 77:11: I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old.

When we have a hard time seeing what God is doing, the fault is not in God's activities, but in our perceptions. In those times we can ask Him to open our eyes to how He is working, and He will help us see that He loves us, He cares for us, and He is always at work.

Fighting FEAR with FAITH

In an earlier blog post I shared some of my experiences with fear. In meeting with other widows and widowers over the years, I find that fear is a very common battle, especially after losing a spouse. In this post I want to suggest some thoughts to help us fight FEAR with FAITH.

Perhaps simple acronyms will help us. Let's first look at FEAR.

• F is for Flight. When we are fearful we are likely to flee from any situation that we fear. In the process we tend to pull back from healthy friendships and activities, and that leads us down a lonely path.
• E is for Error. In a state of fear we begin to think in strange and unhealthy ways. We imagine worst case scenarios and dwell on negative "what ifs." We may even be able to identify that a particular thought process is unreasonable or even absurd, but that doesn't necessarily remove the resulting fear.
• A is for Anxiety. We feel anxious about our own safety, or the safety of people we love, and that makes it seem wiser to withdraw into perceived safety than to step out and take reasonable risks or even engage in normal daily activities.
• R is for Reaction. Instead of deciding on the best course of action, we get into a pattern of reacting to our emotional state or to perceived threats. These reactive decisions often lead us in negative directions.

How can we fight FEAR? With FAITH.

• F is for Family and Friends. We can tell a couple close people about our struggles and ask them to pray for us. We can ask someone to be with us at times when we feel most lonely or most vulnerable. Without relationships like these we can tend to withdraw into a shell of loneliness, which only increases fear rather than overcoming it.
• A is for Activity. Fear threatens to paralyze us. We can counter this by finding something active and enjoyable to do. Go to church. Meet a friend for coffee. Attend a show at a local theater. Take a short trip to see a beautiful place. Visit a park or a lake and spend a couple hours enjoying God's creation.
• I is for Insight. We can counter our fears with essential Truth from God's Word. Here are some verses on which we can meditate:

               Philippians 4:4-9
               Psalm 56:3-4
               Psalm 27:1
               Psalm 118:5-6
               John 14:27
               John 16:33
               Romans 8:15
               2 Timothy 1:7
               1 John 4:18

• T is for Truth. In addition to the truth of God's Word, we can counter our fears with other truths from life. It is statistically improbable that our car will be stolen our our house invaded. It is extremely unlikely that I will be mugged on a suburban street or attacked while sitting in my church. We can let these simple truths overshadow erroneous thoughts and their affiliated fears.
• H is for Health. We want to eat healthily, sleep adequately, and find some form of exercise we enjoy. For starters, we can take a short walk every day. When we take care of our physical bodies, that helps our mental and emotional health as well.

You might point out that fear is an emotion, and it is difficult to counter emotion with reason. This is partially true, but the Word of God gives us many commands about our emotions: Love one another (John 13:34-35); rejoice always (1 Thessalonians 5:16, Philippians 4:4); be thankful (1 Thessalonians 5:18, Colossians 3:15). And the Bible tells us to fear not (John 14:27). So to an important degree, God calls us to control our emotions. And He gives us the power to do so through the Holy Spirit.

You might find that this is overly simplistic. Perhaps so. I admit that some fears are so intense or complex that they are hard to understand, much less fight. Yet I also know that the Lord doesn't want us trapped in our fears, so maybe these simplistic steps will help us at least to begin the process of overcoming fears in our lives.

Are you ready to fight FEAR with FAITH?

The Long Break, and the Joys and Challenges of Adoption

Perhaps you've noticed that my blogs have been a bit quiet lately. For this I do apologize, and hope you'll allow me to explain this long break.

My wife and I have recently adopted an eleven-year-old son, and are working diligently to integrate him into our family that includes three other children. We know the Lord has led us down this path, but the way is filled with joys and challenges.

God doesn't call us to follow the easy path; He calls us to follow the path that He will bless.

We are embracing the joys and challenges, but in order to focus on my family I have stepped back from writing for the last several months. I continue to serve the pastoral role to which the Lord has called me. Now, from this point forward, I plan to resume my semi-regular blogging. My goal remains the same: "Relating biblical truth to everyday life, to draw people closer to Christ."

God's blessings to you. I'll write more soon.

How Can I Help?

I want my written words to bless and help people, to meet people at their point of need. What questions or needs do you have that I might be able to address in a forthcoming book or on this blog? Please comment below.

Differences in Grief Experiences

For my forthcoming book for widows and widowers, I'm writing a section that examines various factors that contribute to the wide range of grief experiences we face. As I'm working on my list, I wonder if you might help me define some additional factors that I can include in my list.

To explain a bit further, it's obvious that there are some similarities in people's experiences of grief. Everyone deals with stages of sadness, anger, and fear. Everyone faces some level of depression. Everyone who has lost as spouse has spent some time evaluating the marriage and thinking through things that might have been done differently. These commonalities in grief are helpful to examine, which I do in the pages of my book.

But I also want to explore why grief experiences are so vastly different among widows and widowers. Your grief is not like my grief, nor like anyone else's. What contributes to this? Here is my list, currently "in progress."

A) Differences based on the nature of the marriage relationship. Were husband and wife very close, or were they more distant - maybe even conflictive - with one another? Were they married a few months, a few years, or a few decades? What roles (finance, household duties, childcare, etc.) did the other spouse assume, which now fall to the widow(er)? Were there unresolved marital issues that now weigh heavily on the widow(er)?

B) Differences based on the current life situation. Are the children young, teen-aged, or grown and out of the house? Does the widow(er) live with financial security or financial uncertainty? Were husband and wife retired or just starting out in life? Does the widow(er) have family members who live nearby and can provide helpful support? Does the widow(er) have good friends to talk with or ask for help?

C) Differences based on the nature of the spouse's death. Was it a sudden accident that didn't allow any time to prepare, or was it a long illness that allowed some time to grieve even before the point of death? Was there some kind of injustice involved in the death (murder, accident that was someone else's fault, medical mistake)? Was the death due to suicide?

D) Differences based on faith in God. Does the widow(er) believe that God can help them through the difficult days of grief? Does the widow(er) believe in the Bible's descriptions of heaven? Does the widow(er) feel certainty that their spouse is in heaven, or is there some doubt about where their spouse may be?

I'm sure there are other factors that affect each person's individual experience of grief. Please give some brief feedback about other things I might include in this section of my book. Thanks so much!

Grief as a Line

I'm developing an illustration, and I'd love to hear YOUR feedback below.

I'm thinking about the time it takes to grieve, and how it varies from person to person based on a wide range of factors. I'm a visual person, so I'm trying to develop a way to describe these variations visually.

Let's visualize the "grief process" as a line. At some point on that line is the point of death. However, death may not be at the beginning of the line. When a woman learns that her husband has only a few months to live, she really begins that process of grieving even before his life ends; she starts to work through the shock and the anger as she comes to grips with the reality of his imminent passing.

Still, "death" is a definite point somewhere on the line. But for the woman mentioned in this example, she has already started grieving, so it may take her a shorter period of time to reach the end of that grief journey.

However, for someone who loses a spouse to an accident, he or she has no advance time to begin grieving. The point of "death" is at the beginning of the line, and for these people, the grief journey often takes quite a bit longer. This was definitely true in my own experience.

Then I think of an older man whose wife died a long, slow, death due to cancer. He was ready to remarry just a few months later, because he had already done most of his grieving while his wife lay in hospice care. His adult children, however, were still grappling with their own grief, and felt unprepared when their father announced he was ready to remarry. Every person in the family was grieving; they were just in different places on the line of grief.

To further this illustration, I think of things which may make the line longer or shorter. If a couple is very young, that lengthens the line because there is additional grief over the death of the future. If an injustice has led to a death, that often lengthens the grief process. If a couple has had unresolved issues, or financial difficulties, the grief process may be longer because of the other emotions that arise. Yet on the other hand, if a couple has lived a long life and has felt prepared for the point in which one of their lives would end, the line might be shorter. If a person feels certain their loved one is now in heaven, that sense of peace may make the line a little shorter. If a widow(er) trusts that their future is secure in God's hands, that often shortens the process of grief a little bit.

Part of why I'm grappling with this illustration is that I counsel a number of people who wonder, "Is what I'm going through 'normal'?" When it comes to grief, there are so many absurdities that we almost always feel that something must be "wrong" or that we're not grieving "normally." I have used this visual of a line with a few widows and widowers, and have found that it helps illustrate why people's grief journeys are all different, and why there is very little way to compare one person's grief with another.

So please tell me...does this illustration help you visualize grief a little better? Do you have suggestions for how I might sharpen this visual image so it can become even more helpful?