Memes for 2020 are hilarious in attempting to make some absurd sense for what has been a year for the ages in all the wrong ways. This year has thrown so many people into the deep end of loss.
Myriads of people are suffering a huge cacophony of mental, emotional and spiritual ills. All because of loss, and so often, very many layers of loss. Much of the time, more than can ever be defined. Which is a further level of despair.
There’s no easy way to traverse the journey of loss.
What is an escapable reality of unrivalled emptiness, bargaining for returning to what was, anger for how unfair it feels, amid depression for sorrow unrelenting, grief quite plainly is purposed to undo us.
GRIEF – THE UNDOING OF US
Wait, what do I mean? Am I saying that there is no answer to grief? When loss can barge through our door at any given moment, even if we’re prone to take life so much for granted that we never for one moment catered for the possibility? Until it’s too late, and there it is, facing us defiantly!
Yes. There is more than one person I know who despises the term, ‘It is what it is.’ Unfortunately, that’s the grief outbound of loss all wrapped up in inextricable pain. And the changes of this year have taken many a soul there.
Just at the time when we most need an answer other than ‘nothing can be done’, we find there is no other answer. There is no other answer when we find ourselves in a situation that cannot be reversed.
But the question remains. What we cannot resolve does not go away.
So what can be done? You’re not telling me that there’s nothing that can be done, are you? Nothing FAITH can do? Here’s the point. Faith doesn’t ‘do’ anything.
HEALING GRIEF – WHEN ‘ACTIVE’ NO LONGER WORKS
Faith allows. Faith waits. Faith sits. Faith accepts. Wait for it... faith laments. Faith weeps. These are all passives. By the inaction of an active passivity, faith heals.
In a world that insists upon actives, faith says, ‘That’s not the way in a game where actives don’t work.’ Faith says, ‘You’re entering the futility of catastrophic frustration if you think you can resolve your grief any other way than via the truth of lament for a lamentable situation.’
What we face is an existential crisis of proportions that are designed to break us. Doesn’t sound like very good news, does it?
Grief invites us into the possibilities of letting go; we cannot grasp anything new without letting go of the old. Lament is the way of honouring the truth of our uncompromising sorrow and confusion of purpose. Lament is also a way of carrying important parts of the old with us into the new.
Lament seems passive — like, ‘is that all I can do; cry, moan and wail?’ — but it is in fact about as active a thing as we can do. With all of our being we need to lament the lamentable.
CHERISHED PERMISSION – SOMETHING WE ACTIVELY GIVE TO OURSELVES
In facing the sorrows that cannot be reversed, we find our eyes communicating with tears what our mouths cannot speak and what the mind cannot comprehend. In lament we find the body has its very own intelligently designed processes for handling grief. We trust those capacities that God gave us.
It’s human nature to want to be in control and to resist the ‘weakness’ of lament. But our insistence on being in control works against us in grief; it halts our progress, it refuses to validate the truth, it stunts our growth, and it delays the inevitable.
Giving ourselves permission to lament — to honour our truth — to face what we hate has happened — is the cherished relief that signals approval to process the grief.
One place we can go, one incredibly rich tradition in terms of lament, is the Bible. Lament psalms like Psalms 6, 10, 13, 38, 42-43, 130, 137 all feature verses that are refreshingly honest. There’s no cliché in these! No pat answers. No ‘pack you off with a simplistic answer to the unanswerable hard question you have.’
When we’re restless, agitated, emotional, withdrawn, unmotivated, and feeling helpless, hopeless and worthless we most need to gently face our reality — and it will drive us into the heartland of lament.
Go to lament knowing that in trusting yourself to the rawness of your reality, you will survive, and you will actually learn a new way to thrive. By all means draw on the wise support of helpers, professionals and friends. You’ll need all the help you can get, and these resources are all pivotal for healing.
In terms of processing grief, lamenting loss really is the only way.
Time isn’t the issue, even if we think it is. Being honest is the way forward.
Photo by Dejan Zakic on Unsplash
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