Your Grief Journey

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 8: Your Grief Journey

What about you? Yesterday we explored how we can journey with others through their grief. But what about your grief journey?

Perhaps you’re going through a very fresh season of suffering. Or, perhaps things are sailing along smoothly right now. Whether reflecting on your past suffering or experiencing your current grief, here are a few suggestions and questions.

I’ve designed them to help you to move from denial to candor—brutal, frank honesty with yourself about your losses and crosses. Don’t try to address every suggestion. Pick a couple that connect with you.

My Candor Journey

1. True faith faces all of life. Where would you put yourself on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being total denial and 10 being facing all of life?

2. In past or current suffering, how did you begin to move from denial to candor?

3. How could your lively relationship with God become the anvil He uses to batter your suffering into meaningful shape?

4. As you reflect on something you are grieving over, list the external losses.

a. What is missing?

b. What has been robbed from your life?

c. What are you grieving over the most?

d. What feelings do you associate with these losses?

5. As you reflect on your grief experience, list the internal crosses—the trials of your faith. Be brutally honest.

a. How has your suffering impacted your relationship with and your attitude toward God?

b. What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling and expressing anger and/or disappointment with God?

6. Read Psalm 13 and/or Psalm 88. Write your own candid lament psalms expressing your feelings to God.

7. Read Matthew 27:45-46 and Luke 22:39-45. How can Jesus’ candor with Himself, His disciples, and with God influence you?

8. Read 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 and 2 Corinthians 4:7-12. Pen your own candid story of your suffering and grieving.

9. Find a trusted, safe friend and take the “baby steps” of sharing with him or her some of your candor.

What Next? What Now?

I know. For some it’s like, “This can’t end here, right?”

Good question. Fair question.

No. Biblical grieving does not end with candor. It begins with candor.

Where it heads next is our topic for tomorrow.

Joining the Grieving Journey

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 7: Joining the Grieving Journey

How do we help others to move from denial to candor?

There are many biblically effective ways to empower people to move through the grieving process. We’ll focus on one category of interventions: trialogues.

Trialogues

In a monologue, I speak to you and/or at you. In a dialogue, we converse back and forth. In a trialogue, a third Party joins us in our conversation—God. Every biblical counseling session must have this three-way communication: you and your counselees listen to God, exploring how His Word relates to their situation.

There are two broad types of trialogues: scriptural explorations and spiritual conversations.

Scriptural explorations explore specific, applicable passages to empower people to relevantly relate God’s Word to their struggles.

Spiritual conversations ponder broad Biblical principles to empower people to face life face-to-face with God.

Samplers

Consider some sample biblical trialogues to assist people to move toward biblical candor.

“I’m so sorry this has happened to you.”

“I can only begin to imagine what you might be feeling.”

“If it were me, I think I might be feeling __________. How does that relate to how you’re feeling?”

“What is your loss like for you?”

“What’s it like to go through all of this?”

“What has been robbed from your life due to this? What is missing?”

“What are you grieving over the most?”

“Have you ever faced anything like this before? How did you feel then?”

“What do you think the Bible teaches about feeling and expressing anger in a situation like yours?”

“Do you find examples in the Bible of believers facing suffering and struggling with depression?”

“David experienced something similar. Stalked by Saul, his life was on the line. He faced the valley of the shadow of death. Could we look at his situation and his response (Psalm 23)?”

“Tamar experienced something like this. Her half-brother betrayed her sexually. Could we look at her situation and her response (2 Samuel 13)?”

“Let’s ponder how 1 Thessalonians 4:13 (Paul’s teaching on candor) might relate to your grieving.”

“Could we explore what applications 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 (Paul’s candor) might have to your loss?”

How Do We Move from Denial to Candor?

But how do we move from denial to candor?

Based upon this first week of blog posts, how would you answer that?

Based upon your own life experience, how have you become brutally honest with yourself in the grieving journey?

Tomorrow we’ll explore further personal implications on the grieving journey.

No Grieving; No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 6: No Grieving; No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

So… does God really allow and even invite His children to be brutally honest about life? Can we support candor biblically?

A Man After God’s Own Heart

David practices candor in Psalm 42:3-5. “My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me all day long, ‘Where is your God?’ These things I remember as I pour out my soul: how I used to go with the multitude, leading the procession to the house of God, with shouts of joy and thanksgiving among the festive throng. Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?”

Notice how David is honest about his external suffering—he describes his losses—the loss of fellowship, leadership, and worship. He also is candid about his internal suffering—he depicts his crosses—accurately labeling his soul as downcast and disturbed within him.

If we had time, we could examine how biblical character after Biblical character practiced candor—Job, Jeremiah, Solomon, Asaph, Heman (Psalm 88), Jesus, Paul, and so many more.

No Grieving; No Healing. Know Grieving; Know Healing

The Apostle Paul does not tell us not to grieve; he tells us not to grieve without hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). He chooses a Greek word meaning to feel sorrow, distress, and grief, and to experience pain, heaviness, and inner affliction.

Paul is teaching that grief is the grace of recovery because mourning slows us down to face life. No grieving; no healing. Know grieving; know healing.

The only person who can truly dare to grieve, bear to grieve, is the person with a future hope that things will eventually be better. When we trust God’s good heart, then we trust Him no matter what. We need not pretend. We can face and embrace the mysteries of life.

Step on the Mats

Candor or denial. The choice is a turning point. It is a line drawn in the sand of life, a hurdle to confront. Faith crosses the line. Trust leaps the hurdle. We face reality and embrace truth, sad as it is. If facing suffering is wrestling face-to-face with God, then candor is our decision to step on the mat.

So Give Me Some Examples!

Just what do I mean by candor? What are some personal examples? Join us against tomorrow for real life, raw examples of biblical candor.

Courageous Truth Telling

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 5: Courageous Truth Telling

So, the world’s way is denial. How do we move with God from denying the reality of our loss to brutal honesty—to candor?

Candor Defined

What exactly is biblical candor? Candor is:

Courageous truth telling about life to myself in which I come face-to-face with the reality of external and internal suffering.

The World Is Fallen and It Often Falls On Us

Let’s explore the last part of this definition first. Martin Luther divided suffering into two levels. He said that level one suffering is what happens to us and around us—external suffering—life’s losses.

Level one suffering is what we are facing. It’s the external stuff of life to which we respond internally. I lose my job, my child is ill, I face criticism, experience abuse, and the like. I like to say it like this: the world is fallen and it often falls on us.

The World Is a Mess and It Often Messes with Our Minds

This is bad, even traumatic, but level two suffering is worse. Level two suffering is what happens in us—internal suffering—life’s crosses. Level two suffering is how we face what we are facing.

This level of suffering is the suffering of the mind that gives rise to fear and doubt as we reflect on our external suffering. It is the crisis of faith. Do we doubt, fear, and run away from God? Or, do we trust, cling, and face our suffering face-to-face with God? I like to say it like this: The world is a mess and it often messes with our mind. In candor, I admit what is happening to me and I feel what is going on inside me.

My Personal Story

I had to move from denial to candor after the death of my father on my 21st birthday. In fact, it was not until my 22nd birthday that the process truly began. I had been handling my loss like a good Bible college graduate and seminary student—I was pretending!

On my 22nd birthday I went for a long walk around the outskirts of the Grace Seminary campus. I started facing my loss. My loss of my Dad. The reality that I would never know him in an adult-to-adult relationship. The fact that my future children would never know their grandfather. As I faced some of these external loses, the tears came. Then I began to face some of the internal crosses. What was happening in me. I felt like a loner. Fatherless. Orphaned. Unprotected. On my own. The tears flowed. The process of candor began. The floodgate of emotions erupted. I was being honest with myself.

Was It Biblical?

But was it biblical?

Drop back by tomorrow as we explore just how amazingly biblical candor is and how vital it is to emotionally and spiritually healthy responding to life’s losses.

True Faith Faces All of Life

God’s Healing for Life’s Losses:
How to Find Hope When You’re Hurting

Post 4: True Faith Faces All of Life

The world has it’s way of grieving. But, when our fallen world falls on us, when suffering crushes us, we need much more than research. We need revelation—we need God’s inspired truth about how to grieve as those who have hope.

Research informs us that people’s typical response to loss is denial. God’s Word offers us profound practical wisdom for moving from denial to candor: honesty with ourselves.

Denial Described

Candor contrasts with the typical first stage of human grieving—denial. When suffering first hits; when we first hear the news of the unexpected death of a loved one; when we’re told that we’ve been fired; we respond with shock. We can’t believe it. Life seems unreal.

I experienced this when I was ten years old. It was December and I was coming home from Riddle’s Pond where we were playing hockey. Billy Trapp and I were in a fight. My Mom pulls up, rolls down the window, and says:

“Get in the car. Grandpa died.”

My response?

“You’re kidding.”

Like my Mom would kid about something like that.

True Faith Faces All of Life

Denial is a common initial grief response. I believe that this initial response can be a grace of God allowing our bodies and physical brains to catch up, to adjust. However, after the necessary period of time, long-term denial is counter-productive. More than that, it is counter to faith, because true faith faces all of life.

I worked with a Pastor who struggled to move past denial. His wife died while giving birth to their only child. He denied the reality for months. He went on preaching, continued ministering. He never grieved, never wept. He put on a happy face. Behind the scenes, he was a mess. He imagined that he saw and heard his deceased wife. He was near the point of a total emotional and spiritual collapse, largely because he could not move out of the stage of denial and into the stage of candor.

So what is “candor”?

Visit again tomorrow and we’ll not only define it; we’ll illustrate it in real life. See you then…