7. When loss just feels like it will never end

Doesn't anyone care?

1 June 2008

Matthew 5:1-12

We come to the final address in a series of seven which has asked the question, ‘Doesn’t anyone care?' This is a cry from a place of pain, when facing a major challenge in life. It is a pastoral enquiry because it comes at a time when we really feel we need someone to express care toward us.

We can feel as though no-one cares, as we go through the various experiences of life – and, in loss, we are most sensitive to the absence of genuine concern of others. When we cry out that nobody cares, it is essential to remind ourselves that God does care for us.

The experience of loss and the ongoing hurt of not receiving support, strength and sustenance is not uncommon. We turn, once again, to the New Testament and this time to a Beatitude of Jesus –
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)

A vigorous debate takes place in the minds of those who write about the Beatitudes. The discussion can be summed up as being a question as to whether the Beatitudes are ‘indicatives’ – pointers to God’s grace at work in our lives – or ‘imperatives’ – a call for action!

Douglas R A Hare gives us a helpful insight into this sharp distinction when he comments: “If scholars have a difficulty reaching a consensus, it is probably because truth lies on both sides of this issue.”

One piece of advice that people are prone to give when someone is experiencing loss is – ‘Time will heal’. Time alone does not heal – only time together with the experiences which make a real difference. Those involved in helping people through loss know all too well that recovery from grief does not happen overnight and there is often ‘a grief work’ to be done.

Jesus combines one of the saddest experiences of life with an experience of blessing. Mourning is one thing that the world tries to shun but, if there is a clue to finding healing in loss which just seems to go on and on, it is in relation to mourning.

We must not domesticate this text and soften it beyond all reason, because its original antecedent would appear to be Isaiah 61: 1-2 –
The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
       because the Lord has anointed me
       to preach good news to the poor.
       He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
       to proclaim freedom for the captives
       and release from darkness for the prisoners,
   to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour
       and the day of vengeance of our God,
       to comfort all who mourn,

Here, mourning is associated with the devastation of Israel.

This is positive and helpful because loss is more than bereavement … and we find this continually when we deal with pastoral matters. The kind of loss that perpetuates itself can be true in much broader contexts than a time of loss associated with death.

There is the grief associated with losing a job or a position that was especially meaningful to you.
It most certainly applies in relation to divorce or the breakdown of a long-term relationship.
It can come through the loss experienced when a child leaves home.
Many report the same kind of loss when they move home.
Giving up a particular dream in life can bring its own pain.

Even though I haven’t the time to explore it tonight, there is another aspect to mourning upon which I would not want to avoid commenting. It is that painful sense of loss when we come to a realisation of our own sin. It was this thought that may well be heard behind St Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret …” (2 Cor. 7:10) – and certainly is in the psalmist’s heart, “I confess my iniquity; I am troubled by my sin.” (Psalm 38:18)

Part of the trouble is that some Christians feel they have to live somewhat above the realities of life … and can handle things in a way that is only supported by unreal expectations.

C S Lewis, in his magnificent A Grief Observed, expressed the anguish of what it feels like to lose in life when he wrote:

“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing him, so happy that you are tempted to feel his claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to him with gratitude and praise, you will be – or so it feels – welcomed with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away.”

This abysmal experience may well be the nearest echo within our own human experience of the words of Jesus from the cross in what we know as ‘the cry of dereliction’: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” (Matthew 27:46)

I mention this because I think it is important to recognise that we can experience such pain and rejection – and, whilst we should not look for it, we must not deny it.

Grief is what we experience after loss; mourning is the way we express it. It is of utmost importance that we get this right. To bottle up emotions and not to express them is a huge mistake. In former generations, whole communities would be affected by loss: the blinds were drawn; black crepe ribbons were hung on doors; and the regular practice of cars bobbing into a cortege would never have happened. Black-edged paper and all that has gone. Here in Australia, our Aboriginal communities know more about how to handle grief than most of us. We cannot dismiss it from the mind because the ceremonies are over. Perhaps it is our desire as a society for immediate answers to problems that has led us to the false assumption that bereavement can be dealt with in this way.

Those who have shared with us week-by-week will know I try to be practical and, beginning from this promise of Jesus, I want to suggest four ways in which we can deal with ourselves when loss just seems to go on and on:

Have respect for yourself

We all tend to want to work through grief too quickly. We may even be saying to ourselves “I should be over this by now – what’s the matter with me?” Or we may observe others and say to ourselves, “I don’t know why they keep referring to the past – they should get on with their life.”

Each loss is unique and you can only chart the journey in your own way. The route and length of the journey varies from person to person. What is most important is that the journey is in the right direction. We need to respect our own rhythm of life … and how we handle ourselves and the loss we are experiencing. I am sure God looks at our lives and longs for us to be able to reach out for his love and embrace it where we are.

If I am asked by someone in the midst of grief, ‘How long does it take?’ I feel the only honest answer has to be, ‘As long as it takes!’ This answer reflects the truth we uncover in knowing that it invariably takes longer than we ever imagine – and gives credence to the fact that we are all different and none of us reacts in exactly the same way as another.

In this promise of Jesus in the Beatitudes, we sense One who reaches out to us in our need. It was the perplexity of such a thought that led one writer to observe, in response to the text, “Often in this life, but always in the life to come.” (C A Lapide)

One aspect of the hurt we feel is continually to wonder how it is that God can be so concerned about me in my need! At a moment like this, we can open ourselves up to experience his gracious care for us in our individual lives.

The words of Psalm 23 have sustained many a saint at the deep points of human need:
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me.” (Psalm 23:4)

Find the places and times to express our feelings

Grief naturally carries with it deep and intense feelings of sadness, anger, fear and guilt. Rusty Berkus in “To Heal Again” wrote these very helpful words: “This Winter of your life will pass, as all seasons do. Stay in your season of winterness as long as need be, for everything you feel is appropriate. There is no right way to grieve; there is just your way. It will take as long as it takes.”

I find it quite startling that when someone has injured a leg or has had some physical trauma it is not unnatural for people to take time for themselves, but with grief we often say, ‘Let’s have two or three days and then back to work’. There can be enormous setbacks with grief. Recalling holidays, anniversaries and birthdays will never be the same again. Even watching a film will unlock feelings which to everyone else are just unknown.

Henri Nouwen suggests that “the only feelings that do not heal are the ones you hide.” I find this most helpful and certainly pastorally sensitive to those who are handling hurt within their own lives.

One of the great things about our Christian faith is that Jesus walks with us and, as we grieve, we can discover God is with us in the pain. Doug Manning, in the book Don’t Take My Grief Away, wrote, “After my brother’s funeral, someone told me that I was handling my grief well. ‘No!’ I responded, ‘I am not doing well at all. If I were, I would crumple up on the floor and let my grief flood this room. As it is, I am stoically holding it all in, because there is no-one here who would be comfortable if I let it out.’”

The ‘stiff upper lip’ approach to life can be so harmful. To use God’s gift of tears at the right place and at the right time is a pathway to healing (incidentally knowing the right time and place is a challenge in itself!).
Tears can be a conduit for many experiences, including anger, guilt, sheer exhaustion and aloneness. St Augustine wrote, “The tears … streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested.”

Share your pain with others

The comforting presence of friends and family can help us to face the future. Finding people who are willing to share the memories is part of the solution. For them to be able to do this without embarrassment, in itself can be such a healing act. We cannot share sorrow with just anyone – it needs to be the right person!

For men in particular there are specific issues to deal with. Jean Richardson wrote helpfully about grief in relation to faith. She says, “Boys in particular, benefit from seeing their father’s tears. Imagine the conflict in a lad who imagines that it is unmanly to cry and yet whose urgent need is to realise his desperation in this way. He may well be surprised, even shocked, to see his own father cry, but he will also learn there is nothing wrong in the natural expression of grief and that tears have dignity and worth.”

One of the reasons we must have a long-term commitment to family is because children want to know that men and women respond to life’s joys and pains uniquely. Family was God’s invention – and is so important.

However, we acknowledge that not everyone has family and this is where God’s pilot scheme – the Church – comes into its own as we offer love and friendship to one another. Sharing the pain may simply mean that we have someone who will listen to us.

When we experience sorrow, not just sentimental sadness, but that intense and piercing stab of the heart which we describe as being ‘broken hearted’, then we know we need to turn to those who really care.

From a Christian perspective, people are far more important than things; we see in the Parable of the Sheep and Goats (Matthew 25: 31-46) that our attitude to God is seen in our attitude to people in need.

We can find no better example than the way Jesus responded to people in need. We are told, “He was moved with compassion.” (Mark 1:41; 6:34; 8:2) The word used is one of the strongest Greek words in the New Testament (splagchnizesthai) and it means being moved at the deepest place of our being.

Once we have grasped that this is the way Jesus Christ responds to our need, we know we can receive this kind of care from others. Not everyone is able to offer this compassionate care to us – and we need to look carefully for the right kind of person.

The name of Eric Liddell is known to millions through the movie Chariots of Fire. His widow is less well known. Following Eric’s death in a concentration camp in World War II, Florence Liddell kept those around her buoyed up through her conviction and faith in Jesus Christ.

Joan Winmill Brown describes what it was like to be with Florence. She writes, “… even when she was suffering great physical problems, she made people feel better. She had a smile that could disarm anyone, and a love for people that could quickly dispel feelings of hopelessness.

Realisse that loss changes you

Physical wounds leave scars – and so do emotional wounds! When we go through loss, it can feel at times as if it will never end. Although we might be reluctant to put it this way, loss will change us for ever. We are never the same person again … and it is foolish to pretend we are. But God is with us and he offers his comfort, strength, power and the grace to be able to pick up life again.

If you are at the point of facing real need because you cannot find a way out of your grief, reach out to God – because he is there, he has spoken the word of life in Jesus and he longs for you to be restored – and this will be a place of blessing and healing.

You are changed through the experience of grief and loss and there is no doubting the fact. The change can be for the negative if there unresolved issues – or it can be for the positive as we enter a new world.

When I was a young minister, I used to travel from Bristol up to London on the train. It was the railway line that so characterised Isambard Kingdom Brunel. As the train journeyed near to Swindon it entered a tunnel which was remarkably long, cut through the mountainside. But the experience of plunging into light after the darkness was exhilarating. It was as if you moved into a new world.

Some of the ways we are changed are worth bringing together as we draw to a close:

We are more understanding of ourselves … We discover things about ourselves in the experience of loss that we find in no other lesson of life.
We become more aware of the deep places in God … Our spiritual journey in loss can help us to find a meaning of God’s love and forgiveness which we have hardly met before.
We are more able to help others … This has to be handled very carefully because, whilst on the journey, we can feel damaged and we need to be in touch with ourselves to ensure that our own stories don’t get in the way – But the healthy journey through loss can produce a depth of caring in a person.

The biggest challenge for all of us is to face the reality of death in our own lives. To avoid doing so is to store up trouble for ourselves, for it is an appointment that all of us must keep.

Our confident faith in Jesus Christ will sustain us. One of my favourite pieces of poetry comes from the pen of Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Christian Life