Someone posted this image yesterday on Facebook-they had received a copy in a therapy session and found it a helpful way to picture grief.
I wanted to share it because perhaps you may find it helpful as well. ❤
I think it’s one of the very best ways to think about grief for several reasons:
First, it accurately represents the many emotions that are part of grief and loss–it’s not “just” sorrow or missing-it is so many other things as well. And some of those emotions catch me off guard because I don’t always recognize them as grief-related.
Second, it illustrates how tangled and interwoven these emotions can be. Teasing out where one feeling begins and ends is really hard. Separating a single emotional strand can be almost impossible.
Third, emotions experienced in the grieving process are not necessarily sequential. There’s no certain charted course through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My experience may be very different from yours in terms of what I feel and when I feel it.
Finally, the sphere is a perfect representation of how my feelings may circle back around again and again as new experiences post-loss remind me of yet another part of life that has been impacted by my son’s unexpected and untimely death.
Ever since Elizabeth Kubler Ross published her best-sellling book, “On Death and Dying” both professionals and laypersons have embraced her explanation of the “five stages of grief”.
The model has been used as a faulty standard to measure grievers’ “progress” for decades.
Trouble is, she got it wrong.
And it is especially wrong for bereaved parents or anyone who suffers traumatic or sudden death.
The news goes out over Facebook, over phone lines, over prayer chains and everyone shows up.
Crowds in the kitchen, in the living room, spilling onto the lawn.
It’s what you do.
And it’s actually the easiest part. Lots of people, lots of talking, lots of activity keep the atmosphere focused on the deceased and the family. The conversation rarely dips to deeper waters or digs into harder ground: “Where was God?”; “Why him?”; “Why do ‘bad’ things happen to ‘good’ people?”
But eventually the busyness and noise gives way to stillness and silence.
That’s when the harder part starts.
The long hours of nightime darkness that invite questions that demand answers. The quiet hours of daylight that insist on playing a home movie of the years that went before. Forcing me to wrestle. Tossing me in the ring of trying to reconcile this tragedy with my worldview.
And many people turn away from the spectacle.
Even good, loving, Christ-following friends find it hard to stick around and watch.
Because it challenges their worldview too.
It makes them wonder if what they have always believed about God is true. It makes them fearful that if it could happen to my son and to me, it could happen to their child and to them. Ir raises questions, they’d rather not answer.
And they don’t have to answer them-YET-because their lives haven’t been turned upside down and inside out.
So they run.
They stop calling, they stop coming and they keep their distance in public spaces.
It hurts.
A lot.
It’s human nature to avoid pain. No one marches headlong into suffering. Empathy requres energy. Compassion demands opening your heart to the hurt hiding inside someone else’s.
I understand, truly I do.
If I could find a place where sorrow and longing couldn’t find me, I would stay there forever. But I can’t. I have to carry this load, I have to face the tough questions, I have to work hard to give my heart a chance.
It is so much easier when others come alongside. I feel so much stronger when others choose to call courage to my broken heart. I find great comfort in knowing that someone is willing to risk their own comfort to bear witness to my pain and struggle.
Please don’t lower your eyes and hide.Raise them and help heal.
I know it’s hard and you don’t have to, but please don’t turn away.
I’ve lived with invisible chronic disease for a decade.
From the outside looking in, you’d hardly know that I am often in great pain. I make daily choices about what I will do and what I won’t do based on what I can doand what my body refuses to do.
I take medication. I do all the things I’m supposed to doto help my body heal.
But I cannotMAKEthe healing happen.
No matter how hard I wish it were different,no matter how carefully I manage my treatment,healing comes (or doesn’t) in its own time.
I’m pretty sure that most people have experienced something similar if they’ve broken a bone or had a bad bout of bronchitis or pneumonia.
Other than following the advice of your doctor and taking your meds on time, resting and eating well, there’s not much you can do to force your body to get well.
A broken heart is just the same.
All I can do is place myself in the path of healing. I can feed my soul with truth and drink living water from God’s Word.
I can lean in and rest in the promise that Jesus will redeem and restore.
I can do the work that grief requires.
And working on healing takes energy, effort and time–lots and lots of TIME.
I cannot hurry the healing.
Please understand that as inconvenient, uncomfortable and disconcerting it may be for YOU, it is immeasureably more so for ME.
As I continue to walk this Valley, my heart asks the question, “What does healing look like?”
Fewer tears?Check.
More laughter? Check.
Better able to function? Check.
I’m definitely not as fragile as I was in the days and weeks and first months after Dominic left us.
I can do what life requires without falling apart (most of the time).
If you run into me out and about, I make small talk and answer questions about my family without breaking down.
So, from the outside looking in it seems the gaping wound of loss has healed pretty well.
But if I lift the lid of my heart ever so slightly, I’m amazed at how much it still hurts. I’m astonished by the depth of pain and sorrow just under the facade ofOK.
I cannot claim to have reached some higher plane of healing or restoration yet. I’m not sure I will this side of heaven.
And the pain of loss has tainted the joy I feel in what remains.
Instead of brilliant technicolor, my life is now lived in sepia tones that warn what joy I have could be stolen at any moment.
The lesson I’ve had stamped with fire on my heart is this: Love is the only thing that matters in the end.
Love God.
Love people.
So the path to healing means I lean in and love Him and love the people He has given mewith everything I’ve got.
I can’t claim to be satisfied with this life I’m living.
I do not like this path I am forced to walk, this darkness that hides the light, this pain that burrows deepin my bones.
But I can say I’m learning not to fight it.
Sometimes I still pitch a fit.
Sometimes I still yell at the sky, “Where were You?” Sometimes I lie down in the floor and beg for relief. Sometimes I quietly rebel with only a single tear.
Most days though, I get up and give in.
I turn my face to the rising sun and choose to carry on. I submit my heart, again, to the One Who created it.
I don’t struggle.
I don’t fight the facts that greet me.
“I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work.” God’s Decree. “For as the sky soars high above earth, so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think. Just as rain and snow descend from the skies and don’t go back until they’ve watered the earth, Doing their work of making things grow and blossom, producing seed for farmers and food for the hungry, So will the words that come out of my mouth not come back empty-handed. They’ll do the work I sent them to do, they’ll complete the assignment I gave them.”
Isaiah 55:8-11 MSG
I am not God.
His thoughts are not my thoughts.
His ways are not my ways.
His plans are bigger than me, bigger than my hopes and dreams, bigger than anything I can imagine.
He has created me for His glory-not the other way around.
So I join with thousands who sing:
Have Thine own way, Lord,
Have Thine own way;
Thou art the Potter,
I am the clay. Mould me and make me After Thy will, While I am waiting, Yielded and still.
Have Thine own way, Lord,
Have Thine own way; Wounded and weary, Help me, I pray.
Power, all power,
Surely is Thine, Touch me and heal me, Savior divine.
When news that Dominic left us spread, our yard was filled with friends and family here to help bear the burden of grief and loss.
Our house was bursting with people and food and phone calls-more coming and going than our gravel lane had seen in a lifetime of living up in the woods.
It was beautiful and terrible all at the same time. Beautiful because we were not alone in our sorrow and terrible because it was due to that sorrow they were here.
In those days between the accident and the funeral I was boundary-less.
People hugged me, fed me, cleaned my house, cut my grass, tended the animals, asked me questions, told me stories and I just accepted it-whatever “it” was-because I was utterly unable to do anything else.
But in the weeks that followed, as the pain made itself more at home in my heart-as it expanded to fill every nook and crevice-I realized that I had to put up some fences.
My oldest son was getting married just a couple months after the accident.
There’s a lot of stuff to do for a wedding as most folks know. So I got a phone call one week after Dominic’s funeral and the person on the other end launched into a long saga regarding a minor detail and expected me to 1) listen attentively; 2) care as deeply as they did about something that absolutely didn’t matter; and 3) join with them in light-hearted, laughter-filled banter.
I just. couldn’t. do. it.
So I didn’t.
I politely but firmly explained that I was unable to continue the conversation and that in future they needed to contact me through my son. I promised I was 100% committed to making the wedding happen, to doing my part and to being as happy as possible on the day.
But until then, unless it was a true emergency, please leave me alone.
Drawing a boundary created space for me to DO what needed to be done without the added burden of extra emotional baggage.
Before Dominic left us I was a “yes” person.
Smiling stylish woman showing sign excellently, isolated on red
Need help with an event?Why, sure I’m available.
Need someone to take your Sunday School class? Absolutely.
Keep your toddler? Just drop him off-we’ll play with the critters all day.
Phone call counselor and Homeschool Help Hotline-that was me.
Not anymore.
I’ve learned that if I am to have the energy needed to do necessary things, I have to protect my heart. I am too weak to carry everyone else’s burdens. If I am going to survive this journey I’ve got to prioritize.
I still listen.
I still help.
But I do it in a more healthy way-with respect for myself as well as others.
It is OK to say, “No.”And I don’t have to offer a reason. It’s a complete sentence all on its own.
All of my children had urged me over the years to draw boundaries. But I had grown from a parent-pleasing first born into a people pleasing adult and I just couldn’t do it.
Dominic even crafted a wire sign that hung on my kitchen curtains in the shape of a cursive “no”.
He made me repeat the mantra: Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.
He’d be proud of me for finally taking his advice.
thelifeididntchoose 