- Their child was 5. He drowned in the creek behind their house. My dad had the funeral. Where do they go from here?
- The loss of her husband and son in one night was still hard to process. But now she was looking for help. How could I help my sister?
- The divorce was a long process. The result was predictable. It was a death of their relationship and the joy in life was gone. How can we help her?
- The slow death of my dad to leukemia had its ups and downs. But when he was gone, I had to think about truth. What did I know for sure?
- The accident took his fiancee in one swift moment. But it took him months to come out of a coma and to begin to do the rehab. Was he beyond the help of God and the church?
Grief: What is it sourced in?
Sudden loss. Death. Unexpected pain and sorrow. Regret for decisions and consequences. Devastating illness that slowly takes life. These words represent a kind of event that Paul calls our groaning in this life (Romans 8). Groaning involves all of the effects of the curse on planet Earth. Part of the effects include the decay and the trouble that we face in life. Paul knows that we will experience sadness, loss, and grief that tear at our lives. At times we may even feel like the seams of life are pulling apart from within to the point of being irreparable.
In our small community in northern Wisconsin, we felt the waves of loss and sorrow several times in a series of months. A friend commented that it seemed unusual to them to see such poignant pain hit the community in waves of emotion. Perhaps it is the nature of being a small community and facing these events together that has caused me to be more aware of the impact of the pain on people–all the people of the community. What helps us in these times of pain and sorrow? As a counselor, I am always aware that every individual processes these kinds of events differently, but there are several anchor points that we need in the storms of death, separation, and loss. Before addressing the biblical anchor points, I would like to interact with the most common secular view of grief.
Grief: What do we see in most secular models?
For those who don’t have the Bible and God as anchor points for understanding human tragedy, the only way to negotiate these times is to ask people questions and to see what their experience is. Then by comparing experiences, they try to see similarities to find a grid through which they can process what people feel, say, think, and do. What secular counselors have found is that there are several kinds of responses to grief and to loss. We may perhaps recognize the reactions listed in their model of grief as those we have seen played out in the lives of family or friends. The helpful part of this study of grief is to know that these are normal tendencies for people. We can watch for these kinds of reactions in those with whom we partner in times of grief. The limitation of these studies is that they call them stages of grief. When counselors use that phrasal terminology, it usually indicates that they believe that those who grieve will progress or move through certain reactions to grief and to loss. At least it indicates that they will travel through them all, if not in a certain order. Those in grief will deal with all of the stages before they are done traveling this path. They may even loop back around in order to travel the path again. Here is a common statement regarding these stages:
“The stages of mourning and grief are universal and are experienced by people from all walks of life. Mourning occurs in response to an individual’s own terminal illness, the loss of a close relationship, or to the death of a valued being, human or animal. There are five stages of normal grief that were first proposed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book “On Death and Dying.” The article goes on to say that “the key to understanding the stages is not to feel like you must go through every one of them, in precise order. Instead, it’s more helpful to look at them as guides in the grieving process — it helps you understand and put into context where you are.” So these are your guides. (Taken from this link. ) I will reassess these as “arenas” rather than stages in the following paragraphs.
Fortunately, this kind of theory is being called into question even within the realm of psychology. Such questioning and study is not uncommon since psychology is indeed man’s theory. Recent studies suggest the theory of these stages of grief be held less tightly and that people be encouraged to move forward more quickly. New studies. Kubler-Ross, in fact, studied people going through the slow process of losing a close friend or family member to a disease, not necessarily a large group of people who had suffered sudden loss.
Grief: What does the biblical counselor have to offer?
We all counsel. We give advice. We may not know exactly what to say in certain situations, but we will say something or do something for those who are traveling the road of grief. We too ask questions to see what the needy person’s experience is. Do we give good counsel? Do we have biblical, gospel-saturated anchor points for our words in these times? The difference for those of us who know God should be that we are not just probing their experience to affirm them or to reflect their thoughts back to them. We are not just trying to guide them through these stages of grief as best we can or by our own experience. We want to help them to evaluate their experience and their reactions biblically with gospel hope.
Although I know people who are secular counselors will have some form of compassion that they show, their professional relationship with the person who is grieving tends to be more impersonal and removed. We have to make sure as biblical counselors that we do not respond to people in this way. We have the opportunity to engage them compassionately and personally. We allow their grief to move us. We weep with them. We should be like Christ in this way. We love people. We engage with them and may find ways to interact with them throughout the week. If we are not personally and directly touching base with them, then we are making sure someone that communicates with them does so. We should, at least initially, be getting regular reports and a growing data bank of information as to how they are processing this loss. As soon as possible, we are trying to give them some hope. They need hope.
We are not trying at this point to figure out what “stage” of grief they are in. And we are not just trying to help them walk this rocky road of sorrow without falling into a deep ditch of bottomless grief. We want to know if they do have hope. We want to know if they have anchor points of TRUTH that will help them to avoid drifting off into the lonely seas of pain and loss. We want to help them to know what God says about those possible arenas of grief(my preference for terminology because it avoids communicating unavoidable progression of stages from one to the other). What are these arenas?
Possible Arenas of Grief
Arena of grief #1: Denial and Isolation. This first arena is described as a defense mechanism to help us deal with the loss. It is easy to see how we can go from the shock of an unexpected loss to a period of denial or removal from the evidence that it has happened. In a prolonged illness, this denial may show up at certain points in the patient or those around the patient.
Arena of grief #2: Anger. Psychology says that when we come out of our shock or removal from the reality of the pain, we are hit with its intensity and cannot handle the pain. We then deflect it out towards others. Blame and hurt may show up as part of how we react in certain situations. Angry words and actions. What does a biblical counselor say to this anger?
Arena of grief #3: Bargaining. This response to grief is more related to terminal illness. Psychology watches as people try to reassess what is happening and think they can gain control through certain changes in their life. If they are in the stages of loss through a deadly illness or disease, they may try bargaining with God or fate, depending on their life philosophy, hoping that the terminal illness may disappear or a cure may be found. Sometimes the bargaining ends, so the patient takes over, forcing a cure in his or her mind.
Arena of grief #4: Depression of some form. The lingering effects of the struggle, the pain, the loss, and the weariness of dealing with daily life in the wake of the death of a loved one or with a long-term illness may lead to great discouragement and to worry about the future. The complications of the events may leave the person (left behind after the death or the one dealing with the long-term illness) with debt, loneliness, fear, and loss of income without hope of immediate rescue.
Arena of grief #5: Acceptance. What does psychology place in this arena? They would suggest that we find ways to cope with life and move on in on some fashion. They do not suggest that we will experience peace, comfort, joy, or happiness. In fact, they see that many people will never reach this stage or arena. However, more recent studies show that people seem to be “resilient” and will find a way through.
What kind of gospel hope do we have for people who may find themselves in these arenas of grief? How does the biblical counselor have help and sufficient counsel in times of grief? We will look at that answer and the biblical anchor points in the next post, Part 2.
