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Blessed are We
Blessed are you, friend, sitting among the
shards of what could have been. It is broken now, that dream you loved, and
it has spilled out all over the ground. Blessed are you, dear one, letting
your eyes look around and remember all the hope your dream once contained.
All the love. All the beauty. Blessed are you, telling your tears they can
flow. Telling your anger it can speak. Blessed are you when mourning is the
holy work of the moment, for it speaks of what is real. Blessed are you,
letting this loss speak all its terrible truth to your soul.
Blessed are we who mourn, saying let us
remain in grief’s cold winter for as long as it takes, that mourning might
be to our hearts the gentlest springtime. Let the thaw come slowly, so we
can bear the pain of it and find comfort at each release. Amen.
~
Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for
a Life of Imperfection
Jesus,
in his “Sermon on the Mount,” proclaimed blessings for “those who mourn,”
declaring that “they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). Elisabeth
Kübler-Ross is well known for her “Five Stages of Grief”: denial, anger,
bargaining, depression, and acceptance. For those of us who have been
through profound grief we know that these five stages are not consecutive.
Grief is more like a cycle in which you circle through the stages at different
speeds, depending on where you are in the grieving process. Perhaps you are
experiencing the acceptance stage when you see a facebook memory or open a
box in your basement to discover a picture and you are reminded of what you
have lost - those “triggers” can send you into one of the other stages
immediately. Notice I didn’t say it can send you “back” into one of the
other stages. Grief isn’t a neat line, it is something we circle around and
through, sometimes for a very long time as we heal and build new ways of
connecting to this world.
I’m
sure if I asked you could give me a list of people, events, and losses you
still mourn: death, messy break-ups and divorces, loss of relationships,
significant health changes, etc. But not all losses are easy to name.
Pauline Boss names some losses as “ambiguous grief”; grief
we have for losses we struggle to name. This can be the loss of a future
hope for our kids when they chose different paths from us, or the loss of
the world we knew pre-Covid; including the loss of graduations, weddings,
in-person funerals, and other rights of passage. Navigating ambiguous
losses is harder because finding support is more challenging.
In
many cases of grief it is tempting to power on, to try to ignore the grief,
or to put on a happy face and act as if it isn’t there. When we ignore or
cover up grief we can’t heal from it - we have to accept that it is there
and find support from others in that grief. With acknowledgement and loving
support we can share the mourning and start to put ourselves back
together.
The
writers of the Psalms made space for Israel to express their grief and hold
it close to God - the Psalms are prayers and worship songs and some of them
are full of anger and grief.
·
“Give
ear to my words, O Lord; give heed to my sighing. Listen to the sound of my
cry, my King and my God, for to you I pray” (Psalm 5:1-2)
·
“Why
oh Lord do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of
trouble?” (Psalm 10:1)
·
“I
am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is
like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a
potshard, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of the
death” (Psalm 22:14-15).
We
have all lost a lot in the past few years - both individually and as a
church. We might cycle through the grief for what, and who, we lost for a
while. But grieving is holy. The Psalmists knew this, that is why they drew
grief into the heart of worship. Jesus knew this. That is why in his list
of blessings he promised comfort to those who mourn.
In
times of grief, be they clear or ambiguous, may we open our hearts to the
holy work of grieving. May we be present as the beloved community,
upholding one another and being upheld and as we draw close to the heart of
the God of love.
Blessed
are we who mourn.
We
will be comforted.
Blessings,
Rev.
Dr. Amy L. Chilton
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