The Spiritual Path of Grief and Growth

The tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., 12 years ago that resulted in the loss of 12 students and a teacher is eerily similar to the tragedy we experienced 65 miles south at New Life Church in December 2007.

A troubled young man came on our church campus after our morning worship services and killed two of our teenage girls, injuring her father and wounding another woman, before taking his own life in the hallways of our church.

We know the pain of the Columbine families and we know what it feels like to pause each year afterward and remember, mourn again and pray. Our lives continue while the lives of others were cut short by senseless violence. How does a school, a church, a community or anyone move through a dark valley like that?

In my new book, Fear No Evil, I tell about the journey our church has taken through the valley of the shadow of death, and how we eventually made our way out of the fog of despair and relished a brighter day. The most important lesson we have learned along the way is the importance of taking time to grieve.

You and I both have to learn to confront our pain -- to acknowledge it and to grieve. Whether we're talking about the loss of a loved one, a career, a bank account or a dream, it is absolutely critical to stop, to weep, to groan. I think of families who have experienced the sudden loss of a house, either to fire or to flood. Sure, it was just sheetrock and 2-by-4s, but their most precious memories were made inside. It was their first "real" purchase. It was the place where their children were raised. It was their family's haven, the spot where they would rest and relate and know peace.

Or what about people who have experienced the sudden loss of a marriage? A husband thought the union would last forever, but then one day divorce papers were served. "But she was my high-school sweetheart," he laments. "She was everything in my life." Regardless who is at fault in a split like that, division always hurts.

Scores of people I know have suffered great loss in life and are emotionally shut down as a result. They never learned to properly mourn and grieve, and so the pain gets stuffed further down. The day finally dawns when they can't engage in any aspect of life, because their enthusiasm and passion are gone. They can't engage with their spouse. They can't engage with their kids. They can't engage with their role at work. The emotional toll they've been carrying prohibits them from engaging in any aspect of life. And as a result, they are unavailable to God and others.

I saw this play out firsthand at New Life. A couple that has faithfully served our body for many years approached me one weekend and said, "Brady, we love what God is doing among this church and how you are leading us into a brighter future, but for some reason, we just stay stuck. We haven't been able to get involved like we used to be involved. We haven't been able to worship like we used to worship. We aren't serving like we used to serve."

Without intending to, this couple had allowed themselves to become unavailable. They had neglected to adequately mourn the losses they had suffered, and spiritually and physically they couldn't find their way back to full engagement.

As you and I learn to grieve properly -- and fully -- we see God show up with comfort for our weary souls. The two move back and forth in waves: we grieve, God comforts, we grieve, God comforts even more. He exchanges our ashes for beauty and gives gladness where mourning once was.

Months after the shooting, we as a church broke ground, laid soil and planted two tall, beautiful blue spruce trees of remembrance on the parking spot where Stephanie and Rachel Works had been shot. And on that crisp weekday morning, that promise was on our minds. What the enemy of our souls meant for death would bring forth undeniable life. Where a spirit of despair had once clouded our sight, pure praise would be on our lips. Collectively we declared that we were ready to move forward.

I learned something years ago that came to mind this week. It relates to dendrochronology, which is just a big word for analyzing a tree's life based on the rings on its trunk that have formed throughout the years. It came to mind because I was roaming through a dense part of the forest near my home and ran across a series of trees that had been felled by lightning. I stared at the cross-section of one of those trees and noticed an irregular pattern of thick and thin rings moving out from the trunk's center in concentric circles.

I'm not adept at reading tree rings, but according to 15 minutes of a show I caught on the Discovery Channel one time, people who are good at reading them can tell you with amazing accuracy how many forest fires, droughts and beetle infestations a particular tree has withstood in its lifetime, as well as how many healthy years it has known -- all by scrutinizing those rings. Which made me wonder what New Life would look like if you cut our church in half and looked inside. I have a feeling you'd find lots of thick rings representing years and years of great growth, followed by narrow rings representing scandal and the loss of two innocent, young girls. But what energizes me is the idea that just outside of that narrowing, I believe you'd find increasingly wider rings once more: signs of redemption, renewal and restoration. Those "wide rings" are available to anyone who grieves. Hope is real. It is available. And it always prevails.

 

 

 

Follow Brady Boyd on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PastorBrady

Comments

[Galdino Delgado]

06:56 AM on 05/14/2011

Grief to the reaction to loss it is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions.

I will be willing to help anyone who needs my invaluable gifts. You could find helpful information on my blog: http://psychicreliefs.blogspot.com/

[Pratitya]

06:46 PM on 05/07/2011

It is not with hope but with courage that one walks one foot in front of the other day by day with the pain and with the grief.

From where does the courage come?

[puzzled500]

04:08 PM on 05/09/2011

You just don't have a choice.

[enlightenedgirl]

11:01 AM on 05/07/2011

Death is our Soul moving on to a better place, yet we as the living grieve for years from the lives that touched us, but now have moved on.  We All Die, some earlier than others and some easier than others.

One Sunday afternoon sitting by myself watching TV a white wisp about 3-4 ft high, almost like a white flame flashed at 10:00 and then it was gone.  While contemplating what I just saw, a warp like pow of energy my ear 5 seconds later.  Not only did I have one paranormal experience, another one followed seconds later.

24 hours went by until I started wondering "who" it was.  I had a feeling and I knew of someone who was sick.  I spoke to my best friend who informed me our friend had passed just a couple of hours before my experience.  And although I sensed childlike happiness to the form I was told in the end she was 68 lbs., she had stage 4 and refused pain meds.  If she was going to experience death, she was going to "know" what it really was.   

I truly believe it was Jan showing me that things are great "over there"!  For someone who was determined to really experience death, I feel that she came to me afterwards to show me it's all OK.  Thanks Jan, for showing there is more.

[Pratitya]

07:03 PM on 05/07/2011

Indeed, sometimes one feels joy coming from nowhere and without reason or a context. And, at times, linked to this disembodied joy is the sad fact of someone's passing -- that is someone who was relieved from sickness and dependency on others for his or her care. This release is like a puff of smoke that dissipates into the air hugged by that very freedom from the constrictions of body.

[researcher]

04:55 AM on 05/08/2011

thanks for sharing that story. it is a common one that I have read so many times as our loved ones can often communicate with us after they have crossed over. grief is for us; not for them. our deep grief can actually hold them back in their process of crossing over.

I have a picture of a soul hoving over his body as some firefighters are trying to save his life. it was taken by a professional photo journalist that just happened to be driving by when this person was hit by a car.

[Cindbird]

09:23 AM on 05/07/2011

My family has gotten too good at grieving, unfortunately. We lost 7 family members in seven years, and withstood the loss of my son's best friend from H1N1 Flu. We lost my 12 yr old nephew due to suicide, my mother-in-law, then my grandmother, my husband's sister, my father-in-law, then my grandfather, then my brother-in-law. Four years after that my son's friend, who was 22yrs old. The lesson I learned through all that is that you MUST acknowledge the fact that you grieve. Too many people are like I was. "I'll be the strong one, I will hide my pain to help others deal with their pain". You can't do that. The pain will overwhelm you. For 6 months after my grandfather died, I could not function. I couldn't eat, sleep, laugh. I finally acknowledged that I HAD pain, that's when the dam broke and I finally was able to grieve the loss. Please, if you've lost someone, allow yourself to grieve. Allow yourself to cry for the one who is gone. You don't have to carry the burden alone. Talk to someone, a friend, a preacher, a therapist. Part of honoring the life of someone who has died, is honoring the pain we feel because they are gone. Allow yourself to honor your grief. It's not a weakness. It is a confirmation of the love you held for that person who has died.

[kmjrose]

03:19 AM on 05/07/2011

I think that in grief we both pull inward and extend to the larger world simultaneously, and in so doing honor what has been lost. The loss is individual, since each individual loses something unique, but loss is universal. As such, grief is individual and grieving is an individual process, but one loss pulls all other losses into it, and thus grief becomes greater that that for a single event.
Grief is also, I think, almost spatial, it is in a sense a place that one moves through and comes out of changed. Not better, not worse, but changed. Transformed. I think that is something we do not acknowledge in our society, that with loss we become someone new, like the narrow rings preceded and followed by wider ones.

I like this piece. Yes, people need to grieve, they need to feel grief, not push it away or try to escape it, because there is no escape, just no growth or transformation if the space of grief is not negotiated.

[notdarkyet]

12:18 AM on 05/07/2011

I have come to believe that grieving is one of the hardest things we do. I think that is why so many people turn to religion and a reason for religion existing. Death of loved ones takes a lot out of us.

[researcher]

04:57 AM on 05/08/2011

I think many turn to religion as they get older and wonder about their lives. also materialism plays out and they seek greater purpose and meaning to their lives. there is a church on just about every street so they have a place to go for answers. I have found that religion has few answers for them so they sell them on faith.

[BlueZoo]

11:54 PM on 05/06/2011

If you would like to learn how to grieve through a situation like this, look no further than the Amish families after their children were killed so brutally in that schoolhouse in Pennsylvania. They taught the entire world how to grieve back then and I have never forgotten it. They went out of themselves and their grief to help not only each other but also the family of the man who killed their loved ones. That "going out of self" serves to focus the love you have for your loved one onto others and it lightens your grieving.

[notdarkyet]

12:16 AM on 05/07/2011

I remember that too.