Jesus Wept: Pondering the Absence of Grief in Western Culture

I know I’ve been horribly inconsistent in my blogging.  As I said in my recent love/hate update, I am currently going through a lot of experiences that I don’t have much of a grid for.  I think the only thing to do is take it one step at a time and write about things as I have the words for them.

One of the things I am wrestling with is the issue of grief.  You probably cringed as you read that sentence.  Grief is not acceptable in our culture.  But my dear grandmother is at the end of her life, so it’s just around the corner for me, culturally acceptable or not. 

Recently, I had a couple of interesting conversations about grief that I want to write about.  The first friend I talked to, who is much older than I am, told me that she chose to wear an article of black clothing every day for a year after her father passed away.  This external symbol of grieving acted as a spiritual discipline of sorts.  This really resonated with me, as I will probably want to wear black for at least a little while after my grandmother’s passing. 

Then I was explaining this to another friend who is also in her twenties.  She commented that wearing black as a symbol of grieving is old-fashioned, but since I like a lot of things that are considered old-fashioned, she was not surprised that I wanted to consider it.

This response is what I want to talk about.  No offense to my friend, but this is the typical Western view of the subject of mourning.  I want to point out this little known fact:

It is only in Western culture that external symbols of grief are considered abnormal, inappropriate, or out-of-date.  In Jewish culture and other cultures, expressions of grief are perfectly normal and acceptable.

Here in the West, grief is not something we know how to handle.  So we respond the way we always respond when we are faced with something that’s uncomfortable:

We ignore it.  And usually things go okay.  For a little while.

Then the grief starts to grow like cancer, slowly damaging our minds and our hearts.  And as it grows, it evolves into anger, depression, anxiety, numbness, or any combination thereof. 

Grief that is expressed and addressed in a healthy way will not grow into any of those things.  If you have lost a family member or a pet, you have to find a way to express your pain. 

And that is why I will wear black for as long as the Lord leads.  It will be my way of saying, “The world just lost a wonderful person who was very important to me.  I’m not okay right now, but I will get to the point where I can live with it.” 

I plan to do more research on the Jewish customs for mourning.  If you know of any books or webpages that would be helpful, please post a comment!

The One Thing That Really Matters

Lately I've been hit by the realization that I'm surrounded by emptiness.  No, that doesn't go far enough.

I'm finding nothing but emptiness in the things that used to fill me up.

"Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ." (Philippians 3:8.)

There are so many things that simply don't matter.

There's really only one thing that will matter in ten minutes, ten days, ten years, a lifetime.

Jesus is alive.

As details about today's shooting in Connecticut flood the internet, St. Paul's words become louder and clearer than anything I've ever heard with my physical ears.  

My heart has this overwhelming need to stand still this evening.  All the little things that seemed earth-shattering before are empty and pointless now.  I stare at the knitting project that I was convinced was going to be the death of me.  Now it's just an insignificant pile of wool.  

All I can think about is the fact that I'm still breathing, and I still have a husband and nieces nephews to hug the stuffing out of.  

I have this overwhelming need to put all the useless crap on hold just for tonight.  I need to hold onto this truth with everything that I am.

Jesus is still alive.

Thoughts on Humanity's Perception of Death

I once read somewhere that human beings are the most afraid of/repulsed by two things.  The first is expulsion of bodily waste.   The second is death.  

Our precious, almost-2-year-old cat Luna was put down two weeks ago.  She was diagnosed with multiple organ failure.  Even if we had chosen to put her in the ICU for a day, there wasn't much chance that she'd survive.  We made the extremely difficult decision to put her out of her misery.

I put off writing about Luna's death publicly, both because of my own human aversion to death and because I didn't want anyone passing judgment on my husband and me for deciding on euthanasia.  So at first, I decided the easiest thing to do would just be to put off writing about Luna's death until I couldn't keep it inside anymore.

Then I realized that suppressing the reality of death may be the natural thing to do, but it's also the last thing we should do.  I think one of the best, healthiest things we can do for ourselves is accept the fact that, on some level, death is a part of life in this world.

 I realized it's going to be especially important to accept this if I want to get into urban farming.  I'm going to have to practically and spiritually deal with animal deaths as they happen.  At some point, I may end up in a situation where the most loving thing I could do might be to end an animal's life as quickly as possible.

I realize I'm probably in for lots of loaded comments about how I'm a bad Christian for saying that death is a part of life.  I'm probably in for comments on how God didn't create death, there was no death in the garden of Eden, yada yada yada.  I'm not going to deny any of that, but I'm also not going to deny that death is a part of our earthly lives.

Maybe one day I'll stop feeling so human when it comes to death.  Right now, it's still a work in progress.

When you're stuck in the middle

I recently read Lauren Winner's Still.  She wrote it in the midst of going through a divorce.  She talked about how she felt like she was in the middle of her faith life.  She was mulling over the fact that there isn't a middle voice in the English language.  When I read the book, this whole idea of being stuck in the middle was an abstract concept I couldn't wrap my mind around.

Then, last week, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer.  My dad, who had never smoked a day in his life, who's biked a crazy lot of miles.  And before I knew it, I was stuck in that same middle I'd just read about.

I don't have words for this place, but it's the same place the world was between Jesus' death and resurrection.  I don't know where to go from here.  Describing it as a season of waiting doesn't seem adequate.  

During this past week, I've had moments where it seems like my life is going on with me.  I'm there, but I'm not there.  Sometimes it's as if I'm watching the rest of the world from behind glass, wishing I could touch it.

Yesterday started off as one of those days where being off this month felt like a curse.  I had to do something.  I went outside to pick crab apples for bread.  I found myself studying them as I picked them.

All the vibrant shades of red and pink were so bright against the grayness of the rest of the world.

I came back in with my bin of crab apples.  It took every ounce of strength to chop them up and add the lemon juice.  But I couldn't shake the idea that I had to keep taking that next step.

When you're in that middle space between death and resurrection, sometimes the most worshipful thing you can do is keep doing the next thing.