Two weeks later, we received another call. We arrived at the house just as the ambulance
was pulling away. I will never forget my
mom, crying in the van, “NOOOOO…please God, NOOOO!” Her Mom (the sister of my great Aunt) had a
massive heart attack and by the time we arrived at the hospital only machines
were keeping her alive.
That Christmas we went through the motions of our family
traditions and we celebrated Christ’s coming, but we did so in the fog of
grief. What normally would have made us
laugh together, made us cry together. At
family gatherings we all wanted to be together and we all tried to make the
most of it, but it was so hard. Grief is
a force to be reckoned with for sure. It
engulfs like a cloud and distorts one’s perspective. It puts its heels in the ground and urges one
to stay put; to refuse accept the reality of the loss. It can seem as though it
will never end and if grief has its way it won’t. Certainly that is what the enemy wants. He wants our grief to be permanent and even
eternal.
However, wherever God is so is his goodness. His goodness has the power to change grief
from being final to becoming a process.
In fact, those who do grief counseling explain that there are typically
five stages of grief: 1) Denial, 2)
Anger, 3) Bargaining, 4) Depression and 5) Acceptance. The final stage is when grief becomes
good. Not that grief is good, but that
the process of grief has gone from that which will be the end of a person to
that which allows the person to have a new beginning.
I would suspect that by this time in the refocus process,
there are some who are feeling like they have just lost their best friend. In some respects, it may actually make more
sense to lose a friend than experience grief because of changes that are occurring
in our church family. If you lost a
friend, you could go the funeral, see the dead body and begin the grief process
because you know you are grieving.
However, in the case of a refocus the feelings of grief are real but
there is no dead body to see in a casket.
Nevertheless, loss is loss and that means grief is grief.
Today, I want to acknowledge and give you permission to
grieve. Yes, new people are accepting
Christ and becoming a part of our church family, we have a growing influence in
our community through Belle Stone, NextGen Basketball and Sahara, we have a
children’s ministry that is flourishing both in new children and new servants,
we have an leaders who are being equipped, we are becoming increasingly focused
on our mission and vision, people are connecting and growing and on and on we
could rejoice in what god is doing among us.
But if you are grieving the loss of something like the choir or what
Wednesday nights use to be like or some other program that once meant so much
to you, it is hard to see anything but the cloud of grief. The enemy wants you to believe the end you
have experienced is the end. The enemy
wants your grief to defeat you. But God
comes offering good grief. Don’t stop in
denial, anger, bargaining or depression…walk through those stages…but do not
let hell keep you from reaching acceptance.
That’s good grief!
To be honest, acceptance is something I have best been
taught by my brothers and sisters in AA. They have helped me to see that grief becomes
good when we trust God enough to lead us to acceptance. They call it the serenity prayer and it goes
like this…
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as
the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I
would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right, if I surrender to
His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with
Him forever in the next. Amen.”
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