Someone, who has recently endured the loss of loved one, and is
now going through a break up of sorts, asked me if there
was any insight that might lighten his burden.
I wrote him a “Dear John letter” that hopefully speaks a better word
than his ex did.
Dear John,
I
don't suppose any of us can prepare for break-ups, or death, or lessen either's impact. Right now my family is wrestling with a newly
diagnosed cancer, and nothing prepares us for such things. The
only comfort I can afford is of another sort.
I begin by suggesting we should not try
to lighten grief’s blow. I think that's
what addiction tries to do--dull the pain--and ignore what the pain is trying
to say to us. If we will let it, grief
can drive us back to fundamental issues which we have often avoided. Grief sends an unmistakable signal that all
is not right with us or the world. We
need a resurrection reality to come and take over creation. If we believe that in the resurrection God
will set all things to rights--that puppies and parents and children and lovers
can all be in healthy relationships, forgiven, reconciled, integrated into the
life of God and all creation-- then we can grieve with hope. And we must allow ourselves to be seized by
that hope. Then, grief, itself, becomes
a kind of joy. It’s a joy that knows all
things are mysteriously going to turn out all right, painful though our losses
may now be.
If we rather choose to believe
that death has the final word about this world--if we believe that life is all
a cruel joke—if our Mothers were lying to us when they tucked us in and told us
that everything was going to be OK-- then I think there isn't much to live for.[i] If there is no God of creation to keep
covenant with us, why should we believe others will? At that point usually what is left is
bitterness.
And, if this is the case, we had better
attend to that bitterness, too. Does not
the fact of this bitterness stem from the deepest part of us that recoils at
the process of death? Deep down have we
not been operating as if by a rumor that we might expect something else? Don’t we all intuitively feel that death is a
damned, unnatural mess which wrecks our hopes and makes a mockery of that creative
love that brought us, against 13 billion years of bad odds, to awe-inspiring
life?
Hurt,
and rage--they both need to be felt-- because they point us in the same
direction—to hope. If there never was
any hope, then what are we mad about? What else did we expect other than
relational break-up and ultimate loss?
The eastern religions say that we have been pretending that there should
be an answer to our problem of transience.
They say our desire to live, form attachments and to love deeply is what
is unnatural. It is this deep desire for
ongoing distinctive relationship that must be given up.
I think they are profoundly
mistaken. I think our hurt and our rage emerge from a legitimate,
deep, and eternal place planted in each of our hearts. The Ecclesiastical writer said, "He has also set eternity in the hearts of
men." (3:11) So, for Christians, grief is a form of joy--a
joy which lets go of our loved ones in the hope that God holds the departed in
his care. God holds them as he continues to hold us. And in the end he will mysteriously hold all
things on heaven and earth together. All
creation looks forward to this liberation from relational and corporeal decay.
So, let yourself grieve, my friend. The God who is present in and with your suffering will give you strength. Let yourself grieve this loss, and by
extension, over time, you will have the courage to grieve all the other losses
that are too big to even think about right now.
In time you will be able to own all your life's disappointments in the
hope that they all will be swallowed up in Christ's victory.
Come see me.
I want to be with you.
