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Welcome to our second installment of our Loss and Grief series. This month we will focus on the not so obvious question. Why do we grieve? Grief is a natural and needed response to loss. Too often we experience the pain of loss and grief without asking why have we been created in such a way that we grieve and are sad when we experience loss. Here are my informed thoughts about that question.
If we are aware of our reality and in touch with what is going on around us we will experience loss, sadness, grief etc. when something we were connected to is either lost, taken from us or comes to an end. These experiences of loss range from the death of a loved one to the end of a book or movie that we enjoyed. The resulting grief from the death of a loved one may last for years while the loss experienced when a really good movie ends may last as long as it takes you to walk to your car.
My own way of looking at life is that life is energy. As finite people we have limited amounts of energy. We invest that energy in people, relationships, activities, work, recreation. How we invest our life’s energy is our choice. At various times in our life we put more energy in, let’s say, our children. When they are young and growing up we put a lot of our energy into their needs, security and our time is used up in being with them. As they grow older and eventually leave and form their own families we gradually pull energy from them and put it someplace else, let’s say, fishing or community volunteer opportunities.
The process of grief as you might see is the process of putting our energy into something. Having that relationship, thing, activity come to an end with the result that there is no place to put that energy we have invested. This is the sadness and grief part. We hold that energy once invested, we remove it from the previous relationship and we have no where to put it which is why we feel depressed and sad. Depression by my definition is the inability to invest energy to complete a task. Grief from loss is having our energy in a holding pattern. This taking energy from what was lost takes time. Eventually what happens is that once we have removed all or most of our energy from the ended relationship or lost activity we will start to reinvest that energy somewhere else. We chose again what to do with our life’s energy.
This is the process of grief and this is also why it is vitally important to grieve well. If we do not go through this process we will have our life invested in that which does not exist. We will spend our life’s energy on what cannot receive that energy. We will be left empty and purposeless in our life’s focus.
Another way to look at it is to say that we cannot say hello until we have said good-bye. Sometimes we never say hello because we are too afraid to say good bye or are still hurting from saying good bye. To live abundantly is to say both hello and good bye effectively.
Now there is an alternative to grief from loss and that is non-attachment. One theology says that all pain is caused from our attachments to people, things, ideas on and on. We suffer because we are attached and do all kind of crazy things to maintain those attachments or deny the loss of those attachments. This theology says the way to peace is to not be attached with the result we will not suffer.
For Christians who follow Christ that theology is not an option. We are called into life and relationships with a God who is relationship with us and choose to suffer death on a cross to be in relationship with us. Jesus wept at the loss/death of his friend Lazarus. The Christian call is a call into finding abundant life in giving our life to others. With that giving we will experience grief and loss and also the promise that our mourning will be turned into dancing.
Next month we will discuss the stages of grief and loss.
In Christ,
Pastor Dick
