Three Necessary Tasks

These three tasks are some of the most important things to work on first if you want to get through this in one piece and come out on the other side as a whole person. I'll understand if you aren't ready yet to give up being united to your loved one through the grief. Feeling the sorrow both bonded me to June and gave me a way to honor her. So, don't worry. These three steps won't end your grief ahead of schedule, but they will put you on the right track towards the future. Ask yourself: Would your loved one want you to wallow in the pain? Or, would he/she prefer you to take some positive steps towards eventually getting beyond it the right way? You know the answer to that one!

Step One: The First Resurrection

Right away I saw that there were not one but two resurrections that I was going to need faith for seeing. Every believer gets it that we need faith for believing that our loved one will resurrect to heaven. If you don't have this faith for your loved one, all is not lost. There are steps to take which I will outline later (see Receiving Faith for Their Resurrection). If you don't have faith for anyone's resurrection to eternal life, even your own, I'll help you with that too (if you'll let me). Faith in the resurrection gives us our hope that we will see our loved ones again when we, too, resurrect after we die. Many believers seem content to camp out here. Indeed, some have no further aim in life where love is concerned than to wait for that greater day to come.

I know that feeling. I call it my moment of chagrin. It came about a week into the grief when I was saying to God, Just beam me up Scotty, there's no life for me down here. And then it hit me the chagrin, which is a state of vexation, marked by humiliation (according to an online dictionary). I looked up and said Oops to the Lord. Oh, Jesus, I really thought I was loving you first and best, but now that June's gone, I only want to go up and be with her there. I don't really want to just be with You down here. I guess I loved her more than You all along. Can you feel it? The humiliation of realizing that you made your loved one into an idol without realizing it. And that the Lord in His humility had allowed it to be so without reproach. Nevertheless, now was the time to come clean.

Coming clean meant that I was going to have to squarely face the far more difficult path of living for Jesus without June at my side and learn to do it without complaint. No more holding my breath, hoping to die and go to heaven. The Greatest Person in the Universe was living inside me and yet there I was acting as if he were chump change compared to life with June. I may have lost the Queen of Hearts, but I still had a great hand to play if only I would get back in the game. That naturally meant letting Jesus take the place of June at my side. But this meant that I had to grow faith for that second resurrection I mentioned earlier.

Step Two: The Second Resurrection

The second resurrection is seeing ourselves come back to life, rising from the ashes of the living death of grief. I'm not talking about some kind of bare-knuckled, grimly stoic, hanging in there. That's merely existing. God's kind of life is thriving, joyous, peace-filled, and purposeful. In the first few weeks, I honestly couldn't see how that was ever going to be possible. Even so, faith is believing for what you can't see by your own understanding. It takes God's promises to grow eyes of faith to see a future that feels and looks impossible. I had Psalm 84 promising me that God could lead me into that future if I would only set my heart on pilgrimage and get going. I clung to that promise for dear life.

To tell you the truth, I was surprised at how hard it was going to be to believe that I could ever be restored to a genuine fullness of life. I thought I had a lot of faith in Jesus, but the hole in me that June left in parting was crater size. For thirty years she had been my best friend the only one who knew and understood me in the depth of my brokenness, as well as the heights of my passions. You can't imagine ever sharing love with anyone at that level again. All thought of past, present, and future was we, never just I, and had been as far back as my active memory traveled. How do you become whole when most of you has gone missing?

At this point, many might say that you could marry again sometime down the road. In that way, you could recover both life and love. Yes, you can, and many do. It's not necessary for total healing, however, and may even get in the way, if you launch out in that direction too soon. This advice applies to everyone: The best wedding present for any future spouse would be learning from and being fully healed of all the pain associated with a previous marriage, whether it ended through death or divorce. Just leave the possibility of remarriage open if you want to and then leave all thought of it alone. As for me, I was determined not to marry again, but to spend the rest of my life living for the Lord ninety to nothing. I was fully satisfied that Jesus was/is more than enough.

I say I was convinced that Jesus was enough. I was. I just did't have the slightest idea how He could get me to the place where the promise of His potential (to fulfill me) became my living reality. Or, hold much faith that He could. A lot of us are like this, aren't we? As an article of faith, we believe God and Jesus can do anything. Then, when we're gasping with unstoppable pain, we wonder how He can possibly end it, much less, bring us to new heights where we're actually glad and grateful for all we've gone through. That Final Destination lay too far in the distance even for eyes of faith to see its outline. So, I went to work praying for the Lord to help me believe that I, too, could one-day experience resurrection in this life, just as June was enjoying it (in a different way) in heaven. Then, I made sure that I didn't blast all my hope to pieces by contaminating the process.

Step Three: Clearing Out the Contaminates

In my mind's eye, I see the process of grief as a river of sorrow that wants to flow as a crystal-clear stream back to God, who alone can mend us. Tears are very much a part of that process, so is everything that surfaces in our heart. I firmly believed, and every day discovered, that the Lord wanted me to give Him everything: every tear and every thought or emotion no matter how unpleasant or troubling it was. In a way, tears lubricate this process of intercession as we take whatever shows up in our hearts and place it into God's Hands. The problem is that many of us hold on to the very things that we need to release to God. Things like anger, doubts, fear, guilt, self-pity, and hopelessness can really contaminate the process if we let them. There will be more on this later (see Clearing Out Contaminants). Make sure you clear your heart of contaminants so your tears can carry the grief to God. Otherwise, you will be cramped in an emotional prison, rather than liberated to pursue the pilgrimage.

Prayer

Oh Lord, I am so grateful that You made a way for us to resurrect! I feel so little hope for myself right now, but at least I still have a hope that my loved one is in heaven and that we will meet again. None of that would be possible if you hadn't been willing to go through incredible pain to get us there. Now, it seems it is my turn to go through just a fraction of that pain and it is killing me! How did you bear it? Help me to bear it with an ever-growing confidence that the gospel promise is real, and that our reunion in heaven will be worth the wait. Help me also gain faith and hope that You can even resurrect me to a life in this life that I will want to live. For that to happen, I can see that I will also need Your help clearing out the many things that are contaminating my feelings. I choose to believe that with You all these things are possible. Lead me into this way of life!