Good grief. How do we grieve well?
This post is not inspired by personal tragedy, but my heart does ache for friends in the midst of sadness right now. I have also just read an excellent little book which I can recommend without hesitation –‘Finding God in the Hard Times’ by Matt and Beth Redman, and it has got me thinking too.
Grief isn’t just about losing loved ones of course. It can be about losing a cherished role, dashed hopes or broken relationships. Sometimes we choose to embrace loss, not least when we decide to leave one community and move to another – something which cross-cultural workers know all too well.
Grief hurts. Pain is not nice. I am the first to admit to being pain-averse, having just paid a lot of money for optional dental work to numb sensitive teeth. That’s a little wimpy, perhaps, but the pain of sensitive teeth is pointless. Other types of pain, however, are best recognized and permitted to throb. Trying to numb grief is not usually a good idea, though there are times when it is necessary to get on with tasks at hand for a while.
My culture – an Australian from a British background – doesn’t do grief well … in my humble opinion. We pride ourselves on having ‘a stiff upper lip’ and ‘being strong’. ‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ we say. ‘It’s always darkest before the dawn,’ we may add. ‘God works all things together for good,’ some Christians quote, usually taking this precious promise out of context. Some of us think it admirable to restrain emotions, even when our hearts are breaking. We don’t want to make those around us feel uncomfortable, nor do we want to be seen as ‘weak’.
In contrast, people of some other cultures are quick to display grief. Chinese people grieve the loss of loved ones in different ways according to local customs and the circumstances of the death. There is often a period of time during which family members wear black armbands or pins, avoid brightly coloured clothing and refrain from any festivities including weddings and Chinese New Year celebrations. Traditional Tibetan ladies remove the coloured cords they usually braid into their hair, the colours which proudly identify the communities to which they belong. In Thailand, the whole country wore dull colours for a full year following the death of their beloved king a couple of years back.
Grief is a constant theme in Scripture too. The Bible is full of laments, not just about death but other dashed hopes and painful afflictions too. There is even a whole book of such poetry called, unsurprisingly, ‘Lamentations’. God wants us to bring our sadness and struggles to him. Ancient Israelites, mind you, were roundly criticized and punished for allowing grief and confusion to turn into bitterness and complaining (1 Corinthians 10:9-11). They weren’t to ignore it though. They were encouraged to turn to God in their pain and re-state their trust in him, even in the midst of grief, as we can see in many communal Psalms that they used in that era. (Examples include Psalms 44, 60, 74, 79, 85 and 90.) In the same way, modern-day Christians are encouraged to humble ourselves and bring our anxieties to God (2 Peter 5:6-7). We are never told to stuff it down deep and ‘put smiles on our dials’. As a community of God’s people, Christians are told to ‘rejoice with those who rejoice’ and ‘mourn with those who mourn’ (Romans 12:15). In my community, I suspect we are better at the former than the latter.
What does this mean for us here and now? I don’t like pain, whether it be mine or a share of yours. However, I hope that as a maturing woman of God, I can overcome my cultural preferences and choose to be Biblical in the way I deal with grief and disappointments, be they mine or yours. May we manage our pain in a culturally appropriate way – according to the culture of God’s kingdom. Name it – share it – be real. No stiff upper lip is required or desired.