Lingering Grief

They say that in grief to let yourself feel whatever you feel.

A friend of mine recently asked me how I was doing.
I responded like this:
"You know the ache you get after a substantial surgery. My ache lingers....but its a livable ache..."

In grief...if I feel an ache...let myself feel that ache, right?
Screw that.

Who want's to live with an ache?
Not really hurting...not really well...the ache just sits annoyingly in between.

So am I to let myself feel whatever I feel?
OK fine. I consent. I will let myself feel the ache...I won't run from it or ignore it....

But I also won't accept it.
The ache is unacceptable.
It is not as it ought to be.

I trust the one who says,

"I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: "Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They're his people, he's their God. He'll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone." The Enthroned continued, "Look! I'm making everything new"(Rev. 21:3-5)

Rest...

As I sit here...I think about what God has taught me.
My mind feels slow. I don't like that.

But my mind isn't slow because I'm dumb (much to my friend's surprise)...something else is going on.
It's as if the dialogue between my mind and heart goes something like this:

mind: "mourn, grieve, reflect, don't give up thinking, remember Him and remember him"

heart: "mind, stop it! give yourself a break, I don't work as fast as you, I need rest"

I once heard that our hearts are fragile
...and I can't just shove my head into my heart. So, what we do is place words on top of our heart and wait for God to break our hearts to let the words fall in.

So, to let my heart rest, I hiked with my family.

For me, there's nothing like a good hike which makes my heart sing, "Oh Lord our Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth..." (Ps. 8). This is the type of heart rest that leads to love.


Jesus instructed us to, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart ...and with all your mind." (Luke 10:27)

Is there something you need to do, to let your heart rest and lead you to love?

Death is Everywhere (Part 2 of 2)

Death is everywhere...but life is "every when"

A friend dies....death is everywhere

A baby dies...death is everywhere

BUT LIFE IS EVERYWHEN

From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." (Matt 4:17)

The kingdom of heaven is where the King is. The Kingdom is near because the King has come near.

And where does this King go?

Jesus' first sermon and announcement of his mission: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free..." (Luke 4:18)

The King and his Kingdom are with the poor, the prisoner, the blind, the oppressed. Given the list (clearly not exhaustive) it seems right to include the sorrowful, right?

Death is everywhere but life is everywhen

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

Psalm 145:18 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, To all who call upon Him in truth.

Psalm 147:3 He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds.

Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the high and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy, "I dwell on a high and holy place, And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit In order to revive the spirit of the lowly And to revive the heart of the contrite.

Everywhen.

When humans die...God is near.
When humans suffer...God is near.
When human voices cry out to God...God is near.
When human spirits are broken...God is near.

So...I live in two realities.
...I lament my mentors death and a mothers loss. I cry out...
...and I look for life from the life giver, for in suffering he is often seen.

Therefore....instead of dwelling on pain, I dwell with pain.

In hopeful expectation of the King who says,
"I am making everything new!" (Rev. 21:5)
...not someday far far away...but everywhen (Matt. 6:10)

Death is Everywhere (Part 1 of 2)

We are the living dead. Human life dies...second by second.

Coming to Fresno was a gift from God. Receiving my passport in time and being able to grieve along with others, attend a funeral to find some type of closure, and even have an extra couple days to just "hang out" and decompress.

Sitting in the Seattle airport, waiting for our connecting flight, was good.


Until a mother sitting 20 feet away from us started screaming...

Wailing...

Throwing up...

Anxiety silenced an airport full of busy people. Phone conversations paused, announcements on intercoms ceased, travelers froze.

I watched this mom...holding her lifeless baby, not any older than my own daughter, Elizabeth...offer her to a flight attendant.

EMT's, police, airport personnel all "did stuff": CPR, IV's, barricades...

Minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes and minutes passed...

Mom wailed over her silent baby...

I'm crying once again. Jamie's death in his 50th year now collides with a baby's death in her 1st year. I pleaded with God to heal her. I know he could.

He didn't.

Death is everywhere.

Travelers stood there, frozen and silent, long after the mom carried her dead daughter and followed teary eyed EMT's to...I don't know where.

Why do we stand as silent witnesses?

...because we know that death is everywhere

...a dead friend and daughter remind us that things are not as they should be.

So we stand there...in silent protest.

"O LORD, how long shall I cry...Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance?"

Where is God when it hurts?

When I heard the news that Jamie was dead...

I cried and cried and cried and cried.

I was in the middle of a meeting with a college student named Sydney.

He just sat there, confused.

I hung up the phone, looked at Sydney and told him the bad news.

This time he sat there, and listened.

It was now 6:30pm Thursday evening and Sydney and I needed to go to a Bible Study which I lead for a group of college students. Every ounce of mental and emotional energy inside of me said: Avert...Avert...Don't go, stay home, you're a mess and people will see you cry, rest up and get stronger, etc etc etc. Sydney asked me what I would like him to do. Knowing that the best thing to do when your hurting is not to run away from relationships but run towards them...Through tears, I asked Sydney to drive me. He did.

In the car I cried and reflected and Sydney drove and listened.

In Bible study I cried and shared for a brief moment and then I listened to my students as they sought to lead each other in worship and study.

After the study, Sydney knew that I needed to get home to tell Heidi so he got his keys and drove me home.

In the car I cried and reflected and again Sydney drove and listened.

At one point, after a long long silence, I looked over at Sydney wondering what he was doing and if I should break the silence. He was just driving. But as I looked closer, I saw that he wasn't just driving...the look on his face was distraught. He was empathizing. He was sad for Jaime's family and friends that he left behind. He said nothing....he just drove and empathized. Part of me wanted to scream at him, "say something wise. fix it. make me feel better!!"...but part of me didn't. It was in that moment I realized that Sydney was my pastor.

Right now I'm thinking about Sydney...
about his silence, his driving, his empathy.

Is God sometimes like this?
When we think he should speak, say something, fix things, he sits next to us...and listens.

Is God like Sydney?
Driving when we don't have the strength...empathizing.

Isaiah 53:4 says, "Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried"

Is God like Sydney?
Near to those who grieve...listening to their cry.

Psalm 34:18a says, "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted"

Psalm 34:15 says, "The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their cry"

My unlikely young college student was the presence of Jesus in a devastating/destabilizing space...

Where is God when it hurts? In unexpected places...

In who or whom has God used to encounter you?

On another note...

There are some resources about Jaime Evans that I want to remember:

Jamie Evans - In Loving Memory - Facebook page

Jamie Evans - Obituary

Jamie Evans - Article in Fresno Bee

Jamie Evans - blog post about "deep pain"

Jamie Evans - blog post about "grief"

Jamie Evans - blog post about "anger"

Sermon by Christ Erdman, friend of Jaime's, helping University Presbyterian grieve

Sermon by David Abbo, helping First Presbyterian Church grieve

Sermon by Jamie Evans - His last sermon

Anger

Someone asked me how I was doing recently.

I could only say, "it hurts"

But I suppose that's only partially true. I've been hurt before: receiving harsh words, physical bodily damage, destructive self talk, and the like. These things hurt.

Yet, this feels different.

This feels like a collision between deep love and deep anger.

Is there a word for how I feel?

Like many people who've contacted me, emailed, posted on facebook and posted on our blog about what Jaime meant to them...Like many of you...God used Jaime, for many years, to shape my life as a follower of Jesus, husband and pastor. I love him for that.

But, I'm also deeply angry at him and at the broken world we live in. There are a lot of things I'd like to write...but I'll refrain.

What do you get when love and anger collide?

God must understand. Right? Through the prophet Hosea he says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me" (Hos. 11:1-2).

Maybe the word is....

LAMENT

Eugene Peterson writes:

Suffering is a huge, unavoidable element in the human condition. To be human is to suffer. No one gets an exemption...

and in his introduction to the book of Lamentations, he writes:

Neither explaining suffering nor offering a program for the elimination of suffering, Lamentations keeps company with the extensive Biblical witness that gives dignity to suffering by insisting that God enters our suffering and is companion to our suffering.

So I turn to the Lament recorded in the book of Lamentations

^3:19-21I'll never forget the trouble, the utter lostness,
the taste of ashes, the poison I've swallowed.
I remember it all—oh, how well I remember—
the feeling of hitting the bottom.
But there's one other thing I remember,
and remembering, I keep a grip on hope:

^22-24God's loyal love couldn't have run out,
his merciful love couldn't have dried up.
They're created new every morning.
How great your faithfulness!
I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over).
He's all I've got left.

^25-27God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits,
to the woman who diligently seeks.
It's a good thing to quietly hope,
quietly hope for help from God.
It's a good thing when you're young
to stick it out through the hard times.

^28-30When life is heavy and hard to take,
go off by yourself. Enter the silence.
Bow in prayer. Don't ask questions:
Wait for hope to appear.
Don't run from trouble. Take it full-face.
The "worst" is never the worst.

^31-33Why? Because the Master won't ever
walk out and fail to return.
If he works severely, he also works tenderly.
His stockpiles of loyal love are immense.
He takes no pleasure in making life hard,
in throwing roadblocks in the way:

So when my love and anger collide....

I choose to lament.
Allowing God to hold suffering and hope inside me.

Peterson writes, “Lament isn’t an animal wail, an inarticulate howl...Lament notices and attends…details, images, relationships. Pain entered into, accepted, and owned can become poetry.”

So I choose to Lament.
Asking God to write Psalms inside me.

Grief

It's painful because there are so many unanswered questions for the living. The questions mostly begin with a three-letter word, "why".

It’s painful to consider who he left behind: An awesome wife, and two great kids. It’s painful because he gets rest but his family gets questions.

The Psalmist, who some theologians consider to have had depression in one form or another, said these words:

¹⁰ Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?

¹¹ Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?

¹² Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

The psalmist has the same questions I do. Jamie loved Jesus. Is he now at rest in God? (If you have questions about death and the resurrection of Jesus, I encourage you to read N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope.)

Over 9 years of theological study, I’ve come across a lot of material about depression and suicide. Articles, papers, theology, and stories.

I have also personally interacted with a handful of students over the coarse of my ministry who have talked about suicide. One of them went through with it.

Yet strangely, there is little comfort in experience. All I feel is pain, tears run endlessly, I feel dehydrated and sick to my stomach. The tables have been turned. I was a student of his. The mentor is supposed to lead by example. Right?

The tears…streamed down, and I let them flow as freely as they would, making of them a pillow for my heart. On them it rested.” – Augustine Confessions IX, 12

As we mourn, we find comfort in the fact that Jesus himself mourned over his friend, Lazarus, as recorded by Jesus’ disciple John, in chapter 11 of John's gospel.

³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴"Where have you laid him?" he asked.
"Come and see, Lord," they replied.

³⁵Jesus wept.

³⁶Then the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"

Jesus understands both the tragedy that death is and represents, as well as what it feels like to lose a friend. Jesus is us. Fully human.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, a man well acquainted with the tragedy of death, wrote:

Made in the image of God: That is how the biblical writers describe us. To be human is to be an icon of God. This glory is one we cannot lose. It can be increased or diminished, though; our imaging can be closer or farther, more glorious or less. Authentic life is to image God ever more closely by becoming like Jesus Christ, the express image of the Father.

In what respects do we mirror God? In our knowledge. In our love. In our justice. In our sociality. In our creativity. These are the answers the Christian tradition offers us.

One answer rarely finds its way into the list: in our suffering. Perhaps the thought is too appalling. Do we also mirror God in suffering? Are we to mirror him ever more closely in suffering? Was it meant that we should be icons in suffering?

May Christ meet us as we suffer. Those who grieve well...heal well. May Christ encounter us as we grieve.

Jamie meant a lot to us. To me, he showed me how to be a man of God, a great husband, a good preacher, and disciplined in exercise and prayer. I miss him.

But most profoundly I miss him for this reason:

Jamie, I miss your hand on my shoulder.

Deep Pain

A man we loved died today.
For many many years he mentored me, every week, for one hour.
He taught me about Jesus.
He taught me how to preach the good news of Jesus.
He showed me how to be a pastor.
He was my confidant, counselor, and friend.
He gave Heidi her first opportunity to preach in a church.
He did our marriage counseling, performed our ceremony, and kept in touch with us when we moved away to go to seminary.

This man inspired us to be like Jesus.

One day, we'll write about our grief. Right now...I can barely type. We feel so much pain/anger/confusion...etc.


The only words I can find comfort in at the moment are these:

Holy Sonnet X - John Donne

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Might and dreadful, for thou art not so:
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure - then from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go -
Rest of their bones, and souls' delivery!
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desp'rate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better, than thy stroke; - why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

If you are having trouble understanding this timeless poem...without me taking the time to offer my interpretation of it, you can go here for quite a good analysis.