Fertilize or Fester?

“She is clothed with strength and dignity…” Proverbs 31:25(a)

Yesterday, I wrote:

I’m going to stop trying so incredibly hard to be strong.

“I will say of the LORD, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’ He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge…” Psalm 91:2&4(a)

I’m going to seek Refuge. Which is, paradoxically, the only place to find Strength.

Today, I realize that the decision to stop running and start seeking Refuge means that the thing I’ve been running from now has time to catch up with me.

And what I’ve been running from, what I’ve been striving for strength to avoid, is grief.

My friend Georgia Shaffer, in Taking Out Your Emotional Trash writes

Whether it takes months or years, our grief decomposes into rich nourishing soil for a new life. (Click to Tweet this.)

Two questions come to mind for me:

Questions of Grief

1. What does a healthy grief process look and sound and feel like?

I’m a rookie when it comes to grief; I have little experience and no skill. My brother and I agree that we weren’t taught how to deal with “negative” emotions while growing up.

We now spend our days immersed in other people’s emotions; he’s a therapist, and I’m an educator. But we struggle to correctly identify even the most basic of our own feelings. (Recognizing “I feel sad right now” is a major victory!)

When I was five, our maternal grandfather died suddenly of a heart attack. During my sixth grade year, our family dog was struck and killed by a car. Three weeks into my first year of teaching, our maternal grandma passed away. Over the next several years, our father’s mother succumbed slowly to the ravages of Alzheimer’s Disease.

I remember what we did for each of these events. We went through the appropriate motions. And then we moved on. There was no mentoring in dealing with the aftermath of loss.

Now, each time I visit my parents, my mother’s Alzheimer’s Disease is worse and my father looks frailer. I am daily moving closer to the two greatest losses of my life. My children will learn from me how to mourn the loss of their beloved Nana and Papa. How will I model a process for which I have so little experience and no skill?

2. When I fail to grieve, what happens instead?

My losses have not led to grief (and thus, nor to its decomposition “into rich nourishing soil for a new life.”)

Instead, my losses have evoked bitterness. And over time, bitterness festers. Putrefies. Stagnates.

Grief has an active ebb and flow; it keeps moving and eventually breaks all the way down.

But as I stew in bitterness, it multiplies. Depression develops into a top scum, a “protective” barrier. Hostility takes root beneath. Vengeance breeds in the depths. Sarcasm bubbles up. A new life will never grow in this environment.

Yet I desire the “new life” to which Georgia refers! So, I’ve been experimenting with grief lately.

I’ve been reading about loss…instead of avoiding it. Journaling about sadness throughout my life…instead of dismissing it with sarcasm. Writing prayer poems that allow me to linger inside sorrowful moments…instead of pretending that “going through the motions” ever was–or ever will be–enough to help me move on.

I still have very little experience and hardly any skill with grief. But I’m making progress, which is a huge improvement over standing still, stewing in the brackish waters of bitterness.

Grief, I’m finding, has an ebb and flow much like the ocean. Sometimes, without warning, it overwhelms me and pulls me under. I lose control–or at least the illusion of control!–and panic. What if I never get back up for air?

Recently, I lingered at Starbucks to do some “lite” prayer journaling; instead, I wept through the birth of a new poem. Several waves of sadness were so strong, I began to panic: What if I stop breathing? Should I run for the car? Do I need psychiatric help?

But as I reached the poem’s end, the emotions had run their course. I felt an unaccustomed calm.

As I re-read the images and metaphors and juxtapositions I’d used to explore an old sorrow, I knew that this was no mere “going through the motions.”

I still felt sad. But I also felt hope, for I’d come to new understandings. Experienced new insights. Discovered new perspectives I’d not seen when my eyes were so firmly fixed inward, bent solely on my own bitterness.

This was renewal.

One step out of the pond of bitterness.

One step toward a new life.

A new life in which running is replaced by Refuge.

In which I declare, even through tears, “I love you, Lord, my strength.” Psalm 18:1