written before<\/a> on the importance of healthy grieving, and our human tendency to avoid it. Whatever our pain or loss may be, our human misery will be too much to bear if we try to do it alone. God made us for communion with himself and with each other. It is within healthy community that healing happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\nUnfortunately, healthy community can be hard to find. All too often, when it comes to grieving well, we encounter dysfunction in our families and even in our Christian churches. The more challenging emotions like anger or guilt or grief are unwelcome and avoided. They are seen as an evil to be eliminated, rather than a healthy part of the human experience. This extermination of unwelcome emotions can be done in a more abusive way (\u201cStop crying, or I\u2019ll give you a reason to cry!\u201d) or a more subtle way (\u201cThere are other people have it much worse\u2026\u201d). The unspoken message is \u201cyou shouldn\u2019t feel that way.\u201d But sometimes we do. It\u2019s just a fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we want to understand what it truly means to be human, we\nlook to Jesus (the New Adam) and to Mary (the New Eve). They model so many\nvirtues for us, including a refusal to shortcut the hardest human experiences\nlike sadness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJesus wept\u201d (John 11:33). It\u2019s the shortest verse of the\nBible, and one of the most meaningful: Even though he is the resurrection and\nthe life, even though he knew that he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead\nafter four days in the tomb, Jesus wept. He wept over his dead friend. He wept\nwith those who were weeping. He didn\u2019t avoid or minimize the healthy human\nexperience of grieving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus became \u201csorrowful even to death\u201d (Matthew 26:38). This was not a dismay at his own immanent death. Rather, he was freely taking upon himself the full depths of human suffering and misery \u2013 drinking it to the dregs. He felt in his heart every agony, every sorrow, every wound, every tragedy \u2013 the greatest of which is sin. He entered into our sadness and freely offered our human condition to his Father, crying out from the Cross the plea of every agonizing human heart: \u201cMy God, my God, why have you abandoned me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Letter to the Hebrews, we learn that Jesus\u2019 empathy with human sorrow led him to the point of loud sobs and tears (Hebrews 5:7). Is that not what is popularly described today as an \u201cugly cry\u201d? You know, the kind of uncontrollable sobbing that we suppress or avoid or feel deeply embarrassed about? Apparently, Jesus wasn\u2019t worried about sobbing uncontrollably or oozing a little snot. Most of us are much more cautious and self-protective. As the poet T.S. Eliot used to say, \u201cHuman kind cannot bear very much reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The problem with painful emotions is that, well, they\u2019re painful. We’d rather avoid the experience of powerlessness in the face of others\u2019 suffering. It\u2019s easier to flee or to fix. We \u201cflee\u201d by avoiding those around us who are suffering in an unbearable way, like the priest and Levite in the Good Samaritan story. Our withdrawing causes their experience of abandonment and isolation to become like that of the suffering servant foretold by the prophet Isaiah: \u201cHe was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, like one from whom people turn their face\u2026\u201d (Isaiah 53:3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFixing\u201d is no better than fleeing. Many Christian families\nand faith communities, in their avoidance of \u201cugly\u201d emotions, try to make it\nall better with a pious saying or an invitation into busyness and distraction.\nFixing is not grieving, and it doesn\u2019t actually comfort anyone. When Job was in\nagony, he didn\u2019t need fixing; he needed someone to sit on the dung pile and be\nsad with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Good Friday, Jesus drank the chalice of human suffering to the full. He refused to numb his pain with the gall offered him. Likewise, his mother Mary stood <\/u>at the foot of the Cross (John 19:25). She suffered together with him, refusing to avoid or escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Holy Saturday, Jesus descended into hell, and Mary continued watching and waiting in sorrowful hope. Perhaps she had some inkling of the resurrection to come \u2013 but surely not of when or how. Hope is hard. We know that God is faithful, but during the darkest moments we have no idea how long the suffering will last, or how our prayers will be answered. We are tempted to take a shortcut and avoid the full experience of Good Friday and Holy Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The joy of Easter Sunday indeed comes as promised \u2013 but often in ways that catch us by surprise. Intense sorrow is no obstacle to intense joy \u2013 quite the opposite. It is only when we learn to stop hardening our hearts and protecting ourselves that we become capable, not only of embracing the \u201cugly\u201d human experiences that we\u2019d rather avoid, but also of experiencing the boundless joy of the resurrection. May Jesus open our hearts and help us to empathize with each other as we watch and wait in hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The apostle Paul exhorts us, \u201cRejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep\u201d (Romans 12:15). Doing so enriches the human experience and makes the love of Christ visibly present. Unfortunately, heeding Paul\u2019s advice is not so simple as it sounds. Rather than rejoicing, we are sometimes saddened at the successes of others. Rather … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Learning to Sit with Sadness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1338,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[58,57,56,55,54,60],"tags":[165,168,120,49,169,167,106,170,171,161,166],"class_list":["post-1337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-renewal","category-healing","category-saints","category-scripture","category-spirituality","category-the-church","tag-community","tag-good-friday","tag-grieving","tag-healing","tag-holy-saturday","tag-joy","tag-mary","tag-new-adam","tag-new-eve","tag-resurrection","tag-sadness"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Grieve-with-those-who-Grieve.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1337"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1353,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1337\/revisions\/1353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}