Tag: Grieving

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Hoarding vs. Hope

Advent is a season of hope. During these darkest days of year, we watch and wait.

In our human experience of suffering, we abide and keep a sober vigil. In moments of powerlessness, frustration, anguish, agony, or grief, we cry out for a redeemer and savior. We feel the depths of our emptiness and need, and we hope. We feel the ache acutely and cry out with heartfelt longing, Come, Lord Jesus!!

That’s the ideal, anyway. But let’s face it, hoarding can feel safer and easier than hoping.

At the mention of “hoarding,” we immediately visualize particular people, places, or things. I’m not talking about the medically diagnosable condition of hoarding. I am using the word in a broader, all-inclusive sense.

Most of us are hoarders in one way or another. It’s something we do to protect ourselves against feeling powerless, or against feeling grief. It gives us a sense of power. It props up the illusion of being in control.

Sometimes we hoard physical objects. We cling to what we no longer need; we clutter our living space. Throwing things away means feeling grief and loss. It is a death, and we don’t want to die. Keeping an open and inviting living space feels naked and vulnerable. We don’t like feeling powerless.

But we also hoard by cluttering our schedules with unnecessary commitments. We feel less like a failure because of the things we say “yes” to – even though we inwardly resent all the things we “have to” do. We avoid the pain of conflict and live with the clutter and chaos of too many commitments.

We hoard by only tackling the tasks we feel confident about, while repeatedly avoiding the ones that would risk failure or expose our weakness. We may even push those undesirable tasks onto others, shifting the blame onto them, or criticizing the failure of their valiant attempts.

We hoard when we hold onto comfort and ease, resisting needed changes. We want our churches to feel familiar to us, to be our own little nest. First-time visitors may feel uncertain, ashamed, or intimidated. We wouldn’t know, because we talk to the same familiar people, ignoring what others are needing or feeling.

We hoard when we suffer in silence rather than humbly reaching out for help and risking rejection. We cling to others, expecting them to meet our needs without actually asking. We do things for them in “service,” calculating that now they have to give us something in return. If I am entitled, then no one can reject me, right? In all these behaviors, we might even style ourselves a “martyr,” but the real martyrdom is happening in the people around us who have to put up with our behaviors!

We hoard with our addictive behaviors. We soothe ourselves with our screens, with our sugar, or perhaps even with impulsive cleaning and organizing – which may seem the opposite of hoarding. But it depends on why we are doing it. Is it a kindness to self and others, or is it avoiding and numbing what I don’t want to face or feel?

We hoard when we surround ourselves with busyness, noise, or talking. We resist silence and stillness. We cannot stand to slow down and actually feel our loneliness, our grief, or our anger. We would rather pretend they are not there.

But then how can we hope?

Every human heart holds the capacity to hope. As Augustine of Hippo said, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Within each of us is an insatiable desire, an intense longing for the living God. But will we allow ourselves to feel it?

Hope can really hurt. To hope is to desire and not yet possess. That means that hope will include suffering. Hope will include grief. Hope will include vulnerability, even feeling powerless. We don’t like those experiences. And we hate to wait!

Thankfully, God is a good Father who delights in us as his children. He sees our struggles and loves us as we are. He knows our tendency to hoard; he gazes lovingly at us even as we repeatedly and relentlessly protect ourselves against him. We are so often like the dog hiding his head under the blanket. God smiles, and calls us by name.

Yet God honors our freedom. He desires us to desire him. He will not force or coerce. Like a lover, he pursues and woos us. He gently prods us, inviting us to admit how naked, blind, and miserable we actually are (cf. Revelation 3:14-20). We desperately need Jesus, but we do not like to feel the depths of our need.

Jesus’ coming brings true comfort, lasting peace, and abundant joy. Even in this world, he helps us to taste and see the goodness of the Lord. He blesses us with an abundance of love. Our hoarding hearts keep crying out, “It won’t be enough!!” and Jesus keeps assuring us, “My grace is enough for you; my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Will we surrender our supposed control? Will we set aside our pseudo-comforts? Will we allow ourselves to grieve and mourn? Will we remember that we have here no lasting city, that we are pilgrims passing through? Will we abide in hope?

Come, Lord Jesus!!

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Learning from Lamentations

We are living in days of painful loss and disorienting change. Our grief is great, but we don’t like to enter into it. Jesus teaches us that we will be blessed if we allow ourselves to be poor in spirit, and that we will be comforted if we allow ourselves to grieve and mourn. But we resist.

We live in a culture that has forgotten how to grieve well. We could really learn from Lamentations, that astounding book of the Bible that tells the tale of the woes that God’s people are experiencing in exile.

The Book of Lamentations is a series of intense and heartfelt cries to God, pouring out pain in poetry that is stunningly beautiful. At the time of writing, there is no certainty at all that God will even answer the cries – it feels very possible that the loss of his favor is forever. Yet the poet cries out all the same. He tells his sad story to God, and holds out Hope.

There is one verse that seems especially pertinent to us who are experiencing agony amidst a pandemic, a general election, a cultural collapse, violent divisiveness, and whatever personal problems are unique to me or you:

“Come, all you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any sorrow like my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12).

We tend to minimize our own pain. “I have nothing to complain about – other people have it much worse.” That is a very quantitative way of looking at my suffering. Of course there are always going to be other people who are suffering “more.” That doesn’t negate how authentic my own suffering is!

In truth there is no sad story like my own story, nor like your own story. Each of us is fearfully and wonderfully made, in God’s own image. My story and yours are utterly unique. God deeply desires that our whole story be told – including the sad and painful parts.

Think of a three-year old with intense nausea or a terrible toothache. What mom or dad would scold him, “Stop complaining – there are other people who have it so much worse!” True, the suffering of a toothache or nausea is not nearly as bad as a terrorist bombing or rape or genocide. But all suffering matters! Every hair on our head is numbered, and no problem is too big or too small for the living God.

Lament is a lost art. It is the telling of our sad story in a way that reaches out for comfort and care, and freely invites genuine human connection.

Lament is not to be confused with counterfeits such as self-pity or manipulation. I can think of many moments in my past, and even some in recent days, in which I have not behaved well when overwhelmed with shame or anxiety or fear. I sometimes react with childish outbursts that draw attention to how hard things are for me. In those moments of self-pity, I am not telling the truth about my story. I am grasping or taking, using or manipulating, or perhaps desperately trying to shift the shame I am feeling away from myself and onto someone else. Instead of describing truthfully what is happening inside of me, instead of vulnerably stating a need and freely asking others for kindness, I am playing on their emotions to try to take what I need. It doesn’t work, and it ruptures relationships. It tends to push others further away – which in turn easily feeds the lie in my heart that others will leave me all alone when life gets hard.

In some ways, we can’t help these less-than-kind behaviors. If we do not allow ourselves to grieve and lament, our heart will keep trying. It will come out sideways – in self-pity or manipulation, in blame or resentment, in outbursts of anger, in passive aggression, in depression, or even in bodily ailments. Our story deserves to be told, and our hearts, made in God’s own image, will keep fighting to bring our story to the light of day, even when we resist.

Lament tells our true story. It speaks the truth deeply, not so much about the factual events, but about what the experience was like. It paints a picture with the five senses, engaging the emotions and the imagination. This process takes enormous courage, because it activates our memory and draws us down into the depths. We easily fear we will never find our way out again. Those fears certainly didn’t stop Jeremiah (or whoever it was who poured out his grief in Lamentations).

Lament speaks the truth about the sad parts of our story, about the pain we are carrying. It refuses to lie or minimize. It fights the urge to shift the attention elsewhere. Far from masochism, lament is essential to authentic Hope. Instead of stashing our pain away, instead of living a compartmentalized and fragmented existence, our lamentation reaches out to the faithfulness of God for ultimate rescue and resolution. It complains to God and reminds him of his promises. It freely and meekly invites other human beings to stand with us as willing witnesses to our story, even at the risk of their saying no or bailing out. United in communion with other members of Christ, we willingly suffer and die with him, and watch and wait for the surprise of resurrection to come. As in the Book of Lamentations, we do not know when or how the rescue will come; we sense that some things are gone forever.  But for all that, we hold out Hope. We open ourselves to the possibilities promised by God, which are very well put in the words of the poet T.S. Eliot and the mystic Julian of Norwich: “All will be well, and all manner of thing will be well.”

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Resuscitation ≠ Resurrection

Resuscitation and Resurrection are not the same thing. As disciples of Jesus, our true Hope lies in the Resurrection, but we often cling to a much lesser hope of mere resuscitation.

Resuscitation means temporarily going back to how our life was. Jesus called Lazarus from the tomb and gave him back his earthly life. Astounding though it was, a glimpse of things to come, Lazarus’ new lease on life was still only for a fleeting time. He was not yet ready for the glory of the Resurrection.

The Resurrection is something entirely new. Death is definitively conquered.  Jesus, once raised, will never die again. He invades hell and conquers. Beginning on Easter Sunday, he starts appearing to his deeply discouraged and disheartened disciples – astounding and surprising them with unimaginable joy.

Resuscitation does not last. It is not definitive. It does not change the underlying problem. Nonetheless, it has great appeal. Not only does it temporarily extend one’s earthly life, it also allows us to return to what is familiar. We know what to expect, and so we feel in control.

Resurrection is unpredictable and catches us by surprise. It is “New” because it ushers in the New Creation. In the Resurrection, God reigns. We experience his Kingdom in all its power and glory. That means surrendering to the unknown of his infinite goodness and dying to our urge to be in control.

It’s totally understandable that we want to cling to this present existence – it is still so amazing, even though it is only a limited experience of God’s glory. But it won’t last. God truly made us stewards, and we have used our freedom to disobey, allowing corruption and death to have dominion. God will not undermine or erase our freedom. The world as we know it will pass away. But he is creating something new by means of the Paschal victory of his own Son. Through Faith, Hope, and Love we are being initiated into the New Creation.

But there is one catch – we have to die first if we are to rise. And let’s not forget about the agonizing period of watching and waiting in between. What incredible joy it must have been to encounter the risen Jesus on that first Easter Sunday! Peter and the others had left him alone to die on the Cross. Their final moments with their beloved Savior and Messiah were shameful moments of betrayal and weakness. Now that same Jesus suddenly appears to them, clearly victorious and beyond all harm, and speaks astounding words: “Peace be with you.”  What a deep and amazed flood of joy they must have felt!

True Resurrection brings joy, even as its newness surprises us. But it is only possible if we first experience the death and the waiting, if we are willing to go into the depths of grief and loss. We often resist!

“I just want things to back to normal!”

How many of us have said or heard these words the past few months! Pining for the way things used to be is itself a normal human tendency. Change is hard. Loss is hard. Grieving our losses is incredibly hard – even though Jesus promises that those who mourn will be comforted and blessed.

We tend to resist true Hope. We prefer to settle for mere resuscitation rather than endure the pain of watching and waiting, not knowing when or how God will fulfill his promise of new life.

In this resistance, we are in good company. Peter and his friends, even after Easter Sunday, still struggled with wanting things to “go back to normal.” In John 21 Peter declares that he is going fishing – going back to his old way of life before he got to know Jesus. No one stops him. Indeed, the others join him!

Jesus surprises them yet again, leading them to a miraculous catch of 153 fish and inviting Peter three times on the seashore to renew his love. As in the Upper Room, he does not shame them for their weak human tendency to turn away. He meets them in their place of heartache and grief.

It’s so hard to grieve, so hard to lament our losses, so hard to open ourselves to the new and better heavenly realities that Jesus is opening us to.  It’s much easier to deny or minimize. It may be absolutely obvious that things will never go back to the way they were, but we will keep pretending, keep holding out false hopes. Or we will identify a scapegoat that we can blame, someone to lash out at because things are not the way we want them to be. One need only spend a minute or two on social media these days to find many examples of these behaviors!!

It is much harder to lament – to allow ourselves to feel the depth of grief and agony and to express it to God and to others. Lament and hope are intimately connected. Refusing to settle for any false messiah, authentic Christian Hope stays open to the promises of God – even when God seems to be painfully slow and silent in answering.

The most hopeful people I know are those who are willing to cry out to God like little children – to weep, to groan, to sob, or to scream – but always seeking the face of the living God.

Hope is defiant. It resists the cheap substitute of resuscitation. It does not settle for going back to the way things were, but holds fast in Faith to the promises of Jesus. Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; they will be satisfied.

Hope hurts. It is much easier to cling to control, to protect ourselves, to numb our pain, or to cast the blame on others. It is so hard to reach out in Hope when we do not know how or when the answer will come (indeed, what if no answer comes?). There is so much vulnerability there. And so much freedom.

Resuscitation can be a good thing. But in the end, it can only bring us back to the present world of corruption – a world still destined to pass away. Only Resurrection can usher in the New Creation, in which God promises to wipe away every tear, in which there will be no more mourning or death.

During these painful and challenging times, you and I have a choice. Will we cling to our flimsy hopes in resuscitation – or will we go into the depths of grief and lament and dare to hold out Hope in the Resurrection?

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The Gift of Tears

Most of us dread the shedding of tears – particularly in front of other people. There are many reasons why we hold back. We don’t want to feel weak or vulnerable. We fear rejection. We fear losing control, perhaps even fear that if we start sobbing, we will never stop. Whether we realize it or not, we probably learned these lessons from word or example in family life. Whether spoken or unspoken, it was against the rules. The shedding of tears comes so spontaneously and naturally to little children. Then, rather than being guided and directed and nurtured, it comes to be seen as a threat.

I have come to learn that tears can be a precious gift from God.

I am by no means the first to make this observation. Many authors in contemporary charismatic circles talk about “the gift of tears” as a charism (a “spiritual gift” of the Holy Spirit along the lines of tongues, interpretation, prophecy, healing, etc.). True, there are individuals who experience weeping as an outward manifestation of the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. This was all the rage in sixteenth-century Spain – to the point that authentic mystics like John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, or Ignatius of Loyola had to warn against the faking of tears as a false expression of piety, even showing off. That risk is still there for some today, but I much more frequently find a false toughness that holds back tears.

More commonly over the centuries, tears are an expression of repentance and conversion, opening us up to love God and neighbor with fuller freedom. Examples abound in Scripture. King David weeps over his sins (Psalm 51). The prophet Jeremiah allows his eyes to stream day and night over the great ruination which overwhelms God’s people (Jeremiah 14). Nehemiah’s tears over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem move the heart of the Persian King Artaxerxes. This pagan ruler is so touched with empathy that he sends Nehemiah with full funding and an armed force to go to Jerusalem to fight and rebuild (Nehemiah 1-2).

In the New Testament there is the marvelous story of Saint Peter. The very moment he denies Jesus a third time, Peter experiences a gaze of mercy from him (Luke 22). The Lord turns to look upon him with full knowledge AND full love. Peter knows that he is known and knows that he is loved. He goes out and weeps bitterly. According to many Christian legends and stories, it was by no means the last time Peter would weep. His tears went on to captivate the imagination and heart of Christian mystics and artists for centuries.

What a journey of lifelong conversion Peter undergoes! From the beginning he is drawn to follow the Lord Jesus. He leaves his nets behind. He believes from day one, and never falters in his faith, even when he repeatedly falters in loving Jesus. He denies Jesus; his actions show us time and again that his understanding is only partial. The growth is prolonged and slow. Even after the Resurrection, when Peter joins Jesus on the seashore, there is still much conversion needed. Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him – offering three renewals of love to the man who three times denied him. But there is more in the Greek. Jesus asks Peter if he loves him with agape – that self-emptying, sacrificial love that Jesus showed on the Cross. Peter answers that he loves Jesus with philia – brotherly love.  Jesus is inviting Peter to confess the full truth of his present condition. There is almost a sense of playfulness about it, certainly gentleness. Jesus is not disappointed in Peter; rather, he is encouraging him, inviting him farther and farther along the path of conversion. He doesn’t expect Peter to get there all at once, yet he speaks the truth to him with love. He encourages Peter that he will one day be strong enough to lay down his life with a full agape love. For now, Peter is not yet ready, and that is okay. Jesus just invites him “Follow me.” The rest will come in due time.

I am guessing Peter had tears in his eyes at that moment as well. It is easy to imagine him shedding tears at all the key moments of his conversion. The mercy of God unleashes our tears, and our tears unleash his mercy. It’s a wonderful, virtuous cycle.

The Desert Fathers, those mighty monks of the early centuries, often discussed tears as a marvelous gift of God. They saw tears as a powerful remedy against the evil spirit of acedia – one of the subtlest and most formidable foes we will ever face.

[If you are unfamiliar with the sin of acedia I highly recommend reading Fr. Jean-Charles Nault’s book The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the Unnamed Evil of our Times]

The deadly sin of acedia is difficult to translate. Calling it “sloth” or “laziness” can be misleading. That is just one of many possible manifestations. Indeed, in today’s world this sin is more likely to manifest itself in boredom or busyness or burnout. Our restless hearts resist staying present in the moment, seeking any alternative than abiding in God’s presence. How sad indeed to be repulsed by divine goodness and prefer our self-created madhouse of busyness and comforts, even when that madhouse becomes an unbearable hell for us. Yet how common to our human experience!

Literally, acedia is from the Greek a + kēdos – “not caring” or “not feeling.” John Climacus describes its first steps: a numbness in our soul, a forgetfulness of heavenly promises, and an aversion to the present moment as to a great burden. How many today, I wonder, are in the throes this spiritual sickness?

The Desert Fathers fought it. Their era was very much like our own. They saw the decline and fall of a once great civilization. The Greeks and Romans, plunged into pleasures, had worn themselves out. The early monks discovered that tears are a saving remedy for acedia.

First of all, our tears allow us –  like King David and like Saint Peter – to be truly humble and recognize our need for a savior. In our tears, we confess that we cannot save ourselves. Like a child in the presence of its parents, we are crying out in our need. The Lord hears the cry of the poor, and delights in those who are willing to become like little children.

Secondly, tears unthaw our frozen hearts and allow us to feel again. They lead us out of our numbness and free us to be vulnerable and dependent. Fr. Nault, in his book, offers the image of our falling tears carving out a notch in our stony hearts – a notch through which God’s mercy can pour into our sin-sick soul.

Evagrius was one of the wisest of those desert monks. We can close with his words about the gift of tears aiding us in our spiritual struggles: “Sadness is hard to bear and acedia is hard to resist – but tears shed in God’s presence are stronger than both.”

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Learning to Sit with Sadness

The apostle Paul exhorts us, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). Doing so enriches the human experience and makes the love of Christ visibly present.

Unfortunately, heeding Paul’s advice is not so simple as it sounds. Rather than rejoicing, we are sometimes saddened at the successes of others. Rather than weeping, we sometimes avoid accompanying others in their misery. Sure, we’ll send them a sympathy card or drop off some food. We’ll say some pleasant-sounding words like “Everything happens for a reason” or “He’s in a better place.” But one or two or twelve month later, when the anguish is even worse, they find few friends still willing to be with them in their grief.

Sitting with others in their sadness can be one of the most unsettling things to do – especially when we are powerless to do anything about it. It is so much easier to throw a cliché at the unpleasant emotions, as though uttering an incantation that will magically make us all live happily ever after. The truth is that we are unsettled and are trying to protect ourselves from the mess of the other person’s experience.

I have written before 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.

Unfortunately, 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 (“Stop crying, or I’ll give you a reason to cry!”) or a more subtle way (“There are other people have it much worse…”). The unspoken message is “you shouldn’t feel that way.” But sometimes we do. It’s just a fact.

If we want to understand what it truly means to be human, we look to Jesus (the New Adam) and to Mary (the New Eve). They model so many virtues for us, including a refusal to shortcut the hardest human experiences like sadness.

“Jesus wept” (John 11:33). It’s the shortest verse of the Bible, and one of the most meaningful: Even though he is the resurrection and the life, even though he knew that he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb, Jesus wept. He wept over his dead friend. He wept with those who were weeping. He didn’t avoid or minimize the healthy human experience of grieving.

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus became “sorrowful even to death” (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 – drinking it to the dregs. He felt in his heart every agony, every sorrow, every wound, every tragedy – 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: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

In the Letter to the Hebrews, we learn that Jesus’ 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 “ugly cry”? You know, the kind of uncontrollable sobbing that we suppress or avoid or feel deeply embarrassed about? Apparently, Jesus wasn’t 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, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”

The problem with painful emotions is that, well, they’re painful. We’d rather avoid the experience of powerlessness in the face of others’ suffering. It’s easier to flee or to fix. We “flee” 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: “He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, like one from whom people turn their face…” (Isaiah 53:3).

“Fixing” is no better than fleeing. Many Christian families and faith communities, in their avoidance of “ugly” emotions, try to make it all better with a pious saying or an invitation into busyness and distraction. Fixing is not grieving, and it doesn’t actually comfort anyone. When Job was in agony, he didn’t need fixing; he needed someone to sit on the dung pile and be sad with him.

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 at the foot of the Cross (John 19:25). She suffered together with him, refusing to avoid or escape.

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 – 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.

The joy of Easter Sunday indeed comes as promised – but often in ways that catch us by surprise. Intense sorrow is no obstacle to intense joy – 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 “ugly” human experiences that we’d 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.

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From Hiraeth to Hope: Healthy Grieving

A couple of years ago I stumbled upon a wonderful Welsh word: hiraeth. It’s one of those impossible-to-translate words. Hiraeth describes a nostalgic longing, a homesick yearning, a painful ache – perhaps for a homeland or an era that no longer exists. The Welsh are quite insistent that it means much more than mere nostalgia for past people or things or places. It wells up from deep within our hearts, and may include grieving over a past that never was or a future that could have been but is now impossible. It seems to seek a true homeland whose grasp is elusive, one that could never fully be attained or sustained in this life. In that regard, hiraeth and hope seem closely connected.

Hope is a God-given virtue that increases in us a deep desire for fulfillment in Christ’s Kingdom. Hope allows us to be aided by the Holy Spirit so that we can renounce self-reliance and place our trust entirely in Christ and his promises, which will never deceive or disappoint. For he is Truth itself.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 1818) describes hope as elevating and purifying our own yearnings for happiness, bringing them all into subjection to Christ and his Kingship, ordering them towards their true fulfillment. Hope liberates us from discouragement and sustains us when we feel alone and abandoned.

How do we move from hiraeth to hope?

I am convinced that the process involves healthy grieving of one kind or another. Jesus tells us that those who mourn are blessed, and that they will be comforted. Every tear will be wiped away. But we must first pass through the dark places of our heart, our valleys of tears – preferably with all earthly and heavenly helps at our disposal.

Hiraeth is described as bittersweet – and not merely because one had something happy that is now gone. There is so much more. I believe the bitter ache is welling up from a much deeper place in our heart, a dark valley that most of us fear and avoid. The sweetness is welling up from an even deeper place, a place beyond the valley of tears, where God whispers our true eternal identity in our  heart.

Ecclesiastes describes an appointed time for everything under heaven: a time to give birth and a time to die, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, etc. The author remarks that God has “placed the timeless into their hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Our deepest, truest self knows that all else is vanity and emptiness, and will pass away. That inevitable loss is sad indeed. But hope of our true destiny spurs us on, giving us the determination and the endurance that we need to pass through the valley of tears.

How do we grieve well? The ancients tell us that virtue is found in the middle course. One extreme is to be stuck in the past, paralyzed by nostalgia, incapable of letting go or moving on. At the opposite extreme some of us “rush ahead” into hope, pretending like everything is swell. In doing so, we are denying or minimizing our pain. It will come back with a vengeance. I think of the Pixar film Inside Out as a masterful illustration of our need for healthy grieving and the unhelpfulness of trying to mask over our pain with false joy or false hope.

Just as abiding in the Lord and bearing fruit is long and patient work, so also walking the path from hiraeth to hope will often be slow and arduous. It may require the hard work of clearing out obstacles or cooperating with God in removing toxic filth. It is not a “one and done” task. Therapists compare grieving with the process of peeling layers from an onion. We shed so many tears and receive so much healing that we think the process must surely be done now – only to discover more layers.

Our pain may come from various sources: death of loved ones, sudden tragedy, betrayal or victimization, childhood abuse or neglect, or the creeping realization of old age and human mortality. Often it is the oldest wounds, still unhealed, that cause the most pain. When we find ourselves “overreacting” to a situation in the present moment, it is likely a sign that the situation somehow poked at an old unhealed wound. Such moments are painful, but they are great opportunities to receive the healing balm of the Holy Spirit. Remember that “Christ” means “anointed one.” Therefore being a Christian means allowing ourselves to be anointed. Receiving ointment on unhealed wounds is painful, but is far better than leaving them to fester!

When life touches an old wound, rather than blame the person or situation that upset us, we can heed the invitation to return to the valley of tears. There we can receive strength and anointing from on high, which always happens so much better in healthy community than as an isolated individual. We can reach out to trusted friends, the godly people in our life who know better than to try to “fix” our problems, who will listen to us and give us the encouragement we need to persevere.

On this journey, I think of the wise men following the star together to Bethlehem. They experience a longing very akin to hiraeth. They don’t go it alone, but travel together. They are humble enough to seek and receive guidance from others. They support and encourage one another during their long trek. They have no idea where they are ultimately going, but they trust the deepest yearnings of their heart, and they recognize truth and goodness and beauty when they find it.

When it comes to healthy grieving, sojourning from hiraeth to hope, we very much need the support of others. In communion with them, we will be more open to receiving the healing balm of the Holy Spirit. We will be more disciplined in rooting out from the valley of tears the poisonous plants that block our path to our true homeland.

There are other hindrances and helps to consider. I’ll share more next time.

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