Holidays and Grief – Emmanuel Comes

The past week has been challenging for me due to illness. In addition, the holidays are here and so is grief for me and many people. My grief is the loss of my marriage. My friend lost his daughter to brain cancer. People have lost jobs, family members, friends, and ways of living. Grief, loss, death, stops for no one just because a holiday arrives.

My friend David, who lost his daughter, said he is going to do his best to be happy during the holiday. His attitude humbles me. I told him I wasn’t trying to be happy, just trying to get through them and get them over. That is what most of us do when we grieve and yet also need attend holiday or festive gatherings.

What is powerful in the Christian tradition at this time of year however, is that we celebrate God coming to us in the middle of it all. God comes to us in the middle of the muckety muck of life. The coming we celebrate is different than was expected in Joseph and Mary’s time. The expectation of a “messiah” was one who would deliver. Jesus came to be with us to help us through our challenges. We’re not being rescued in other words.

Darn. Sometimes we just want to be rescued. We want someone or something to just take away the pain. We want the grief to go away. Yet, when we lose someone, we always carry with us those memories of joyous times past. We know that no one can rescue us from the pain we suffer. We suffer because no more memories will be made with that person. For those losing a job, it means starting over. For the newly disabled, it is learning to live with physical limitations that can affect self-worth.

When the holidays or a celebration arrives that a grieving person is expected to attend, sometimes the grief seems even larger; maybe even formidable. The grief feels larger because of the person missing, but also because we know others will expect the griever to be happy. Grief is not something easily stuffed down into a person’s heart and soul. When grief is stuffed, it can become a health hazard mentally and physically. What can we do to survive the holidays while grieving and also wanting (or trying) to be present for others still here?

The first thing is to be real and be truthful. When asked how one is doing, perhaps a response like “still hanging in there” is a good response. That is truthful for me while trying to accept where I am, but also trying to move forward. There’s a word that I’m looking for that is not “happy” or “joy”, but is related to love.

This morning as I sat in my meditative time, my soul suddenly said, “I love my life.” When I lived with my ex-wife, my heart and soul said that all the time. That has bubbled up in this new place and I’ve wondered about it. When that happens, does it mean I wasn’t truly happy in my former life in Sylva? Of course not. Perhaps “gladness” is the word for which I search. It’s not as exuberant to me as “happy” or “joy”.

All during this trying time, God has sent me messages about my being loved. Whether through dear friends, family, church, or my devotionals, the message is always the same. God loves you and you are not alone. This is the Christmas message. This is the message we celebrate in one called Emmanuel. Emmanuel means “God with us” and isn’t that the message of the entirety of scripture? That no matter where we go or what happens to us, God IS WITH US. We are not alone in our grief, loss, and sadness, no matter if it is a celebratory day or an ordinary day.

How can I love my life while grieving? I’ve asked myself that all these months. At first, that blossoming of that soul phrase made me feel guilty; perhaps my love was faulty in my relationship. Yet, we all have room to grow when it comes to loving another. At the same time, I loved my wife with all of my heart. As I continued to question what it meant for my soul to now exclaim “I love my life”, I began to see the beauty in my life in spite of the loss.

Yes, I have lost life as I knew it and had to move to a different town. However, God is still with me. When I lived in Spirit of the Mountain Lodge, God was there. My music, family, and friends still loved me. My dog always loves me of course (that’s why many believe the dog is most like God). These are all wonderful and beautiful gifts given to me and I am most glad to have them in my life. I did not lose all of that love and beauty by losing my wife.

“These three things remain; faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of these is love.”  1 Corinthians 13 (my summary)

No matter what we go through: faith, hope, and love remain. Love is the greatest because it always changes one for the better. My wife’s feelings changed for me. While that is heartbreaking, she loved me well when we were together. On some level, she still loves me now. The real thing that matters however is that I still have those eleven years of love. Part of the grief is that the love we have for each other will change. Yet, even then, all the love that came before changed me into a better and more loving person. My life is better now because I was loved then.

“There are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness; facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.”   

~BRENÉ BROWN

God’s message to me during my devotion time today was so powerful that I could see that even though it feels like I’ve failed at marriage, I am still enough. I put on my “BE” shirt today. My counselor has been encouraging me to “love myself” and that’s something that has always been hard and a bit confusing for me. Yet, with the message from scriptures today and my soul’s comment, I think I get it.

I am enough for God. God uses the weak, broken-hearted, the down trodden. When we look at the life of scripture and those lifted up as great in church history, we see time and again that God uses the ordinary to create the extraordinary. God is that powerful. God can use someone like me. Like Moses. Like Paul. Like Mary. God can create an extraordinary miracle of love, even in someone as small and ordinary as a baby, like Jesus.

 

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Helpful books during a time of crisis:

Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW , Braving the Wilderness

Pema Chödrön, Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better

Photo Journey

Photo journey is my story in pictures and song. I chose the music because of the mood it sets. Because the trip was odd, I also liked that I can understand some of the language and some of it is still a mystery to me. Love is always a mystery. These photos are not about photography but about a mood landscape if you will.

 

Presence, the Red Lamp

Presence, the Red Lamp is from Robin’s poetry book “More Than Knowing”

In early morning light, I see
red glowing up the hill,
shiny bright light glows in the brown of the wood,
shining eternal light of God down the mountain to my home?
I look closer to see sunlight
flow through red water-food for hummingbirds.
I remember the homeless poem
I promised to write.

Public Domain by Leroy Skalstad

How the homeless haunt me;
the man sitting in the rain in a park in Charlotte.
He was an attorney who lost his family someone said.
Rain fell a sheet of gray wetness one morning
as he sat on the bench in the park
beside of my office.
The morning was cold,
I took him my rainbow-colored umbrella.
Large canopy of color in my hand,
I said, “Here this is for you,” and he looked blankly
at me, but took the umbrella.
“Don’t give them money,” the dictum of all city dwellers.
Instead, I gave him my umbrella
little comfort to me.
What happened to him? To his family? What gray day destroyed him?
At the end of the day,
when the rain had stopped and the sun began to shine,
outside my office door leaned the umbrella gently in a corner.
The homeless man nowhere to be seen.
A colorful yet silent thankfulness
dripping wet in the corner.

The homeless are nameless birds
roosting on our corners,
sleeping on park benches, streets, sidewalks, warm doorways.
Relatives by loss and often mental illness,
they are connected by a cardboard sign
and some same black magic marker.
Who gives the marker?
Odd questions always come at the wrong time.

Public Domain by Leroy Skalstad

Once I knew her name, for she lived on my street
or nearby in the woods where rapes happened.
She had multiple personalities
that she argued with as she walked by my cozy house.
Once, after a stint in jail,
she was lucid and clearly intelligent.
She was forced to take her meds there.
The officer said she would be fine
if she could just stay on her meds,
but they are expensive and
how do the homeless get prescription cards?
The last I saw her she was arguing with her other personality,
the one who was belligerent,
“Why didn’t you take that sandwich she offered? I’m hungry!”
“I asked for money and I want money!”
One Christmas I gave her a small token gift,
wrapped in pretty paper with a bow.
As I write, I know it was more for me than her.
She still was gracious and kindly thanked me.
As she walked into the dark woods,
she celebrated the shiny bow
as precious.

Beauty,
a gift given in nature
by light, trees, water.
We celebrate these beautiful things,
these places that are the wild
where our homeless live.

In Columbia, South Carolina,
there once was a river city of homeless.
Their cardboard houses were constantly taken down.
The average homeless person walks ten miles a day.
Nobody wants them.
Keep them out of the neighborhood
away from the rivers and bridges.
That is not my daughter, sister, mother.
Not my brother, son, father.

Mother Teresa said that when we look in another’s face,
we see Christ.
Presence.
The red lamp in the church is
about the presence of God
shining light into our dark places.
We always have hope.
Even if we are Christ of the homeless,
Christ’s face is homeless.

You
too could be homeless
or light.
You are the light of presence.
Red light shining down
love,
kindness, a meal.
Bread of life.
Tabernacle of the holy.
Feed the birds.
Shine your light.
The hope is you.

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As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Luke 9:57-58 NRSV