Friends lost a loved one this week, and the familiar feelings are all haunting me again. The vacancy, the hole. The impossibility that a person can be here one day, gone the next. It is a reality altered, our world unhinged. It is a great mystery of the universe, how a life can profoundly impact others so greatly, yet be gone in the blink of an eye.
It's been over two years since Liza passed. And yes, I am still processing her death. In our society I could be blamed for wallowing, but friends, our society isn't so good at grief.
A book I'm reading featured this quote.
"Healthy are those who mourn. Only very recently have we begun to realize that to deny grief is to deny a natural human function and that such denial sometimes produces dire consequences.
"Any event, any awareness that contains a sense of loss for you can, and should, be mourned. This doesn't mean a life of incessant sadness. It means being willing to admit to an honest feeling rather than always having to laugh off the pain. It's not only permissible to admit the sadness that accompanies loss - it's the healthy option."
- Donald L. Anderson, Better than Blessed
Sometimes when I read the Sermon on the Mount, it brings feelings of anger. "Blessed are those who mourn," Jesus said. Mourning doesn't feel like a blessing. It brings about some of the most painful feelings I have ever experienced. It has been one of the darkest seasons of my life.
It seems to be an essential part of the human experience, though. It is necessary in a fallen world where things are far less than ideal. So I'm clinging to the second part of the verse, "for they shall be comforted." Whether in this life or the next, I believe there is comfort for all who mourn. And that is worth holding onto.
1 comment:
The healthy are those that mourn part of the quote you shared placed near to blessed are those who mourn passage, caused me think of Sermon on the Mount verse in a new light for the first time. Perhaps it could be interpreted that unless one allows the painful pages of grief and mourning to be turned after the unmeasurable loss of a loved one, one cannot be comforted, one cannot process the pain of the loss, and one cannot move forward in life. Blessed - healthy - are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This perspective made the verse seem so different to me. It stopped feeling like it was saying "Blessed are those who have lost someone." Rather, in contrast to our culture's denial of mourning and distancing from the reality of death and grief, this verse could perhaps be interpreted as, "Dear ones, let grief happen as it needs to happen, because mourning is the only healthy, healing, helpful response to excruciating loss". In that light, the blessing would not be in having lost someone, but in daring to take the difficult path of mourning - the only path that allows for healing, comfort, and life after the very human experience of devastating lost.
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