On
separate occasions this week two friends asked me questions about how we were
doing as a family with our grief and how specifically our kids were handling
it.
One
friend was simply curious and concerned and wanted to know how we were doing;
the other also wanted to share some struggles his son is having since he just
lost a close teenage friend very suddenly.
As I
shared some reflections and answers to their questions it once again struck me
that we have some choices in “how we are doing”.
Anger
and bitterness are still very natural feelings that regularly come up for me,
and I am often keenly aware that I can “go there” easily and chose to remain
there, acting out from a place of extreme anger and bitterness over my
loss. In fact, I can easily extrapolate
these feelings and apply them to everything – because Daniel died, all kinds of
bad things have happened and are going to happen, and I am going to be “mad as
Hell” and on the warpath for a long, long time.
Or,
at least, that seems to be the strange slippery slope that sits before me and
beckons me forward much of the time.
On the
other hand, I also find that I can have deep feelings of compassion and caring for
other people as a result of the intense pain I have felt and that I continue to
feel. Yesterday when my friend shared
the story of his 18 year old son learning recently that his close friend had
died suddenly, I felt genuine empathy for what this kid and his friends are
going through and shared some observations about how my two teenage children have
dealt with and are dealing with the loss of their brother.
Thankfully,
right now it seems like our family is primarily on the caring and compassionate
side of this scale, though I am sure we all each struggle with the anger and
bitterness options more than we let on to each other.
These
choices seem very real to me and I pray that we choose to find ways to express
the care and compassion that can take hold of our hearts if we lean in that direction.
God: help us to choose well!
Funny, interesting, cool are my three choices for comments below your post. Need more. I thank God you are in my life. I doubt, often, if I can feel as deeply as you do about anything. Praying for you this holiday week, since we won't meet.
ReplyDeleteThanks Kevin. I appreciate your thoughts, prayers, and presence in my life as well. I am not sure if I feel any more deeply, though I do seem fixated on figuring out what these feelings are and how to channel them in some direction.
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