TheAfterSermon – week 10:

Grief is a crazy companion, sometimes comforting, even refreshing.

Then, it will rip you apart.

When preoccupied, it can go away briefly, go into hiding and you can live, ever so briefly, as if you have never lost anyone or anything.

Then, out of nowhere, it will hit like a ton of bricks, playing its twisted game of hide-and-seek.

Believe it or not, grief has your best interests at heart.

It will do its work to revive yours, as battered and broken as your heart may be.

Let grief do its work as best you are able: its painful, beautiful, inner work. Allow it free-range. Full access. As it does its slow, deliberate, detailed work, you will continue to become even more beautiful than you already are.

That’s what it does: it turns hurting people into human agents of incredible understanding and grace – if you let it.

Your heart may be broken.

Your life may feel hopeless, but grief will ultimately deliver you to a hopeful destination and hope and courage will be yours again.

If you let it.

Try to get out of grief’s way. Allow silence. Allow yourself stop-and-think time. Allow yourself to remember. Play the music that may be painful to hear. Go to the places you are avoiding. Look at pictures, play the saved voicemails.

Watch the home movies.

Do these things when you are ready to do them.

You will know better than anyone when you are ready.

You may fall apart at first when you venture into the things you have been avoiding, but it is all part of getting ready to fall together.

Allow yourself speak-to-a-trusted-friend time.

Cry, write, read. Be angry if necessary.

Grief labors long over its ever-incomplete healing work.

Accommodation is possible. A full life is possible. But, keep in mind, the vacuum left by some loss is never filled, some losses are beyond healing.

It is natural to want to rush grief and to want all pain to be gone.

Who cannot want pain to be gone?

But, it is a crazy and unruly companion.

Grief breaks out at the most unexpected times.

Rushing grief, hurrying its work, will lodge pain even deeper into the soul only to later manifest as some unwanted reaction or unfamiliar emotion.

No matter how recent or distant your loss, welcome the tears.

Let grief’s first agents, first responders, flow.

“Time heals,” clangs the cliche.

Time doesn’t heal, not usually, not by itself. Time is time.

Time passed is not grief diminished.

There are some losses that are never “healed.”

Some never find “closure.”

This does not mean survivors cannot live full, productive, beautiful lives.

Warmth, two listening ears, and hot cups of tea accompanied by face-to-face-no-phones hours may be the most powerful gifts a person can offer one who has suffered.

It is ridiculous to approach a grieving person with a step-by-step generic packaged get-over-your-grief formula.

“What shall I do with this grief?” she asked, having lost so much, one thing on top of another, more than enough loss for many in a lifetime.

You shall sit with it.

Embrace it.

“What shall I do with the pain, the gaping hole in my chest, a wound in my soul, my very being?” he asks after losing his life-partner.

As difficult as that may sound, you will let it do its work.

You will go into survival-mode. Operate on automatic.

Auto-pilot.

Then, you will arrange your life around it, at least for a while.

“But, I do not want this, the anguish, this disorientation.”

Nobody does.

It is always an uninvited guest.

Crazy, unruly grief will do its work and you will emerge as gold.

You will know remarkable intuition and offer presence to others in ways now unimagined despite it being a path that you’d never have chosen.

The power of grief should never be downplayed or underestimated.

Grief is a private journey.

Don’t mess with it, not in yourself or in others.

It’s a crazy, unruly, companion.

Rev. Rod Smith is pastor at First Presbyterian Church in New Castle.

There’s a common denominator in all of your relationships: it’s you. I am the common denominator in all my relationships. This obvious truth is hidden from some, and an even startling truth when discovered for others.

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” a client might say. “Are you sure?” another may question, as if this is some form of heresy. Yes. I’m sure. And, the realization and embracing of this fundamental truth – and doing something about it- is yet another means of taking personal responsibility for our lives.

I have no doubt this is a monumental burden for some when understood, and, nothing within me wants to “blame the victim.” There are groups and individuals so downtrodden and so “owned,” that such thinking seems impossible and such thinking may be considered blasphemous. I grieve when encountering such individuals and groups. A flame burns brighter in the one who sees this invaluable nugget. It may take a while for it to become a fully fledged sustaining fire.

But, it will. Usually. At the core you (and I) will be even more beautiful than we already are (yes, all humans are beautiful) when we see and embrace the fact that we are each the common denominator in all our relationships.

Babies bring cataclysmic shifts to families. 

Hours after my son Thulani was born I knew I would choose a grandmother for him.

I called my friend Judy from the hospital very early in the morning of the baby’s first full day and informed her I had chosen to adopt a baby and that I would like her to be his grandmother.

Judy was an outspoken member of the church and whom I had gotten to know well through the death of her beloved husband. She would freely recount how I had deeply angered her when I asked her if she was ready to bid her beloved Dick goodbye as he approached death. 

Within days we buried him.

My “insensitive” question at the hospital was what she said she really needed to hear. Judy would usually then proceed to brag that she was the only “no vote” when the congregation made the decision to “import” me from South Africa.

“There’s no one here in the USA? We have to bring an African, really?”

Soon after my early morning call Judy marched into the hospital ward, sat, motioned for the baby, held him, embraced and welcomed him. 

“I’ll be Nana Judy,” she said, then shifted into action. Hand outstretched for my house keys she asked which bedroom would become the nursery.

Within hours it was.

Nana, propelled by an eight pound baby, could make things happen.

Teaching and encouraging children to speak up and to speak out and to voice their likes, dislikes and opinions, and to do so from a young age, will make a remarkable difference to a young life. Please, let the days when children were “seen and not heard” be gone.

Of course, if it is you, the parents who are encouraging a child to speak up, the child will also do so with you. This is something you want. It may not always feel comfortable or convenient but you are teaching an amazing and wonderful life skill to be used for the long haul. Learning to speak up and to speak out, to “self-advocate,” is a good thing for many reasons.

If your child can speak up to you, resist you, discuss matters with you, debate with you, he or she will be able to do so with anyone and will go through life unintimidated. Surely, you, the parents, want this? Helping a child find his or her voice – the ability to articulate wants, thoughts, what he or she sees, feels, and what he or she doesn’t want, think, sees, or feels is at least as important as being able to read, write and count.

It’s a gift of pure gold.

When men and women allow another to come close and then have expressed their deepest thoughts, I have discovered a few common fears. I have identified them within myself and in extended moments of vulnerability I shared with others:

The fear of exposure, of being discovered as a fraud, fake, failure who has been able to masquerade successes. The fear of abandonment, of discovering no one stayed or remained faithful to friendships, to the continued enjoyment of familial connections, formal and informal. The fear of aloneness, discovering there is no-one in your circle, your corner, there is no-one on your team. The fear of total dependence, discovering you are in the hands of strangers, helpers who talk loudly, speak in commands; regard you as needy flesh, a man or woman without a story, without a rich history. The fear of unfinished business, the inability or lack of opportunity to find completion, to close the circle, to express regrets, to ask for forgiveness; to be surrounded by people for whom being right, being correct trumps being reconconcialtory or expressing mercy.

You and I, dear reader, can be the antidote to those who harbor such fears, and offer mercy and kindness in places where there sometimes appears to be an absence of both.

When writing about anxiety (yesterday) I suggested taking time to “write yourself” to the source of your anxieties, to use paper and pencil to “deliver” you to its origins. The free flow of words that may lead you inward, offer insight into your fragility, shed light on your amazing strengths, uncover your undermining uncertainties.

Notice, there’s no technology involved. No computer, no phone. I’m asking you to dive inward into yourself, not into the web. I know this is countercultural for those who are rushing through life, seeking the next experience, chasing “likes.” It’s also counter-cultural for those who believe the solution is imported, downloaded, rather than latent, already within. Searching for something “out there” can exacerbate the very anxiety you seek to lessen and harness.

It takes time to build upon the words and make them into sentences, then paragraphs that will lead you to important crossroads of your history. Go there. It’ll be tough. Painful. But, it may also be freeing. You don’t have to be a writer to do this. Just put one word in front of the other until you have a sentence, then sentences and paragraphs which will deliver you to the core of your being, a beautiful place, I bet, if you get yourself out of the way, let the words take you where they know they need to go.

Chronic anxiety, the persistent form that cripples day-to-day functioning and is not “pinnable” on a specific situation, requires professional help. Seek it out. That said, there are a few simple  – I did not say easy – strategies to combat distressing levels of anxiety as described in yesterday’s column. 

• Do a little personal searching. I think of it as an “internal google” search. Take time aside and with pencil and paper in hand, ask and answer the questions: “Where is this worrying coming from?  When did it begin? If it was a river, where is its source?” Fill pages with the thoughts that follow. There is no quick fix to lurking anxieties. Writing them down and answering the questions will expose their identity and potentially loosen their hold.

• Write down the cut-offs in your life. Who in your family is estranged from you and what are the reasons as you see them? This is not a call to judgement. Look not for whom is to blame. Write down the cut-offs and the logic or lack of logic behind the cut-offs and some of the anxiety you feel is likely to loosen and lessen. We are designed to be in groups, packs which we call families. When the pack is disturbed the individual is too.

There are several expressions of anxiety and some which I am sure you will recognize. 

Your bank app is showing a depleting balance. Pay day is a stretch away. You feel a sweep of worry run through you. Your mind hovers over a few possibilities. You recall another source of income. Anxious feelings dissipate. 

This situational anxiety is “normal.”

You haven’t heard from your adult daughter for a few days. She usually is in constant contact. She texts. She calls. You know things are not going well for her at work. There are a few unusual pressures on her marriage even though she has not told you or shared any details. 

Worrying about her is starting to get in your way. You can’t think about too much without thoughts of her well being wanting to invade your thoughts. You text her. She calls you back. Everything seems fine. This anxiety is born of familial connection. 

Your actions have taken care of it. You can get back to your life. 

Some people are worried for no apparent reason. It is like an anchor around the heart. Needs are met. They have enough. But anxiety, from an unidentifiable source, is crippling.

This is chronic anxiety.

This requires professional help.

When the unexpected occurs, things you’d prefer to avoid; self-, other-, or life-inflicted, take a minute or an hour or a month if necessary to:

• Remind yourself that life itself has spent a lifetime preparing you for this. You’ve run versions of this track before. You have what it takes. You are probably stronger, more resilient than you may feel most of the time. No one is strong all the time. It’s rare to be weak all the time. Courage ebbs and flows.
• You’ve had a lot of practice facing adversity and all of the opportunities were rehearsals for the next one. You’re more skilled, self-aware, experienced than you’ve ever been. A little distance, a lot of patience, a load of listening, a truckload of grace for yourself and others will get you through this. Take time to replenish supplies of goodness and grace.
• You’re not who you were, you’re not who you will be, you will emerge with new learnings, renewed, replenished grace. Give yourself room to receive divine grace and you’ll be unrecognizable to others and yourself. Everything can be faced without returning evil for evil, wishing ill on another, and without carrying a sense of entitlement or a desire for revenge. Peace is possible, no matter what or who you face.

I know it’s hard to believe but in March 2022 I will have been published each weekday in your newspaper for 21 years. To date I have written 7500 columns for The Mercury. There have been a handful of times when I have been traveling or out of WiFi range that very kind editors have re-published a column but, in the main, you have become part of my daily routine and I have loved it.

I especially appreciate readers who have followed my work from the beginning. Some readers have created scrapbooks of my columns and, while I am flattered, you indeed have more of my work collected than I do. The absolute truth is that this daily exercise in writing about relationships, mental health, emotional wellness has kept me growing (hopefully) and relatively sane (hopefully).

I know I am repeating an old theme but this column may indeed have helped you or inspired you but I am my first reader. The issues I write about are the ones I am seeing face-to-face in clients and meeting face-to-face within my own journey. Thank you for your faithfulness.

I am planning (tentatively, cautiously) a trip to KZN in March, 2022. Let’s get to scheduling.