"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted"
One of the greatest needs in western civilization is to come to grips with loss, pain, grief, and tragedy in our lives. We would just rather take a pill. We don't want to confront these difficult things, and so we miss the blessed life. Jesus says that we live in a sinful world and we will have loss and grief. We must learn how to process pain or we will forever be crippled by it. We cannot deny that these sorrowful things happened to us.
We must admit that this loss has happened to us. We must admit that it is painful and sorrowful. We must give ourselves the freedom to plumb the depths of our pain and sorrow. We must also get the pain out through talking, writing, singing, screaming, shouting, etc. Pain that is felt but left in the soul has not been processed.
I had a man come up to me the other day and ask me how to process pain. I said that you must talk about it with those you love and those who would understand and those who are willing to listen to you. You have to let the loss trigger all the deep feelings. You must gain a new perspective on why these things happened. I told him that you may need to write about it or in various ways bring the pain out. Sometimes the simple process of allowing yourself to cry and convulse about the loss helps and brings the pain from the inside to the outside.
A part of mourning is waiting for the new beginning. A loss is always difficult and makes us want to go back to the time before the pain, before the loss, before the sorrow. But in many cases we cannot go back, which is what makes the pain so deep. With each loss there is the possibility of a new beginning, but there is a waiting period before the new beginning starts. It is this waiting period that is difficult. Nothing is happening. We are expected to learn new habits, gain new wisdom, and grow in new directions so that the new beginning can take place. We need to be alert to the lessons and insights that God is trying to give us during this time or we may miss the new beginning.
There is a third phase of good mourning – the time of new beginning. This is when the new thing is starting but is not yet fully developed. One must make sure that the new thing is not despised because of the memory of the old. Surely when the new is starting it will not be as wonderful as the old thing which was fully developed. But the new beginning has the potential of being even more blessed if you will not kill it with a desire for it to be fully formed or to be just like the previous thing.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz