Category: Grieving

The great question: What does God expect of me?

Micah 6:8 The Message
8 But he’s already made it plain how to live, what to do,
what GOD is looking for in men and women.
It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don’t take yourself too seriously—
take God seriously.

Micah 6:8 New King James Version
8 He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love [a]mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

Charles Spurgeon was a 19th century preacher with gifted insight and talent for expressing spiritual thought in words that prick the heart and soul. Here are his notes on the Great Requirement from the Spurgeon Study Bible.

Walking with God denotes an active habit, a communion in the common movements of the day. Some bow humbly before God In The Hour of Prayer, others sit humbly in His presence at the time of meditation and others work themselves up to draw near to God in seasons of religious excitement; but all these fall short of Walking with God. Walking is a common pace and ordinary rate of progress and it does not seem to require great effort. But then it is a practical working pace, a rate at which one can continue on and on and make a Day’s Journey by the time the sun is down. So walking with God means being with God always. Being with him in common things; being with him on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, as well as on the Sabbath. It means being with Him in the shop, with Him in the kitchen, with Him in the field feeling His presence in buying and selling and weighing and measuring, in plowing and reaping doing as for the Lord the most common acts of life. Then comes in the qualifying word of “humbly”. When our walk with God is closest and clearest, we must be overwhelmed with adoring Wonder at the condescension that permits us to think of speaking with the Eternal One. To this reverence must be added as a constant sense of dependence, walking humbly with God in the sense of daily drawing all supplies from Him and gratefully admitting that it is so. We are never to indulge a thought of independence from God as if we were anything or could do anything apart from Him. Walking humbly with God involves a profound respect for His will and a glad submission to it, yielding both active obedience and passive submission. Humble walking with God cries undercutting afflictions, “It is the Lord let Him do what seems good to Him.” When the Lord bids me serve Him I must plead for Grace to run in the ways of his Commandments and when the Lord chastens me I must beg for patience to endure His appointments. Walking humbly with God implies all this and much more. May the Holy Spirit teach us what a broken and contrite spirit means and keep us always low before the Lord. The practical result of all of this inward humbling will be an acting toward others and a moving in all matters as under the influence of a humble spirit.

I trust this inspires thoughts that are of value to you in your quest to master discipleship in Jesus Christ.

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Matthew 7:13-14 (NKJV) The Narrow Way
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Our congregation’s priest was being retired and there were no possible replacements that we saw on the horizon. Then, God who works many a blessed surprise “brought” a servant from Germany along with his family to our community. He was being assigned for two years by his employer. He became our priest and served us with love and joy.

Early in his time with us, he confided in me that he was concerned about his lack of English vocabulary and hoped that he would not make a mistake in language that would offend someone in the congregation.

I assured him that the Holy Spirit would guide him through every service but if he had any reservations, I offered my help with words. After all, he understood that words can have multiple meanings and can easily be misinterpreted.

Each Sunday morning I prayed for him specifically for his serving, knowing his concerns regarding his choice of words.

As the sermon unfolded, I sensed our priest leading up to the Bible passage above regarding the “narrow way” that leads to life. But as the words flowed, instead of using the word “narrow” he used the word “corridor”. My heart leapt as I took in that word in the context of the biblical passage. I was mesmerized by a whole new perspective on that passage. A passage I had used many times in my own years of serving sermons at the altar. Now in my mid-seventies, God speaks a whole new way to see that age-old passage.

In my business as an engineer, our company serves primarily hospitals and schools. We take their old threadbare drawings and convert them into computerized electronic drawings. These drawings for both schools and hospitals have countless corridors on their drawings of floor plans. These corridors gave a new view of the “narrow way”.

The term “narrow way” implies a restriction, a limitation on one’s freedom; an assault on our ability to go where we want to go and a real inconvenience. Such negative feels are highlighted in the bible passage that indicates that the more popular way is the wide one.

As I considered the opportunities offered by the concept of corridors, I realized the following observations.

In a school setting the corridors lead to numerous classrooms. Each offering a differing set of knowledge and teachings. Laboratories offer an opportunity to learn by means of experimentation. Seeing firsthand how one thing leads to another.

Another room teaches geography wherein we learn about places far different from our own local experience. Each room offers new opportunity to grow in wisdom and understanding.

In the hospital setting, corridors lead to rooms where illnesses are diagnosed, where equipment is available to see beyond the human eye, and where there are instruments that reveal symptoms of serious illness. Still other rooms are there for surgery, recovery, rehabilitation, and therapeutic equipment.

I invite you my readers, to customize these seedling thoughts of mine to expand how the “corridor” perspective can illuminate the ‘narrow ways’ that you experience in your life. I see a whole plethora of spiritual views hereto for unexplored. I wonder what fascinating revelations our God will open to you.

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Since I started writing about grieving, I have been finding very powerful and new to me information on how to master the art of grieving. As noted before, grieving is a very personal journey, none are like any other because the relationship between two people is unique. The deeply personal experiences can never be fully appreciated by anyone else, no matter how one might try. It is best to accept that and find peace, comfort and even joy in maintaining a connection with a loved one who has passed on. My previous writings on this subject provide a plethora of different ways to perceive one’s grieving. It is like looking through a prism and seeing a wealth of opportunity from what was invisible before we peered through such a looking glass. 

Here is yet another perspective that I will be adding to as new visions find their way into my life. I gave this a title, and without a known author, I will offer it as from Anonymous.

WISDOM FOUND

I had my own notion of grief.
I thought it was a sad time
that followed the death of
someone you love.
And you had to push through it
to get to the other side.
But I’m learning there is no other side.
There is no pushing through.
But rather,
there is absorption.
Adjustment.
Acceptance.
And grief is not something you complete,
but rather, you endure.
Grief is not a task to finish
And move on,
But an element of yourself –

– Anonymous

 

 

As life experiences unfold before my eyes each day, and as dear friends pass on, my learning more and more the fine art of grieving continues to present new ways to experience this most inescapable and profound emotional and spiritual personal perspective. Since the passing on of someone who meant the world to us is uniquely individualistic, I find that the more ways to view such can enable more and more souls to find a measure of comfort in one or more perspectives I have inserted into my grieving posts. Hence, I have become sensitized and watchful for any new visions, thoughts or words that may be helpful to those who might read my posts.

Recently and unexpectedly, a dear friend showed me a poem by Henry Van Dyke that spoke to me and perchance it may also touch your grieving heart and provide a measure of comfort. For me the maritime theme/metaphor connected me to the calming that the eternal endlessness and constancy of the sea has always provided.

I call this poem “GONE?” as the author (or my source) had no title:

GONE?

I am standing upon the seashore. 
A ship at my side spreads her white sails
to the morning breeze and
starts for the blue ocean.
She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky
come to mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says: 
“There, she’s gone!”

“Gone where?”

Gone from my sight. That is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and she is just as able to bear the load
of living freight to her destined port.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says:
“There, she’s gone!”
There are other eyes watching her coming,
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout:

“Here she comes!”

And that is dying . . . 

-Henry Van Dyke

And till at last we meet again . . . 

New perspectives on the process of grieving continue to surface even as I continue my personal journey through grief. Recently I came across this image of a statue created by Albert György.

The artwork is called Melancholy by Albert György and is on display in Geneva, Switzerland) Read more about the piece and artist here: https://totallybuffalo.com/a-sculpture-that-creates-intense-emotion/

This sculpture profoundly depicts the feeling of emptiness when someone huge in our life dies. The apparent loss is so big, it leaves a sense of emptiness that defies description. I have known that feeling. But I have also learned how to fill that empty whole in my being. It is that knowledge that I hope to convey and share with you my readers. It is my sincere hope, that with my experience, you can find some measure of comfort and some path for filling the emptiness in your heart from your loss.

The first step I have found is to develop a firm belief in the afterlife. This is essential to form a bedrock of hope that the painful separation is not eternal. On this corner stone, a structure can be built with the capacity to provide an authentic comfort in grieving. In fact, it can lead to a depth of appreciation for grief itself.

Once you can extricate yourself from the sadness associated with the painful feeling for the soul deceased, you can begin to work on your feelings of loss and the emptiness that follows.

The next step is to reshape your perspective. I discovered this when a grieving father gave his eulogy for his teenage daughter who had died. He eloquently shared all the things his daughter “passed on” to him that he treasured. He explained that seeing death as “passing on” instead of “passing away” provides a different perspective. I found this to be profound.

Exploring this new perspective, I realized that the “passing away” view produced an implication of the person leaving you, and progressively moving further away each day. Such a view deepens one’s sense of loss. On the contrary, the “passing on” view opens the way to focus on all the wonderfully valuable assets the deceased gave you in life, thereby keeping them close and “alive” in your life.

This is where “prism viewing” comes into the process. Simply stated, prism viewing means looking at life through a specific prism, as with physical prism that reveals the beautiful colors that compose white, invisible light. When I choose to view my loss through the prism of “passing away”, I will see all the reasons why I am losing that person and it intensifies my emptiness. But if I choose the prism of “passing on”, I see and remember all the precious treasured gifts that life with that person gave to me. The emptiness begins to be filled with those treasures. Emptiness is relieved and joy can fill the void.

Every person in your life that precedes you in death, has left you with treasured experiences and memories. Prism viewing helps you remember them. These have been termed “collateral beauty”. A movie of the same name provided a fascinating perspective on this aspect of loss.

I found however, that the most potent positive vision of grieving is what I gleaned from a television show. The show is a drama that takes place in a fictitious hospital emergency room. Code Black is the term for a situation when an emergency room is overwhelmed with critical patients. The resources of equipment and personnel have become insufficient to handle the circumstances.

In one episode, the ER’s lead doctor is speaking to a patient who is not severely injured. He is a psychologist. The doctor is grieving continually for years since a car accident took the lives of her two children.  The patient, with his extensive training and experiences sees her grieving heart. He offers to help her, but she adamantly refuses his offer to help her overcome her grief. She tells him why.

“My grieving is for me the profound evidence that I have deeply loved, and I have been deeply loved. No one will ever take that precious gift away from me. Never.”

That statement opened a very interesting viewpoint for me. It prompted many hours of meditation and deliberation. I concluded, that there was much truth in the following statement.

This love that you shared with the person who passed on does not have the capacity to die. It lives on and there is a place for it to go. It is shared with that person every moment you recall the treasures you shared in life. It revives that feeling of friendship and love that made your life together so special, so important, so blessed.

The love of grief has the power to fill the emptiness and help looking forward to newly resurrected memories from a life well lived and a love deeply shared.

To my readers, I hope these thoughts can help you fill that empty space you feel. I pray that God will open your memories and reveal the many forgotten treasures your loved on passed on to you.

COPYRIGHT © 2018 ALLAN MUSTERER all Rights Reserved

The great inevitable in life is the experience of losing someone you have deeply loved. Sooner or later, this event enters our life. It is feared and dreaded by most because it is so final. When it suddenly or slowly becomes our reality, it brings with it intense pain and suffering. So much so that it has the potential to be utterly debilitating. The action that follows is our grieving.

Grieving can take on many forms. Crying, withdrawing, anger, resentment, and many more forms too numerous to mention. But what I have discovered in my life of grieving is that despite the utter sense of devastating personal loss, there can be a shining light of hope and comfort. It is that light and the comfort it brings that I want to share with my readers.

Years ago, I read a book entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor E. Frankl. As a psychiatrist thrust into the hell of Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II, Frankl found himself positioned in a unique moment in time for observation. He discovered that if a person can find meaning in the circumstances they are in, no matter how horrid, they can and will survive. Meaning provides a means to find that light beam of hope that comforts the grieving heart.

I began my “search for meaning” of the grief that grips my heart and mind with an interesting note that was recently posted on social media. I found this to be a good starting point in my search.

So, grief is really our love. The love we shared with the one whose death has instigated this grieving was the evidence that we loved and were loved. This is quite profound. I once watched a television show that was based on an extraordinarily busy emergency room in a large city. The head doctor was speaking to a patient who perceived the doctor’s underlying grieving. He wanted to help the doctor and in his thoughts, remove the grieving. Her response was epic.

She said, “I never want to escape my grieving because it is a constant reminder that I have deeply loved, and I have been deeply loved. No, I will never let my grieving go.”

Hearing that was very touching to me. I stopped the recording, back tracked, and replayed it repeatedly. It spoke to me, and added value and understanding to my own grieving. This led me to another statement of grief.

For me, I took issue with one part of this statement. For me, when I came to embrace my grief, like that doctor, it is a place I wanted to stay. Because now my grief no longer brought those negatives of withdrawal, anger, etc. Now my grief was that constant reminder of the treasure of loving and being loved by someone very special and important to me.

So how could I go about cementing the positives of grief into my soul? I was invited to the funeral of a young girl I did not know. I knew her mother, and other relatives. I attended the funeral and found a real treasure for perceiving my grief. The father of the deceased teenager spoke and as a preamble to his eulogy he said, “When someone dies, people say that they “passed away.” Where I come from however, people say that they “passed on” and I want to share with you what my daughter “passed on” to me!”

His statement struck a tender chord in my soul. It burrowed deep into my heart as this grieving father eloquently spoke of all the gifts his daughter gave him during their short life together. Following the funeral, I pondered this perspective for days. I began to realize that this was a critical component of embracing the blessing of grieving. I thought of the motto of Garden of Innocence, “If no one grieves, no one will remember.”  I realized that focusing on what my dear one passed on to me I had a bridge for keeping them alive in my memory. Never forgotten, they continued to give me what they so graciously bestowed upon me in life.

Further consideration of this “passing on” vision brought the thought that “passing away” implies that our loved one was moving away from us, farther and farther away each day. But “passing on” implies a continuation of their presence in my life, a living relationship as I named the gifts they gave me. This evoked a sense of comfort amid my grief.

Grieving was not a constant feeling I discovered. Rather it was like the ocean, it came in waves. And the intensity varied, triggered by special moments and events in history. A birthday, an anniversary, a graduation, a marriage along with many other moments triggered the sense of loss. Like waves at the beach, if you are not looking for them they will knock you off your feet, tumble you under the water and fill your pants with sand. If you have ever experienced that you’ll know how miserable it can make you. So, what are we to do? There is a solution that I have found that works for me. I call it “Prism Vision”.

Simply put, prism vision is looking at circumstances in life through a prism that, under your control determines what you see. When I found myself unprepared for the waves of grief, I chose to peer through the prism of “Collateral Beauty”.  “How does that work?” you ask?

A prism has the characteristic of taking white, invisible light and, as it passes through the prism, breaks it up into all its component colors. In other words, it reveals what hereto for was hidden, invisible. So when I used the prism of collateral beauty, in the sudden onslaught of unexpected intense grief, it revealed the hidden beauty of the relationship I enjoyed with the one who passed on.

Allow me to give an example too illustrate just how this works.

I was drowned in work and activities during an extraordinarily busy week. The many things and events that filled my week consumed my undivided attention. I had little time to think of anything else but what was on my plate that week. Sunday arrived and my wife and I headed off to church. When I arrived, I looked at my phone to turn it off and suddenly realized it was the anniversary of the passing on of a very special friend, one who means so much to me. A tidal wave of grief crashed over me. I fought to hold back tears as deep feelings squeezed my inner parts and a huge lump found its way into my throat evoking pain. I felt empty with every part of me aching.

Then I peered through my collateral beauty prism and bigger waves of remembered special moments shared with my friend loomed immense before me. So big were these visions that they overwhelmed the waves of sadness and pain. They buoyed me up and lifted my soul out of darkened depths. Immediately I decided on a course of action for that day. I wanted a quieter time to reflect, to connect with all the beautiful moments shared with my friend.

The sermon at church offered more triggers of the beauty of my connection with my friend. After I returned home, I put my plan into action. I went to the Garden of Innocence where abandoned babies are given a name and laid to rest. Some months prior, I had named a baby in honor of my friend. I thought, “What better place to go to meditate than in the beauty of this Garden and see how God would help me use my prism.”

I arrived at the cemetery early in the afternoon and proceeded to walk up the hill toward the Garden. The warmth of the sun blanketed my back on the journey upward. Birds sang their sweet melodies and a gentle breeze wafted through the trees. As I walked I found myself in deep thought wrapped in anticipation for what was to come. Again, my thoughts went to my friend who loved butterflies. At least one black and yellow butterfly almost always visited us in the Garden when we had a burial ceremony.

I wondered, “Wouldn’t it be nice if when I reach the Garden, I would find many butterflies flitting about? Surely my friend would be happy at such a sight.”

As I continued my walk, I thought again, “What would really be extraordinary to find a butterfly landing on the grave stone of the baby I named in honor of my dear friend!”

What were the chances, considering that butterflies rarely landed on the ground and there were over a hundred seventy grave stones in the Garden?

I arrived at the entry to the Garden of Innocence and my heart was overwhelmed as I was greeted by what must have been a couple dozen butterflies dancing in the air above gravestones. I was moved to start my phone and activate the camera. I pushed the movie button to catch the many butterflies that filled the air. To my utter surprise, as I panned around, my eye and camera caught a butterfly zoom in on the very gravestone of my special baby. As I walked filming this extraordinary moment I caught the butterfly sitting on the gravestone slowly opening and closing its wings. After a few moments it lifted off and continued to fly around the Garden.

I was overwhelmed with joy and thanked God for giving me such a glimpse of collateral beauty with my precious friend. The pain of grief melted away as I basked in the joy of the moments that followed. This profound connection with my loved one continued to bring joy and comfort to my soul.

It is my hope that sharing these thoughts will help my readers suffering from grief and loss to find their own prisms to reveal the hidden collateral beauty they share with those who have passed on.

NOTE: The video of the butterfly landing on the gravestone can be viewed using this link: http://www.dropbox.com/s/3imdicpiepafazd/20160807_220021_66160173695203.mp4?dl=0

If this post has been a blessing for you, you might enjoy other posts similar to this. Search specific key words to find them.

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