The Spirit is Leading. Are we Listening?

This morning, I asked google for the definition of grief. This is AI’s summary: “Grief is a profound emotional and psychological response to loss, often characterized by intense sorrow, sadness, and distress, but also encompassing a range of feelings like anger, guilt, and despair. It’s a normal, albeit complex and personal, process that can follow not just the death of a loved one, but also other significant losses such as divorce, illness, or job loss. There is no single “correct” way to grieve, as each person’s experience is unique in its reactions and timeline, and it can manifest physically with changes in sleep and appetite”

I have many grieving friends. Some have ended a position that was their calling of many years, left their church family, are fighting an ongoing medical diagnosis, ended beautiful friendships, said goodbye to family on this earth, are walking through compounded grief years after having lost their child, are walking into the adult world and saying goodbye to their childhood, some have had to say goodbye to that wiggly tail who always greeted them, and some are grieving with the knowledge of decline knowing that loss is on the horizon.

What strikes me most profoundly is that ALL loss experienced is unique. We cannot fully understand what another is going through. We cannot score grief as harder or easier. Sometimes as humans we ask ourselves “what would I do if I was in their shoes?” While this is a beautiful effort, we have to recognize that the question itself is biased to our own perspective. Metaphorically, we can’t understand a friend’s shoes because our foot makes a different imprint than theirs does. We see things through a different lens, so we process differently, and processing differently changes our gait. A more empathetic question would be to ask God to help us to hear and understand their heart in the midst of what they’re walking through.

There is a beautiful and universal truth in grief though, and that is this: despite the pain, grief WILL change us, and change is good (ask the autumn colors). This poem on the “Gift of Grief” echoes these words in a more elegant and explicable way.

Gift of Grief
Death takes away. That’s all there is to it.
But grief gives back.
By experiencing it, we are not simply eroded by pain.
Rather, we become more compassionate, more aware,
more able to help others, more able to help ourselves.

Grief is powerful. It plunges us into the depths of sorrow
and forces us to face the finiteness of life, the mightiness of death, and the meaning of our existence here on this earth.

It does more than enable us to change: it demands it.
The way we change is up to us.
It is possible to be forever bowed by grief.
It is possible to be so afraid of one aspect of it that we become frozen in place, stuck in sorrow, riveted in resentment or remorse, unable to move on.

But it is also possible to be enlarged, to find new direction,
and to allow the memory of the beloved person who has died to
live on within us… not as a monument to misery,
but as a source of strength, love and inspiration.

By acting on our grief, we can eventually find within ourselves
a place of peace and purposefulness.
It is my belief that all grievers, no matter how intense their pain,
no matter how rough the terrain across which they must travel,
can eventually find that place within their hearts.

~ by Candy Lightner

“The way we change is up to us” Isn’t that the truth! All grief is unique. All grief demands change. Still, our response to its presence is the real challenge, isn’t it? Do we choose to act on our grief? Or do we freeze?

Since there’s no correct way to grieve and more than a gazillion variables (it’s a real number, I promise ;p ). How do we step? How fast do we go? How do we slow down when it’s needed? How do we ensure that we don’t get stuck and thereby unable to move? The answer is simple albeit not always easy- we walk yoked to Jesus. We lean on Him for every “next”.

Matthew 11:28-30 (Markie paraphrased) says “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from me. I am gentle. My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”. Do you know that one ox can pull approximately 5,000 lbs but two oxen yoked together can pull around 15,000? I’m not a math major, but those numbers are pretty easy to figure- yoked together they can pull three times as much! How much more will we pull if we allow all powerful Jesus to yoke himself to us? If we look to Him to know when to speed up, when to press on, when to slow down, and when to stop and feel the pain?

Is not the greatest desire of a Christ follower to be Spirit Led? To do what it is that He’d have us do? Then we can’t get ahead of Him (I’m guilty here!) and we can’t get behind Him (guilty again). We must embrace the yoke of His presence and peace will emanate following hope.

Here is the tripping hazard- We cannot be spirit led if we are flesh driven. Please read that last line again. Now go back and read it for a third time soaking in the truth of it. We can’t follow His leading if our own voice is too loud to hear His direction.

I have been repeating this phrase to myself a lot lately. Life is hard! The flesh wants what it wants, whether it’s a pint of ben and Jerry’s on a tough day, to yell about the unfairness of another’s actions, to stay in bed because the missingness is just too hard, or to scream in anger at twin toddlers for throwing all of their books on the floor to climb the shelf as a ladder for the 20th time this month (I have no idea who that last example is referring to- insert sarcasm here).

The crazy thing is that I believe all of these (maybe except the last one) are appropriate sometimes. Nothing is always the right choice. Life is too unique to put it all in a cause-and-effect box. What is the answer then? “Pray without ceasing” continuous conversations with the one who ALWAYS has the right answer. even when “right” changes. Ask Him to help you follow better and listen to His voice as He directs your every step.

We are closest to God when we are in the depths of suffering. I remember early on after the tragedy being forced to rely on Him for my next breath- and what a beautiful place that is to be! If only we could remember to be His sheep all the time… “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul…”

It took me five months to be able to study scripture again after our tragedy. Aside from the book of Job, I struggled to relate to the stories of His people. Even still, Psalm 23 was a comfort me. This psalm is one of the most well-known chunks of scripture. David’s words provide comfort. We are reminded that we don’t have to have all of the answers because of our proximity to the one who does and His complete preoccupation with our welfare in the eternal perspective means we don’t have to decipher at all. Our job is simple- to follow.

Where will you remind yourself this week that you cannot be spirit led if you are flesh driven? I need this reminder tattooed to my hand.

You can “Keep Going, Really!” because He is yoked to you and somehow closer still through the “Valley of the shadow of death”. Afterall, it is only a shadow because Jesus is already the victor!

~A humble sheep