grief – Erin Ulerich

The Path of Grief, the Way of Hope

The January wind blew harsh on my face as I studied the line of trees stretching across the parking lot. Their branches had no leaves, but were loaded with small, hard, dark brown balls.

The trees matched the weather – bare, stark, hard. And the weather matched my heart as it trudged along the winding path of grief.

Grief is like a raging storm scattered with lightning bolts. These short bursts of light in the darkness momentarily reveal the deepest parts of our soul. These short bursts of light shake us to our core and let us know if what we are holding onto is strong enough to stretch into eternity. Like a lightning bolt slicing a mighty oak, grief splits through the distractions and barriers in our lives and brings us face to face with the reality that if we are without God then we are without hope.

But in the hands of God, grief mingles with hope. Loss and life intertwine.

In the midst of grief, hope reminds us that we were created with eternity in our hearts. We were created for more than this life could ever offer.

Hope comforts our hearts with the truth that our loved ones are with the Lord.
But even that comfort reminds us of our loss because if they are with the Lord, they are not with us. At the same time, there is also great encouragement. If they are with the Lord, we will see them again. The loss, though painful, is not permanent.

And what are we to do as we live in this in-between?

We are to walk the path of grief, so that hope can have its way in us.

God uses grief to touch places of our hearts that would otherwise remain unchanged. Grief is messy and uncomfortable, and the path of grief takes time. If we try to rush through grief, we will miss the hope.

“In western Christian culture, we’ve been conditioned to hide sadness, cover up weakness, and put a strong and cheerful face forward. We hide our grief for fear that others will mistake it for ingratitude. We bury our lament before it’s finished because we’ve been told there’s an open window somewhere that we should be focusing on instead.
And yet, when I look at Scripture, I see welcomed space for these things. There are no time limits or cut-off dates placed over them. Jeremiah does this beautifully in Lamentations 3. While the chapter ends with hope, there’s nothing of platitude in his writing.” Tasha Jun
In God’s hands, grief builds our trust in Him, strengthens our faith, and teaches us to walk in hope through this broken world because we know that a time is coming when all things will be made right.
The harsh January wind won’t always blow. Eventually, the warmth of the sun and the gentle spring breeze will coax the hard balls on the trees to reveal the delicate buds hidden inside. These buds will open, covering the trees with a explosion of white flowers, as if to celebrate being made new.
Loss and life. Grief and hope.

Not the Way It’s Supposed To Be

When it comes to dealing with grief, God doesn’t leave us to our own strength or resources. He walks through it with us. Jesus felt the same “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be” feeling that we feel when He stood in front of Lazarus’ grave.

“This just feels wrong. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

I’ve said this many times in my life.

I said it in 8th grade when a friend committed suicide.

I said it when I watched Grandma sobbing beside the body of the man she’d loved her whole life, clutching his wedding band in her delicate hands.

I said it in 10th grade when I stood beside Pappaw’s grave, staring at the trees in the distance as the pastor spoke, clinching my fists to keep the tears from falling.

This time I was in my early 30’s sitting with my Daddy outside King Daughter’s Hospital in Yazoo City, MS where Grandma was losing her battle with Leukemia.

The familiar mixture of sorrow and anger welled up as I spit out the words.

Daddy put his arm around me while I sobbed. He waited until I was quiet, and in his deep gentle voice, he said, “Nothing about death is right. Death didn’t exist until sin entered the world. It doesn’t feel right because we weren’t made to experience death.”

Through the years I’ve often thought of Daddy’s statement. And now, as I am walking through another time of grief, the words come back to me. We weren’t made for this.

We weren’t made for this, yet we still experience it. What are we supposed to do since we don’t have the resources or strength within ourselves to walk through these shadows?

In His mercy, God doesn’t leave us to our own resources or strength. He walks through it with us. He put on our flesh, He put on our feelings, in order to be with us. And He felt this exact feeling as He stood in front of the grave of His friend Lazarus.

Jesus got mad, like we do when death strikes our loved ones. But He didn’t get angry at God, like we often do. He directed His anger at the source of the problem. He was angry at death and sin. And when He wept, He didn’t leak out a few tears or get a lump in His throat. He burst into tears.

He felt angry that the people He loved had to undergo such pain. He was indignant that sin dared to wreak such havoc. And He grieved. Rev. Wally Bumpus puts it this way. “Jesus was grieved at what death had done to the crown of God’s creation.”

Jesus was saying “This is not the way it is supposed to be.” He acknowledged the pain-filled reality.

Then He called His friend out of the grave.

Jesus felt the anger, the soul-deep turbulence that we feel when death invades our space. He is qualified to walk through grief with us. As the One who destroyed death by rising from the dead, He has the power to comfort us like no other.

Knowing that my Jesus felt this same “this isn’t right” feeling changes the way I handle my grief. Instead of trying to push it aside and ignore it, I can follow His example and acknowledge this pain-filled reality. My grief can be mingled with hope because the way things are now is not the way things will always be.

Because of Jesus, one day death will be fully dead, we will be fully alive, and things will be the way they are supposed to be for all eternity.

The Unfolding of the Ultimate Story

There has been a great wrestling going on in my soul.

Truth vs. feelings, hope vs. grief.

Even after writing such a hope-filled post, Restored Before the Face of God, there are moments when the grief and loss drown out hope.

My brain is still trying to wrap around the tragedy while my heart feels the great loss. Last week I sat in my home in Mississippi and watched the procession and funeral taking place in India. It was dark here while India had already moved on to the next day.

I watched men place their caskets into ambulance-type vehicles while people around them sang in their language. The video showed huge banners with their pictures covering each vehicle. As I read the quote on each banner, the wrestling within me intensified.

“My purpose in life is to serve the Lord by serving among His people and taking care of their health needs (in India).” – Sharron Naik

“I want to be a minister back in my country (India), like my dad and serve my Nation.” – Aaron Naik

“I want to go back to India and be involved with the law/politics and I want to spend my time defending the truth of Christianity and the Bible.” – Joy Naik

The wrestling grows stronger because I desperately want this tragedy to make sense. But nothing about this adds up. These three loved the Lord and had plans to go back to India to serve Him. They were part of the Banjara people group, a group where less than 1% are Christians. If we are talking about progress in spreading the Gospel, doesn’t it make more sense to have them alive, telling others about Christ? Were their hopes and dreams just a waste?

I know that I’m not the only one who is wrestling deep within. We live in a broken world and we all have circumstances in our lives where things don’t makes sense. Where 1+1=3 no matter how much we try to figure it out. In all the tears, the heart-wrenching wails, the fists clenched in anger, our soul wrestling comes down to one question:

What kind of God are You?

There.

I said it.

This is a question we might whisper over a coffee conversation with our closest friend, but we’d never ask it out loud at church. People typically don’t like questions like this, because it feels wrong to question God.

But I think God loves it when we ask this question.

When we get down to the rock-bottom, nitty-gritty and finally ask this question it is because all the things we’ve been leaning on, all the ideas we’ve created about God, have FAILED. It means that the god we’ve created in our image, the god that we work to please in hopes that he will love us or at least answer our prayers is POWERLESS. It means that, maybe for the first time, we are actually seeking God for who He says He is.

As we seek Him we can ask ALL the questions we need to ask. I have found that God doesn’t really match my “whys” with reasons. Instead He shows me more of who He is. Through my grief He shows me that He is the God of all comfort, that He really is near to the brokenhearted and is gentle with those who are hurting. He meets my needs, showing me that He provides for His children.

How do we seek God? Where can we find a clear picture of who He is and what He is like? We can find Him in the Word, because it contains His words to us about Himself. And through the Word made flesh, because Jesus shows us what God is like.

At Sharron, Aaron, and Joy’s funeral, Ravi Zacharias described God’s compassion through Jesus when He raised Lazarus from the dead.

“Jesus knew He was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and yet He stood in front of that tomb and wept. Why? Why did the Lord of Glory and the Lord of hope shed those tears? Because He knew what you and I would feel at the loss of a loved one, having to wait over a period of time before we would see the ultimate story revealed. He knew the pain that you and I would endure.”

Because of His compassion, God can strengthen and sustain us in our grief. “We have a suffering Savior, a wounded Savior, and for the wounded heart, the wounded Savior is the best answer, the best source of sustenance” (Ravi Zacharias)

Dr. Zacharias goes on to describe Jesus feeling abandoned by God when He was on the cross. “At the very moment He thought He was abandoned and forsaken, He was actually in the center of His Father’s Will, providing for you and for me, so that the greater death – which is spiritual death – would not be that which we endure.”

The very depth of Christ’s sufferings was the way that the Ultimate Story could happen. His suffering opened the way for our redemption and our eternal life with God, instead of eternal death removed from God.

“His Word abides forever and pulls the whole story together and all of the threads that may look desperate- it brings them together to a perfect design that He had in mind. Your young, precious children, Sharron, Joy, and Aaron. The threads were in God’s Hand, every day designed for them was already written in the Book before it ever came to be. He gave you the joy of having them for those few years. Three precious gems. They are now in the Presence of the Lord laying their treasures at His feet.” (Ravi Zacharias)

Hearing the truth proclaimed at the funeral service didn’t answer all my questions, but it did calm some of the wrestling as it brought my eyes back to God’s character, His love, and His perspective. His Ultimate Story is written in love with one goal in mind – bringing people into relationship with Himself. This tragedy, this loss, will be redeemed into a powerful, beautiful chapter as His story unfolds.

Fighting For Hope Through Waves of Grief

Missing Robert

Grief is a tricky beast. It hides and makes you think you’ve “dealt”, you’ve “moved on”, and then it hits out of nowhere like a tsunami on a sunny day.

We don’t talk about him very much, but we miss him.

I miss the way he said “Well, hello there!” when he called around this time each year to get ideas for the kids’ Christmas presents.

Over the past 2 years, there have been plenty of What ifs, plenty of What could have been done conversations, but the bottom line is that while he didn’t he make the choice to die from his drug use, he made the decision to use drugs.

He made the decision to refuse help. “No program is going to help me,” he said, and that is when I knew he had decided to stop fighting for hope.

It was a decision that defied logic. He had been clean for years, so many years that my children only knew the fun Uncle Robert.

The Uncle Robert who helped them catch fireflies in the summer and who shot a zillion fireworks with them on New Year’s Eve.

It was a decision that led down a dark path, a path filled with cover-ups, half truths, and out right lies.

It was a decision that robbed us of our brother, friend, uncle, and son.

It was also a decision borne out of a daily battle to stay on the right path, a million unseen, un-applauded decisions made over the years of being sober. A battle he fought on his own.

He didn’t have to fight alone. We, his family, would have loved to celebrate victories with him. We would have loved to applaud his successes.

But we didn’t see the burden he carried until it was too late.

By the time we saw, his mind had already been turned upside down. By then, he had bought the lie that our words of hope and encouragement hid ulterior motives and that his drug dealer friends were the only ones who could be trusted.

Isn’t that the biggest twist of irony?

The people cooking the poison that killed him had convinced him that he was no longer alone because they had rescued him when no one else would.

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. That is the game plan he followed with Robert, and the story he seeks to write for all of us through all kinds of addictions. If our enemy can keep our focus on numbing the pain in our life, he keeps our focus off of living the life we were meant to live.

Life that gives hope, that looks forward to the future, that believes that change is possible.

So many of Robert’s years were marked by his struggle, but that struggle was not who he was. He was self-less to a fault, fun to be around, and he loved his kids. That’s the legacy I choose to remember.

At the same time, I can’t ignore his last months and days. They are filled with somber warning. They remind me that when I listen to the lies of the dark, when I give in to my own struggles and try to numb out, I am one decision away from stepping on the same path that stole him from us.

We Can Trust Him, Because of Who He Is

Life is hard to figure out.

In a session at a recent writing conference, Kaylan Adair, editor at Candlewick Press, spoke on middle grade novels.She defined them as stories where the characters stick their foot into the adult world for the first time. They are on an exploratory mission and don’t plan to stay. In these stories, the character discovers that life is complex and complicated.

There are days when I wish I lived in the chapter before the beginning of a middle grade novel – where life is easy to understand.

In reality, we live in the midst of layers of life, where things are happening simultaneously around us, to us, and by us, while we try to make sense of it all. We tend to default to a formula where our life experiences shape our definition of who God is and whether or not He loves us.

Good things happening=God is good and happy with us. Bad things happening= God is bad, weak, or mad at us.

This formula looks simple and easy to follow. But life can’t be lived through a formula. Life is complex and complicated, a mix of joy and sorrow at any given moment.

God is constant and unchanging, and life around us swirls in chaos.

Instead of letting our life experiences shape our definition of who God is and whether or not He loves us, what would it look like if we let who God is and His love for us shape our definition of our life experiences? It’s more than playing around with words. The difference between these two is the difference between hope and despair. I’ve experienced it in my own life.

When I was in 8th grade my grandfather died of a heart attack. I had a vague notion of who God was but I had no idea that He was with me or that He loved me. I felt alone and my grief was dark and hopeless. That same year a friend from school committed suicide. Again, I swam in dark and hopeless grief.

Years later my grandmother passed away after a horrendous struggle with cancer. At this point I had a closer relationship with God. I struggled with her suffering. I pleaded with God to take away her pain. I yelled at God and wrestled with the complex truth that He loved her and He was allowing her to suffer. But it was not dark and hopeless because who God is was my filter. My grandmother was his precious child. He loved her even more than I did. He was getting her heart and soul ready to spend eternity with Him and He would not let her suffer one second longer than necessary to accomplish that.

If I had interpreted who God is through this difficult circumstance, the logical conclusion would have been that God was either helpless or too cruel to alleviate her pain. However, the truth is that God’s greatest desire for my grandmother was for her to know Him and He loved her enough to do whatever was necessary to accomplish that purpose.

What made the difference in these two reactions?

Trust.

I filtered my sorrow, my anger, my frustration through the filter of who God is. I searched His Word to find out about His steadfast love, His faithfulness, His being with His people. And I clung to who He is as we walked through this battlefield of cancer.

The more I know Him, the more I trust His steady, constant Hand in the midst of the constantly changing circumstances swirling around me.

If your eyes are on the storm
You’ll wonder if I love you still
But if your eyes are on the cross
You’ll know I always have and I always will – Casting Crowns, Just Be Held