I knew saying good-bye to Jim would be hard. Not only had he been a loyal and long-time member of the congregation, he was also one of the most beloved, a sort of favorite uncle for many of us.
Now I was presiding over his funeral. As I drew to the midpoint in my sermon, I felt the pressure of pent-up tears. I looked out at faces of so many lives Jim had touched.
I choked back the wall of emotion; I couldn’t speak. I paused and tried again. I couldn’t. I waited. Eternity came and went. Bit by bit, word by word, I got through my message.
After the service I was exhausted. But I kept pushing myself into another week of ministry. Six days later, I had to do it again.
Esther died of cancer. Her husband, Henry, had died of a stroke only six weeks earlier. I watched her slide quickly after his death. We buried Esther on Sunday.
Early Monday morning, Helen died.
Helen was our nursery worker of fourteen years, whose family is like my own. I was with them at 1 A.M. when Helen was pronounced dead and again at 10:30 A.M. when we met with the funeral director. Two days later we buried Helen.
I didn’t cry at either of those funerals. I told myself I would not break down.
Three church members had died within ten days. I convinced myself that I must be the Teflon-coated pastor, letting everything slide off my scratch-resistant surface.
But I hadn’t convinced everyone. The night following Helen’s early morning death, having caught five hours of sleep in the past thirty-six, I was at a meeting when a church leader called my house. She was worried about her pastor–me. She told my wife, Debbie, that she could see the toll grief was taking on me.
When I returned home that evening, Debbie told me about the call. My fragile house of cards came crashing down. The secret I was trying to keep from myself was out!
That night I realized my predicament: I was denying my grief, my exhaustion, and, most of all, my humanity. My busy schedule had insulated me from the profound sense of loss I was feeling–and an even deeper fear of further losses.
But there was another reason for not grieving. Years ago I had watched a pastor who, I thought at the time, too freely and indiscriminately displayed his feelings to his church. He wept publicly at funerals he was conducting. He seemed weak and pathetic when we needed comfort and hope. Having seen that model, I was wary of letting others know of my grief.
FROM PAIN TO FEAR
My brief moment of realization, however, didn’t seem to help much; I went right on with business as usual. But several days later, I began to notice my emotional health wasn’t quite right.
I had dropped off a bunch of letters at the post office and hardly driven a block toward home when I felt a growing sense of anxiety. Did you put the postage on all those letters? I asked myself. You’ve forgotten to do that before, and these were important letters, checks for car payments and bills.
No need to be anxious, I countered. I’m sure I remember stamping the letters.
My anxiety answered, turning the temperature up a notch or two, ignoring my rational reflections. If you didn’t put postage on those letters, they’ll all be sent to the dead letter office, and your payments will be delinquent.
Gradually, the anxiety became alarm. I couldn’t shut off the internal tapes. All through the day, I kept feeling a growing anxiety, not just about postage, as if I had forgotten something important. After several conversations, I wondered if I had said something that might be taken the wrong way. Even when there was no specific cause for anxiety, I felt an unnamed nagging dread.
My stomach had been tender the past several days (though I had been ignoring that warning sign, too), and now it was positively churning. I braved on. A full calendar will be good for me, I told myself. But the uneasiness would not go away.
PAIN AS FRIEND
I don’t know why coming to terms with my grief took so long. I knew better. I paid dearly fur this insight years ago, when my younger brother, Keith, died.
At that time, fresh out of seminary, I was an associate pastor in a suburban church. Keith was only twelve when he died, a victim of an enervating heart condition. The morning he died, I was preaching from Isaiah chapter 6, “When Our Foundations Shake.”
They shook all right. But within days after Keith’s funeral, I doubled my already busy schedule. I never missed a beat, and I was proud of it.
Inside, though, I was bursting with pain, reeling from the shock of losing my only brother. I was angry at God (disguising my feelings as philosophical issues) and under a frightful load of guilt for not being with my brother more (however irrational such feelings may have been).
I became increasingly depressed. Always a bit of a night owl, I found I couldn’t get to sleep at all, which meant that as exhaustion snowballed I was less able to deal with the emotions.
Just as my internal battle was coming to a climax, a young woman in our congregation was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She was a friend as well as a parishioner. Suddenly, everything came to a head.
I found myself in the hospital–with a stomach ulcer and irritable bowel syndrome. The doctor put me on anti-anxiety and anti-depressant medications. But the medicine wouldn’t be enough, he said, it would only deal with the symptoms. If I wanted to get well again, I had to confront the real problem, my unresolved and denied grief.
About that time I began a training program in family therapy. And, providentially, the counseling center required us to be in group therapy. What happened next was one of the most healing experiences of my life. I learned to give myself permission to have needs and limitations.
As a pastor, I had talked about this for years. I regularly encouraged others to understand the importance of embracing their humanity, of recognizing their limitations and trusting God to be their strength. But I had never taken this sermon home.
One day I came into the group session after a particularly painful night. My therapist, herself an active churchwoman, said, “Michael, I hope someday you’ll be able to embrace your pain as a friend.”
“What?”
“Pain is the body’s way of warning us something is wrong. The pain you feel is a signal that something is going on you need to deal with.”
This was, of course, the lesson I had learned ten years before. But now I had forgotten it. Care-givers often can be the most resistant care-receivers.
A GOOD TIME TO GRIEVE
Recently, a young woman lost her mother after a short illness. The young woman, a surgical nurse, is one of the most natural caregivers I have ever seen. She is famous for her “bedside manner” during preop rounds. This time, however, it was her mother’s bedside.
She was there day and night throughout the illness. And after her mother died, she put her head on the sheets of the hospital bed. I could see her hands grasping the sheets, twisting them into knots until her knuckles turned white. She kept saying, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose it! Right now. I’m not sure I can hold back!”
I put my hand on her shoulder and said, “This would be a really good time to lose it, Barbara. Go ahead.” But she couldn’t. Not then. She had helped dozens of others through similar pain, but she couldn’t help herself.
All of this was whirling in my mind when Walter died–a few weeks after Jim, Esther, and Helen.
Walter was a retired minister who had moved to our community. He was a saintly legend all around town. Intellectually brilliant, he was known primarily for his kindness. Walter was my mentor and a colleague as well as a parishioner.
When his wife called at seven o’clock one morning to say Walter had died, I felt a rising tide of emotion. I knew that if I were going to minister to his widow and family, I had to make sure my grief did not get in the way of responding to their needs. But I also knew my grief was an authentic part of the ministry I had to offer to them.
As I hung up the phone, I remembered my words to Barbara, “This would be a really good time to lose it. (to ahead.” I had just gotten out of the shower, so I threw myself on the bed and cried for a few minutes. I then got up, washed my face, and went out the door. During the drive to Walter’s home, I decided that this time I would try to minister to Walter’s family and handle my grief in a healthy way.
First, I set aside time for his widow and me to talk through what we were feeling. The family wouldn’t be arriving for several hours, so we had plenty of time. We sat in Walter’s room, his bookcases around us, and talked about Walter’s last illness, a stroke. We talked about his confusion and disorientation, and how he hadn’t seemed himself.
We talked about a lot of things, but mostly we talked about the gaping hole in our lives his death had created. I listened to her pour out the love of a half century. Together we remembered and grieved.
After an hour, we began thinking of the memorial service–what would be fitting for Walter.
Second, I altered my schedule. Before, I had buried my feelings under a jammed calendar; this time I blocked out time to grieve. This was the most difficult part–giving myself permission to feel depressed, to feel lonely, or angry, or guilty. C.S. Lewis once observed how much grief felt like fear. I felt this fear, a fear of facing myself and my loss.
Each new grief has the potential to bring to the surface unresolved pain. This turned out to be more than I had bargained for. I wanted to escape again by running away to a busy schedule. But I had paid the emotional and physical consequences of grieving poorly before.
Finally, setting aside time wasn’t enough. The feelings unearthed were powerful, and they needed to be heard by someone. I allowed caregivers in our congregation to pastor me, which was much easier than I anticipated.
I was, to use the biblical description, “hungering and thirsting” for pastoral care. The people in our congregation, I learned, were eager to minister to their pastor. Of course, I didn’t share my grief indiscriminately. I sought out a few trusted caregivers: a member of our church board, a lay member of our staff, and two members of Walter’s family.
One to whom I entrusted my grief was an 85-year-old woman, wise and gentle, but an unsentimental matriarch of our congregation. Another was the woman who had originally called my wife concerned about my emotional health. She was moderator of our congregational care committee.
I didn’t meet regularly with these individuals, only when I sensed I was ready to burst emotionally. The first time was right after Walter’s funeral. The next was a couple of weeks later. I never cried in front of them, though occasionally I was choked up. Each person reflectively listened as I recounted my feelings of loss and hurt. I talked about missing Walter and how some days even getting out of bed felt overwhelming.
Those were times of healing. I learned the importance of allowing church members to care for me. There is a depth of community possible only when pastor and people mutually care for each other.
A few days ago, as I visited Walter’s grave, the words of the psalmist came to mind: “Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy.”
That is, provided they bear the weeping seeds together.
Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
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Copyright © 1994 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
