Tag Archives: grief

How to Recover from Loss, Grief, and Exile

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How to recover from loss is a lot like returning from exile. What comes to mind when you hear the word exile? You might think of someone booted from their country, like the Dali Lama. He was exiled from Tibet and now he is a man without a country. In the Bible, Israel was often in exile…forced out of their land to live in Egypt or Assyria or Babylon.

How to recover from loss

How to recover from loss

But living in exile isn’t just about leaving your country. Exile can happen on a personal level when life throws you a curve and you end up in a place you never planned on being. Exile is a place of loss where you feel displaced, disconnected, confused, and often depressed.

In the Bible, exile involves people leaving their country and walking through a desert to a place of imprisonment in another country. The desert symbolizes the isolation and hardship of exile.

When you and I end up in exile, we aren’t in a literal desert, but we still end up in a dry place emotionally and spiritually. Like exiles, we are often cut off from people, and though we may not hunger and thirst like desert people do, we hunger and thirst for things like; peace, love, health, stability, purpose, or comfort.

Exile is a place where fear and sadness can flood your mind unexpectedly. Just when you think it’s gone it comes back with a vengeance. You feel trapped and even fear that God has left you.

Seven Types of Exile

We all experience exile. Following are seven types of exile/loss with a few examples of each.

  • Emotional exile: depression, PTSD, anxiety disorders, panic attacks, bipolar disorder, etc.
  • Spiritual: bad church experience or just feeling disconnected from God
  • Relational: bad marriage, divorce, estrangement from children/parents, death of a loved one,
  • Financial: debt, loss of job.
  • Career: bad fit. 70% of people feel like they aren’t in the right job.
  • Health: inability to have children, chronic pain, terminal disease.
  • Season of life: Life between college and marriage and/or career, managing old age.

How to Recover from Loss (exile)

Here are five things to consider in regard to how to recover from loss:

1.  Name it. Some times it’s helpful to simply name the problem. Like going to the doctor: they can’t always solve your problem but they can diagnose it. Somehow, just having a name for it helps. So point to the pain in your life and call it what it is: a loss.

2.  Grieve it. Grief is something we often skip over. Put simply, grief involves a few things:

  • identify your loss
  • acknowledge the impact of the loss on your life
  • give yourself permission to express your emotions about the loss
  • allow God to redefine your new life because of the loss

3. Learn from it. In the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah learned that even though Jerusalem had been destroyed, God was still faithful…his mercies were new every day (Lamentations 3:20-25). God speaks to us in the midst of our darkness.

4. Reframe it. To recover from loss you need to see things from God’s perspective, not a human perspective. You need to see things from an abundance mentality, not a scarcity mentality.

5.  Expect to return from it. There’s no formula for how to return from exile or how to recover from loss. Neither is there a timetable. I can’t promise you when it will happen. But the record shows that God always brings his people out of exile and he brings them out better than when they entered. God spoke to his people   in exile by saying…

They will know that I am the LORD their God because I made them go into exile among the nations, and then gathered them again to their own land ; and I will leave none of them there any longer. Ezekiel 39:28

I know a number of my readers are in exile today. The good news is: God knows that too and he has a plan for you to return from exile. His faithfulness is great and his mercies are new every morning. Let me pray for you here:

Father, in the middle of heartache Jeremiah was able to say: Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness…  Father, be with those of us in exile today. Fill us with hope and thanksgiving. Reveal yourself to us. Show us the path out of exile and how to recover from loss. Amen.

This post is taken from a message I spoke on 3.24.13. To read or listen to the entire message, download Return from Exile – Part Two.

Grief, Loss and Letting Go

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Many people don’t understand or appreciate what happens when they encounter a loss (a death, divorce, loss of job, etc.). Too often people either skip over grief or they get stuck in grief. Neither approach resolves the loss or allows grief to do its healing work.

How Do You Deal with Grief?

Any loss leaves a hole in your heart. The question is: what will you do with that hole?  Here are three things people try:

  1. Leave the hole empty and mourn forever. They never get over the loss.
  2. Kill the pain with addictive habits.  This will lead to more losses in t
    he long run.
  3. Fill the hole with busyness. This only delays the healing. When the busyness stops the pain will remain.

The Grief Process is when you allow God to rewrite your story.

What if instead you sought to seek healing? Healing takes place when you invite God to rewrite your story, this time without whatever or whomever it was that you lost. It will be a new life, but it can still be good: just different.  

Too often people cling to what was and get stuck in the pain and sadness of grief never accepting the good that God has for them. 

You want to let God close the hole over time. That is what grieving is all about…a process of renewal. But you have to let go of what was to embrace what will be.Too often people cling to what was and get stuck in the pain and sadness of grief never accepting the good that God has for them.

What Does “Letting Go” Really Mean?

griefI wrote the above as a brief post on Facebook. A reader immediately wrote back asking what I meant by “letting go”. She said a lot of people use that phrase without ever explaining it. I love questions like that. So this is what I said:

I talk about the process of grief and letting go in more detail in my book, STUCK. But quickly here, “letting go” means that you don’t insist that what was lost HAS TO EXIST for your happiness. “Letting go” means you are willing to entertain the idea that God can make good of your life without whatever it was that you lost. Many people refuse to go there. Even though they know what was lost is gone forever, they hold a thought that their life will never be good again.

Letting go is a process. The hole in your heart doesn’t fill up right away. That’s why it’s a GRIEVING process. It’s a time of mourning. And that’s okay. Think of a pie chart. When you encounter a loss your pie is reduced by, say, 25%. You are operating from a deficit. You aren’t 100%. But if you are open to God he will slowly start to rebuild your life. The pie chart slowly fills in…not with junk that you put there, but with new relationships, hobbies, faith, etc. that brings healing and closes the gap.

I hope this helps you understand what happens when you experience a loss and why it takes time to fully recover. Don’t try to fix it on your own. Let God bring healing to your loss over time.

Question: What is your typical response to loss?  How has that worked for you? Leave your comment below.

When you subscribe to this blog I will send you a free ebook copy of “Forgiven…once and for all”, a  reflection on how God has fully forgiven you.

Grieving the Loss of My Mother

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Grieving the loss of my mother isn’t something I was fully prepared for. I guess we never are. Mom passed away last week after 93 very active years.

Grieving the Loss of my mother

My mom in Texas the week before she died.

My mom had just held an all-family reunion. She and everyone there knew it would probably be the last time many people saw her. We just didn’t know how quickly she would leave us.

I left her just a few days before she died and I sensed she didn’t have much time. On the flight home I read a poem about Sabbath and it seemed like it might be foreshadowing what was to come.  It speaks of fall but it speaks of death in general. Following is the second half of the poem…

It seems cruel
  that something that used to be so beautiful
    should fall to the ground
      sinking into the earthy mud
        along with everything else that is dying,
         no longer recognizable for what it used to be.
It seems cruel but it is the way of things.
One generation gives its life for the next.
   One season slips away so another can come.
      One crop of fruit falls from the tree so that more can be born.
         One wave recedes while another gathers strength to crash upon the shore.
It seems cruel
    but it is the rhythm of things
               and rhythm has its own beauty.
                                                            from Sabbath in Late Fall by Ruth Haley Barton

This seemed so appropriate after having just been at a reunion that was marked by a new generation of children.

My mom died under almost ideal conditions. She lived a long life (93). She died in her sleep. She got to say good-bye to almost everyone important to her. She had a reunion and one last cross-country adventure weeks before she died. Any one of us would sign up for the way she left this world.

Yet even under “ideal” conditions it’s still a loss. I saw it coming but it still hurts. That’s true of any loss. To the degree your life wraps around something, to that same degree it hurts when it’s gone from your life. It must be so hard when people lose someone when it’s anything less than ideal.

There are times when I feel fine. I’m grateful for how things ended up. But in spite of that waves of sadness hit me unexpectedly. I’m sure that will be true for some time.  I crave family now and friends. Just being with them helps the process.

I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts in days to come. But I’m interested in how you may have grieved the loss of your mom or dad. Leave a comment below. Thanks.

Grieving the Loss of Family Relationships

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I just finished an eight week series at my church on Restoring Broken Relationships. I ended it on Sunday talking about when things don’t work. That is, what do you do when you TRY to restore broken relationships but the other person doesn’t cooperate? This often happens in families. It’s about grieving the loss of family relationships.

Grieving the loss of family relationships

Grieving the loss of family relationships

I interviewed a member of my church who has wrestled with this. At first he was depressed about his lack of connection to his own family. But after much thought and prayer he came up with a plan to help move him forward. His talk opened up the eyes to many in my congregation. You might want to listen to it yourself (click the link above). Here are the key points.

Grieving the Loss of Family Relationships

  • In the early days the siblings connected to each other through their parents, the family farm and their church. They were one big happy family and assumed they always would be.
  • As children grew up and moved away they no longer had the farm or church to hold them together but holidays with mom and dad and fond memories kept them together.
  • As mom and dad started to fail this brought the siblings even closer together as they shared the same purpose of helping their parents.
  • When mom and dad passed away things changed. The siblings no longer had time for each other.  My interviewee sensed a profound loss. Not wanting to be passive he sought to create opportunities for his siblings to come together. But most chose to ignore these opportunities.
  • This brought disillusionment. How could this happen? Aren’t we family? Aren’t we all Christians?
  • After reflecting on this he saw that the three things that kept his siblings together no longer existed (parents, farm, church). It should have been no surprise.  He needed to accept this “new normal”, grieve it and come up with a new plan of action.
  • He developed personal “rules of engagement”, a plan for how he would communicate with his siblings without putting pressure on them to respond. This is what he came up with:
  1. Extend courtesy. Keep an open mind and be kind.
  2. Expect nothing, but also close nothing. Burn no bridges.
  3. Participate when invited (wedding, graduation).
  4. Send birthday and Christmas cards with no strings attached; simple, kind, caring.
  5. I will call if I have a tragedy with no guilt implied (that don’t have to drop everything and come).
  6. I will pray about my attitude and theirs (so we don’t close off from each other).
  7. Respect their desire for privacy or space. (Just because we’re family doesn’t mean we have to be together).
  8. Things can change, they can change, I can change. This is a season. Maybe some day we will be close again.

Many of us never see what this man saw. We live confused and depressed that we are not close as a family. And we nag/pressure our family to be what we want them to be. Not helpful.

What struck me in this interview was how easily we disconnect from people when we have no common purpose. It made me realize that if I want to have rich relationships with friends or family I need to plan for it and not assume it will happen naturally.

Question: Have you experienced grieving the loss of family relationships in this way? How have you handled it? 

Learn more about how to forgive in my book, STUCK…how to mend and move on from broken relationships.

The Gift of Pain – Helping Others from Our Hurt

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The Gift of Pain

The Gift of Pain

I just finished a three-part series called Walking with God in the Desert at my church. It seemed to impact a number of people in a good way. My goal was to help us develop “desert eyes”, that is, to see what good might come from hard times. I called it the gift of pain.

I mentioned that we need to develop three kinds of “desert eyes”; eyes to see our dark side and deal with it. Second,  eyes to see the small kindnesses that God brings our way. And last, we need eyes to see the gifts that come from our pain that help others through their desert times, or, the gift of pain.  

Following is an excerpt where I talked about the ” gift of pain “.  

The Gift of Pain

The easy teaching about the desert is that God wants to comfort you. That’s absolutely true. But if all I did was tell you stories of comfort then I would really be doing you a disservice because God’s comfort is only half the story in the desert.

God comforts us for two main reasons. One, he loves us. He wants to help us. The second reason is so we can turn around and comfort others. Your desert experience is a training ground to learn how to help someone else in the desert. The apostle Paul understood this. He wrote this to a church in Greece…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

Then Paul applies this directly to his situation…

If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort… 1 Corinthians 1:3-6

That’s like a friend of yours feeling sorry for your situation and you say…oh. Yes…I suppose it’s bad news for me but it’s good news for you. And they ask, What do you mean? And you say…because of my distress I’ll be able to comfort you better when you go through hard times.

That’s what I mean by the gift of pain. Paul used his desert experience to help others. When you go through hard times you learn things like humility and empathy and compassion. You learn what it means to be intimate with God. You can’t go to college to get these things, right?

These gifts only come one way…through pain. But once you have them then you have something to share that you never would have had to share before. God wants to work something deep into you so that he can pull it out of you to benefit someone else. It’s the gift of pain.

Question: Have you been given a gift of pain? How has your past pain prepared you to help others going through a similar trial? Please leave a comment below and “share the knowledge” by clicking the links. Thanks.

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