Grieve Well, Live Well

Gen 35:8

Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak outside Bethel. So it was named Allon Bakuth (Oak of Weeping).

Pain comes to everyone. Sensible people try to avoid it of course, but no one is 100% successful. When pain comes, it is silly to deny it. I am ashamed to admit that I have been a silly person. But not any more! Now I know, what Jacob knew.

Pain came to Jacob’s family and they named a tree! When Rachel’s beloved nurse Deborah died, the family cried and then established a memory to their tears. They named the landmark tree which shaded her grave Allon Bakuth, “Oak of Weeping”.

I like this simple response to loss because:

• It is not an answer. Naming a tree doesn’t change anything. It certainly doesn’t explain “why”. But naming a tree is strangely therapeutic.
• It is not a private response. They did it as family. And it was public enough for the Scriptures to memorialize the story.
• It is not a head response. Naming a tree is more like poetry, art or playfulness; and less like strategising, explaining or calculating.
• It is not a trite response. To “name” something is really quite significant.
• It involves nature. How beautiful to think that the Oak Tree is also weeping. How biblical in fact (Rom 8:22).
• It works.

I have been a slow learner in the school of grieving. I have not always understood its profound value. My celebrated strategy was stomping through transition, failure, loss and even death, with the least emotion and most speed possible. If I could avoid feeling sad I counted it a win. I did not understand the positive power of such emotions. I thought I was winning. I was not.

This failure to grieve was making me less tender, less compassionate and less effective. All of this came crashing into my awareness more than five years ago. I changed. I began to practice the discipline of slowness and the art of sadness in the face of loss. Now I see the pain of others more readily. I grow through my own pain. I find God’s healing grace in ways I had not known before.

So what does this look like practically? I can identify five things:

1. I pray asking God to help me feel His pain (purposeful pain).
2. I unpack my loss with people I can trust and write some of my thoughts down.
3. I visit places (both geographic and internal) that I would have avoided previously and let myself taste the sadness. 
4. Then I bury it.
5. And, I give it a named. Just like the “Oak of Weeping”.

To my surprise, I emerge from this exercise a healthier person. I have learned to embrace sadness. Not the way a mother holds her infant (I don't love grief!), but the way a carpenter grips a saw – firmly and with purpose. Grief is a tool and I am only recently learning how to use it to build a better life.

Questions

• Do you have a recent or particularly significant “Oak of Weeping”? Is there a place, a thing or an event which bares a name that is testimony to your loss?
• What have you learned about grieving well?

A Book

I found help in the book“The Emotionally Healthy Church” by Peter Scazzero. The professional titled sounded safe. But, the author actually wants to talk to the minister/reader first. The stuff about the church’s health comes second. That book blessed me heaps.

Epilogue

Another tree comes to mind. Another tree of weeping, of bleeding, of suffering and then victory. This tree is cruciform. And the one who hangs on it becomes a curse (Gal 3:13). But this tree casts a healing shadow like no other!