Brave enough to mourn

Last year in February I went to a women's retreat organised by my church. It was a last minute thing, I wasn't sure if I could or, in all honesty, wanted to go on a weekend retreat where I would have to venture out of my comfort zone and - gasp! - actually make a social effort and meet new people. As it has always been with me and these types of events, I brought my favourite trusty sidekick - a nice, large work of fiction that I could read and sit comfortably alone with if things got awkward (pro tip: Books also work as a signalling beacon to attract other readers and start a conversation easily about the book because "What are you reading?" is so much easier than "I have seen you every Sunday for the past 3 years but still don't know who you are."). Someone saw that I was reading it and we started a conversation about science fiction and books. At one point, she told me about her husband and said a brief sentence under her breath which I couldn't quite make out - her husband had died last week? No, I couldn't have heard that right, it must have been the crowded noisy room that made me mishear that. Confused I paused and an awkward pause hung between us as I'm unsure whether to ask her to repeat the statement when, at this stage, she looks like she might cry. I recalculate and realise I must have heard it right and produce a lame and useless "I'm really sorry". The rest of the conversation was a blur, with empty reassurances and vague panicky statements. What I didn't realise is that that night was only the beginning of a year of contemplation on death (and how poorly we handle it). 

In the modern western world we have become very good at ignoring death. Even our language has been reshaped - no one ever dies anymore, they pass on or perhaps we lose them. Our spaces have also been changed, with morgues and mortuaries being hidden in hospitals through dark forgotten corridors or basements. After death, bodies are cremated leaving little evidence of those we love. 

Even the way we live has become a herculean effort to hide the passing of time with an increasing obsession with appearing and living as though we were young. The cult of youth discards promptly any beauty or wisdom that comes through age and time. Even the elderly are often left, forgotten, uncontacted until it is a convenient time in our all busy schedules - forgetting they must endure weeks of loneliness, isolation and a feeling of being left behind by a rapidly changing world they were once active participants of and key contributors to socially and economically. When so much of society relies on technology, the technological skill threshold is increasing rapidly making the public square plainly inaccessible to older generations. 

I think this is one of the reasons why the covid pandemic has been so hard for many of us. Suddenly we are faced daily with the reality of ageing, death and frailty; the limits of the human resources in controlling our environment. 

These are certainly things I have certainly had to grapple with: in the last few months I attended my first funeral, grieving the premature death of a friend. I have followed closely as my family in Brazil are living through 14 months of isolation, fear and continuous grief which is taxing their mental and physical health severely. I have prayed for and grieved for people one order removed as it seems no family or group is left untouched by the cold and certain grip of death. I have also spent excessive amounts of time alone facing a computer wondering what was the point of it all, of the work, of the titles - and, if I died tomorrow, how many people would actually attend my funeral? Have I actually impacted other people's lives in meaningful ways beyond using them as an audience for my intellectual rants about certain topics? Have I and am I willing to truly love those around me like Jesus loved me, or do I just want to put in enough effort to never overstep the line of awkwardness and ensure I am approved and loved by others? 

Through all this a single line of scripture has been rolling in my head for months: "Mourn with those who mourn" [Rm 12.5b]. It is a line I have read so many times and always thought was pretty self explanatory and simple - if people are sad, you get sad too - but it has taken a global pandemic to make me realise how hard doing this is and how, to put it bluntly, we are utterly failing at doing it. So, how to we do better than lame 'I'm sorry's and awkward silences? 

(1) Life is messy, death is real - deal with it

If history has taught us anything, is that death is one of the few certainties in life. I am not suggesting a stoic approach where we cannot attach emotion to death, or an approach where we embrace it because it is a 'natural' process. As a Christian, I believe death was never intended to be part of the world - it is a horrible, painful thing that entered as a consequence to a deviation from God's original plan - but this does not mean we can ignore it. 

In fact, Christians should uniquely be able to hold the tension between the grief and the sadness of suffering and loss alongside the immeasurable hope we have been given through Christ that he is making things new. If we need to live in a world that blissfully denies pain, suffering and death - as well as those going through these things - then have we actually understood and do we actually believe in the hope that we have through Christ? 

This is a point that I really want to stress because of my personal experience: Christians often don't know what to do when things go off script. We know how to deal with people having babies, and weddings and celebrations. But how do we deal with the death? Divorce? Disease? Is our God strong enough to deal with the wrongness of the world? Is there room for him to still be good even when things are bad, or do we just pretend things aren't that bad? 

Having grown up in a messy home where divorce and disease made my teenage years extremely difficult, I never felt so alone as I did in the Christian community. I had friends in school who did not share my beliefs that stood by me even when I was at my worst, who walked me through my darkest and angriest days, but many people from the Christian community I considered close friends couldn't understand or fathom how to respond to suffering and loss. Perhaps due to being young and somewhat naïve, having lived a sheltered life, but it made keeping my faith extremely difficult. Either I needed to bury deep the hard parts and pretend they weren't happening to have a social context where I could be a part of, or it resulted in feeling like an outcast. 

The challenge lies in being capable of acknowledging the horrors of the world without despairing entirely, and here is where faith in God is the one resource that Christians have that cannot be matched: the certainty that God is above all the messiness and working through it is the one thing that can help us stand against the current. To be part of a messy world, to acknowledge its horrors and its evil, but to stand against it and try to bring redemption - one step at a time. Our hope that this is not the way things are meant to be and that things will ultimately be changed and redeemed is what can enable us to truly see what the situation is and do something about it. 

(2) To love is to suffer 

If Jesus showed us anything from his time on earth, he showed us that the one who truly loves is the one who suffers, who is broken. We enter relationships expecting what we will receive in return - fun, laughter, company - but often when a cost appears that is too taxing, we let that relationship dwindle and eventually die.

It is difficult and it is inconvenient to have people who are suffering and grieving in a community, these are people who are fragile and who don't have much to give in return - in fact, they may suck joy and energy out of any event or conversation. We cannot truly love anyone if we are not willing to let our hearts break for them and with them. 

(3) Aim to love, not to be loved

We often equate loving people to being nice and being likeable; perhaps even to being loved. But again, looking at Jesus' trajectory, for whom having loved all people perfectly resulted in his public execution. It isn't exactly how we envision the consequence of loving anyone, is it?

My desire to be loved and accepted has often prevented me from saying or doing anything in a difficult situation out of fear of saying the wrong thing, the inappropriate thing, the person not liking me for it. How much more harm have I caused by my silence and my fear of not being loved? Do I really place being loved above doing something kind or loving towards someone? Would I prefer to be considered less weird or would I prefer to contact a friend I'm worried about and ask 'Have you ever thought about self harm? Would you like to talk? Do you mind if I pray for you, even though you don't believe in prayers?'. 

(4) You don't have to know what to say

I did mention awkward silences, but I don't think all silences are awkward. In fact, words can be just as harmful - empty statements such as "It will all be ok, it will get sorted out", "We will pray for your healing" and "God knows what he's doing" without any emotional involvement are at best meaningless and at worst deeply harmful. There are times we don't understand what another person is going through, and that is OK. But if we truly love them, we will hurt with them - and the way we can reach out can be with an embrace, sitting and mourning with them or even trying to reach out with practical tasks that can help lighten their load. In other words, there is no perfect way to respond or to mourn - each situation and each relationship is unique, but whatever you do, pour your heart into it. 

I do not think these four points are all encompassing and certainly they are not a four step method for mourning with those who mourn. These are just three barriers I have found in myself and my cultural assumptions that have made it harder to mourn - not only death, but any form of deep loss - with those around me. 

Only taken as they are, these three things to address have overwhelming prospects. If I were to try and accomplish them on my own, the endless effort to pour out love holds a very real risk of burnout and exhaustion. I cannot pour out love without being filled by God's love for me and for the person in front of me; I cannot try something outrageous and awkward without God's Spirit to guide me as to when to speak and when to be silent; I cannot try and relate to others without God's grace to catch me and care for those around me when I ultimately (and inevitably) fail. 

I cannot think of a time in history where loneliness and isolation have affected so many as it has in the last year, most of us have experienced loss in some shape or form - it means we feel very unprepared to reach out, but it also means we share an underlying theme that can help us connect with everyone around us by default. The game changer for Christians is that through Christ we have incredible resources for responding to suffering and pain, and it is our responsibility to share it with a hurting world. But first we need to be brave enough to hurt with it.