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Grief hurts. It is a knife that cuts and rips and slashes and makes us cry out in terrible pain. It is an agony of the soul. When it comes, we feel out of control.
All of us have experienced it for one reason or the other: death, terrible sickness in our own bodies or the bodies of those we love, divorce, the loss of a career. It comes in different guises, but in some form it always comes to everyone. It always does.
How best then can we deal with this emotional winter storm? This ripping and tearing at our stability. Some weep until there are no more tears left to cry with. Some try to drown their sorrow in a bottle or the impact of a pill. Some try to repress their heartache and, like a kettle with no escape valve, eventually explode.
Would you ease your own grieving time? Then go out, and though still hurting or remembering how badly once you hurt, use your personal knowledge of pain to help others.
Remembering will hurt, but it will remind you of what it was like improve your empathy.
Then willingly search for some other hurting survivor. Hold the palsied hand of someone old and alone, or give patient love to a little lad or lass who obviously gets very little of it at home. Be a loving friend who takes a day off from work to stand in those final moments by a grave with someone who knows you went out of your way to show you care.
In other words, move from the theological to the practical. Study the Sermon on the Mount and start building your own little hill of concern.
Helen Keller was deaf, dumb and blind, but she didn’t spend her life sitting alone in dark, dumb, dingy silence feeling sorry for herself. Did not burden herself by grieving for a life that might have been. Rather she got up every morning and went out. Went out to where the birds were singing, and people were talking and the world was living, all of which she could neither hear nor see. Went out to pour the sweet perfume of noble thoughts on others and feel some of it splashing back upon herself.
Don’t misunderstand me, she wasn’t born with this wonderful attitude. In her youth she would literally flail at family and teachers, making loud almost animal-like sounds of frustration.
She was daily angry and allowed herself to be filled with hopelessness. Then one day, her teacher got through to her that there is more than one kind of blindness.
That, yes, there is physical blindness that cannot see light, but there is also spiritual emotional blindness that will not search for light.
And so she decided to make the most of life and not the least, to look for the best and not the worst. She decided not to daily grieve over her misfortune, but instead deal with it with a multitude of positive actions minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day until she had lived out a lifetime of service.
More than once I have placed my hand on the shoulder of another human being bent low with hurting and said, “Weep…cry…. Slowly siphon it out of your system. Then turn and begin to walk away from your wounding. Otherwise, you but nurture a ghost that will haunt you the rest of your days.”
In short, when pain and problem come, pray deeply and then deeper still, do all you can and then get on with living.
There is a thin line between those who have conquered life or been conquered by it. Each additional year of living does not necessarily bring maturity, sainthood and sweetness, or spiritual wisdom. Strength is not an automatic.
What then to do?
Believe God chose your day of birth and knows your day of death. These are two very important decisions that are His and His alone. And accepting this knowledge is a good place to start in the battle for stability.
QUOTES FROM THE SPIRITUAL ABRAHAM LINCOLN BOOK
Everything that happened in the war was not of blood and pain and hate. The best in man sometimes rises out of the worst. More than likely the story of what happened
one cold day during the terrible battle of Fredricksburg reached Abe’s ears and pleased the heart of this forgiving President. It was a dreadful battle that cried out for some miraculous act of empathy.
A Sergeant Richard Kirkland of Company E Carolina Regiment made a request of his commanding officer that was almost denied. He had looked too long at the tortured, twisted dead and dying men and could finally stand it no more. He sought startling permission to take water and aid to those dressed in both Blue and Gray.
“You may get a bullet in the back of your head, son,” he was told. The soldier replied that he wanted to go anyway.
“May God protect you,” said Major General J. B. Kershaw. A short time later, men on both sides of this field of agony and despair, watched in awe as the young man vaulted over a bloodstained stonewall and walked unarmed an d seemingly unafraid among the dead and dying. They saw him kneel down and cradle a fallen Union soldier in his arms, offer him a drink of water, rest his head on his knapsack and cover him with his own overcoat. And then move to another soldier nearby. This time it was a Confederate soldier.
Again and again throughout that long, pale December afternoon, just eleven days before Christmas, Sergeant Kirkland returned with water until every living soldier, from both the North and the South, had felt his compassion and concern.
General Kershaw later wrote that not one shot was fired during that time. That never had he heard such silent respect. “…no doubt,” his pen etched, “all the trumpets of heaven resounded on this monumental day.”
Some recent topic titles on his other blog, Whrick’s Writings are:ONE LOG ON A FIRE, TWO JOLLY GREEN GIANTS; LOVE AND FORGIVENESS, WISDOM IS.WHAT IS HAPPY,60 PLUS AND NOT HOLDING
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SOME QUOTES FROM Rev. Wyrick’s 9TH BOOK “THE SPIRITUAL ABRAHAM LINCOLN”
Preface
‘This book is more than just a march down memory lane. It is certainly not a search-and-destroy mission as are some historical efforts. It is really a questing for an understanding of the man able to write, “He has the right to criticize who has the heart to
help.” “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?” “It is the duty of all nations as well as of men to owe their dependence upon the over ruling power of God.”1 “With malice toward none; with charity toward all…”
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