What If?

People who are always gentle with themselves probably do not need to think about all the ways that rumination, regret and remorse mess us up. So you guys can go have a nice day and stop reading right here! For the rest of us, the insecure, the sensitive, the perpetually anxious and often plagued with guilt peeps, who are alway berating ourselves with the WHAT IF’s? - I have a phrase for you, here goes: When we know better we do better.

I'm not suggesting that this little phrase serves as some kind of magical solution to all our feelings of guilt and shame. But what I am suggesting is this: we often get in a habit loop of thinking, feeling and doing. When it becomes just circular suffering without anything changing, we need to break up the band and find a new way to live.

So here's what we do. We notice ourselves falling into the trap of feeling perpetual guilt, we realize that this is more habit than factual reality (because if we are legitimately guilty then our work is to ask forgiveness and make amends), and we need to discipline ourselves to break the habit loop.

Here's my example: As my mother died, my daughter was giving birth. I rushed from my mom's bedside to be present for my grandson's birth - a ten hour drive. My father found this reprehensible; who ever wants to disappoint their daddy? But my mind knew that I had done all I could for my mom, and now I needed to be there for my daughter. I spent years dealing with a whole range of emotions. But healing began on the day that I made my two lists, and I was supported by people who loved me in saying, when we know better we do better. Anytime I found myself ruminating and rummaging around looking for alternative choices for a past I could not change, I said to myself: "This is not productive; this is not helpful. When I know better, I do better. I am doing better by refusing to ruminate, second guess and feel guilty about something I can not change...and would not change if I had to make the same choice right now." Let me be clear. What I had to accept, what I had to get better at doing, was this: not allowing other people to decide what I should or should not do, how I should or should not feel. I believe I made the choice my mother would have approved of - go home once all has been done, and do the next right thing. Celebrate a new baby even as you mourn the loss of the woman who loved babies more than ice cream. But if this sounds easy, then I am a poor communicator. It was not and it is not easy. But this is what a commitment to growing up requires - doing. hard things.

The Gift of Guilt

"I'll never get over my guilt," is a sentence I hear often from parents who have suffered the traumatic loss of a child (and all losses of children are traumatic - even if they are grown up when we lose them).

If we stay in this place of ruminating over our regrets and guilt, we are spared a bit from the acknowledgement of all our loss. Maybe it is easier to talk about our feelings of guilt than it is to live with the reality of all the things that will not happen now that they are gone.

It is all HARD. Guilt is crushing; mourning is like having heart surgery without anesthesia - every damn day.

But here's the thing - guilt is not really a gift unless it is true, legitimate wrongdoing - if that is true, then we know how to proceed: ask for forgiveness and make amends. However, it is usually not the whole story. Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit for what we perceive we can (or should) control. Secondly, it is expensive. Unremitting, unresolved feelings of guilt steals the present moment. It takes us away from the living.

Guilt, the lying little bugger, tells us that it serves as a living tribute to the loss. But guilt really just keeps stealing from the living. Guilt asks us to keep dying for our dead - and that sounds noble, even preferable to our grief over another's passing.

But what if there is another way? What if we acknowledge the specifics of what we cannot undo that was 'wrong' and refuse the offering of a generalized guilty feeling with no legitimate claim to reality? We acknowledge our legitimate wrongdoing and seek forgiveness, make amends. If we find that some of the beliefs that we have held about our guilt are simply not true, then we must move forward. We live. We live to honor the lost. We live well for those among us, our other children, our family that is still present for us to love well.

These are not easy things nor are they appropriate first responses for someone new to grief. But if we find that our grief is interfering with our love for others - maybe it is time to re-evaluate the ways we have thought about our loss. Maybe we need a grief counselor or a grief group to help us reframe our habitual way of thinking about our suffering.

Maybe we need some support for healing.

Our Work

If we use Sarai as an example of our own struggles with disappointment, what might we learn? We could certainly notice that blaming Abram probably is not helping her heal. I wonder if it would help Sarai (and us) to make a couple of lists?

1. Make a list of all the things that we grieve over that are not, and never were, up to us. For example - is it possible for us to change another person? No. Even if we want to, each person has the right and responsibility to choose their path in life - even if it is self-destructive. Can we control who lives and dies? Mostly not. We may feel guilty about some of our decisions, but only the things that we are actually responsible for go on list 2, not list 1.

2. Make a list of the choices we have made that we cannot undo. No matter how much we regret them, these are the decisions we must come to acknowledge and accept as ours to own.

This can be a necessary part of the work of grief. We mourn what happened and what did not happen. When my mother died, I mourned her passing AND I grieved over all the things that did not happen. It took we a long while to understand that my work involved grieving the loss of two things - the stuff that was not and never was up to me and the choices I cannot undo.

Consider your lists today; see if in making them you discover some "stuck" places in your own grief work.

“All Therapy is Grief Work”

In Dr. Edith Eger's book, "The Gift", she sums up in one sentence why so many of us who need therapy resist getting it - "All therapy is grief work." She should know.

As a Holocaust survivor, Eger has worked with veterans, military personnel and victims of physical and mental trauma. She understands grief. But what is far more impressive to me is her candor about her reluctance to actually do the work of grief herself. Instead, she achieved and strived and tried to outrun her suffering. Thanks be to God that at some point she realized this: "I'm a prisoner and a victim when I minimize or deny my pain - and I'm a prisoner and a victim when I hold on to regret." (p.92, The Gift). According to Eger, we all share in the universal experience of life not turning out as we want or expect. "We suffer because we have something we don't want, or we want something we don't have." (also p. 92, The Gift)

In an effort to either support or deny Eger's claim, I did what I so often do, I turned to the scriptures to see what kind of examples I might find in the life of God's people over the ages. It did not take long, in fact, this was not even the first example of disappointment paired with added suffering.

Sarai, who was barren, came up with the absolutely brilliant idea (sarcasm, folks) to 'give' to Abram her slave Hagar as a surrogate for Sarai's child. (Use your imagination, there were no fertility clinics.) What could possibly go wrong here? Of course, Hagar became pregnant.

Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me." (Genesis 16:5 NIV)

Wait. Sarai came up with this scheme. Does anyone ask how Hagar feels about her master and his wife's plan? NOW Sarai has regrets. She wishes she could change the past. Her wish is much deeper and more heartfelt than just wishing Hagar's pregnancy would have no emotional effect on Hagar and thereby cause Sarai discomfort. Sarai wishes she herself could get pregnant and bear a bunch of babies with her husband.

Grief is not just about what happens to us; it is also about what does not happen. It's never easy to think about grief and loss but it won't get any easier avoiding it.

Today, ask yourself - in your grief, can you identify the ways you feel powerless over not just what happened but also what did not happen that you expected, longed for or dreamed about?

Suffering Does Not Have to Destroy

Easter is over for this year, has been for awhile now. I've spent more than Easter's time slot on the subject of suffering and resurrection. But if I may, indulge me one more blog post. Suffering does not have to destroy us. Your suffering does not have to destroy you.

We are in far greater danger from the extremes to which we go to avoid our suffering. We run from our own deaths, we try to evade hard times. Rather than confronting our suffering, we are far more likely to go in search of an enemy to blame. Please consider that those things you most oppose - be it personalities or politics or even sports teams - these are distractions. They are also dead ends. Our lives will never improve through an obsessive focus on blaming and opposing others.

Instead, I would point you to Jesus. The losing God. The God who refused to say he was King even though he was one. Jesus, the guy who raised his friend from the dead (too late to avoid a scolding from his friends Martha and Mary perhaps) knowing that this would be the final straw and lead to his own death. Jesus, the guy who tried to tell us that death is far less scary when we sit in the hands of God than it is to live a life missing the point.

Don't miss the point, please. And, when you do, like me, miss the point - don't beat yourself up. Take a break from social media and maybe dig in the dirt or take a long walk or play an instrument or listen to a song that makes your heart sing. Make cookies with your grandchildren - if you don't have grandchildren, make cookies for someone. Invite a friend to sit on your patio and soak up the sun and a little encouragement. Say yes when your friend invites you to play bridge even if you have to rearrange your schedule. Love the ones you're with. This is truly, our one wild and precious life. Don't waste it worrying about whether or not your silly little sideboard might be stranded in the Panama Canal.