According to SAMHSA (Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration), 61% of men and 51% of women in the United States report exposure to at least one lifetime traumatic event. Up until the fall of 2013 I would not have fallen into those statistics.
In the last roughly 6 1/2 years, that changed dramatically. There is no statistic for what came next.
Pictured above are the faces of every traumatic loss I experienced in that time.
3 Suicides. 3 Cancer Deaths. 1 Heart Failure. And as of June 30th this week – 1 Murder.
This image does not include casual acquaintances who passed away in that time frame. These are all friends and family I loved dearly. It also does not include close calls, including but not limited to my dad’s near-fatal heart attack or the friend I rushed to the hospital after he swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills.
I’m uncertain at this point whether death is following me around with a vengeance like the book of Job or if God has me following death around so I can be there with compassion when tragedy strikes. All I know with certainty is the trauma of loss has become a norm. In Psalm 23 it mentions, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil.” It seems while some get to pass through this valley, I have been camped there for awhile now in a tent where I can offer hugs and condolences. Grieving loss of life is not a subject anyone wants to be an expert in, especially through personal experience. Yet here I am, and the only thing I can do is give that experience purpose.
When Steve ended his own life back in August of 2014, it shattered me deeper than I have words to express. Over the next three years I spent every day burying the pain of loss and seeking every desperate way to heal. I didn’t want to let those around me down, and I didn’t feel like many people understood why I was so deeply impacted by him, so I kept it to myself most days. Nobody knew just how deeply I hurt or how each of the other losses kept reopening and deepening the wounds. I loved the few instances where I talked with his family, but they were grieving their loss of him too, and I didn’t want to make it worse for them just so I could feel better. Maybe I did anyway. I don’t know anymore, but I’m sorry if I did.
In March of 2017 I finally cried out to Jesus in what you could refer to as a last ditch effort seeking truth after extensive exploration everywhere else. That was the first time the weight lifted, like I could supernaturally breath again. I still had a great deal to work through for myself, but I finally grasped that I couldn’t heal without God.
Since accepting Christ into my life, I lost my employer of six years unexpectedly last August from what I will simplify as being sudden heart failure. She had welcomed me as part of her family and been there for me so often. Then Monday of this week, my best friend of the last several years was murdered in a home invasion. The man who shot him in the head was on parole with the police looking for him, and he broke into the “wrong” house looking for someone else. He left from there to shoot three more people who all survived and has since been apprehended. (People keep saying “wrong” house as though there is any right house to break into and shoot someone. There isn’t. Language is gut-wrenchingly challenging some days.)
In all these encounters with trauma and loss, I have become more self aware of my grieving process. I know the five stages like the back of my hand (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). As a Certified Life Coach, Living Free Facilitator, and avid learner of human behavior, I understand grief intimately. Yet no matter how grounded in knowledge and Christ I am, they still happen in their own way. They are just more informed now, shorter, and expressed in healthier ways with the forward momentum of the Holy Spirit moving me toward healing.
Even Jesus wept when Lazarus died, and in that moment he knew he could bring him back to life! There is no stopping or withholding grief. If it needs to be expressed, it will happen.
The pain in the world always inevitably motivates me to counter it by spreading more love. I don’t want to live any other way. I can’t be someone who returns hate for more hate and amplifies the problems. It would dishonor their memories and wishes for my life, compounding the pain already being experienced. Thusly I learned to forgive in all things, even when it can be so very hard. Admittedly it will take time for me to process my way through real forgiveness for this murderer just like it took me time to forgive those who may have held some level of responsibility in the other deaths. The instructions Christ gave in places like the sermon on the mount hold deeper meaning to me now, because I’ve had to walk them out and learn they are truly the only way to survive.
Forgiveness is the only path of any value.
I’ve learned grief is not meant to be carried alone. This time around I have a strong support system in place that has astounded me with their immediate heartfelt presence. In addition, I can turn to prayer where I get moments away from the sadness of the flesh to feel the peace of God that surpasses understanding in my spirit. The years I didn’t have that relief were excruciating and exhausting.
Furthermore, I believe heaven is real, and I will see them again, greeted by the most amazing hugger and brightest smiles and most engaging eyes and charismatic personalities. Our shared faith will heal and uplift me in life and reunite us someday. I don’t know if a couple of them were Christians, but I know most of them were.
At the end of the day, the most important lesson gleaned about mourning as a Christian is that grief does not come from a loss of love, but from an overwhelming presence of it.
There are parts of me that sincerely wish it could get easier, that loss could become less painful the more you experience it. We know death is a part of life, so sometimes I think it would be nice to be a little jaded to it.
The other part of me knows the truth. I want to mourn every single time I experience a loss without fail. At least that way I know my heart is still working. In order to experience deep and real love, we must allow ourselves to be deeply vulnerable – a word that some days sounds like complete insanity and others like the only sane thing to do. My friend who was murdered was truly the most vulnerable and loving person anyone had ever met, and he set an excellent example for me to follow. I know he would be disappointed in me if I allowed this to weaken the love or put up walls in my heart. He would insist I be even more vulnerable, to cry and scream and let it out, but never to shy away.
To have been blessed by every beautiful experience I shared with each one of these people, I had to be open to the fact that someday I could lose that gift. Every time a loss happens, I am selfish in mourning what will not be in my life and the lives of others anymore, but it comes from wanting to continue giving that love we shared – more love – all the love I can. I become more aware that I am vulnerable, more aware of the love I have to give, more aware of everyone who feels the same pain. Grieving loss develops unfathomable empathy. The depth of your pain translates into new depths from which you can love others.
To suffer great loss is the fertile soil of great love. To do the work to heal from that loss is to plant seeds in that soil. To take what you learned from the experience and use your greater empathy to be more compassionate, helping others through their pain – that is to bear fruit.
So if there is one thing I want you to know, it’s that your grief is love gained. It may have been gained through the deepest pain imaginable, pain I would never wish on anyone, but I pray you will embrace it. Let love fuel your healing process, not darkness, bitterness, or hate. When you experience the anger stage, be angry that the world doesn’t have enough of the love you shared with the person you lost, and choose to share it. It’s the only way anything gets better. It’s the only way that maybe someday, these kinds of tragedies can be a thing of the past. Give more love, even when it hurts.
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” – Kurt Vonnegut
