Over the course of two weeks in April and May, Nancy and I buried our fathers. Writing that sentence still feels strange.
I’ve been gathering texts, and facebook posts, and thoughts into a sort of journal. I posted Scripture, lyrics from songs that expressed ideas I couldn’t quite formulate, observations about how grief was rolling around in my mind and soul, like a bowling ball in the trunk of a car. Looking back over those pages, I’m realizing I wasn’t just learning about loss, but also about peacemaking.
Like many Christians and pastors, I’ve often wanted to comfort hurting people. Grief exposed something for me that I hadn’t fully seen before. Often, when I encounter pain I cannot understand, or that threatens to overwhelm, I make a choice. I can choose to sit down on the ‘mourner’s bench’ beside someone, or I can shrink their pain into something small enough that I can explain. Shrinking pain feels safer (for me).
If I can explain your suffering, I don’t have to enter into it. If I can quote the right verse or offer the right theological truth at just the right moment, maybe we can move on. We don’t have to linger in the discomfort – also, I’ve done my pastoral duty and I’ve ‘saved’ you from additional pain and struggle.
I’m learning, one step at a time, that grief doesn’t work that way.
A dear friend sent me a book that has been a faithful companion through these last months (months? It hasn’t been months. It’s been 77 and 63 days, respectively). Lament for a Son by Nicholas Wolterstorff is an account of grief following the death of his son. The author refuses to tie everything up with neat conclusions, choosing instead to tell the truth about the emotional realities of grief.
He says, “The wound is no longer raw. But it has not disappeared…. If he was worth loving, he is worth grieving over.” He writes that the death of a loved one leaves “a hole in the world.” Not merely sadness, but an absence. Someone who saw the world in a way no one else ever will is gone. Two people who were wired into my daily experiences are no longer there. No more meals. No more phone calls. No more advice.
My father knew things no one else knew. My father-in-law loved people in ways that were uniquely his. Questions unasked now have no earthly answers.
Neither one of them will hold a great-grandchild. The world really is different (and poorer) because they are no longer in it. And that’s okay to say, because it’s exactly how I feel, and not because I lack hope.
Our Christian faith gives us extraordinary hope: Christ has truly conquered death. The grave is not the end. Resurrection is coming. Those truths are massive foundation stones that cannot be shaken. Yet, this hope does not erase grief.
The love of God, the compassion of Jesus, and the truth of hope have given me permission to grieve honestly because I do not have to pretend. I don’t have to manufacture smiles or rush people toward emotional resolution. I can tell the truth about death because I know death will not have the final word. It’s horrible and terrible, and to deny that is to deny reality.
One experience stuck with me and took a few days to process. Someone, perhaps trying to be helpful, questioned why I was expressing “so much grief” when I know that my loved ones are with the Lord. I think I understood the intention intellectually, but my emotions were another matter entirely. I was angry. I was ready to light a stick of dynamite.
I texted my friend who sent me the book. I wrote these words in my journal: “When someone encounters pain they can’t understand, they can either join on the mourner’s bench, or they turn it into something small that they can understand.”
I keep coming back to that idea. I think that’s true far beyond grief. This is a principle that shows up in conflicts, in marriages, in divisive political and cultural issues.
When someone tells us about their pain, our first instinct can be to explain it, to evaluate it, compare it to our own, dismiss it, or attempt to fix it. We rush to certainty because… well, uncertainty is uncomfortable. We have the truth of the scriptures in our heads, and we know it. And so we speak from our head, attempting to rescue them from their emotions when peacemakers should be doing something different.
Peacemakers sit and listen. They ask questions and smile or cry when stories are shared. They resist the temptation to make another person’s pain manageable, or turn it into an opportunity to share their proverbs about ‘how to get through it.’ They mourn with those who mourn.
That doesn’t mean withholding advice during panic. It doesn’t mean abandoning truth. It means recognizing that the emotional experience of grief is not a problem to solve, but an opportunity for presence and love.
Wolterstorff says, “Please… don’t say it’s not really so bad. Because it is. Death is awful, demonic. If you think your task as comforter is to tell me that, really, all things considered, it’s not so bad, you do not sit with me in my grief, but place yourself at a distance from me. Over there, you are of no help. What I need to hear from you is that you recognize how painful it is. I need to hear from you that you are with me in my desperation. To comfort me, you have to come close. Come sit beside me on my mourning bench.”
If a polarized world needs a peacemaking church, then perhaps one of the first things peacemakers must recover is the quiet ministry of presence.
Before we speak, we sit. We listen before we explain. We linger before we fix.
My dear friend (who sent me the book) once told me that “the most important thing someone can do for someone who is suffering is to bear witness to their pain.” I didn’t like that answer then, because I wanted to fix the thing causing the pain… but now I understand. Only Jesus can fix the loss of two fathers… and in this season of grief, before he fixes it, I welcome those who will come and sit closely beside me, bearing witness.
Who do you see around you who needs you to sit with them?
Keith Myer is the Matthew 5:9 Outreach Manager.
He has been a pastor serving in the Southern Baptist Convention for over twenty years, most recently at Harvest Baptist Church in Salisbury, Maryland. He serves as a trustee of Gateway Seminary in California, as the Associational Missionary for the Eastern Baptist Association, and as the Chair of the BCM/D Sexual Abuse Reform Task Force. The BCM/D Task Force’s work has been incorporated into the SBC’s national response, specifically the 5 Essentials of Train, Screen, Protect, Report, & Care, and the Pathways implementation curriculum.
Jesus’ ministry of peacemaking thrives on trust, transparency, and strong relationships, and so Keith has worked hard to listen and build coalitions that can produce positive change. He enjoys reading and spending time with Nancy, his boys, and their two dogs. He knows with certainty that Coke is better than Pepsi, Dunkin is superior to Starbucks, and The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie and the best sci-fi movie ever made.
Keith has an M.Div from Columbia International University and an M.B.A. in Leadership from Liberty University.
