I remember visitation at the funeral home following the death of my younger brother, Dick. When my friend John C. came through the line, he hugged me and I wept. Later, someone who had observed my reaction described it as "Dave lost it." After hearing this, I didn't want to make others feel uncomfortable, so I chose to hide my grief. I got the cultural message and let it shape my response to my grief.
What messages have others given you about grief? How did they affect you?
In Dr. James Pennebaker's book Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotion,1 he cites several studies which indicate that we gain protection against harmful internal stress when we express emotions. We also gain the long-term benefits of decreased risks of future diseases and increased health in our immune system.
Jacob not only faced his grief but also embraced it. He put on sackcloth — a culturally accepted way of expressing grief — which was typically coarse black cloth made of goat's hair, much like wearing black in some cultures today. He wept and he mourned; he became a person who was acquainted with the pain of grief.
Jesus is also "a man of suffering, and familiar with pain" (Isaiah 53:3) — or as the King James Version puts it, "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He wept when His friend Lazarus died. God wants to develop the heart of Jesus, a man of sorrows, in us. What if not facing and embracing our grief means we are resisting this development?
What if expressing grief is actually "coming together" rather than "falling apart" — our heart and spirit coming together with our body?
Dear Jesus, I choose to trust You. Form Your heart in mine. Amen.
~Dave Beach
James W. Pennebaker, Opening Up (New York: Guilford, 1990), 34.
Excerpted with permission from When Grief Goes Deep edited by Timothy Beals, copyright Zondervan.
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