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Everyone experiences some kind of significant loss. A young person has moves from their childhood home or has a close friend who moves away; a teenager or young adult loses their girlfriend or boyfriend; many people in this church have lost parents, gone through a divorce and “lost their children;” some of you have lost your spouse, sibling, or even your child. Emotional pain is just as real if not worse than physical pain. Yet in the face of this, Jesus promises those who mourn will be comforted.
Mary Ann Taylor-Hall wrote, “Come and Go, Molly Snow” in which she gives an account of a mother named Carrie who is attempting to come to grips with the loss of her eight-year-old daughter, Molly Snow.1 Over time Carrie listens to helping words and begins the steps of coming to grips with the absence of Molly Snow. She defines the presence of a deep, dull ache, which had taken the place of her daughter. At one point Carrie remarks, "Sometimes the thought of “I’m still here” seems stranger than “she’s gone."2
Carrie finds it is harder to deal with being left behind than it is to deal with Molly Snow's being gone. Most anyone who has lost some significant person in his or her life knows that feeling. Without the person we loved, “I’m still here” no longer carries the joy it once did. When a wife dies, a part of the husband dies. When a child dies, a part of the parent dies. “I’m still here” just is not the same now that I am without them. We wonder how we will go on without the person in whom so much o
f our lives found identity and meaning. Carrie felt stuck in the “still here” wants to know what is going to happen next. As she begins to put her life back together, she admits, "I'm not brave."3 Finally, Carrie comes to the realization, "I'll always have this grief in the center of me, but my life will grow around it. My life will be real."4
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. We hope! We have come home and looked in our late spouse's chair and expected them to be sitting there. We have wanted to tell a parent about some fantastic achievement in our lives, but had to tell someone else who was not nearly as interested, or proud, as our parent would have been. We have wanted to call our best friend and talk sports, politics, or many other topics just so we could stay on the line with each other. No matter how hard we strain we will not hear that voice again.
Jesus promised that those who mourn shall be comforted. This is not about “readjusting.” This is not about “getting by.” This is more than just “making it.” We are talking about being comforted.
This does not mean we stop crying, no longer miss the person, or have somehow “gotten over the loss.” No, it means the opposite. The truth is some things we may never get over, but we can learn to live with them. Comfort is not the erasing of a memory, but having our pain soothed to the point that we can remember in peace. Comfort is not a drying of the tears, but a peace that allows us to remember and give thanks even while we cry.
When Jesus gave His farewell address to the disciples, He told them that God would send them the Comforter, the Holy Spirit. We too are promised the Comforter, whose constant breath of new life empowers us to continue living in ways that would honor the memory of the one we have lost.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross described five stages through which a terminally ill patient might pass. Not all pass through the stages; perhaps just some; and perhaps they are fluid even within a day. Those five stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Their families and friends make similar treks and not all of them reach acceptance. It is important to remember that the stage of acceptance is not a “happy time” in which all is suddenly “okay.” Rather, it is a time in which fear and despair no longer wield control over us.
Acceptance is not about saying that things worked out well after all. Rather it is the ability to live peacefully and hopefully in the face of a set of completely unsatisfactory circumstances. It is not a giving in to the tragedy, but an overcoming of its grip on us.5
1. Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Come and Go, Molly Snow (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995), p. 18.
2. Ibid, p. 120.
3. Ibid, p. 219.
4. Ibid, p. 268.
5. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 99-106.