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Why Do The Sads Feel So Sad?
105 Plays4 months ago
Thanks for listening to Season 1, Episode 13 of The After Dinner Mint, a podcast of Stories I’d Tell You at Dinner. We bring Christian women in Western Australia together through honest stories. Thanks for sharing your day with us!
Why Do The Sads Feel So Sad? is a deep dive into grief with a Mental Health Social Worker, a woman in ministry, and a Clinical Psych Registrar. Britt, Maddy and Bec explore our experiences of grief including bereavement but also discuss loss through transitions, aging, and the loss of dreams and potential. Life in a fallen world means we, collectively, are well acquainted with grief.
Can grief be a gift? How do we learn to live with it when our bodies shut down? How do we grieve in community? How do we grieve as Christians? As always, we have questions. Join us around the dinner table as we flesh this one out.
In Wednesday’s episode, we discuss:
🎧 What grief is and the common responses of either ignoring it or being consumed by it.
🎧 How our lives have been shaped by sitting with grief and what it means to grieve as a Christian.
🎧 Making space for grief and being able to sit with it, through therapy, deep friendships, prayer and lament, and what makes this vital skill difficult.
🎧 Grieving in community: the good, the bad and the ugly.
Check out the show notes for everything mentioned in the show.
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Music: Come Back by Ketsa. Licensed under a Creative Commons License Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives 4.0 International License.
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Transcript
Introduction to Themes of Grief and Hope
00:00:00
Speaker
And I see that we are living on this kind of cursed earth. We are longing for what is to come. And in a lot of ways, for me, my grief reminds me of what is to come, that fullness, that wiping away of every tear I've ever had that I get to look forward to whilst I endure on earth. But I don't actually endure it alone.
Introducing 'After Dinner Mint' Podcast
00:00:24
Speaker
This is the After Dinner Mint, a podcast of stories I tell you at dinner. Think of the mint as the stories you tell after you've been kicked out of the restaurant, holding your mint, standing in the street, telling more honest stories with your friends than you did at the table.
00:00:39
Speaker
It's not a sermon. It's not advice. It's not self-help. We're processing what we're learning about faith and life, honestly, in community, to encourage you to do that with your God and your community.
00:00:56
Speaker
Hello, welcome back to the latest episode of the After Dinner Mint. And today we are talking about why do the sads feel so sad? However, before we get into the topic on grief and loss, we thought we would just introduce ourselves a little bit. So you have a bit of a sense of who's actually talking to you.
00:01:15
Speaker
And if we have any expertise on these subjects that we are discussing, which I would like to reiterate that we do not claim to be experts on any of these topics. And this podcast is purely meant to be what would happen if you were hanging out with your friends late at night when the conversation flows a bit better and you're able really talk about where you're at and what you might think about things. So we're not here to give you advice. We're not here to give you a theological position.
00:01:39
Speaker
However, we are speaking from our own experiences as Christian women in society leading very different lives. So why don't we get started? Actually, I'm going to throw to you, Bec. Can you introduce yourself?
Meet the Hosts and Their Backgrounds
00:01:52
Speaker
What's your background?
00:01:53
Speaker
What's your work history been? Why are you here?
00:01:58
Speaker
vima yeah Excellent. So my name is Bec. I am trained as a clinical psych. So my background I've worked in child protection, prisons, homeless shelter, child trauma services.
00:02:10
Speaker
hospitals, you know, all the really sad places. I've worked there. Yeah. And I'm also the founder of Stories I Tell You Dinner. Yeah. Maddie, tell us about yourself. Thanks, guys. I'm Maddie. I trained as a speech pathologist, but left that to do ministry. And so I'm currently almost to the end of my Masters of Divinity at Trinity, which has key A big journey and I'm almost there. I can see the end inside.
00:02:32
Speaker
I'm really excited to be there and excited to dig into more ministry stuff soon. Are you already working in ministry, Maddie? Or when you finish, will you look for a job in ministry? I've done a number of years already and I effectively left my ministry job to train in ministry.
00:02:46
Speaker
It was like, oh, what do you want after this degree? i was like, oh the job that I already had. But yeah, so hopefully go into a ministry position or I'd also happily work at a parachurch organization and encourage people or just volunteer at my church and lead a Bible study or something like that.
00:03:02
Speaker
However, the Lord calls me use. Amazing. Parenting my children, that also is a thing that i need to do. Yes. Yeah. That takes up a lot of time. but but And my name is Brittany. I am an accredited mental health social worker.
00:03:17
Speaker
which basically just means I provide therapy to, at the moment, it's young people and young adults with complex trauma and marginalisation and perhaps reasons that they can't receive services in kind of the mainstream system.
00:03:34
Speaker
And I have worked there on and off for a number of years. I've done some work in private practice as well, providing therapy. And prior to that, worked in headspace centres, hospital, hospital,
00:03:47
Speaker
specifically with young people. i was a school chaplain at the very start of my career, worked in local government, lots of different jobs. Basically have kind of worked at the pointy end of mental health for a long time now, providing therapy and hopefully some hope to the young people that i have been working with.
00:04:04
Speaker
And many moons ago, i did do one year of theology training. Can I remember the course? always toy with studying, but I've never really got there.
00:04:15
Speaker
I feel like doing stories, I'll end up, I'm like, I want to do theology training. And I'm like, no, no no more study. But now everyone has theology training. Maybe it's a trap. No, I'm kidding. It's Brini.
00:04:27
Speaker
Renhoff. I have zero theology training. I've read a lot of meat. Sorry, Brit. yeah like Get us on track. Get us on track.
Exploring the Nature and Impact of Grief
00:04:33
Speaker
So today, really what we're talking about is grief and loss and not just in the sense of somebody close to me has died, that sort of grief. We are thinking a bit more, expanding that our thinking on that to really encompass grief and loss in the sense of as we go through life stages, transitions, the grief of even like finishing up with a job, starting a new one, the grief of changing into motherhood, the grief of perhaps not being able to have children,
00:05:01
Speaker
The grief of either leaving singlehood for marriage or not marrying, whatever the life stage you might be in we all kind of experience grief and loss as part of the human experience, I would say.
00:05:15
Speaker
And so we really want to deep a little bit about that and I guess one of the places this came from is what I have found in providing therapy over the years is there's this kind of inherent human fear of grief, of either pretending it's not happening, like, no, I don't care.
00:05:34
Speaker
I don't mind that that happened. I find that a lot with as a trauma response when people have experienced significant difficulties, they'll say, it's fine, I just got over it, I worked through that, as if they somehow managed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.
00:05:49
Speaker
Versus really kind of succumbing to grief and loss and feeling incredibly victimized by it and feeling like things are really unfair in their life versus kind of sitting with it. But most people I find don't particularly have natural skills in sitting with difficult emotions, myself included. i think it's part of the human experience.
00:06:13
Speaker
But we really want to think about as a Christian, what does it actually mean for us to experience grief? How do we acknowledge it? How can we make sense of it? So I'm going to throw to you, Maddie, and I want to ask you, how would you define grief?
00:06:28
Speaker
Yeah. I want to add to that intro as we kind of process grief, but also as we sit beside people who process grief. Yeah, we want to think about that too. Grief is like that idea of having a loss of some sort, whether that be a tangible loss, something that is visible to others around us, a loss of a loved one, a loss of function in our body of some sort, or something intangible, which is what you were describing before, that idea of losing a stage of life that you enjoyed or losing a certain freedom or even just a loss of income or a piece of our out potentially where we put our identity that actually got sometimes God uses that kind of loss as, hey, you're not putting your identity in me. But, you know, there's different things that we could experience as a grief that are not as visible
00:07:18
Speaker
to other people and I think there's that intense sorrow that comes with it that it affects us like physically emotionally and spiritually is there anything else that you guys would add to that you're talking I was like man Maddie is so articulate Maddie's to all my answers ah I was just like, all I had was grief is not just death.
00:07:46
Speaker
Grief is like a loss of something, but I love how you specified that. So I don't feel like I have that much to add to that one. I appreciate the simplicity of it's not just, ah it's not just this, it's that.
00:07:57
Speaker
But yes, yeah, yeah, I hope that was helpful. Well, and I think as you were talking, the thing that really came up for me was aging. Even now at 38, so yeah There are things that I can't do that I used to be able to at 20. And I've started noticing it. I'm like, oh, I'm aging.
00:08:15
Speaker
Okay, I have to adjust to this. And so much of our society is geared towards not aging, either by completely reversing the signs that you might be aging through aesthetics or And or just like being able to do everything, being as fit as you possibly can.
00:08:34
Speaker
and so there is like this broader sense of grief and loss that we kind of go little by little as we go through life, that as we start to lose things. And in a lot of ways, i think it makes us consider, I hope, as Christians, what is our worth actually in? Is it in our capacity, our ability, our relationships, the external stuff, or is it in our relationship with Christ?
00:08:55
Speaker
Just as you were talking, it did remind me of this sermon I had Rory Sharnagy years and years and years ago. And I don't even remember the actual thing that he was talking about, the actual passage. But what he talked about was like that sense of growing older, those choices that you've made start to close off as well, where he was like,
00:09:12
Speaker
look I'm Rory, I'm married to Susan, we have four boys, we you know like we've had the children that we're going to have. I'm a pastor at this church, like you know other people might leave this church and go on to do things, but I'm going to stay here.
00:09:26
Speaker
i remember being like, yes, at some point your options when you age are mature, they do tend to close, not that you can never do anything else. you know You tend to be like, okay, I'm on this path, my body is not doing the things that it used to do.
00:09:39
Speaker
There is that sense of maturity and with that like options closed. Yeah. Yeah. It really makes me think of when I was 18, 19, 20 and involved in church and when that verse, Jeremiah 29, 11, like I alone know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper. And it was like, and then there's now that really famous meme where the Batman guy's like, context.
Personal Experiences and Reflections on Grief
00:10:05
Speaker
and slapping the face of the person because it was really used at that point to be like, you could do anything. You can be amazing. You're going to change lives. professional poster. Yep.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, and that was the type of church I was in where it was very like, yes, you can do so many things with your life. And the more I age, the more I'm like, Actually, maybe sometimes my life's just really boring. I'm like, i am I am stuck in my mundaneness of like my house needs cleaning all the time.
00:10:36
Speaker
I clean things and then it gets dirty again and it is boring and I don't love it Like, am I great right now or does that even is that actually the purpose of my life to be great? Like what does any of this even mean? But that grief and loss of dreams not even achieved that perhaps you thought you would have in your life as well.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's actually really interesting you say that because I've been, was chatting to someone in my life who is not a Christian and they're getting to 10 years off retirement age, but they're almost like always flip-flopping of like, I don't think this is what I want to do with my life. Oh, I never realized this hope of learning this musical instrument. I never realized this There's just this like these kind of, it's always coming through as this cycling of like a crisis of, I never did that.
00:11:23
Speaker
I never did that thing. I'm running out of time. Yeah. And it's hard. They're like grieving this loss that they also never had. And I think is um as Christians, we try and think about that.
00:11:34
Speaker
We also go, is that a really important thing to be taking through your life? Or like, do we need to be prioritizing those things or do we need to be? How do we bring those things to God when we're grieving a loss in a way? Also recognizing it's okay that we didn't realize that potential.
00:11:51
Speaker
It's just a different worldview, right? It's a totally different framework to consider it from. Yeah. So given, you know, obviously we're defining grief quite broadly as we talk about it today.
00:12:05
Speaker
What would be the signs to you that you're not doing okay in your grief? And it might be helpful to kind of share even perhaps the kind of grief, not full details, but a little bit about maybe the kinds of grief you might have experienced, whether whether you um it's more that direct grief or that broader sense of grief that we're talking about today.
00:12:25
Speaker
I'll throw to you. Yeah, I mean, I think what we talk of, probably one of the ones that sticks out for me is maybe like, so my parents divorced like quite suddenly maybe 10 years ago.
00:12:36
Speaker
And the thing that really shocked me actually was that it actually was a grief. um I think probably like perhaps a family culture, perhaps, you know, water culture.
00:12:46
Speaker
It's just something like, well, like you're an adult, I move on. And actually sitting with it and being, realising actually, I've lost my family. Like, I've lost my family unit that had been quite close.
00:12:58
Speaker
Yeah. Like, I think recognising that it was a grief, which kind of ties in with quite nicely, like, for me, ironically, although...
00:13:13
Speaker
Psychology is my job or has been. and Although it has been my job. I'm ironically not great at dealing with emotions. I'm like, oh, that's a feeling. i don't want to deal with that. Ew. It's the therapist.
00:13:26
Speaker
ah hit It's the therapist. It's the therapist. The last gradual and weak grip. Yeah. The secret is that they also struggle.
00:13:37
Speaker
Yes, yes, exactly. But I think the thing that I have learned through like a lot of prayer is actually like that grief goes somewhere. Like just because I don't want to acknowledge it doesn't mean it doesn't go somewhere. and So I will find that it will come out in my body.
00:13:52
Speaker
I will notice that like I will get sick. My body will do weird things. I'll have a shoulder twitch, whatever. And then I'll notice that I'm, like, increasingly resentful and irritable and bitter. And the thing is I've just come to learn that, like, I cannot let resentment get to me. I cannot let it become bitterness. Like, I actually have to deal with things, which ironically means that I have to deal with how I feel and I have to talk to people and be awkward.
00:14:20
Speaker
And, like, those things suck, but they're not as bad as being really bitter. Yep. Yeah. And my bitterness is like ah rot, isn't it it? like eats away at like your relationships, at your like heart. And it has like all these other things that it impacts, which, yeah yeah, we need to deal with those things so we don't become. in Yeah.
00:14:41
Speaker
But it's hard to do. It's really uncomfortable. Do you want to share as well? Yeah, please do. Yeah, I guess like last year, i obviously already shared about this in my interview podcast. You can listen to episode one.
00:14:54
Speaker
Just plug it for us. Anyway, I had a pregnancy loss and it was, yeah, it was like really hard to, the the nature of what we went through was just, There was this real grief for, in the end, there wasn't actually a bible ah pregnancy there. was effectively a mess. But you're grieving what you realized was never necessarily there, a person that you had thought.
00:15:17
Speaker
And there was, it was just... I just, I remember it was just all consuming. Like I just, my emotions were so big at the time. And then it ah impacted me in that physical sense of like, there was a tightness in my chest.
00:15:34
Speaker
Like was anxious at such little things. it I felt like I just needed to re retreat and be on my own. But then when I was on my own, I felt isolated and then like wanted to be with people. It was only select people that kind of want to be with.
00:15:50
Speaker
And it's just really it's really hard to describe because grief is also just really unpredictable. um And as you start kind of proceeding through it, you have a day that's really good and then something happens and it just triggers all those feelings come back again. And I think as well, like in a smaller sense, as kind of the grief went on and I was kind of dealing with that in the following months,
00:16:17
Speaker
I was noticing that if I wasn't, those days that I thought I was feeling okay, sometimes all it took is like a few little things and then I'd almost spiral again.
00:16:28
Speaker
But I really wanted to be open with how I was feeling. So, yeah, i had this like I had this physical impact. I had like at the emotional impact. And then I think spiritually it was like really hard for me to pray.
00:16:39
Speaker
was just really hard for me to articulate it. And, like, it wasn't that I didn't necessarily know God wasn't with me. I just didn't know what to say in my actual grief.
00:16:50
Speaker
Like, I didn't know. and And that's where, like, the Psalms were just so helpful is preaching, like, you know, reading through the Psalms and getting these words. I think Psalm 22 literally starts with the famous words that Jesus used, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
00:17:07
Speaker
Mm. He's not actually saying that God has forsaken him. He's saying, this is how feels. This is actually just how it feels like I'm stuck in my grief and you're not there to help. oh Keep reading. He does.
00:17:18
Speaker
God's faithfulness is evident through the whole Bible and you can see that he is with us. But yeah, it was just like, I could just see that in my life, how many areas it affected. e Yeah.
00:17:30
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, i I, have experienced a lot of grief. So I had a miscarriage before I had my first daughter, but probably the major losses for me being both my parents have died and at very different stages of my life. So my mum, I must have been 27 when my mum died, and that kind of grief that I experienced...
00:17:55
Speaker
Because she received a diagnosis of cancer and then went through a series of treatment and was about a year before she died, which is quite quick anyway, but I felt like I really processed that grief.
00:18:06
Speaker
And I wasn't married and had kids. I had a lot of time to kind of make sense of it all. So that year was very hard, but i lost I felt like I lost my mother in stages and grieved that as I went.
00:18:21
Speaker
And then when she died, because she was so unreal at the end, it was almost a relief that she died. And then obviously that grief has continued to play out for me in very different ways as I've gone through different stages. So i got married the following year obviously my mum wasn't there.
00:18:40
Speaker
We started having kids. My mum was her younger siblings were twins and so when I had twins it was like, oh, like, I want to talk to you. like when I was preparing to give birth, and even, like, the antenatal classes, they're like, how were you breastfed for?
00:18:56
Speaker
They just, they throw that stuff out there, and you're like, I'm like, I have no idea, because I didn't think of any of these things in my twenty s Like, I had no concept for having children. So, there's been lots of, like, little, not, they're not little groups, but they are, like, it's that continued grief in developmental stages.
00:19:14
Speaker
And i expect that to continue for the rest of my life in a lot of ways, like that I will feel God willing. i live past the age my mother did. But I i know that as I start approaching that age, I will feel that of like, this is what it was like.
00:19:30
Speaker
This is kind of what it might have been like for you to be around this age and to have adult children and to just all of those stages that you experience. you experience different parts of grief and it grows with you. And so in some ways i have learnt see grief change as a friend in a way. and It's such a weird thing to even try to describe, but it's like a part of me that goes with me and I can't get rid of it.
00:19:58
Speaker
i can't turn away from it. I have to accept it and learn to live with it And there are things it gives me that I love and there are things that I don't love about it that continue to crop up at different stages of my life.
00:20:11
Speaker
Grief in some ways is a gift from God. i think it's also a reminder And I remember my husband, when my mum died, was my boyfriend.
00:20:25
Speaker
And he just said to me, this is just so unnatural. Like, we are not meant to be separated from other people. Like, this is just not the way life is meant to be. And I see that we are living on this kind of cursed earth. We are longing for what is to come.
00:20:39
Speaker
And in a lot of ways, for me, my grief reminds me of what is to come, that fullness, that consciousness. wiping away of every tear I've ever had that I get to look forward to whilst I endure on earth. But I don't actually to endure it alone.
00:20:54
Speaker
I endure it with Christ who totally gets all my suffering and my grief and what separation means in a way that like no human really can.
The Role of Therapy and Community in Grieving
00:21:03
Speaker
But when my dad then died and I had small kids, that was completely different.
00:21:08
Speaker
So about a year after my dad died, I started seeing a therapist. And the reason I did that is The initial kind of grief ah for me felt like walking through water.
00:21:20
Speaker
Like, I don't know, or down. There's actually a quote from C.S. Lewis that really describes it for me. So he wrote a book, A Grief Observed, after his wife died, and I would recommend it to anyone, even just to get an insight into the depth of pain someone can feel. He writes really eloquently about it, and I think he Still, like Christ is central to what he's saying.
00:21:42
Speaker
So it's grief as a Christian. However, it does describe the death of pain someone does feel. So at other times, it feels like being mildly drunk or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me.
00:21:55
Speaker
I find it hard to take in what anyone says, or perhaps hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting, yet I want the others to be about me. I drag the moments when the house is empty, if only they would talk to one another and not to me.
00:22:10
Speaker
So it's like being there but not there. And that's how I felt. i was kind of like, in this, okay, I've got the motions of life. Having small kids when you're grieving is really helpful in a lot of ways. Obviously, difficult.
00:22:22
Speaker
But what I saw at that time, and I still saw this from my mom, dad, but not as much so. But when my dad died, it was like God provided all these people who were like, I'm going to take your kids for an hour. Do just want to go do something?
00:22:35
Speaker
Or I'm going to, I've made you all these meals. Or i like the tangible experience of Christ's people, Christian or non-Christian as well. Like there were, I remember a friend being like, what can I do?
00:22:47
Speaker
And I was like, can you just come over? Like, I just can't. I'm finding it hard to just hang out with my kids in the house. Like, she would just come and we wouldn't really chat that much. But it was just like, i just need someone to hang out while I do nothing with my children at my house because I can't get out of the house. I can't do this right now.
00:23:04
Speaker
But I do need help with this parenting or just community side of things. So I think in God's kindness, he is really with us in that. But, yeah, the things that told me I wasn't actually going okay
00:23:18
Speaker
Really, I felt like I needed a space to be able to get some of it out. And what the therapist did is not, they're not solving my grief. They can't take it away. There's no like getting rid of it.
00:23:30
Speaker
But they sat with me in it, which I think Christians can do. And I think we could all do well to learn how to sit with our own emotions and with other people's.
00:23:41
Speaker
But in reality, that's what I paid her to do, to sit with my feelings and be with me in it. And it was so powerful, that experience. And, you know, since then, there have been Lots of other ways in which that grief continues to play out, but I don't feel like my experience of grief impacts my functioning in my day-to-day life. But I knew I was like really irritable.
00:24:07
Speaker
I had a short fuse with my kids. I was like, this is not who I want to be and this grief is kind of pushing into me in a way that's unhelpful now. Whereas since that experience of kind of really – not I guess contending with it, like sitting with it for me, has allowed it to be a part of my experience, but it's not my whole experience. It doesn't define my identity.
00:24:33
Speaker
it doesn't define my existence, but it is part of my experience on earth. And I don't begrudge that it is that. It just is. It's part of what God has put for me while I'm on earth that I do experience things like this.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yeah. Something i noticed while you were talking almost was just that theme of allowing space for grief. Like...
00:25:01
Speaker
You're allowed space for grief. It's almost like when your mum was dying, although it was very hard, you had time to say goodbye and say the things and process and that kind of really helped.
00:25:13
Speaker
And a thing that really hindered with your dad was that I have really small children and I don't have that space. So almost by making space, by going to therapy, just being like, I need to just sit and give space to what has happened. Yeah.
00:25:27
Speaker
Yeah, it felt like I was making an appointment to be sad. Like, I was like, cool, this is the hour. I'm going to go I'm going to cry. remember the first appointment. I sat down and the woman was like reading my referral and she's like, wow, you've been through a lot. And I was like, burst into tears. was like, yes, I have. Like,
00:25:48
Speaker
But it was helpful. Like the sad have to come out. The feelings have to be felt. Like you're meant to just express stuff. And sometimes it's helpful to schedule that in.
00:25:58
Speaker
Yeah, you had to be really active in actually making space for that. Because I think when so many other things fill our lives, we then send them so that we don't have to address it. And then it's like these things bottle up. And it's like someone used the illustration of those places where you get steam kind of coming
Christian Faith and Community Support in Grief
00:26:14
Speaker
from the ground. There's little cracks and they like, oh.
00:26:16
Speaker
I don't know what they're called. It's very well. Something like that. But it's like if you throw a pebble over there and then suddenly a big shoot of steam comes up on the other side of the path, it's this whole idea of it'll pop up in the most random ways if you don't give space for release.
00:26:32
Speaker
And yeah something will trigger it that is not even related Yes. You'll explode over here and you realize, oh, it's not even related to the fact that my kid threw the spaghetti across the room again. It's actually related to the fact that I'm bottling up this thing.
00:26:47
Speaker
Or like, you know, like brief and emotions actually. And you, Brick, made a space so that you could go, I need to talk through this. I need to like break through this. And I think that's actually really important. It's important that our Christian community also, that we encourage one another to do it, but that we also recognize that we need that.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yes, definitely. And I think also I grew up with, my parents had actually experienced significant amounts of grief themselves. in the loss of different people in their lives.
00:27:15
Speaker
And they never, ever dealt with it, like ever. And in fact, the message to me was you experience as a child, like obviously this is not necessarily directly what they said, but this is what I took.
00:27:28
Speaker
You experience grief, never get over it. It never goes away. It's the worst thing that can happen to you. And they were so stuck in it, both of them. And I think it's a totally different time of life, but for me life,
00:27:44
Speaker
having the twins. And I've gone to different therapists on and off over the years. I work in this industry. I really believe in the power of it. Like, I think it's a good thing to do. But again, the main message there would be, if it's interrupting your function, go see someone.
00:27:57
Speaker
it's not You don't just have to go see someone to be like, is there anything I should deal with? Like, you can just deal with stuff with your friends and at home and with God quite adequately.
00:28:09
Speaker
But I remember saying to a therapist, like, the sign of an adult is that you don't feel anything. And she's like, ah sorry, what? Like,
00:28:19
Speaker
And I've had to learn because I did grow up in that environment it like, don't feel things, just get over it. And turns out I couldn't do it. And in becoming a Christian, actually ah massive part of my emotions opened up because I experienced this love and this care and this total acceptance that only I could get through Christ.
00:28:39
Speaker
And it opened up a bit of a like, it started a little crack at like 16, which began to just go into this big thing of like, Sometimes I just have to feel things and they're really big and huge, but God is actually with me in that. So I don't have to be afraid of it.
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, I am yeah yeah ah so with you. but a feast guy I think that's the thing actually with the enough by becoming a Christian. It's almost like you rest in God really loves me and not going anywhere and I can feel the things and say the things and there's like this spaciousness isn't it that you're like, I can bring all of my resting emotions and admit them to you.
00:29:24
Speaker
I'm like, process them with you. So then like it's this beautiful resource to then be able to share that with someone else. for God is teaching me this and he's not accusing me that you feel these things.
00:29:35
Speaker
He's not accusing me, but he can make it with you. You don't need to do this. orm not. Yeah. I can definitely see that in my life too, where it's not like the pain goes away. like You guys aren't dismissing the fact that it's not like when you became Christian, you stopped suffering either.
00:29:52
Speaker
Britt, you showed us one of the quotes from A Grief Observed, and one of them was like, we're actually guaranteed suffering in our life. It's part of living in a broken world. that is part That's one of the things that the Bible actually guarantees, not wealth, not other not like yeah comfort, comforts, but like physical comforts but ah suffering. And ah know that even in my experience, we had some relational stuff in our family that I'm the only Christian in my family and I've been able to process and have reconciliation some of our relationships that some of the other people in my family just haven't.
00:30:26
Speaker
And it's impacted their relationships in a way that I think that Christ's work in my life by his spirit has enabled certain emotions and certain processing to happen and forgiveness and reconciliation and even a personal understanding of my own sin in those relationships too. Yeah.
00:30:46
Speaker
which has been really helpful for overcoming certain grief and suffering and going, yeah, that suffering happened. It happened. And not needing to hold that. But I was also thinking as you were speaking, Britt, as well, was about 2 Corinthians is a letter that Paul writes and he's writing it. It's very...
00:31:05
Speaker
You can tell that he's relationally hurting. Like he's grieving the fact that, you know, he's having some difficulties with the Corinthians. There's conflict there. But he also starts his letter with something that's really helpful, that he's talking about the God of all comfort. He says, Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves resist. Yes, God.
00:31:34
Speaker
For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. a It goes on. So please read 2 Corinthians. That's a great, great moment. Just a shout out to all the people listening.
00:31:47
Speaker
2 Corinthians is a coupon. Get on it. Yes. Well, neat. You know, it was just, i just read that earlier and I thought ah Christ is with us in our stress, in our suffering. Christ himself suffered.
00:31:59
Speaker
He wept at the death of Lazarus. ah He grieved all sense of loss and he physically suffered. literally gave up his entire self in order to save us.
00:32:13
Speaker
And so he's familiar with suffering. We don't need to shy away from it or be ashamed of it. He always provides comfort. e Just so encouraging.
00:32:24
Speaker
And I find the Christian framework so useful for even making sense of suffering and grief in that There's no sense that it is your fault when these things happen. i mean, obviously, relational conflict, there is sin in the world, and we do take a part in that quite a lot of the time.
00:32:44
Speaker
But there also are scenarios that do not make sense and are not our fault and are part of living in a fallen world. And the Bible's pretty open about suffering being a part of our journey on earth, that we should expect it.
00:32:59
Speaker
because we're not exempt just because we are Christians. Yeah. Absolutely. And i found this Bible verse that I was reading this morning, and I think it's just that we can't control that these things happen, but it sounds like the Bible is really like,
00:33:15
Speaker
But we can eventually choose how we respond. because So it's in Psalm 73 and it says, verse 21, so it goes, When my heart was grieved and my spirit embedded, I was senseless and ignorant. I was a brute beast before you.
00:33:31
Speaker
But then it goes, I'm always with you and you hold me by my right hand. And I just think, yeah, it's like God holding you like a little child, like a toddler, just being like, i ah love you and I'm with you in this and I also love you too much to let you keep going like this. Like, grieve with me.
00:33:51
Speaker
Don't go away on your own. oh Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just coming back to that, a grief observed, again, highly recommend. But C.S. Lewis says in it, we were promised sufferings. They were part of the program.
00:34:06
Speaker
We were even told, blessed are they that mourn. And I accept it. Yeah. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination, which I think just really sums up that suffering being a part of our experience on earth.
00:34:25
Speaker
And there are differences in our experiences. Like not everyone is going to experience the loss of close loved ones or a partner or any of those things, but some of us will.
00:34:37
Speaker
And I think as a church, we need to think about how do we care for others in that suffering when it happens rather than thinking it won't happen. Yeah, there's a really there's another like a really helpful resource that I've read. It's called Letters to Emma.
00:34:53
Speaker
It's a book by Lee Carter. It's written by a woman on the East Coast. And she talks about her experience of her loss of her husband. And it's just letters to her friend trying to explain her grief.
00:35:04
Speaker
She just articulates it because she effectively like can't verbally articulate it. So she's processing it through her letters. She's shared it because it's been helpful for someone who's reading it and knows someone who's grieving or themselves is grieving.
00:35:16
Speaker
And yes, really helpful tips of things that helped in community and things that didn't help, which was also good. But yeah, it raises questions like any kind of loss or grief always raises questions of purpose. um It makes you a bit more aware of your mortality.
00:35:31
Speaker
And, you know, and we actually do is death and um loss is a reality of our life around us. And so having a really good understanding of what the Bible actually says about death, what the Bible says about loss, what the Bible says about the age come and the hope that And I guess also equipping ourselves with kind of an understanding of what it is to live in Christian community. Because how do we love people well when people are grieving deeply and we don't often know how to engage? Like sometimes it's uncomfortable to sit in the feelings, but it's also sometimes uncomfortable to approach someone who's sitting in those feelings and know what the right thing is to do.
00:36:08
Speaker
and Yes. And all you need is, they need is presence and knowing that you're there. Yeah. I mean, something used to work with a lady who used to work in the rehabs and she said something that always stuck with me.
00:36:19
Speaker
Well, she just said like, hurt people, hurt people. And I think there is that, sometimes that sense of flow and that when we are hurting, we hurt the people close to us. Yeah. And, you know, and I'm not grieved.
00:36:31
Speaker
But I think the other thing that I think we have as a resource that like, and I think you were touching on this, Maddie, is that like in the secular world, there's nothing like the church. Like you can't suffer in community.
00:36:46
Speaker
You have people around you and sometimes like I think, you know, the some of the worst thing is to like to suffer alone. Like there's no one even trying to say the wrong thing or turning up with a terrible person.
00:36:58
Speaker
Like there is no one. Yeah, it was like what a gift that you you have have the church who are trying and doing it imperfectly and like, you know, sometimes doing all the wrong things, but they are trying.
00:37:15
Speaker
And the last thing, i really like the idea, and remember Rory Sharni used to talk about it. He was like, it's good to think about suffering and have a good theology of suffering before you suffer.
Perspectives on Preparing for and Responding to Grief
00:37:25
Speaker
Yeah. Because ah read this quote.
00:37:29
Speaker
and think Jinkalik, I have no idea where he pulled it from, but he was like, everything difficult is making us, but it's basically like making us question our our theory of life, you know, because it's more difficult than what our current theory embraces.
00:37:45
Speaker
I think actually a really good investment is being like, what do I actually think about evil and suffering and grief? So when that they do come, like, yeah you know, you're not knocked off.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah. Or do I as men believe this house to kill the rod? Yeah. ah Because grief can absolutely derail someone's Christian faith, especially if you don't have a firm foundation of what suffering actually is, how the Bible and how God speaks into our suffering.
00:38:17
Speaker
So, yeah, it's definitely worth worth thinking about these things, even if you're not someone who's grieving or suffering at the moment, because guarantee someone in the next, like someone next to you at church is going to be suffering.
00:38:29
Speaker
And I also think when we're thinking about broader senses of grief, like not just an obvious loss, like somebody, someone has actually died, but just the grief and loss that we experience as we go through life, what I have learnt from experiencing grief is to lean in and name it, like, yeah.
00:38:51
Speaker
I'm quite happy to to say, look, I'm so sorry. That must be so hard. Or like, how are you managing that? Is that all right? And not just in like a therapy session where obviously you're going to be more explicit in your discussion around grief, but just in my everyday discussions with friends and family and thinking about their experiences and what it all means. Like,
00:39:13
Speaker
People are making sense of things all the time and it can be helpful to reframe it, to encourage them, to encourage them even, yeah, like to read the Psalms or to read Corinthians or whatever it might be and consider how God is with us in these moments.
00:39:27
Speaker
And God invites us to talk about that ugliness of grief too. And so I think it's really helpful To be able to do that side by side with one another and have people you feel safe. Some people, they're dealing with anger when there's a grief.
00:39:39
Speaker
They're like, I'm angry. That's an emotion that's also dealt with in its arms. Let's pray through that. Let's pray about it. Let's talk about it. and having And it's actually like you're not a failed Christian if you feel those emotions either.
00:39:51
Speaker
Yeah. Because it's pretty natural. um Yeah. It's better to wrestle with than to try and pretend it's not there. Yeah, absolutely. Just pretend it's not there. Yes, as the therapist.
00:40:05
Speaker
but it's those It's those heads though, you know, like when you're at time zone and you're whacking the crocodile heads? Whack them. It's keeping coming up. The only way out is through. The only way is through. Yeah. It's true.
00:40:19
Speaker
Look, a really helpful resource that I had that I think I mentioned um in my interview was the Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Mark Rogrip. And that is really helpful for using the Psalms to lament, to learn, to learn to just be like, this absolutely sucks.
00:40:37
Speaker
You know, like God, why? You know, why is it like this? And but also to reframe and structure your prayers in that, yeah, actually you do care about this and you do to this and you love me deeply and this pain does not define me or even take away your comfort from me.
00:40:55
Speaker
Because yeah to Romans 8, what is it, 38, 39, nothing will separate us from the love of Christ. Ugly emotions. uglyg martians yeah eat ah We need to work through them and we need to pray through them. We need to talk to people.
00:41:09
Speaker
And sometimes we can't pray through them, but we need someone to pray for us. Yeah. Something that helped me was going, I need you to pray through this because I just can't articulate it. Have you guys read that book, Is It Any Prayer Any Time? You know those um kids' books? Oh, yeah, that little like Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:28
Speaker
There's a page at the back and it talks about like, and when you can only, i could never read this to my kids without crying for so long, but it's like when you don't have words to say and all you can do is groan, God still hears you.
00:41:42
Speaker
I always found that so encouraging because it's like actually don't have the words. I have nothing to say. i can groan in at you. That is all I have. But you hear me and you know me and it's such a comfort.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Well, knows us better than we do. Knows what we need. Yeah. So my final question for you guys, how has sitting with grief shaped your life?
Reflections on Grief's Influence on Life and Faith
00:42:07
Speaker
I think it's hard to quantify. And I know that we talked about this ah lot, Britt, but really reflecting on it, like I've spent like 15 years in kind of basically hardcore trauma settings. Like I've sat with a lot of grieving people.
00:42:20
Speaker
I'm more and more conscious that, like, it's the most important thing we can do is to show up. But I'm also more and more convinced that, like, I'm not great at it. I don't know.
00:42:32
Speaker
And I don't – I think it's – I think people assume because you're a therapist, like, you're good at it and you're naturally really empathetic and you go around feeling empathetic all the time.
00:42:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Like, it takes emotional – work to sit with someone who is grieving and sit with them and feel same thing and be like, oh, we are grieving that loss that like you had this and it's not coming back.
00:42:59
Speaker
Or the future that you hoped for is not there and it's not going to, you know what I mean, and it's not going to look like what you thought. it's going to be. And I think it has in some ways like probably amplified like a natural, like quite sensitive personality and it's probably amplified that.
00:43:18
Speaker
You know, like, oh yeah, grief can come anytime. Like you're always listening for what's not said. But I have also really come to wrestle with recently, maybe in some of the ways that I have served and tried to love people in that way and be present.
00:43:37
Speaker
I'm like, have I done that out of my own strength and tried to white knuckle that? Or have I done that out of God's strength? Because I noticed that I'm much more peaceful and less distressed when I do it out of God's strength.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah, I am growing more convicted. I'm like, God has given us the church. ah The church is a great and beautiful gift. It's not perfect. like Friendships are a gift. like you know Even if you go to therapy, it's only an hour a week, you might get 10 sessions.
00:44:09
Speaker
like It is not a cure-all. No, we, you know, and like for the people who are there being like, hey, I'm here and I'm listening, like I would do like two days of therapy and then go home and go to sleep. Like I would do a day of therapy and like, I need to sleep.
00:44:21
Speaker
Like I need to immediately go to bed. And I'm like, God has made me with limits for my good. Like I am not all, you know what i mean? I'm not all sufficient. I am get tired.
00:44:32
Speaker
i get grumpy. Like I think it's a good work to do, but I was like, I am not indispensable. I am not God. I 100% have limits. Yeah.
00:44:44
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. yeah i I think for me, grief has shaped my life in allowing me the gift of experiencing the fullness of my own emotional experience, the good and the bad.
00:44:58
Speaker
Like experiencing the lows helps me experience the highs. And I also do feel extremely grateful for the gift of stable mental health. like i don't have I haven't experienced depression as a full-on episode and I i think that that is very difficult.
00:45:18
Speaker
But the peaks of grief that I've experienced, where particularly around anniversaries, I experienced for like a couple of days, I feel like I'm walking through water again. And it feels like it feels like what I imagine depression might feel like on an ongoing basis. But I am very grateful to God for kind of a stable mental state.
00:45:35
Speaker
So I don't feel like when I sit with people's grief as a therapist that I have to take it on because I just – Know that I'm not God. And I think that foundation of being like, I can't do it on my own for myself.
00:45:50
Speaker
I definitely can't do it on my own for these people. And it's that like what you're talking about, like doing it in God's strength and trusting in the person and in the resources and also in the systems around them because, yeah, an hour a week, I'm not going to radically change anyone's life.
00:46:06
Speaker
But where they have other resources and you help them build that up, that can be a powerful thing, I think. So I think it's helped me to be willing to sit with others. Like I'm willing to sit with them in a way that perhaps I would have avoided previously. Yeah.
00:46:23
Speaker
And then in my own personal life, I don't know, I just, I feel like it's given me a way to see grief in all of its forms, not just like the loss of a person or whatever it might be a pet or.
00:46:36
Speaker
oh, yeah, I get that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that is really hard. Like I can empathize with it again without, I don't feel like I have to be feeling it myself to empathize with it, if that makes sense.
00:46:47
Speaker
Probably because I have experienced it. I'm like, I just get it. I get what you're talking about. Yeah, so to me, grief has shaped me probably very significantly in opening me up in a way, but I really see that as such a gift from God to give that to me.
00:47:07
Speaker
Otherwise, it always was just avoiding. And I think also the process of kind of working in therapy obviously does that to you because you have to look at your own stuff because when you're sitting with people every week, your own stuff gets triggered and you need to go sort that out. like Yeah, you're like, you can't, you're saying so like irritable or like, why is this really getting to me when like, you know, 10 other people with the same issue doesn't distress. Yeah, it doesn't have affect. I need to like, yeah, I need to look at this and I need to deal with this.
00:47:33
Speaker
I think it's like reminded me that it's actually being a Christian doesn't necessarily mean not feeling grief, sadness, suffering.
00:47:46
Speaker
It doesn't mean that you don't feel those things. It feels like it's brought to light the reality of my broken world more and more and how much we need Jesus. I feel like that's what it's been for me in a big way. And it's actually helped me when I'm coming alongside other people in pastoral ministry and to remember to just never dismiss those kinds of feelings either. Like,
00:48:10
Speaker
I remember one person saying, and this is like, I'm going to admit this, that when I was quite young, I said something like, oh, have you been praying about it? Or have you been? And the person felt really dismissed and they felt like I wasn't acknowledging that that was an okay feeling for them to have.
00:48:26
Speaker
um And so I really appreciated them sharing that feedback with me when I was young because I remembered that, yeah, you if I was going through brief and then someone was saying to me, but you just need to pray more or do not anxious about anything but just trust in Jesus. Yeah.
00:48:40
Speaker
Well, Very great Bible verses, but it doesn't, like, just putting those, you context, just putting those, throwing those out doesn't acknowledge the reality of our world. So it's helped me remember this world is not all there is.
00:48:56
Speaker
We look to the age of thumb. Yeah. And that grief and loss and brokenness is a very real reality of this world. And so it doesn't, it means I'm not surprised as much when awful things happen.
00:49:09
Speaker
I feel like God just shapes and readies you with grief for more grief or loss or whatever. And reminds me that I need to talk about it and have people in my life that if I'm going, this is really hard and I feel like I should be able to cope with this, but I'm not coping with this.
00:49:27
Speaker
Those safe people in my life that I can talk to you. They can just pray with me and listen. They don't have to say anything. But that's how I feel like it's shaped my life and I'm so grateful for it because I just never have learned that otherwise.
00:49:42
Speaker
Yeah. and And I think also sometimes when we give kind of more band-aid responses to people in their grief of like in our mind we're encouraging them, sometimes it's actually about we don't feel comfortable.
00:49:53
Speaker
Like we we want to fix it. And so when we really can acknowledge that God is truly the only one that can, we don't feel as much pressure to make everything better.
00:50:06
Speaker
We can just be like, yeah, that is that is really hard. e yeah Like life is not what you expected it to be and that is so hard. And God has not abandoned you in that, but he gets that it's hard.
00:50:19
Speaker
And you don't have to like, wrap it up in a bow you can just let it be it is what it is it's hard it's just sad yeah but it's sad it doesn't win it's not going to be like it doesn't win yeah it doesn't win well and also I think like sad things in life feel sad because they are sad not because you're doing it wrong No.
00:50:43
Speaker
It's like, it's just how it is. Sounds so sad. but If you just bought my Instagram course, you know, you would stop feeling so sad because you're doing grief wrong. ya Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:50:55
Speaker
Stoke course, people. um Does anyone have any grief? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Comment grief and I'll give you my $5,000 course. So take time. Any final thoughts before we wrap up?
00:51:10
Speaker
Anything you want to say?
00:51:13
Speaker
Look, I would just say, if you're going through grief or loss, like if anyone listening is, just please don't be afraid to articulate it or talk to a trusted Christian that you know.
00:51:24
Speaker
ah Christian community is really helpful and really important. And God gives us an amazing gift of one another. So please, please reach out to others, um help them to process alongside you. And sometimes just articulate what you need from them. Hey,
00:51:38
Speaker
Come be in my house, a bit like what you needed, Britt. Yeah. i am like ah Just be present. and don't really want to talk about it, but can you be here? And so don't be afraid of doing that because God's people do love one another. We want to serve one another.
00:51:50
Speaker
So would just encourage anyone listening to do that. And i would encourage you that it's okay to be awkward. just yeah how are you doing be like how you doing with the grief like how are things going yeah and I want to talk about it and you'd be like okay but they might be happy that someone asked you might be like can I bring you a meal and they might be like I have heaps of meals be like okay but at least you did the thing yeah dignity of risk ask them and then they can they know if they want to but you've asked
00:52:23
Speaker
That's it from us, friends.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:52:24
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, you can sign up to our free weekly newsletter called Stories I'd Tell You at Dinner. So you get essays, poetry, podcast episodes, everything, photo essays straight to your inbox on Wednesdays from March to November from Christian women in Western Australia.
00:52:44
Speaker
If you'd like that, the link is in the show notes. Thanks for listening, guys.