Presence in Pain & Grief

I have sat with people who come to me with utter devastation. Some bring their tears, others bring their put-together survival mode. Regardless, both suffer - often silently. The losses I’ve been honored to be told are too great. The repercussions of them are too vast, deep, jarring. From abuse, to death, to the pits of shame - each person I see (including myself) is losing something - everyday. Yet they show up to my office, sit on the gray couch and work up the courage to look at me and tell me all about it. It’s a miracle. It’s connection - the antidote to shame. Grief lines all of my conversations. It is like the invisible string that ties all of a person’s pain into a giant knot making it impossible to undo alone. As clients tell me about their devastation, I often find that grief is likely not the first response. How could it be? No one teaches us this. We need guides to grieve. Mary Ellen Owen, therapist and instructor at The Allender Center, opened my eyes to verses like Jeremiah 9:17-18:

“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wait over us til our eyes overflow with tears”. 

When I do consider what mourning is like, I am confronted with the reality that to wail is rare, especially in the presence of someone else. I’m also deeply acquainted with the desire to want it. To want to wail with another. Grief is rarely expressed most fully alone. In fact, grieving alone often turns quickly into despair. It is within trusted, safe, attuned presence that despair and sorrow can become a beautiful grief - moving towards healing, acceptance, and shalom. When done carefully and intentionally, the therapeutic relationship is one of attuned presence to particular pain where grief can freely exist. By attuned I mean eyes that are kind, patient, fixed, and full of delight. In this kind of “being” the therapist is so enthralled by the storyteller, that to explain, tie a bow, or revert to “at least it wasn’t xyz” feels more like death than to sit and weep. By particular pain I mean open to the shame, details, fears, and the “I’ve never told anyone this” statements. A good therapist is a present therapist whose eyes are full of hope for the devastated, but not too afraid to let grief take its course. Like the oak leaf hydrangeas pictured above who have grown faithfully in my yard for 100+ years, a skillful guider of grief digs deep roots of trust, waits patiently for growth, and welcomes the rain. I’ll end with this quote from Jerry Sittser, author and professor, in A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss after he lost his wife, daughter, and mom in a tragic car accident:  

“The tenderness of God is always present but the human heart is never more available than when in the midst of grief”

(Sittser, 2021).

I believe to my core that grief brings us into the “thin place”, where heaven and earth seem as one. It is terribly painful, completely unavoidable, and remarkably tender. 

References:

Jerry L. Sittser. (2021). A Grace Disguised Revised and Expanded. Zondervan.