By Ada Brownell
When we walk
through difficult times, we need physical, emotional and spiritual help. There
is plenty out there if you know what to look for and where to go.
When our daughter Carolyn began to recover enough after chemotherapy,
she urgently desired emotional help. I was a thousand or more miles away, and
that’s one reason why I wrote Swallowed by Life. I told her about the Cancer Society’s
support groups, called her every day, prayed, and flew to see her twice in two
months.
Yet, a diagnosis of a terminal, debilitating or painful
disease is a whopping load for the patient and his loved ones to carry
emotionally, even when the Lord walks with you every moment of the day.
I have several recommendations picked up through wandering
around in the medical community and picking experts’ brains.
1.
GET A GRIEF-MATE
Find
a spiritual partner to help you in your fear and grief. Arrange to contact your
grief-mate when you feel overcome by fear, you are terribly sick, have a
situation you don’t feel able to handle, or a decision with which you need
help.
Your
grief mate can be a pastor, a counselor, a Sunday school teacher, a friend or a
relative who is spiritually strong.
I
have a friend who has battled cancer for years and it recently returned and her
husband, Gerald, just discovered he has prostate cancer. Yet, she leads a
cancer support group at our church. While she spends much of her time
encouraging others, she relies on the love, prayers and fellowship of people
filled with compassion.
2. GIVE YOURSELF
PERMISSION TO GRIEVE
Allow
yourself to talk about your loved one, or about your own illness and the
doctor's prognosis.
Cry.
Jesus wept when he heard his friend, Lazarus was dead. When I was grieving, I
set aside a devotional time every day when I could get alone with God and talk
to him about my grief. During the day and when you're in public, you sometimes
have to shove it away. But I felt better knowing I'd have that time in my
upstairs bedroom kneeling and crying before God, telling him about my broken
heart.
Each
day I stripped another layer off a part of me that felt as if I had died, too,
and helped me keep a focus that I am still living and need to fulfill whatever
purposes God has for my life here.
It
helps to understand the stages of grief and that grieving is normal both for
the dying and those left behind.
According to Drs. Frank Minirth and Paul Meier in their
book,
Happiness is a Choice,
there are five stages of grief which occur to anyone who has experienced the
death of a loved one or discovered he has an incurable illness. Even Christians
will have these grief reactions.
1. The first stage of
grief usually is denial. The person
refuses to believe that what is happening is true. This stage normally doesn’t last long.
2. The second stage is
anger turned outward. In this stage
people sometimes feel angry at God, their doctors, or anyone they feel they can
blame for their problem. Sometimes people
even angry at someone who died. Other
people get angry at those in good health or those who haven’t lost a loved one.
3. At stage three, we
have anger turned inward. The grieving
person begins to feel guilty, then begins to be angry with himself. He absurdly begins to blame himself for everything.
4. Stage four is when
the person feels genuine grief. Tears
and sorrow are normal and help the individual get grief out. Even though we
know there is hope for those who “die in the Lord” there should be genuine
grief.
5. The fifth stage is
the resolution stage where the person comes to acceptance of the event. This stage is the result of a person working
through the four other grief stages.
3.
LOOK AT EVERY MOMENT OF LIFE AS A GIFT
When
you’re the person who is dying, you still have a purpose in life. I probably
told you this before, but when my dad ended up in a nursing home, he kept
saying, “I’m no good for anything.”
“Don’t
be ridiculous!” I said. “You’re still not done raising your family. You’re
showing us how to grow old.”
As
long as we have breath and our mental faculties we can pray for others, love
them, and be an example.
Don’t let death
swallow the days and the hours remaining when there is still life. Love. Smile.
Rejoice in the hope you have. Do things you enjoy. Even when you’re ill, you
can eat a favorite flavor of ice cream, watch a butterfly outside tasting
nectar, listen to a bird’s song, go outside and look at the stars and marvel at
the One who created them.
