Praying Through Pain: Moving From Grief to Praise a 10 - Day Plan by Kathy-Ann C. Hernandez, Ph.d.Sample

Day 3

The Personal Element of Loss

My father died before we could celebrate his highest academic dream for me. He had not finished high school himself. Perhaps, because of this, he valued education greatly. And so, if he could not pursue it himself, he was determined to pursue it for his daughters. It saddens me that he died before we could celebrate in our usual way-- both sitting in the gallery of the house where I had grown up. Then he would have asked me questions about my professors and what it was like to live abroad. And I would do my best to paint pictures for him about places he had never been. Thinking of it even now still makes my eyes water.

If you have lost a loved one, you will probably agree that there is perhaps no grief that is as palpable as that. However, death is not the only thing that can cause us to grieve. Grief can come to us at different times as we experience loss. Grief can be defined as mental suffering or distress in response to a real or perceived loss. These losses can include the death of another person or even the loss of one's possessions, job, status, or ideals.

In 1969, Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief in her book Death and Dying:

Denial: We deny that this can be happening to us.

Anger: We question why it happened and/or who is to blame.

Bargaining: We often bargain with God to make it not happen or go away: an "I will… ".

Depression: We sink into depression thinking, "I can't bear this; I'm too sad to do anything.

Acceptance: We acknowledge that it has happened, and we cannot change it.

This grief model is beneficial in showing the range of emotions that can accompany grief; it is a process. To effectively deal with losses in our lives and get past them, we must go through the grieving process entirely.

Acknowledging our losses and the emotions accompanying them is the first step in dealing with the difficulties we face. Here, we are best positioned to tell them all to an empathetic heavenly father who knows from personal experience what it is like to grieve the loss of a loved one - even His only son.

Reflect:

Reflect on the image of God as a father grieving the loss of his only son. In what ways is that image comforting to you in light of your grief moments in life?