The Ache of Loss, the Hope of Healing Podcast Episode

It’s over. It’s not the way it was. It’s never going to be the way it was. That’s the element of despair that I think I felt. Oh, now what? God, where are you? Yeah. And that’s where faith kind of wraps up into that as well. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

My name is Matt Kaufmann. Kathy Knochel is with me today. Hi Matt. And Bill Schmidgall. Hi Matt. Bill, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. We’re going to talk about grief today, a topic that is really relevant to all of us in many different junctures in time. And I really look forward to my guests here. 

Kathy, certainly you bring a professional perspective. Yes. You walk through grief with people. Absolutely. Would you say that grief is more present than people realize? Oh, absolutely. Yes. I think grief comes in various forms and in different stages of life. And so, I think grief is something that we unpack a lot in the counseling room. 

Yeah, that’s good to know. And I think there’s a lot to provide from your perspective. I really appreciate that. Bill, I’ll let you introduce yourself. You’ve got a long history here at ACCFS. You’ve been a valuable member of the church outreach team. Many people might not know all the work behind the scenes that you do, plus even teaching for this team back decades ago, and we’re thankful for that. 

But just in recent years, you lost your beloved Anna, and certainly you speak from an experience. While the death of a loved is one of many griefs that we endure certainly you have done that. So anyway, bring our listeners up to speed with who you are, Bill. Yeah. Thanks, Matt. I come from probably now close to 17, 18 years here at ACCFS working in the church outreach area and started out as church outreach director for a few years and then went to part-time and now serve as a church outreach specialist and do a lot of behind-the-scenes website work and editing of audio and podcast video and things like that. 

Bill is part of our podcast team. Yes. There we go. Things get through Bill before they get to our audience, which is great. Thank you for all that work. So yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at. And then as far as this topic goes, in January of ’22, I did lose my wife of over 40 years, so it was a very unique marking experience in my life and as I’m sure many have experienced as well. 

Yeah. Thanks for that, Bill. Let’s just start there. We’re going to talk about grief. You said, Bill, a marked experience. Is that what you said? It’s a marking experience. In other words, it is an experience that leaves an indelible change and mark on your life. Okay. And so, could we even go so far as to say that it is a holy ground of some sort in a person’s life? I would agree. So, say a little bit more about that, and in what ways does grief mark holy ground in your life and in the lives of people? I think death itself is a place where heaven and earth meet, and I remember as a family, we gathered together and had a prayer before we said our final farewells and goodbyes, and I made the comment to the kids that this is holy ground. This is where we see a soul depart this life, and we felt that. God and the Lord were very present in that. So, beyond that then is when I said it marks us, it changes us. We come out of that experience kind of wondering who we are. 

Yes, I’m still married, but yet I no longer have a spouse, so now that makes me a widower, and that’s extremely strange. That’s not a term that comes off of our lips very easily. And so, we are marked, I believe, in a way because what we’ve lost can’t be restored. We can’t fix it. And so, I think what we’ll talk about today a little bit is what does that grieving process does for us. 

Yeah, I appreciate that, Bill. Kathy, thinking about this holy ground situation as you walk with clients, and it may be a death of a loved one, but most often probably isn’t. Speak to that. Yeah, I think about where we read in the Bible about there’s a time to mourn. And within that if we think about it as being a time to grieve, that it is usually something that comes up in somebody’s life, like Bill was talking about, that it is unexpected. 

It’s not a season of life that was willingly chosen or sought after. And so that definitely comes up, whether it is the passing of a loved one at an expected time or a tragic loss of a loved one or just life changes, unmet expectations, the end of a life stage that happened unexpectedly. 

There are just so many different places along the journey of life that we come to a place where something is unexpected, and then that feeling of grief wraps around it. Yeah. So, Bill knew exactly what this meant. This was a loss in coming and grief is going to follow. Would you say that some people perhaps don’t see that what they are dealing with is something to be grieved? 

Is that a bit mysterious for some? Oh, absolutely. Yes. And I think that when I’m meeting with someone and we’re unpacking something that they have just walked through or some emotions that they’re feeling I tend to ask the question in a curious way, “Does this feel like maybe you’re grieving this?” 

Which then allows the person to think about the reality that there was some kind of loss and that their body is trying to work through that loss. Yeah. So, I think that’s really helpful, and I think we’ve set up grief, but let’s even take it up maybe to another level. What do we mean by grief? Maybe let’s set some definitions or provide some boundaries around what it is we’re talking about because I’ve heard two key words, grief, and I’ve heard loss, and maybe a third word, pain.  

So, Bill, if you were to sort these things out, how would you do that? Yeah. I would say that grief is the process by which we deal with our pain and deal with our loss. Grieving is a mechanism through which we acknowledge that something is gone or that something didn’t materialize, like an unmet expectation or a job opportunity that’s gone. And I would say that these are losses that are not restorable. I can’t get them back. And I think sometimes some unhealthy grief is when there is this hope that I will get back to where I was and that just doesn’t happen. 

Kathy, is that part of the fork in the road that you walk with people? Maybe they don’t recognize that this is grief going on because they are trying to grasp something that is not possible. Yes. I liked how Bill said that. I think those are some really good phrases to hold onto when you’re thinking about grief, and specifically that piece of striving to get things back to normal, that is where we start to wrestle and things can go off track or, yeah, emotionally, we are not as healthy. 

The goal and the beauty of the grieving process is that we learn to make room for the new normal or the new situation in front of us. And so, getting back to normal is not what we’re working towards there. Okay. And my question that I was going to follow up with is, what does dealing with pain and loss look like? Because that’s how you defined it, Bill, and so what I’m hearing you say, Kathy, part of what dealing with the pain and loss is stepping into a new normal. 

Is that true? Yes. Bill or Kathy, add to it. What does dealing with pain and loss mean? Everybody deals with it in a different way. But I would say that time doesn’t necessarily heal wounds. It simply distances us from the event, and in that time, we process our loss and our grief, and we learn how to move forward. 

Some people say let’s move on, and that has an air of almost finality to it like, “Okay I’m going to unhook from this event,” and that’s not accurate. We don’t ever unhook from it. It always follows us. But we can go from a place of raw grief to a place of sweet sorrow so that we continue to respect the memory, but we no longer carry the raw pain that goes with it, and that’s, I think, how we deal with grief and how we heal through grieving. 

Wow. Okay, so what I hear, Bill, you’re saying is you really honor the loss and pain. What I sense in you is part of what you have found valuable in the grieving process. When I understand my loss and pain to be holy ground, I’m a little bit more open to the idea of moving on with it rather than moving on without it. Yeah. And I’m wondering how. Yeah. And so, the hardest part about that, like, how do we learn to move with it, is grief is painful. Again, we’ve talked about it’s usually because we’ve lost something or something unexpected has happened, and so just in our own humanness, the anger that can come up, the fear, the hopelessness, the sadness, the questioning. 

So, all of that can really cause someone that is walking through grief to just feel that those are the things that cause the pain. And then I think the other tricky part with it is that life around us just keeps moving. So, we are walking through some sort of grief journey trying to figure out how to hold it, how to work through it, and life does not stop. 

Jobs do not stop. Raising children does not stop. All of these things, and so we have to be able to be in this place where we can coexist with the pain and also life, including positive experiences that are happening. So, we just have to be able cope but the hard part with grief is, how do we hold all of these things at the same time? 

Okay, so now I’ve got two questions, okay? And I’m going to lay them both out, and we’re going to try to get to them. One, which we’re going to deal with later, is the community piece. You mentioned that the world keeps going. Yeah. The people on the street make it look like there’s no big deal and they don’t know that there is. So, there is a community piece, right? And I want to come back to that.  

But this first part you mentioned are the uncomfortable emotions. Sometimes they’re called negative emotions. Yeah. But they’re not negative in the sense of being bad, but they are uncomfortable. Okay, so I want you to speak about that and Bill, I want you to weigh in on walking through uncomfortable emotions. It seems like you have to experience them and yet they’re uncomfortable. Is that part of the difficulty of grieving well? Yes. I would say so. I’ll just jump in here quick. There were times shortly after my loss where I found it necessary to weep, to cry but the tears weren’t there, and I would find myself listening to sad music or hymns that moved me to cry because that was what I needed to do. I needed to feel it. I needed to embrace it and let it wash over me in a way that brought me healing. So, I feel like Kathy said, we need to walk through it and hold it and embrace it so that it can serve its purpose. 

Yep. And I think what I have learned about grief is that intensity that you’re talking about there, Bill, it’s there, and it’s there a lot, and it feels intense, and there are also moments in all of that where it subsides a little bit. And so, I think we have to remember if we’re walking through grief, that it’s going to come like waves. 

It is not going to always be at that intensity, even though it’s still painful, and it’s still hard. That rush of intensity will go back out, and this is hard, but you can work to engage in whatever is happening around you. But then unfortunately, that next wave is going to hit, and it’s going to be there again. 

Would you agree? For sure. Yeah. Absolutely, that’s exactly right. It does come in waves, and it does subside, and I would say with the wave comes despair, and when it subsides, we can feel hope. Oh, the sun is going to shine again. I don’t see it right now, but I have hope that it will. 

But hope and faith are fragile, and they’re hard to hang onto when the waves are intense. Bill, say a little bit more. Put more words around despair. So, a wave that comes three weeks later, a wave that comes six months later, a wave that comes a year later, what does despair mean in those waves? 

I would say despair is the absence of hope. The pain is such that I don’t know if I can deal with this. So, I got remarried in June of 2023, and you’d say, “Okay, all is good, right? We’re ready to move on or move forward.” And, oh, I’d say maybe a few months ago, I suddenly went through that same feeling that grabs you and kind of like getting hit in the gut, and you’re just, “Oh, I don’t know whether I can deal with this or not. I don’t know how can. Wow, where did this come from?” And despair doesn’t come to me like it did at first. How can I go on? How can I live? What’s my identity? And all the fears that are wrapped up in despair.  

So, here’s what I find interesting about despair as you’ve illustrated. It sounds like a lot of self-question. True. What does this mean for me? I thought I was doing well, and look, I’m not. Is that part of what you mean by these waves and the impact? Yeah. I would say that, yes, and also as we talked about earlier, how do we just get back to the old normal? That is part of that despair piece, too, of the frantic need for things to be the way they were, and things would be better. 

And especially if it’s the loss of a loved one, we know that it can’t go back to the place that it was. We long for routine, and routine is done. It’s over. It’s not the way it is. It’s never going to be the way it was. That’s the element of despair that I think I felt. I don’t feel that anymore because we’re several years down the road, but I think we can still fall into that suddenly, “Oh, now what? God, where are you?” Yeah. And that’s where faith kind of wraps up into that as well. And Matt, you’ve talked before, you’ve done some podcasts on identity before, and if you think about that, when you are going through the loss, again, this is loss of a loved one but also the loss of something else in life, an unmet expectation, identity is always there asking the questions like, “Who am I? Where do I belong? What makes me unique?”  

And sol, in a time of grieving, those are unanswerable questions. What’s really interesting is you both were talking about this desire for a restoration of normal, of what was. Grief doesn’t fix that, does it? No. And that is another interesting point. What’s really interesting is that what we most long for, our bodies and emotions kick in this grief with no hope that it’s actually going to do that. 

Is that part of what people chafe against or push against? What’s the point? Yeah. How much crying is going to bring this back to where it was? None at all. I think that’s where we would say grief is complicated. Complicated grief. And I would say I see that a lot when there is also some kind of trauma attached to it. 

So, like a tragic loss of some kind, multiple things that happened or multiple losses at the same time, and I probably see more of that intensity of that anger and what’s the point, which I guess is that despair that you talked about. I think it’s important to note that those do not last forever. 

You don’t know that when you’re grieving, and anybody that’s listening that is fresh in grief may not believe that statement I just said. But I would say that does not last forever. Again, time doesn’t heal it. But as we coexist with that, as we participate in life, we have grounding and new experiences that come, and then that despair and high intensity slowly, how would you say it? It diminishes.  

Yeah. I really like what you said, we coexist. I think that’s really a good way to put it. We coexist with the loss. We have to go about our earthly duties, as we would say, our life, our kids, our families, whoever that is, and even if it’s a loss of an expectation or a hope that we had or a job that looked promising and now it’s not there what comes with that is maybe loss of revenue, loss of just all kinds of things. 

Yeah. But I was going to say one thing when Cathy mentioned this idea of loss of identity or change of identity. I remember going to have a doctor’s appointment a week after the funeral, and I’d never been to this individual before, and was going through the initial forms that you fill out, and it says, “What is your status?” And the options are single, married, and widowed. And I’m like, “Wait a minute. I’m a widower.” “This is so incredibly weird.” And so, yeah, it does affect your identity and how you move forward in that. That’s interesting. You coexist with two normals. One is a past normal, but it’s ever so real in your brain. And the one that you’re embedded in. Which you may absolutely not like. No. You may chafe against it. Yeah. I don’t like it. So, it’s marking that widow category saying, “This is my new normal,” but in my brain and my heart and everything, it’s not. Yeah. It is a very strange experience, I would say. 

And Bill, I think in experiences like you talked about at the doctor’s office, I think it is easy for someone to feel so much pain in those moments that they just want to avoid. “I’m just not going back there,” or “I’m not going to think about it.” If we were sitting in a room together talking about that, I would say grieve that. Yes. Let yourself feel that. Cry about it. Cry through it. Talk to people about it. Absolutely. There are tons of first after a loss. Yeah. And you need to be able to grieve each of those. Yeah. And feel it.  

And in my situation where you have children and grandchildren who are walking through grief as well. That’s a whole new experience. I want to comfort them, and yet I need comfort too. And you feel maybe that’s part of the despair, where you feel my capacity to comfort is pretty much diminished because I don’t have anything left. I need it all myself. Yeah. And so, it’s just a process.  

And that is a great segue into the second thing, the second question about community. You kind of nodded to that, Kathy, and you even said new experiences and doing life in a world that’s keeps moving. So, let’s talk a little bit about community, which we live in tight communities where we walk with people who are grieving, and we all want to do that well. What is the purpose of community? What does it look like to do that well? What are the needs? And I know there’s not going to be an easy pat answer for this.  

I would say let’s think of Job. When his friends came, for the first seven days, they had it right. They just sat there with him in his pain. Absolutely. The ministry of presence. When they opened their mouths is when they got in trouble and began to try to figure out why did you have to go through this and began to point fingers and fix it, assign blame. Fix it. Exactly. And that just didn’t go very well. And poor Job, he’s trying to figure out why this all happened to him. 

And I think community is not afraid to step into somebody else’s pain and walk with them. Oh, that’s interesting. One of the reasons why we push off grief in our own life is the uncomfortable emotions. Let’s try to avoid those. And what I hear is we need to take that same medicine as a community to be okay with uncomfortable emotions because I just want to say something to make it all better. We desperately want to make it better and to also fix our own awkwardness of, “I don’t know what to say right now.” 

Yep. So, we just say whatever comes to mind. I would second what Bill said there of what the community can do. So, there’s probably a little bit more than this, but just be present and be quiet. That’s what I think, just because the more you say things the less helpful it is. Err on the side of silence. Yes. Because you have no idea how that person is processing their grief. I don’t know how this person is going to get through this and depending on what circumstances led up to it. If this is a loss of some kind, they may actually be feeling a momentary feeling of relief because the hard journey is over. Relief might be an emotion. Yeah. Anger might be.  

You just don’t know where the other person’s at, and I would say for sure don’t say “at least” statements because those “at least” statements, again, are meant to feel good but they don’t ever, I don’t think. Exactly. No, that’s very true. I know we’ve all experienced this. We’ve gone through visitation lines with nothing to say. We can’t say anything, and you know what? That’s okay. “I love you. I’m praying for you.” That’s just really about all you need to say. But I will say this. I can go through a visitation line of someone who has lost a spouse and if they know that I have, we are on the same wavelength. 

There isn’t any need to say anything at all. We get it. We’ve been there, and we understand. But don’t go through the visitation line and say, “I understand,” when you really don’t. That’s a little harsh. But yeah, I think feeling that the community is praying for me is powerful. If the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much, how about if the whole community is praying? 

And you really sense that. I know we felt the prayers of those we love lifted us and carried us, and we sensed that. So, you would say a big part of grief in your experience was a faithful community. Yes. Yeah. And for sure the presence piece, I think just showing up and being there, and not just in the immediate crisis or the immediate time. I know things that tend to feel good to people is when it’s remembered, like the anniversary date of the passing is remembered, or an occasional check-in, how are you doing? Again, just asking good open-ended questions, and staying in a place of compassion as somebody’s working through the grief process. 

I think it’s really easy to forget. Again, as we talked about, life has to keep moving, and it’s really easy for our compassion to wane for the person going through grief because it’s oh yeah, that was three months ago, but they’re still in the thick of grief. Three months, six months, a year, a long time. 

I think your example there of just remembering an anniversary or bringing that up, I think, even speaks to the complexity of what we mean by comfort and what we think comfort is. So, if comfort is like everything’s great. That comment you just made is actually bringing back this loss, somebody might want to avoid that, right? Anyway, my point is I do think sometimes as a community that’s coming around somebody, in our attempt to comfort, we’re not shooting for the same ideals of that person. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think it’s okay to ask them. 

Does it make you feel better when we remember your loss? Or would you rather not hear that? I think we can be ready to ask questions like, “How can I help?” “And what does that look like?” What did Job say? “Miserable comforters are you all. You’re not doing me a whole lot of good here.” And it can be that way. Yeah, I think the risk you run is that the person is probably thinking about it anyway. When you say the risk of “What if I upset them or make them grieve?” They’re grieving anyway. Sure.  

Yeah. Everyone is unique there. That’s maybe not true for all people, but for the most part, remembering and knowing people are still standing with you goes a long way. And I think some who have lost loved ones particularly are afraid you’re going to forget them, you’re going to forget their spouse, you’re going to forget their child. And they have this tremendous fear of, “Nobody’s going to talk about them anymore. They’re in the dustbin of history, and they’re just kind of gone.” And I think that’s a real fear, and maybe a stumbling block for some people working through grief in a healthy way, is they’re so fearful that individual is going to be forgotten. 

And yeah, I think mentioning them or sending them a text on the anniversary of their death or their anniversary or whatever, however it works is probably very helpful, for some, in some cases. Do not be afraid to pray with someone who’s grieving. We often say, “Oh, I’ll pray for you,” or “I will remember you in prayer.” Just pray with them right there, right then. That’s part of stepping into somebody’s pain, and I think it’s very touching. That is so nice and so respectful and thoughtful. And so, yeah, I would encourage that if it works.  

You know what? I like that suggestion, Bill, because sometimes we don’t have words for people. But we do have words with God. We do, absolutely. That’s something we’re pretty well all practiced in. We can go to the Lord and bring that person into our prayer and put our arms around them and tell them we love them, and that’s huge in my mind, in my experience. 

It makes me think of the verse, isn’t it, God is near to the broken-hearted. He binds up their wounds. Exactly. It’s God’s work. And he comforts. We can comfort others by the same comfort that we were comforted by God. I love that verse. I think that’s so helpful. 

The first year, I got emails from Grief Share, and I found them to be very helpful because they cover almost all types of grief, but they spoke to me through mine, and they’re just very good. And I would go on to say then that as we are walking through grief, when we get to a place where we’re more comfortable with talking to others and we help them walk through their grief, it helps us heal in our own grief. 

Bill, you talk about that person who understands. We have a Savior who understands this very deep area of humanity Which is, yeah, really something to think about. Really appreciate both of you. I’m going to take just a little bit of time because we do have a resource, and Bill helped with this resource. 

It’s called Making Peace with Pain. It is a resource to help people do what you’ve said here, Bill, grieve with whatever the loss is. Kathy, you’ve provided a large spectrum, right? So, you can find that on The Learning Connection. And this resource really is not intended to take a person from A to Z. 

No. We understand grief doesn’t work that way. And I appreciate Bill’s influence in that, but it is a place where the loss is honored, remembered, and God willing, finds its proper effect in our life. And I think that goes back to the holy ground that you talked about. Yeah. That’s honoring the loss and respecting it for what it is. 

And isn’t that like God to take holy ground in broken and difficult places and o show up there in a way that we carry it the rest of our life in a redemptive way, and he uses that to form us more into his likeness. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you, Bill. Thanks for sharing here today. 

Thank you each one for listening. We have a profound respect for the loss and pain that you all carry on a variety of matters. Some are known only by you, some are known in the larger community, and we respect that. We trust and pray that this can be helpful to the end that you might feel God’s grace.