Guiding Others through Loss Minister Webinar

It’s very good to be with you all. Thanks Frank and Ted for being here. Looking forward to a conversation on guiding others through loss. Your prayer, Frank, really set up Christ’s statement there on the Sermon of the Mount when he says blessed are they that mourn. Jesus says a thing that we all pause and say, wait, come again. 

What did you say? Yeah. And this one in particular, if I were to have written this, I may have said, don’t worry if you mourn. There is a reset. But the way Christ said it is you are blessed if you mourn because you can be comforted. And this idea that there’s something additive in the comfort even above the mourning. Does that make sense? There’s something here. And we could wax a long time on this, which isn’t what we’re going to use our time for, but just to start with the inspiration of this passage. How should we, as pastors, as ministers, be thinking about grief and loss and what role do we have in those positions? 

What opportunities are available? Ted, we’ll start with you. Alright, thank you. I think one of the things that is probably the place where I would start with this is that Jesus entered humanity and experienced grief and was acquainted with grief. Because of that, I think we have to be careful with the sense that our job as Christian ministers, or just Christians in general, is going to be able to prevent grief or that it’s going to be able to bring instantaneous comfort. Journeying with people, accompanying people, guiding people, listening to people is probably more akin to journeying with Jesus and with each other than we’re here to make you make over. 

Yeah. Let me ask this way, Frank. As you reflect on your ministry/eldership/pastorate what has stepping into grief meant to you? How has it formed you as a person? You’ve had that opportunity many times. Grief is very real and I like the way this verse puts it. Blessed are they that mourn. That is present tense and how long does that present tense continue? 

We don’t know, but the last part, for they shall be comforted, is future and needing to work through where they are currently but knowing that in the future there will come a time of comfort. And this is a foreshadow of Christ’s death and resurrection. The disciples were mourning. But three days later, they were comforted, but they didn’t know when that comfort would come. And because of the resurrection, we know that comfort will come at some place, some point.  

That’s a great way to set up the work. And that is we enter into death and resurrection with people, right? Which follows the model of Christ. So, I think it’s just a tremendous verse. I’m going to set up the evening and lead the conversation here with Frank and Ted. We’re going to talk tonight, and we’ve got three intentions. We’re not going to spend equal time on these, but first what kinds of losses might be in my congregation and what we want to see is losses in their varied forms. Because loss does come in many varied forms. We have some in our heads where oh, that’s clearly grief and loss associated. But there are some other things that really might fly beneath the radar. And so, we want to surface those things. What losses might we find in the congregation? That would be our first intention. 

And number two, what might be the experience of those suffering loss? So, this might be a little bit of an education for those of us who don’t see grief and loss on a day-to-day basis, or it’s not a part of our everyday life. We need some perspective. And so, what might it be? And here again seeing experiences for their varied forms. 

There’s a common theme here that there are varied forms here. Loss is on a spectrum. Experience is on a spectrum. And then finally, number three, what might be ways to pastor these varied forms? So, I’m assuming there’s a variety of tool sets to bring to bear. As we think about pastoring those who are suffering loss, we’re not going to spend equal time. 

I’ll try to move through one and two because we really want to spend some time Frank and Ted on number three, where we look at some applications. We can see this in our own lives and the ministries that we’re in. So, let’s start with this first one here, this idea of what losses are in the congregation. 

I want to start with you, Ted. We’ve got a number of scales here on the screen that I’d like you just to step through. But then I’d like you to talk a little bit about missing loss. And sometimes people don’t even detect that what they’re dealing with is loss. That’s correct. Take it away. Alright. A couple of things that oftentimes when we think about this particular topic, we think about loss as it relates to the death of a person. And that’s certainly a loss and it’s probably one of the things that we think of. That is one of the most certain things that we will experience in life. 

However, there is a whole host of losses that come across our own lives and that of our congregations. Some are very publicly known, some private. And I think one of the things that we have to be very aware of as pastors is that as we teach our congregations, one of the things that happens is sometimes we find that outside of funerals we’re not very clear about what loss is. 

Oftentimes the other losses that happen in life, like miscarriages, disappointments, lost roles, a number of different things, don’t have a formal place that they’re actually dealt with in congregations. Okay? The rest of things that happen like weddings, births, baptisms we celebrate. We often have a lot of things that are very public. Good things. The interesting thing is for each of those things, for every new baby that’s born in the congregation, there’s somebody else that didn’t have a baby. For every marriage, there’s somebody that has had either a poor marriage or a didn’t get married. 

And so, we have this contrast. And by the way, I’m not trying to say that means we have to give everything equal time or things of that nature, but we just have to be aware. Because otherwise we overfocus on one and we forget and we sound really tone deaf to the rest of the church. They’re not the rest of the church, but the individuals who are experiencing other things. 

This is really true for ambiguous losses that nobody says out loud or has a funeral for. But there are things like losses of roles, losses of dreams. Let’s say that somebody thought that they were going to be put in the ministry and never were. Let’s say somebody wants to get married and never are, or somebody really knew what their role was as a song leader and then gets older and their voice wanes. What’s difficult about those losses is that you don’t know when to grieve them. 

Maybe next month we will be pregnant. For sure. Do you grieve that when it didn’t happen? But do I really grieve that we won’t have children? Do I grieve that I won’t get married? You’re right. Those things are super difficult. They’re very tricky. And that’s why I’m not trying to say that as ministers we are supposed to say, oh, we’re so thankful for a baby. Oh, and we’re really sorry about this. We’re not trying to do that. But to keep it in mind and to be aware that those are there. 

The other thing is we have some losses that are very sudden and unexpected and sometimes they have a big impact. But then you also have gradual losses and sometimes very small losses. And it can be everything from one’s own influence on things that have very small impact. 

But there are things that accumulate on us. Another thing, and we deal with this in the church, and that is that people who grew up in the church 50 years ago or whatever it was and what it was like for them. Tt was predictable. They knew what it was. And so, as things shift, as we have generational change and different things of that nature, the fact is the predictability of things change and those are losses. And so, what ends up happening is that we sometimes end up getting responses from people about specific things that they like or don’t like in the church. 

Hey, why are we serving lunch this way. We used to do it that way. They actually sometimes felt a sense of what feels like home versus something new, but what you’re saying, Ted, is it’s a loss. It’s loss. So, you’re looking through these things that we all deal with and sometimes struggle against and you’re saying there’s a loss behind here and if you understand it as a loss, that will help you interact with it. Absolutely. Because here’s the thing, we are okay with loss that feels like it benefits us. When I got rid of my Chevrolet Corsica that I had for 13 years, hey, guess what somebody says? Isn’t that emotional for you? I said it is. Woo-hoo. Okay. But the flip side is if that wasn’t my idea of a good thing, that would’ve felt very different. 

And so, across a congregation, you can have celebration and mourning at the same time, all over a pickle bowl. One of the hard things too, with different types of loss is I might view something as a minor loss, but to them it is major. Yeah. And there are already major losses happening in that congregation that I am focusing on. And I can dismiss a person’s minor loss, but it’s not minor to them. Yeah. It’s very real. And addressing that is hard. I don’t know how to navigate that. What I like is that you brought up, Frank, the fact whether a loss is big or small is very relative to an individual and to individuals. And sometimes what seems small to us is tied to something bigger in their life or a previous loss.  

Okay. Then other times people tend to feel that whatever’s big to us should be big to everybody else. And in our pastoral role, we’re putting out fires in all different kinds of places. And really, is this your big one? What about this one? This is what’s going on here. And I think it’s just one of those things for us that not only can we easily compare what this person’s going through to this one, but then we have the congregation’s loss and our own losses. 

Sometimes we are a participant in what the congregation is going through. Other times we’re dealing with our own losses that the congregation isn’t in tune with. And so, it’s a little bit like, wait a minute, you’ve got an emotional hangnail here. And I feel like somebody has ripped out my heart. Okay.  

Is that descriptive for you, Matt? Yeah. I appreciate that. Which I think really lends well to the next point. And the next point we want to talk about is what that experience looks like. And this is an image that you’ve used in different teaching here. This mess of reactions. Yes. Speak a little bit about that. Yeah. So first of all, one of the tools is called the grief ball. And oftentimes when I’m working with people with loss, I’ll pull out this ball, and it shows all these different emotions. And I’ll say to people, can you see yourself in this anywhere? 

And they’ll say, yeah. And I’ll say then you’re normal. We use it to normalize. It doesn’t mean that everybody feels all these things. It doesn’t even mean that there aren’t a lot of opposing emotions when things happen. We know that. One of the reasons I like this is because we oftentimes think that emotions are really pure by themselves. 

There’s generally loss with relief, loss with rage, loss with frustration, loss with despair. Yeah. And so, I would say mixed emotions are more human experience than pure joy or pure sadness or pure anger. And so, what’s helpful to see is depending on what somebody’s gone through, if somebody found out that their loved one was just killed in a car accident, they’re going to have rawness that’s very different. 

Somebody whose grandma hasn’t known them for the past four years. And they’ve been waiting for her to pass. Very different. We get that. But here’s the other part, those are known losses. The problem is, like you said, Matt, the person that doesn’t know if they’re going to have that baby or not. 

The person who thought that they were just sure that God had directed them to put in the proposal and it went south, the job that all of a sudden evaporates, you know, those kinds of things. That really throws us. And I think one of the things is our nature as human beings in order to bring comfort is to try to make sense of the loss. And unfortunately, the desire to make sense of the loss tends to be the desire that accidentally turned us into a reason giver. Oh, let me tell you why this happened. You know it. And unfortunately, people want to know why. Of course we do. Some of what you said there, Ted, I thought was really interesting. 

You mentioned a person really believing God led something or did something or was moving some way and so there’s been some disillusionment. Yes. So, as we talk about pastoring people through grief, a lot overlaps with the therapist helping a person with faith. 

Except for that one. Disillusionment of faith is a loss. I hadn’t thought about it until you mentioned that. I thought God operated this way, and now I’m waking up to find out something different. Yes. And what am I to make of that? So, I’d be interested, Frank, or both of you, have you engaged in holding people’s hands, pastoring through the disillusionment of faith? 

Absolutely. I think the thing is that when something bad happens and we say, wait a minute, we’re holding onto a good God and a bad thing happens, we have our emotions and our reality stuck in the middle of that. And so yeah, we get all kinds of sideways in that and we’re working through it as people are working through it. 

And Frank, I think the questions that people could come up with are myriad, wouldn’t you say? Yeah. That disillusionment is so hard because people look at God as moving in this direction. I am following him, and all of a sudden, they’re off course or God’s off course. Yeah. But they know that God can’t be off course, so I must be, and there’s that struggle of how do I get back on the course? Yeah. And you know what, this brings me to something that really gets us pastors. When I was a brand-new counselor, I bought a book called Finding the Right Words, and it was about dealing with people who were in pain. 

And I couldn’t wait to read it because I wanted to know the right words. And it said there was none. And I was so ticked because at the end there, the whole point of the book is that there weren’t exactly right words, but boy, we want them. And that’s where I’m not saying that it’s never right to say words. Yeah. That is not my message. I think one of the things that happen is that our feeling is that we want to make sense of things for people. We want to make sense of it for us. Yeah. And then some of the time when we’re in this place where we have a congregation that’s hurting or a family system or whatever, it’s going to take time. 

And quite frankly, who has any time for the time we want relief. And so, it is part of the, I would call it, panic that comes with pain because it’s like we have to somehow relieve that. And actually, more importantly is that people know they’re not alone. That we are with them. Okay. That we will walk with them. And a big part of that is that God bears us up and can bear with us even through the times when we don’t understand. I think those are some tangibles and I appreciate that even above the words. It is not found in the words. 

I’m curious Frank, having been a minister for as long as you have and the eldership and this mix of experiences people have. How has it impacted you? How has God used walking through grief with people to sanctify your life? I want you to know that I don’t have the answers. I don’t understand everything. I can think of several situations of working with a family through grief and that tangled web that you have one member in despair, the other is in anger. And sometimes I try to minister to the one in their despair and an hour later they’re talking to somebody else and they’re in anger. And it’s, yeah, when I talked to Frank, he didn’t understand. Sure, because he was moving from despair to anger and I was still in the despair mode.  

And so, my own sanctification is just knowing God and being content there and that I am not a person’s savior. I need to love and to comfort as best as I can. But it’s not dependent on me. And more than anything, it’s dependent upon the whole body of Christ working together, the church body stepping in and reaching out. And that I don’t have to have the answers. Yeah.  

And what I hear you say, even there, Frank and not having the answers, you in a way are drawn into grief yourself. You find yourself a participant. Yeah. In a way that’s a good word. In a way that Christ in his incarnation became a participant. So, I think there is some beautiful mirroring that I think is really neat.  

We’re pretty familiar with the grief cycle. But we’re going to go ahead and share that again. Ted, briefly, let’s just talk through basically seeing grief as a process. This helps us see where we’re going, which is helpful. Yep. There are numerous models of loss, and each has its strength and weaknesses. This is Kubler Ross’s model of loss where there was a loss, and then that shock/denial phase followed by anger, followed by bargaining and depression, and going around in that until they get to acceptance. 

It’s important to understand that the denial/shock component is more likely the more unexpected something is and the more also that we have that sense of the loss just isn’t right. Okay. Like this can’t be a thing. And so, for example, when adultery is found out. The betrayal trauma that happens and somebody is surprised. Oh my, the person I thought I knew. And so, the shock, denial and feeling dumb and all those kinds of things, anger happens in a lot of different directions. It can happen outward, like I pointed at you or whoever. It can go at me. I feel that it can go to God. It can also go to institutions and so it can go to churches, et cetera.  

The bargaining phase is an interesting one. If you think about it. A lot of people are saying, what’s bargaining mean? What it means is it is the attempt to regain that which was lost. Okay? It is the wrestle with the reality of, no, we have got to be able to go, no, this can’t be happening. And how can we just go back to like it was? And our brain does that in different ways. When the apple cart has been upset, it’s like trying to get it reset. 

The depression phase sometimes is just mild dysphoria and mild feelings of loss. Sometimes when they’ve experienced grief, people can go into clinical depression. Okay. And so, we don’t say that those are necessarily the same thing, but after a period of time or difficulty restoring, functioning. And then we’ll talk about this a little bit more. Maybe you want me to talk about it now? I don’t know. But what is the goal at the end of loss? We see acceptance, new hope and purpose. Because I think one of the things is it really helps us to understand what we’re aiming for, even as helpers. 

What is it we’re trying to get? Yeah. I think it’s important here to speak about that. Yeah. So, one of the things that I would like to interject here? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. How fast do people go through that cycle? Can you go through all of them in one day or does it take a year to go through them? 

Yeah, so two things. First of all, depending on the loss, people may go very step by step or be here and rest there a while, and go to the next and next. Other times it looks like that grief wheel. Okay. And it’s less about the stages. And so, we use a stage model like this. It’s less about saying, okay, you’re at the right stage than it is to say these are likely the things that you may find yourself feeling. Okay. But yeah, in practice, it goes like this. Okay. Yeah. That’s good.  

You want me to talk about the outcome? Yeah. Let’s do so when I would like to just say briefly when you think about what the goal of good grief is. Okay. And loss. There are really two things that we have to be able to deal with. One is acceptance of the loss. So, if there is a death that we have to reckon with and come to an acknowledgement and grapple with the loss or the loss of trust, or the missed opportunity or the whatever. 

So, in some senses, those things are really permanent. And we have to grapple with that. Secondly, a person also has to get to the place where they’ve had a restoring of functioning to be able to flourish. Okay? So, there are two things that we’re trying to get to. An acceptance of the reality of the loss and a return to a place of coping and functioning or flourishing. Now, that does not mean if those two things happen there won’t be difficulty. Sometimes people say but I’ll always grieve. Maybe you’ll have a sad spot. You are changed. We are changed. And so, I would really hesitate to say to somebody that good grief equals you won’t be affected. 

You won’t ever feel sad about it or et cetera. But if someone’s not able to reckon with the reality of the loss that it really happened, okay. And they’ve not been able to come to a place where they’ve restored functioning and coping and are able to reengage their life. And this is something that ministers can help with because sometimes after a loss, people struggle. But let’s say it’s five years since the loss and somebody isn’t regaining ground. Okay. I would hope we’d get help to people earlier if we could. It’s not a flight to health. We’re not trying to get people back like it never happened.  

But at the same time, if people are stuck, there are levels of things we can do to help intervene. And it’s not one size that fits all, but I don’t think the goal is to just say, yeah, you know what, it hurts and you’re just going to suffer for the rest of whatever. That’s good. And that’s really a nice segue into this where we want to go with the third tier here. What might be ways to pastor those suffering loss. And so, you’ve begun that, Ted. We want to see help in varied ways. Now we’ve got a couple of bullets here. 

And many of you submitted some really nice questions when you enrolled. Okay. So, we want to take on some of those. Frank, take any of these bullets here on the screen you’ve had experience with and what practicality can you bring to any of these matters? 

There are two there that come to my mind right away. Don’t just take the easy ones. I want the easy ones. I get to go first. Yeah. So anyway, leading corporate church support and helping with lament. When Roanoke Church experienced their electrical accident which affected 10 people all from Roanoke Church including a death and lots of people in the hospital. 

It was a tragedy. It was sudden and not just the families were mourning, it was the entire church. And the minister team got together. We had to, first, inform, when we learned about the accident. Victims were all over at different hospitals in Ottawa and Peoria and Streator and elsewhere. 

And then we came together that evening and the next night was Wednesday night and we decided to cancel Wednesday night church service and meet at the fellowship hall and have a time of sharing as a church because the whole church was in grief and you didn’t know where things were going and I think it really helped us as a church to be able to grieve through it together. 

Yeah. The lament part. One of the young men, let me just pause on that because really, you’re talking about lament on two different levels. Yes. Helping an individual lament. I want to hear about that. But you’re really helping a large corporate group lament. So, let’s go back to that Wednesday night. 

Did you talk to a bunch of people to figure out maybe what a forum could look like to be helpful? Thinking about canceling Wednesday night, now all of a sudden, what are we going to do? You read the room, you knew that your church needed something apart from a sermon, you probably felt like nobody was ready to probably have that sermon. 

What were some of the thought processes to say, here’s what I want this Wednesday night to achieve, to give us a model for what it looks like to pivot in a moment and do what’s best for the congregation? There were numerous prayer needs, and that’s where we focused, where is prayer needed? 

And we connected a hymn with each one of those because I feel strongly that music gives expression to the soul that we cannot articulate. And with each point there’d be a brief talk about the situation, then a prayer for it, and a hymn, and then we went to the next and the next in that way. And covering the church and each individual and family with prayer.  

Thank you. I appreciate that. So useful. I just want to highlight what a gift to not only your church but our communities. That’s another topic for another time, but the opportunity to lead corporate lament is certainly applicable in the times and days that we live. I think that’s an interesting way to witness. Let’s go now to that individual lament. One of the young men had his best friend die in the accident. And it caught everybody by surprise because God was just answering prayer in miraculous ways that we thought these boys would be in the hospital for months. 

Some of them were being discharged in a week and so they were just all convinced their one friend would pull through. God pulled through with everything and their friend died. And for over a year, one young man every time he came to visit, he would sit on the couch and he would cry. And there was very little to be said, but we went through Psalm 13, and I really learned to love it because I think it captures lament. 

And it starts with how long wilt thou forget me, O Lord, forever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? And we would talk about this Psalm and other Psalms, and that’s where he was at. But then we would come to the end and say, at some place you’ll get here. 

Not now. But the Psalm ends because that’s the beautiful thing about it. It goes through lament and then ends in rest, and it ends with, but I have trusted in thy mercy, my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. Rejoicing was so far from his mind he couldn’t even get there. But in the future, you will be there. 

But right now, this is where you’re at. What I hear again, I think this is a unique niche for pastors, right? You’re dealing with another disillusionment thing. God answered these prayers. He didn’t answer that prayer. I’ve got a square a lot right now with God. Yes. And what I hear you as a spiritual director to him saying, you have permission to complain and use this Psalm 13 as a script. Is that what I hear? Yes. Is that because David was complaining? He was questioning God and it’s okay because he’s going to God. Yeah. He’s the author of life and we don’t always understand him, but if we’re going to him, when we stop going to him, that’s when we have a problem. 

Yeah. Ted, say more about lament. I know that’s a passion. Yeah. So, I think what you said there, Frank, is really beautiful and it’s a good example of sitting with somebody for a long time and working through different things. When we think about the different process of walking somebody through lament, even ourselves through lament, think about a four-step model. It’s always sketchy to say everything’s got steps. 

But I think it’s helpful to put a shape to it. Step number one is to turn toward God. Okay. So actually, the direction of lament is to God. And I say this to my clients, and I’ve said it to myself, but God is big enough to handle the Psalms. Okay. And he collected them for us, and he can handle our questions of what we don’t understand. So, it’s turning toward God. I’m actually way more concerned when people won’t turn toward God because they’re so white hot and moving away. Yeah. But sometimes they feel like they can’t. 

Absolutely. because what I have to say, he’s not going to want to hear. Correct. And I would even say that there are times where we have to stand in the gap for people and we’re going to be their bridge and to walk with them in times and places that they won’t. Yeah. So, spell that shape out. 

Turn toward God is number one. Number two is to pour out our complaint. Okay? And that just sounds wrong to some people. But I tell you, when you read it in the Scripture, you see what’s happening. It’s right there. Okay? And then the second or step number three is a big ask. 

Oftentimes it’s asking God, I need you to come through for me. I need you to show up in some way. I need you to somehow deliver. And at the same time, we don’t know how that’s going to be or if that’s going to be the way that we would like, but lastly, it’s a step in the direction of either toward praise or toward faith. 

And sometimes we don’t even feel those things today, but we’re stepping in the direction of that. So, that’s where I would really encourage people. By the way, there are some nice resources in Christian literature. We have some things on our website related to lament like podcasts and things of that nature. And we’ve found it to be very helpful in the counseling room as well in the pastoral room.  

Ted, you take one of these and elaborate. Yeah. One of the things that I would say is to help them to sense God’s presence. Nobody ever says this out loud, but I do think that sometimes people get a sense that God likes me when I’m happy and joyful. 

Okay. And when I don’t understand, or I feel dry or I feel really wounded, then I can’t go to him or I can’t, whatever. And I think it is important for us to be able to be practice the ministry of presence. What they experience in the Ministry of Presence is our presence. And again, I’m not trying to say we’re God or anything like that, but it is just like we get to be the person that has skin on that can give them a hug and that can give them a listening ear and that can wipe our eyes with it. There’s a powerful opportunity here to say God loves you. And here’s how you can know it, because I do. 

And I see it. Yeah. I see your disillusionment. I see you right now, your anger. I see all of these things. What a tremendously powerful moment. Yeah. And I think one of the things that we have to watch out for in our parishioners as well as in ourselves, is something referred to as spiritual bypass. 

Spiritual bypass is the term used for when a person of faith uses a spiritual term or phrase in order to avoid dealing with something that’s really hard. The phrase that I shared with you is that a spiritual bypass in the grief sense is using faith to go around grief instead of going through it with God. 

Okay. That is really phenomenal. I’ve never heard that phrase before. Yeah. But that is powerful. And so, here’s an example. Let’s say somebody hurt me very deeply but I didn’t want to have to deal with him. I’d say I forgive him. I don’t want to deal with that. I just don’t. I forgive it, but me saying that I forgive it and I have forgiven it is really me saying, I don’t want to think about it. I can’t cope with it. And so, I’m going to use the words forgive and I push it down. 

Okay. And so, for us accidentally, because when things or when people are hurting bad and when they’re hurting bad over things and they’re dealing with raw things as they’re dealing with suicide, as they’re coming to grips with the aftereffects of their abortion. Just all kinds of things. 

We don’t get to just cherry pick these nice and easy things, but it feels so raw and we want to have answers that our natural response is to give something that is trite. Okay? And unfortunately, trite phrases are more about us if we’re giving them, it’s more about us trying to feel like, I don’t like to feel this discomfort and I’m trying to pull you out of discomfort. 

The other thing that happens, oh, so many times in visitation lines and other places, people coming through, wanting to be helpful and kind, and all those things, end up giving platitudes that end up being really hurtful, quite frankly. And I don’t think at all that people mean it. 

So, I think there are some nuances here that we want so badly for people to feel. Okay. Oh, for sure, don’t you think? Yes. And I want to comfort, and so Ted, I want you to speak to that. Is comfort the highest ideal? Maybe not, but maybe it’s a time thing also. What are your thoughts? Yeah. How would you explain that? Yeah. So first of all, we have to get rid of the idea that comfort equals removal of pain. Okay? I like to use this phrase, we want to focus on caring, not curing. Okay. What happens is when we’re caring, we’re present. We listen, we express our love, our ability to walk with somebody. 

When we’re trying to cure, we’re trying to fix, we’re trying to take it away. Now, of course, if we could take it away, we would in a second. Oh, wouldn’t we? But the grieving doesn’t want that necessarily. That’s right. I mean to comfort and to say, that’s an offense to the loss. 

Yeah. All you have to do, you’re still right. It’s an offense to the loss that I need to stay in grieving because if I move out of it, what’s that say about my relationship? Yeah, and so this is where timing does matter. There are times and places that we need to let people be where they are. 

There are other times and places where we need to help gently move people along. But we need to know that we’re the right people to do that. The other thing is. Our tendency to all you to do, I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to give a fix to your wife instead of listening to her. That goes over really well. I’m such a bad student, I keep learning that. Me too. But I think one of the things about it is that sometimes we mix up the concept that tears are bad or that people hurt. That their tier equals somebody’s doing bad. Yeah. Okay. And if somebody can’t cope, I understand. If somebody is unable to move on and they’re not able to, we have to do some things. 

We have to intervene. But tears, if it’s after a loss or even a long time after a loss, the ups and downs of those waves occur when the tears come, they wash through. We need to be able to tolerate it and not even just tolerate it but to receive it.  

I’ve got a question for Frank. With the work that you do both, close to the nursing home there. And you’ve seen death. You’ve been at a bedside before, I know. That was a question that somebody asked, when do I go and what do I  do when I’m there? The family’s there. 

I’d love for you to share a story or give us some coaching. When people are approaching death, it is such a sacred time. They’re getting close to going home. Being with Jesus, but for the family, it can be a really awkward time because they don’t know what to do. Because often that last day, those last couple days, the person is unresponsive. 

They’re not responding too much. And what do you say? What do you do? And I had an experience that really changed my way I view things, and it’s based on my experience as a speech therapist years ago. I had a truck driver who had a massive stroke. My job was to assess his language, and he basically had no language. 

I had put out a book, a ball, and a bell. I held up my hand and said, give me the ball. And he looked at me and he knew I was making a request to give him one of those things. He did not have a clue what I was saying. So, he could not understand language, could not understand a single word. And so, what I told him, I said, I’m going to do the Lord’s Prayer with you. 

And I started the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, which art in heaven, hollowed be thy name. Now the Lord’s Prayer, he could not understand a word of it, but there’s a cadence to it. And if you were brought up in a Christian home, you know that cadence and tears came to his eyes. And he knew exactly what I was saying, and it was the reality that this was his only hope. So, when you’re at the bedside of someone who is not responding, hearing is the last sense to really go. Now, do they really understand everything that’s being said in the room? Probably not. 

When we’re groggy, we don’t follow a conversation, but you know the tone of what’s happening in that. And what I like to do at the bedside when I know it’s just going to be a day or two, is get down on my knees and talk to the person’s ear and just say, this is Frank. And it looks before long you’ll be going home to Jesus. And I’m going to sing a song with you. And I sing, Jesus loves me. And anybody who’s been brought up in a Christian home, recognizes that. Even people who haven’t still often know that.  

And so, I’m on the webinar speaking and singing that hymn that I think can help connect that person. And not only that, after I’m done with the hymn, I’ll do the Lord’s Prayer, our Father, which art in heaven. And what it does is it says to the family that you see this person as a living soul. They have not passed from this life yet, but your focus is on them, and it helps the family refocus back. They’re not gone. They are there. This is a sacred time, and it’s getting back to the core that it is Jesus. Jesus loves me. The beautiful thing about it is it carries the basics of the gospel. Jesus loves me, we’re weak, he’s strong, and that’s all that matters. And that’s neat. I think that provides a little bit of guidance because we don’t know what to do when you walk into that room. 

I do want to give a nod to Arlan. If you’ve got a question or anybody, feel free to jump in and interrupt us. Yeah, let me just jump in, Matt really quick. Okay. So, the question was a scenario, where you had a couple and one spouse passed very suddenly, and the other surviving spouse is walking through a lot of regret and struggle. 

Especially because things that maybe were said close to the time of death, which they never would’ve said, but that suddenness that, immediacy has left an extremely unfortunate situation. So, any counsel or any advice, how do you counsel someone who cannot forgive themselves, who’s dealing with that level of regret at that level of acceptance? 

How do you walk into a situation? Yeah. So, this is a great question because we would wish that grief was always clean, but reality is things like guilt, shame, goodbyes that didn’t happen, unfortunate goodbyes, just different things that leave people with an edge that really makes it hard to heal. The good news is that we have ways to help people be able to pick up that loss. And there’s actually a term for this. We used to call it complicated grieving but now it’s prolonged grief. And in that we oftentimes have to help people be able to go and do some additional specific grief with and around the time of the loss and around whether that is self-forgiveness. Sometimes it’ll be trauma, those kinds of things. 

And so, we do a variety of things. In the counseling room, we do everything from some trauma treatments to helping people to be able to write out and speak out dialogue that they would’ve wished they could say and those kinds of things. And we use the empty chair technique and other techniques to be able to address this. 

And so I would just say this, if people are stuck like that, or if you’re not sure if somebody just needs to go through the regular process of grief or is bound up in some way, you can have them or you as a minister can call in to ACCFS and do a triage and we’ll be glad to talk you through what’s going on and then to figure out if it sounds like something that would be benefited by a few sessions of counseling or a grief support group like grief share or maybe going through the Grief Course? 

Yeah. What’s the new name of the grief course? Making Peace with Your Pain. That’s in The Learning Connection. We also have some workbooks that we sometimes have people go through with others. We do not have a one-size fits all, but I would say that oftentimes people feel because something really unfortunate happened and they can’t get it back, then they are stuck. Yeah. There’s no repair. And so that’s where we have to do something different.  

And then when regret is bound up in grief, yeah. That has to be a really difficult thing. We’re just nearly at the bottom of the hour. Arlan, if you had any others, you can ask those or perhaps somebody has a burning question they wanted to chat in, or even unmute yourself and ask it verbally as well. 

I really appreciate both of you sharing that. Any closing comments? Pastoring grief. One of the things that I would say is that I think that it is a daunting task for us to try to keep up with all the griefs in a church. Okay. Because you can’t keep track of every person’s anniversary or third anniversary or fifth anniversary of this, that, or the other thing. 

But I do think that being able to see and be aware that grief is part of what’s going on at various kinds, whether it’s going to be an empty nest or who knows what. For some people that’s a beautiful time. Sometimes retirement’s a wonderful time. Sometimes it’s really rough. 

So, it’s not to look at other people and say, I know that they’re having trouble. But it’s to be able to keep it in your mind that this is part of the undercurrent of all of our lives. And it doesn’t mean that it has to be automatically the worst thing. But I think that as we have that in prayer, when we have the opportunity to pray with the congregation, it is one of the times that we can mention some of the things and not mention a person unless it is appropriate. 

Yeah. But to be able to say, Lord, there are people who are hurting, and there are people that are this and people that are that. And it’s a way to at least allow them to know, at least people can ping off of that. That fits me. And I’ve been heard or I’ve been acknowledged. 

As I think about this conversation, a couple thoughts come to mind. One is that each situation is as unique as each person is unique and how they grieve is unique. And so, it’s not one pattern that fits all. It’s really trying to listen and understand. Another thing I try to do from time to time, over the pulpit, if somebody has died recently, we’ll pray for the family, but also in the prayer, acknowledge that there are individuals in the church who have private struggles that they are going through. 

Yeah. And that God would be there with them and guiding through that because that’s great. A lot of things are public, but some just aren’t. Yeah. You give voice to it. Yeah. Yeah. And Frank, I think that’s wonderful. I appreciate that. Thank you each one for being on. Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. 

You mentioned it so well in your prayer Frank, but what a tremendous blessing and unique privilege as pastors, as ministers, we bring to bear Christ, the suffering servant, into the pain that people bring. And so, it seems like we’re uniquely apt to provide hope in these very difficult places. 

And it’s not us, right? It’s Christ. So, thank you each one for being on. This will be recorded and uploaded to the website. But each of you have a blessed evening.