the danger of ungrieved grief

"What could be worse for our children’s children than the inheritance of ungrieved grief?"

Joshua Luke Smith, Finding Hope in a Fractured World

"Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape."

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

I have been to more schools and come out with fewer degrees than anyone I know. When I add it up, I have attended 8 institutions and come away with only 1 degree. It’s not that I don’t like learning, and it’s not that there was a problem with the programs. It’s just that I kept getting distracted by doing the things I was learning and the theory started to lag behind the practice.  

But through all the Colleges and Seminaries I have attended, there is one class that has stood out to me for years. One class that truly changed me. One that actually delivered on the promise of transformation that was proposed in the syllabus. 

It was a section called "Grieving the Seasons of Your Life" taught by Legendary New York Leaders Dr. Ron and Wanda Walborn. The big idea of the class was about the spiritual foundation and formation of a leader, but the angle on grief was new to me. 

Nowadays, we talk a lot about lament. We lament racial injustice in America, gun violence in our schools, and sexual confusion that makes God's good vision unrecognizable. This cultural lament is helpful and biblical, yet very few people have a framework for grief and lament in their own lives.

When you grow up in a broken family, it takes time to really learn the damage that has been done. It may be years before you realize that what you thought was normal was actually dysfunctional, and it may take even longer to come to terms with the damage done in your heart. 

And so much of what I learned about ministry was about theology and technique rather than healing and change. It was about doctrine, apologetics, leadership, and culture. Most of these things were aimed at informing your mind but not forming your heart. Grief didn’t seem to fit into this, so it just got glossed over.  

To be fair, the class I am referring to was not a typical seminary class. I watched demons cast out of students in one session and people slain under the power of God in others, but these honestly seemed small compared to the work of healing that happened in my own life.

The homework assignment we were given after a lecture on grief was to write a grief journal. Yes, a grief journal. Not a gratitude journal of all the good that had happened, but a grief journal of all the pain, tragedy, rejection, heartache, and abuse we had encountered in the story of our lives. 

Somehow this felt too personal, almost inappropriate for an academic setting. Writing a paper on the Old Testament theology of grief, no problem. Writing a journal about my own grief, deeply problematic.

But I settled in and wrote out a list of all the things that hurt or wounded me over the course of my life. I tried to go year by year and let God bring things to the surface. Some things I had forgotten, others I had put behind me, others I had sworn to never mention again. And as I began to write, I began to weep. Something in the depths of my soul opened up and a flood of emotions I could not control surfaced in an almost violent way. The most terrifying part of this was that I had to then hand this in as homework. My tears and pain and trauma as a seminary assignment. 

To be honest, I was embarrassed at some of the things that had hurt me, ashamed at some of the things that had happened to me, and terrified of some of the things that controlled me. I felt weak, exposed, and vulnerable. My instinct was to hide.

I think many other men may try and hide their grief too. We bypass it because we don’t know what to do with it. Robert August Master was the first to bring the idea of spiritual bypassing to my attention. He describes it as a way of pretending everything is good because of our faith, while ignoring, dismissing, or denying the sadness, pain, and anger we are living with. He writes,

What spiritual bypassing would have us rise above is precisely what we need to enter, and enter deeply, with as little self-numbing as possible. To this end, it is crucial that we see through whatever practices we have, spiritual or otherwise, that tranquilize rather than illuminate and awaken us.

Often the church elicits a sort of toxic positivity. It’s a kind of collective tranquilizing under the guise of the goodness of God. This functions like a spiritual cortisone shot that numbs the pain for a while so we can function but doesn’t address the underlying issues of our heart. Brokenness rarely fits into our neat programs and tightly scheduled services. Where does Jesus fit into all this? He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. There are times I wonder if he would even be allowed to share his faith in the modern church that often demands things turn out well in the here and now.  

It's important that a man finds healing for his wounds and addresses the pain in his heart. A man must learn to grieve. If he doesn’t find healing for his pain, he will often use others to medicate it. Henri Nouwen addressed this when he said, 

The main question is "Do you own your pain?" As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.

So many men use women to numb their grief. 
So many men use achievement to numb their pain.
So many men use power to try and keep their sadness at bay.

Learning to grieve gave me a way to own my pain and find a new kind of fellowship with Christ. I never fully understood that walking with Jesus would mean he would walk me into my grief and that there was a kind of intimacy I wouldn’t know with him until I let him lead me there. I knew a lot about the power of his resurrection; now, he was inviting me into the fellowship of his suffering. 

And then something remarkable happened. I got my homework back. My "grief journal" was covered with red marks, but it was also covered with compassion. For Ron and Wanda, this was no mere academic exercise. It was spiritual parenting. It’s one thing to have a professor teach you, another to have one weep with you. And that’s what Ron did. He told me,

"I am sorry these things happened to you."
"These things were not fair."
"I am angry at how you have been treated in your past"
"I am heartbroken by what you have had to go through"

The word compassion has the idea of suffering alongside someone. And that’s what I experienced that day. A seminary of shared suffering. One that took Jesus from the pages of scripture and brought him close through another. One that showed me pain could be redeemed and grief could be a gift.

Nouwen went on to say, "The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self."

Our vulnerable self. Our heartbroken and healed, grieving and glad selves. The selves God created us to be and not the ones we pretend to be.

You most likely won’t get a chance to take the class that I did yourself. I’m not sure if it’s even still being offered today. But I know this, Jesus is still offering to meet you in your grief. To meet you in your sadness and your sorrow. To bless you so you don’t need to bypass. To change your wounds into scars and help you live from the whole of your heart.

Do you need to do a grief journal? Have you sat with your pain long enough to own it?
Maybe this week you can take some time to do just that. To be introduced to the man of sorrows so willing to be acquainted with your grief too.

There is a ton of solid research on the power of doing this well. 

And you can see Dr. Ron Walborn teach on the power of learning to grieve wellhere, which he taught at our church.

We need a generation of strong men.
We need a generation of kind men.
But these men will appear only as they go through their grief, not around it.

I'm hoping this week you learn to grieve well.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers.

Jon.