The Mrs

We as Christians, at least in the evangelical environment in which I grew up and am still involved in, have a very complicated relationship with grief and suffering. While we say that e know this is something that is to be expected as the result of living in a fallen world, in the already/not yet state of waiting for the Lord’s return and redemption of the physical world, we seem extremely reticent to acknowledge grief and suffering, join in with those experiencing it, and give it the space it deserves. Is this what Jesus asks of us? Would this be His response? I am going to walk through some examples that I have personally dealt with and look at these questions.

I grew up attending several churches would predominately focused on the “mountain top” experiences only, and if you had bad days or experienced grief, suffering, hardship, or loss, you were made to feel that this was a result of your lack of faith. I remember sitting in a service where people were relating the amazing things God had revealed to them and how good He was and all the blessing they were living in. I sat there thinking of the hard days I frequently experienced, the not even feeling capable of getting out of bed or feeling totally overwhelmed by life (what I would later learn was depression and anxiety), and thinking that I couldn’t relate to their experience at all. I was scared to share what I actually dealt with because I was scared I would be told that my faith was weak and my struggles were a result of that. The thing was, even in that difficult time, I could stand there stating with all my heart that God was good and I knew that He was with me in those times and it was by His grace that I was functioning. I remember thinking that these people were either lying about what their life was like, or lived such a small existence in a “Jesus bubble” that they hadn’t encountered true suffering or grief. Their resistance to acknowledging the true ups and downs of life led to me feeling like an outsider and inhibited my ability to form true community with them. Thankfully, the Lord kept it from impacting my faith in Him.

A few years later, when Ben and I were struggling to get pregnant with our first child, I again felt this sense of being “othered” due to our struggle. Too many people couldn’t relate to having issues getting pregnant and few were willing to try and understand what we were going through. I had others turn it into a “suffering olympics”, trying to say that my struggle wasn’t as big a deal because at least I had never been pregnant and lost a baby. Too many people compared it only to what they had or had not experienced, instead of trying to simply be there for us or try to empathize with us.

Thankfully, two years after that, when we lost our second child to miscarriage, we were surrounded by a community who joined with us in celebrating and acknowledging that child’s life, as short as it was. They allowed me to feel what I needed to, took me out for coffee to ensure that I didn’t just sit at home alone in my grief, and provided meals for our family while we grieved. Many of these women had never experienced miscarriage themselves, but they knew that they could still be the hands and feet of Jesus to us. This was the first time I had ever felt uplifted in my suffering. It was a beautiful experience and the Lord used it to keep me strong in my faith in Him amidst the deep pain and loss. Then a month later when I became pregnant with our third child, they were still there, acknowledging how scary it must be to be pregnant after loss, allowing me to share as I needed to. They let me grieve the loss while celebrating the blessing of this new child, without trying to tell me to get over the loss because we had now been given a new child.

Sadly, I have experience pretty severe postpartum depression and anxiety after all 3 of my births. This seems to be something that is hard to find good support for. I’m not sure if it’s that we simply don’t talk about it enough, which is for sure a failing, or what. But it’s easy to feel like something is wrong with you when you are experiencing such suffering at what should be one of the best times in your life. What I have found at least, is that it’s hard to find people who are willing to TRULY know you, those who actually mean it when they ask how you are doing, who will come clean your house, pray with you, and hold you while you cry. This makes it very difficult to feel like you can authentically share what is going on in your life, when you’re questioning the legitimacy of someone’s question; do they really want to know or are they just making small talk? This also puts all the effort on to the person who is suffering; to have to be the gatekeeper over what they share, instead of being cared for and given an environment in which they feel comfortable being real and vulnerable.

I know this all got mixed together, because it’s hard to list examples without also listing then the things that were done well for me and the failings I see in our response as Christians to these things. So I am going to make a list of things we as Christians, me included, do not do well when encountering someone experiencing grief, suffering, struggle, and hardship:

• We aren’t willing to step into the suffering with the person
• We use cute little Christianese phrases to try and make them and ourselves feel better about it because we are uncomfortable with the grief
• We aren’t educated on a Biblical response to grief and suffering and thus don’t know how to handle it
• We aren’t willing to work to relate to someone with experiences other than ours

Over the next several weeks I am going to write detailed posts on each of these so that we can learn together ways to overcome these issues. I can say from experience that it is a privilege to enter into people’s suffering with them and help them bear that burden. It is not easy, but we are called to do it and should thus learn how to do it as well as we possibly can.