Psalm 91:4 New International Version (NIV)
4 He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
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I realize that Christmas has already came and went for the year but there will always be another one and the holidays will come around time and time again. For future reference, I wanted to touch base on the topic of grief (grieving during the holidays). This can apply to anytime of year too. I will be recording my first podcast on Blog Talk radio once a private room opens up at the library, so I can record the show! It will be on the same topic. I am excited to begin connecting with more of an audience. :)
The question is, how do we cope with grief? How do we navigate in the storm? Where do we focus our energy? Is it ok to be sad and grieve? I have found that the answer will change from person to person. As far as healthy grieving goes, for me personally, I have found that prayer helps me to cope. When I pray and lean on God for support, He helps me to navigate through the storm. You can always refer to your Bible for some comforting scriptures. Here is one: 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” God comforts us and He always will. All it takes is one simple prayer and He is there, by your side.
So, are you asking what I did during my most difficult times? I hope you are! In my darkest hours, when I was grieving the most, LOVE saved me. I believe that God IS love. During the storm, there were times that I would get lost but I always heard that voice (Holy Spirit) telling me to hang in there and to NOT give up because there is so much more life to live and wonderful things to experience. Plus, my belief that suicide is a sin and possibly even one that can lead to eternal damnation kept me from taking my own life. I know that many people believe that suicides go to Heaven but I don't really believe that. I am sorry if this offends anyone. As I was saying, prayer helped and so did focusing on HOPE and good things yet to come.
I would focus on things that I was grateful for in the PRESENT and in the PAST as well. The main thing that I was grateful for in my life and still am grateful for are my loved ones. I do not have a big family and hardly have any friends but focusing on the beautiful relationships that I had and have kept me going and STILL keeps me going today. Another thing I did, which can be seen as a lack of social etiquette :-p, was that I got ANGRY. I got REALLY freaking angry and I showed it! I gave myself permission to be angry, to express it, to wallow in sorrow and to cry from the depths of my soul. There are far too many people in America that do not want to give themselves permission to grieve until it has run it's course. I, on the other hand, let my emotions run the gamut and it was a terrible, exhausting, liberating and eye opening experience.
After the negative emotions and intense pain worked through my system, I would begin to ACCEPT the situation. I would look at it all from a neutral standpoint and understand why it happened (like my son Taylor's recent death). I understand that Taylor had to go to God because keeping him here would have been selfish on my end. I had to set myself aside, and live from a heart centered place of love, empathy and compassion. Sometimes I revert back to the poor me attitude and blame God for my son and his birth defects. Most people that are grieving bounce around a lot in the grieving process, which I will get to shortly.
This experience with my son's passing has been something like a beautiful nightmare. It was tragic and saddens me deeply. I miss my baby boy very much.... but from tragedy there came a new life born within my soul. It's like the great and majestic phoenix. Out of ashes came a deeper understanding of love, compassion, empathy and what it truly means to be selfless, putting someone else first, before my own needs. Funny, it just dawned on me literally a few seconds ago that God granted my request. I have been praying and asking Him to help me to understand compassion and selflessness from His perspective. Jesus Christ was a perfect example in what it means to be selfless. I had the blessing of being able to experience that love for my son, which must have been love in it's purest form, here on Earth.
God works in mysterious ways and sometimes we do not fully understand WHY our loved one had to pass away but when we TRUST God, all of that can be set aside. That leads me to what I feel is the most important step in grieving. TRUSTING in the Lord will save you from the soul wrenching pain that grief can bring. It will prob never be easy to grieve but trusting in Him will greatly reduce the blows that you will face (emotionally of course). In knowing that my son was in complete bliss and peace in Heaven, it gave me great comfort and made grieving bearable. In the past, grief felt unbearable because I did not trust that God would provide me with everything that I needed.
I remember grasping at people and they would slip through my fingers like a handful of water. Before I knew it, they were gone or too preoccupied with someone or something else to focus on me. I learned over a long period of time that people will never fill the void and neither will food, sex, or anything else of this world. Only God can fill that void.
There are many people who think they don't need faith to grieve and heal. I strongly believe that you have to have faith in God or you will never stop trying to fill that void. Trying to fill that gaping hole in your heart with worldly things will only lead to an ongoing, repetitious cycle or sorrow and despair. Trust me, I know from my own experience. I kept going to a man to fix me and he never could. I did not trust that God would bring me a man that was actually available. I will admit that I was having an affair with a married man for too many years. It all went back to my core belief that no one would ever be fully present in my life and truly be there for me.
It was not until recently that I came to the conclusion that this man that I had been seeing for so long, only made that vicious cycle of despair continue to go round and round. I was not able to break free of this stronghold of sin until I accepted and trusted that God would bring me the right man. A man that would marry me, cherish me, be a good dad and make his family the center of his world, as God intended. I have separated myself from the guy I was having an affair with and am STILL working on maintaining those boundaries.
If we are to move on in our lives, we must have BOUNDARIES and we must have a healthy time and place to grieve. After all, we have to work and live, right? Right! I have always found that going to either a river or lake had a tremendous healing effect on my soul and greatly lessened my grief and sorrow. It still does today! When I can't sit outdoors, in the winter, I take a hot bath with lavender oil or a hot shower, pray and meditate on whatever gives me hope. I will also think back to scripture and any words of comfort that come to mind, I hold onto. One Psalm that has always given me comfort in my hardest time is Psalm 91. Here is my fav part and for the rest, you can click on the link.
Psalm 91:4 New International Version (NIV)
4 He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm+91 There are variations in the way different Bible's word Psalm 91 but my favorite is when they say, "feathers" because I picture myself wrapped up in the warm embrace of an Angel's wings and feathers. It's such a comforting thought. To know that He sends his Angel's to protect me and comfort me gives me peace.
Everyone has their own unique way of grieving but there are some basic phases that most people go through and here they are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Some people may even skip over some of these! For me, the denial was when my son was alive and I did not want to accept the gravity of how sick he was and that I would have to let him go. I went through ALL of the steps actually! I even bargained with God, asking Him to at least make my son healthy enough to walk around and live life. That if He would save him then I would be a better person and a better Christian. The depression was the hardest and most gruesome part of the grieving process and I thank God that I survived it and am STILL surviving it!
I hope that this blog post has helped you somehow. I find that by sharing my own experiences, I can help others to break through barriers in their lives and finally move forward. Moving forward and letting go does not mean that it won't hurt. It just means that we are making a conscious choice to break through the fear and to ENJOY the beauty that God gives us in this life. We learn to live with our loss and keep going, no matter what. God has a plan for each and every one of us. He has given every single person that has ever existed, a spiritual gift to share with the world. If you ask Him, He will lead you to discovering that gift. This is what I love about life coaching. I have the amazing opportunity to help people discover what that gift is. All I do is help you to see what you ALREADY know deep down inside!
Well.... Take care everyone! Stay blessed and please have a Happy New Year, full of many, many wonderful experiences!
Love,
Chrystyana
