A ReWoven Life
By Jk Loring
Here I sit in front of a blank page on my computer. It has been difficult for me to decide on what I wanted to write about as a guest columnist for “Good Grief.” My wish is to help someone, anyone, who is struggling with the loss of someone they loved, whether that be a child, a spouse, a friend, a grandparent, a parent or a sibling. The list is endless. The grief will be different each time because of the variables of who you are, what the person who died was like, what your relationship with them consisted of, and what the circumstances were surrounding the death. Unique, one of a kind, special.
In the past 12 years, loss through death has rattled my life several times. It hasn't made me an expert in any sense of the word. (I don't think we can ever become experts at the mourning process because of the differences in each relationship.) I have simply muddled through the messy process of trying to become whole again. It has made me a deeper, more compassionate person. When someone loses a loved one, my heart breaks all over again.
I can tell you that each of us, at one time or another, will have to walk this road. Unless we cut off every relationship we have ever had and run off somewhere alone for the remainder of our lives... we will experience grief. It is unfortunately a part of life. When I look back on my life, I think of all those I have lost to death. Those relationships were so full of love and laughter and hope. That is why it hurt so much to lose them. I think of Garth Brooks' song back in the early 90's "The Dance"...... it talks about the end of a relationship. One of the lines was something like, "but I would have missed the dance." How true that is of death. If we had never had the deep relationships, full of life, pain, love, laughter, sorrow, disagreements and just the daily life stuff, we would never feel the heart wrenching pain that comes from death. If we would never love... we would never grieve. We would also lead very lonely and unfulfilled lives.
I've learned that words aren't necessarily needed. "I'm so sorry" will usually go so much farther than a lot of words. The more words we use, the easier it is to say something dumb or insensitive. Not that we mean to add hurt to pain, it just happens. Hugs, holding a hand, sharing tears, heal the heart so much better than advice. If you have experienced people trying to help you and saying the wrong things, forgive them and let it go. If to do that, you need to confront the statement, do so in love. If they have never experienced grief, they just don't know. People don't mean to be mean; they just have never been where you are. It is in those times that the grieving process can seem almost worse than the death. The death has separated you from the one you love, and the grieving process often seems like it separates you from everyone else.
Rarely is healing a clear, precise process. It often involves a lot of crying, anger, crying, denial, crying, confusion, crying and a whole lot of prayer. In my case, obviously, I am a crier. The process is on its own time table. The grief process is longer for some than it is for others. No one should tell you when you should be over it, that is a choice you alone have. When everyone around you goes back to their own lives, you will see who has been changed by grief along with you. They are the ones who call a lot, just to see how you are doing, the ones who listen while you pour out your heart and don't try to correct you, and they are the ones who cry with you
Our society is very uncomfortable with death and grief. Death we have to deal with. Grief lasts much longer than most people want to deal with. It is uncomfortable, emotional and there aren't a lot of firm rules. If you run and hide, ignore it, or stuff it, it is very patient, it will wait. Five months, five years or five decades, it will still be there. It doesn't care how long, it waits. As it waits, it will slowly taint your life with fear, sarcasm, bitterness, and loneliness until one morning you wake up to realize grief is still there. It has stolen more than just the person you loved, it has stolen precious years of your life. Not dealing with grief allows it to steal your health, your peace and your deepest relationships. Instead of being able to share what is on your heart with the people you love, you find yourself avoiding subjects and walking on egg shells.
It takes courage to go through the whole grieving process and not get hung up in one place or another. With a loved one gone there are so many empty places in your life. Everything that was once so normal becomes painful, emotional, and disconnected. A song, a food, a smell of aftershave, a favorite place, a certain time of day, all these things and more can be triggers to pain, tears or anger. It is okay to cry. My mom used to say that tears were like baptism, there to wash your heart and your soul clean again. It is okay to be angry and express that anger to God, He is big enough to handle it. Even when you come to the conclusion that you aren't angry with God but He sure must not like you much, He can heal that too, if you let him. He does love you. And He knows what you are dealing with. Remembering those we loved will bring so much healing to our lives. The memories, the laughter, the stories and the tears…those things are the things that bring healing. Talking about those you have lost with people who listen may help you heal much more quickly than stuffing all those memories and feelings.
Will our lives ever be the same again? No. Will we ever be happy again? Yes. But our lives will never be the same. They will be different. Hopefully, they will be deeper and rich in the hope of eternity. The pain doesn't go away but we learn to let it make us love deeper, live passionately and laugh at every opportunity.
When God first started to heal my heart, He brought to my heart Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." At that time my family and I were going through a period of 6 years in which we lost five people that had been woven into the material of our lives. The last thing it looked like was plans to prosper us and not harm us. About that time I had a dream of a beautiful woven tapestry that was hanging on my living room wall. Suddenly, among the different colors and textures, threads started to fall out. It left the tapestry with huge gaps and empty spaces. It looked impossible to repair. Ruined and destroyed, it hung there for everyone to see, not looking at all like the beautiful piece of art it once was. I cried over it, I tried to pull it down, I started to question. Was it something I did, how did this happen, why, why, why? I started to look for threads that could fill in the empty spots. The right texture, the right color, and size just couldn't be found. I tried different things but nothing worked. I had come to the point where I knew there was nothing I could do to fix it. At that point I fell to my knees and gave it up to God. I could see Jesus walk up to it and gently touch the edges. Softly He began to weave tiny threads into the tattered tapestry. At this point I realized that the tapestry represented my life and what I was going through at this time. Slowly he was weaving His thread into my struggling, wounded life. So thin and so delicate were the threads that I could hardly see any progress. I closed my eyes just for a moment. When I opened them again I could see the new weave. It was far from fixed but the shimmering golden threads gave me a sense of expectation, a renewed hope. Even though it was not what it was before, I could see that He had a plan to make it a beautiful piece of art once more… never to be the same again, but from this point forward, possessing a color and a richness that was not there before.
That is what God wants to do when our lives are shattered and tattered and torn. If we will just allow Him to come into the situations of our lives, He can (and will) fill in the empty spaces with rich threads of His abundant grace and mercy. So it is when we lose someone we love to death. Only He holds the answers. Only He can fill the empty spaces of loss. There is only One who can make us whole again. His name is Jesus, Lord of lords, King of kings, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
Through the whole walk of grief, I know that He was the one companion who never left me and never misunderstood me. He saw me crazy and a mess but never judged me. He saw my heart and knew my cries. He gently put me back together again and filled in the gaps with His love, patience and hope. I am changed. I will never be who I was before death came, yet I am becoming more and more who He made me to be from the very beginning. My life is being rewoven by the Master weaver.
By Jk Loring
Here I sit in front of a blank page on my computer. It has been difficult for me to decide on what I wanted to write about as a guest columnist for “Good Grief.” My wish is to help someone, anyone, who is struggling with the loss of someone they loved, whether that be a child, a spouse, a friend, a grandparent, a parent or a sibling. The list is endless. The grief will be different each time because of the variables of who you are, what the person who died was like, what your relationship with them consisted of, and what the circumstances were surrounding the death. Unique, one of a kind, special.
In the past 12 years, loss through death has rattled my life several times. It hasn't made me an expert in any sense of the word. (I don't think we can ever become experts at the mourning process because of the differences in each relationship.) I have simply muddled through the messy process of trying to become whole again. It has made me a deeper, more compassionate person. When someone loses a loved one, my heart breaks all over again.
I can tell you that each of us, at one time or another, will have to walk this road. Unless we cut off every relationship we have ever had and run off somewhere alone for the remainder of our lives... we will experience grief. It is unfortunately a part of life. When I look back on my life, I think of all those I have lost to death. Those relationships were so full of love and laughter and hope. That is why it hurt so much to lose them. I think of Garth Brooks' song back in the early 90's "The Dance"...... it talks about the end of a relationship. One of the lines was something like, "but I would have missed the dance." How true that is of death. If we had never had the deep relationships, full of life, pain, love, laughter, sorrow, disagreements and just the daily life stuff, we would never feel the heart wrenching pain that comes from death. If we would never love... we would never grieve. We would also lead very lonely and unfulfilled lives.
I've learned that words aren't necessarily needed. "I'm so sorry" will usually go so much farther than a lot of words. The more words we use, the easier it is to say something dumb or insensitive. Not that we mean to add hurt to pain, it just happens. Hugs, holding a hand, sharing tears, heal the heart so much better than advice. If you have experienced people trying to help you and saying the wrong things, forgive them and let it go. If to do that, you need to confront the statement, do so in love. If they have never experienced grief, they just don't know. People don't mean to be mean; they just have never been where you are. It is in those times that the grieving process can seem almost worse than the death. The death has separated you from the one you love, and the grieving process often seems like it separates you from everyone else.
Rarely is healing a clear, precise process. It often involves a lot of crying, anger, crying, denial, crying, confusion, crying and a whole lot of prayer. In my case, obviously, I am a crier. The process is on its own time table. The grief process is longer for some than it is for others. No one should tell you when you should be over it, that is a choice you alone have. When everyone around you goes back to their own lives, you will see who has been changed by grief along with you. They are the ones who call a lot, just to see how you are doing, the ones who listen while you pour out your heart and don't try to correct you, and they are the ones who cry with you
Our society is very uncomfortable with death and grief. Death we have to deal with. Grief lasts much longer than most people want to deal with. It is uncomfortable, emotional and there aren't a lot of firm rules. If you run and hide, ignore it, or stuff it, it is very patient, it will wait. Five months, five years or five decades, it will still be there. It doesn't care how long, it waits. As it waits, it will slowly taint your life with fear, sarcasm, bitterness, and loneliness until one morning you wake up to realize grief is still there. It has stolen more than just the person you loved, it has stolen precious years of your life. Not dealing with grief allows it to steal your health, your peace and your deepest relationships. Instead of being able to share what is on your heart with the people you love, you find yourself avoiding subjects and walking on egg shells.
It takes courage to go through the whole grieving process and not get hung up in one place or another. With a loved one gone there are so many empty places in your life. Everything that was once so normal becomes painful, emotional, and disconnected. A song, a food, a smell of aftershave, a favorite place, a certain time of day, all these things and more can be triggers to pain, tears or anger. It is okay to cry. My mom used to say that tears were like baptism, there to wash your heart and your soul clean again. It is okay to be angry and express that anger to God, He is big enough to handle it. Even when you come to the conclusion that you aren't angry with God but He sure must not like you much, He can heal that too, if you let him. He does love you. And He knows what you are dealing with. Remembering those we loved will bring so much healing to our lives. The memories, the laughter, the stories and the tears…those things are the things that bring healing. Talking about those you have lost with people who listen may help you heal much more quickly than stuffing all those memories and feelings.
Will our lives ever be the same again? No. Will we ever be happy again? Yes. But our lives will never be the same. They will be different. Hopefully, they will be deeper and rich in the hope of eternity. The pain doesn't go away but we learn to let it make us love deeper, live passionately and laugh at every opportunity.
When God first started to heal my heart, He brought to my heart Jeremiah 29:11 "For I know the plans I have for you”, declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." At that time my family and I were going through a period of 6 years in which we lost five people that had been woven into the material of our lives. The last thing it looked like was plans to prosper us and not harm us. About that time I had a dream of a beautiful woven tapestry that was hanging on my living room wall. Suddenly, among the different colors and textures, threads started to fall out. It left the tapestry with huge gaps and empty spaces. It looked impossible to repair. Ruined and destroyed, it hung there for everyone to see, not looking at all like the beautiful piece of art it once was. I cried over it, I tried to pull it down, I started to question. Was it something I did, how did this happen, why, why, why? I started to look for threads that could fill in the empty spots. The right texture, the right color, and size just couldn't be found. I tried different things but nothing worked. I had come to the point where I knew there was nothing I could do to fix it. At that point I fell to my knees and gave it up to God. I could see Jesus walk up to it and gently touch the edges. Softly He began to weave tiny threads into the tattered tapestry. At this point I realized that the tapestry represented my life and what I was going through at this time. Slowly he was weaving His thread into my struggling, wounded life. So thin and so delicate were the threads that I could hardly see any progress. I closed my eyes just for a moment. When I opened them again I could see the new weave. It was far from fixed but the shimmering golden threads gave me a sense of expectation, a renewed hope. Even though it was not what it was before, I could see that He had a plan to make it a beautiful piece of art once more… never to be the same again, but from this point forward, possessing a color and a richness that was not there before.
That is what God wants to do when our lives are shattered and tattered and torn. If we will just allow Him to come into the situations of our lives, He can (and will) fill in the empty spaces with rich threads of His abundant grace and mercy. So it is when we lose someone we love to death. Only He holds the answers. Only He can fill the empty spaces of loss. There is only One who can make us whole again. His name is Jesus, Lord of lords, King of kings, Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.
Through the whole walk of grief, I know that He was the one companion who never left me and never misunderstood me. He saw me crazy and a mess but never judged me. He saw my heart and knew my cries. He gently put me back together again and filled in the gaps with His love, patience and hope. I am changed. I will never be who I was before death came, yet I am becoming more and more who He made me to be from the very beginning. My life is being rewoven by the Master weaver.
posted by Jo Winkowitsch at 5:20 PM
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