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The Journey of Grief · Infinitely Precious

• 0:00
  Intro: Welcome to the infinitely precious podcast produced by infinitely precious LLC. Your host is James Henry. Remember, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are.
• 0:12
  James: Hello, beloved. It's me, James, and I am here again to share some thoughts with you. Most of the time, in fact, almost all the time, all the thoughts I share with you are my own. They arise from what's going on in my life or my morning sit or whatever it may happen to be. Today, I want to take a moment to talk to you about the journey of grief because that is a prevalent topic in my life at this moment.
• 0:48
  Now, most of you know who listen to me that I have been a pastor for or in some form of ministry vocation for roughly thirty nine years of my life, so for a long time. So I've walked with a lot of families through grief And I've walked through my own grief. I've had two very close friends of mine die unexpectedly. One was quite young from my perspective, about 50. And another, you know, was someone I talked to on a regular basis, and so it was strange to not be talking anymore.
• 1:35
  So, but some of you who listen or watch also will know that just this last week, than six days ago, my father died. And it was kind of unexpected. I mean, was 96 years old. But earlier in his hospitalization it had been kind of expected. And then he kept getting better as his intense will is made it possible to do.
• 2:12
  He left the hospital, went to a rehab center and was making good progress. He took a turn this past Wednesday and died at 11:20PM. I was holding his hand, my sister was stroking his hair and my brother had just right been there holding his right arm. And so he slipped from this world in what could be seen as a very peaceful, comfortable way. Leading up to that time as his medical power of attorney, I had to make the decision when the doctors called for him to go from care, the kind of care they were giving, to a comfort care.
• 3:07
  And so at around six that evening, I was still on the road on my way there, I had given them permission or made the decision because it was dad's wish to die naturally. So, I had made that decision. And so, it's easier to say you'll follow someone's wishes than it is to follow them, but perhaps that's for another podcast. So, since that time, I have been experiencing moments of intense grief. You know, add to that that I'm in the process of leaving, a place that I have worked for thirty three years and making a transition to a new place, where there will be new work and new people that I'm looking forward to, and yet thirty three years in a place is a long time.
• 4:02
  So there are relationships and pieces of that that I am grieving. So I wanted to talk today a little bit about what to do with grief. How do you get through to the other side? I help people do this all the time, but I thought it might be helpful if I shared some thoughts as a person who was actually going through grief at this very moment. In this moment, the intensity, the waves of grief are not coming over me.
• 4:45
  But I want to say a couple of things about grief. First of all, it's unpredictable. The way you experience grief, there isn't a right or a wrong way for you to experience grief. Everyone is different. Every relationship is different.
• 5:02
  I know for instance that in the death of my father, my mother who was married to him for over seventy years coming up on seventy one years will experience it vastly different than his son. My relationship with dad was completely different than my little brothers or my little sisters and they're both adults just like me, they're not little but I always thought of them as my little brother and sister. Each one of them had their own unique relationship with dad and so for them their grief is going to look different. My wife loved my father, my children loved my father, and so each of them experience grief differently and have a different relationship, and that's the way grief works. So if someone is trying to sell you a package about the six steps of grief or the five and exactly what you're going to go through and how you do it, you need to set that aside.
• 6:06
  If you like a neat orderly package, grief does not come in It doesn't. Grief will come over you in moments when you least expect it, in memories you don't know will arise. As you're talking to someone or you're thinking you would like to call the person that you're missing, when those pieces come over you, it will feel very real. Now, particular depending upon where you find yourself at the time that the wave comes over you, your propensity might be to try to suppress those waves of grief coming over you. If it is at all possible, don't do that.
• 6:57
  Breathe through it because grief is real and it has physical responses, it has mental and emotional responses and spiritual responses that happen within you. And grief is based on the fact it's based on love that endures and is struggling to make sense of the loss of the presence of someone in your life, at least the presence as you had it before. So my suggestion would be not to simply try to suppress the grief you're feeling. Breathe through it and know that it will come when it comes And, you know, in this moment as you're breathing, you might be able to see, you know, it lessens. There will be a time when your grief is less acute, less intense than it is right now.
• 8:02
  But right now is not necessarily that time. So allow yourself to feel the feels you feel. You would think that would be a natural thing that we learn to do and yet we live in a society, particularly for males, but for all people that say there's a time and a place to have feelings. And the truth is you have feelings, they aren't you, but you have feelings when you have feelings. That's how it happens.
• 8:35
  So if you think there's a magical formula to not have feelings when it's inconvenient, there isn't one. Somebody might tell you and, you know, you can pinch yourself or, you know, poke hard or think about some innocuous thing and try to forget about what you're feeling. But what I encourage you to do, unless, you know, you're simply you're flying a plane, you're the only person who can fly it and you're trying to land or whatever, and if you allow yourself to experience a grief, it could end you, then I suppose perhaps trying to suppress your grief could be good. But in most situations, letting grief happen, letting it flow as it arises is okay. I felt mine arise just talking about this several times.
• 9:29
  Now whether you could see it or not in me, it doesn't matter. What I know is I felt it coming up and I was breathing through it. I didn't try to suppress it and there are moments when the tears flow down my face and there are moments when the grief just feels like a tightening of my gut. It feels like lots of different things. You'll feel it in your body and all over.
• 9:56
  So what can you do about it? Well, when you feel the waves of grief, you can breathe. You can breathe in it and know that this is part of the journey that you're going to go through. You can recognize that it's okay to grieve. It means that the person that you're grieving, or if you happen to be grieving the loss of work or some meaning piece in your life, it's different, but grief is grief.
• 10:32
  Give yourself permission to feel the feels that you feel. Even as you feel those feelings, know that perhaps there are people in your life that you trust and love that you can talk to about it. You don't have to be alone in this and if there aren't people that you necessarily know or trust, there are grief groups. There are groups of people who are struggling with grief themselves. You could reach out to someone who is a spiritual advisor of yours, a pastor or someone else, someone who could sit with you without judgment because being judged for grief is not helpful.
• 11:16
  It's not helpful at all. So if you know someone who's going through grief, judging them is not helpful at all, so let it go. Let it go. The best you can do for them is just tell them how sorry you are for their loss. Don't try to time your grief.
• 11:35
  It takes as long as it takes to get through. Now, if your months and months and months and years into grief and you are still feeling it as intensely as you felt it in the beginning, there can be grief that becomes unhealthy if you don't deal with it. So seek someone out. Seek someone out to help you work on that grief in the midst of your struggles. So give yourself permission to live.
• 12:08
  Sometimes the fact that you survived whatever happened makes you feel survivor's guilt. You know, you might feel a tad bit of guilt because you simply made the decisions that the person asked you to make in their journey toward death. And as you feel that, give yourself permission to live. Be gentle with your expectations of how quickly or how you're going to respond. Don't be afraid to ask for what you need.
• 12:44
  You find that you may need it. Find some expression of your grief. Do things like perhaps write in your journal. Perhaps you'll, if not write in your journal, perhaps you're a painter or a poet. Perhaps you're not, you don't even have to be like a professional at that.
• 13:02
  If you want to paint or write poetry for you or draw, do it. Do it as an expression of what's going on inside of you. Whatever your art, let that art out. Take care of your body. It's helpful if you're a walker like I am to keep walking, eat healthily, pause as you need to, keep moving, not so much so to avoid the pain, but to work through the pain.
• 13:37
  That's healthy. And something else you may do is something that I often find myself doing in life which is develop a ritual, a way of remembering. So I, you know, today for instance, I lit this blue candle. It's not really blue, the candle is white, but it's in a blue container and it's just a reminder of daddy and I talked to him. I talk to him.
• 14:06
  I don't know whether he can hear me or not, I suspect that he can. I know I carry him with me so I talk to him and, if I'm frustrated or angry or I'm missing him, I tell him. I tell him. I let him know how much he meant to me. I'm very fortunate that before he died I had about four or five weeks of regular visits with him where we could talk through things and I don't have any unfinished business with daddy, but I can still talk to him, can still talk to him about the things that I would have talked to him if he were alive.
• 14:45
  The difference is I might just not get the response that I would have gotten if he were still physically here. So I encourage you, find a way to journey through your grief. Don't try to shortcut it, don't try to jump to the other side, take time to be present with yourself in your grief. Those are my thoughts about it. As a person who is going through it right now in a variety of ways, I encourage you to do just that.
• 15:21
  Know that you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift that you are even if you're not feeling that way right now in the midst of your grief and know that you will likely carry the grief for as long as you live. It simply won't be as an intense or acute or as regular perhaps, though it may be as it is right now. So I wish you the best on this journey of grief that you may be going through. I invite your prayers for me if you so desire and for all those in this world who are grieving. Until the next time I join you, wish you the very best.