Well, this chapter just split my heart open. Did that happen to you too?
“What is it that you grieve,” Kate and Jessica ask on page 15.
They’re asking specifically about grieving something that now
never will come to pass: an “imagined future” or a future self that has died.
Surely, we’ve all suffered an
unexpected loss of something we always had or expected or hoped would happen.
We all know the ache they’re talking about – the “deep sadness that
reverberates through our bones” (p 15).
A whole way of living died the day I had my first seizure. (That’s not a completely bad thing because I was living beyond my limits.) But I will never be able to live a life where I’m not measuring and tracking and evaluating something. Which can be exhausting.
And I’m not sure I’ll ever drive a
car again because I don’t know when a seizure is going to happen. That means I
will always (one way or another) have to ask someone to take me somewhere. This loss of freedom and
independence is something I deeply mourn – I mourn the loss of the life I used
to live and even mourn the life I might HAVE to live from now on.
Thankfully, all is not lost. “Loss requires us to reimagine hope” (p 16).
I can do hope; I am good at looking
for hope. This new life I'm not sure I want can still be good enough.
Even as I type these words, providentially,
a friend texted me about an event, asking if I wanted to go and needed a ride.
Reimagining hope for me is being grateful for dear friends who are looking out
for me and trying to include me because they know I hate asking for help.
“Acknowledging
‘this will never be’ is the precursor to imagining what might happen next" (p 16). Because something always does happen next. Hope is always
reimagined, if we have the eyes to see it. Why not name what will now never
happen, so that we can prepare for what is yet to come?
Kate and Jessica encourage us to
look into the painful emotions we all have – “When you cannot have the future
you imagined, let the tears flow. Let yourself mourn. … Tell God the whole of
it. Even if it hurts” (p 17).
“Blessed are you when mourning
is the holy work of the moment, for it speaks of what is real” (p 18).
Pastor Allison
I’m curious: Did your heart split open when you read this chapter? Is there
something you need to mourn but can’t face? Has this chapter changed your mind
about anything? I don’t expect you to be specific in a public forum if you don’t
want to, but I am curious to hear what you think if you can speak in
generalities. (I’m still learning to mourn my imagined future.)
What do you think of their
suggestion of a ritual to mark a transition like mourning an imagined future?
(p 19)
Let me know in the comments!
3 comments:
They should teach us how to grieve in school!
I like their notion of acknowledging that a certain self is gone and won’t be back. This sounds terrible but I think the idea is that saying something is lost sets you on a creative path to discover something else when the grieving lessens.
Yes, I think you’re right - to all of that!! I felt this incredible freedom when I thought about grieving and letting go of something that I will never get back again.
I like that phrase “creative path” - grief is a weirdly winding path that leads to something else, or what’s next, as they say.
There’s such hope in that, hope to hang in to whne it all seems hopeless.
Friends, if this chapter touches you and makes your heart ache, you need to listen to this podcast, hosted by Kate Bowler and interviewing Susan Cain, author of “Quiet” and “Bittersweet,” a book about joy and sorrow - the bittersweet news of being human.
Oh my goodness - if you liked this chapter, you need to listen to this podcast!
“Survival of the Kindest”
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/susan-cain-survival-of-the-kindest/id1341076079?i=1000558753898
Allison
Post a Comment