Helping Others

Helping Others

We want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.

1 Thessalonians 4:13

After I had written a number of articles about widowhood, I often was asked to give grief seminars at churches. At one, the pastor interrupted my outlining of the stages of grief to bluntly ask, “How can I get my people over their grief?”

The poor man was carrying an unrealistic burden and, undoubtedly, trying to rush those in his congregation toward his concept of proper grief.

“Your job isn’t to get them over it,” I answered. “Your job is to help them through it.”

He visibly relaxed and settled in for the rest of my presentation, in which I explained the four basic stages of grief: numbness, searching, disorientation, and resolution, and the effects of each. I explained I wasn’t using the stages to pigeonhole folks but to help them through a confusing, frightening time. Then I read 1 Thessalonians 4:13 and emphasized how the verse doesn’t say we aren’t to grieve but rather we aren’t to grieve like those who have no hope. I noticed the pastor was taking notes.

I later wished I had asked him if he had ever experienced the death of someone close, but I already was convinced he hadn’t. After all, we can intellectualize death all we want, but until we have walked grief’s road, we do not understand its full impact. Yes, we can rejoice in heaven’s reality, but we also miss the presence of someone special.

By the way, the folks who helped me the most were not the ones who told me not to cry, as if good Christians can’t weep, but those who understood my hurt, wrapped me in a hug, and cried with me. —SANDRA

Lord, guard my mouth from spewing pious words. May my presence be a comfort to those who are hurting. And help me to remember that you, too, wept.

How shall we comfort those who weep? By weeping with them.

—FATHER ALEXANDER YELCHANINOV (1881–1934), RUSSIAN ORTHODOX PRIEST AND EDUCATOR