Letting Go of Disappointments and Painful Losses Page 2

  ANONYMOUS

  If we want to move successfully from one season of life to the next, at times we will have to release our grip on things past. And when we do, we must expect at first to experience intense and complex emotions. As endings, empty spaces, rifts, separations, and little deaths come our way, so do feelings of grief. When we are grieving such losses, it helps to know that God has good counsel for us. He hasn’t left us hanging. Solomon penned these lovely lines, which are so much more than poetry:

  There is a time for everything,

  and a season for every activity under heaven:

  a time to be born and a time to die,

  a time to plant and a time to uproot,

  a time to kill and a time to heal,

  a time to tear down and a time to build,

  a time to weep and a time to laugh,

  a time to mourn and a time to dance,

  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

  a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

  a time to search and a time to give up,

  a time to keep and a time to throw away,

  a time to tear and a time to mend,

  a time to be silent and a time to speak,

  a time to love and a time to hate,

  a time for war and a time for peace.…

  [God] has made everything beautiful in its time.

  He has also set eternity in the

  hearts of men.

  ECCLESIASTES 3:1–8, 11

  God has made everything beautiful in its time. Even the empty spaces. Even the holes. I admit that it’s a hard concept for me to believe when I’m frantically grasping the last few strands of whatever is trying to escape my clutches. The pain involved in letting go doesn’t feel “beautiful” to me; it feels downright miserable.

  Yet in God’s economy, new life springs forth from death. Jesus tried to help His followers understand this. His disciples had seen His triumphs. They had witnessed His miracles and experienced His power in their midst. They thought He was going to establish His kingdom on earth. Then one afternoon Jesus sat down on a hillside and told them that the time had come for Him to be glorified, but not in the manner in which they expected. Instead, it was to be by His death. And with tenderness and feeling, Jesus comforted them with an illustration:

  “The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds onto life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.

  “Right now I am storm-tossed. And what am I going to say? ‘Father, get me out of this?’ No, this is why I came in the first place. I’ll say, ‘Father, put your glory on display.’ ”

  JOHN 12:23–25, 27–28, THE MESSAGE, EMPHASIS MINE

  Jesus bids us turn our eyes on the fields and observe the mature grain ready for harvest. He explains the process: no loss, no gain; no death, no new life. For Christ the analogy was very personal: His death was to become the gateway to life. Without His death, there would be no resurrection—for any of us.

  The message is for you and me as well. It’s a message of hope when life steals from us and leaves us with empty arms. It’s a message of strength when we’ve been stripped bare and feel as though we’re facing the future empty-handed. It’s a message of substance that can fill the holes in our soul with a promise. God says to us:

  When you are letting go,

  remember that I am planting seeds of new life in you.

  Your grief is only for a season.

  My end is not death. It is always life.

  I am the author of life.2

  These are the promises we have to hang on to when we are doing the hard work of letting go. Did you catch that? Letting go is hard work. It is often very bewildering. To break away from someone or something we have been bonded to rips at our emotions. It goes against our natural instincts. The parting cannot happen without inward bleeding. The greater the bond, the greater the pain.

  Our head and our heart are usually in conflict. Our head says, I need to do this for my own good. I need to let go because it’s right. I need to let go because God is telling me to let go. I need to let go for the sake of my kids or my spouse or my friendship or my own growth and development. But our heart says, Oh, no you don’t! It hurts too much. I can’t do it. I won’t do it! Our logic and our emotions war with each other.

  But there are some things we can do to cooperate with God in the process of letting go. We can take certain steps to help us move down life’s path with a sense of curiosity and adventure, minus the claw marks. In the next chapter we will look at some of these steps.

  God does not leave us comfortless, but we have to be in dire need of comfort to know the truth of His promise. It is in time of calamity … in days and nights of sorrow and trouble that the presence, the sufficiency, and the sympathy of God grow very sure and very wonderful. Then we find out that the grace of God is sufficient for all our needs, for every problem, and for every difficulty, for every broken heart, and for every human sorrow.

  PETER MARSHALL

  CHAPTER TWO

  RECOGNIZE

  THAT WHAT

  IS, IS

  LETTING GO IS A PROCESS, NOT AN INSTANTANEOUS EVENT. It starts with an awareness of a difficult reality, and as our awareness increases, so does our pain. I once saw a poster that described the process perfectly. It was a cartoon of a woman whose head and arms were being squeezed through the wringers of an old washing machine. Beneath her anguished face the caption read, “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”

  Facing the truth can be very difficult. Like surgery, acknowledging our disappointments and losses may hurt, but it can help move us toward wholeness. If we deny, block, stuff, or numb the pain, we end up camping out in our grief and never progressing beyond it. We cut ourselves off from the treasures God has hidden for us in the empty spaces, and we lock ourselves up emotionally.

  As a counselor, I see this regularly in people like you and me. I’m talking about typical, get-up-in-the-morning-and-go-to-work, raise-the-kids kinds of people. Moms who help with PTA. Dads who coach Little League. Brothers. Sisters. Aunts. Uncles. Folks who seem normal on the outside but who are locked up on the inside.

  Among them was Lori, a forty-six-year-old woman who told me about Matthew, the baby she had lost fourteen years earlier in stillbirth. “It’s over,” her family told her. “Forget it. Don’t talk about it. We have to move on.” And that’s exactly what she did. She moved on, stayed busy, got involved in things, and kept her mind occupied. But Lori didn’t move on emotionally. Her heart was tightly wedged in an incident long past. She was frozen in time, arrested in grief.

  Matthew’s name hadn’t been mentioned since the day Lori left the hospital. There was no funeral, no memorial, no pictures, no discussion. Lori and her family treated the incident as if it had never happened. Cards sent by friends were burned unopened. The family thought that erasing the evidence would erase the pain.

  But it didn’t. It couldn’t.

  So now there were fourteen years of stockpiled pain. This was the way Lori handled other losses too. No wonder she was depressed. No wonder she felt as if she were about to burst. The human heart was never designed to bury feelings alive.

  When Lori came to see me, she found the courage to recognize and face reality for the first time in fourteen years. Behind closed doors she gave herself permission to recognize her loss and talk about it—an important step in her healing. The denial was broken, and so was the power of the pain.1

  There is no power on earth more formidable than the truth.

  MARGARET LEE RUNBECK

  Then there was Marissa, who was skilled at keeping secrets—not because she wanted to, but because it was how she had learne
d to survive. Her father had sexually abused her from the time she was a little girl, and she didn’t dare tell anyone. If she did, her father said, he would put her in jail and kill her mother. Little girls believe their big, strong daddies. In Marissa’s innocent mind, there were no options. She had to be a good little girl. And part of being good was keeping the secret.

  But the terrible secret, buried for so many years and landscaped with neat shrubbery and little flowers, became like a hidden toxic-waste dump. The poison seeped into the very soil of her life, gradually numbing and warping her soul, even the good parts. I saw evidence of the hidden toxins in her words:

  “I want to enjoy my husband and kids, but I have no feelings.”

  “It’s as if I’m numb. Flat. I can’t tell the difference between happy and sad.”

  “Nothing matters to me, even though I want it to matter.”

  “I used to be passionate and sensitive. I used to care. It’s not like me not to care.”

  Again, we weren’t built to bury our feelings alive. We weren’t designed to deny our pain or to live by a “no talking” rule. The mind has limitations built into its defense system. If we block the bad, we also block the good. The result?

  No sorrow … but no joy either.

  No heartache … but no passion for life.

  No grief … but no capacity for laughter.

  It all gets locked up together.2

  The good news is that there are keys to unlocking our pain, and they are right in our pocket. The first key is to recognize that what is, is. It is the essence of being brutally honest with ourselves and looking our painful truths in the face.

  Openness is to wholeness as secrets are to sickness.

  BARBARA JOHNSON

  Sarah is a wonderful example of someone who courageously acknowledged her losses and let them go. Sarah came to our sessions impeccably dressed in the latest vogue, her makeup applied to perfection. But the eyes that stared at me were as cold and hard as chiseled marble. Sarah had struggled with an eating disorder for nearly twenty years, and she was one of the most bitter and controlling people I had ever worked with.

  As we talked, I expected to uncover the source of Sarah’s bitterness. But the account of her childhood was rather typical and uneventful. No great traumas. No major heartbreaks. Her parents had a good marriage, and she spoke of a close relationship with both them and her two brothers. She butted heads with the boys now and then, as most kids do in the healthiest of families, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Besides being blessed with parents who loved each other, she had the support of grandparents who lived next door. Her grandmother was like a second mom and confidante, especially during Sarah’s teen years.

  I was puzzled.

  Sarah’s family dynamics didn’t fit the common profiles of patients with eating disorders. They weren’t even close—no divorce, no abuse, no drugs or alcohol. Neither parent was intensely rigid, perfectionistic, or driven. They were church-going folk who took life in stride.

  A piece of the puzzle was missing. It had to be.

  Sarah recounted her years in high school and college in vivid detail. Cheerleading. Dance. Church choir. Gymnastics. Perfect grades. Scholarships. Sports awards. Titles. Then, in her third year of college, everything changed: Her grandmother died, and Sarah was raped. When she reached that point in her story, Sarah’s reflections became blurred, and her account became fragmented.

  That double-edged trauma became the hinge on which the rest of Sarah’s life turned. The loss of her innocence and her confidante were more than she could bear, and, like an anesthetic, the eating disorder became her tool to numb the pain. Gymnastics and college became a thing of the past. The bubbly brunette withdrew from life and went into hiding—for years. Then, eighteen years later, she heard me speak in a conference about growing in hard places and made an appointment to see me.

  Sarah spent several months in therapy, acknowledging and processing the trauma she had tucked away in secret. Facing the truth about her losses and how they affected her life gradually defused the power of her pain. Each week I saw change. At first tears and, eventually, spontaneous smiles broke through the barrier of her cold stares. Bit by bit, stone by stone, she dismantled the wall she had built around her heart and risked letting the pain out and letting others in.

  In time, Sarah gained the courage to join a therapy group I facilitated for women in recovery. One night the group wanted to talk about “God issues” and how they perceived God’s involvement in their lives. I passed out paper and markers and asked each woman to draw a picture that illustrated her relationship with God.

  One woman drew a stick figure of herself—no face, no hair, no clothes—kneeling on one side of a stone wall that towered high above her. Her face was buried in her hands. Bright sunlight shone on the other side of the wall, where Jesus stood with scores of other stick figures. She described herself as someone who was on the outside looking in. “I feel as if God has all kinds of friends down here on earth,” she said, “but I’m not one of them.”

  As we went around the circle, each woman showed the others her picture. When it was Sarah’s turn, she held up a likeness of two very large hands holding the handles of an ornate vase. There were many colored markers she could have used, but she chose to do her picture strictly in black. The outline of the vase was carefully drawn and perfectly symmetrical. But down the middle of the vase she had drawn a thick, jagged line depicting a very deep crack.

  Her description moved me. “This vase,” she said slowly, “can’t be fixed. The hands holding it are about to throw it away.”

  It wasn’t a pretty picture, but even so, Sarah took a step forward that night. For the first time in eighteen years, she was truthful with herself and others about how she felt concerning her relationship with God.

  I always marvel at God’s sovereignty in putting groups together. One of the other members, Terry, immediately stepped in and asked Sarah how the vase had become cracked. Terry, herself a rape victim, happened to be nearing the end of her recovery. Within the safety of the group, Sarah was able to uncover the shame-filled events she had hidden for years. I had a front-row seat as I watched God do a deep work in Sarah through those women who offered her acceptance, grace, and truth.

  Sarah’s bitterness began to change in subtle ways. It didn’t happen fast, but then long-term change rarely does. As the months passed, the eating disorder simply became less and less of an issue. Why? Because the pain driving her compulsion was losing its power. Sarah was learning to face her pain and let it go, so there was less need for an “anesthetic.”

  One day Sarah walked into my office and said, “I’ve made a decision. I want to be trained to work on the Rape Crisis Hotline.” She didn’t want others to suffer in silence or live in denial, as she had for so many years. She wanted to be a refuge for those who were scared and hiding. She wanted God to use her brokenness to help others heal. She wanted others to know that there was hope.

  Toward the end of Sarah’s recovery, the group again raised “God issues.” I had saved the pictures from the previous session and brought them out for review. Each of the women received a clean sheet of paper and colored markers, and when they were all finished, they showed the others their new drawings.

  Sarah’s new picture intrigued me. Guessing at its implications, I felt a surge of excitement. Once again she had drawn a perfectly symmetrical vase with swirly handles on the sides. Once again, the same two large hands firmly gripped it. The deep crack down the middle of the vase was still there too.

  But Sarah had added something new. Using a fluorescent yellow marker, she had drawn heavy lines, like beams of light, spilling out of the fissure and flowing to the edge of the paper. Pointing to the crack she said, “That’s where God shines through.”

  As the others reflected on her drawing, one woman said, “Hey, it looks more like a trophy than a vase to me.”

  “Yes!” said another who knew Sarah’s story. “You’re in God�
�s hands. You’re a trophy of His grace.” The rest of the women nodded.

  Once again I was reminded that it is through our suffering, our trials, and our wounds that God’s glory is often revealed. The caption under Sarah’s picture could have read “2 Corinthians 4”:

  For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

  2 CORINTHIANS 4:6–9, 16–18

  Unadorned clay pots. Vases with cracks. Earthenware jars with chips and dings and flaws. People with troubles, perplexities, weaknesses, traumas, and fear. That’s all we are without God.

  But with God … oh, we are so much more.

  With God, we are people with a treasure inside, a treasure whose value is beyond price, reckoning, or comprehension. We are men and women with God’s glory at work in us. His work doesn’t entail removing our weaknesses or hardships. No, His work is displayed as He releases His divine power through our weaknesses.

  When life is hard and God is in us, our broken places can become the windows where His glory shines through.

  When life is hard and God is in us, we who are broken pots can become trophies.