OWNING YOUR GRIEF AS A PASTOR

As you stand before your congregation on a Sunday morning, how frequently do you gaze out and recognize how many wounded warriors are sitting before you. The longer you stay at the same congregation, the more of their secrets you bear in your own soul. You recognize those who are only there for appearances, or for the sake of the family but don’t have any interest in recognizing “the things that make for peace” in their own lives or that of the world around them. Sometimes you want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them, saying, “Don’t you understand what you are missing.” But you can’t, so you just grieve over their loss.

A FAMILY IN TROUBLE

Or perhaps you see a family whose life has been captured by the prosperity of their own secular success. Suddenly they are wealthy and it is clear that they don’t understand the dangers of their prosperity. They are talented, good people, but you watch as things begin to dominate and distort their lives. A bigger house, more fancy cars, membership in prestigious clubs, lavish cruises–nothing bad, but you can see how their soul is being stressed, and you grieve. No one asks you for counsel, but you know the gospel is increasingly a stranger to them.

You watch the increased busyness of the family being pulled from this event to that. The children are enrolled in a myriad of supposedly enriching groups, the spouses each have their own commitments, and you watch as the family members have less and less time for each other. You don’t know from which direction it will come–maybe an infidelity, a teen rebellion, an unresolved hurt, or just a cooling of once prized intimacy–but you can almost see the seeds planted for family pain.

STRANGERHOOD

You grieve both in anticipation and when you hear the pain when strangerhood bubbles to the surface.

Who would listen to your grief, even if you felt free to share it. You hold it in and it grows. Grief, often unconscious, grows and takes its toll on your very being.

an excerpt from soon to be published volume 5, clergy emotional health