I want to suggest several ways in which a person can confront one’s grief and move through it to a measure of healing. I want to emphasize that to seek healing from grief does not mean that we eliminate the pain. When you lose someone you love, for example, the pain of the loss of that relationship remains but you seek to place that loss in the context of a larger life that you continue to live rather than allowing the pain to paralyze you.
Grief tends to isolate us. We tend to pull in on ourselves and feel very lonely. A major step for pastors in dealing with their grief is to find someone with whom they can share. It may be a counselor, a spiritual director, or a close colleague. Whoever it is must be someone with whom you are free to share your thoughts and feelings freely. Words spoken tend to give order to our experiences and allow us to put them in context. For a pastor, it is important that that person have some understanding of the theological dimensions to our grief.
A second step in responding to grief is restoring our relationship with God. Part of that restoration includes learning to trust God with our rawest of feelings. A major step in this process is relearning the practice of honest lament to God in prayer. The psalms are our guideline in this process.
Psalm 13 is the classic form of lament. By placing your own name where there is a pronoun and with some paraphrasing, you can easily form a prayer for a pastor who feels as if the opposition in his or her ministry or the lack of visible success is becoming overwhelming. It is a prayer of despair that reaches towards restoring the very relationship that originally called you to ministry. An important part of this process is to hear yourself pray aloud the words of the psalm.
In future blogs I will suggest other psalms and Scripture passages that can shape your honest expression of hurt and anger to God.
