YOU KNOW TOO MUCH/SEE TOO MUCH
In addition to helping others cope with their experiences of grief, pastors continually experience hurt, disappointment, death, separation, goodbyes, and even betrayal that cuts deeply. When, for example, a member of your congregation dies, as pastor you reach out to the family and others touched by the loss and offer counsel and support. However, you also feel the loss. Yet, often, both you and the congregation expect you to address the needs of those who are grieving and then move on to the next task before you. Less noticed, but none the less real, are all the little losses you experience and or grieve for in the life of your congregation. More than once, I have looked out on my congregation on a Sunday morning and grieved for several members who are struggling with significant issues that they cannot discuss with others. Who helps you with your grief?
You know from your own experience, and would counsel others, that grief not attended to can affect a person’s physical, emotional, and spiritual health. Even little griefs tend to accumulate and increase the pain in your life. The better and more sensitive a pastor you are, the greater the accumulated pain in your life.
THE FIVE R’s OF HEALING
Joyce Rupp, in her book Praying Our Goodbyes, suggests four steps in the healing process—Recognition, Reflection, Ritualization, and Reorientation. Because one of the effects of grief is isolating that part of your life off from others, I want to add a fifth R, Reconnection to the list.
RECOGNITION:
It is tempting for a pastor, reinforced by congregants and friends, to simply deny the impact of the variety of griefs experienced in ministry. No one wants to be seen as a whiner. Real leaders simply absorb the pain and move on. WRONG
While it would not contribute to the effectiveness of your ministry to constantly be telling everyone of your pain, it is self-destructive to not recognize what is causing you grief and pain. To deny the effects of loss in your daily experience of ministry is to allow the impact of those losses to wander around in your psyche until it sneaks up and bites you in unexpected ways.
REFLECTION:
Those events, interactions, and experiences that cause you grief can also be an opportunity for spiritual growth. Because we believe that God is not absent from any part of our life,— nothing can separate us—(Romans 8:38-39) having identified a cause of grief, small or large, we can then seek to listen to what God can say to us through this experience.
This does not suggest that God caused the event to teach us something. Rather, since God loves us and is aware of what is happening, God can speak to us even through our losses. How many times have you experienced a personal injustice in your ministry but grew from that experience in your faith journey.
When you hurt, it is time to reflect deeply and listen deeply for God’s healing word.
