Compartmentalizing Grief
I don’t want to feel what I’m feeling this morning. I have things I need to do, and sitting in sadness and confusion and doubt will only slow me down. But the hard news keeps barging into my mind and so I’m paying attention, even if I don’t want to. Maybe slowing down and feeling is what God wants me to do most today. Slowing down and sitting in the sadness, confusion and doubt that is there at the hard news of the sudden death in his sleep of Bryan Dunagan, the 44 year-old pastor of the church I grew up in in Dallas.
I didn’t know Bryan personally. I only knew of him through the pastor grapevine. And what I knew of him was that he was loved, respected and an unusually gifted leader and preacher who was making a big impact for the Kingdom of God. So what, on earth, do we do with this terrible news? Who can make sense of it? Why would God allow this? Those are the painful, barging-in questions this morning. For me – from a distance. And even more so – I know – for the thousands of people whose lives he touched and ministered to personally. There are no easy, cheap answers. No Christian platitudes work this morning. There is only sadness, confusion and doubt to sit in and feel. To all of you who are there with me in that uncomfortable place this morning, the only words I have are these: I’m so sorry. I’m so sad too. I’m confused too. I get the doubt. And it’s ok to just sit here and feel it. And perhaps, to ask those hard questions honestly to God.
We’re good at compartmentalizing hard feelings like these, stuffing them away in a mental drawer so they don’t get in the way of our day. I learned how to do that when I was 11 years old at that same church in Dallas where Bryan was the pastor. My Dad was a pastor there too before he bolted when I was 11 and left me to deal with a painful first-round of sad, confusing, and doubting questions for God that I didn’t want to face and feel. So I set about compartmentalizing them away by distracting myself with video games and learning how to throw a curve ball and drowning them out with tunes from the Eagles on my Walkman. It was much, much easier to shut myself off in my room playing Nerf basketball than to face the truth that my family was falling apart.
Over the years I would find more sophisticated distractions. Girls were next. Then drugs and alcohol. Then work. Then adventure. Then money. Then food. Then ministry even. All convenient and easy drawers of compartmentalization to keep the sadness and confusion and doubt at bay. All to avoid asking God the hard questions and waiting, painfully, for answers that aren’t quick or easy. Maybe you know what I’m talking about this morning. Whether it’s over the news of Bryan’s death or another mass shooting or another war or your failing marriage or failing health or failing work or the memories of a father who bolted. Put those into your compartmentalizing drawers and get on with your day.
Or don’t. And just lament. Like Jeremiah.
Jeremiah faced the reality of his suffering and felt it before God. That’s when he wrote the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah-like lament names reality and lays its pain out to God. It cries and rages and questions and doubts with raw honesty. It holds nothing back. It compartmentalizes nothing. “For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears; for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my spirit; my children are desolate, for the enemy has prevailed” (Lamentations 1:16).
On the surface raw lament can feel exposing personally and disrespectful to God. But Jeremiah teaches us something about who God is in the midst of our sadness and confusion and doubt that is the beginning of hope. He teaches us that compartmentalizing pain only makes it more painful in the long run. In those little drawers it will become moldy and poisonous. He teaches us that God invites our raw pain and wants to hear it from our heart. He is not surprised by it, afraid of hearing it, nor insulted when we want answers from Him. And he teaches us that when we lay all our grief all out to God, while we may not get easy answers to make the pain go away, we do get Him – a good God who understands how we feel and is with us, weeping, in the midst of it.
Jeremiah doesn’t compartmentalize the pain. And in his lament, he discovers that he cannot compartmentalize God’s abiding mercy and love either. It’s there in that raw place that grief and mercy meet and hope flickers again. “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’ The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.” (Lamentations 3:21-25)