Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Lynn Brookside , R Mitsch Raymond

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94 pages

English

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Few losses are as painful as the death of someone close. No valley is as vast as grief, no journey as personal and life changing. Compassionate and wise guides Raymond Mitsch and Lynn Brookside shine a light on the road through grief. They can help you endure the anguish and uncertainty; understand the cycles of grief; sort through the emotions of anger, guilt, fear, and depression; and face the God who allowed you to lose the one you love. A series of thoughtful daily devotions, Grieving the Loss of Someone You Love shares wisdom, insight, and comfort that will help you through and beyond your grief.

Sujets

Psychology

Philosophie et théologie

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	15 octobre 1993
Nombre de lectures	1
EAN13	9781441225467
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0374€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2014 Raymond R. Mitsch and Lynn Brookside
Published by Revell a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.revellbooks.com
Revell edition published 2014
ISBN 978-1-4412-2546-7
Previously published by Regal Books
Originally published by Servant Publications in 1993.
Ebook edition originally created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version.® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patents and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc. ™
Other version used is: TLB —Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
Introduction

1. Even Christians Grieve

2. Help through the Grief

3. Going Crazy

4. In the Beginning

5. Just Tell Me the Rules

6. Define “Normal”

7. Warning Signs

8. Being Rather than Doing

9. God’s Anesthesia
10. A Time to Mourn
11. Give Sorrow Words
12. Facing Familiar Routines Alone
13. Being Real
14. Slow and Steady Wins the Race
15. The Truth Hurts—Sometimes
16. The Humpty Dumpty Syndrome
17. No Problem
18. Of Laughter and Tears
19. Why Weep?
20. Regrets
21. Keeping Up
22. Morning by Morning
23. Where Is God?
24. You Just Don’t Understand
25. Anger—The Second Layer of Emotion
26. The Eternal “Why?”
27. Can We Grieve and Still Believe?
28. The Death of Our Dreams
29. On Wearing Masks
30. Forgiving Ourselves
31. Sweet Relief
32. A Fragrant Offering to the Lord
33. The Curse of Silence
34. Is God Trustworthy?
35. Our Labor Is Not in Vain
36. Committed to Healing
37. Feeling Abandoned
38. The “Good Old Days”
39. Feeling Like a Leper
40. Dreams in the Night
41. Wanting Them Back
42. I Feel Your Pain
43. Letting Go
44. Putting Our World in Order
45. Medicating the Wound
46. It Wasn’t You
47. Taking a Break
48. Saying Good-bye
49. Facing Death
50. Anniversaries
51. It’s the Little Things
52. Shared Sorrow
53. When Young Children Grieve
54. When Older Children Grieve
55. Looking for Someone to Blame
56. Putting Guilt in Its Place
57. Surround Yourself with Life!
58. Acceptance
59. There Is an End
60. How Long Is “Long Enough”?
61. Sufficent Grace
62. He Has Overcome the World
63. We Are Like Grass
64. Clinging to the Pain
65. Reaching Out
66. Walking Through the Fire
67. Blessed Assurance
68. Not a Hill but a Spiral
69. The Healing Power of Time
70. The Christian’s Perspective
As of the reprinting of our book, word has come to me that my co-author, Lynn, passed into glory in August of 2012. She was an invaluable addition to this book. When I was in the last throes of writing this book, I fell desperately ill and Lynn came to my rescue. She added a much needed feminine touch to our book as well as much needed editing flourishes. It wouldn’t have been the book so many have loved without Lynn’s touch. May God use her words to touch people’s lives even beyond the grave. As the apostle Paul reminded us in 1 Corinthians 15:54-55, “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” This book is a testimony to the fact that death no longer holds us hostage to its sting.

Ray Mitsch
INTRODUCTION
Ray went out on an emergency call a couple of years ago with his father-in-law, Paul, who is a veterinarian. Paul had been called to his animal clinic because a dog had been badly injured in a car accident. Once he had determined that the pooch was too injured to be helped, there was nothing left to do but put him out of his misery. Ray assisted Paul by holding the frightened dog in his arms while Paul gave the dog a fatal dose of a sleep-inducing drug. Ray was stunned by the remarkable swiftness with which the animal moved from life to death. In an instant, a living, breathing being was gone, never to return. Ray was compelled to face, once more, how fragile life is. The entire experience brought back all of his grief over his father’s death.
Ray’s dad died when he was just twelve years old. An only child, Ray and his dad had been extremely close. His dad’s death came at a time in Ray’s life when he was particularly vulnerable to feelings of loss and isolation. In addition, adolescents and pre-adolescents are particularly keen on having control over their lives, so the powerlessness Ray felt in the face of death was even more devastating than it might otherwise have been.
Ray was too young to have the resources to grieve adequately. He was afraid to cry for fear of appearing to be a sissy. He was unaware of the havoc that unexpressed grief can play in a person’s life, so he had a much greater incentive—or so he thought—for stuffing down his sorrow and “getting on with his life” than he did for expressing his sorrow. Besides, Ray’s mother was counting on him to be “the man of the family” now. He had to be strong for her.
All these things caused Ray to postpone dealing with his sorrow. Now, years later, Ray finds that he’s forced to deal with his grief a little at a time as opportunities like putting down a dog present themselves. Perhaps that’s one reason Ray has chosen to become a psychologist, so that he can help others avoid the pitfalls into which he fell. That’s certainly why he wanted to write this book.
Lynn had a similar experience. When Lynn lost her first child within hours after her birth, she didn’t know how to grieve. She hid her sorrow deep within and vowed never to let it out. It took many years for her to come to a place where she felt able to release her immense sadness. During those years her hidden grief took its toll. It was only when she finally acknowledged and processed her grief that she was able to shake off its effects.
Our hope is that you, the reader, will experience “good grief.” That you will use the pages of this book as signposts meant to lead you to the other side of your grief.
The psychic wound we experience when we lose a loved one to death is much like the physical wound caused by a bad burn. Burn victims are in extreme danger of infection. If an infection takes hold under the scab that develops over the burn it can become life threatening, even when the burn itself is not. The only way to be sure that no infection develops is to scrub the wound periodically, which is extremely painful and said to be one of the worst aspects of the healing process.
Unfortunately, the choices we face as people who are grieving are not so clear-cut. Many of us opt to take what looks like the easy way out. Once the memorial service is over some of us refuse to continue to “scrub” the wound caused by our loss, declining to deal with the “infection” that may be developing just below the surface. We are either unaware of, or unwilling to face, the emotional death that may lie in our future as a result of this neglect.
Until recently, more serious burns, those that covered a large portion of the body, presented an even greater risk. Burns tend to ooze liquid from the lymphatic system. People often say that the burn is “weeping” because droplets of liquid seep from the wound. Before the advent of synthetic skin people were known to die from losing too many precious bodily fluids before skin grafts could be done. In many ways, the grieving process parallels this problem, for it’s possible to keep our wound open too long, to get “stuck” in our grief, and to allow it to drain energy and the very life from us.
In our culture we tend to acknowledge physical wounds but neglect emotional ones. That’s particularly true where grief is concerned. We would not expect a burn victim to show up at work after only three or four days in the hospital on the theory that he will “work” himself back to health. Yet, traditionally, employers in this country allow for only three or four days of bereavement leave. For some reason we seem to expect people to “work” their way out of their grief. It was not always so.
There was a time, not so many generations ago, when people routinely expected a family to “go into mourning” for a year or more after the death of someone close. It was traditional for people to wear black for an entire year following the death of a loved one. Wearing black was more than just a formality. It was a way of reminding themselves and those around them that they were still in a fragile state and needed to be treated with special regard.
The grieving process is never “neat and clean.” It wasn’t so generations ago and it isn’t today. There is nothing pleasant about experiencing that kind of sorrow. It is intensely painful, even gut-wrenching, and it takes time; often, lots of time. In the process we may ask questions we have never asked before, questions about the nature of God and the worth of life in general. We feel numb. We feel confused. At times, we may feel enraged. But most of all, we feel the hurt. There is no standard for grieving. Loss affects each of us differently so, of course, people don’t grieve exactly the same. In spite of all our differences, however, there are still some constants in the way humans deal with grief. It is these constants that we have addressed in this book.
We are aware that our readers will be at different stages of gr