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The Keys to Emotional Healing: Part 1
After seeing God bring about major transformation of emotional healing in a number of broken people, I asked Him what was happening when He healed people’s hearts. I wanted to understand the process. His answer was simple and profound, but never easy: “grieving and forgiving.” Both of these emotional disciplines are necessary to move from the place of sustaining a wound to the soul, to the place where that wound no longer controls and diminishes us—because it has been transformed into a healed scar. Grieving means moving pain and anger from the inside to the outside. Tears are God’s lubricant for that process, and what a gift of grace tears…
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GOOD GRIEF: Seven Steps to Embracing Emotions- #4 Actions Defined
If actions speak louder than words then we had better learn to define them. Whether at home or in the classroom, hurting children who have not learned how to ask for help will resort to acting out or closing down. Their actions are a cry for help. Too many times we label them as an act of defiance. We never want to justify or condone misbehavior. However, if a child needs help and they don’t know how to ask for it we can correct their communication style best by first hearing their heart, dealing with their hurt and then in love and compassion explain to them the proper way to…
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GOOD GRIEF: Seven Steps to Embracing Emotions- #2 Normalize the Feelings
After the death of his wife, C. S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” If an adult is so surprised by the feelings that accompany loss how much greater is that intensified for our children? Children who face loss without explanation will reject the feelings. They will bury them under other feelings or stuff them down through unhealthy actions. The next time loss comes they’ll fear the feelings while reinforcing the wrong responses never learning to truly grieve loss. Loss is a part of our lives. We lose track of time. We lose lots of stuff: everything from…
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Exploring Grief
“Good grief,” is more than just a quote by Charlie Brown. Grief is real and it is no respecter of persons. Grieving is done by all but it is not done well by all. It comes to everyone sooner or later. For decades many children have fallen through the cracks of their parents' grief. We grieve many things from small losses like the ice cream falling off the end of our cone to huge losses like the death of loved ones. Yet every loss no matter how small carries with it a need to grieve. What are you teaching your children to help them with their daily small losses? What are…
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What Not to Say When Someone is Grieving – Take Two
5 1/2 years ago I wrote a blog post called “What Not to Say When Someone is Grieving.” With almost 40,000 page views, it is clearly a subject that touches a lot of people. I’m re-publishing it today, but I invite you to read the original post so you can see the amazing, jaw-droppingly painful comments people shared. And I hope it will help YOU know what to say when a friend is hurting. It may be insensitivity or a lack of education that spurs people to say things that are unhelpful at the least and downright hurtful much of the time. I still remember my own daggers to the…
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The Beautiful Attitudes – Part II: Blessed are those who Mourn
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted (Matthew 5:4) The Greek word for blessed (i.e., makarios) used here has the meaning of being fortunate, prosperous, or successful. That is, successful are those that mourn! Why? When do we mourn? Mourning is the proper reaction to the loss of something considered precious and dear… something or someone that we loved. This may be the loss of a loved one, loss of plans for marriage due to unrequited love, loss of plans for your children’s future as they become rebellious or loss of career opportunities while being sidetracked in your place of employment for decades thus effectively wasting your working life, etc. Furthermore, mourning is…
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The Keys to Emotional Healing – Part 2
In part 1, I talked about grieving as a necessary part of emotional healing. The other part is forgiving, separating ourselves emotionally and spiritually from the offense so that we can continue to be healthy toward the offender. As I said last time, forgiving is like pulling out the soul-splinter that is causing pain and the emotional “pus” that accumulates from unresolved pain and anger. (Grieving discharges this emotional pus.) Forgiving releases the person who hurt us into the Lord’s care, for Him to deal with. We see this modeled by the Lord Jesus during the crucifixion process, when He repeated over and over, “Father, forgive them, for they know…
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What Not To Say When Someone is Grieving
Last week my dear friend Sandi Glahn wrote another boffo blog post about the myths of infertility, which included some of the dumb things people say. It may be insensitivity or a lack of education that spurs people to say things that are unhelpful at the least and downright hurtful much of the time. I still remember my own daggers to the heart after our first baby died nine days after her birth. And for the past several years, I have been collecting actual quotes said to those already in pain. So here’s my current list of What Not To Say when someone is hurting: Don’t start any sentence with…
