Grief: When Loss Becomes the Unexpected Teacher

Those who know me may be aware that I have thought about one day entering the field of education. I am partially inspired to do so because of all the teachers who not only invested in me as a student, but who cared for me as a person. I wasn’t just a name on a spreadsheet but a person with a story, and it was the authenticity of those teachers that left a permanent mark on me. Those were some of the fond memories of my time in school: the ones that I can continually look back on and be thankful for. But unfortunately, not all moments carry the same weight of fondness and the teaching of valuable life lessons. Other moments can carry immensely heavy and dark weight, that make you question much of what you came to know and believe, partially from what you were taught. Which begs the question, what do you do in these moments where it just seems that your world is turned upside down? How do you find joy or at least attempt to find answers to questions so that you can have some clarity or certainty?

I have wrestled with this question for at least 2 years, since the loss of my father to colon cancer. But I wrestled with it even longer for the 5 years in total that he fought cancer. I have tried reading numerous books, listening to various sermons, attending multiple events, which have helped in some way, but it hasn’t offered the complete picture. It hasn’t given me what I exactly wanted, which is why do bad things happen to good people? How does loss and grief justify what I was taught of an all-knowing and all-loving God? I just wanted answers or to be taught something special, like the wisdom that my teachers imparted on me as a child. But I received nothing. And grief drove me to feel just more of a combination between sorrow and anger that I could not shake. In fact, I didn’t want to engage anything that dealt with religion, philosophy, or offered some explanation for life. I felt numb to it all. However, one day as I was driving home from work, I was going through my list of podcasts I had saved on my favorites list but had never listened to. It was from Kate Bowler’s “Everything Happens with Kate” podcast, which is based on her book Everything Happens For A Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved. In her book, Kate details her battle with Stage IV colon cancer, which is exactly the type of cancer my father fought. She takes concepts from her books and applies them to her podcast when she interviews various people who have struggled with pain, loss, grief, suffering, etc. The episode I had flagged was “Jerry Sittser: Life After Loss”, where Kate interviews Dr. Jerry Sittser, a professor emeritus of theology and senior fellow at Whitworth University. I mustered up the courage to listen to the episode on the way home and Jerry had shared his story of loss.

Jerry lost his wife, mother, and daughter in a tragic car accident in 1991 while being hit by a drunk driver. He had three surviving children and had to navigate this new life of parenting them. What Jerry said helped him to grieve properly, was being honest about his pain, that he never knew he could experience and now he will never unknow. This struck to the core of what I was experiencing with the loss of my father. This type of pain I never knew existed before and was so raw to me that I didn’t think anything else could be worse. Jerry explained that we cannot explain our suffering with simple formulas and shallow theology, but even in that deep pain, we are still met by God somehow and someway. I was shocked when I heard this because I had not felt the presence of God in what had felt like ages. But Jerry said for him, it took 5 years to sit through the eucharist in his church, without crying and being reminded of the loss of his wife, children, and mother. He still says he has many questions that remain unanswered and will probably never be answered. I felt like I was in Jerry’s body at some points because I had longed to hear the story of someone else who had similar feelings of uncertainty that they would ever be able to get through something without feeling grief in some sort of way. Oftentimes, I want to teach grief a lesson by attempting to reject the feelings that come my way. But what was profound with Jerry was that he seemed to allow grief to be his teacher instead of the other way around. He said, “You don’t really come to an answer [about grief and your questions], until you realize there are no answers.” At this point, I felt Jerry started to experience somewhat of a moment where he had seen where God was leading him to. He eventually became content with the experience of sitting in that church, the one where he spent so many years with his wife, because he felt God in the moment. And at this point, I also felt an internal sort of epiphany because when I had interviewed for a graduate school during my senior year of college, I shared my struggles with my father’s battle with cancer. One of the divinity professors looked at me and said “How would you feel if you never received the answers to the questions you were looking for? But you got answers to the questions you never asked?” This was exactly the point that Jerry seemed to be making as well. We don’t find this sort of contentment or teaching experience in an instant or a single moment. It could take us years, maybe even a lifetime. But the season of Eastertide, the period from Easter to Pentecost Sunday, reminds us that this is a season meant as a joyful time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. And for those of us who are experiencing some kind of grief, especially in a season of what is supposed to be joy yet can be hard to find, we are promised something that we can be joyous about. We are promised that in the midst of life’s sorrow, there is something beautiful. We are reminded that in the season of what we are already experiencing, there is beauty in the season of what is yet to come. Because for the church, the festival of Pentecost is a reminder of the beginning of the Christian Church. It illustrates, as one commentary puts it, “God's hand guiding the Christian community through the trials and decisions that are presented to it.” [1]

So my prayer is that for you, and for myself, and for all us that have experienced trials, is that we are guided by God’s hand to find meaning in what seems to be meaningless, to find our answers when we have no answers, or to recognize light in what seems to be darkness. It didn’t take Jesus a moment to experience the same things that we have, but it took him a lifetime. And He too was fully human, but also fully God. So if God experienced the very things that we experience on a daily basis, then he knows the fullness of our human struggles. He knows what it is like and still commits to us with his joy, so that we can find answers in the unanswerable or to find the teachings in what seems to not be understandable.

As I was inspired to think back to the moments of my childhood, after hearing Jerry explain his fondness of the memories of his family, I recall the times when my father put so much of his life into mine so that I could live to experience the joy of what every child deserves. I recall the times of my teachers in early school who told me of my value and worth and the times of my professors in college, who would let me into their offices to ask the important questions I had as I coped with the grief of my father’s cancer battle. All of these had the same theme in that I had a story to be heard, that I had feelings that were valid, and that the love that God had for me was so immense as was the love my father had showed me. And yet in the times when I also felt alone, and had nowhere to turn to, it was grief and the emotions that came with it which led me to cry out to God when I had nowhere else to turn. It was the grief that was the unexpected teacher of the hard truth that sometimes we don’t really come to an answer, until we realize there are no answers. Surprisingly, I feel a sense of peace when I read Jerry’s statement over and over.

[1] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/message-of-pentecost-1.280657