I woke up this morning and scrolled through Facebook and the second post I saw was a friend from high school mourning the loss of her mother. I turned 58 years old this year and it seems there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t see a post like that one. And it caused me to think about the nature of mourning. Times of loss like a divorce, the loss of a parent or a good friend are heartbreaking experiences. And we’re programmed to avoid pain; it’s in our DNA. And these kinds of experiences are incredibly painful. So it’s not a surprise that the first stage in the grieving process tends to be denial.
Denial gets a bad rap in our society. Denial in the early stages of grieving is simply nature’s way of telling you that you’re not ready to handle what’s in front of you. But all to often we stall there and find ways to numb the pain. We typically think of numbing as being substances and it often is. But just as often we numb ourselves with distractions: we busy our schedule with chores or extra responsibilities. I find myself binge watching television as an avoidance mechanism.
There comes a moment, though, when denial has run its useful course and it is time to deal with the painful emotions we’re feeling. Time to uncork and unpack what life has left at our doorstep. And that process requires courage.
It’s a courage that is in short supply. Because when it comes to our emotional and spiritual health we spend scant minutes a day if anything at all looking inward, sitting silently and listening more through ourselves than to ourselves. Listening through is a listening that transcends us and becomes an all way conversation with God about what is rather than what I want it to be.
I must admit that I’m new to this kind of listening. I must also admit that it was great tragedy that led me to trying this kind of listening through myself. (I won’t bore you with the details other than to say this: a life threatening health scare and a global pandemic nearly broke me; the loss of my son Griffin most surely broke my heart.) More often than not, as Fr. Rohr has written on dozens of occasions, it is these kinds of tragedies that instill in us a need for something transcendent. We can either choose to remain heartbroken and allow the heart to harden into bitterness, envy and contempt. Or we can allow our heart to be broken open where it can be renewed and refilled by a union of with the One. It’s not so much that He fills it as our hearts are mended together in these moments. And I find the courage to face my loss and look beyond myself and see the needs of the others in my life and hopefully have something of value to offer having had the chance to listen through myself and find More.
