Grief as Spiritual Formation | Being Present in an Unbearable Present

by Peggy Haymes, Pinnacle Associate

This column originally appeared in Good Faith Media.

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles on grief as spiritual formation. 

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Stop for this moment and pay attention. Pay attention to what is around you — the sounds of a breeze drifting through trees, the feeling of your breath moving in and out. Be present in this moment. 

As we focus on spiritual formation, we’re asked to pay attention to our lives. We’re reminded of how distracted we are and are invited to pause to listen for the movement of God’s Spirit.  

In grief, such direction seems neither desirable nor possible. How can we be present when that present is unbearable?

 In the transition between sleep and waking, there is a moment when our minds are still a bit in the world of our dreams, the world where our loved one is still alive. 

We expect to smell the coffee a spouse is making. We expect a friend or family member to call later. We expect to have to get a kid up and dressed soon. 

As we awaken, we really don’t know why such anticipation fills us with a warm and sweet gladness. Until reality comes crashing in.

There is no coffee brewing because there is no one else to make it. There will be no phone call. There’s no sleepy head to rouse and to argue with about what clothes to wear.

 Spiritual formation calls us to be present with what is happening in our lives, to be here in this present moment. Yet in grief, “here” is the last place we want to be. How can we be present when the present is unbearable?

 It was a tough time in my life, too, filled with too many varieties of too many losses. One night, I called a dear friend who was also a therapist colleague. “Sharon,” I said, “I don’t like being in this place.”

 “Yes,” she said gently but firmly, “but this is where you are. What are you going to do with it?”

 It’s not a universal experience in grief. When death is the next right step in a long and well-lived life, the world doesn’t feel quite so out of sorts. 

But there are other times—times when loss of any kind feels viscerally wrong. When death arrives far too early.

When illness turns the shared adventure of life into the daily grind of caregiving and bearing witness to the slow diminishment of your beloved.

When you find yourself in that singular, unforgettable moment: the phone call or the doctor saying the words you cannot yet hear.

 At first, my friend didn’t understand why the government car stopped in front of her house, why four Marines strolled up her walk. As she let them in, she realized their purpose. 

“Don’t tell me what you’re going to tell me!” she repeatedly screamed. “Don’t tell me what you’re going to tell me!”

 What they had to tell her was that her 21-year-old son had been killed in Iraq. If they didn’t say it, then it couldn’t be real. Not yet.

 “I don’t want this to be true.” 

I’ve heard it dozens of times from people with whom I’ve worked. And why would they? We don’t want to live in this world.

 “Go to dark Gethsemane,”  the old hymn instructs us and if there is any present we can bear, maybe it’s this one. Because in Gethsemane, we’re not the only ones who don’t want to be where we are. Jesus doesn’t want to be here either. 

He begs God for a different way, for a path that doesn’t lead through such suffering. “I don’t want this,” Jesus cries out and don’t we know that prayer?

 Jesus doesn’t get any divine reassurance that he can bypass the worst of it. No one promises it won’t be that bad. There is no option B, no matter how deep his longing for it. 

There is only this dark, lonely night. His friends cannot bear to see him suffer so and so they escape into sleep. In the dark hours of the night and of his soul, he wrestles with a fierce reality that, in the end, he cannot avoid.

 Gethsemane understands a night that’s too dark and too hard and way too long. Gethsemane can bear witness to our wails against the injustice of it all. In Gethsemane, we are not the first ones to baptize the rocks with our tears. 

Go to dark Gethsemane because sometimes spiritual formation isn’t about light and illumination. It’s stubbornly bearing the unbearable present, choosing to take the next breath, to face the next minute.

 Go to dark Gethsemane, enduring the night until finally we’re able to stand again, until we can walk into whatever this next day will be and whatever this next life will be that we weave together with God.

Peggy Haymes is the creator of Navigating GriefLand, an 8 week small group resource from Pinnacle.