Upon getting some great feedback from the question that was posed a couple of weeks back, we have been prompted to make a question somewhat of a weekly deal.
Please leave your answer as a comment. Of course another option is to e-mail us your answer if that floats your boat, but we would love to allow others to see your feedback, and some of our best feedback last time came via e-mail.
Also, we need some catchy, witty, trendy name for this deal..."weekly question" is the best we have come up with. Embarrassing. However, as Miss Thing has recently rescinded her week of approval of sleep, our creativity is waning. In fact, if none of this makes sense, chalk it up to the fact that I am only on this thing in the middle of the night in order to help me try to ignore her cry and the nagging inclination that I am a terrible father for not coming to her rescue.
With no further ado, the question:
In preparation for our Milwaukee trip...what is a one sentence definition of grief that best sums it up for you?
By the way, a friend of ours left us his sweet camera as he headed to Mexico for a while. Thanks. Pictures have been a'plenty, and some should be coming (I have also not forgotten my coming reply to the e-mail I received).
O, but wait.....what is that? Silence :) We win. Good night!
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28 comments:
Grief is the lens of sadness through which you see everything else.
Grief is when someone rejects Jesus Christ after you share what He has done for you and in you....
Or-
Grief is when someone you know/loved dies and you know that they had not received Jesus Christ as their Saviour.
Greif is the one thing that can make even a strong person (who is normally the rock in any other situation) fall apart
Grief is the expression/feeling of loss even betrayal of someone or something loved, not necessarily tangible.
Grief has a way of leaving you profoundly scarred, yet forever able to appreciate what is left for how long you have it.
Hmmm. As for a name for your weekly question segment? How about "Weekly Wondering" or if you pick a day of the week to commit to, "Wondering Wednesday", "Topic Tuesday" or just a "Weekly Pondering" and maybe you can use a graphic/button to make it stand out?
Sorry - just getting into blogging again and these things stick out to me from other places :)
Grief is the loss of a dream or someone greatly valued.
"I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes - I wonder if it weighs like mine - or has an easier size.”
~Emily Dickenson
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me...
There are moments, most unexpectedly, when something inside me tries to assure me that I don't really mind so much, not so very much, after all. Love is not the whole of a man's life. I was happy before I ever met H. I've plenty of what are called 'resources' ... One is ashamed to listen to this voice but it seems for a little to be making out a good case. Then comes a sudden jab of red-hot memory and all this 'commonsense' vanishes like an ant in the mouth of a furnace...
And no one ever told me about the laziness of grief...Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions -something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he'd rather lie there shivering than get up and find one.
To me, no one says what grief feels like better, although, not in one sentence, than C.S. Lewis, in A Grief Observed.
Grief is the process of coming to grips with sometihng you are powerless to change, the same thing that has forever altered who you are and how you view the world.
Grief, is..the innermost core of my being...missing, longing for, needing, thirsting, desiring beyond words for what once was...
In my heart are tiny shelves where my losses await...wait for me to remember...or to think of or to just 'miss' my loved ones who have passed ..but also the death of a relationship...my 24 years of marriage to my childrens father which by no need of mine ended...that is like a death...a death of all of the promises made through out the years...so for me thoses memories wait...sitting neatly on the tiny shelves ..with my hope that they never slip off and need my attention..a hope that thoses horrid upsets stay on the shelf and that my heart can continue to move on through this life...
My grandmother told me when my Daddy died ( I was ten years old ) that 'someone is never really gone until we let them go"~
Grief is a weight in the pit of your stomach caused by the one thing you would give anything in the world to change.
In the lyrics of the Natalie Grant song Held, she says "This is how it feels... when the sacred has been torn from your life and you survive". Sums it up for me.
As for your weekly question, building on ViolinMama's suggestions, how about "Atypical Topics"?
Grief manifests itself for me as a deep loss of a day-to-day interaction/connection with someone/something you love...that relationship where such intense, intimate love exists, the kind of love that has changed you from the inside out, that has become part of your heartbeat...the kind of love that you are thankful for every moment you were blessed enough to have been given.
Grief is a big giant hole in your heart and with each passing day mends just a little, but will never truly be healed.
Grief is that moment in time when the breath is stripped from your body and you KNOW IN THAT MOMENT that your life will never, ever be the same again, even if you were expecting the arrival of that very moment.
(Is a run-on sentence allowed?)
I had never truly experienced grief until we had our first miscarriage. And then a second. Lines in the sand? Oh, yeah. I see those lines in my dreams, in my rearview window, in the crack in the sidewalk. I thought grief was something that lasted a certain amount of time, an emotional roller coaster that eventually came to an end. Grief is never over. Grieving never ends.
The Lord I served on the day He created life in me and I took those pregnancy tests is also the Lord I serve as I miss my babies.
Grief is being deprived of a loved one through a profound absence.
It is good days and bad, it is holding onto the hope and trust in Christ that He is redeemed in that moment.
How about "TypicalTreasures" each day God gives us simple little treaures, typical or not, to hold close to our hearts. Be it that first cup of coffee with our spouse in the morning, or that pair of dirty little hands that brings us a dandelion flower from the yard or a pretty rock with an oh so proud smile. Little, simple treasures God gives us each each day that we take for granted, or don't appreciate at the time or even think about sometimes until it is to late. For me grief is realizing it's to late.
Grief Stinks!
For me, grief is a black fog which has the ability to instantly cleave your very being wide open and then roll inside to eclipse your heart. Like all fogs, grief does eventually lift, but it can happen so slowly that change is imperceptable until the day when it is barely noticed.
Grief is the process of coping with something that you have no ability to change.
Grief is something that does not ask permission and it can swallow you whole...
I like the question thing...like the Names in the Sand blog topic of under the tree.
Grief is: Like growing pains; as if all the hard parts of life were in one chunck of mess, confusion, inner conflict and vulnerability.
grief is the abandonment of a hope once treasured
this sums it up for me...whenever i have felt extremely grieved i have also felt abandoned in a sense--alone and deserted and left with a broken vision of what life will be like now.
the encouragement and renewed vision comes b/c Jesus promises it will not always be this way--when i see Him in glory--my vision will be perfected
Today was the first time I attended Spring Creek, where you spoke. Thank you. I thank God for you and your family. (March 29, 2009)
Grief: the inability to smile at the beauty in everyday life, empty days missing everything but tears.
Matt and Ginny-
Saw you at Spring Creek today, and THANK YOU! Your humbleness and transparency, your faith and your inspiring analogies were so very moving. That you put yourselves in a position to share your story and open those wounds yet again must have been so painful, but you touched many people today. As you said, your trials and perseverence have indeed brought you closer to the Lord and Eliot's life has blessed so many. We will all face grief and suffering in this life, and when we do we can look back on your attitude and faith to help us get through. Thank you for making the trip to cold, snowy Wisconsin. You were and are an inspiration.
Sincerely,
Jenny Nowak
Ginny & Matt,
Thank you so much for coming to Spring Creek Church in Wisconsin today! This was my first time at this church, as I am Catholic. I heard about your visit and just had to attend Spring Creek to hear your message of grief and healing. (By the way, what a great church!)
Ginny and I spoke after the 9:30 service, and I told her about Baby Ray (I am at 22 weeks gestation now and found out recently that Baby Ray will not make it in this world - he lacks functioning kidneys). Your courage and strength inspired me and my husband. In fact, I was taking notes on all the Bible verses that brought you comfort (thanks for sharing those!).
Here is an attempt to connect pain and grief with the goodness and master plan of God (this brings me a little comfort in my own situation): The tree stump story you shared today made me think about a particular tree from 2000 years ago. Someone cut down (‘pruned’) this tree (I am sure it was a beautiful tree!) in order to make a specific item. Yes, only the stump remained in the original spot, but the wood that was chopped down had a fruitful purpose: It was transformed into a cross where our Lord and Savior hung. At the end of the day, yes, it hurts (understatement!) when we get pruned down to a stump, but God sometimes prunes us so that we (or our wood) can bear more fruit. Meaningfulness: When we see first hand how our ‘chopped-down wood’ has produced fruit and transformed others (and ourselves). While I'll never fully understand why we are made to suffer, please know that your pain of being ‘pruned’ has helped so many people in their relationship with God. In addition to Christian family and friends praying for you (a direct sign that our Lord and Savior has a huge army), I am sure you also have strangers praying for you, perhaps even people who have never spoken to God before or even thought about Him (the army is growing)! Now that is awesome fruit!
God's peace and blessings to you now and always!
Sara-Rae & Josh Remmel
sara.rae.remmel@gmail.com
Great sorrow over a great loss.
Grieving for me felt like the world was supposed to stop and yet moved on regardless of the loss inside of me. No one could see my pain although it screamed through me. Everything lost meaning.
I'm not one for coming up with witty titles either. The only title I could think of was "Deep Thoughts" which was a SNL skit with Jack Handy :) Good luck!
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