The Ball and The Box

I found this pictorial description of the journey of grief on Twitter last night. It is an unusual but very accurate illustration of anguish after the death of a loved one. Initially I planned on sharing this just with my present group of GriefShare participants, but then I thought it might help CandyceLand readers to understand why intense sorrow hurts so much and lasts so long for their family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors after the loss of someone very dear to them. Most importantly, though, if any of you have ever experienced a traumatic grief yourself, this might explain why years later the intense pain can unexpectedly resurface.

(Credit goes to Lauren Herschel who posted this analogy given to her by her doctor.)

So grief is like this:

There’s a box with a ball in it. And a pain button.

In the beginning, the ball is huge. You can’t move the box without the ball hitting the pain button. It rattles around on its own in there and hits the button over and over. You can’t control it - it just keeps hurting. Sometimes it seems unrelenting.

Over time, the ball gets smaller. It hits the button less and less but when it does, it hurts just as much. It’s better because you can function day to day more easily. But the downside is that the ball randomly hits that button when you least expect it.

For most people, the ball never really goes away. It might hit less and less and you have more time between hits, unlike when the ball was still giant. I thought this was the best description grief I've heard in a long time.

The Work of Christmas

This past Friday night Steve and I had the pleasure of traveling to Wilton, CT to hear Steve's sister Annbeth and niece Megan sing in The Wilton Singers, a community choral society. One of the songs, entitled The Work Of Christmas, was very moving and has been permanently planted in my mind because of both the tune and the lyrics. 

Click here to listen to the song:

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music from the heart.

Perhaps this struck a chord within me because for years now I've considered Christmas to be a "Sufferer's Holiday," an idea I borrowed from the GriefShare series, Surviving the Holidays. The birth of Christ inaugurated the beginning of the end of suffering for the world. Genesis 3 unleashed sin and misery and death and pain on mankind, and the newborn baby Jesus in Bethlehem began to remedy the problem that man created in the Garden. Our Messiah would live a perfect, sinless life, die on the cross, and be resurrected so that Heaven would be open to our arrival.

But what to do between now and this future time? There is good work to be done in the form of finding, healing, feeding, releasing, rebuilding, bringing, and singing together. While all of this comes from God, He has decided to work through people like us as He makes His kingdom visible to a watching world. What a privilege it is for reclaimed sinners to be part of the work of Christmas!

Part 1 of Paul Tripp on James 1:2-4

Paul Tripp's thoughts: "The comfort in James 1:2-4 confronts us with what we truly want out of life. There are only two types of motivating hopes. You either hook your hope to a physical, situational life of comfort, success, strength, and pleasure or to a life of rich spiritual awakening, growth, and Godward glory. The Bible presents the second option as not only infinitely more satisfying in the long run but also that for which we were made. Because we were made for it, it does a much better job of satisfying the longing that's in all our hearts. Suffering in the hands of God is a powerful tool of personal growth and transformation. Here's what God does in us through the tool of hardship:

Count it all joy, my brothers, 

when you meet trials of various kinds, 

for you know that the testing of your faith 

produces steadfastness. 

And let steadfastness have its full effect, 

that you may be perfect and complete, 

lacking in nothing.

"That is a remarkable passage because it calls and alerts us to something counterintuitive. We don't typically experience joy in suffering; in fact, many of us lose our joy even in the face of the smallest obstacles. Now, don't misunderstand what James is calling you to here. He's not saying you should rejoice because of pain and loss. This is not a call to joyful Christian stoicism. Rather, James is saying that you have reason to rejoice in the middle of your travail because of how God is using your suffering to produce in you what you could never produce in yourself. Suffering in the hands of God is used to fill you up, to grow you up, and to complete God's work in you."

Candy's thoughts: If you've been a CandyceLand reader for any length of time you will know by now that my two favorite modern-day theologians are Nancy Guthrie and Paul David Tripp. Most of you also know that our EPC Women's Bible Study classes this year (maybe 2 or 3 years? 😉) are examining in great detail the book of James. This past weekend, then, there was a melding together of Tripp and James when I resumed reading Tripp's book on suffering. This is an excellent read, one in which Tripp explores the world of pain through the lens of his own terrible physical affliction.

Steve and I were reflecting recently on the personal events of this past year, and we have dubbed 2019 as the year of "sickness and septics."  Local folks know that I have struggled with respiratory issues ever since my hospitalization in March; at the same time our house was hit hard by septic issues that required 2 of the very same kind of renovations. While I am just now starting to feel better, and the 2nd home repairs are 90% completed, I can honestly confess that I did not consider either of these challenges as "joyful." I do, however, agree with Tripp that God's goal in our trials is to grow us, transform us, and ultimately complete His work in us. 

While I see no evidence yet that #sicknessandseptics have had a positive effect on me (my fault not God's), I hope that in time I will be able to look back and 'count it joy' that God cared enough to move me along toward the goal of 'producing in me what I could have never produced in myself.'