Grieving Through the Holidays

It's that time of year again. Time for joy, holiday parties, gift giving and receiving. Time to worship the One whose birth we celebrate. It's also the time you feel grief so strongly, because the one you love has passed on. Or you lost your job. Or that fire or tornado or hurricane has destroyed all your worldly goods. Or maybe you have recently been diagnosed with a deadly disease. This is the time of year when everyone's happy, right? But you're not. You're in pain.

So, what is it that you can do? How can you get through these holiday celebrations without losing your mind, or having a breakdown ... or worse yet, becoming a hermit? Well, the very first thing you need to do is suck in that next breath of air!  Force it out, and then do it all over again!

The purpose of this blog is not to go through all the causes, symptoms and stages of the grieving process. You already know those, because you're experiencing them as we speak.  The purpose of this blog is to bring encouragement and hope to you through this holiday season.  To share some information with you that could help you get past the pain, and onto healing ... despite those emotions that make you want to hide from the world.

I read a book once called "A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss," by Gerald Sitser. Mr. Sitser had experienced his own grievous trauma, and, therefore, was knowledgeable about what he wrote. On page 138, Mr. Sitser made this comment: "Sorrow itself needs the existence of God to validate it as a healthy and legitimate emotion. If there is no God, it makes no difference how we respond. It becomes entirely subjective, like individual tastes in ice cream. If sorrow is subjective, and it doesn't matter how we respond, then why not laugh at tragedy, loss and depression? How do we establish the absoluteness of good vs. bad, anyway? And where did we get the idea of "good" and "bad" in the first place? People feel pain in suffering because suffering is bad. We know this because we have knowledge of what is good. Such knowledge can only come from God."

Following Mr. Sitser's logic leads us to another point: denial of our negative emotions will only keep us in bondage to them for a longer period of time. We must acknowledge their existence. And then we must make a conscious choice to put them in their proper place.  In other words, throw those negative, painful emotions out like yesterday's trash. How? How is that possible? By making a conscious choice to acknowledge and grasp hold of the fact that even through the painful emotions, hope exists. Hope for healing. Tragedy is designed to defeat and destroy us. So, is healing possible? It depends on what you believe! And on what you do about hope! Grieve ... but never without hope.

Grief will destroy us, or it will transform us ... but it will never leave us the same. Our lives will never be the same as they were before the tragic event. But we can move on. And it can be a healthy, positive, productive, and most of all Godly, growth and change. Here are some practical suggestions that will help you overcome grief, especially as you progress through this holiday season:

1)  Prepare yourself. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 4: 23 to "guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."
2) Get a moderate amount of exercise. Exercise has been known to reduce stress.
3) Pay attention to your diet. Stick to the good stuff. Cut down on refined sugar, white flour products, caffeine, nicotine and anything else that is harmful to your body.
4) Get proper rest, as well as a good amount of sleep.
5) Talk to someone. There's healing power in sharing your burdens with someone.
6) Keep a journal of your thoughts, feelings, prayers and answers to prayer. Later, you'll be able to look back and see how much progress you have made.

Make a conscious choice to grab onto the hope of healing. Then take some positive steps in that direction. And don't forget to pat yourself on the back ... because even the smallest of steps is a major accomplishment!

Scratching at Life

Wherever books are sold

One morning I was sitting on my couch having a quiet moment before God.  My couch was my “prayer closet” at the time, and I was praying and reading about Him.  It wasn’t too long after I sat down that I began to hear noises in the corner of the room … scratching.  The sound of scratching got louder and louder.  The house I lived in at the time was built on a pier and beam foundation, and it had crawl-space access to the underneath of the house.  Hearing that scratching, I remembered that I had forgotten to fix the screen that covered the hole accessing the crawl space.  I realized that some sort of animal had probably gotten under the house through that hole, and it was doubtless trying to scratch its way to who knows where.

            Strange how our minds work, but at that point I began to wonder where that animal thought it was going.  It didn’t have to scratch its way through anything to get somewhere.  To get wherever it wanted to go, or any place else in the whole wide world, all it had to do was to go back through the same hole it came through to get underneath the house in the first place … which was probably that unfixed opening … and it would have all the freedom it was seeking.  No struggle, just walk through.  It reminded me of something I once heard about a fly being trapped in a glass.  It has been said that a fly will buzz around that glass until it dies, without realizing that liberty is only as far away as the top of the open container.

            Aren’t we like that?  How much do we “scratch” at life, going nowhere, when freedom is right there, just waiting for us to find it?  Our moments of refreshing could be closer than we realize because God is closer than we realize.

            Times of refreshing.  Oh, man  … we all need them, don’t we?  We have been walking around in the desert (our own personal, barren, wasteland; one that parallels with the desert the Israelites walked around in for forty years) for so long!  We need that oasis of refreshment … we see it in the movies and we know from the Word of God that it is ours for the asking.  “Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” Jesus tells us, “and I will give you rest.”

            We all need that rest.  Even God rested!  He created the world in six days, and on the seventh day He rested.  He even ordained that day as special calling it the Sabbath.  He knew we, as human beings, would need to rest at times, so He commanded us to rest on that day as well.  God’s Son Jesus also rested.  So what makes us think we can do without it?  

            But how do we go about obtaining them?  When do we have time to include them in our busy schedule?  And how can we even believe they are for us personally, when our hearts are in such pain and distress?  Just as the Israelites did, we walk through that desert.   And as if that drought in our spiritual lives weren’t enough, then … after the desert … just like the Israelites, we have battles to fight.  Just when we’re ready to get out of the desert and claim our own “Promised Land,” it’s then that those battles start.  Just when we’re finally ready for a little R & R (rest and relaxation), we’ve got to gear up, don our spiritual armor and face those “giants” that would keep us out of our own promised land. 

We fight battles.  But all the time we’re questioning, and we want to know … how can we reach the point that Joshua led the Israelites to, that point where we too can “rest from war.”  Resting does provide refreshing.  It does provide life.

We were created with what has commonly been referred to as a “God-shaped hole” within the very core of our being.  Something within us needs satisfaction and fulfillment.  Something within us needs peace, joy, love and goodness, just to name a few of the things we seek after.  Somehow, we seem to look for these things in all the wrong places.  We look for love within sexual relationships.  We look for peace within circumstances that are going our way.  We look for joy inside a bottle of alcohol or relief through mood-altering drugs.  We become “a-holics” … work, alcohol, drugs, sex, money, food, sympathy, relationships, or anything-else-we-can-find-a-holic.  What we find in those “places,” is that none of this fits the bill.  Oh, we may find temporary satisfaction, joy or rest from some of these things.  But soon we are seeking again.  We’re looking in all the wrong places.  It reminds me of those bright-colored toys we used to buy for our toddlers … you know, the ones that they would have to find the right shaped object to insert into the same shaped hole.  A square peg, for example, would not fit into a round hole.  The toddler learned manual dexterity, eye-hand coordination, etc., through playing with this toy.  But what this particular toy could not teach us was how to fill that “God-shaped hole” we were created with.  What we need to learn is that just as only the correctly shaped object could fit into its counterpart hole, the only One who can fill a “God-shaped hole” is God Himself.   

            Maybe we’re looking for times of rest and refreshing in all the wrong places as well.  Times of refreshing come from the presence of the Lord.  It is to Him that we must turn for rest and refreshing. It is possible to put aside all our cares and worries for the moment, and come into the presence of the Lord. Not only is it possible, but it's absolutely necessary for our health and well being. Times of refreshing … they are a matter of life and death! 

Your Book's Not Selling!

Are you discouraged with your book sales? Have you been working extra hard to get the word out about what you've written ... yet it doesn't seem like there's much response? TAKE HEART! Be encouraged! Keep on keepin' on! Here's a story that relates:

I took an Executive Secretarial course in college. When I graduated ... guess what I thought I was going to be? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out ... but guess what else? It didn't happen! I had to work my way up through the ranks, until eventually I got to the management level.

The same thing happened when I wrote my first book. I never had any thoughts at all about becoming a writer or an author. It happened by the grace of God (literally), through my studies to become a licensed belief therapist. Since I knew God was behind the writing of my first book, it followed in my mind that He would touch the hearts and minds of those He wanted to get the word to that He had planted in my heart.  Thus ... the sales would be there! But they weren't. (You'd have thought I would have learned my lesson with the Exec. Secretary job ... but nooooo!)  I literally spent almost all of my waking hours at my computer, marketing my book on line. So much so that God eventually had to say to me: "What's more important ... what you're doing or WHO you're doing it for!" (Notice that there's not a question mark at the end of the sentence. There's not an answer to be given. God was trying to tell me that even though I was working for Him, I was missing out on the most important aspect of life ... relationship with Him.)

I believe that at the time, I had the best marketing agent at Tate Publishing. Yet I'm now into writing my 5th book (as well as having written a behavioral management program for troubled teens, and that one's not published yet) and the sales still aren't there to any huge degree. Tate Publishing is really into recognizing and finding your "niche," which for the most part, at least up to this point, I thought I had. Marketing is definitely not my "niche." (My father was a salesman, and my son was in retail for a long time. But the gift bypassed me!) Yet I'm still marketing on line, as well as traveling to different trade shows, book festivals and book signing events. But still ... few sales.

Being an author is a very difficult field to be in. With a million new books published every year, there are a lot of us out there with something to say. Yet, I'm still working at it ... I have a book that was released  earlier this year (Here...Have A Miracle), and I have another in the production process as we speak. (Walking Toward the Light) And I'm into writing my next book after that. (My 3rd, 4th & 5th endeavors.)

I CAN'T STOP! Why? Because I believe that God is behind it. He's the One who gave me the talent, the words to say, and the ability and equipment to get the job done! He's the one who gave me the message. Sooooooo ... what's happening is that I'm "planting the seeds" and leaving the results up to God. (Check out I Corinthians 3: 6) It's the only way I can keep on doing what I'm doing. Depend on Him for the results.

I hope you will be encouraged with what I've said here. Let it soak in to your own writing career. One other thing that has helped me, is being in touch with other Tate authors. Following their tips, watching their events to see if there's one I might be able to join, and reading their encouraging posts.  I do wonder about the sales from time to time. But I'm going to keep on keeping on ... and I hope you will too!