#7 (Emotionally Healthy Spirituality by P. Scazzero): An Honest "God, How Could You" to "God, I Rest In You"

(**Notes taken from Peter Scazzero's Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. Most words may be direct quotes of his words.)

Ch.7: Enlarge Your Soul Through Grief and Loss

Losses reveal our limits. Even the most gifted of us has enormous limits placed by God.
Why? To keep us humble, grounded.
How does our culture typically deal with loss and its pain? We try to numb it through denial, blaming, rationalizations, addictions, and avoidance. We search for spiritual shortcuts around our wounds. We demand others take away our pain.

The Story of Us All
Job lost everything in one day: his family, wealth and health. Most of us experience our losses over time, until we find ourselves at death's door where we leave everything behind.
We lose:
-our youthfulness.
-our dreams.
-our routines and stability in transitions.
     -change jobs.
     -immigrate to a new country.
     -move.
-our children as they grow into independence and we lose our influence and power.
-our parents as they age and deteriorate and we become their caretakers.
-family member or friend dies.
-spouse has affair.
etc.......
Finally, we lose our wrong ideas of God and the church.
God is much larger and more incomprehensible than we thought. The Church is fraught with imperfect people who betray us.

How do we respond?
Job neither sinned nor blamed God; he worshipped. The undeserved nature of his suffering is bewildering.
Our culture and families deal with grief differently.
For example, people of British ancestry value a "no muss, no fuss" experience of loss. Funerals are practical and pragmatic. In Italy and Greece, women wear black the rest of their lives after husband's death.
In our culture, we try to keep busy, watch TV incessantly.
"Sadly, the result of denying and minimizing our wounds over many years is that we become less and less human, empty Christian shells with painted smiley faces. For some, a dull, low-level depression descends upon us, making us nearly unresponsive to all reality."
Many Christians feel ashamed we cannot obey the command to "rejoice in the Lord always."; like Joe who said, "Feeling sad or depressed or anxious about the future has got to be due to my unbelief. This is not God. It has to be related to my sins. I just figured it was better I stay away from church and Christians for a while until I get over it."
Many of us are afraid of grieving, facing that pain.
In fact, the heart of Christianity is that the way to life is through death, the pathway to resurrection is through crucifixion.

We develop defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from pain:

• denial (or selective forgetting)--"Doesn't bother me that I got fired...not worried."
• minimizing---"My son is doing OK, just drinking once in a while now."
• blaming others--"I'm sick because the doctors messed up."
• blaming yourself--"It's my fault Dad left us."
• rationalizing--"John has a genetic disposition toward rage, he can't help it."
• intellectualizing--"My situation not as bad as others. What do I have to cry about?"
• distracting--"Stop focusing on the negative. Look at the great time we had at Christmas."
• becoming hostile--"Don't talk about Joe. Shouldn't speak ill of the dead."

Biblical Grieving In Job: God's Path to New Beginnings
Job models for us 5 phases of biblical grieving:
1. Pay Attention--When asked "How are you?", don't say "God's working all things for good."
Like Job, you can be authentic. He screamed in pain, "May the day of my birth perish..." He shouted at God, told God exactly how he felt. He doubted. He wept. He wondered where God was and why. He did not avoid. He confronted the pain honestly.
Two thirds of Psalms are laments, complaints to God. Jeremiah wrote an entire book called Lamentations. Ezekiel lamented. Daniel grieved.
God grieved.
However, we as Christians stuff it in, except our feelings defy stuffing. They leak. There are 'leaking' Christians everywhere, some have sporadic explosions, but most of us leak in 'softer' ways, such as passive-aggressive behaviours (e.g. showing up late), sarcastic remarks, nasty tone of voice, giving the 'silent treatment.'
Job entered his 'dark night of the soul' and did not medicate himself.

2. Wait in the Confusing In-Between--In our culture of instant technology, we have a particularly difficult time with waiting. We want control. It requires deep humility to obey this radical command: "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him" (Psalm 37:7).
We receive comments similar to Job's friends, what Scazzero calls "classic religion" or "legalism":
"The reason you are not healed is you don't pray enough, fast enough, read the Bible enough..you have sinned more.." Job's friends tried to fix Job and defend God, and in their attempt to explain what God was doing (which they did not understand), they tortured Job, who was already in great pain.

3. Embrace the Gift of Limits--The discovery of our limits drives us to humility before God and others:

• your physical body--inevitable deterioration.
• your family of origin--family, ethnicity, country of birth, culture...etc.
• your marital status--married or single; children or childlessness.
• your intellectual capacity--can't be brilliant in all areas: science, arts, literature, music..etc.
• your talents and gifts--only Jesus has all the gifts.
• your material wealth--even a millionaire is limited in resources.
• your raw material--you have a 'unique self' wired and limited to certain occupations.
• your time--only one life to live. Time is running out.
• your work and relationship realities--neither are perfect or brings fulfilment.
• your spiritual understanding--"The secret things belong to the Lord our God." (Deut. 29:29)

John the Baptist understood limits: "A man can receive only what is given him from heaven." (John 3:27) He knew what it was to say, "I can accept my limits, my humanity, my declining popularity. He must increase. I must decrease."
Most of us are like babies thinking that the universe exists to meet our every need. Our egos are so inflated, we act as if we are God. We need to get off our thrones and grow up. One of the great tasks of parenting and leadership is to help others accept their limits.

4. Climb the Ladder of Humility--Job emerged from his suffering a broken and changed man. God refers to him after as "my servant", suggesting a new level of intimacy and closeness with Job. (Job 42). He did not seek 'revenge' on the friends who tortured him with cruel and insensitive words. Instead he prayed and blessed them. Humility, a quality that reveals maturity in Him.
St. Benedict in the sixth century developed a 12-step ladder for growing in the grace of humility.
Scazzero adapted it:
Step 8: Transformation into the Love of God.
     -no airs of importance here. Fully aware of our limits and fragility.Content to rely on mercy of God..
Step 7: Speaking Less.
     -"the wise are known for their few words."--a life that seeks God and is filled with wisdom.
Step 6: Deeply aware of Being "Chief of All Sinners".
     -our realization that we are more sinful leads us to be kinder and gentler.
Step 5: Radical Honesty to Others About Your Weaknesses/Faults.
     -we quit pretending to be what we are not, admitting our weaknesses to those who care.
Step 4: Patience to Accept the Difficulty of Others.
     -we give others a chance to figure out their weakness in their own time and way.
Step 3: Willing to Subject Ourselves to Direction of Others.
     -we submit to authority God has placed in our lives without grumbling or attitude.
Step 2: Doing God's Will (Not Your Own or Other People's).
     -we recognize that submission to God's will is at heart of spiritual transformation.
Step 1: Fear of God and Mindfulness of Him.
     -we often forget and act as if God is not present.

Let the Old Birth The New
Good grieving lets go and lets it bless us. Not only was Job spiritually transformed but God prospered him twice as much as before. This account is meant to encourage us to trust the living God with the many mini-deaths we experience in our lives.
The central message of Christ is that suffering and death bring resurrection and transformation.
Our losses are real. Real death. Real pain.
And so is our God, real, the living God, the great I AM.
When we grieve God's way, we move from a "give me, give me" prayer to an intimate prayer life characterized by loving union with God.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus, when I think about my losses, it can feel that I have no skin to protect me. I feel raw, scraped to the bone. I don't know why You have allowed such pain. Looking at Job helps, but I must admit that I struggle to see something "new being birthed out of the old." Lord, grant me the courage to feel, to pay attention, and then to wait on You. You know that everything in me resists limits, humility, and the Cross. So I invite You, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to make Your home in me as You describe in John 14:23, to freely roam and fill every crevice of my life. And may the prayer of Job, finally, be mine: "My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You."
In Jesus' Name, Amen.