"I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places..." (Isaiah 45:3 NRSV)
The experience of grief and loss in any form tends to create so much pain, anxiety, and disappointment that one may ask, “Where are the 'treasures’ in grief and loss when your 'treasures' have been lost?
However, let us examine the concept of treasures found in grief and loss a little more closely. One of the images that stands out for me is recorded by the Psalmist in Psalm 84:5-7. The Psalmist, commenting on God’s people making their pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship, states that passing through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs. The Valley of Baca has trees that secrete a sap and give the appearance of weeping. The Valley of Baca is also known as the Valley of Weeping. It is a dry, arid place, suggesting difficulty and hardship and sorrow and pain. This metaphor suggests that as God’s children navigate through their weeping experiences – dry and arid like grief and loss – they make it a place of springs. In other words, their journey, although challenging, ultimately yields valuable experiences that can be seen as treasures.
Treasures such as life lessons, resilience, faith in God, hope, transformation, and many more are some of the important life lessons that people gain through grief and loss. Throughout our lives, we experience various forms of loss, including the death of loved ones—whether from natural causes, suicide, or murder—loss of relationships, job losses, retirement, financial loss due to scams, property invasions, loss of important items like credit or debit cards, and loss of status or self-esteem. Whatever the nature of the grief and loss, human beings tend to respond in basically the same way. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed some responses in her classical studies many years ago.
Stages of Grief and Loss
Here is a summary of these approaches.
Denial
– I can’t believe this is happening or this has happened; I am shocked. This is a defense mechanism that helps us to pace the feelings of shock
Anger
– How come this happened? Who is responsible or who is to be blamed? Sometimes, we blame God, the church, the hospital, the caregiver, other family members, or even our employer or co-worker. Anger helps to mask deeper pain, which we need to pay attention to.
Bargaining
– If only I had... God, if you bring them back, I will..., A way of simplifying a complex problem. It is trying to regain control or to ease guilt.
Depression
– Life makes no sense, what's the point of going on? – A natural response to the weight of the loss; it’s a quiet stage of processing reality.
Acceptance
– Life will be okay, it's hard to live without... but I’ll manage. It's coming to terms with the reality of the loss and learning to live with it.
Making meaning
– What does this all mean, and what are the lessons I can learn from this experience?
Biblical Phases for Processing Grief and Loss.
Pete Scazzero offers three phases drawn from the Bible that he recommends are helpful for believers to consider in responding to grief and loss. These are:
Pay attention to pain
Wait in the confusing in-between
Allow the Old to give birth to the New.
To discover the treasures and make the Valley of Baca a place of springs, it is necessary for anyone going through grief and loss to pay attention to their pain. This means articulating what you feel. Give witness to your grief; lament if you need to; bawl if you feel like; but by all means name what you feel, let it out. Failure to do this leaves residual feelings that could imprison the individual emotionally for the rest of their life. Get together some friends, other family members, and share your feelings. Don’t be stoical or pretend to be unmoved or dispassionate; share your pain.
Wait in the Confusing In-Between. Waiting during grief and loss can be painful, frustrating, and lonely, but wait. The biblical stories on waiting yield great results. It is through waiting that we learn patience, resilience, and gain courage. Joseph waited twenty years in Egypt, through servitude and imprisonment, before the Lord vindicated him. During the wait, he never lost faith in God. While you wait, keep your focus on the God of promise. The history of God’s people is a testimony of waiting on the fulfillment of God’s promises in their lives, but God never let them down. God, too, will vindicate you and give you peace as you remain faithful to him.
As you allow the old to give birth to the new, you discover the wisdom of Jesus in the statement, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit (John 12:24 NRSV). From Paul and Silas's loss of freedom and beatings, conversion for the Philippian jailer and his household was produced.
Conclusion
It is without doubt that grief and loss produce great pain and discomfort, but we can gain great treasures such as transformation, hope, new relationships, new insights, better understanding of God and better understanding of ourselves as we go through, not only the general stages of grief, but also the biblical phases. “The wound is the place where the light enters you,” Henri Nouwen. Follow carefully Jesus’s suffering and grief, and see what treasures He has left for the church.
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