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Renovatus: What Do We Do with Our Own Grief?

Renovatus: a Latin word meaning restore, rebuild, or renew.

I was just about ready to leave my home in Los Angeles to start my daily teaching duties at Azusa Pacific University. At about 7:00 a.m. the telephone rang. My friends at Youth Specialties called to inform me that Mike Yaconelli had been fatally wounded in an automobile accident just hours earlier. I sat on the couch in the living room in shock as I tried to process this very emotionally charged conversation. I didn't know what to say or think. I'd just been with Mike a few days earlier. Immediately I clamored for details: What? How? When? But the question I didn't ask or couldn't ask was Why? I couldn't ask that question, because the pastor/counselor/helper in me kicked in.

I've served as a Youth Specialties Convention Pastor for almost ten years. I realized that this tragic event was rocking my dear friends at YS. I also knew that they minister so faithfully and selflessly to countless men and women on the frontlines of youth ministry. Now they needed to be ministered to. So I became the pastor. There was no time for me to process this tragedy and its impact on me. Mike had been a very good friend and role model to me. Mike invested in me while I was a very young youth pastor, after we met almost twenty years ago. Certainly his death impacted me, but I needed to do my job. I knew that sooner or later the grief surrounding this tragedy would become personal. How does a youth pastor deal with personal grief? We can be called upon to help others deal with grief, but we really suck when it comes to going through the process ourselves.

Renovatus, a Latin word meaning restore or rebuild and the root in the word renovate, captures the concept behind this column. It seemed fitting that it be dedicated to the renovating process in the soul of the youth worker dealing with personal grief. Here are some important points in that grieving.

Shock

Shock is normal. The initial hearing of the death of a loved one hurls us into a stunned state. This is a good thing because it serves as an initial, God-induced anesthetic from the overwhelming trauma of loss. Shock serves as a way of easing us into the grief process. It also serves as the prompt or platform for decisions that must follow. For youth workers the decision that follows isn't to grieve, it's to help, to control, to protect, to bring healing, and to console the hurting survivors and situation. I needed to realize that isn't bad, but if I stayed in that mode of operation and didn't face personal grief, it would become very unhealthy.

Emotion

So often we think that strength is emotionless. This is far from true. Jesus models this often. He's grieved and becomes overwhelmed with tears at the death of his friend Lazarus. The ultimate healer breaks down and weeps over the loss of a loved one and the pain that those around him feel. Jesus' example is a very vivid demonstration of an important step in the healing process for both the survivor and the helper.

Recently I had my students write a paper recalling their adolescent development. One student told of the painful suicide of her father. Some weeks after the paper was written, I had the opportunity to sit and chat with her. I asked her what her experience was like, because my soul ached for her. After a few moments into her story, we were both in tears. I didn't have any answers; I just had a hurting heart. I wasn't in tears to bring anything to her, or to be an example to her. I was just sad. Oddly enough we both left that place revived and whole. I got a note from her a few days later thanking me, not for my wisdom or consolation or concern but for how healing my tears were.

There's also a flip side to this. I've encountered youth workers who've told me that they didn't feel the sadness that everyone else around them felt during the death of a loved one. Their comments are often preceded by "I feel guilty because I should be feeling sadder than I am." Their comments imply that there's a standard that mandates emotional response in a time of grief. Grief is a process, not an event. It can come in waves at various times and in various places. To not feel grief and loss in the same way or degree as others isn't abnormal. Be patient and honest about what you feel and then allow yourself to feel.

Anger

Death can create a domino effect of pain and anger. This is where the "why" question comes in. In a time of death and tragedy, youth workers are often faced with this question. We feebly attempt to give an answer that we know rings hollow in the heart of someone in the throes of pain. We know that our answers may contain truth, but that doesn't quite cut it. We know that the answer that we give sounds clichéd, but we say it anyway with the deepest sincerity.

But ultimately we know that we don't know the answer to why God allows the death someone we love, so we walk away and we feel angry. We feel like all we've dedicated our lives to is nonsensical and irrational. This often sets the dominoes falling in the life of a minister. Grief and loss start to bang into the other hurts that are tucked deep inside us: the wounds from the past, times we felt wronged by God or when we couldn't see God's compassion, protection, or sovereign control, start to bleed again. Personal grief opens Pandora's Box where we've stuffed unresolved issues, and we become angry with God.

In the book A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis, when contemplating the loss of a loved one, boldly asks the questions: Where is God? and Why is he silent? Lewis knows that we can't speak for God or even wrap our finite minds around God's infinite ways. There's no answer that will satisfy and we know that. But Lewis hits the core of the issue. He says that he's not "in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about him. The conclusion I dread is not, 'So there's no God after all,' but, 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.'"

Like Lewis, we face the same crossroads where we have to trust what we don't know, can't rationalize, and don't see. Because we work in a profession intent on making God known, we experience angst over the unknowable. We never know why a particular person dies at a particular time, but we do know that God is still there. Even in the midst of our anger, our pain, and our uncertainty, we know that we can count on God, even when we may not feel like it. We need to be angry and weep and mourn. Only then will we come to the same conclusion that Job came to: "though he slay me yet will I trust him."

Community

Youth workers can be very good at this with their kids, and very bad at it for themselves. We understand that God works through us to be present in the lives of kids and families, but we don't see God working toward us in the same way. Many of us expect God to choose another vehicle through which to minister to the minister. Grief is minimized in the context of intentionally loving relationships. When we grieve we're already in a vulnerable state. We think that being more vulnerable by allowing someone else into the process will make us less competent or effective. This only serves to isolate us and keep us in repressed pain. God has chosen to work through the vehicle of the church to bring healing and restoration to hurting hearts. Effective youth workers must come to realize that we aren't the exception to God's wonderfully beautiful, incarnational plan.

We not only grieve with someone; we also grieve with hope. Paul encourages this in 1 Thes. 4:13-18. We know this passage well and use it when we console others, but we never stop to think that Paul may also be implying that hope is only realized proportionately to the extent that grief is realized. Deep sorrow makes our loss real and final, as painful as that may be. When we face the reality of loss through our grief, we then embrace the reality and anticipation of being reunited with the ones who've preceded us into eternity. When we suppress the sorrow it doesn't make the loss fully realized, and therefore the hope isn't as real. Grieve with someone and grieve with hope.

Dialogue

It's important to engage in conversations about your own loss as well as the grief of others. Talk about the loved one you lost. Recall joys, tell stories, talk about your feelings, ask others how they're doing. Tell other survivors about your memories. Don't be afraid to verbalize everything from facts to feelings. Conversation and honest verbalization of our hearts engages us and others in the process of renovatus.

Steve Gerali is Director of the Youth Ministry Undergraduate Degree Program at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California. In addition to over 25 years of youth ministry experience, Gerali is a clinical counselor, author, speaker, and educator.