Re-storied Help

I remember that in God’s system the last is now first.  I expect that those we have lost will be there to welcome us home when we enter the New Life.  I expect that Anne may be one of my “tour guides” on that first trip into the New Creation.  Our loved ones have entered that new life ahead of us.  We should not assume that our Lord does nothing with them once they arrive.  In fact, I expect that my loved ones will be my guides as I get accustomed to the New Creation.  

I love the words from Revelation, chapter twenty-one, that describe what awaits us all. “See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”  Those who have entered the New Life ahead of us will be there to welcome us into that New Life where God is with us for eternity.

Sometimes these words help me, and sometimes they make no difference at all—at least not in that moment.  But our God is patient and steadfast and gentle with all who mourn.  Seek out the company of those who can hold you close in your pain, as we long to do today.  And know that the God of peace longs to heal you every day and forever with love and grace and mercy.  That is the only plan of God that matters.

For me, a profound example of this reorientation is how I now deal with asking for help when I need it.  I am the child of a narcissistic mother who often shamed me when I asked for help or expressed other needs to her.  I was bothering her or was whining or was just a nuisance.  She advised that I go to my room, read a book and stop disrupting her day.  So I learned early on that asking for help—especially from an emotionally significant woman—was generally a bad idea.  

Of course, that is exactly what I craved more than anything, and over the years that craving had some bad outcomes in my life (but that’s a topic for another book).  That pattern continued to some degree in my marriage to Anne, and I was never all that able to ask for help from her without feeling profound shame in the asking and then regret after she responded with help.  She was more than willing to respond to me, but our relationship style didn’t lend itself to much of that sort of interchange.

Loss and grief have created opportunities to change that behavior and feeling pattern in profound ways.  I have encountered any number of people more than willing to help me in loving and constructive ways.  My challenges have been twofold: first, to ask for help without feeling bad about myself, and second, to accept the help without resenting the helper to some degree.  Being in abject despair has a way of sorting out one’s emotional priorities whether we want that to happen or not.  

Feeling shame at apparent weakness has been the least of my worries over the last weeks and months.  I simply needed the help and had no energy for any secondary neurotic responses.  In the midst of that, I have discovered that it is possible to receive such help and to feel even more whole than before.  That is a kind of reorientation that loss and grief made possible by rendering me so completely vulnerable to the world and to my own pain.  Frankly, I feel a certain amount of gratitude for my grieving in that regard.