Loss

I’m sitting in Panera, getting ready t0 finish my teaching notes for tonight’s “EMMI” (Epic Men’s Mentoring Initiative). Before I move ahead I wanted to do a quick follow-up of a portion of what I covered at www.epicchurchlv.org.

Pain of Loss! We all face loss at some time in our lives – right? Some of us have faced immense loss, while for others it has been minimal. Either way, loss is not something we enjoy, but it is inevitable. Below are 3 common responses I’ve had to loss in my life. Maybe you will add to the list & I definitely would like to get your input, but for now these are the areas I’ve covered. I will come back later and cover what I believe to be biblical responses to loss.

COMMON & VERY HUMAN RESPONSES TO LOSS

1. I TRY TO IGNORE THE PAIN. Many times I think if I ignore the pain, it will go away. If you’re like me, when I have a tooth ache, I don’t want to go to the dentist, I just hope the pain will go away. If I go to the dentist it may hurt even more. But the pain doesn’t go away, and often the opposite is true, and many times it just gets worse. Many of us try to tough are way through pain, ignore pain, act as if it’s not there & maybe it will go away. This is never a good way to deal with the pain of loss, but I’m very guilty.

2. I OFTEN BLAME OTHERS. It’s so & so’s fault! We see a lot of blaming today! It’s Barak Obama’s fault. It’s Ben Bernanke’s fault that the economy is this way. Or God it’s your fault!! God if you were really, really good, you wouldn’t have let this happen. God if you were really good, you would answer my prayers. Or maybe you blame yourself, “How could I’ve been so stupid?” Or sometimes it’s, what did I do to deserve this? Boy, I blame others very well, but I’ve found that the blame game only hurts me worse & makes be grow bitter. I don’t’ want to grow bitter, but better!:)

3. I WITHDRAW. I often times take a step back and disengage. I’ve said “if people are going to be that way, who can I trust then?” “I’m not going to let anyone close to my heart, I’ll be guarded!” Can you empathize with me??
I go into an internal world I call internalization (my cave of solitude). You can read more about internalization a few posts down.

It’s not always bad to internalize things, the problem is, when I stay in that zone to long, depression, and erroneous thinking sets in, and I could easily begin to hide behind something. Sometimes for many of us, it could be substance abuse, to numb the pain. Some of us we’ll hide behind consumerism, or maybe we’ll hide behind our jobs, and we become workaholics, and hide behind our success, the toys, the cars, the image. Some of us will even hide behind religion. Some of us will hide behind relationships. The truth is – there are some common responses to pain that are wrong. That is to ignore the pain, blame others, or simply to withdraw.

How how have you dealt with pain over the years, and more specifically, how have you dealt with the pain of loss?