I’ll be going on vacation tomorrow. I’m getting away from the normal pressures of everyday life. Away from important phone calls and from the bothersome ones. I’ll be in a part of the country very different from where I live. There will be new vistas at every turn. It will be relaxing and a good time to reconnect with my husband. I’ll be getting away for some rest and refreshment.

As I prepare, I am reminded that you can’t get away from your grief.  No matter where you go, your grief goes with you. You may be in a different place. You may not be confronted by all the reminders at home that can send you into a tail spin of grief. But the grief is something you carry in your heart. It will be with you in many ways. 

On the other hand, a different location can give you new perspective on your losses. You may find new ways to interact with Jesus to find comfort and healing. You may find that you can listen more carefully to the whisper of His voice (I Kings 19:11-12) when you are not surrounded by the everyday reminders of your child. You may find that you can be closer to “normal” when you are away from all the people who know you have lost a child. You, too, may be able to reconnect with your spouse as two hurting but hoping people who care about one another. 

Here are a couple thoughts about how you might find some “rest and refreshment.”

• Jesus says “come unto me, you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) He will take off you shoulders some of that weight of grief. This sounds like a promise!  
• God, the Creator, built into the lives of His people, the concept of rest. He created the Sabbath and the year of Jubilee. He intended for you to take a break now and then. Go. Rest and be restored. No guilt.
• The Psalms talk about rest. Psalm 91:1 says you can rest in under the shelter of His wings, safe and secure. He is your refuge. There’s no fear here.
• Similarly, Psalm 62:1-2,5 talks about a safe place. God is like a strong fortress, a safe place to hide or take shelter from enemies or from the burning sun.
• There is renewal in taking time out. Hope. Hoping in our God. He will renew the strength of those who practice this hope. (Isaiah 40:28-31) 

I’m expecting to have a good time and come home refreshed. And I’ll be praying for you to that you’ll find some rest and refreshment for your heart. Blessings in His grace, which is sufficient for your present needs.  

“My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.” Psalm 62:1-2

Men and women are different. The roles they have as parents are different.

I am speaking in broad generalizations. Usually the husband and father is the provider and protector. Usually the wife and mother is the nurturer and comforter. The mother gently soothes the child when her little girl is hurt and strengthens her to go back out into life. She teaches her in every waking moment to function as a healthy human being in the real world. Together they teach the child to have an inner heart of faith, hope and love. They guide the child to know Christ and to love and trust Him.   

When a child dies, the father and the mother are grieving very different losses because of the different roles and relationships they had with the child. When the child dies, the father feels that he didn’t protect her. He didn’t provide for her safety. The father feels like he’s a failure.

When a child dies the mom who is the nurturer also feels like a failure. She couldn’t kiss his boo-boo and make it all better. He died. Both parents expected to bring the child to successful adulthood. He is not an adult. He is not successful and well adjusted. Each may feel like a failure, but having failed in a different responsibility. 

I know that these feelings really are part of a parent’s experience since I have listened to parents talk about them. But I also know these are not categories in which our Lord speaks. The Lord does help us find our roles in parenthood. But He does not measure us on a scale of success or failure, like grades we used to get in school. He wants from us qualities like faithfulness, obedience, trust, perseverance, humility.

God made each of you, exactly as you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses.  He gave you certain responsibilities in His kingdom. He gave you, mothers and dads, to each other as partners in your life. He placed that child in your specific family. All for your good and for His glory, ultimately. 

He knows each of you, and knows your role and your circumstances. He knows the generalities and the specifics of your life. He understands the differing roles of men and women. He even used the images of mothers and fathers to help us understand Him and His kingdom.

Isaiah (chapter 66:12-13) uses the image of a mother and little child to describe the kingdom of God, where the God of the universe is also the one who takes us up in His arms to comfort and encourage us. The child is never far from a mother’s mind, and so it is with God (Isaiah 49:15).

The authors of Scripture use the image of father to describe His relationship with us. Psalm 68:5 says God is like a “father to the fatherless.” Paul, in his letters (Galatians 4:5-7 and Romans 8:15-17), helps us understand that we’re adopted by God into His family and have rights like children. We’re heirs, and when we’re hurting we get to climb up into His lap for comfort. 

In the prayer Jesus taught us to pray (Mt 6:9), we’re taught to address God as Father – that’s “our” Father, Jesus’ and ours. Later in the Luke passage (11:3-13), Jesus draws a clear analogy between earthly fathers and His father-like relationship to us: fathers give their children good gifts; He gives His children the best! The Kingdom is like that.

He knows your heart. He knows what you have been called to do as a mom or a dad. He knows how you’re feeling about the death of your child. He knows your true failings and your feelings of failure, which may not be the same thing.  Parents, instead of struggling with feelings of failure, go to your Heavenly Father, climb into His lap and receive comfort in His compassion. Can you humbly trust Him now? Can you faithfully persevere through your grief? He welcomes you into His arms of comfort.

When a child has died, a man and a woman who loved that child are experiencing a chaos of emotion.  Two people in brokenhearted chaos, living together, sounds like a recipe for relationship disaster!  Usually, life allows you to take turns with difficult situations that produce big emotions. In better days, you may have a good pattern of helping one another in turns when you had these kind of challenges. But not now, when you both lost a child. These patterns may not work at all because each of you is so broken.

Each of you may be wanting and hoping that you can lean on your spouse the way you used to. But, frankly, my friends, those are unrealistic expectations at this time. Neither of you has the resources within you to be that strong tower on which the other can lean.

Each of you will need to share your emotions and listen to your partner, but you can’t resolve the other’s emotional battles. Not at this time. Each of you needs to find an ally but be careful!! Don’t expect too much from your brokenhearted partner, but be aware there could be danger for your marriage when seeking comfort from another person, because that helping, comforting relationship inherently has a degree of emotional intimacy. Be careful.

I propose this plan for your emotional support:

• Share your thoughts with your mate. But don’t expect him or her to solve your problems.
• Find an ally for you personally, and make sure your spouse knows and approves of this person. This ally is one to whom you can talk honestly about anything and everything. They’ll listen without judging. They will give good sound godly advice, but infrequently. They’ll speak words of truth and grace to you. They will listen again and again, as much as you need to talk. And they won’t make the kind of emotional attachment that’s reserved only for your spouse. 
• This ally could actually be a support group, a group of godly people.
• Lean into Christ, and then share what you learn from Him.

If you are leaning into Jesus and leaning into the grief, you will be closer to your spouse than it seems. You are both leaning in the same direction. If you are sharing your thoughts, sharing what is comforting you and listening to your partner, that’s true communication, even if you can’t solve their pain. And remember, that you each are grieving your own different and unique losses in your own unique way. The Lord who made and understands each of you individually, is meeting your heart needs in unique ways. Don’t expect that what helps and comforts you will help and comfort your spouse. But keep sharing. It’s Biblical: Weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. Comfort others with God’s comfort to you. (Romans 12:15; II Corinthians 1:4)

I am reading a little book by one dad about his loss and grief. His 17 year old son died of cancer of a rather fast moving kind. He wrote: “[his mom] cried often, but I could not cry. I often longed for the relief of tears, but the ability for such a release seemed to be dammed up. No matter how big a head of emotion lay behind the dam.

“…our culture… gives us, as men, only 2 acceptable ways to handle our grief. We can bury ourselves in activities, our work, or do-it-yourself projects, hobbies, church or other community chores, or we can exercise anger. We can be as angry as we want to be about drunk drivers, police, doctors, hospitals, our dead children, ourselves or God. Considering our limited grief options, there seems to be little chance that most of us will come to terms with our grief. Meanwhile our wives stand by in despair as we seem to suffer silently accepting no help.” (Andy’s Mountain Fathers Grieve Too  by Dwight L Patton; pg 17, 19.)

Men and women do grieve differently. Women often cry and want to talk about it. Men, not so much. In fact, more than once I’ve witnessed at a support group a man sharing something about his grief and the wife saying “I didn’t know you grieved that way!” Sometimes the wife misses knowing about the husband’s grief because she is looking for something that looks like her grief. But he is different.

This is one of the great blessings of a support group. Men can express grief in a masculine way and be understood by the other men. Women express their thoughts and feelings in a feminine way. Each gender gains a better understanding of the other. Each spouse gains a better understanding of their own partner. But this little advertisement for a group is off the main point – that men and women are different in their emotions and expressions.

Now, I want to be sure you understand that what I say next are broad generalizations. Each gender can experience any or all of the following symptoms of mourning.  But, men tend to grieve silently, with work, in their car, through sports or building or fighting. Baseball and golf allow the man to whack something, as does building with a hammer and nails. Women tend to grieve by talking, crying, shopping, reading, emotional outbursts. I have heard one speaker refer to the differences as follows: men tend to use their large muscles while women use their small muscles.  

Both have deep emotions, but men, as Dwight Patton mentions, tend to express many emotions as anger. Fear can disguise itself as anger. So can sorrow or discouragement. Women generally have more diverse expressions of emotions, but they, too, can mask other emotions as depression: such as discouragement, fear and anger.

God made us male and female. On purpose, He made us different.  He understands the differences. He made the female for the male because “It was not good for man to be alone.” God made Eve as Adam’s helper. That implies Adam needed help! And it implies she brings to him something that is truly helpful. He is wise who receives that gift of useful help. It’s practical, including here in grief. She can teach him to feel and to name his emotions. He can teach her to find ways to function anyway. Let each learn from the other. Let each lean on the other for the strengths he/she has that you don’t have. Lean on each other as much as possible, but know that your spouse can’t be your all in all. Not now is their grief, not ever. That’s God’s place. He alone is your always present, available and able helper. He alone is your all sufficient source of all sufficient grace.