Funeral Homes Walking With God Through Grief And Loss After Cremation

Funeral Homes:

One of the most pain-filled letters I ever received came from a young mother whose first born child had died of AIDS. She was overwhelmed with the depth of this loss. It was doubly crushing blow to her since she did not know she was a carrier of the disease until her daughter was born. The letter poured out of her anguish and despair. She felt, she said as if God had abandoned her at a time when she most needed this Loving Presence. She even thought of taking her life, so deep was he desolation. As I read her letter, I sensed a deep desire in her to walk with God even though she found no comfort when she tried to pray. Over and over she pleaded for some insight, some direction, on how to relate to God during her time of darkness. The painful emotions described in that letter haunt many human hearts caught up in grief and loss. The negative feelings we have during such times are natural. Yet they bewilder us because we do not expect or accept them as a part of the experience. We want to rid ourselves of the unpleasant feelings as quickly as possible, but grief takes time. We must recognize our feelings of loss and learn to live with them for a time as best we can.

Working Your Way Through

Faith questions naturally arise during these agonizing times. How can I walk with God when God seems to have forgotten all about me? How can I pray when I hurt so much? What do I do when the ways that I used to pray don’t work for me? When we feel engulfed by such questions, there are some helps to which we can turn.

Picture God On Your Side

The way we picture God has much to do with the way we walk with God during our time of loss. It is helpful to picture God as being on our side rather than against us or responsible for our suffering. Harold Kushner tells us in When Bad Things Happen to Good People that God does not send suffering to us; rather, suffering and loss are a result of the human condition. Picturing God as One who is on our side is a strong biblical image. God will never abandon us or forget us. God has great compassion for us, yearning for our peace and joy. Many writers see God as suffering with us, walking the road of our grief, having infinite concern for us. As we pray during our time of grief, we can picture God sitting by our side, looking upon us with much love, or walking with us listening to our story of sorrow.

Trust In God’s Nearness And Goodness

When we are grieving a significant loss, our world can seem bleak and dark. We may feel that God does not care or doubt that God even exists. Grief is a time to trust that God is very close, even though our feelings say otherwise. When we are depressed and all we can think about is our sadness, it helps to call on our good memories. We recall people and events that have brought us happiness. These memories assure us that God does love us very much even though we are missed in gloom at the present time. Good memories also have a way of helping us to trust in the future, when other times of happiness will come our way. Because our inner vision is usually quite blurred when we are filled with painful emotions, we can easily miss the good things that are a part of each day in the present. At the end of each day no matter how miserable it may have been, we can find at least one thing we can be grateful for. We may want to write this down each evening and to look at our “gratitude list” when we are feeling particularly discouraged.

Pray Your Pain

If we feel sad and empty, these feelings will naturally affect our prayer. We cannot separate ourselves from our bodies or our emotions when we pray. We need to accept the fact that we probably will not have a sense of God’s presence for a while. God understands this and loves us in our humanness. As we grieve our loss, it helps to deliberately pray our pain, to cry out to God, to express our anger. Writing a letter to God, telling God how we feel can help us to experience being “heard” by God. We can also write a letter from God to us, noting what God would want to say to us at this time of loss. We may also need to find other forms of prayer for a while. If we are restless, we could go for a long walk or listen to music. If our mind is constantly filled with remembrances of the loss, we could quietly repeat a scripture verse or formal prayer. If we are overwhelmed with sadness, we may find that just sitting with empty hands held open is the only prayer that we can pray. As we do so, we say our open hands that we trust God to fill our lives with strength enough for another day.

Look For God In Unexpected Ways

We tend to look for God in certain familiar ways. Consequently, e may think God is absent, yet God is there in ways we may not have noticed. It may be the kindness of someone who writes us a letter for makes a phone call to see how we are. It could be the beauty of the stars on a night when we cannot sleep. A friend of mine who was in great paid from cancer told me that during her many sleepless nights she would hear the first birdsong in the dawn, When this happened, it would lift her heart and bring he a deep sense of closeness to God. Another woman who was in much grief told me how she looked out her window one day and saw a spider spinning a web. The threads were wet with dew and sparkled in the sunlight. As she gazed on this intricate wonder, she saw her own life woven into God’s heart. This insight filled her with peace for the first time in many months.

Make Time For Solitude

As difficult as it may be to take quiet time for ourselves and to be in solitude, we need to do so. We may feel terribly restless or lonely and want to run from the paid or keep ourselves very busy. But solitude is essential and necessary for our growth. In our solitude we are like a seed buried in the darkness of the earth, all alone and waiting. It seems as though nothing is happening, but quiet growth is taking place. A day will come when a new green shoot will come forth from the earth. A day will come when we will discover new growth, a gradual return of peace and happiness.

Be Gentle, Be Patient

We are in a hurry to heal, but we must be patient with ourselves. We must look for courage, resiliency and hope in the lives of others, noticing how they have made it through their difficult journeys. If one of these persons lives nearby, we can ask that person to tell us his or her story of loss and growth. Finding a local support group can also ease our pain. We can hear in the lives of others some of our own experiences of grief. This, too, will encourage us to be patient as we grieve. Sometimes we expect so much of ourselves until we realize that the road we walk is alone one for other people as well.

Take Heart

When the people of the Exodus were wandering in the wilderness, they often complained that God was far from them. Yet God was as close to them as their next breath. And God constantly reassured them of this nearness. The Exodus people eventually did find a new place of freedom and peace. The same is true for us. Through it all, God is keeping vigil over us just as God did with the Exodus community in the wilderness. It is the kind of vigil that a parent keeps with an ailing child or the night watch one keeps while waiting for a loved one to come home. Etty Hillisum experienced the great loss of her family and friends’ deaths in concentration camps. She walked through years of war and suffering. Amid it all, she never gave up. One day she wrote in her diary: “There will always be a small patch of sky above, and there will always be enough space to fold two hands in prayer. Etty Hillisum hold on tightly to God in her difficult times. We need to do the same, leaning on God, believing in this compassionate Presence with us. God will, indeed stay with us on our road to restored peace and joy.

If you or a family member have any further questions or concerns with respect to cremation, cremation services, cremation costs or a direct cremation please feel free to contact Cremation Options toll free 24 hours daily at 1-877-989-9090.

Joshua Johnson
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