Grief During The Holidays | Melissa Edge

well good evening and I just want to start off by saying and thank you so much for coming we are so so glad you're here so let's be honest this is not the holiday event that you wanted to come to it's given a choice none of us would be grieving at this holiday season so I just want to tell you thank you for a courage to walk in this room tonight and yes I do work on staff as a pastor at Buckhead Church our campus 20 miles south of here but tonight honestly a stand up here is one of you because I know what it's like to be grieving at Christmas and it's a hard place to be and so tonight I just want to be here with you and to share a few things that I've learned I kind of empty my cup from a few things unfortunately there's no silver bullet and there's no magic formula to take away your grief or pain but do you want to share a few things that have learned along the way to talk a little bit about holidays and what we can do to get through them and then share a little bit of Scripture with you tonight if that sounds all right with you I didn't want to start off I wish I mean I'm looking around the stream when I think gosh I would love to hear every single one of your stories I feel like I would probably learn a lot from each one of you I did thought I would start off a little bit lighter if that's okay with you it's a heavy night I get it you can breathe and this time of year you may or may not love Christmas and I get that too but I thought I'd share with you over the years a few things that I have come to love about Christmas and the first thing is this and my dad is actually this is my dad he looks and he dresses like Santa Claus so nothing brings me more joy this time of year and seeing my dad dressed up at Santa and even in the midst of my grief he always brings a smile to my face this is my little dog Ralphie and Ralphie yes anybody and loved a Christmas story in the room yeah so Ralphie is named after the main character in a Christmas story although she's a girl dog with a boy named in every year this is her Christmas card picture from last year so I dressed her up as scene from the movie and so clearly I did not stick my dog's tongue to the pole that is peanut butter she's looking so just for the record I do not do that what I really want to tell you about Christmas and what I love and this is honestly a little bit of a confession so withhold your judgement but I'm a little bit addicted to Hallmark Christmas movies anybody else want to admit that all right right here we're good we're good all right we're good now I know some of you that are like big movie buffs your movie critics you're just judging me in your head right now that's my poor choice and acting and no plot and I get it it's low-budget films but you know what I love about hallmark movies I love the predictability of them right because every movie turns out the same way it's kind of like this the main character with a sad story meets a less sad supporting character they fall in love then break up over something silly reunite at the ends and give one final kiss there's no death there's no violence it's just happily ever after every single time and what I've come to learn about myself is the reason I love this is because it answers this say this question the same every single time is everything gonna be okay and with a hallmark movie you can always know yes yes everything is gonna be just fine but if we're honest tonight I think some of us have walked into this room maybe carrying the same question in regards to the holiday is everything gonna be okay am I gonna be okay it's Christmas gonna be okay after what I've walked through this year it's my family gonna be okay it's a valid question to ask because it's one that I carried into my first Christmas without my husband six years ago I'd love to share a little bit of my story with you my late husband Tony and I actually only spent two Christmases together as a married couple this is Tony here we met actually here at North Point and our first date was in this very room at a singles events we got married in April 2008 and we are very much in love my husband was a hopeless romantic he literally swept me off my feet and yes we had our ups and downs in marriage like anybody does but we had very strong hopes and dreams of her long bright future together but next for loving me Tony loved and lived for adventure snowboarding snowmobiling mountain biking anything adventure anything adrenaline that was my husband and so it was an ordinary day in March of 2010 and he had started his executive mba program through Emory University and he had taken the day off to study and he decided he loved mountain views and the highest place to get here in Atlanta is to go up to the top of Stone Mountain so he'd gone there to study and I was out of town at a work event coming to him that evening and he texted me and said I'm at the top I'm starting to study it's beautiful here I wish you were here with me and I texted back that I love you not knowing that that would be our final exchange attorney was missing for about 12 hours and at 10 a.m. the next morning I was told the news I never wanted to hear that my husband had crossed over the fence at the top of Stone Mountain and he had fallen to his death and I would later learn my adventure loving husband had done this over and over again as a child this time he fell from the steepest my crossover at the steepest point and fell and in a matter of moments here my life is completely shattered heart is completely broken I never knew sorrow could hurt so badly and I was 30 years old and I'm again my journey as a widow and I thought what in the world am I supposed to do now the only thing I knew to do was to continue just to get out of bed every day as hard as it was to put one foot in front of the other and just keep walking and the days are hard and the days were so long but nine months later I found self in a room very much like you are sitting here tonight thinking how and on earth am I gonna survive Christmas without my husband and what I realized as I was sitting in this room that was surrounded by people whose lives had changed in an instant - it was the day of the terminal diagnosis it was the day there was no longer a heartbeat in the womb is the day of an accident or sudden illness and although I wish no one else was suffering the way I was suffering it was comforting to know that they knew what sorrow was - and to know that I wasn't alone and I want you to know that in this room tonight there are a lot of you who are walking through your first holiday season without your mom or your dad your husband or your wife a brother or sister a child a beloved family member or close friends and I'm so sorry and I wish I wish you weren't here honestly I wish circumstances are different but I want you to look around for a moment because I want you to know into sense that you are not alone this room is full of people who know what it's like to be grieving at a time when the rest of the world is celebrating so I just want you to be how you are tonight it's okay to cry it's okay to laugh just take a deep breath we're in this together so why don't we get to this thing called grief whether we like this word or not and it's here and it's what we're all walking through and the process that we go through is called grief recovery and I like that word recovery because it because it means that things will get better and for some of you tonight you need to hear that it will eventually get better yes it's hard and can't imagine being on the other side of it but it does lift and it you will recover but grief is one of those words that no one really teaches us in school right you don't take a class on grief 101 really no one at the church talks about it very much culture just wants to sweep it under the rug it's uncomfortable it's ambiguous unknown its mysterious right but I like to think of grief this way grief is evidence that you have lost someone important in your life we're all here tonight because we've lost someone important in our lives and though everybody deals with our grief differently and there's no comparison between your loss and my loss and someone else's loss and your loss it's everybody goes through differently but there are some common themes that I've learned along the way that have been helpful for me that I feel like can be helpful to anyone no matter what your losses or where you are along the process so love to share with three things with you tonight and the first is this to let others help this is the thing I had to learn very early on to let others help now some of you have put that into practice tonight some of you have invited a friend or a loved one to come with you tonight and if I could just speak to those of you in the room who have accompany the person who is grieving tonight I just want to say that you're amazing and thank you for being here this year I've learned what it's like to be you my best friend Casey who literally walked me through everything in my grief journey she lost her mom this year and suddenly our roles are reversed and now I'm just completely heartbroken over watching her hurt so badly and I know it's hard to know what to do or what to say when you see your friend or loved one hurting so much but can I just say your presence is the best gift that you can give this holiday season and into the new year just showing up being with them reminding them that they're not alone so thank you so much for your presence tonight shortly after losing my husband I realized I couldn't do this grief journey on my own I needed a team of people around me to help me through and so you know in those early days and maybe you can relate to this when when when the death happens all these people start around you you know they want to help everyone to bring food and how can they help and be around and it's it's amazing and I felt so much support and love from those folks now of course there's a few people who may or may not have said some things that weren't quite as helpful is that I thought that they would be and they would say things like well he's just in a better place yeah okay okay or you know God just needed an angel what all right okay or at least you were married for two years or anything with at least right it just doesn't it doesn't go well it doesn't go well and I know I've said some of those things before so if you've said that don't cringe we've all been there there's grace but you kinda have to learn the things you're gonna keep and some of the things you're just gonna throw away when it comes to grief but every time a lot of these folks got back to their lives as business as usual you may have felt that in the three months the six-month mark you're still reeling from grief and you're like well where is where is everyone the casseroles are gone a fridge is empty where is everybody and I was deeply deeply grateful at that point in my journey that I had some close friends and family members who were just by my side they were with me in the trenches and they were not gonna let me give up as hard as the journey was they listened to me without judgment they planned fun outings for me just to get me out of the house and away from grief for a little bit and then they sat on my couch when I decided at the last minute I was not leaving the house that day the other thing was I had some mentors he really walked me beside some big financial decisions maybe some of you in the room have had to settle in a state this year that business side of grief that no one talks about is really really difficult and I was grateful to have some help in that the other thing I did and letting others help was to begin grief counseling and honestly that was the best decision I could have ever made because it was so nice to have an objective voice to listen to me and to hear my crying and my complaining or whatever else but also to walk me through and to make me feel normal about where I was in my grief journey if grief can really be normal right at least to let me know that I wasn't going crazy that this was what I was walking through was where I was supposed to be that was so so very helpful to me and the other thing I found helpful was to be to sit alongside other people who had been through loss to you I would sit across from other widows a little bit further along than me maybe even friends I had lost a parent or a child and it wasn't this sad swapping of stories it was more of this knowing together we knew what it was like to lose deeply and honestly it was so so comforting to hear the words me too me too those are powerful words and if you don't hear anything else tonight we want you to hear these words me too you're not alone we understand we're with you and in the midst of this so I don't know what your support system looks like but I would encourage you as people offer help to take them up on it and to be specific with what you need especially right now in the holidays maybe it is a meal or maybe it's a dinner out maybe it's help wrapping presents or even decorating your Christmas tree if you have kids maybe it's a fit friend that can take your kids out on a fun outing just to get away from the grief for a little bit or maybe a friend or two could plan some things in January and February those dreary months around here I plan some fun things for you to look forward to after the holidays are over so whatever you do let others in and let others help the second thing about grief that I would say to you is to release expectations and this is expectations of yourself and also of others and to be completely honest I spent that first year of grief trying to figure out how to navigate everyone else's grief particularly my husband's family it was like I was trying to withhold or hold up this image of myself I felt of so it's responsible for everyone else's grief and my counselor had to remind me over and over again Melissa you are not responsible for everyone else's grieving you've got to take care of yourself but also I was on a mission to beat grief right I was just kidding I was gonna get through this I read the shortest book on grief I could find I just wanted to know what I needed what I was up against right it told me I needed to get through all the first first anniversaries first holidays for first birthdays all those things so I was like alright they're all on my calendar let's check these things off so one at a time I thought I could just check these things off done with grief but it doesn't really work that way it's not neat and tidy and organized and you know you may have heard some the five stages of grief and those there's some really great and helpful things there but stage it the word stages for me made me feel like I had to go from one to the next to the next on us again like a checklist and then I came across this quote in this book called I wasn't ready to say goodbye and this was so much of a better picture for me this is what it says recovery is not like an elevator that takes you from the basement of despair to the penthouse of peace and understanding it is more like a maze hello where you go forward a bit and then you go back a few steps you cover the same ground again and you find yourself at the beginning it's like a fun house but it's not fun right but this for me release my expectations that I was just gonna check stage after stage off and then if I revisited anger a revisited sadness or whatever that was that didn't necessarily mean I was stuck and it didn't necessarily mean that I wasn't moving forward so it's not this linear journey journey it's more of a swirling picture and I also found in addition to releasing expectations of myself I had to release expectations of others because I learned very quickly that my loved ones my husband's family my friends his friends they did not grieve like I did they grieved in a different pace altogether they run a totally different stage when I was in anger it was it was never ever balanced I had to learn I couldn't compare my grief to theirs and so for you to give yourself permission to grieve the way you need to grieve but also give space and permission to your loved ones or maybe it's your spouse your children other or your parents other family members let them grieve the way that they're going to grieve and though it's going to look differently and that's okay there's no specific formula or timeline for grief and you know what that means right here at the holidays because that's really when all this grief can really collide you're together with your families it may mean to sit down and have a family meeting to talk through what Christmas is gonna look like this year what traditions you want to hold onto you and maybe you opt for some new things in the midst of that it might not be a fun meeting it might be a little messy but I found that the more I can openly communicate with my family it helps release these expectations we had and get us all on the same page so reliefs yourself from carrying other people's grief and release yourself and expectations of others and what they're walking through and the last thing about grief I will tell you is to allow your emotions to come and go and this is a bit of wisdom that I actually learned from my friend sue and Sue lost her dad a few years of for Tony passed away and I love what she said she told me that holidays and birthdays and anniversaries eighths were always going to come and go and emotions were gonna come and go so she found it better to just choose to allow her emotions to come and go with those dates or hard days or whatever that was and I needed to hear that because that feeling part of grief there's pesky emotions that would just pop up at the most random inconvenient times I just wanted days to go away those were the hardest thing for me to navigate because they were so unpredictable at times and one of those tears to stop I wanted to not be sad anymore I just desperately wanted to be happy and I did experience a wide range of emotions and I'm sure you can relate to these pain anger sadness resentment disappointment fear confusion hopelessness and fatigue gosh that one really snuck up on me grief is really really exhausting and it we can really take a toll physically on your body and I wrote found myself all these emotions would just come up at random times there's one day I remember I was on the phone trying to figure something out with my cell phone plan I was on the phone with AT&T that's frustrating enough right I began to scream at the customer service lady just screaming at her she didn't deserve it poor thing I hope she forgives me but it had nothing really to do with my cell phone plan it had everything to do with my emotions that were just out of control and another day I found myself weeping in the waiting room at the mechanic shop just weeping it was just a simple oil change right I mean why am i crying but Tony took care of all of my car maintenance and so it triggered another emotion for me and you know that same day later on I was laughing at some memory we shared together so it was like this roller coaster of emotions to me and it felt like I was going crazy and I learned you know what that's normal too that's all over the place and that's filing large to be so longest I would fight it and I would dread how it's gonna feel if I realized I just needed to let twists and turns of emotions and grief to come and go and just to be okay and with whatever comes my way instead of just trying to avoid the emotions or stuff them down and you know not all emotions are are painful they for some of you in the room if you've had you lost a loved one to a long-term illness and maybe you were the caregiver you feel a sense of relief because you no longer have to make these hard difficult met called decisions anymore it's okay to feel that and then the other one I really felt guilty about was joy right I would find myself I would maybe post a picture on Facebook and I was smiling in it and my friend would say oh it's so nice to see you smiling and I'm thinking what do you think grieving people cry all day I mean we cry a lot we can't sustain that there are moments of joy but I would feel guilty about it but you know what I had to learn was that just because you have you experience joy and especially here at Christmas it's all mixed in together it doesn't mean that it's disrespectful to your loved one and it doesn't mean you're not still grieving or that you don't love and miss your loved one so it's okay to have this moment of joy and those of you with kids in the room I asked my friend Jen she lost her husband and she has two young boys asked her how did you navigate this whole emotion and grief thing with your kids and she gave me two great tips that actually I think apply to all of us whether you have kids or not and the first one was to talk openly about your loved one to share memories and not feel like this has to be the hush-hush topic openly talk about them especially with your kids and the other one she told me was to show emotion and they were trying to manage it wherever we are but she found it actually validated her kids feelings and it gave them permission to express their emotions too and I know grief feels all-consuming right now I get it and as some of you are a little bit further along your journey may be its lightened a bit it does lighten after a while the intensity does decline and I saw my grief more as the ripples on a lake and at first it was just choppy you know it was up and down up and down up and down and after a while it started to smooth out a little bit the highs and the lows got further in between my emotions began to stabilize and that's what will happen with your grief journey - so these are all tips that you were you actually have in your program you receive tonight well let me just review two for you one more time and these are to let other people help let others help you to release expectations of yourself and of others and to allow emotions to come and to go and then I actually included a few tips just for the holidays little extra bonus here and the first one is to take time for rest and self-care this seems intuitive but it's really really important that fatigue of grief this physical symptoms to take really good care of yourself it's like you've had major surgery so you shouldn't expect yourself to be at a hundred percent at this point in the journey so nutrition and exercise maybe go to the gym nobody is at the gym right now January a different story right now no one's at the gym and also avoid things that tend to numb your pain overeating / drinking / shopping whatever that is just constantly busy and there's sends things tend to numb your pain so take time degree take time to take care of yourself and a second one is to be aware of what triggers your grief and this is especially true at the holidays now if you've been to the mall lately the music is super loud Christmas music is super loud I was even the other day I was in Macy's metha turn it down turn it down still bothers me I actually do all my shopping online now I love Amazon anyone else on the Amazon yes it's great it's great and it's it's important to not just avoid things you think oh this is gonna make me sad this is gonna trigger something that's it's not that but just make a mental note if something triggers emotions you'll just know next time to maybe avoid that or make a note of it and the last thing is to give yourself permission to say no this one's so important right now there's a holiday party every night and honestly you may not feel like going to all of that that's okay now this doesn't mean you can opt out of everything and opt out of everybody it's important not to isolate yourself during this season surround yourself with this people who can understand who can flex with your plans maybe change them or sunder Stan you might need to leave a party early whatever that looks like but to surround yourself with people who understand in this season and to say no to things that you feel like you just need to say that you and though I hope these tips are very helpful for you and they they they help you get through these holidays I know that in a few minutes you're gonna get in your car and you're gonna go home you're gonna head into your day tomorrow and it's Christmas right it's still Christmas and perhaps you came in here tonight and you don't even want to begin to think about Christmas it's just too much it's too hard that was me that was my journey and others of you may be so excited to celebrate Christmas because it actually gets your mind off of your grief that's okay too for parents or grandparents in the room you don't really have a choice of whether you celebrate Christmas or not because you have kids to think about and there's others of you in the room you've lost a parent this year in all of your traditions or family traditions are centered around them and I get that it's a really hard place to know what to do with all of that and then for a few in the room you've lost a child this year and I can imagine Christmas is centered around your children that's a really really hard place to be and I'm sorry I'm so sorry for every single one of you and what you're walking through this holiday season this first Christmas without your loved one will be hard but there'll be moments of light and of hope and of joy mixed in and you may be thinking almost I mean those tips were great and you talked a little bit about your journey but like how it what really what really got you through you know Eames hard into my relationship with my Heavenly Father and not in some overly Christian Oh God's got this I'm just gonna trust him kind of way it was more like brutally honest with God asking him really hard questions God why did you allow this to happen why death why suffering what are you doing in my life really disappointed right now and perhaps you have questions for God too and I want to tell you it's okay and it's okay to be brutally honest with him wherever wherever you're at in that and then there's some of you in the room tonight you're like the god thing I mean I'm here in a church but this isn't just not for me after what has happened in my life I don't want anything to do with him and I get that too and I'm glad you came anyway perhaps you feel that God let you down but I encourage you wherever you're at tonight to ask God your hard questions and to be honest with him about where you're at you know when I turn to my Bible for answers that first Christmas answers to my questions I found it wasn't alone in my questioning I actually turned to the Psalms right in the center of your Bible and I found the writer of many of the Psalms of David he had a lot of questions for God if you need some good questions read Psalms but I want to share a couple with you and Psalm 6 3 it says my soul is in deep anguish me anguish that's a hard word clearly David's going through something hard we don't know exactly what it is he's crying out to God and he says how long Lord how long that's a question how long am I going to be sad how long till this grief lasts and then we go on to psalm 46 what are you - sorry and it says why my soul are you downcast why so stirred within me it's a question for guy like what do I do with my sadness what do I do with these feelings of despair and then it goes on put your hope in God it's like the answer to where we put our hope in right here at the writer says to put your hope and God for I will yet praise Him my Savior and my god and I love that word yet because it's almost like saying okay I know you're in hard place but trust God anyway put your hope in him anyway the yet and here at Christmastime we celebrate that hope in Jesus the savior of the world and that first Christmas after my husband passed away I really began to gain a new perspective on the Christmas story through the lens of suffering it's kind of way kandi talked about the whole Advent I loved what she shared so I saw through this lens of suffering Heavenly Father that first Christmas sending his son into a very lost and broken world there had been hundreds of years of silence from God his people waiting on him to bring the Savior it's a very dark place and that first Christmas when Jesus came it was Mary and Joseph in a stable and dirty gross stable there's no Santa Claus and holly-jolly and Rudolph and Frosty's and all the fun hoopla that we have today it was just a very dark world and here is God sending himself in through his son Jesus God with us Emmanuel I love how Jesus is described and John 1:5 the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it that Jesus is this light that's shining into the darkness and I don't know about you but my grief got really really dark at times so dark I just didn't know that I was going to make it out and so this description of Jesus as light in the midst of the darkness I can't think of a better description of what hope looks like it's like these candles on the tables here if we dim the lights it was just the candles burning just enough of a light to keep us going right so enough I would like to show us way to keep moving for doesn't mean the darkness is completely gone but there's light in the midst of it and maybe that's what Christmas can look like for you this year I love to describe hope this way hope is light in the midst of darkness your grief may not lift every night and be completely gone wouldn't that be nice but that you can know this hope in the midst of where you're at exactly where you are in your journey and that's what happened that first Christmas and that's what Christmas can look like for you and for those of you here in the room tonight and you're thinking I'm not I don't subscribe to the Jesus thing I don't know about the God thing we're so glad that you're here and maybe this Christmas can be the Christmas that you explore faith for the first time maybe some other things are working for you to walk you through this grief journey but maybe maybe faith is something that you can try or maybe return to after a long absence maybe you just start by asking the question who is Jesus God can you show up in my pain can you show me who you are in the midst of it and I've my prayer for all of us whether you've walk with God for a long time or maybe you would be that person who who's just questioning God tonight wherever you're at my prayer for you is that you would carry this hope with you that hope would show up in the midst of your darkness and your sadness this time of year and then it would provide a hope and a comfort and a peace that surpasses anything that this earth could ever provide I wish you didn't have to face this pain and this grief this Christmas season I wish a wish it was as easy as fast forty to the end of a hallmark movie and just saying everything is going to be okay but I want to tell you as we close and I stand before you as proof that my life will never be the same and that I have walked through unexplainable loss that healing and does come and at the five-year mark of my husband's passing last year I finally gained the courage to go back to the place that represents the epicenter of loss for me a place I never thought I could ever face again I climbed to the top of Stone Mountain and what this picture represents from the top is that I found a hope and a peace in Jesus that has allowed me to continue to walk forward that has been my light in my darkness and that is my hope my great hope for each one of you

Channel: North Point Care

Views: 1,470

Rating: 4.5555553 out of 5

Keywords: care network, north point community church, woodstock church, buckhead church, Gwinnett church, decatur city church, brownsbridge church, help, struggling, challenges, pain, relationships, transition, change, ministry resources, resources, training, counseling, grief, loss, death, holidays, holiday blues

Id: LqhzKgozUoI

Length: 36min 3sec (2163 seconds)

Published: Wed May 16 2018