Living With Loss, Finding Peace Through Pain

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So without further ado, please welcome to Hillcrest Baptist's Quest for Truth, Dr. James White.
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Sure it is. I had the opportunity once of preaching at Metropolitan's Havernacle in London, which is
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Spurgeon's church. And I guess I need to go that direction with that, huh? Okay. And there is a—I guess
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Spurgeon taught his students that you never preach for more than 40 minutes.
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And so in the actual pulpit in the Metropolitan's Havernacle, there is a clock embedded, but it's not a one -hour clock.
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It's a 40 -minute clock. And there is a button there. And when Dr. Masters introduces you, as he leaves the pulpit, he starts it.
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And I sort of bounced up and down a little bit on the floor, just to make sure there wasn't a door down there.
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Just to see what would happen if you went past 40 minutes. I didn't go past 40 minutes. I was wise enough not to do that.
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But it is a pleasure to be with you. It's a pleasure to be the closer for Sebastian Goldswain. And that's a high calling, to be able to do that.
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Very, very talented. I have to admit, when he started the first number, some of you may know an
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American superstar in music by the name of Glen Campbell, passed away last week, having experienced
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Alzheimer's at the end of his life. And I met him and his wife a few times in Bible study classes at the
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North Phoenix Baptist Church, where I was a member at that time. And I really believe that Mr.
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Campbell had a very strong testimony, actually. And his wife's testimony at his death was very Christ -honoring as well.
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But I was... Where did Sebastian go? Oh, he's hiding in the back. Oh, backseat Baptist.
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Okay, all right, I got you. But I was only disappointed with one thing. And that is, when
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Glen Campbell played classical gas, with a full orchestra, he played the end of it by putting the guitar on his head, like this.
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And just played it perfectly with it on his head. So, I was looking for that toward the end.
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So, it's a little something you might want to shoot for next time. Because it was pretty impressive.
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If you want to YouTube it, you can see Glen Campbell playing classical gas, and he puts the guitar on his head at the end.
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So, he was a talented fellow. I appreciate the introduction and the music, but I'll be honest with you, this is my least favorite topic to address of all the books that I've written.
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In fact, most people don't even know I wrote that book. In fact, I'll tell you the background to it.
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I was a hospital chaplain at a major secular hospital. It was not a Christian hospital. It was the toughest work
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I ever did. I am Scottish by heritage. And that means, please don't hug me.
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Please don't invade my personal space. We used to wear kilts. Ever seen Braveheart? So, keep that in mind.
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So, the idea of walking into sick rooms in a hospital, and talking to people, totally outside my comfort range.
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It was a tremendous challenge. What happened was, actually a couple of years after I finished that work, an acquaintance of mine had a 29 -day -old granddaughter, and his daughter had epilepsy.
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She had a seizure when they were alone, rolled over on the baby, and the baby suffocated.
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At 29 days of age. I attended the funeral. Coffins are not supposed to be that big.
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They're just not supposed to be that big. When the funeral was over,
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I went back to my office, and I literally and metaphorically cleared everything off my desk.
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I started writing for my friend, sort of an outline of all the things I had learned in the hospital, because I was entrusted with running a law support group on Sunday afternoons.
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There were two chaplains. We were supposed to divide them up evenly, but for the first year, the other guy was looking for a new job, so he was candidating, preaching around.
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I had 48 out of the first 52. And so, I had to learn a lot very, very quickly.
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I had not been taught any of these things in seminary. This was something that I learned pretty much on my own, in the crucible of really dealing with people who had lost someone.
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The hospital was very close to a retirement community, so there were a lot of people there that had lost people that had been part of their lives for a major, major portion of their lives.
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There were a lot of women who had lost husbands, and husbands who had lost wives, that had been married for 25, 30, up to 50 years.
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So, I started writing for my friend everything
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I could think of, and about halfway through, I realized it was a book. So, when I finished it,
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I sent it to the acquisitions editor at Bethany House. I was already a Bethany House author at that time. He loved it, but he took my name off of it.
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He says, I want to bring it in -house, I want to give it to our internal editors, but your name will prejudice it, because every book
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I write was on a controversy, the King James only controversy, the Roman Catholic controversy, letters to a Mormon elder, is the
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Mormon my brother? You wouldn't get a fair shake. So, they took the name off of it, the editors loved it, wanted it, and then only then did he tell them who actually had written it, and then they're like, oh great, what do we do now?
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We've got a guy that obviously we all know doesn't have a heart, and here he's written a book that I might indicate actually has one.
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So, what are we going to do now? But, on September 13, 2001, at Ground Zero in New York City, after the attack on the
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Twin Towers, they were distributing my book by the caseload to the first responders who were still digging through the smoldering rubble.
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And so, it's had a life of its own, partly because it's not a huge book, and people in grief don't want to read 500 -page tomes on the history of the study of the subject of grief.
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They want something that's helpful. And so, it has been helpful, and I'm thankful that it has functioned in that way.
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But, as I said, it's one of the hardest subjects to address because I have tremendous respect for anyone who is a hospital chaplain, especially if they do it on a full -time basis.
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I was never constituted to be able to turn off the emotions. When people would cry,
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I would too. When you do funerals, you're always asked to do funerals,
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I would cry with the family. It made it very difficult at times even to make it through. I just wasn't constituted to be able to isolate those feelings.
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I would enter into what people were experiencing. So, even to this day, as I tell you some of the stories that I remember from my experience that went into the book, it's hard to keep those.
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I'll be honest with you, tomorrow night will be easier than tonight. And I'm doing a debate with a
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Muslim on the Islamic concept of Qadr versus the Christian idea of God's sovereignty.
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So, you would think that would be a harder thing to do, but it really, really isn't. I don't have a lot of time, but I do need to tell you at least a few stories.
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A couple weeks ago, I'm doing a sermon series on Sunday mornings when
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I am the one preaching at my church in Phoenix, Arizona. It's, interestingly enough, based upon ancient papyrus of the
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New Testament that I'm doing that doctorate on out at Potter's Room University, well, Northwest University, the old Potch.
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Anyway, and it was in John chapter 11. If you know the story of John chapter 11, there
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Jesus ministers to Mary and Martha after the death of their brother Lazarus.
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Now, of course, we know what happens. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, though I think we always need to keep in mind that means, isn't that wonderful,
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Lazarus? Keep something in mind. He had to die twice. He had to die twice. I wonder if the second experience of death was different because of the first experience of death.
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But Jesus ministered to Mary and Martha, and yes, he knew what he was going to do, but it did not change the fact that the
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Bible tells us that when he asked them where they had laid him as they're going to the tomb,
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Jesus weeps. We've all memorized at least that one verse of the Bible, Jesus wept, the nice short one.
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That, by the way, is not the shortest verse of the Bible. I thought, don't frown at me.
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You ought to see the pastor down there. I mean, that frown went all the way down to the shoes. I mean, it was just like, wow.
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It is not the shortest verse of the Bible. It's the shortest verse of the Bible in the English Bible. There is a shorter Greek verse in 1
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Thessalonians than the actual Greek of Jesus wept. So there you go, no more frowning.
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Anyway, we've all memorized that, and the reality is that Jesus was not putting on a show.
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He was deeply impacted. The very strong, strong words are used of Jesus' internal turmoil in the presence of death, even though he had told the disciples days earlier, this is so that you may grow in faith.
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This is so that God may be glorified. He delayed going so that this would be the situation.
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Despite all that, in the presence of death, the very Son of God, the one who gives us life, wept.
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And so if Jesus wept, then it is perfectly appropriate for us to understand that even though Christians are told we're not to grieve as those who have no hope, that does not mean we do not grieve.
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It just means we do not grieve in hopelessness, and there is a huge difference between grieving in hope and hopelessness.
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With that in mind, as I spoke of Jesus' interaction with Mary and Martha, I could not help but think of the two experiences of death that I had in the hospital that were the extremes.
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The extremes. We'll start with the bad one. Even to this day, when
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I hear a code bell go off that sounds like the one that we had at the time the hospital was called
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Thunderbird Samaritan Hospital, I get chills. And sometimes
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I have dreams of that code bell going off because my job, wherever I was in the hospital at the time, was to drop what
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I was doing, and they would denounce where it was. And what the code bell was was someone was in cardiac arrest in the hospital.
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And it could be someone coming in by ambulance. It could be someone in the CCU, the critical care unit, wherever it might be.
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I just had to go there immediately, and then I would help the nurses, and I would frequently be the connection between the doctors and the family, whatever else it might be.
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Well, one afternoon, late afternoon, actually it was early evening now,
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I think, the code bell went off, and it was the emergency room, which normally means it was somebody coming in to the emergency room.
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My job was to stay at the door, and it was one of those automatic doors where you have to sort of stand in front of it to activate it.
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So I would activate it so the people bringing the person in wouldn't have to wait for it. And then I'd be watching for the family, and I'd take them to this teeny, tiny little family room, and then
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I'd become the liaison between the emergency room doctors and the people there in that little room.
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And so as I saw the ambulance pulling up, I got the doors opened.
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I'll never forget this. Out comes the, not the stretcher, but it's on wheels, gurney,
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I guess they call it. And there is what we had been told that this was a 9 -month -old coming in.
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And I'll never forget this huge fireman. And what they're doing is they're pushing.
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He is up on the rails, and so he's riding on it as well, and he's leaning over doing teeny, tiny little
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CPR on this beautiful little girl. And once she gets in, we find out she's not 9 months old.
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She's 6 months old. And so I immediately know this is going to be a long night because I've figured this out already.
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When they bring somebody in who's 78 years of age, they're not going to spend 3 hours on that person.
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If they've had cardiac arrest or something like that, they're going to try, but they're not going to try for a long period of time.
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You know, someone who's 20 or 30, they're going to be doing it for a long time, and I figure here. And even when I had walked into the
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ER, I had noticed that there were not only more nurses and stuff, but the look, just the atmosphere was electric, and all of a sudden, cops started showing up from all over the place.
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Because, and they told me later, it's like, well, they have kids, and so they just went code 3 just to see if there was something that they could do and stuff like that.
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And so here comes, so I'm looking around the parking lot. Where are the parents?
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And here comes a late middle -aged woman rushing toward the door. And that's when
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I find out what the story was. Today was the first day that grandma took care of grandchild.
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Mom and dad are at the lake, and they haven't been contacted yet. And they're trying to get word out to them, but they're at the lake, and this is before cell phones.
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And so what's happened is grandma has put grandbaby down for a nap on a mattress.
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And grandbaby has rolled over, and somehow, the space between the mattress and the wall has gotten wedged into that space between the mattress and the wall with her face in the mattress, and has suffocated.
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And if you've ever been in an emergency room, you know that the head nurse of emergency room is chiseled out of granite.
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They are heartless creatures. They're just chosen for their absolute inability to feel emotion, except for that night.
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Everybody is focused on this. And so I take grandma into that room, and I figure out we're going to be there all night.
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It's 20 minutes. It's 20 minutes. There just wasn't anything they could do. It had been too long.
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And I had to take grandma into that room with police, because obviously there was an investigation and stuff like that, so they had to have somebody present.
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That tiny little body on that table. And the cops are crying.
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The nurses are crying. The head nurse is crying. It is unbelievable.
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My daughter at that time was about three, I would say. And one of the hardest things about being a chaplain was it changed me, but it doesn't change your family.
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It doesn't change your wife. It doesn't change your kids. They don't see these things. And you don't even want to necessarily try to communicate these things to them, because they're often so negative, but you're changed by it.
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All I could do is go home. She was already in bed by the time I got home, but the next day, just hug her.
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And just be so thankful that I still had her. But it was just horrific.
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I mean, it's the only way to describe it. That night was absolutely horrific. It was the worst experience that I had there.
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But then on the other side, I have to say, on the other side, before we look at some of the real practical things,
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I went into CCU, and I had a nurse come up to me and say, I don't remember his name.
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Have you met the man in room number two? And I said, no, I haven't. I've come by. He's always been unconscious.
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And she says, I've got to tell you about this guy. He says he's in his 90s.
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He was one of the very first recipients of an artificial pacemaker in the entire
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United States. And he's on a no resuscitation,
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NR, no resuscitation plan. And he is just incredible.
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You go in, and you do a blood draw, and you know it hurts. And when you're done, he says, thank you, honey.
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Because when you're 91, you call everybody honey anyways. And you can get away with it. So thank you, honey.
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And he's just the kindest man you've ever met. And she said, you know, once I held his hand, and I said to him,
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I said, you know you're dying. And he says, oh, yeah, I know that, honey.
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And she says, are you afraid? And he looks at her, and he says, honey,
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I've walked with the Lord for 87 of my 91 years. And so why in the world would
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I be afraid to go see him? And so I happened to come in to the
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CCU on a Sunday afternoon. And I was talking with the one relative that he had there, a niece or a cousin or something.
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I don't remember what her relationship was. And by this time in the hospital,
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I had, I mean, I have a biology background from college. And I had seen enough people die by now that I'm looking at the monitors, and I realize he's going right now.
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And so we called the nurse in, happened to be the same nurse, and stood at his bedside, and the relative holding one hand and the other nurse holding the other.
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And I got my arm around the relative. And with absolute peace and tranquility, this servant of the
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Lord entered into eternity with great confidence and no struggle.
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And I think of those two and the whole range in between. And I came to understand during that time period that in Western society, and I'm assuming that most of what
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I'll say will be pretty directly connected to here in South Africa, that there may be some differences.
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But in the United States, we do not talk about death.
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Think about the television entertainment that we watch. You can watch a program in which literally hundreds, thousands of people die in 40 minutes.
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And by the end, everybody's happy and all is good. You never see the long -term grieving.
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You never see the process. You never see how long it actually takes people to get over a sudden loss of a close loved one.
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We don't talk about it. And as all of our nations have moved from agrarian status to the modern technological age, my parents were still old enough to know in their day what it was like to have entire families living in one home.
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And you'd know your great -grandparents. You'd know your grandparents. I mean, we delay marriage so late today that many of our young people will be very, very elderly if they ever see their grandchildren at all.
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I'm really thankful. I got married at 19. My wife was 18. And so I had my first grandchild.
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Well, she just missed my birthday by two days. So little Clementine was born two days after my 50th birthday.
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So it's really easy. Even she at four and a half is able to figure out how old Punkle is by how old she is.
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Just add 50 to it, and she can figure it out. And I'm thankful for that because in a few years, I'm going to need her to help me with that.
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But I'm really thankful that I can give her horsey rides and on my back and everything else.
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And I knew my grandparents. But that kind of experience of knowing and seeing mortality, and very frequently the great -grandparents would die in the home.
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You would see that. We hide our young people from the reality of death now.
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Very rarely bring them to funerals or even talk about this type of thing. Well, do we even meet around a table any longer to eat and communicate with one another?
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Everyone's going someplace else. Even when the kids sit down, they've got an iPod on, they're listening to music or something like that.
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The idea of the generations sharing their wisdom and things like that is passing quickly.
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And as a result, the vast majority of people are not prepared to deal with the loss of a loved one.
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And I'm going to be primarily dealing with the loss of a loved one though I recognize that the grieving process is not limited to death.
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One of the toughest grieving processes is the loss of a spouse to divorce. And what makes it really hard is that there's no finality because that person still lives.
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And so there is finality in the death situation, but there isn't in that. And the loss of abilities, the loss of a leg, for example, contracting of cancer, all these things, you will be able to see parallels to the grief process as we briefly discuss it this evening.
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But death brings a reality that carries with it its own finality.
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And in the process, it reminds us of our own mortality, and that's where the difference really lies. That's what makes it different than anything else, is that no matter what happens in the back of our minds when we experience the death of a loved one, whether we want to accept it or not, it faces us with the reality of our own mortality.
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That someday that's going to be me in that casket. If it happened to this person, it can happen to me.
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Maybe they're very aged. Well, okay, it's down the road someplace. But we all know, we all know that we get into those vehicles and I've seen those guys driving those vans out there.
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You call them taxis. They are low -flying rockets is what they are.
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And so you know just as I do that none of us have a guarantee of even returning home this evening.
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And that reminds us of our mortality, and it complicates that situation.
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What I learned is that's also the case in the church. It shouldn't be, but it is. It's the case in the church.
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The vast majority of Christians, we should be prepared. The scriptures tell Christians that it is better to spend a day in the house of mourning than a day in the house of feasting because that day spent in the house of mourning causes us to count our days and to recognize our mortality, whereas that day in the house of feasting is just simply passed without any type of eternal benefit derived from it.
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We should be people, because we have died with Christ, been raised with him, we should be people who have thought through the issue of the loss of a loved one and recognize we will grieve.
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Anyone who is old enough to love is old enough to grieve. Anyone who is old enough to love is old enough to grieve.
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And our society will tell us, well, you give somebody a couple weeks off and then they should just pull themselves together and all will be well.
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The reality is if we really understand who we are as human beings, whether Christian or non -Christian, that process of grieving is going to extend literally our entire lives, not intensely, obviously.
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I lost my mom seven years ago and do
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I still think of my mother? Do I still miss her laugh or the fact that you could tell her a joke and just so enjoy the fact that she'd call you two days later when she finally got it?
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Yeah, I miss that. Because she had two kinds of laugh, the laugh when you first told it, which you knew really wasn't all that sincere, and then there was a couple days later, hey,
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I got it, yeah, all right, you know. And I can enjoy that now, but, you know, mother's days can be a little tough and you have anniversaries and her birthday's coming up and things like that.
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Sure, I will always be a person who's lost that person. All of us enter into that eventually at some point in our lives.
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But especially when it's someone like a spouse or something like that, that is going to end up changing you and you're always going to be a grieving person.
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But the actual initial process, because if you think about it, I've been married for 35 years, actually.
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You had an old bio there someplace, I'm not sure where you got it, 35 years, I'm sort of proud of that, and it's 160 debates, by the way.
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But look, after that many decades together, your life has certain patterns of habits that involve that other person.
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And if they're all of a sudden not there, how long does it take you to build new habits?
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And how are you going to feel during the period of time when those old habits are having to be slowly broken down and new habits replacing them?
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That's what the process of grief is all about. It's confusing, it's hard, it's emotional.
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For some of us who aren't very emotional ourselves, or at least we don't express that openly, it can be just as difficult and just as disconcerting because we don't express our emotions.
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And so, how long does that take? Well, it's going to depend upon the person. But my experience in the hospital was the most intense feelings of loss, confusion, anger, anxiety, were three to six months after the loss.
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We give people two weeks and expect them to be top performers as soon as they come back.
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We don't deal well with this issue. We do not think well upon this issue. Even though the literature is filled with the discussion of what really is involved, we don't think about it.
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I want to just briefly talk with you because my time is passing quickly. Thankfully, I really can't actually see the timer, so that's sort of good.
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The lighting's horrible, so I just blame you for that. But I want to talk to you a little bit about what
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I identified as... You've heard of the stages of grief. Nobody...
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Let me put it this way. Everybody's experience of grief will be unique because everyone's relationship with the person they lost is unique.
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But we're all human beings. And therefore, there can be patterns that we can identify that some people will fit more into the center of those patterns than others.
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Some people will be on one side or the other. I get that. Everyone's unique, but we're human beings.
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And therefore, there are similarities to our experiences. And what I found in the hospital...
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Because you've all heard about the fact. And I bet you if I asked how many of you have seen this happen.
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My mom died when my parents had been married for either 53 or 56 years. I forget which.
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And... When you've been married for that period of time, it is a documented reality that very often the other spouse will die in a very short period of time after the other one.
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Even if they did not have extensive medical issues. You hear about the lovely stories of couples dying right next to each other in the hospital.
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They've been married for 70 years and things like that. You get that. But I saw in the hospital that I would have especially women coming in to the lost support group on a
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Sunday afternoon that had completely lost their self -identity. Their life had been completely defined by that man.
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And by their caring for that man, providing for that man, him providing for her. And they just didn't know what to do any longer.
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And I saw what I would call the upward spiral and the downward spiral.
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It's a spiral. It's not a straight line. But you'd have good days and bad days, good days and bad days.
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And the question was, were they getting more and more intense in the emotion as you're going down?
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Or are they becoming more acceptance, more experience of life, more experience of happiness as you're going up?
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Still having bad days? You may go for a week and then you have a bad day. But is it upward or downward?
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And I'll tell you right now in case I forget it, but I don't think I will. The key that determined which direction you were going in that spiral was one word.
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Hope. Hope. Whether you could look into the future and see yourself experiencing happiness, being useful in the lives of others, experiencing joy and contentment again, or if the future was just simply one huge black cloud.
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If you could not see yourself ever being happy again, if you could not see yourself invested in the lives of others again, that was the thing that determined, as I saw, whether one was on the downward or upward spirals.
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Now, what were these spirals? Well, let me explain the upward spiral first. Numbness and shock.
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We've all seen this, I would imagine, but you'll have these people in the first few weeks, they seem so strong.
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They're handling everything and they're making decisions and they just seem rock solid.
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What we don't realize is for the first couple of weeks, it's numbness and shock. It's built into us.
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It's how we can cope and survive. And that eventually wears off.
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That eventually wears off because you have to start dealing with the reality that your life has fundamentally changed in how you interact with the world around you because that person was so important to you.
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And so, you go from numbness and shock to emptiness and solitude. There's loss.
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You feel alone. And notice the term I use, solitude, there.
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You need time to think through what has happened. You need time to... It would be nice, and as Christians, we know we're...
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We know exactly why we're supposed to do this, but every relationship has its holes, has its faults.
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And how many people have lost somebody and said, oh, the last thing
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I said. Oh, as I went out the door that day, I was impatient.
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We hadn't dealt... We hadn't worked through that hurt. We hadn't... Oh, and you need time to be thinking about those things.
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That's why I certainly learned, and have I lived in light of it? No, but I certainly learned then, don't let there be anything on your account because you don't want that there.
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You don't want that there. Emptiness and solitude. Anxiety, guilt, and shame. Anxiety.
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What's the future gonna be like? How am I gonna make it? Guilt. Oh, I should have driven that night, or I shouldn't have said that thing, or if I had just seen there were signs of the heart attack that was coming in.
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It's so, so constant, so regular for us to be second -guessing things. And shame.
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Shame at things that were said. Shame at behaviors that we had.
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And now there's nothing we can do about it. Oh, so much of the law support group was taken up in discussing things like that.
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Then you have anger and irritability. And one of the things, and I'm gonna go ahead and mention this now because I've had people tell me,
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I'm so blessed that I've actually had people contact me and say, your book kept me from committing suicide. I mean, that's a blessing to hear from someone.
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But even in the hospital, I remember so clearly one day that I brought out this issue of anger, and I said, there are times when you may well feel anger toward the one you lost.
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And I remember this one woman just gasped out loud in front of everyone.
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She just gasped. And she said, I thought I was the only one.
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I thought I was one of the most evil people in the world because I was angry. I'm angry because he left me with nothing.
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And he did this and he did that, and I felt anger. But I just, I haven't been able to forgive myself for feeling angry.
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You mean other people feel this? Probably saved her life. She was in despair.
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She just didn't know because no one talked about it. And she just thought that was the most horrible thing in the world. And it happens.
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Anger and irritability is a little bit different than what you're gonna see on the downward spiral.
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But the fact of the matter is people who are in the grieving process, you need to cut them a little slack.
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You need to give them a little patience because they can come to the end of the rope at times. There could be some bad days.
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Sadness and grief, and that sadness and grief can extend for long periods of time. Look, we are people,
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God made us to observe times and seasons. He gave us holidays, for example, to remember his goodness toward us and things like that.
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He gave the people of Israel things like that. And so on birthdays, anniversaries, that special day that you shared together, whatever it might be, for years down the road, there would be people that would say, you know,
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I keep hearing her calling my name. I'll be in a store and I'll, I thought
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I saw her. Because you see, you've had that habit for so long and it takes time for those habits to be replaced by other habits.
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Or even, and this surprises a lot of people, walking down the spice aisle at the grocery store and there's a particular smell that you always used in his particular favorite food.
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And as you walk down the aisle, you smell it. And there you stand blubbering in the middle of the aisle and nobody has any idea why.
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It happens. It happens. Sadness and grief. And then acceptance.
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Not the finish of a process. It's not like, oh, everything is just fine. No, you've been changed by this experience.
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You're a person who has lost someone that you loved and you've been changed by that.
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Now that change can be a positive or a negative thing and a lot of how you respond to it is going to determine what its long -term effect is going to be.
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But acceptance. Now, how is that different from the downward spiral? Well, numbness and shock is the same.
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But then, emptiness and isolation. Rather than solitude, if you're on the downward spiral, you tend to push people away.
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It's one thing to need some time to process. It's another thing to begin severing healthy and helpful relationships.
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When you see someone who's doing that, you know, solitude will be brief.
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It will not be permanent. But when you start cutting people off, when you start purposely putting yourself in a situation where you don't have to interact with others, that's not a healthy thing and that's not a good thing.
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Fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame. The only difference there is the addition of fear. Fear and anger can function as the battery acids of emotion.
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And they can be extremely corrosive when we become isolated from those around us.
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So you add fear to that level. Then you have anger and instead of irritability, you have animosity.
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A settled attitude. I'm going to tell you something, folks, on a very practical level.
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I saw families torn apart. Not simply because of the death of a person, but because the people in that family responded in the downward spiral to one another.
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And relationships that had been strong and important, destroyed because of how sensitive people are during this time period.
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And especially, especially those first few weeks, especially in dealing with the actual arrangements for the funeral, who's invited, who's not.
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And then dealing with the possessions. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. And then on a really practical level, super, super practical level here, because I'll probably forget this later on, but let me throw it out there.
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Folks, if you're facing a situation like this, you may have a father or mother, they're fading.
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They're maybe in hospice or something like that. First of all, you're never fully prepared. As long as there's life, you have hope.
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I can't tell you how many people, I'd meet with them in the CCU, their loved one had just passed away, and they're like,
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I thought I was ready. As long as there's life, there's always hope. Just be aware of that.
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It's good to prepare, but just remember, you're still never fully prepared.
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But, one of the things that I, this has just helped so many people, one of the huge pitfalls that damaged so many families, holidays.
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Holidays. You would think, what do you mean? I'll tell you a story. Family, dad's passed away.
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Patriarch of the family. Probably October -ish. Going into, in the
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United States, we have two major holidays. I really appreciate the fact you had that cold front when
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I flew into Johannesburg. It made me feel like Christmas. It was great. It was 46 on my back porch.
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46 Celsius on my back porch the week before I left. It's great to come down and go, ooh, it's wonderful.
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We have two major holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don't think you have Thanksgiving, do you? Okay. I love
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Thanksgiving. It's a specifically Christian thing, and I love turkey and dressing.
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My dad made the greatest turkey and dressing on the planet. So, anyway, having that big bird as a central part of the family feast is a quintessentially
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American thing to do. Well, this family wasn't communicating well. And so they just decided, you know what?
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We're just gonna soldier on through, and we're not gonna suspend any of our traditions. We're just gonna, we're gonna just go through here.
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And they weren't talking to each other, and they weren't planning. And so they get together, and they cook the meal, and they put it all out there.
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And then it all comes to a grinding halt. You know why? Because there's only one person that's ever cut that bird, and he's not there.
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And all the silences, all the non -preparation, all the stuff that was bubbling under the surface, but no one would, he was there, but not there, and because they weren't willing to talk about him, he was there more than he would have been if they had talked.
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And nobody was willing to touch a knife to cut that bird. And the place blew up.
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The place blew up. Major damage done to relationships in the members of that family over a cutting of a bird, because there had been no preparation, there had been no thinking ahead, there had been no communication.
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Incredibly practical thing, plan ahead and talk. Don't do what so many families do, and that is, don't, don't, don't, don't, we don't want to hurt somebody, or we don't want, no, you've got to talk those things through.
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It's just absolutely vitally important. So animosity, animosity develops. And then, instead of sadness and grief, you have resentment and bitterness.
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Resentment and bitterness. Now that you've isolated yourself, now it's really easy to begin to blame others, to transfer your guilt to someone else, where there's resentment and bitterness towards others.
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And instead of final acceptance, you have sadness and despair. And that sadness and despair, especially amongst the elderly, can very quickly lead to physical ramifications as well.
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And so, it's not like it's a straight line. You experience these in a spiral, so that there are some days that you think, hey, you know what,
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I seem to be doing pretty good. And then the next day, and you can't always tell why.
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A lot of people report feeling like there's an elephant sitting on their chest, they just can't get the pressure off, and it's not a heart attack, it's just this despair, this weight, this loss.
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And yet, some days it's there and some days it's not. And those of us that are logical and pride ourselves on being disciplined with our emotions, it can really be a mess.
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If you're always a mess, well, then you might actually have a little bit of an advantage, come to think of it, on the emotional level.
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It's like, well, hey, you know. But those of us who, you know, I'm not
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Italian. We got any Italians here? Okay, we got some Italians over here. Don't hug me, okay.
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I would speak at these churches in New York with all these Italians in them, and they're like, hey! And I'm like, back off, back off, back off.
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Personal space, personal space, personal space, you know. But, you know, there are some people that are like this, up and down, and up and down.
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I'm just sort of, you know. I'm just, you know,
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I'm pretty much the same every day. And so it would, for me, it's even harder, because it's so far outside of my normal experience to go through that kind of jumbling of emotions, because my regular routine, broken up, loss of that person, loss of that person.
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So each one of us experiences these things in different ways and in different fashions.
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I've actually gone five minutes over. Well, that's okay. So let me just emphasize this, and then we'll take some of the questions.
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I've seen some of the questions. They're very, very difficult questions, very hard questions. As I said before, in my experience, the key issue is the issue of hope.
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I did a talk when I was at the hospital, we recorded it, called Christians Grieve Too. And my emphasis was upon that text that Paul wrote to the
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Thessalonians, that we are not to grieve as those who have no hope. And a lot of Christians feel guilt when they grieve, because they misunderstood that verse.
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They think that that means that Christians don't grieve. That's not what it says. We are not to grieve as those who have no hope.
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Huge difference between being a person who grieves the loss of a loved one, knowing the promise of Jesus Christ of redemption and eternal life, and grieving as a person who does not have that hope.
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And when you understand the central message of the Christian faith, Jesus Christ came that we might have life, we might have it more abundantly.
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And he did so, he accomplished that through death. Yet we have life through death.
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His sacrifice, his self -giving on the cross of Calvary, for the one who puts their faith and trust in him, he becomes their substitute.
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The just punishment for my sin is laid upon him. And not only are my sins therefore fully forgiven in him, because the wrath of God comes upon him in my place, but his perfect righteousness is imputed to me, because it's not just forgiveness of sin that we need.
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There are great commandments that God has given us to love God perfectly. Well, I haven't done that. I need a positive righteousness.
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And that is given to me in Jesus Christ. And so, I am united with him in his death, his burial, and his resurrection.
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And in fact, the great promise of Colossians 3 .3 is that you have died and your life has been hidden with Christ in God.
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And he is seated at the right hand of the Father. Nothing can touch my life that is not allowed to touch my life by the
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Father and the Son and their perfect purpose for me. So I have hope not only in my difficulties
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I experience in this life, but I have hope in that empty tomb is the promise of my resurrection.
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And it's the promise of the resurrection of those that I've loved as well.
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But I'll go ahead and address one of the toughest questions right now, before we close.
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It's part of the question, so I guess it goes into the question and answer period. It's one of the hardest things I had to deal with in the hospital.
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It wasn't a Christian hospital. I had to be at the bedside when many non -Christians passed into eternity.
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When I first began, I went and I bought a half dozen books and worked through them.
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Not a single one helped me because the theology behind every single one of them was basically protect
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God. God didn't have anything to do with this. God will comfort you now, but he had nothing to do with the loss of your loved one.
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And I just sat there going, well, if he had nothing to do with the loss of that loved one, then how can I say he's got a great plan for your life when he was on vacation before?
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How could I say on the one hand, well, God will make things meaningful for you now, but I can't explain what in the world he was doing before.
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And when I read my Bible, I see a God who is very different than this sort of absent
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God that then comes along and tries to make things better. That's not what I see in Scripture.
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And so I couldn't answer that. I couldn't approach people that way. I never learned what the magic words were, by the way, because there are no magic words.
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And to be perfectly honest with you, in many, many lost situations, the greatest wisdom
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I found was in holding a hand and silence. People wanted certain words.
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Oh, I can't tell you how many people in the hospital wanted me to act as God and forgive this person's sins and change them and usher them into the place of glory, and that wasn't my place.
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It would have been a false hope. But at the same time, I don't think that little family room off the
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ER was meant to be a theological seminary either. That's why we need to be talking about these things before we get there, because what we say when we get there can have various levels of value to it.
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But the big question is, what do you say about a person who never bowed the knee to Jesus Christ?
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What do you say in that situation? You, Christian minister, what do you do? Well, first of all,
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I cannot look into anyone's heart, and God has not granted to me the ability to know who his elect people are, and I've often said
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I wish God gave to us glasses that would cause the elect to glow green, so wouldn't that be great in the marriage counseling situation?
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Oh, I see what's going on.
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Yeah, that would be wonderful. That would be great. It would be so wonderful to look into the hearts of men.
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Well, I wouldn't want to, but we can't do that. And I am not in a position, and will never be in a position to be able to identify who they are or to give to someone a forgiveness that God hasn't given to them.
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All I can say in a situation like that is that my
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Lord and Savior has always proven to be a powerful and perfect Savior to any person who has ever turned to Him in repentance and faith.
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And I can't know who has done that and who has not done that, but I have to be faithful to His message, and that is the only way that anyone will ever stand before a thrice holy
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God is if they have His righteousness, because no righteousness that we have is going to avail before Him.
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And we are never more foolish than when we allow anger that we might have.
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You might say, well, I've talked to people who have been a part of a religious group their entire life, and their ancestors were a part of this religious group, and they'll say, why should
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I believe what you have to say? Because that would mean my ancestors are not going to be able to go to heaven. And the point is not, you can't change the situation with your ancestors.
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The question is, what about you? If you come to recognize your need of God's perfect righteousness, you can't let what's happened to your ancestors change the fact that God calls you to repent and believe.
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And so, in that situation, in that hospital room, I would hold the hand,
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I would pray for God's comfort upon everyone in that room, but I knew what they wanted me to do.
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They wanted me to act as if I were God, and to somehow change this person's entire soul.
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I could not do that. I would not do that. You may even ask, why did you stop working in the hospital?
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Well, I was bivocational. I mean, I was still working as an apologist during this time period. And the support of the ministry finally got back to the point where I could do that again.
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But the main reason was simple. They wanted to bring a Wiccan chaplain on staff.
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And I couldn't do it. I could not function in that type of a context where I would be in essence saying, well, you know, we're just spiritual people, and one spirituality is just the same as another spirituality.
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I don't believe that. And I couldn't function in that situation. And that's what is so hard for many chaplains today, is because they are put in that situation.
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We live in a day where the idea that this is true for all people is very offensive to our society.
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How dare you say that? How dare you say that? You know why I dare say that? Because there's an empty tomb that demands
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I say that. Every single other religion on the planet either doesn't deal with the reality of death, or when it does, its founder is still in its tomb.
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But when I speak not on my own authority, but on the authority of that one who rose from the dead, take it up with him if you don't like what he has to say.
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Because he's seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, and he's going to come again someday. That's his promise.
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And when you predict your own death, burial, and resurrection, and then bring it about, I think you might want to listen to someone like that.
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Because there's nobody else that does it. Nobody else that can. And so there aren't easy answers when there are people who want you to, in essence, pass their loved ones on into heaven.
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The first person you need to be thinking about is you. Because God's command to repent and believe comes to each one of us individually.
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And the scriptures say, today is the day of salvation. Now is the day. You don't put it off.
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Because none of us know. None of us have a guarantee of tomorrow. So, yes,