Stand Dangerously (At The Threshold Of Heaven And Earth)

 "...not because you've got it all sorted out, not because you've understood all the answers to all the questions..."

This message (link below) was a huge gift just now, in this present darkness I'm walking through.  I've been listening to NT Wright a lot lately, and it's been an enormous boon.

Highly recommend, if you're wrestling with the questions-without-answers...and recorded at my alma mater, nonetheless!

Dr. NT Wright speaking on Job 42, at Wheaton College 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLOzo7pct9Y

Things he touches on that were particularly meaningful to me today: He asks what I've come to call in recent days "the origin questions." I have been desperate to find someone else asking these questions. A lot of people talk about how we endure the suffering even if we can't answer why...but not as many people seem brave enough to say out loud, "Why are we even suffering in the first place, regardless of whether it produces any good?  We didn't ask to be here." I don't want answers to this.  I just want to mingle with other people courageous enough to ask.

Also, I always appreciate how Dr. Wright points out the philosophies that have been generally and falsely accepted as Christianity. I have over the years continually identified so much Gnosticism entrenched in my personal beliefs.  It's like weeding a garden.  You can spend a Saturday weeding the flower bed, only to find by the next Saturday, more weeds have taken root and popped up all over again.  It's a perpetual work. Just like the work of righting our perspective of God.  A lot of the work in my soul over the last couple very dark months is confronting my delusion about life being a fairy tale. 

No Resonance with "Roles"

What I want to talk about in this post is a little bit how to navigate information when you are exploring resources on grief navigation.

The thing is, as you explore, some things will be helpful, some things will not be helpful (in a lukewarm way), and some things will not be helpful in a deeply affecting way, like you feel just completely misunderstood by them or maybe even offended.

This is normal and okay.  Sometimes we will experience all three of these things within the pages of one book.  It's okay.  My advice is to use what's helpful and discard what's not.  Who knows? What's unhelpful now may prove helpful later.  Or it might not.  It doesn't really matter.  If you are seeking help with your grief, you need to focus right now on what is helpful and soothing and makes you feel understood.

We are conditioned by society and our subcultures to think in very black and white terms, like everything fits into either "this" or "this." The older I get, the more bizarre this seems to me, since there's almost nothing in life that actually fits into two categories.  And yet the phenomenon persists.  

We do this with grief resources, too.  We try to fit it into "helpful" and "unhelpful." But it's really okay if something was just a little helpful.  Or if five chapters of a book on grief are helpful, but the other five were not particularly helpful.  We glean the good and shrug off the not so good.  It's okay to do that. 

One major example of this for me was that I really appreciated the book "On Grief and Grieving" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, which I read in the summer of 2020 as part of a grief group led by a friend of mine.  I have since recommended the book to many people and even given away a few copies.  I helped me to feel so understood (in the grief world of feeling constantly misunderstood) and validated.  I was also so thankful to hear them address all the misconceptions around the "stages" of grief and to clarify their intentions in laying out grief that way.

But there was one chapter called "Roles" that just did not resonate with me at all.  The gist of the chapter is that when you lose someone, you lose the roles they played in your life (I don't know, like travel buddy, bridge partner, shopping friend, lawn mower, handyman, etc.). And now you need to confront the loss of the roles and explore who will now fill those roles for you.

Maybe I should re-read the chapter to be more fair. But, my gosh, I just could not embrace this way of thinking about people.  It seemed truly so bizarre to me to think of people only in terms of the roles that they played for me, as if they were just actors in a play I was directing or robots I keep in a closet until I need their services.  I also can't see thinking this way about re-filling those roles.  

To me, if you lost someone, you grieve them and you grieve all you lost with them about your relationship.  To me, losses have always left these huge holes in my life.  I can almost visualize them as these huge chasms that I'm peering over the edge of into an abyss.  

But those holes are sacred.  I do not try to refill them and God help anyone else who tries.  There are few faster ways to enrage me, actually, then to try to somehow replace the person I lost. They remain like a shrine in my psyche. 

There will be men in my life that may be sort of fatherly to me, but no one will ever replace my dad.  That is a sacred hole.  I hate that it's there, but the only way I can see making it worse now that it exists is for someone to try to remove it.  It's there because it's there and I have to work on accepting it and moving forward with the hole. 

In the almost two years since Rebekah died, I am continually working on accepting that she is gone and that a friendship that endured nearly 30 years has come to an earthly end.  I am thankful that I have other close girlfriends in my life that have been such a deep source of comfort to me in this time...but never in any way would I want them to feel like they need to now fill the hole that Rebekah left.

And I don't want anyone trying to be Rebekah.  No one can be her.  No one knows our jokes, our history, our rhythms, no matter how much of it they were nearby for.  No one knows how many laughs, tears, and prayers held our friendship together for 30 years.  Our friendship was hard-won.  There were plenty of times either or both of us weren't sure it was worth the work.  But for love of each other, often in spite of our goofiness, we pressed on.

This friendship is not transferable upon death to someone else.  Friendship doesn't work like that.  Friendship is a custom-made garment, knit together stitch by stitch over days, weeks, years. It is not a one-size-fits-all or a hand-me-down.

When someone dies, you cannot replace that person nor can you expect someone else to replace them. You are not that person and you will never be that person and God didn't place you here on earth to be their replacement.  God is not asking you to be someone else and he's not asking you to simultaneously be two people.  You may acquire some new responsibilities in this situation, but you have not acquired a new personhood.  He created you with your own things to do, to be, and in relationship with him, you have the rest of your days to figure that out.

In my case, I am my own person.  I have my own life with my own responsibilities and priorities. I am not an extension of Rebekah.  I am not a backup Rebekah.  So (though it shouldn't even have to be pointed out) I will not try to be Rebekah for anyone in any way.  I am not her.  I will not fill her roles and I will not ask anyone to fill her roles in my life.

My friendship with Rebekah met its earthly end and was sealed with goodbyes on her deathbed.  It's my personal work, painful as it is, to make peace with that.  Part of that work is coming to see that commitment of time, heart, and energy as done for now. My friendship with Rebekah doesn't oblige me to take care of anyone else the way we cared for each other.  It doesn't mean now I transfer the banter, the sharing, the jokes, the gifts, the attention to someone else now. It doesn't give anyone else automatically the access to my time, my emotional energy, or my heart that Rebekah had.

If you think of people in terms of their roles in your life, that's your deal.  And good luck with maintaining any kind of relationships like that.  (If you're wondering why people don't respond to you the way you want, here's a huge clue, btw.) 

I do not think like this.  I think of people as a uniquely designed creation whose presence in my life may be a great gift to me (conversely, it may be a huge annoyance to me, but that's another blog post - ha!).  I may benefit from their presence, but the whole of who they are is not just what they bring to my life. They're a person with their own thing going on, and sometimes in some ways that thing might intersect with my thing in ways we enjoy. We co-exist; we do not coerce, control, or co-opt.

When I lost three people I loved over the course of just 12 weeks in 2019, I felt a lot of pressure from the eulogizing.  I started to question all my life choices and my head swirled with what it meant to carry on someone's legacy.  Should I get certified as a teacher and carry on Rebekah's legacy in that way?  Should I begin a Facebook prayer ministry like Jeff had?  Should I rethink hospitality and have the open-door policy my grandmother had?  I felt very overwhelmed, largely by guilt, by the contrast of who I was and who these people were.

By the grace of God, I soon began to realize that the best way to carry out someone's excellent legacy is to live out my personal giftings and callings and experiences in the same excellent way that these beloved ones did...and that is how I can honor them.  Not by becoming them, but by being the most excellent, generous, confident me in my things the way I saw them being in their things.  This gave me a lot of peace and at least a little guidance on how to move forward with these dear people as an enduring part of myself and my story.

For as much as grief is a confusing time, it can also be a clarifying time.  It can clarify what is helpful and what is not helpful.  It can clarify who is demanding too much of you or the wrong things from you and who is walking beside you without judgment or expectation.  It can clarify what you should and should not be spending your time on.  As much as I would prefer some other way to learn all this, grieving has afforded me all of them.

The Ring Theory and My Gross Naivete

Psychologists Susan Silk and Barry Goldman came up with an invaluable approach to crises which they dubbed The Ring Theory.

A couple of years ago, a lot of people were re-posting the articles about this theory on social media, which is where I first saw it and fell in love with it.

Here's a link to one such article, which explains what I'm referring to: 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/promoting-hope-preventing-suicide/201705/ring-theory-helps-us-bring-comfort-in

Anyway, I wholeheartedly agreed with this theory and have been personally operating under it since I learned about it.  I have shared it and told people about it whenever I can. 

But today I had a huge and devastating realization about The Ring Theory.

And it's this (hear me sobbing?):  I have been operating under the extremely naive presumption that because I understand and adhere to The Ring Theory that other people will also do the same.

Oh gosh.  I can be so naive, even at 43.

The Ring Theory is like a 12 Step Program:  It works if you work it.  It only works if you work it.  But it doesn't work by osmosis, and so you can do the thing for yourself, but other people not only have to know about it, but also do it for themselves for it to work broadly.

To summarize briefly if you're not wanting to read an article, The Ring Theory is an approach to crises which sets the person at the center of the crises in the center circle.  Then there are concentric circles around that person, which contain the people in decreasing levels of closeness to that person.

So if you, let's say, are the one with the cancer diagnosis, you are the person in the center circle.  (The concentric circles can only really be defined by this person, but let's do a general possible layout here for the sake of this discussion.)  The next closest circle would be, let's say, the cancer patient's spouse and children, if applicable.  The next circle might be, then, their parents and siblings and some close friends. The next outward circle would be their friend group, not the closest friends, but the ones who've had a persistent presence in their lives, and then, perhaps, outward from that would be their community, which might include acquaintances from church, school, social clubs, whatever you're into. Finally, we just get all the way outward to broader society.

But the circles are not all there is to the theory.  The objective here is to prevent people from being complete blockheads in responding to the central person's crisis, and so a rule is established: comfort inward, complaints outward.  This means the person in the center can complain to their spouse, their parents, their friends, their pastor, all the people in the outer circles about their crisis, but the people in the outward circles need to give encouragement inward (and not complaints) to the people closer to the crisis. 

That means the people in the outward circles cannot look for emotional support from the people in the inner circles.  If they are needing support, they need to look for it in a circle further out.  Also, no one should be looking for support from the person at the center, and likewise, no one in the same circle should be looking within that circle for support; they need to look outward for people who are less close to the situation.

If this all seems too heady, let's put it in context.  When one of my friends was battling cancer, she told me about how people from her community would sometimes bring over a meal and then get very emotional while talking to her, even sobbing.  Then she felt like she had to comfort them.  I know it's very hard to keep it together in these circumstances--especially if you haven't seen your friend in a while, their appearance due to cancer can be very shocking--but it's just SO inappropriate to come in the guise of helping your friend and then what you're actually doing is increasing their emotional burden.  

People at the center of the crisis cannot be burdened with comforting people outside of the crisis. (These things seem so obvious, don't they? And yet people violate this all. the. time.)

So it's a glorious theory, a lovely model.  But devastatingly, it's only that: a theory.

This theory only pans out if people are emotionally healthy and emotionally appropriate.  Which just isn't the case in our broken world.

The case in our broken world is that some random, unhinged woman from your church community will insert herself into the inner circles and assume a closeness and privilege to information that is disproportionate to reality.  Some know-it-all guy from an outer circle will spout unhelpful, unsolicited advice about what should be done by people in closer circles, which makes him feel like he's doing something and leaves the others feeling exasperated and crushed. A friend who has only ever been an acquaintance of the central person will now self-proclaim to be a close friend, or a sibling of the central person will demand the access and attention that the spouse and children have. A narcissist in your midst will feel and assert that they, too, should be considered at the center of the crisis.

Or a friend or relative in the same circle of proximity as you will assume that they can lean on you, putting you in the awkward, impossible position of having to bear the weight of their struggle along with your own.

Most people don't know about the Rings and even if they learned about this theory, there's absolutely no guarantee that many of the bullheaded, self-absorbed people in the world would do anything to respect the Rings even if explained to them.

I'm trying to accept this today.  But it's devastating to me.  It is a continual source of devastation that people refuse to be appropriate in crises and grief, that people will often prey on your historic kindness and demand that you support them when it's actually a time that you need support yourself.  When you yourself are appropriately seeking help outward (i.e. from less connected friends/family or from professional counselors) and thus doing what's best, you're still fending off the inappropriateness of others' either seeking or offering help from/to you when you have never sought it and never offered it.

It adds so much unnecessary suffering and trauma to the already-present grief when people are pushy, demanding, and self-absorbed, when people insist on helping in ways that are unwelcome, when people assume a closeness because of the crisis that did not exist before the crisis.

But alas.  What to do?  There is an inherent emotionality to crises that just happens.  We are humans: we feel things. We feel things that happen to us.  We feel things that happen to friends and family.  We feel things that happen to acquaintances and often even to total strangers. People get weepy thinking about a mother dying young, whether they knew them or not.  It's a very sad thing and this is a normal reaction. People who would never tell you they loved you are all of a sudden gushing at you with words disproportionate to your closeness because someone you both loved is suffering or has died.  Emotions abound in crisis and spill all over everything.

I understand better than most that early grief is a unique, confusing time during which people react in myriad ridiculous, uncharacteristic ways. I have a certain amount of grace & tolerance for this in the moment, the days surrounding the diagnoses, the passing, and the funeral.  People are together and they're trying to fill awkward spaces with words and feel like they're doing all the things right. They're coming to terms with mortality and not wanting to have regrets.   

But I also believe in personal growth and responsibility, and as time goes on, I believe that people should not act as blindly and disrespectfully and annoyingly with their fourth or fifth crisis as they did with their first and second. I believe that people can actually learn and grow in their responses to situations.  Adults should be able to learn self-control (especially for Christians, as this is fruit of the Spirit), and at least begin to distinguish between what aids and what aggravates.

There's no winning.  It's compounded misery...being shouldered involuntarily with the job of teaching others how to be appropriate, while also trying to process your own grief. And it's the source of much suffering and anger in my soul. I can't fix it, but I have to keep dealing with it.  

But maybe, just maybe, by posting these thoughts, I will introduce some people to The Ring Theory and they will also decide it makes sense and begin to implement it themselves...and I will have done my tiny part to make crises just a little easier for the people at the center.