Growing through Suffering

Source: https://whatsyourgrief.com/growing-around-grief/

#grief #suffering #therapy #griefcounseling #growththroughsuffering

A pastor I’ve been working with for over 10 years recently shared a cartoon with me. He found incredibly helpful in his work as a hospice chaplain. It’s a quote from Lois Tonkin on the website, whatsyourgrief.com: “People think that grief slowly gets smaller with time. In reality, grief stays the same size but slowly life begins to grow bigger around it.”

This quote wonderfully captures something our therapists, coaches, and spiritual directors recognize all the time: while we may yearn for a pain-free life, our pain can help our lives deepen and grow—when we let it.

I learned how true this statement was being a pastor for over 35 years, and having done hundreds of funerals. So many people I knew deepened over time as their lives grew through their grief. While grief doesn’t shrink, the pain of losing someone or something can help us become more aware of life’s preciousness. It can make us more aware of God in each moment. It can help us develop wisdom we didn’t have before.

The big word is “can.” Grief, pain, trauma, struggle, and more can help our lives grow bigger when we respond in healthy ways. The converse is also true: a life without struggle can cause life to atrophy. Most of us intuitively know how a pain-free life can stagnate life. For example, have you ever heard anyone say that he or she “graduated from the school of hard knocks”? They’re saying they’ve developed uncommon wisdom and understanding through their struggles.

Many people think that if God is good, we shouldn’t struggle. But that’s not what the Bible teaches. In fact, almost every main character of the Bible struggled, and became more caring, healing, and resolute in their service of God through their struggles. The list of those who grow through pain starts with Adam and Eve, and includes, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the Israelites, Joshua, the Judges, Ruth, Hannah, Elijah, David, Solomon, Jesus, Paul, Peter, and the disciples/apostles.

Tonkin’s quote about grief has a lot of truth to it, and not only as it applies to grief. For generations counselors have recognized that people in therapy develop strengths, resources, wisdom, and depth they never had before and couldn’t develop on their own. The key is that they decided to work on their pain rather than repressing, depressing, projecting it, and/or inflicting it on others.

When people choose to work on their grief, their pain, their trauma, and more, their lives can get bigger. By now you’ve probably heard of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), where a person’s previous trauma causes depression, anxiety, a sense of discontinuity, confusion, and chaos in his or her life. Have you ever heard of its twin, post-traumatic growth syndrome (PTGS)? Mental health researchers have recognized that some who go through trauma transform their lives, making their lives bigger, deeper, and more expansive.

It's this growth that explains why therapy, coaching, and spiritual direction are so important to people suffering long-term life pain. We help people transform their pain and suffering to become more expansive, compassionate, and healing. Most people in the helping professions have experienced great pain in their own lives. They’re trained to help, but they also offer their own wisdom crafted by working on their own pain. This is true of the war-traumatized veteran who now dedicates his or her life to helping other veterans heal physically, mentally, emotionally, and relationally. It’s true of the rape victim who now helps other rape victims. It’s true of the recovering addict who now serves as an AA sponsor or therapist. It’s true of a local, great hockey player who recovered from cancer and how dedicates part of his life to raising money to fight cancer.

I’ve spent my career in two vocations littered with people who suffered grief, trauma, and pain, and tapped into it in the pursuit of helping others—ministry and counseling. It’s rare to find a therapist who hasn’t suffered great pain in her or his life. It’s also quite common to find pastors who have struggled in ways that now allows them to heal others of grief, trauma, and pain.

I’ve often used a phrase to explain the reality of life, which is this: “No one gets out of life alive.” The reality is that life can be, and often is, painful. But that pain can be transformed into hope and healing when we choose growth over pain-induced paralysis. And our therapists, coaches, and spiritual directors are here to help.

Blessings,

The Rev. N. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, MDiv, MA

Executive Director/Director of Caring for Clergy and Congregations

Christmas Triggers

#christmastriggers #holidaystress

By The Rev. Dr. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, MA, MDiv

“This isn’t what I asked for!” “Why do you have to act like this on such a special day?!” “Can’t you stop being like this just for one day?” “For some reason this day always makes me sad.” “How long do we have to be at your parent’s house…we’re always there too long?”

Christmas triggers: The Christmas season is so full of triggers. What’s a trigger? It’s an event, a situation, a feeling, a series of thoughts that “trigger”

emotional pain, conflicted relationships,

or difficult behaviors.

As much as we may love the Christmas season and Christmas day, both can trigger pain, loneliness, sadness, conflict, and so much more. So here are some ideas that may help.

Slow Down and Be Intentional: As joyful as the holidays can be, they’re stressful simply because they add so much to our already full plates. We go to more events and parties. We consume more unhealthy food and drink. We feel pressure to find and give “perfect” presents. We rub against each in ways that cause friction.

Slowing down and becoming more intentional helps. This means distinguishing between I want to do, what I need to do, and what I should let go of. Be intentional about what you say yes or not to. Be intentional about what you’ll eat and drink. Slow down so you can make good choices.

Focus on the Positive: This is incredibly hard to do when things become negative, but we can choose how to respond to triggers. We can react in typical negative ways, or we can choose other ways of thinking. Focusing on the positive means appreciating what’s good rather than lingering on what’s not. Appreciate the lights, friends, what’s good. Don’t deny what’s not good but pay more attention to what is good and be grateful for it. Gratitude is part of my spiritual life. I’m intentional about thanking God for all that is good.

Mature Understanding: Can you be more understanding simply of how people are? I’ve found this to be a powerful tool for getting through the stress of anything. The more I recognize that others are responding to triggers, causing them to be sad, create conflict, and feel stressed, the more I can become patient, compassionate, understanding, and respond in more helpful ways.

Be Responsible for Yourself: There was a phrase that really influenced my life when I was being trained as a drug and alcohol counselor. It has to do with two Alcoholics Anonymous steps 8 and 9, which have to do with making amends to those we’ve harmed. A recovering alcoholic said to me, I’ve learned that it’s my responsibility to make amends and ask for forgiveness. But I’m not responsible for getting them to forgive me.

The same is true for Christmas triggers. We can only be responsible for how we react and respond to them, not for how others do. So be responsible for your own responses and forgiveness for others.

There’s Nothing We Can Do to Grow Our Churches

A pastor I meet with for coffee once a month asked me a pointed question: “With all the work you’ve done over your career in turning around churches, what’s the one thing we can do to get churches to grow again?” Before I had a chance to think, I blurted out, “There’s nothing we can do to grow our churches, but there’s a lot of things we can do to grow our churches.”

We both paused and said, “Wow, that captures it!”

Too often pastors and churches have sought ONE thing we can do in our churches that will turn everything around. Is it being missional? Being spiritual? Being contemporary? Being contextual? Being biblical? Being relevant? Being justice-minded? It’s none of those things,… it’s ALL of those things.

There may be no magic bullet, but there are a lot of mini-bullets we could, can, and should be employing to turn our churches around. Unfortunately, there are strong emotional factors that stop us. The main two are fear and grief.

Pastors and leaders may want change, but we’re afraid of our long-time members and big givers who remind us that if we change things, they may retaliate by not giving, leaving the church, or making life hard by constantly criticizing us.

Also, with change comes grief. Change means giving up parts of church life that we love, such as certain rituals, music, and cherished but ineffective program or missions. We know we’d grieve their loss, so we resist change.

For example, during the past year I preached in a struggling church. A group of members approached me afterwards and asked, “Would you be someone to help us grow again?” I responded, “Are you a church that’s open to change?” One said, “I think we are.” I responded, “Okay, the first thing you’d have to be open to is changing your music.” The woman to my right said, “That’s not going to happen. We love our music.” They were singing out of a hymnal from the 1980s. Fear of change and anticipatory grief over loss.

Recently the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) released their study of the state of congregations over the past 10 years. They found that while America’s population grew by 7.5%, Episcopalians and Methodists declined by 19% each, Lutherans by 25%, and Presbyterians (my denomination) by a whopping 40%. Yet I see almost no sense of urgency across denominations sparking tangible, effective change. Why? Fear and grief. We fear making the changes we need and have anticipatory grief over what we may possibly lose. Meanwhile, non-denominational churches have grown by 72%.

So, if there is no thing we can do to get our churches to grow, what are some of the lot of things we can do? A significant part of my work for Samaritan’s Caring for Clergy and Congregations program is working with pastors and churches to answer that question. Here’s a list of pragmatic things we can do that can spark other “things”:

• Begin to create a sense of urgency in the church board about what the future of the church will look like in 5, 10, and 20 years. There’s ample material to draw on. The simple reality is that if leaders aren’t discussing their future, the church won’t have a future. But don’t just discuss. Get them to commit to addressing reality.
  

• Create a church task force devoted to the future of the church that will study the present cultural landscape, explore what other churches are doing to grow, and make suggestions for how your church can adapt. I’ve written extensively and in detail about how to construct and lead such a task force in my book, Becoming a Blessed Church (Chapter 8), which is easily found on Amazon or elsewhere online. If you contact me, I can also talk about how to do it and send articles on it.
  

• Pastors, you need to adopt a different preaching style to reach those who’ve walked away. First, pastors need to study YouTube, Tik Tok, Facebook videos and more to see how younger people are accustomed to being spoken to. Behind-the-pulpit, manuscript preaching no longer reaches people. Younger people are hungry for the connection with God, but not for theology about God. Again, you can find guidance on how to reach these people from my newest book, Preaching to Those Walking Away (also found on Amazon), which is based on my 22 years of growing a church by attracting people who had given up on church.
  

• We need to adopt a collective “growth mindset” where we’re willing to grow together in exploring how we’re called to be in the 21st century rather than continuing to lament the passing of the 20th century. Too many churches and pastors have adopted “preservation” and “survival” mindsets as they try to cling to the past. They’re troublesome mindsets. They lead churches to be constantly inward focused. We can’t be mission-minded if we’re always just trying to preserve and survive. What does a growth mindset look like? It means embracing technology rather than fearing it. It means purposely talking with those who’ve walked away through intentional conversations and focus groups to learn from them what’s caused them seek God elsewhere.

Embedded in these four ideas are pathways that open us up to “a lot of things” we can do to get our churches to grow. With all this said, if we don’t develop a sense of urgency over the present plight, in 10-15 years we won’t have to worry because there won’t be enough churches to matter.

Remember that Samaritan’s Caring for Clergy and Congregations program is one that has helped pastors and churches turn churches around.

Blessings,

The Rev. N. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, MDiv, MA

Executive Director