"Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has humanized the soul."
- F. W. Robertson

A knock on the door at three in the morning is never a good omen. We were living in an immigrant neighborhood in Grenoble, France, the sole Americans among many Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians and Portuguese. It was a pretty unpredictable neighborhood in the day and not the type of place you wanted to open the door in the middle of the night. But when I peered through the peephole I saw my next door neighbor, Fatima. She looked terrified and in great distress.
I quickly unbolted the door. She breathlessly repeated the name of her five-month-old infant. I followed her to her apartment and there on the bed lay her baby boy, a terrible yellow and gray color giving his face an eerie shadow. I ran back to my apartment and woke up Gary. Within minutes he was speeding through deserted streets to the hospital with Fatima and her baby. The infant died shortly after their arrival.
This sad episode in our missionary life opened the door for us on some of the elaborate grieving rituals in the Arab world. I was shocked at what I saw the next 40 days at Fatima's house. On a daily basis women would stream through her door wailing and screaming at the top of their lungs.. Not more than once I retreated to my apartment to put my head in my hands. I thought they were crazy and struggled to understand this strange custom.

Now, many years later, I understand the wisdom of helping someone to grieve a loss, whether it is the death of a loved one or a life event that has left them hurting and wanting. In fact, I see a greater significance in the grieving process - one that encompasses every facet of our lives and effects our relationships deeply. Recognizing and resolving these losses is the purpose of this booklet. Grief, though painful, is actually a necessary step in recovery from loss. Some cultures of the world know well how to usher one another through the grieving process. They help each other confront their losses and grief in a way that allows the mourner to go on with the rest of life fully after the losses have been sufficiently addressed. In addition to grieving death, older cultures provide outlets for other losses, as well. In some, young men are ritualistically dragged from beside their wailing mothers into the initiation of life as men. At the traditional Italian wedding there is the "last dance" for the bride with her father and for the groom with his mother. I have seen many tears at these events during those dances. These are powerful and important rituals that have been unfortunately discarded in our culture of disintegrating home and family life. Without them we are left with little opportunity to grieve the changes and losses of life.

Both the Old and New Testament give examples of people grieving. In the book of Job as well as in other places, sitting in sackcloth and ashes was a way to express deep grieving. David openly grieved over the death of an infant. Samuel grieved over the removal of God's blessing from King Saul. Different prophets grieved over the sin and rebellion of the people of God. There was great mourning in Bethlehem after the horrible slaughter of infants, and also at the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Paul wept and grieved over the condition of the young church. James exhorted the people of God to grieve over their sin.

There is a problem for us in understanding the grieving process the way the New Testament church or the people of the Old Testament understood it. The grieving process was intrinsically accepted and openly accepted by them. Being "emotional" was considered normal when one encountered life losses. If there was a drought or if a marriage failed, the expected response was to be sad and to express grief. For biblical people this was a no-brainer. It would have seemed quite unnecessary to explain such a cultural process so deeply embedded in the hearts of that people.
For us, on the other hand, we have glorified stoicism in our culture. People greatly admire Jackie Kennedy for not openly grieving the death of her husband. We consider it noble and dignified to hide our grief. Macho guy movies portray characters that slightly flinch at the deaths of close friends and family members who can then immediately do some heroic feat. The choice to just be "in pain" for us seems crazy to most in western society. We medicate. We stay busy. We shove it down.. We try to forget. The problem is, the emotions associated with our losses can't be forgotten. It may be possible to forbid ourselves from expressing feelings related to our losses, but they return to haunt us as headaches, fatigue, depression, illness, and unwarranted outbursts of irrational anger or anxiety. We trade the humble gift of tears for a deceiving web of symptoms. I can't help but see that one of the main tasks of Satan and his army of demons is to keep people from grieving. This especially makes sense when you consider that the end of the grieving process provides opportunity for resolution of losses and forgiveness. The father of lies is an expert in encouraging denial.

Until my thirties, I never contemplated what the "losses" in my life might be. I sped through my days without much thought of such things. Events and circumstances, which should have been counted as losses, were stiffly pushed aside. As a Christian, and particularly as a missionary, I did not believe I was supposed to be upset (for very long anyway) by anything. Such things as having virtually all our worldly possessions stolen on our move overseas to be missionaries, or my mother's rejection of me for deciding to be a missionary were hardships I accepted as the cross I had to bear, period. To express my hurt and dismay by such things was to betray God and his provision, I believed. Unknowingly, I had carried over family and cultural patterns about grieving into my Christian life and imagined them to be "godly."
When my brother died at 24 years of age in a car accident I couldn't stop crying. My mother gave me Valium for several days. Three days after he died, I was back in school. I remember walking through my classes in a fog all that year. When a teacher walked up to me and expressed his sympathy for my loss, I blankly looked at him and answered, "What for?"

Western culture is a stranger to grief, whether it is for death or for life changes. We even have multi-billion dollar industries that aid us in avoiding it. Over the counter and behind the counter medications prove much more accessible and far more viable than simple tears. If anesthetics don't take the edge off, elaborate avenues of escapism will. Anything from movie matinees…comfort food…shopping…to pornography and prostitution lay at our disposal.