death – Andrea Arthur Owan

What Does the Cross of Christ Mean to You?

(This blog post is based on recent messages given by Parkside Church pastor Alistair Begg.)

How much does the Cross of Christ mean to you and your faith?

Not the trauma Christ experienced on it, but the cross, and what was accomplished there.

Your answer might divulge whether or not you comprehend what happened and the end results.

Your answer might divulge whether or not you are a true Christ follower.

The danger of focusing on the cross’s physical trauma—

When reading about the physical punishment Jesus endured before dragging his cross to Golgotha and being nailed to it to die, there’s no doubt the punishment was brutal and gory. Anyone with a speck of imagination could conjure up the slick sweat, the slashed flesh and exposed muscle, the streaming blood.

For centuries artists have tried to depict it, often with devoted and pained followers kneeling around the crucified Christ in the artwork. The art often projects deep spiritual agony of the devotees, the horrified countenances of the gathering crowd.

They seem stirred by the ugly scene. And often that’s what stirs us too. Often, that’s the only thing that stirs us.

We dive head first into the passion of Christ’s suffering; we feel the profound emotion. We can really get wrapped up in it.

But when we do this, we’re at risk of getting too involved in the passion itself. We identify Christ as the perfect sufferer and extend Him sympathy for that. And we miss what He says to the wailing women and gawkers. (There are always those types that relish watching an execution firsthand.)

Jesus looks at them from the Cross and says, “Don’t weep for me.”

Jesus wants something greater from us than our sympathy.

He wants us to acknowledge exactly what was going on and why it had to happen.

He wants something far greater from us. The Cross demands it.

What does the Calvary Cross demand from us?

Jesus doesn’t want our sympathy. That falls short of what the cross calls us to do.

Jesus wants our love and devotion.

That’s what the Cross, and what was accomplished on it, demands.

The Gospel writers and the epistle writers don’t focus on Jesus’ suffering. They don’t elaborate on the agony. They avoid any vivid descriptions of the suffering Jesus.

What they all emphasize is the sacrifice required for the world’s sins—yours, mine, everyone’s sins since time’s beginning—in order for us to be reconciled to God, have a personal, loving relationship with Him, and have a living hope to enjoy Him for all eternity.

The culminating goal of Christ’s crucifixion is atonement for our sins.

As Pastor Alistair Begg says, that no matter how long we live or how many good deeds we do “We can’t make amends for [our sins]. We can’t establish our own righteousness or our own atonement.”

We can never pay the expected price.

But Jesus could, and He did. It’s what He was born to do.

Make atonement.

Atonement accomplished on the Cross. Proof the debt for our sin was paid. The glorious Resurrection three days later the proof that He was who He claimed to be.

We don’t fall in love with Jesus and follow Him because we feel sympathy for Him. We fall in love with and follow Him because of who He is and what He accomplished on the Cross for us.

It wasn’t His suffering that saves us. It’s His sacrifice.

As Pastor Begg emphasizes, the solution to the world’s dilemmas is solved on that rough, ugly Cross.

At this point in your life, are you still asking Jesus to prove Himself to you?

If you are you’ve missed the sacrificial message of the Cross. The sin-debt-paid-in-full message.

The “It is finished,” message.

You’ve missed salvation.

Jesus has already done all He needed to do to prove Himself. He won’t need to do anything else, even if you ask.

Don’t the good parts of Christianity—the love, the justice, the mercy—save?

The good parts of Christianity—the mercy, the justice, the generosity, the love—are great outward manifestations of a God and Jesus-loving faith. Our faith calls us to do and demonstrate them.

But those good works count for zero toward salvation. No one can do enough good works to get to salvation on his own.

It takes that Cross of Christ to make it to, and over, the finish line.

The danger of removing the Cross as the centerpiece of Scripture—

There’s a church in San Francisco, which I won’t name. It’s a famous church, in a mainline denomination now hotly arguing internally about how they’re going to split over differing issues. A divorce for irreconcilable differences.

In 1967 the lead pastor in this church decided to remove the Cross from the sanctuary. He said he did it “to send a message of inclusion and love and to open his sermons and services to all.”

No doubt he thought he was being loving, kind, thoughtful and inclusive. Open-armed and open-doored. But I think he missed the real message of that Cross he thought others found unappealing, creepy and offensive.

And I’m wondering if in the process He missed Christ.

Or robbed the people who need it most from the salvation message the Cross declares.

To a true believer and follower of Christ, the Cross gives the deepest message of love the world has ever known. Removing it from the centerpiece, and along with it all that was accomplished that earth-shaking day on Golgotha, might prompt condescending sympathy from the masses but a convenient dismissal or avoidance of the truth.

Removing the Cross guts our faith.

We need the Cross because it is the stabilizing structure that supports our faith. The trellis supporting the vine branches. Without the trellis the vines collapse.

Without the Cross, our faith crumbles and disintegrates.

Yes, I know that throughout history the Cross has been used as a symbolic weapon to promote and do unspeakable things, causing many to be repelled by it. And for those horrors, Christians need to apologize and, if possible, make amends.

But those events do not change the facts of salvation truth.

The salvation truth is open to all and everyone who comes to the cross to confess and lay their burdens down there.

Let His breath be in your lungs!

Come to the Cross, and then worship Him!

Invitation—

Are you moved more by Christ’s suffering than the end result of the sacrifice? If so, turn your attention to what the Cross really means for the world. For you. Ask the Lord to reveal that truth to you. Let Him call you to faith and convince you.
Have you been trying to earn your way into Heaven with good deeds? Do you believe that’s what gets you there? Realize that you can never do enough good deeds, never measure up to God’s standards and Christ’s righteousness. Lay your good deed list down and kneel at the Cross. Find salvation and righteousness there.
I encourage—implore—you to stop holding Jesus up as only a good man or a wise prophet, and go to Him in repentance and faith.

Days before His sacrificial death, Jesus wept over Jerusalem because they rejected Him.

Do not let Him weep over you.

NEXT WEEK: I’ll provide you with a couple of resources to learn more about this marvelous story of redemption and hope!

Until then, sing hallelujahs to the King as we celebrate Palm Sunday and walk toward Calvary and the Cross.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.”


Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a health and fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally and spiritually and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Toxic Positivity and Grief

Have you ever revealed your deepest grief pain to someone only to have her give you an immediate comeback of super-positive or upbeat thinking they believe you should focus on? Something to get you over your slump?

What they may be guilty of is toxic positivity.

While there is no question that being positive and grateful is good for the brain and good for you physically and emotionally, it sometimes does more harm than good when you’re mired deeply in grief, and you’re nursing a raw heart.

Thinking back—

Do you remember a time when someone responded in a nauseatingly positive way when all you wanted to do was share your heart’s pain and have a listening heart hear it?

How did it make you feel?

I remember a lot of overly upbeat sentiments after my daughter’s death. And I remember the effect they had.

Shame.
Embarrassment.
A sense of lacking, or being inadequate.
Betrayed.
Devastated.
Misunderstood.
Anger.

The emotions list could go on and on.

Instead of encouraging me, most of the responses made me retreat into myself and believe that people couldn’t relate to my pain, didn’t want to relate to it, and were eager to have me get back to life and living.

My pain made them uncomfortable.

So I really shouldn’t share it.

Biggest culprits—

Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, Christians are often the biggest culprits of toxic positivity. They’re too quick to recite Bible passages meant to encourage the griever. To put their grief in God’s perspective. (As if the griever were ignorant about all those passages.)

While their hearts might be in the right place, often their mouths aren’t. They aren’t listening with their hearts.

And now the hard question: Are you guilty of doing that to someone?

Yes, there are many, many Bible passages exhorting us to lift one another up, but there is also that big one that tells us that we need to “weep with those who are weeping.”

In order to weep with someone, we need to listen deeply, and weep. And hold. And then, when the griever’s heart is receptive, encourage with more upbeat passages and thinking.

We need to be available to walk alongside them in their grief and trauma, not rush ahead, drag them forward, or get behind them and push.

But I don’t want us to get way ahead of ourselves here. I want to take time to explore this, so we can really learn and heighten our sensitivities and hone our responses to broken, hurting hearts.

What’s ahead—

I’m going to take the entire month of February to cover this new, hot topic, which you may have heard about. This month we’ll:

Define toxic positivity.
Give you examples of it.
Give you ways to deal with and respond to it (if the damaged griever).
Help you develop good handholding and empathy skills.
Discuss the benefits of helpful positivity and how to incorporate that into your life—at the right time.

Toxic positivity definition—

But for today, let’s just start with the current definition of toxic positivity.

While there is no psychological category for it, nor is there a formal diagnosis, the group at What’s Your Grief? provide this definition:

“Toxic positivity is promoting the ideal or goal that, no matter the circumstances, one should always and only maintain a positive, happy or optimistic mindset.”

In other words, “Happy, happy, happy!’ at all times, and in all things.

Is there anything wrong with this?

Well, no, and yes.

And that’s what we’re going to be exploring this month. In small, helpful, bite-size increments. Helpful for the griever, and the one the griever seeks support and empathy from.

Hope you can join me!

Invitation—

For this week, meditate on the toxic positivity definition. See where your thoughts take you on this. Maybe jot down some times you’ve experienced toxic positivity from a well—meaning friend, or when you think you’ve been guilty of it.

On a side note: After a bout with COVID right at the beginning of the New Year, it’s good to be teaching and mentoring again!

And for those of you who are caregivers, check out Guideposts’ bi-monthly devotional Strength and Grace for daily, uplifting devotions to help caregivers as they minister to and care for aging parents, patients, and family members struggling with mental illness, like dementia and Alzheimer’s. It’s a joy to be a member of the writing team contributing to this magazine. For more information, go to Guideposts.org.

Blessings,

Andrea

“I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John 2).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Honest Grief

As we wrap up our series on grief recovery and completion, I want to return once more to an aspect of grieving that’s often overlooked or avoided.

Honest grief.

It’s the belief that it’s counterproductive and usually dangerous to avoid truth in grief, either with yourself, your family members, your friends or involved children.

Let’s look at this one more time.

Illusions and euphemisms harm rather than protect—

While avoiding the topic of grief, or any difficult topic, may look like a good idea in the short term, putting off truth-telling usually sets you up for future failure and larger problems down the road.

When you avoid, you often end up believing or spreading inaccuracies. Or allowing them to take root and spread. The way to avoid those inaccuracies is to communicate honestly about your emotional reaction to the pain of loss.

Author Alisa Childers describes grief as “harrowing.” Indeed, it is. It can feel as though you’re standing on a jagged precipice you’re either going to fall off or jump off. In her book Another Gospel? she notes:

“Something they don’t tell you in the movies is that upon receiving cataclysmic news, your body betrays you. My knees began to shake wildly, and my throat became dry and my voice creaking.”

Yes, as shock hits the body, which it did when Childers received news that her beloved 20-year-old nephew had died from a drug overdose, the bodily systems fail.

And right along with that, the emotion systems break down. It can feel as though your heart implodes. A weight that you can’t push off crushes your chest. Inflammation and the fight to survive tears through the body. And all that fighting and desperate attempt to equilibrate and normalize causes exhaustion.

Tell the truth about your feelings. Don’t hurt yourself, or others, (including children), with avoidance and lies or half-truths and euphemisms. As the Grief Recovery Institutes professionals note: “Silence or avoidance of the realities about loss creates more problems than it solves.”

Unspoken feelings can lead others to wrong conclusions about your feelings. Be honest. Be clear. Be effective at this process we call grief.

Being honest about your feelings gives you freedom to heal, and to thrive again.

When grieving progress, isn’t—

Before quiet, sterile funeral homes arrived on the scene, families usually gathered together to wash, prepare and dress the body of a deceased relative. It’s safe to assume that the mostly women and girls performing this task talked and reminisced about the deceased. They shared memories and feelings.

Then the body was laid in what used to be called the parlor, (now the living room, thanks to Better Homes Magazine), for several days so other family, friends and neighbors could come, pay their last respects, do more reminiscing and chat with the surviving grievers.

Food was shared. Time was offered and spent. Tears were shed. And stories told.

Now the process makes death more removed, more foreign, less personal.

Much of the important (and meaning-packed) ritual has been removed. Even a traditional funeral service, with the casket carried in, placed near the altar, and then carried back out to a waiting hearse, has largely been replaced with a “memorial service” to sing worship songs, chat (a little) about the deceased, and then maybe enjoy a potluck buffet in the church fellowship hall or a favorite restaurant or club.

Eighty years of life gets you an hour memorial and some sweet and sour meatballs, or a cheese ball and crackers.

The older I get the better raucous Irish wakes look to me.

This new minimalistic tradition can hamper grieving and healing. I would do all that I could to resist rushing through it, or be rushed through it because a well-meaning friend wanted to protect me.

And, yes, have a funeral or memorial (Do something!)—

In this uncertain and disruptive time we live in, I still believe we should do whatever we can to have a funeral or memorial service, even if that means inviting people to join via ZOOM, or some other recording technology to watch a service and burial; or join together in an online meeting to share eulogies, express grief, thankfulness or memories together.

There is a tremendous amount of healing and grief progress that comes with these rituals, these rights of passage for not only the deceased, but most especially for the remaining friends and loved ones.

Don’t deprive yourself or others of this passage. It will be difficult, but it will be worth—for you and others.

NEXT WEEK: a word on giving thanks in all circumstances and kicking off the holidays. They’re certainly going to be different this year.

But Thanksgiving will be BIG for our family, at least in spirit and celebration.

The engineer and I are going to welcome our first grandchild into the world this week. To say we are excited is an understatement!

Until then,

may God guide you through any grieving process you may find yourself traversing to the light on the other side of its darkness.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

Grief: What keeps you from healing

A LOT OF THINGS CAN HAMPER OR CURTAIL grieving. One is the fear of and attempt to reject your feelings. Another is the use of psychopharmaceutical drugs to dampen the emotions and pain. We’ll briefly cover both on today’s post.

The danger of trying to reject your feelings and emotions—

Whether or not the attempted rejection comes from you, a domineering and opinionated family member or well-meaning friend, trying to reject or dampen your feelings can seriously derail your grieving.

The problem often lies with someone else trying to fix your feelings. Make them better. “Help” you get past them too soon. Or manipulate and change what feelings you are having.

Don’t do it to yourself and don’t let someone else try to do it to you. If they do try, lessen or curtail your interactions with them until you are strong enough to lay down boundaries or respect.

I can’t stress enough how much you need to respect yourself, your unique relationship with the deceased person, and the emotions and feelings unleashed during the grieving process.

Acknowledge those feelings, address them, understand where they’re coming from and why they’re there. They’ll come out now or later in some fashion. If you try to tamp them down, ignore or reject them, (especially the negative ones), they’re more likely to rear their ugly and disabling heads in other areas of your life—like relationships and physical and emotional health.

You want to be fully healthy—emotionally, physically and spiritually. You want to live again. Thrive!

The dangers of psychopharmaceutical drugs—

While using anti-depressants or anti-anxiety drugs might seem like a good course of action, and may be necessary for one’s sanity and being able to sleep and hold it all together in the early stages of grief, be cautious when considering or accepting a prescription for them.

First, some come with a host of side effects, one of which is suicidal thoughts. And that’s often what we’re trying to avoid with anti-depressant medication.

They can become emotionally habit-forming. While they’re not addictive in ways substances like methamphetamine, heroin or alcohol are addictive, Elizabeth Wurtzel notes in an Addiction Center online article that:

“People can still develop a physical dependence on the antidepressants. Individuals with depression are also more likely to abuse other drugs.”

Another danger with psychopharmaceutical drug intervention is the drugs can mask a person’s normal, natural responses to grief. Drug-free grieving may give the griever a better opportunity to feel his or her feelings, deal with them and complete the grieving process sooner and more completely and effectively.

So please don’t be in a hurry to ask your doctor for an anti-depressant prescription. Try the natural approach first. If you find the pain grief too debilitating, then seek counseling or pharmaceuticals.

NEXT WEEK, we’ll look at the fallacy of protecting someone from grief, misunderstandings of reactions to death, and the benefits of talking about death.

Until then,

Remember that grief is not easy, but there are concrete steps we can take to make it easier, and survive it and thrive after it!

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.

How to Grieve Well: Successful Steps to Completing Your Grief Healing—Part 9

FOR THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS we’ve searched, dug, uncovered, remembered and relived, all for the sake of grieving well and achieving what we call grieving completion. But does discovery mean we’ve successfully arrived at completion?

No. Awareness and discovery are not grief completion. We still have some work to do.

Why discovery doesn’t equal grief completion?

Let’s imagine the following scenario: If you learned that you had hurt a friend’s feelings, would just knowing you hurt them rectify the problem? Surely not. You would, hopefully, want to go to that friend and apologize to them, to have the relationship restored, if possible.

If you didn’t apologize, both you—and your friend—would remain incomplete, with that offense likely hanging over both of your heads and hearts for years.

Your realization of your offense does not naturally complete what was left emotionally unfinished.

You need to take action.

Keep sounding (and feeling) like a broken record, or enjoy freedom—

Maybe you know someone who keeps repeating the same story over and over and over again. Or maybe you know you’re guilty of doing that. You know they—or you—sound stuck in the past, and you don’t know how to get them, or you, unstuck.

When you carry the repetitive accounts around inside your heart and head, never able to let them go or bring a satisfactory end to them, you’re actually limiting and restricting your life from possibilities, freedom, peace and joy. And each time the story is repeated the resentments—or regrets—pile up.

You don’t need to relive the pain, frustration or anger the rest of your life; you can put a period on those emotions. You can apologize. You can forgive. You can state what you always wanted to say or what you know you should have said out loud and free your heart and mind from the burdens they’ve been carrying around for far too long.

What about exaggerated memories and embellished stories?

When a person is grieving, they often embellish their stories or create fairytale characters out of their deceased loved ones—both good and evil characters.

Unfortunately, doing this can put a serious barrier on the road to grief completion. The goodness of the deceased person is embellished; the person’s sins get expanded like hot air balloons. We can deify people just as easily as we can demonize them.

Be careful to not create or write a story that’s more untruthful than realistic. Believe it or not, these extremes can be covers for unfinished relationships, words and actions.

Tell the important positive things. Divulge the uglier, more hurtful events. Tell of wonderful promises kept and promises broken. In the end, your story and its ending will be realistic, and it can be a powerful witness to forgiveness, transformation and peace to someone aching to find those things.

For both positive and negative events, the freedom you gain from going through this sometimes difficult relationship review and grief completion allows you to acknowledge and let go of unrealized hopes, dreams and expectations about what transpired in the past and what could or should have occurred in the future. Or what you hoped would have occurred.

What we’re aiming for is freedom.

And exactly what does that mean for the grieving person? This statement from the Grief Recovery Institute drives the point home:

“Freedom does not mean the end of sadness, but it can mean the end of pain. Freedom allows fond memories to stay fond and not turn painful. Freedom allows [you] to remember loved ones the way [you] knew them in life rather than to be fixated on the images of the loved one in death.”

You can also be freed from haunting memories of a not-so-loved one. Terrible things that happened will take up less mental and heart real estate. The pain and hurt of broken promises will fade away and consume you less.

Next step: Completion—

Let’s return to the sample question list I introduced last week. How did you answer those?

Were you able to uncover times where apologies were warranted? Forgiveness needed to be given?

Did you remember significant events, both good and bad? Did you note what you wished could have been better, different, or you would have had more of?

Were you able to uncover events in the four critical areas that help you communicate those undelivered emotional thoughts and feelings?

Apologies
Forgiveness
Significant emotional statements that aren’t apologies or forgiveness. You know, really important stuff.
Fond memories—things you want to thank the person for, things you appreciated about them.

If you really dug deeply and answered them forthrightly, you’re ready to compile the necessary statements into a form where you are delivering, completing and saying goodbye.

Let’s see what that looks like.

Delivering your relationship review statements, completing grief, and saying goodbye—

So what, exactly, does a relationship review letter look like? How long is it? With whom do you share it?

The letter looks like any other letter you might write to someone, about the significant parts of your shared relationship, your joys, your hurts, your apologies, your forgiveness. The length will usually depend upon the relationship and the depth of it, how much life passed between you and the other person.

While you don’t have to include everything you noted on the emotional energy checklist, you’ll want to make sure you include the significant emotional comments.

The important things to remember about this letter are what it’s not, and what it is.

First, it’s not a journal or diary entry, and it’s not really a full story.

It’s a story that communicates the apologies, forgiveness, significant emotions and fond memories contained in a special or significant relationship. It’s a way to un-trap those bottled up emotions and release the energy surrounding a death or loss.

It also gives you a conduit to say a formal goodbye to the physical relationship that no longer exists. The letter makes it possible to say goodbye to the emotional aspects of the relationship when the physical relationship is over.

Let’s take the example of a young man (say, in his early twenties) whose father suffered from mental illness and committed suicide.

The young man might start his letter with stating just how difficult life has been since his father’s death. The pain, the shock, the way his dad was found. How he still feels numb. How much he hurts over what happened.

Then he might talk about all the wonderful things he remembered about his dad when he was younger, and talk about significant trips or events they shared. Say how much he enjoyed those. And he can talk about the significant disappointments.

Then he might move into talking about his dad’s mental illness and how it affected him and how he saw it affecting his dad. How it damaged their relationship. And then make a forgiving statement to his father about how he knows it wasn’t his dad’s fault that he suffered from something he had no control over.

And the young man might feel it was necessary to apologize for his behavior toward his father at certain times, when the mental illness came between them or had a negative effect on their relationship or the family. How he was impatient and treated his father in an unloving or even mean way because of it.

He might talk about how he blamed his mom for the problems, because she was the most available and easiest person to blame.

Toward the end of the letter, the young man might say how upset he was at his dad’s selfishness, for the time and events his dad had and his actions had robbed them of—like college graduation, birthdays, marriage and grandchildren. Maybe the young man is sorry that he’s feeling so angry with his father and needs to make a forgiveness statement about that and the future.

Finally, he could tell his dad just how much he misses him, loves him, and forgives him and is glad he is no longer suffering. How grateful he is for the time they did have together. But how he still doesn’t understand why his father would do something so extreme and unloving as to take himself away from all of them. Maybe he might ask his father in the letter if he didn’t feel loved enough. Maybe he feels as though his dad didn’t fight hard enough to get well, or stay alive for his family.

But at the end of the letter, he can tell him again how much he loves and misses him, and say “goodbye.”

It’s always important to say goodbye.

Then he can read this letter, which is likely to be lengthy, to a friend, a grief group member, or a trust family member. Someone who will just listen to his heart being poured out.

For this kind of tragic event, it’s not unusual for the surviving children (or spouse) to feel deep anger, deep regret, and deep guilt over what they think they could have done or should have done or wished they’d done differently. Or maybe what the doctors could have or should have done. These things need to be expressed.

Let’s look at another letter that might be written by a ten-year child at the events surrounding the death of her father to a terminal illness. Yes, even children should go through this relationship review exercise.

“Dear Dad,

Why did you have to die? The last time I saw you you promised you would see me soon, but you broke your promise. I know you love me and wanted to see me, and you didn’t die on purpose, so I forgive you. But I miss you so much, and I didn’t like it when Aunt Amy came to school to get me instead of Mom. But I forgive Mom, too, because she was with you.

I miss skipping to school with you, and visiting you in the hospital, even though you looked strange. I’m sorry I was rude to you that day when I told you I was fed up with you feeling so poorly and that it wasn’t fair I didn’t get to visit my cousins. I’m sorry you were sick so much. I was sad a lot because you were so sick. And I was worried.

I wish I could have been allowed to visit you that last week in the hospital. And I felt so confused when Aunt Mary came to pick me up at school.

I miss you, Dad. I don’t understand why you had to die. I’m still angry. I wish you were still here to look after me and Jack, and make my meals, and take me to school and pick me up. I just wanted you to know that.

I love you, Dad.

Goodbye,

Ann

This letter is very short, probably because of the writer’s age. But don’t put a specified length on your letter. Just make sure you say what you need to say, and then say goodbye.

Always say goodbye.

And when you’re satisfied that you’re finished, you must read your relationship review letter to someone.

As the experts at the Grief Recovery Institute note:

“The key to completion is that the thoughts, feelings, and ideas must be verbalized and be heard by another living human being to be a ‘completed’ communication.”

Undelivered communications of an emotional nature must always be verbalized.

And if you’re listening to someone deliver this kind of letter, think of yourself as a heart with ears.

So always, always, always listen with your heart!

What about other significant losses?

There are other significant losses besides death.

There is moving and leaving cherished friends, maybe nearby family, a job you enjoy.

There’s divorce.

There’s physical and emotional or psychological trauma.

There are a number of ugly and shocking things that can happen and that may deeply affect you in life.

These tools we’ve covered the last several months can be used for all of them. Hopefully, you’ll be able to put them to good use for yourself and perhaps others.

They’re game and life-changers.

Invitation—

This is your opportunity to put your hard work together. Take the time you need to compose a letter you’re satisfied with and then find a heart with ears to listen to your heart.

NEXT WEEK we’ll do a grief recovery wrap-up by talking a little bit about drugs used in battling grief and telling the truth when you’re grieving.

Until then,

Find a heart with ears, or be one.

Blessings,

Andrea

“Beloved, I pray that you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers” (3 John).

Andrea Arthur Owan, M.S., A.T., R., is a fitness pro, speaker, award-winning inspirational writer, memoirist, and senior-ordained chaplain (IFOC). She helps people thrive physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and recover from grief, loss and trauma.