Tag: Spirit

Grief: The Ultimate Body and Spirit Experience

I can think of no other life event that makes you so acutely aware of being both body and spirit than the death of a loved one. Especially the death of your child.

Grief.

There’s a reason people call it gut wrenching and refer to the sufferers as brokenhearted. Your gut feels wrenched—grabbed, twisted and strangled. Your heart feels as though it has fractured into a million pieces that will never be patched back together in the right places again. And they really won’t.

The air feels as though it’s been vacuumed out of your lungs and you can’t breathe. Sometimes you feel as though you’ll suffocate. But that’s okay because you know death would be a welcome alternative to the hell you’re experiencing.

There’s a reason Scripture refers to the brokenhearted as having crushed spirits.

 

Your heart throbs with an indescribable pain that seems impossible, and impossible to bear. Somewhere deep in the core of your physical body lies your spirit that cries out in pain. If you could hear it on the outside, it would sound like a blood-curdling, glass-shattering wail. On the inside, the silent scream reverberates through your body, causing your heart to gush blood and your organs to convulse.

Even your brain gets involved, dumping chemicals into the nervous system that send your spirit into a state of terror and your body into rebellion. Your nerves sound an alarm of impending destruction. You’re unraveling from the inside out, until there’s nothing left to unravel.

Then you lie wasted, unresponsive to sensations and disinterested in life.

Nothing can make you feel so old and physically and emotionally wasted as the death of a loved one. Look at a grieving person and you can recognize the dull look in their eyes. The light of life—from within—has vanished.

Grief.

There is nothing like it to make you aware of how much body you are and how intertwined it is with your spirit or soul. They are inseparable while your body pumps blood and your brainwaves function.

 

When you encounter a grieving person, remember that their body is hurting just as much as their spirit, and it, too, needs attention and care.

 

Blessings,

Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

 

(Free-for-All Fridays will be on hiatus until October 12. I’m on a pilgrimage to discover and experience the body and soul waltz. See you next month!)

Photo by Christian Newman on Unsplash

Are You Mostly Body or Mostly Spirit? Part 2

Have you ever been in physical pain? I mean the kind of pain you experience with a serious car accident, broken bone, or surgery?

The pain can be so severe that it strikes at your deepest gut level. Your nerves scream. You’re in agony, and you can’t get any relief. Heavy pain meds might take the edge off, but only for a while. Ice acts like a numbing anesthetic it, but eventually that wears off too. Your body screams “Nooooooo! Make it go away!” Or the pain can be so severe you actually entertain the thought of death being an inviting option.

Before I went on hiatus for my oral surgery, we were discussing whether or not we—as humans—were more body or more spirit. I’d like to return to that discussion for the next several weeks.

What do you think?

When you’re in physical pain, would you say you’re thinking of yourself as more body, or more spirit? I know I’ve often wished that I were more spirit than body at that point, but there’s just no escaping the body my spirit’s housed in. Often even my spirit cries out too, since it doesn’t seem to like it when the body’s suffering either. The physical disability seems to wrap its tentacles around every part of you. Body and spirit intertwine. And you engage in mental combat to make the spirit rise and conquer.

At those times, we usually allow the body to move into center stage, and give it all the attention it demands, deserves, if you want to heal properly and press on in life. Often the spirit takes a backseat, or is temporarily forgotten. Even though you’re really trying to focus on the spirit—sometimes for distraction—the body can be pretty demanding.

 

Example—

Take a good look at the picture at the top of the post. The collarbone that’s broken, splintered into multiple pieces and displaced. It’s a doozy. And having suffered a simple greenstick fracture (crack) in my collarbone at the age of 4, I can tell you this person is suffering. My arm felt as though it was falling off. I can only barely imagine what this person’s arm felt like.

Realignment would require surgery and internal fixation. It may even be a compound fracture, where it’s broken through the skin. Bleeding. With muscle, fat, and nerve tissue exposed.

There is no question in my mind that the sufferer of this injury is overwhelmed with the limitations and demands of his or her body. And it’s getting their attention.

 

Can you blame them?

 

NEXT WEEK: I’ll give you what I think are good examples of spirit and body taking on equal importance. And it’s demonstrated with and in our Lord Jesus.

Have a great weekend nurturing both body and spirit!

Blessings,

 Andrea

May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers (3 John 2).

 

Photo by Harlie Raethel