Manchaca UMC

Lesson 5: Ask a Different Question

Three months ago we were in a car wreck as someone ran a stop sign and pulled out in front of us as we were going 70 mph. Fortunately, no one died. We went to the ER and were released hours later. The other driver ended up in the ICU. Our car was totaled. We finally saw the police report two weeks ago. The conclusion appropriately was that the other driver was at fault. Yet it did not say why the driver ran through the stop sign. Was it a seizure? Texting while driving? Driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol? Three months of nerve pain and inconvenience in my life is asking for an answer to the question: Why? However, I know that the answer is not going to change the outcome in any meaningful way.

Grief does that. It causes us to ask: Why? That is understandable, but I am guessing that it is ultimately not that helpful in helping us move on with our lives. In my experience, this question seeks to do one of two unhealthy things. First, it seeks to establish blame. Unfortunately, blame will end up falling on someone else, on God, or on ourselves. David Kessler asks people who blame themselves for the loss of a loved one: “Tell me, did you send yourself straight to jail or did you give yourself a trial first?” Often blame has the result of imprisoning ourselves or someone else metaphorically. Even God. It is difficult to have healthy relationships when one party is imprisoned. Secondly, the question is an effort to bring a sense of control to our world. If we can explain the event, then we maintain some sense of control. But control is always an illusion and a healthy life is built more on trust than it is on control. Psychologist Henry Cloud notes that “control is the curse of all relationships.”

Perhaps we could ask some different questions in our grief:

1. Why not me? At first glance this feels like an insensitive question to ask why shouldn’t a loss happen to us. It’s probably not best to ask immediately following a loss. But the question comes from Gerald Sittser who lost three family members in a collision with a drunk driver. He found it helpful to give a sense of perspective. We are not the first to suffer. Millions died in 1918 from the Spanish flu. FDR did not live as long as I have. This points me to the realization that in our collective human experience there are resources to help deal with loss. Also it reminds me that loss is a part of the cycle of life and has to date not knocked God off the throne. Loss, though painful, is an entry into greater things.
2. What now? This question comes most recently to me from Auschwitz survivor, Dr. Edith Egers. She is among those who argue that the most important thing about us is not what happened to us, but is rather how we responded to it. Many powerful things have come as a response to loss. Synagogues came from the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. A tragic death led to the formation of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In recent years # Black Lives Matter has emerged from a series of tragic and preventable deaths to African Americans at the hands of a racist system.
3. Why am I still alive? Kessler uses this question to move us forward from getting stuck on the question why did my loved one die. Finding purpose can help bring meaning to.
4. What will I do to honor the years my loved one did not get? Part of the intensity of grief comes from the lossof the future of the lost loved one. What would they have gone on to do in the years ahead? We cannot know that. But we can determine to live our lives in a way that honors their lost years. We can make a part of the contribution which they did not get to make. Remember Private Ryan trying to honor the memory of Captain Miller?
   
   

A non Christian philosopher, Lao Tzu, once noted that “new beginnings often come disguised as painful endings.” May the questions which we ask in our grief help point us to new beginnings which both honor and bring meaning to the loss which we have experienced.

~David