Helping Grieving Parents Adjust to the "New Normal"

Grief professionals say that grieving parents will endure various “phases” of grief, such as shock, denial, depression, anger, and others. While the severity of each these phases might decrease over time, no grieving parent is ever “over” his or her grief. Grieving parents who are many years removed from the death of their child will say that, even while the “fog” of intense grief has since lifted from their lives, there continues to be an ongoing hole in their life, a void that cannot be filled. Grieving parents sometimes refer to living life in this type of ongoing grief as “the new normal.” Veteran grieving parents can attest to the fact that, even many years later, they continue to live in this “new normal.”

If you know parents grieving the death of a child, extend grace to them as they make arrangements for “the new normal.” Do not assume that they will engage in the same activities, enjoy the same hobbies or activities, and keep the same schedule. Being involved in certain activities that the parent may have previously enjoyed with the deceased child may now be too painful to endure. The child’s death may have caused a significant change in their outlook and priorities. The parents may have new interests and perhaps even new professional endeavors.

This “new normal” for the parents may mean that extended family members must make new arrangements around the Holidays and other significant dates, such a birth dates. Some grieving parents will avoid altogether any of the same activities they did before the death of their child. But regardless of whether the grieving parents wish to retain many of these same traditions, extended family members need to be ready to give up these traditions if it will be too painful on the parents.
For some extended family members, losing a Holiday tradition or other tradition is almost like religious heresy. But as Paul tells us in Colossians 3:16-17, there is nothing uniquely spiritual about our traditions, days, and festivals. Don’t push grieving parents into an ongoing tradition just because the extended family wants to retain the tradition. Instead, realize that just as grieving parents must develop a “new normal,” so also must the extended family members develop a “new normal.” As you consider how to go about structuring Holiday traditions after the death of the child, consider asking the grieving parents what traditional activities they would like to be involved with, and which ones they would like to avoid. Whether it relates to Holiday traditions or other events, you can extend a considerable amount of grace to grieving parents by providing them the latitude to develop their “new normal” following the death of their child.

God's Unmatched Love for Us

It is particularly fitting for grieving parents to focus on the cross of Jesus Christ as a symbol of God’s unmatched love for us, for the measure of our love for our deceased child is the same measure of love that was poured out, for us, at the cross. The night before my own son unexpectedly lost consciousness, and later died, my wife told her mother, “I love [our son] Micah so much. I can’t imagine the grief that God went through when Jesus died.” If you are a fellow grieving parent, you similarly have a special insight into the level of grief that God the Father must have felt as Jesus was tortured, crucified, forsaken by God the Father, and finally allowed to die. Matthew 27. God’s love for us compelled Him to allow His one and only son to die. “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9.

You and I would give everything, including our very lives, for our deceased children. We know how hard it is to lose our child unwillingly; to willingly give up your only child is absolutely unthinkable. But on that Roman Cross two thousand years ago, God’s love for us was proven in how he willing allowed His own son, Jesus Christ, to die for us, that we might be in relationship with Him. If God loved us so much that he allowed Jesus to die, can we not trust His love for us now? About God’s great love for us, Paul wrote, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Romans 8:32.

The cross is also a demonstration of how God’s love for us transcends life and death. In the very act of dying, Christ demonstrated that love is greater than death, and that he loves us enough to accomplish great purposes on our behalf even through physical death. “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate use from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39. If God allowed His own beloved son to die, can we not also trust that our child’s death is not an indication of our being unloved, or of our child being unloved? In our grief, we must hold fast to the cross, where we can see the full measure of God’s great love for us.

Micah's 3rd Birthday and the Micah Wessman Foundation

Dear Friends,

Tomorrow, we remember and celebrate Micah’s third birthday. We continue to miss him greatly. How we wish that he were with us to celebrate his own birthday! We look forward to the day when we can see him again. In the meantime, we are so grateful for friends like you who have honored our son’s memory by your prayers for us and encouragement to us.

As you may know, in 2009 we created the Micah Wessman Foundation, a nonprofit organization. Our mission with the Foundation is to provide Christ-centered resources and encouragement to families grieving the death of a young child. We wanted to provide you with an update regarding the Micah Wessman Foundation.

• New Website

First, we are very excited to announce the launch of our website, Hope for the Mourning: God’s Promises for Grieving Parents, located at www.hopeforthemourning.com. The website will include resources for parents grieving the death of a child as well as Biblical teaching on suffering, grief, and infant salvation. The website also provides an opportunity for grieving parents to be contacted and/or to receive a care package. We decided to use the Hope for the Mourning name in order to allow our ministry to be more recognizable for those who don’t know Micah’s story. The ministry will retain the name of “Micah Wessman Foundation.” We invite you to visit the website. The website will gradually be constructed over the next few months.

• Care Packages

The initial contact between us and the grieving parents is through the care packages sent to the grieving parents. Since the inception of the Micah Wessman Foundation, we have sent 42 care packages to grieving parents. We are made aware of some of these grieving parents through word of mouth, and others through the obituary section of the newspaper. Most of these care packages are sent within the Twin Cities metro area.

We currently include the following items in the care package:

 Two restaurant gift cards, $50 to any “Lettuce Entertain You” restaurants (Big Bowl & Wildfire Grill are local options) and $25 to Chipotle. We encourage the parents to take a few evenings “off” of cooking and just spend time together.
 Three books on grief written from a Christian perspective. These books are: A Grace Disguised, by Jerry Sittser, Holding on to Hope, by Nancy Guthrie, and Streams in the Desert, by L.B. Cowman.
 A brochure about Smile Again Ministries, a grief retreat ministry specifically created for parents grieving the death of a child. We also provide the parents with information on the scholarship we offer these grieving parents to attend this grief retreat.

Of course, we also provide the parents with our contact information.

• Scholarships to Smile Again Ministries

For those parents who wish to attend Smile Again Ministries, we offer each couple to whom we send a care package a $300 scholarship towards their total costs of attending. Over this past year, the Foundation has contributed $2,000 in total scholarship money to Smile Again Ministries for use in providing scholarships to grieving parents.

Thanks again, friends, for your encouragement to us.

In His Hands,

Cory & Heather Wessman

Death Nailed to the Cross

Cancer. Suicide. Murder. Over the past few weeks, it seems that death has been particularly close. Whether it has been my clients, fellow church members, relatives, or the adult son of a fellow grieving parent, death is clearly prevalent among our family, church, and even my law practice.

But praise be to God, death is not supremely powerful. As Pastor John Piper preached in a recent funeral sermon, Christ's work on the cross provided us, his followers, with victory over the cross. In Colosssians chapter 2, we read that Jesus
took the record of debt that stood against us, our sin, and nailed it to he cross.
http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/conference-messages/victor-watters-converses-with-death-a-meditation-on-1-corinthians-1555-57. If we trust in Christ, then we can trust that our death, by reason of our sin, was nailed to the cross when Jesus died.

Therefore, as we encounter death, I pray that we would overcome fright and fear in faith. May we be able to focus on the victory that has come by reason of Christ's work and sacrifice.

O Death, where is your victory?
O Death, where is your sting?
The sting of Death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 15:55-57.

Grave Avoidance?

In the year following Micah's death, I would visit Micah's grave fairly frequently. But in the last year, Heather and I have felt less of a need to visit the grave. In fact, Heather has not visited the gravesite in nearly two years; I have not visited his marker since the beginning of this summer.

Our visits to his grave are not for our son; any time we spend at the grave is really for us. My son, having been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ on that roman cross nearly 2,000 years ago, is now in the physical presence of God. While I can not tell you what his daily life is like now (or whether he experiences anything like our "days" at all), I know Micah is in a better place. As Paul states in 2 Corinthians 5:1, "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands." We know where Micah's well-being, right now, is not impacted by the frequency of my grave visits or any other ways we might honor him.

As grieving parents, how we view our own visits to the grave might serve as a barometer of how well we are grieving, generally. Visiting the grave every day, at the expense of relationships and work ministry opportunities, would probably mean that we are "stuck" in anger, or the past, or in our guilt. Alternatively, never visiting the grave at all, even if only mentally, would probably mean that we are trying to suppress our grief through avoidance.

If we live in faith in a loving and sovereign God, we need not live in the past, as if that is all we can hope for with our child, or live in avoidance of our grief. In Jesus Christ, we have a "living hope" that, even now, our deceased children live with Him, and that we will see them again someday. To the extent that our grave visits point us toward this "living hope," they are visits well spent.

Faith -- In Fear & Trembling

In the August, 2011 online issue of Christianity Today, columist Mark Galli writes about the recent discussions among Christian leaders about hell. Along with Rob Bell, Francis Chan and other Christian leaders, Galli has written a book to weigh in on the question. Apparently, Galli's critics contend that his espousal of the traditional view of hell amounts to his "punting" on the entire question.

In response, Galli rightfully notes that accepting the traditional view of hell is not "punting" on the issue at all. Galli writes, “...God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful, and this we must proclaim right in the midst of the most awful circumstances and in the face of the most mysterious questions. But we proclaim it not glibly, not easily, but in fear and trembling, with nothing to hold on to but faith. We proclaim it not because we know exactly how God will work out his justice and mercy—for this he has steadfastly refused to reveal. What he has revealed to us is that he is perfectly just and perfectly merciful—as demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ...” Mark Galli, Trusting God with the Ones You Love, Christianity Today, August, 2011 (web only version).

Certainly, traditional views of hell might seem paradoxical or troubling to 21st century sensibilities. But that is the point of faith in a God whose ways escape human understanding. If you signed on to Christianity thinking it would provide you with simple, easy answers to difficult questions in life, then you probably have been sorely disappointed. Rather than approach this issue with glib simplicity, Galli correctly notes that we ought to approach this question in faith, not knowing exactly how God is demonstrating His unmatched mercy and love, but trusting that He is (and will) demonstrate these attributes through His judgements of humans.

I resonated with Galli's comments, not so much because I have thought very much about hell, but because I think the same principle applies to those of us trying to wrap our arms around God's purposes in suffering. In trusting in God's promises for us, we are not "punting" on the philosophical and theological issues that accompany the "problem" of how a loving and sovereign God could allow suffering. When you have lost your child, then easy, simple, or glib theological answers won't do. Instead,fully recognizing our inability to answer all these questions, we approach our faith in humility, trusting that whatever joy God has in store for us by reason of this suffering, it will be great, eternal, lasting joy.

Purpose, Not Cause

In the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus confronts the question of why God allows suffering in the world. In that portion of scripture, Jesus and his disciples come across a man who had been blind from birth. At that moment, Jesus’ disciples had the opportunity to ask Jesus the simple question that so many of us have asked God in our grief—why God? Why was this man born blind? Was the man’s blindness caused by the sin of the man’s parents or the man’s own sin? Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Jesus then proceeded to demonstrate His authority over blindness, health, and life itself by immediately healing the man’s blindness. It seems that God purposed the man’s blindness from birth in order to provide Jesus, at that very moment, the opportunity to powerfully demonstrate His healing power.

For parents grieving the death of their children, two significant implications follow from this passage.

Turn to God’s purposes

First, we should look for the purposes that God is accomplishing through the death of our child, and not focus on the causes of his death. Of this passage, John Piper says, “The meaning of Jesus [in this passage] is not obscure. He is saying to the disciples: Turn away from your fixation on causality as the decisive explanation of suffering. And turn away from any surrender to futility, or absurdity, or chaos, or meaninglessness. And turn to the purposes and plans of God. There is no child and no suffering outside God’s purposes.” John Piper, Sermon, May, 2011, www.desiringgod.org.

If you have lost a child in death, you can trust that God is not punishing you for some sin in the past or some failure on your part to adequately care for your child. Just as the man born blind was not punished for the sins of his parents, so also your child did not die because of your past. Moreover, there is nothing that you could have done to have prevented your child’s death. The author and sustainer of the entire universe purposed that your child should live only as long as he or she lived, not a moment more, not a moment less. King David wrote, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139:16.

If we center our grief in the causes of our child’s death, we will be caught in an endless cycle of anger, frustration, and discontentment. In short, we will be living in the past. Instead of focusing on the causes of how our child died, we ought to try to live in the assurance that God is, even through this most difficult time of our life, working “all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28. Rather than living in despair, we can live in peace, trusting that God accomplishes all his objectives for our child’s life in a manner that most glorifies Himself. We can live “in the future” in the sense that we will, ultimately, come to realize that all of our sufferings were used by God in a manner far exceeding our grandest expectations.

God’s ultimate aim is to accomplish His glory and our good, not our comfort

Second, this passage shows us that God prioritizes the magnification of His own glory ahead of our life objectives, our life goals, and even our own comfort. Consider the suffering of the blind man as he lived in blindness in first-century Palestine. He did not benefit from those modern conveniences available to blind men & women. In addition to these daily physical difficulties that must have accompanied his blindness, the man suffered from the social stigma that accompanied blindness in that culture. From his birth, the man was an outcast. He was forced to endure the scorn and ridicule of those who believed that his blindness was a result of sin.

Some argue that God could not possibly desire for us to experience such significant suffering as the death of a child. The implicit assumption with this argument is that God sees the universe exactly as we do. In other words, under this misguided notion, our perception of the greatest “good” that could come from a particular situation is also God’s greatest “good.” As noted by Randy Alcorn in “If God is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering,” a child often fails to see the good that is accomplished when parents discipline their child. From the child’s standpoint, the parent does not seem to be working for his or her greatest good. Just as children do not have the long-term perspective necessary to see the greater good that can be accomplished through discipline, so also we usually lack God’s perspective when it comes to understanding the purposes behind our own suffering.

Particularly in an age of human history where we make much of “human rights,” it seems that the worst thing God could do is take away our “rights” to a safe, comfortable life. But nowhere does the Bible apologize for the suffering that followers of Christ may experience during their earthly lifetimes. Jesus’ encounter with this first-century Palestinian blind man in John 9 underscores the fact that God not only allows suffering, but uses these sufferings. There, God purposed this man’s blindness, and all that it entailed, in order to give Jesus this opportunity, at this brief moment in history, to demonstrate His glory.

In addition to providing occasion for God to demonstrate his glory, the man’s blindness was also for the blind man’s own ultimate good. In exchange for the safe, comfortable life to which we think we are entitled, God calls us to a life greater than what we can fathom. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:9, “…no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” It is not unreasonable to think that, even after his subsequent meetings with the Jewish religious leaders, the blind man described in John chapter 9 became a devoted follower of Christ. I’m guessing that if you could speak with this Christ-follower right now, he would tell you that he is glad that he was born blind. His blindness turned out to be for his good, because it occasioned him to meet and be healed by Jesus and, most likely and importantly, become a devoted follower of Jesus.

If you are suffering through the death of a child, isn’t it possible that, just as God used the blind man’s infirmity to glorify himself, God will also work through your weakness to glorify himself? Isn’t it also possible that, as of this moment, we cannot grasp everything that has occurred and will occur by reason of your child’s death, and that God will use your child’s death to accomplish many and varied good things, whether in your life or the lives of others?