015: Rethink Your Grief

Marriage Therapist Carol Timmons joins us as we RETHINK grief. We look at the five stages of grief, the differences between sorrow and depression, and how Jesus navigated grief.

This week’s Practice:

Rethink Your Grief

+ 015 Rethink Your Grief - Carol Timmons Transcript

Tim: Okay. Hey everybody. Tim Timmons here with another 10,000 minute experiment. We've got Emmoe Donise to my right.

Emmoe: Hello.

Tim: We've got Chris Cleveland to my left.

Chris: Yeah, we do.

Tim: Hey, really quick. Every time you test my voice, how do you do it?

Chris: I'm Tim. I don't even know if that was the same one?

Emmoe: I don't think so.

Tim: I'm always, yeah, I'm sitting at the chair going, Hey, we just test our mic.? He always does the dumbest voice.

Tim: "Hey, oost voo, oost doo."

Chris: We're just trying to get someone who's a little more excited to be here than I am.

Emmoe: Lies. Lies.

Tim: That's what you do. That's what you do.

Emmoe: Oh my goodness.

Tim: It's so stupid.

Emmoe: Mm-mm (negative).

Tim: Also, we are in my studio and this is a great day because my air conditioning is broke.

Chris: Oh, welcome to the club.

Tim: So it feels wonderful in here.

Chris: It's not bad though.

Emmoe: I can't even tell.

Chris: Yeah. Okay. No, that feels great.

Tim: And we are talking to an amazing, amazing woman right now via the zoom. She is in Orange County, California. Everybody in the world, please give it up for Miss Carol Timmons.

Chris: Woo.

Emmoe: Woo.

Tim: Woo.

Chris: Yay.

Carol: Yeah. I'm glad to be here.

Chris: Yay.

Carol: Thank you.

Tim: And if you guys can't figure that out, Carol Timmons is my mom.

Chris: Yes she is.

Carol: Yes.

Tim: So everybody goes, "Oh, you know Carol?" I'm like, "Yeah, the babe." I mean, she looks the same. I mean, you can kind of see her on zoom. She looks the same as she's looked for a many, many years.

Chris: Forever.

Carol: Well, I just don't know why I have to age if he does?

Tim: What's that mean?

Emmoe: Mm.

Emmoe: That was deep.

Carol: I'm sticking with 55 and you know, you can be 45, but I'm-

Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah Mom, please don't give my age. That'd be really great. I'm 24.

Emmoe: I love it. Oh my goodness.

Tim: So that's my mom, everybody. And she has been my mom for a long time. For 24 years. Chris, you had a question right before we started about what she calls me?

Chris: That's right. Yeah. I wondered if she called you Timothy or Tim? My hunch was correct, that it's Timothy.

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Because I'm Christopher at home.

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Not Chris. Yeah.

Tim: You can call me Timothy anytime you want.

Carol: I call you both Tim and Timothy.

Tim: She does. In her letters that she writes me, it's Timothy.

Emmoe: Aww.

Tim: Yeah. This woman's pretty amazing everybody. Even living in Nashville now I still get people that will write me on the Instagram or the Facebook saying, your mom has saved my life or whatever. I mean, that has been for years and years. So my mom's a shrink.

Carol: Thank you.

Chris: A shrink.

Tim: She's a therapist.

Chris: I imagine there's some education behind that word.

Tim: Shrink?

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: I am officially an LMFT.

Chris: There we go.

Tim: Watch your mouth.

Chris: Licensed Marriage Family Therapist.

Tim: Okay. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Emmoe: Nice.

Tim: Thank you.

Emmoe: I was like, that's a new one. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Chris: I was like, I want to know the details.

Tim: Yeah.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Chris: I love it. A Licensed Family Marriage Specialist.

Tim: Therapist.

Chris: Therapist.

Carol: Licensed Marriage Family Therapist.

Chris: Got it.

Carol: LMFT.

Tim: You can get those correct.

Emmoe: That's awesome.

Chris: This is great.

Tim: Yeah. So my mom is, you kind of think that growing up with a woman who is one of them, you'd be kind of nervous that she's shrinking you all the time.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: But she kind of wields it really well.

Carol: Thank you.

Tim: Yeah. You really do, mom. It's a beautiful thing how you will speak or give thoughts when you're asked and you kind of hold that loosely and you're a great listener. This is an incredible woman everybody.

Carol: Thank you.

Tim: Yeah.

Carol: You will be paid later, sweetie.

Tim: Yes. So what's your most recent moral failure, mom? Do you want to just go to there? I'd feel like it'd be a good thing to ask mom. No?

Chris: I've started asking people that question.

Emmoe: No. No.

Tim: Yeah?

Chris: Yeah. You're rubbing off on me, Tim. I haven't asked my mom yet, but...

Tim: Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not going to ask my mom that.

Emmoe: The wrong practice.

Tim: Yeah.

Tim: So you guys, I wanted to bring my mom on because we had a conversation last week, us three, when we were at lunch, we were at a terrific Mexican place by the way. I'm always craving Mexican food out here because we don't have it like we have it in California.

Carol: Right, right. Yes.

Tim: And we found a spot and let's just say it puts some holes in some parts of my body that I didn't know where needed. The salsa.

Chris: It hit me just right. It hit me just right.

Emmoe: Is that your Yelp review?

Chris: But Tim-

Emmoe: It put some holes and I'm like, wait, wait, do I want to go there? Do I not want to go there?

Tim: No. What I meant in my heart. No, it was so good. But we were having this conversation. We're talking about grief. I've been walking through a lot of really difficult things in so many areas of my life, which I'm not going to actually really go to in depth in because it's not appropriate. My marriage is wonderful and my wife and family are great. There are just some really heavy things that I'm really mourning right now and grieving. And I've never really had to experience this kind of grieving in so many different areas. And Emmoe, you've had so much experience in grieving your brother's death.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Chris: And Chris, you've had a lot of grief just in family stuff and in so many different ways. And so as we're talking, Emmoe said did something that just kind of rocked my world. She said, "For the first seven years of my grief, I tried to grieve really well. I tried to like master it."

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris: Wow.

Emmoe: U tried to grieve with grace. I think I was trying to not overwhelm anyone with my grief, and I was trying to not discount God's character at the same time. And I was just so numb to my pain for seven years because I was like, Buddy's good. And so like I tried to trump my emotion with a truth I wasn't really experiencing.

Chris: Oh wow.

Emmoe: For so many years.

Tim: But then you said?

Emmoe: Then I probably said, "I want another taco." And then you said, "Nope, our budget."

Tim: You said grief just happens to you.

Emmoe: Oh, yeah.

Tim: And that rocked me. And I think in this season I've been trying to grieve well. I'm trying to do it well, I'm trying to love still in the midst of things. Yet, it hit me and Chris, we started getting into some of your stuff. We just said, we need to do one of these on grief.

Chris: Yeah.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim: And I thought who better to talk about grief than my mom. She is just so, so wise beyond her 55 years. And I'm always going to my mom, all of us kids and I've got two older sisters and we're always going to my mom with questions or thoughts. And there's just always this beautiful wisdom of spirit stuff and psychology.

Chris: Wow.

Tim: She has such a great blend of these two.

Chris: I love that.

Tim: You guys thank you so much for being a part of this podcast. It is such an honor to walk in this with you as we're trying to figure out how to join Jesus in our week in the craziness and in the mundane. So thanks for jumping in.

Tim: I also just wanted to say, thank you specifically to Anne, Heather, Leanne, Lindsay, Diane, Lee, or Lea, it could be Lea and Lynn. All of you apparently have L's in your name. You guys are totally winning. So thank you for financially partnering with us. We are so thankful for that because this is not cheap, nor is it free. But hopefully this has actually been so encouraging to you that's why you're giving. So if this has been encouraging to you can always go to 10,000minutes.com, 10000minutes.com and in the upper right it says donate or check out different places where and get resources there.

Tim: So we've decided to split this conversation up into two different episodes because it was seriously so, so good. Chris, Emmoe and I have been texting each other just as friends talking about the stuff we're learning on this. So I think you're going to love both of these. So get ready. And it's just hanging out with my mom. She's like the coolest, so here we go.

Tim: So mom, I wanted to bring you on to help us just even talk through it. And I know there's so many people listening that are either walking through grief right now, or have walked through grief or will be walking through grief in a week. And the other little thing is that grief is not just losing a loved one. It's not just these huge things. I mean, it's down to, you had a hard relationship with a friend or, I mean, there are even the small little things that I would never think you need to grieve.

Emmoe: Right.

Tim: We actually might need to rethink our thinking on grieving.

Tim: So mom, there are five stages of grief. Is that correct?

Carol: Yes, yes.

Tim: You want to just run through those?

Carol: Okay. Yes. And let me just start by saying, please interrupt me at any point. I have some things I generally say about grief and I will go through them as long as you let me talk.

Tim: We have eight hours left, mom, and we will interrupt you to make fun of each other at some point.

Emmoe: That's true.

Carol: So I want you to interrupt and ask questions and stop and don't just say, oh, she needs to keep going.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris: Awesome.

Carol: Fair.

Emmoe: Oh, that's healing.

Tim: Bully her. Bully this woman. Yeah. It's going to be great.

Carol: Well, I started thinking about this. Timothy asked me to do this the other day and so I thought, okay, I'll just write and I wrote out four pages. Boom, boom. Just wrote them out. So that's why I need for you to stop me because I'll just keep going. And I was remembering in my era, in my day, there was a very popular book when I was raising my family and the title of it was Necessary Losses by Judith Viorst. And it's actually a classic at this point, even though it's an old book by now. But her point was, she was a few years older than I was at the time. She was in her fifties. I was in my thirties or so when I was reading the book and her point was there are necessary losses in our lives and the older we get, the more we will have them.

Chris: Hmm. Wow.

Carol: We hope that we're going to go through life and just skip through on the freeway that we've planned. But there are all kinds of necessary losses. Children grow up and leave. The very idea. We get older and our bodies don't do the same thing as they did when we were younger. Friends come and go. People come and go in our lives. Circumstances change. There are necessary losses. And it was a very lighthearted book. It was an entertaining book because she was just making fun of herself and all of us. And what are the things that we're losing? It was a delightful book to read it. Wasn't like, oh gosh, we've got to read a book about losses.

Tim: Right.

Carol: No, it was just fun. And she told stories and told stories on herself and made herself look foolish. So we all loved the book.

Tim: Were you going to say stupid?

Carol: No, I was not going to say that.

Tim: Okay you guys. That was a bad word in my house. Mom [inaudible 00:10:23]. Sorry.

Emmoe: I do like that [inaudible 00:10:24].

Chris: She was a licensed professional. She didn't say things like that.

Emmoe: Yeah. She's done this before. Okay.

Tim: Okay. Keep going. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Carol: So anyway, so I was just thinking, and that book was for all of us to just come to grips with reality. And I think that's what grief is, it's coming to grips with reality.

Chris: Wow.

Carol: I think that reality is a hard thing. The opposite of reality is mental illness, so we don't really want to do that.

Chris: Wow. Yeah.

Carol: We want to live in reality.

Chris: That's right.

Carol: So as a therapist, that's what I do a lot is try to say in a kindly way, this is reality. We need to understand that and let's get our feet on the ground and come to grips with that and move on.

Chris: Wow.

Carol: So anyway, yeah, and I was just thinking that grief applies to anything we lose, whether it's jewelry or important papers or your keys or a person or a pet or whomever.

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: Grief is losing something important. And the technical thing is deep sorrow, deep sorrow regarding anything that's a trouble or an annoyance. And you know, sometimes, well, if it's really a grief it's a deep sorrow. If it's trouble or an annoyance, it's something like somebody says, "Well, don't give me grief over this decision."

Tim: Right.

Chris: Uh-huh (affirmative).

Carol: Well, that's just another way to use that. But true grief that we're talking about is deep stuff. I saw a quote on surviving grief and I liked it, so I wrote it down. Cry whenever you need to. Scream, shout, lay on the floor, sob in the shower, be still, run, walk, listen, breathe, release your pain, throw away the map, be real, read, seek friendship, be vulnerable, don't fear being broken.

Chris: Wow. AKA live your life.

Emmoe: I know. I'm like exposed. Whoa. Geez.

Tim: That's beautiful.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Carol: I was thinking about it this morning too, and it just came to me that, because a picture's worth a thousand words. We are all on the freeway of life and we would just like to keep going 70 miles an hour.

Tim: Right.

Chris: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol: But sometimes in our lane there's a detour.

Chris: Yep.

Carol: And we don't like it because some of the other lanes don't have that stoppage and they can just wiz on by and that's annoying. And we don't like to have a detour. And so, yes, that's sort of an intro to the five stages of grief. So you've heard of the five stages of grief?

Chris: Yeah.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Tim: Yes.

Carol: Do you know where they started? Where they came from?

Tim: Jesus.

Tim: It felt right to.

Chris: Different, different class.

Tim: Different class.

Chris: Yeah. Different class.

Tim: Oh, grief. Sorry.

Emmoe: No.

Tim: No mom, I don't know the history.

Carol: Well, there was the doctor. Her name was Elizabeth Kuber Ross. You probably heard that name. And she was doing research on cancer patients and she found in her research that all cancer patients went through five stages of grief.

Tim: Yeah.

Carol: So she wrote a book about it, the five stages of grief with those going through cancer.

Chris: And what are the five stages?

Carol: And you can remember them with an acronym. It's DABSA. First stage is denial. Second one is anger. Third one is bargaining. Fourth one is sadness. And the fifth one is acceptance.

Chris: Wow.

Carol: But I'm going to introduce a sixth one.

Chris: Okay.

Carol: But I'll hold that one for a minute.

Tim: So it's DABSA?

Carol: DABSA.

Tim: DABSA. Would you say sadness?

Carol: DABSA.

Chris: Or depression?

Carol: DABSA. DABSA.

Chris: DABSA.

Carol: DABSA. Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Actually, Kuber Ross said denial, anger, bargaining, depression.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: Oh okay.

Carol: But I don't use that because depression is a clinical term and it's really not the same as grief.

Tim: Right.

Chris: Yeah.

Emmoe: Right.

Carol: Grief is one thing. Depression is another. Now you can be depressed in grief, but depression is a whole slew of clinical other symptoms.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Carol: And it is not grief.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim: Somebody asked me yesterday that knows some of my journey right now. They said, "How are you?" And I'm like, "I think I'm in like a mild depression." But would you say, I mean, I'm actually, okay. I don't think this is a clinical thing. I'm just, I'm really sad. My heart is really sad and angry at certain things. So would you say it's more of a mild sadness?

Carol: Yeah. I think you're in grief.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Tim: Okay.

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: We say depressions sets in after about two years of being under constant stress, tension, pressure, terrible things going on. I'm just talking clinically because I'm from a clinical background. So I don't like to use a clinical term when we should use the word sadness.

Tim: Totally. That makes a ton of sense.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Chris: Actually, I really love that. Yeah.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Tim: It's almost more beautiful. That is actually more beautiful for my heart to say, I'm just sad. Instead of depressed feels a little bit more removed.

Emmoe: Yeah. Yeah.

Tim: I don't know why that kind hits me a different way, but I feel really sad and that actually attaches to my emotions more than the mild depression does.

Carol: That's right. That's right. Because depression is just a whole syndrome of clinical symptoms, but you have something you're sad about.

Tim: Yeah. Right.

Carol: So, okay, so to go back through denial is a normal reaction to rationalize overwhelming emotions.

Chris: A normal reaction to rationalize-

Carol: A normal reaction to rationalize overwhelming emotions. So something very bad happens or something even a little bit bad happens. I lost my keys just before I was ready to go to church yesterday and I was supposed to be there for something and I totally lost, I couldn't walk out the door. First of all, they have to be here. I'm in denial.

Tim: Yeah. Right.

Carol: Then I'm angry. I had those keys. Where are they? I'm so mad. Then I'm bargaining. If only I could remember exactly when I had them, where I could have put them down. And then sadness, they're not here. I'm just, I'm bummed. I got to call them and tell them, I'll be late. And acceptance. Okay. The keys are gone. Do you have another set? Yes. I have another set. Acceptance.

Tim: Right. Right. Even in just that small little thing of losing your keys.

Tim: Okay. So as we start diving into rethinking the word grief for the next two episodes, let's just take a moment and make a mental note or a literal list of a few things that have not gone our way in the past, present, and the future. What has been lost or is in the process of being lost or might you potentially lose in the future? It might be a job or it's a certain status or an identity. It might be a thing, might be people or relationships. What have you lost?

Carol: So it's helpful to understand the five stages because you can say, okay, woo, I guess I'm in bargaining or it's fair for me to be in anger. I'm angry about this situation.

Chris: Is there a typical time that people stay in any of these phases, like denial? I could imagine like grief or even if you stayed where you are for so long, it becoming depression, if we deny long enough.

Carol: That's right. That's right. That's exactly right. And of course the length that we stay depends on a lot of factors. The seriousness of the loss, the stability of our own self. If I'm used to living in reality, then it's going to be hard for me to deal with reality. How the people all around me are responding. All kinds of factors. I'll say this, it's linear in the sense that we go from denial to anger, to bargaining, to sadness, to acceptance. But it's not linear in the sense that we go from denial to anger, to denial, denial, denial, anger, bargaining, anger, anger, anger, denial, bargaining.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol: So once we've started on the journey, we can go back and forth and do more of whatever it is we haven't fully done yet.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I feel that in some of my journey where it's like, I thought I actually accepted this at some point. And then come back and like, wow, maybe I didn't, or it hits you from a different angle.

Emmoe: That's too real.

Carol: Well, and you probably did accept whatever it was, but there was more acceptance to do.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris: Yeah. That's true.

Carol: That's the point. So don't feel bad if you think you've already come to acceptance and you go back and do some more denial. Okay. Let's pick it up, pick it up and do it.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: Does grief ever, love me through this question, does grief ever end? I mean, is this just new pathways of grieving a certain thing. Do you ever stop the grieving process?

Carol: Excellent question, my dear. We say true grief resolves. Maybe it doesn't end, it resolves.

Emmoe: Yeah. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol: There is such a thing as morbid grief and clinically it's called complicated bereavement. And clinically, after two years, if someone is just still in a pile and they can't get out of their grief, then we're going to say, well, I think it might even be complicated bereavement. It might be more serious. And I'll use the example of my dad. My dad has been gone 40 years this year.

Chris: Wow. Wow.

Chris: There are times when I am thinking about my family and Tim, I'm thinking about the grandchildren and I'm thinking, I wish they knew daddy. I wish they knew my dad.

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol: Or if I'm talking to somebody in a session and I start to tear up over my dad.

Tim: Yeah. Yeah.

Emmoe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: But you know, my grief over my father is resolved. I don't wear it on my sleeve, but when it comes up, I do it and I cry. I let myself cry. Why not?

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Carol: He was wonderful. I loved him. And he was a great influence in my life. And I wouldn't be who I am without him and all of that. So true grief resolves. We come to a place of resolve, but that doesn't mean that it's totally over and we never grieve that person again, or I'm done grieving. And think of it as a journey. It's a journey. It's not a destination.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: Right. Right.

Carol: Okay. Now, what makes sense?

Tim: Even with your dad, that you still cry with your dad. I mean, you and I will talk about your dad and you will move to tears at a moment's notice. Is it just become this soft sadness at the end of it?

Carol: That's a good way to put it.

Tim: I mean, I feel like that's where it is with you. There's not this anger. I don't see any of those pieces of the stages of grief other than just a sadness and a love. I mean, it's really beautiful how you love your dad and even mourn over your dad.

Chris: Yeah. I wonder if that's almost honoring and like celebrating the goodness of it, whether it's a person or a situation. When you're grieving, it's because you've obviously lost something that meant something to you.

Carol: Right.

Chris: And so when we come back to that even over years and can grieve it again, it's like, wow, this was really special. I guess, maybe the idea is can we do that without losing everything else and losing our minds in the middle of it?

Carol: Yes. And that's the hope, isn't it? Isn't that great?

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: That we can grieve, and we can cry, and then we can pick up and go on.

Chris: Yeah.

Emmoe: Yeah.

Chris: And by actually doing it, by you saying I'm going to feel these feelings about my dad now, it's actually honoring.

Carol: Yes.

Chris: The experience, instead of pushing it away and denying it.

Carol: That's right. That's right.

Tim: Well, what's that sixth DABSA?

Carol: All right. I'm just going to read through the-

Tim: All right. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Do you guys have a thought of the letter that it's going to be? Is it that the end, mom? DABSA.

Carol: No, no, no. It'll be a surprise. It'll be a surprise.

Emmoe: Is it? Is it?

Tim: I'm saying it's a T.

Chris: It's a T.

Tim: Rebalance.

Chris: Ret's go.

Emmoe: Is it?

Chris: Ret's go.

Emmoe: No, no. I want to see if I can get it right.

Carol: So denial. Now, anger is as the numbness wears off of the pain of loss, anger takes hold, and that's when we start to blame. We blame ourselves, we blame others, we lash out, whatever. The bargaining part is when we say if only, and that's the what ifs. And that helps us, it's a temporary coping mechanism from the pain. We've been in denial, been angry and it's exhausting, so we start in on bargaining. Well, if you would've, if I would've, if they would've, why didn't you? Well, how could you not? And it gives the person sort of a time to adjust to the reality of the situation by bargaining.

Chris: Do you see people spiraling here? I know in some of the things that I've gone through, I feel like, and maybe this isn't bargaining, tell me if it is. I will go uber into details. I need to know everything around this and understand it, but it really I'm just spiraling into this never ending abyss of filling my mind with useless information.

Carol: Well, I would rather have you see it as a coping mechanism. Just like I said, it's a temporary escape from the pain.

Chris: Yes. That's a better way to say it.

Carol: And it appears to provide an explanation or a hope of some kind. It doesn't really, but when you ask someone who's lost someone close to them, they want to tell you all the details. Well, this happened and then that happened and then they did this and then all of us didn't know what to do.

Chris: Right.

Carol: So they want to tell the story over and over and over again, because it's a way of going, wait a minute, it really happened. Didn't it? Didn't it really happen?

Emmoe: Yeah.

Chris: Wow.

Carol: So anyway, the bargaining, if only, last a long time for most people. Most people say, well, I just don't understand. I don't know why it had to happen or why this was, or how did it, why didn't some other of people? Why didn't the doctors? Why didn't? Well, they should have, and I can't believe I did. It's a long stage.

Chris: Yeah. That's right.

Carol: Then the fourth one is the sadness that I was talking about and not to be mixed up with depression. It's an appropriate response to a great loss. That's sadness.

Tim: Sadness is?

Carol: It's an appropriate response to a great loss or whatever.

Chris: So we shouldn't be afraid of it?

Carol: No. No.

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: We have to do it. If we don't do it, it will come out again. It will surface over and over again.

Tim: Any other stages or just it'll surface?

Carol: The sadness will. Yes. It'll come out in anger. It'll come out in denial. We need to do our sadness.

Chris: Yeah.

Tim: Yeah.

Chris: And this maybe is the part where you feel like you've tried to do that with grace, the sadness part?

Emmoe: I think all of it, really. The more I listen to the way Carol, you're explaining things, the more it's about permission, and that's been a big part of my life.

Carol: Yes, yes.

Emmoe: I didn't feel like I had permission to be that angry or that sad or permission to even ask for things. So my life has been very much a bargain. Everything I do is like settling. So it's so much more of like, I'm not going to ask for much, so death isn't around the corner again.

Chris: Wow.

Emmoe: It's not so much that I didn't feel it's that I didn't feel like I had permission to be so angry because my parents reacted differently or my community felt uncomfortable with how sad I was. So it's just all those stages, really.

Carol: Boy, I've heard that before. I listened to these things and I've heard you say that before and I've thought that you were trying to be very, very brave and maybe trying to be very spiritual with the situation.

Emmoe: Yeah. Yeah. I think I was trying to. And the part where you're saying that grief resolves, I think I was trying to find the redemption in grief instead of just it just being what it is.

Carol: Right.

Chris: Wow.

Emmoe: And like God is in that instead of like, where's the testimony, where's the point. So I can say it was worth feeling so crappy.

Chris: Were you trying to skip some steps to get to the resolution of it?

Emmoe: Totally. Yeah. And being a worship leader and a mentor, I felt the pressure to be and then for my parents to be the only one left. So for them to like just check out, I was like, how do I do of this at 22?

Carol: Yes.

Chris: Wow.

Emmoe: But even now I'm like, man, every day, it's about permission.

Carol: I think that's an excellent way to look at it because you didn't give yourself permission to grieve. And sometimes it takes a long time to really assimilate that permission to grieve. I had an experience when I was early marriage, early twenties. My closest friend growing up, my childhood friend, Janice, died of Leukemia. I was married and couldn't go back for the service. And so I grieved alone. I did my best. I wrote her mother a letter. I went over how good of friends we were and how I loved her and I knew she was with the Lord and on and on. In my mind, I had grieved. But 20 years later I saw the movie Beaches.

Emmoe: Oh boy.

Carol: I don't know if everybody understands the movie Beaches, but it was about two women who were very close friends. I totally identified with that movie. In that movie, the quiet girl passed away and the loud one lived. Bette Midler was the sort of loud, in your person. Well, it was the opposite with Janice and me. I was the quiet one. She was the upfront, she was going to be a doctor, she was a leader, she had the best grades, she was everything. And so in my mind it was so totally twisted around.

Carol: When I got home from that movie, I sobbed for an entire hour. I couldn't get my breath. I was grieving Janice because I thought, why did I live and she died? And I had to make sense of it. I had to do my bargaining and make sense of it. So every year on her birthday, I celebrate her birthday and I thank the Lord for allowing me to live and to let me be in place of her as well. I had to make sense of it somehow, but 20 years of not really understanding that I hadn't fully grieved.

Tim: Wow.

Chris: Wow.

Chris: I've got a couple questions.

Carol: Yes.

Chris: And that you can get to, or not. I wonder, we talked so much like about faith on this thing, and one question, you can answer these, however you want is do you find a faith angle to be helpful in this? Or can it be both helpful and hurtful in people. Like what Emmoe was saying is like, I tried to jump to like the God is good and it made me skip all these steps. And then gosh, what was my second question?

Tim: That's a great question, Chris.

Chris: Let's start with that one, I think and move on to another.

Carol: Think about who we know Jesus is. He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

Tim: Wow.

Carol: Isn't that wonderful that we're told that.

Tim: Woo.

Carol: He knows us. He knows us intimately. We are his children. He doesn't want us to be fake. He wants us to be real. He understands grief. As a matter of fact, he went through terrible grief and sadness as he was dying on the cross. And he asked his friends just kind of come and hold his hand and they fell asleep.

Chris: Yeah.

Carol: He understands.

Tim: I mean, what if Jesus actually understands our grief? I mean, I know it's such a Christian thing to say that he walks with us and he talks about us. But like, what if he actually understands our grief and wants to walk with us in it and restore us through it?

Tim: This week I'd love for us to even just start rethinking this idea of grief. There are huge things that maybe we need to rethink and re-look at our grieving process on. So if that's the case, who would you want to do that with? Who is somebody safe? Whether it's a therapist or whether it's just a friend, who is somebody that you can walk through this process with?

Tim: And on the other side of this, there are so many little things that happen all week long that I think I don't grieve well. And that I don't think we as a people grieve well. And after a while, these things seem to build up and build up and then actually cause resentment. And generally at some point they catch up with us. So this week let's practice being aware of the things that we might need to begin a grieving process with. And remember as we grieve and walk through this stuff, we're going to do this with Jesus.

Tim: We decided to split up this podcast because next week we're going to look at how to walk with others in their grief. And then how do we walk with Jesus in our grief? You're going to want to jump in next week with us. It's so good. You guys, I'm so thankful for you. I'm so thankful to walk through this with you. If you want to get a few encouraging texts, please text 10K, 10K to the number 55678 or just go to 10,000minutes.com and check out all the different resources there. And if you guys want to give that would be amazing too, because we'd love to continue doing this.

Tim: Thanks you guys.

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