grief

More than we can handle

Wed, 03/03/2010 - 12:30 — Debra Dean Murphy

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

It’s the stuff of cross-stitch samplers and sunny sermons: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”

It’s meant to console, to inspire confidence, to help us “claim victory” over illness or heartache or the wiles of the devil. For all the earnestness with which it is exhorted and embraced, it is also patently untrue.

Some people, lots of people, millions of people have more than they can handle.

They are overwhelmed, undone by sudden catastrophe; buried under crushing burdens related to debt, disease, death; drowning in a sea of unstoppable pain or white-hot grief. Some, miraculously, find a way out of the staggering misery (more on that in a minute). Others don’t.... READ MORE.

 

The suffering God

Tue, 01/26/2010 - 11:27 — Debra Dean Murphy

Debra Dean Murphy's blog

Today would have been my sister’s 46th birthday. She died in a car accident in 1987. She was 23 years old and a newly-minted 6th grade teacher. Her name was Kim.

In the fog of grief that November my parents and I listened to the well-meaning words of family, friends, and neighbors who tried to offer comfort, whose own heads were spinning with disbelief at the loss of this beautiful girl whom they too knew and loved. We were all groping, in vain, for meaning.

We rarely seem to ponder questions of theodicy (why a good God permits evil and suffering) when things are going well, when we have our wits about us and the issue is more theoretical than personal. Unfortunately, theodicy usually kicks us in the stomach through a tragedy or loss that leaves us stunned, emotionally spent, and choking with rage and grief.

What has struck me most about God-talk and the recent earthquake in Haiti is this: Whether God’s (inscrutable) ways are being defended or God’s very existence is being denied, the kind of God under consideration seems to be something on the order of a comic-book superhero.... READ MORE.

 

Adam Thomas's picture

Baby Boy (Davies Tales #4)

Mon, 11/23/2009 - 14:28 — Adam Thomas

Adam Thomas's blog

During the summer between his first and second years of seminary, Aidan Davies grew up all at once. The summer began with a breakup and ended with a baptism, but those are pieces of a larger story. This story is about a baby boy.

Davies was a chaplain only because his badge said he was. For that first month, he didn’t particularly feel like one. I’m not a chaplain, but I play one at this hospital, he often thought. His clinical pastoral educators – the hospital’s professional chaplains – had borrowed their teaching style from mother birds. On the third day of the summer, they pushed Davies and the seven other interns out of the nest and watched as eight pairs of arms, flapping wildly, disappeared in a downward spiral. The wingless interns crashed into the rocky bottom, and, miraculously, found their patients there.

Rock bottom was on the top floor of the hospital, but Davies had no patients on that level considering another intern had chosen the ICU as his normal beat. However, that night, Davies was on-call, and the on-call pager had beckoned him to Intensive Care, and he stared at the message on the little screen the whole elevator ride to the twelfth story.... READ MORE.

 

James Lumsden's picture

If I should fall behind...

Wed, 12/03/2008 - 10:16 — James Lumsden

James Lumsden's blog

Last night, after the fullness of the first Sunday of Advent had come to a quiet close, I received a phone call from the spouse of one of my staff. He and the doctors confirmed what I had sensed earlier last week: my colleague and friend's kidneys are shutting down and she has about a week to live. In a flash, this tune from the Dead came to me, one of my all time favorites... READ MORE.