grief Archives - Gina Brenna Butz

When We Don’t Get Closure

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 21, 2020
Post category:grief transition

In February, we finished off our last high school soccer season. We knew each game might be our last, so we tried to take it all in. We took lots of pictures. My parents came. The girls got sweatshirts made to commemorate it. While it was sad to end, we had closure.

Closure is important. We teach our ministry staff, when they come back from overseas assignments, to build a RAFT (Reconciliation, Affirmation, Farewell, and Think Destination). In other words, we take a good look around and see what needs healing, celebration, and grief. Then we look ahead with hope to what is coming next.

That aspect of Farewells-saying goodbye well to a season, both to people and places, and allowing ourselves to grieve well, is essential. When we know something is going to end, we pay attention. We notice what we’ve taken for granted. The ordinary suddenly becomes precious and noteworthy. When we are cut off from saying goodbye well, it is difficult to fully engage with hope in the next one.

It’s so devastating and unnatural when we are denied the opportunity for good closure. This season we’re in is full of cut off endings.

When We Don’t Get Closure

When our daughter went to school the Thursday before spring break, we didn’t know it was her last day. We had no idea she wouldn’t wear her school uniform or drive carpool again. If we had, we would have done it (and the days leading up to it) differently.

This spring we all missed so many events, but maybe the most difficult are the lasts that we won’t be able to get back. The things we can’t reschedule. Watching the last club soccer season. Celebrating the end of a year-long program. Enjoying the last days of work before retirement. A friend moved away and you didn’t get to say goodbye. You had to leave your host country and you don’t know when (or if) you’ll go back.

I’ve wondered why this feels so wrong, this cut-off grief. I wonder if it’s because we ache for shalom-the way that things are meant to be. The peace God intended. We bend toward justice and righteousness. It is good to desire what is right, and this just feels wrong. When we work toward healthy closure, it’s like a satisfying ending to a book. We are shalom people. We celebrate goodness. Ending in a place of restoration and peace is in our wiring. It’s so jarring when we are kept from that.

So What Do We Do?

I’ve contemplated what to do about this abrupt grief we feel. We begin by acknowledging the weight of it. It’s another part of living in the reality I talked about in my last post. It doesn’t feel right because it isn’t. Like stopping a race before the finish line, or quitting a book halfway through a chapter, it’s unnatural not to finish well.

It’s been helpful for me to recognize this. It’s a particular kind of grief to not only miss something but to know that you’ve missed it entirely. We carry emotion in our bodies-it’s one more thing we need to name.

I hope that experiencing this cut off grief makes us appreciate what we do have. When we are able to finish well again, I hope we do. Realizing how important closure is, I hope we savor what we have even more. This is a reminder to love what we have well when we have it, because we don’t know when we might lose it.

These undone places can be a reminder that we were made for something more than this. We were made for another world, one where shalom is never shattered. If we put too much hope in things of this world, we will be disappointed. While we grieve the unfinished chapters, let them remind us that the greater story ends well.

And rather than shrugging it off as lost, it’s worth the energy to find ways to have some kind of closure. This Friday would have been our daughter’s graduation. Instead of that, her class (thankfully small) is gathering to do a socially distanced tailgate party. It’s not what we planned, but it’s still good.

Living in Reality

Post author:Gina B
Post published:May 1, 2020
Post category:expectations faith grief truth

“You don’t get to decide reality. You just get to enter it.”

That’s a phrase a friend of mine shared years ago, and it changed my life.

Reality is what is true. It’s true whether or not we believe it to be true, whether or not we want it to be true. It just is.

How We Respond to Reality

I think of this a lot, as I see people choosing the parts of our current reality they want to embrace. Not all of it-just what fits the picture we want to hold onto.

Some of us prefer optimism-let’s find the silver linings and look on the bright side. There’s a benefit to that, but not when it’s delusional. Not when it turns a blind eye on the plight of the less fortunate.

Some focus on the gravity of the situation, with just cause. We can’t look away from the reality of the pain this is causing so many, including ourselves. We can’t avoid the hard truths, but in doing so sometimes we miss the good that is happening.

Sometimes it’s not optimism or pessimism that keeps us from reality. It’s just willful ignorance. A stubborn refusal to name what is real. Like an athlete who says, “No, I’m good to play” when they are obviously injured.

This reality isn’t one that any of us would have chosen, but it what we have. We don’t get to decide if we want it, but we do have the opportunity to enter it with Jesus at our side.

My friend Iris recently said, “Jesus will not meet us in fantasyland. We meet Jesus at the foot of the cross in reality.”

Our current reality is rough.

Each morning I wake up and wonder if maybe this pandemic is a nightmare we can shake off.

We can’t.

So if we can’t shake it off, how do we enter it?

How Do We Enter Reality

We enter it honestly, confessionally. As with any trial, we are being stirred. This situation shows us where our idols are-where we hold too tightly to comfort, security, control, success, peace. So as we recognize them, we confess them. We agree with God about the hold they have on us.

We speak honestly about our emotions. So many are stirred in us in situations like this-anxiety, grief, anger, frustration, discouragement. God wants our unedited hearts. He can handle them. We speak the reality of how we feel, knowing that He will sift through it and bring us to His version of what is happening.

We don’t pretend that things are better than they are. Nor do we take God out of the equation and predict despair. We look suffering in the face and see God standing with us in it, holding us, comforting us. The more we are willing to enter suffering, the more we can minister to others in it.

We enter it knowing that while we are all in this together, we are experiencing different realities. For some, this has been a time to slow down. For others, there’s more work than ever. Some might find it’s a bit of a relief. Others wonder how they will make ends meet. When we don’t recognize the fact that our realities are not the same, we withhold compassion and understanding. But when we do see that others are experiencing this in a different way, we give them space and grace to be on their own journeys.

We enter it with Jesus. We meet Him at the foot of the cross in it, knowing that nothing about Him is changed by our circumstances. Nothing He has done for us is taken. We know that He sees all we are going through. He has compassion on us. His power and wisdom will carry each of us through the reality we are in. Nothing in this situation scares Him, derails Him, makes Him wonder what to do. Nothing about how we are going through it, whether we’re “doing well” or not, phases Him.

And because of Him, we enter it with faith, hope, and gratitude. We look around to see where He is at work and we celebrate it. In this reality, there is goodness, because God is here. Those of us who know Him ought to be the ones most able to walk it with hope, because we have an unshakeable foundation in the midst of the harshest realities.

When we stare in the face of reality and still praise God, how much more is He glorified? And how much more do we see that He is greater than any reality we encounter? He is God of anything we walk through.

Related posts:

Why We Need Kindness Right Now

Holding Grief and Gratitude Together

When Weeping Is Prayer

Post author:Gina B
Post published:February 14, 2019
Post category:emotions grief prayer

I read about a family whose 6-year-old twin boys and 9-year-old daughter died while waiting for a bus. I started to pray for the family in their loss, but all I could do was cry. No words.

It’s not the first time. So often, the weight of the needs around me feels too much to put into prayer. Tragedy in our country. A tough diagnosis. A friend’s child’s struggles. My child’s struggles.

Recently, my own work felt overwhelming, and Jesus whispered to me to stop and pray. When I did, tears came instead.

But maybe that is prayer.

Because isn’t prayer about honesty? Isn’t it touching the heart of God? And doesn’t God weep with us?

Prayer is a conversation. He invites, we respond. We come, He listens. And in it, we bring our hearts.

Sometimes maybe the way we love best is not with words, but with emotion. We step into others’ reality. Allow their pain to become ours.

Or we step into our own reality. We allow our pain to show. We let ourselves feel. Our hearts come to the surface, and we let Jesus touch them. We let them be caught and held by the Savior.

After all, that’s what Jesus did. He stepped into our reality. He embraced our humanity. Allowed our pain to become His, to the point of death.

God Weeps with Us

And He does it day after day. He is not the God who stands at a distance., but the One who watches for the prodigal. When He sees him He scoops up His robes and goes running.

He is the God who bears witness to all the pain of the world, even that which others do not know. Closer than a heartbeat, He is El Roi, the God who sees.

He is the God who collects our tears in a bottle, who hears every sigh and sees every longing. What He hopes for from us, more than our words, is our hearts.

There is an aversion in our culture to enter pain. We stand at a distance and pray, but our prayer is more, “God may that never happen to me,” than, “God this is ours to bear together.”

Or, when the hurt is ours, the prayer is, “God make this go away so I don’t have to feel it” rather than “God here is my heart, please hold me in the midst of the battle.”

What Our Weeping Says

There is a difference between weeping from despair, and tears of honesty. The latter is brave-letting ourselves feel our humanity while we face reality before the One who alone can bring redemption of all that is broken.

So I’m learning to let tears be part of my prayer. When they are for others, they are tears that say, “I do not want to stand at a distance from this.” I want to stand alongside them, where Jesus is. Most likely, someday I will need someone else to cry prayers for me.

And when they are for myself, the tears say, “Thank you, Jesus, that you cherish my heart. You do not expect me to go through this alone, but invite me to give it all to you.” They are tears of relief, of surrender.

May we allow weeping to be part of how we communicate with God. May our tears be our prayer, an honest, dependent cry to the One who understands it all.

What God Doesn’t Need Us to Tell Him

What to Do When It’s Hard

What Is Anger’s Real Name?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:October 11, 2018
Post category:emotions grief perspective

Sometimes on New Year’s Eve, when I’m feeling ambitious and intentional about our family relationships, we review the year together. One question we ask our kids is, “what’s one thing you learned this year?”

Our last year overseas, our then 10-year-old said, “I’ve learned that anger is a secondary emotion,” and I high fived myself.

Partly because it felt like I nailed something good in parenting, but mostly because I was glad our kids learned it so much sooner than I did.

It was something I learned that year too, mostly because I experienced a lot of it (we got a dog. It was hard. I got angry. Really angry).

Anger is a secondary emotion, meaning that it’s not all we’re feeling. When we’re angry, it’s usually because we’re feeling something else, something that feels vulnerable. So anger, which makes us feel big, covers the emotion that makes us feel small.

Anger was a theme that year for our whole family. It rose in me when we got our dog and everything in my life fell apart. Our daughter lived in it the summer before we moved back to the U.S.

For me, the anger covered shame, the shame of failure, of not living up to my image of a successful homeschooling, dog training missionary. Our daughter’s anger masked the fear she felt in being so completely out of control and sad in the process of leaving home.

What Anger Tells Us

Anger is a good barometer. We get angry when something we love feels threatened. Often it’s our image. Or it’s a way of life we’re trying to hold onto. Maybe our deepest desires feel threatened-our desire to be wanted, important, safe, right.

Anger doesn’t always show up as rage. In fact, often it doesn’t. It disguises itself as sarcasm, criticism, stubbornness, contempt. It slips out in clipped words and impatience.

Most of us don’t linger in anger for long. It feels wrong. We dismiss it, stifle it, or blow it off quickly, rather than allowing it to be a doorway into something deeper.

When we don’t linger, we never get to the bottom of what we’re really feeling. And we need to.

Because if we sit with our anger long enough, it will tell us its real name.

if we sit with our anger long enough, it will tell us its real name. Share on X

The Names of Anger

It might tell us its name is grief. Maybe shame. Fear. Fear of losing control, fear of not being enough. Weakness. Confusion. Despair. Beneath our anger is our true emotions that need to see the light of day so we can deal with them.

One fall, I was, in my husband’s words, “kind of mean.” That’s fair. (He was being gracious-there are stronger words he could use).

He said maybe I didn’t have much emotional margin after sending our son off to school, the prayer rollercoaster God took us on that summer, and the business of gearing up for a conference that fall that I was leading.

Regardless, I’m glad he said something. It gave me an opportunity to sit with my anger and see what it was hiding. It told me I felt unimportant, lonely, unheard, in certain areas. As I sat with those more raw emotions, my anger began to dissipate.

Don’t ignore anger. Pretending it doesn’t exist, or dismissing it without question robs us of the path to deeper emotional health and wholeheartedness. Sit with it. Dialogue with it. Let it tell you what you’re really feeling.

What is your anger’s real name?

Related posts:

Looking Scary (When We’re Scared)

When Fear Is a Dictator

We Grieve and Then We Hope

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 22, 2018
Post category:grief hope transition

“I don’t know if I’ll ever find what I have right now again. There’s just so much that’s unknown.”

That was our son’s deep cry as we talked one night. He’s slogging through the final weeks of his senior year of high school, staring down freshman year at one of the country’s largest universities. It’s a big transition.

His days are consumed with studying for AP tests, shifts at the local grocery store, graduation parties, and college prep. This chapter is closing in a flurry of activity, so much so that finding the emotional space to prepare for the next chapter is difficult. He despairs in the loss, and fears for the future.

We all come to places of transition where the temptation is to despair or fear. Instead, we can choose to grieve and hope. Read the rest of the story today at SheLoves magazine.

Related posts:

When Grief Surprises You

Plan to Stay Where God Calls You

Having Hope in a New Season

When Grief Surprises You

Post author:Gina B
Post published:June 11, 2018
Post category:grief transition

I’m in a season of grief right now. Oh, I’m not sad all the time. It surprises me, actually. It comes in waves, like the ocean.

I’ve become more acquainted with the ocean now that we live 45 minutes from it. I love walking along the beach at sunrise. The waves are so unpredictable. They surprise you sometimes, coming up further than you expect. You can’t predict them.

Sometimes the water stays far away. Other times it stretches out and touches your feet, even washing up to your ankles if you’re close enough.

That’s my experience of grief.

If only it were a linear, predictable process. Hard at first, and then gradually subsiding. Less and less over time, until you don’t feel it anymore. A clear timeline with a precise end date. You do your grieving and then you’re done, praise Jesus.

Instead, grief feels like a stranger popping out from behind doors at the most unexpected times.

When we walked onto the stage to stand with our son at graduation, I was surprisingly calm. Later, as one of his good friends stood there with her parents, I lost it.

When I have thought about graduation in the past weeks, I have felt more pride than sorrow. Then a week ago I read an email from friends overseas and the tears spilled over at how well they’re doing.

His graduation party was all joy, then last week I folded one of his never-to-be-worn-again uniform shirts and I broke down.

That’s the thing with grief-it’s all right there, but we can’t control or predict it.

I’m often frustrated by this unpredictable guest. Probably because it reminds me that I am not always doing as well as I would like (or like others) to think. It keeps me vulnerable, never knowing when a wave of grief might catch me off guard, when I might start crying about some random person’s life, when it’s really just touching my own.

But I’ve been learning these last few years that grief is a necessary companion. In fact, it is a doorway to wholeheartedness.

I know that part of the reason my grief comes out sideways is that I don’t want to deal with it. It’s easier to stay focused on my to do list, buying dorm essentials and harping on him to finish those thank you notes (I swear, he’s working on them), than to let the waves crash so hard I lose my footing.

But losing our footing in grief is what we must do sometimes. More and more I am learning to stop and walk straight into the waves. To let myself dwell on what we are losing, and how much it hurts to lose. To say a proper goodbye to this beautiful season we have lived.

When I do, I find that those waves don’t drown-they heal.

And I’m learning that I cannot navigate the waves alone. It’s easier to weather waves of grief when there are people walking beside us, holding us up. They hold our hands and make us brave as we walk into the waves. We need those people who will life preservers, keeping us afloat while we swim in the grief for a little while.

We can’t fight the waves. Instead, we can accept that they are a natural part of the journey. We can give space to our souls to process the grief when it comes. And we can invite others to hold space for us to feel all of it, so when the waves do come, we can swim.

Let the sorrow come and touch you. When we do that, we let ourselves be human. We live wholeheartedly. Let grief surprise.

Related posts:

Acquainted with Grief

Embracing Suffering

As the Ride Winds Down: Thoughts on the Last Moments of Childhood

It’s Going to Be Okay

Post author:Gina B
Post published:March 29, 2018
Post category:grief hope trials

“It’s going to be okay.”

I recently told my husband that he can no longer say this to me when I am discouraged, anxious, or forecasting the demise of some aspect of my life (as I am apt to do at times).

I’ve always hated when people say, “It’s going to be okay.” I want to slap them.

“How do you know?” I wonder.

How, in the middle of this really stinky moment in my life can you offer this platitude? (Trust me, I’ve had it offered to me at really, really stinky moments).

But lately, I feel like God keeps telling me exactly that, “It’s going to be okay.”

Really, God? Is it really going to be okay? How can you say that? When I’m sitting here waiting to hear the news that could be life-changing, it doesn’t feel like it will be okay if it doesn’t turn out the way I hope. When we’re staring down disappointment, broken dreams, loss, shalom shattered, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it will ever be okay.

But He repeats: It’s going to be okay. Here’s how I know.

It’s going to be okay. Why?

This past week at church, we talked about Jesus raising Lazarus. When Lazarus falls ill, they send for Jesus by saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” I don’t send for people that way, but maybe I should, like, “Erik, the wife whom you love needs a foot massage.”

But that’s what defined their relationship. And just to be clear, John reiterates it in verse 5, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” Ah, so it wasn’t just them thinking he loved them. He really did. Our speaker pointed out how important it was to preface the story this way because, in the middle of the not okay that was coming, it would be easy to doubt.

It’s easy for us too.

He loves us

It’s going to be okay because He loves us. That’s the anchor where we sink our souls when life doesn’t look the way we feel it should. The God who loves us more than life is in it.

So it’s going to be okay. But not just okay. It’s going to be good.

Oh, but not necessarily good in the way we think it should be good. And that’s the problem.

The problem is that my idea of good is so focused on my comfort and happiness, focused on tangible, temporal things. In my world, the news is always what I hoped it would be. Jesus shows up in my time and my ways.

He is good

But It’s going to be good because He is good, and His purposes toward us are for our good. He is focused on our character and sanctification, on intangible, eternal things. He shows up in His time and His ways, that are so much better than ours.

His good is so much bigger. It’s a good grounded in the deepest love we can imagine, always working on our behalf.

It’s good in the way that Jesus didn’t just save Lazarus from illness, he raised him from the dead. That’s a better story.

He’s writing a good story

And that’s what I also know. It’s going to be okay because God is a good author. He is a good storyteller. He is writing a good story for us. And the story ends well.

We won’t see them as good stories if we hold too tightly to our idea of good. In my version of life, disappointment, broken dreams, and loss are not part of the story. But what kind of story would it be if everything was perfect?

A boring story, that’s what. The best stories have conflict. They have twists and turns and nail biting, “What will happen?” moments. And God’s writing the best story for each of us.

The stories God writes are stories of redemption. You can’t have redemption if you don’t have shalom shattered. You can’t have resurrection without death.

This week is a holy reminder that it’s going to be okay. Easter demonstrates His love for us. It is a testimony to God working good on our behalf. The story is one of triumph over the greatest enemy. He made everything okay.

We say this Friday is good, but it didn’t feel good to the disciples. It felt like the end of all their hopes. Disappointment. Broken dreams. Loss. It didn’t feel like it was going to ever be okay.

They didn’t know Sunday was coming. But God knew.

He knew that it was all for love. It was the greatest story ever written. All for us.

So when I slip into bed and anxious thoughts nag at my brain, I call to mind instead His voice telling me, “It’s going to be okay.” As I think about our son heading off to college this summer, and all the unknowns that go with that, He whispers, “It’s going to be okay.” I sigh my latest dilemma to my husband, and I hear him catch himself before he says it, but I nod, and say, “You’re right. It’s going to be okay.”

When life feels like Friday, it’s going to be okay, because Sunday’s coming.

He loves us. Everything is working for our good. The story ends well. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. Maybe not until we see Him. But it’s going to be okay.

Related posts:

What to Do When It’s Hard

This Kind of Jesus

What to Do When It’s Hard

Post author:Gina B
Post published:February 9, 2017
Post category:dependence on God faith grief trials

In the last couple of weeks, I have witnessed all manner of hardship around me. The sudden death of a son. Adopted children wrestling with trauma and fear. Inconclusive test results. Two attempted suicides. A mysterious illness in a child.

Moments like this rattle us to our core. They remind us that the world is fallen, and we are frail. They speak to our smallness, and our need for a solid place.

Pleas to God for comfort and peace and hope are intermingled with the aching questions of, “Lord Jesus, why?” and, “What now?” and “Where are You?”

There is desperate clinging to that which is good, mixed with a wonder and confusion of how we continue to navigate this world that is so hard and uncertain.

And when I ponder it myself, here’s what keeps resonating in my soul:

Lean in.

Lean into His voice whispering through the questions and the confusion, “Come closer, sink deeper. Find a place of solace where your soul can exhale and rest. I’ve got this. I’ve got you.” We set aside what we do not know and grab hold of what we do.

Lean in, friends. Hard. Lean into the One who sees it all. Fall on the One who loves you. Collapse in the arms of the One who is more than able. Lean to the point where your feet don’t even touch the ground anymore and you’re just carried by Him.

He can handle it. There is nothing beyond His strength. He is our ezer kenegdo, our warrior helper, who fights for us and helps us.

Don’t just throw your worries at Him hoping something will stick, hoping for the best. Lean into His promises like your life depends on it. Let your leaning be full of faith, hope, and trust.

Don’t let your unanswered questions drive a wedge of bitterness or hopelessness between you and the very one who knows what you need and wants to walk with you in this.

As Hudson Taylor said, “It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies-whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.”

The promise of abundant life is not the promise of a painless life.

It is not the promise of a happy life. It is a promise of resources plentiful for what we will walk through. Here is where we can always lean in and find what we need for the journey.

So lean in with your fists, if you must. Lean in with your wailing and doubts and anger, and beat your hands against His chest until it dissolves into grief and you let Him hold you.

Lean in with the faith of a child and rest. Rest in His comfort and peace, knowing you don’t have to have answers or direction-you just know that someone holds those for you.

Lean into His embrace. Listen to His heart beat for you. Hear His voice speak over you the very words you long to hear. Find what you need.

You can never lean too hard, or push too much. There is no way you will topple Him or ask more than He can offer. He is our solid oak, our life raft, our shelter, our rock in the storm.

Lean in.

Related posts:

Let Go and Let Him Hold You

Cease Striving

Peace and Hope Amidst the Storm

Embracing Suffering – Guest post at Thrive Connection

Post author:Gina B
Post published:July 26, 2016
Post category:dependence on God grief trials

Suffering in this world—great or small and in one form or another—is inevitable. It is not something like jury duty that you just have to hope will not happen to you. You will not avoid it if you simply “play your cards right” or just “walk in the Spirit.” Nor is it some detour to get through quickly so you can get back to the real work of ministry.

Suffering in the Christian life is essential. It is a tool for transforming us into the kind of people God designed us to be.

Read the rest of this post at Thrive Connection.

What Will We Tell Our Children About These Tragedies?

Post author:Gina B
Post published:July 15, 2016
Post category:faith grief hope parenting

What Will We Tell Our Children About These Tragedies?

Our kids return tonight from a month long mission trip during which they have been out of contact and presumably unaware of all that is happening in the world. I wish the only thing I had to explain to them is why people are looking at their phones even more than usual, to the point of running into other people and walls and such.

Instead, after sending them off just after the Pulse shooting in our own city, we have to tell them that while they were gone, the nation was in uproar over the sudden deaths of two black men at the hands of police. We have to explain to them that during the protests that followed, five police officers were shot and killed. There were bombings in Baghdad and Turkey that killed over 300 people combined. And last night in France, more than 80 people were killed during a celebration. Lord, have mercy.

How do we deal out this information? How do we help them understand why? Part of me wants to shelter my kids from knowing the horror that this summer has brought, but they must know. They must know because we want them to be people of compassion, people of the world, people who enter in to the sorrow of others and weep with those who weep.

Will it make them fearful? I don’t know. Maybe. But I know the path to peace is not to ignore reality or choose to only see the parts of it that make us comfortable, that we agree with, that directly affects us. We cannot hide from the truth, but we can choose how we respond to it.

We can choose, as a family, to be people who cling to God. We can’t explain to our kids why all this is happening, but we can remind them that there is always hope because of who He is. We can cry out to Him for mercy, healing, strength, wisdom, compassion, guidance, help. We can be people who remember that this is not our home, He is.

So we will tell our children about the atrocities our world has seen this past month. We will tell them, not to make them fearful, but to make them aware that this is the world we live in. We will tell them that this is when we look up, not for answers, but for help, to navigate this world as people who love it well but hold it loosely.

We will cry together for the world. We will pray together for it. We will live, not in fear, but in hope, in trust, in faith. We will face the truth and respond by looking to the One who alone can save.