August 30, 2022

Three Ways to Help Those Who Grieve

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves received from God.”
~2Cor. 1:3-4.

August 30th is National Grief Awareness Day. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be mindful of grief every day? We’re a hurting people. Webster’s New World Dictionary defines grief as “intense emotional suffering caused as by a loss.” That pretty much describes most everybody I know—at one time or another. How about you?

Our culture does grief poorly. We seldom know how to honor grief or respond to those in pain. Denial, distraction, division, depression, and destructive habits scream this truth. When grief strikes, we may pause—step out of the fray to tend our wounds. . . at least for a little while. But when the rest of the universe acknowledges our life-changing events with a “tsk” and a glance, grief can become an isolating journey we want to abort.

But grief-done-well can make us a gentler and kinder people, equipped by sorrow to make our world a better place. When we acknowledge our grief and allow God to heal and comfort us, we do so not just for our good but for the sake of others. Grief can’t be fixed. It has no timeline. But it can nurture spiritual growth and compassion for others.

Three ways to help those who grieve:

1. Tend to grief. We’ve all known emotional suffering caused by loss. But choosing to enter our suffering—to allow Jesus to comfort us and heal us, and, by so doing, equip us to serve a hurting world is supernatural stuff. We become a testimony to God’s grace and sufficiency; His compassion and heart for people in pain is expressed through us; and we grow in our ability to be present with those who mourn. Grief can’t be fixed but it can be healed; it has no timeline, but it will end; and when we follow Jesus, He leads us through grief and back out into the world to comfort others as we have been comforted.

2. Take the initiative. Don’t wait to be asked to do something. Do something. When my son-in-law died, one of his friends offered to do handy-man jobs around the house; men from work and church provided lawn care; many families brought meals or sent food related gift cards. One young woman who had lost her mother as a child dropped by with four cozy comfort blankets: one for my daughter and each of her three girls. And it’s easy to send a card, personal note, or text that requires nothing of the recipient. Grief is an exhausting personal journey; it helps to know you’re not forgotten.

3. Listen. We must focus on the hurting person and follow their lead. Healing comes in telling their story. Don’t pry. It’s generally not a time to share personal stories or offer opinions. If you can’t think of what to say, it’s okay to remain quiet. There is a rhythm of grace in shared grief—empathy, compassion, and unhurried helping as we slow our pace to match another’s and help share their burden by our presence.

I’d like to make tomorrow another grief awareness day. Anyone want to join me?

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For more information check out the book Don’t Sing Songs to a Heavy Heart: How to Relate to Those Who are Suffering by Kenneth C. Haugk, Ph.D, pastor and clinical psychologist who is the founder of Stephen Ministries. It’s a great “field guide” for engaging with those who grieve.

August 2, 2022

Learning to Be Me Without You: The Back Story

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story.
~ Psalm 107:2

Learning To be Me Without You is a love story about a diagnosis, one last adventure, a crisis of faith that erupts on the threshold of death, and a transformed heart. It’s a story of God’s grace in the crucible of grief, and how He recovered my life from loss. It serves up hope with a pinch of humor and the wonder of discovering the presence of God in the wilderness of widowhood. Although it’s not the book I’ve always wanted to write, it is the book I had to write. Every story has a back story. And mine began with the need to unpack my nineteen-month, set-apart season by the sea after my husband died. That’s when I fell in love with a gentler and kinder Jesus.

I have journaled for most of my life. So, when Ray was diagnosed with a terminal disease for which there was no cure or effective treatment, I created a separate journal for that experience. I chronicled his disease, our move to coastal North Carolina where he could breathe better at sea level, his last hospitalization and death, and my deepest fears: that I couldn’t survive the grief of his death, and that God would not be enough. I continued to write my way through the first year of widowhood, a club no one wants to join, to discover insights about God and myself— to heal, and to remember. I feared I would forget so much, or get timelines messed up. I wanted to record my experience in real time: the events, the pain, the questions, the graces, and the healing.

I also gave myself the gift of an unlimited book budget. Stories of others who had survived and been shaped by grief inspired me. Their wisdom lent vision and expectation for my journey. As my heart began to heal, I considered what had comforted me along the way. My list was long. But words that offered language for this experience and hope for the future ranked high.

I kept writing and praying: Lord, help me show the essence of how you worked in my life so others might see You in theirs.

Family and friends read snippets—polished versions of journal entries. Publishers bought stories that are now parts of the Prologue and two chapters. Three years after Ray died, I joined a writer’s group; we met monthly for more than a year. Their response encouraged me to keep telling the story. Desire followed: I wanted to comfort others as I had been comforted—with words and language for a journey that is both personal yet universal—and shout hallelujah to the One whose relentless love has been enough.

So, I did.

Learning to Be Me Without You is being released today on Amazon. Paula’s Book

If you choose to read it, I pray this story would be a vehicle to carry you into your own story, and there experience the wonder of God’s presence as He cradles your story within His own.

Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story. We’ve all got stories. Take a few moments to consider yours. What’s one thing you’d like others to know about God’s redemptive grace in your life? Would you share it in the comments?

February 8, 2021

The Gift of Words

I will remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
~Psalm 77:11          

I still haven’t figured out how to do Valentine’s Day. Thoughts of candlelight dinners, heart-shaped boxes, and romantic cards make me feel like I’m the one left standing in a game of musical chairs after the music stops: awkward and alone. I know I’m not alone-alone, but there are days I feel like it. Valentine’s Day is one of them.

Scripture compels me to remember God’s love and faithfulness and that He will never leave me. King David’s antidote for his downcast spirit was to remember God and praise Him for the days of old and the wonders He had done.

Remembering helps me too.

Ray and I wrote almost daily letters to one another during a year-long, long-distance dating relationship and engagement. We both saved them. I stored them together in a box after we got married and shoved it to the back of various closet shelves whenever we moved. I knew I would someday read them again. And I did. Ten months after Ray died.

One Saturday night I slid the tattered box from its shelf. Lowering it to the floor beside my chair I sat down, gently removed a letter, slipped it from its envelope, and began to read. Welcoming the return of lost memories, I read one letter after another. Love and longing flowed through the decades into the wee hours of Sunday morning until Ray’s words found their home in my heart.

By the time I had finished reading three hundred and twenty-two letters shortly before noon on Monday, something had changed. What began as a stirring in my heart had swelled into a seismic shift from upside down to right side up. Although longing had awakened grief, making a holy mess of sorrow, I also felt the healing power of words.

Ray didn’t journal or keep a diary. After he died, I searched for words, things he’d written on scraps of paper: directions, a phone message, bank balance, or grocery list. I hoped they would satisfy a hunger I couldn’t yet name.

As a new widow I asked God to help me believe He would be enough—enough on messy days and at night when I’m undone by Ray’s empty side of our bed. I asked God to be enough as I grew old alone. I wanted more than to know about God’s love. I wanted to experience the awe, the belonging, and foreverness of it. I wanted to feel satisfied and fulfilled. I wanted to be whole.

When I read our letters, my heart had heard Ray read his to me. Not as a mature sixty-five-year-old, but as a passionate young man growing into adulthood, fearful he wouldn’t be a good-enough husband or father, desperately wanting the approval of his father and mine—a young man with unwavering faith and wild love for his bride-to-be. But there was more.

Beneath the echoes of Ray’s words, I felt another voice—One that held his words and breathed life into them on their journey to my heart. God began to answer my widow’s prayer when He used the gift of Ray’s words to infuse my heart with His love for me—an experience that changed the trajectory of just about everything.

Remembering inspires hope for my journey . . . especially on the tough days.

January 11, 2021

Resolutions Reimagined

He who began a good work in you
will carry it on to completion
until the day of Christ Jesus.
~Phil. 1:6

I’m a recovering type-A—that personality style fueled by accomplishment, achievement, and a jam-packed schedule which in some twisted way elevated my sense of worth and excused my failure to respect human limitations. Recovery began with my unravelling; it happened in two parts.

Ray and I bore the scars and trophies of our shared journey through four decades of marriage, parenting, and demanding careers when we loaded the car then hit the road for a one-month beach vacation after I retired in 2014. It was a trip to celebrate endings and contemplate new beginnings. Lulled by tires thrumming as we sped east on I-70 out of Colorado, I surrendered to their invitation to savor unscripted time: no roles to play or schedules to keep. With each passing mile I slithered from the responsibilities and persona I had created over the past quarter century to escape lifeless skin that no longer fit. Before we had cleared the plains of western Kansas I turned to Ray and said, “there’s nobody I need to be anymore!”

That “aha!” cracked the fault lines of my paradigm, creating the on-ramp for what was to come. Ray’s death, eighteen months later, upended my life.

“When suffering shatters the carefully kept vase that is our lives, God stoops to pick up the pieces,” says author Ken Gire. “But he doesn’t put them back together as a restoration project patterned after our former selves. Instead, he sifts through the rubble and selects some of the shards as raw material for another project—a mosaic that tells the story of redemption.”[1]

In my ensuing crucible of grief, time was measured in “breathe in, breathe out” increments—not in minutes, hours, or achievements. I embraced solitude and yielded to stillness. I waited, refusing to exert precious energy on distractions. Change was imperceptible at first. But by the time a second new year rolled around I sensed a profound difference in me.

That year I reimagined my resolutions and wrote two lists. One list enumerated specific things I wanted or needed to do—like buy a house, move, and speak at a retreat. Character qualities dominated the second: love well, comfort others, be a good friend, and keep learning. Compiling two lists showed me how doing and being fit together and gave language to my inner transformation; I was becoming an integrated woman. It was as if Jesus whispered, let’s do these things my way.

Some of the shards God has selected for my repurposed life came from my former self; I’m hardwired to set goals and make a plan. But it was the loving, comforting presence of God in my suffering that compels me want to do them His way.

As a recovering type A, I’ve learned to pivot—from striving to accomplish, to cooperating with God to complete the good work He began in me.

How is God inviting you to cooperate with Him this year to complete the good work He’s begun in you?

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[1] Ken Gire, The North Face of God: Hope for the times when God seems indifferent (Wheaton Ill.: Tyndale House, 2005), 120.

December 17, 2020

More Than One Right Answer

Come, my people, enter your rooms
and close your doors behind you;
hide for a little while
until indignation runs its course.
~Isaiah 26:20 NASB

As a young mom I often prayed and sometimes begged for alone time. I may or may not have picked an occasional fight so others would go away when these didn’t seem to work. Unhealthy, I know. But effective in the short run. 

Perched within an empty nest and surrounded by a global pandemic, I now wonder if God stock piled his “Yes” answers, like making deposits in a bank account, and gave them to me in one lump sum this year.

I’ve had lots of alone time.

When Colorado’s cold snap chased me inside, and covid spiked, I reevaluated my response to the crisis. I considered public health mandates, my risk factors, and how my choices could affect others. I prayed for wisdom, knowing there’s usually more than one right answer.

Nestled within a praise chapter that follows an apocalyptic warning in Isaiah, I sensed the wisdom and restraint within this verse: “Come, my people, enter your rooms and close your doors behind you; hide for a little while until this indignation has passed” (Isaiah 26:20). This calm, common-sense answer washed over me as I lingered with those words—just stay home and wait for a while. This will pass.

My right answer is a personal one—not a political, public health, or economic statement. I am grateful for grocery clerks, medical personnel, and those who provide other goods and services and navigate safety measures well. I admire pastors, churches, and organizations that continue to find creative ways to meet people’s needs. Parents who juggle home-schooling and working from home have my deepest respect. Their right answers look different than mine.

Whether frantic with increased demands, or closing the door behind us, we’re all waiting for something.

I’m waiting to share a meal with my family and laugh around a dinner table. I’m waiting to hug my grandchildren and smother them in kisses. I’m waiting to wear lipstick and not a mask. I’m waiting to meet friends for coffee, lunch, or a hike. I’m waiting to worship in person with my church family. I’m waiting to feel safe again. I’ve had practice waiting, I’m sure you have too.

I have waited poorly—scrambling to take control of my life and the circumstances that hijacked my plan. I have filled waiting with distractions, opinions, or rage against the impotency I felt. I’ve been anxious and fearful. But I’ve also waited well.

When Ray died five years ago, life as I had known it shattered and fell from my bones. I’ve had to grow into a repurposed life. I resisted the urge to take control and waited for unforced rhythms of grace to find me. I experienced the comfort of God’s presence when I made room for Him. And He continues to faithfully restore my life from loss even as He has accompanied me in the waiting.

Whether this alone time is my lump-sum answer to a young mother’s frazzled prayers, or the reality of widowhood, retirement, and an empty nest sucker-punched by a pandemic, I want to wait well—to emerge better than I began, because I have encountered Jesus.

For what are you waiting? And how will you wait?

November 18, 2020

The Feather

Write, therefore, what you have seen . . .
Revelations 1:19a NIV

We stuck a for-sale sign in our yard and headed for the beach in August 2015. This would be our last big adventure. Eighteen months after my husband, Ray, was diagnosed with a terminal lung disease we moved from Colorado to coastal North Carolina. The beach had always called my name. And Ray could breathe better at sea level.

Two weeks after we arrived Ray died.

Six weeks later, I filled a thermos with two cups of morning coffee, then grabbed my beach chair, journal, devotional, and pen. Tossing them in the car, I backed out of the garage for the six-minute drive through beachside neighborhoods and tourist shops, across the bridge to Topsail Island, and pulled into the public parking lot.

Warm wind whipped my hair as I shed flip-flops and pitched them into the car. Gathering my gear, I stepped onto coarse gravel, and gingerly hobbled to the beach access ramp.

Cresting the dune, I stopped. It took my breath away, this ocean beauty. A palette of blues and grays tumbling, continually shifting to rearrange themselves in this living masterpiece where ocean melts into horizon and reflects sky’s changing mood. Here, deep speaks to deep. Creator to created. The Comforter’s voice to my sad but healing heart. It calmed me, untangled the cords that imprisoned grief, and offered new perspective.

The moon’s gravitational pull had drained the ocean to low tide, making long my walk to lapping waves on the nearly deserted beach. I unfolded my chair and eased into its low-slung embrace. Warmed by the sun, yet grateful for the gentle breeze that tempered its heat on that cloudless morning, I savored unhurried time.

As spent, foamy waves scurried up the sand, I took a slow pull of coffee. Opening my devotional, I read these words of Matthew 11:28-29 from The Message: “Get away with me and you’ll recover your life . . . Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.”

Looking out over calm waters I watched a lone gull soar on invisible currents: flying solo.

“I want to recover your life.”

Moved by this bird gliding effortlessly above the water, I pondered those words as I prayed about my repurposed life and asked God for guidance.

Just then, a small, gray and white feather fluttered and came to rest at the foot of my chair. Intrigued, I watched as another wisp of air lifted and carried it a few feet down the beach, where again it landed on flat, wet sand. Playful and inviting, it beckoned.

I unwrapped myself from chair’s embrace to follow the feather down the beach as it toppled ahead, born by the rhythm of the breeze: lifting with each flurry, then floating to the ground
when creation inhaled.

“Follow me.”

And so, I did. Until finally I stooped to pick it up.

Smiling, I walked back to my chair and tucked the feather between the pages of my devotional. It has become a reminder to me of God’s presence and faithfulness.

That morning I began to pick up the corner of the universe that contained our story knowing it was mine to figure out, both looking back and peering forward into this unscripted season rising from the ashes of “we” into an amputated “me.” As I lingered on the beach, God continued to whisper his invitation to me.

“I want to recover your life . . . follow me.”

Since then, I have followed Jesus into grief and discovered the presence of God. I followed when he said, “be still,” and let him rearrange the landscape of my heart. I followed him home to Colorado.

And I have followed him here—to write about what I’ve seen and to inspire hope for the journey.

Sometimes we need a tangible reminder of God’s presence in our lives.

Mine is a feather . . . what’s yours?

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