Through a Lens Darkly: Grief, Loss and C.S. Lewis (2011) - full transcript

C.S. Lewis is one of the most popular Christian
apologists of the twentieth century.

His writings present spiritual truths in easy to understand
terms that appeal to a diverse cross-section of readers.

But what can this famed writer, who captured the
imagination of millions with his adventures to Narnia,

teach us about life,
love, and loss?

C.S. Lewis imagined
himself as a lifelong bachelor.

As a professor at Oxford, he enjoyed
the company of fellow scholars and writers.

Lewis engaged in debate with the liveliest minds of his
day and seemed quite content with his solitary life.

Everything changed, however,
after Lewis began a correspondence

with an American writer
named Joy Davidman Gresham.

At first, Lewis arranged a
civil union between himself and Joy

so that this new friend and
her sons could remain in England.



But when Joy was diagnosed with
bone cancer shortly after their marriage,

the couple realized the depth
of their love for each other.

Thus began an intense three-year journey of
exhilarating happiness and heart wrenching pain,

ending with Joy's
early death at age 45.

" No one ever told me that grief felt so
like fear," Lewis wrote of his experience.

He came to terms with the loss
of his wife in a series of journal entries

that became the basis for his
reflective book, A Grief Observed.

In this work, readers encounter and identify with
the emotions often felt after a significant loss

as Lewis chronicles his grief
in a sparse, moving prose.

The book was first
released under a pseudonym.

Eventually, it was released in
Lewis's name after his death.

Well, there's a common misconception that Lewis had
led a charmed life up until the time that Joy died

and that this was the first time he'd really had to
deal with these emotions of bereavement and loss.

Actually, there's a kind of symmetry. He lost someone
important to him in every decade of his life.



He lost his mother when
he was nine years old.

He lost a number of his
comrades during World War One.

Of the five people he trained with at
Oxford, the other four were all killed,

and it's almost a touchstone of his spiritual
condition how he responded to these different losses.

By the time Joy passed away when Lewis was, had
been married in 1957 and then she died in 1960,

this was actually his fourth or
fifth experience of bereavement,

so he really was acquainted with
grief before he wrote A Grief Observed.

Joy died in July of 1960 and Lewis began
keeping a journal about his feelings

and all the turmoil and
tumult that he was feeling.

It was partly autobiographical and it was partly meant
to be a universal experience of any grieving husband.

A Grief Observed has provided many readers with inspiration
and healing when grieving the loss of a loved one.

However, Lewis' work is more than a
reflection on the pain associated with death:

it is a primer for sorting through the
feelings that accompany any significant loss.

My mother loved to laugh.
She had a good sense of humor.

I remember staying up nights
with her watching Johnny Carson,

and so much so that sometimes my dad would come
out and say, "Why don't you two go to bed?"

I remember her laughter
and I miss that.

My mother was
a mother of ten,

and so I think of her as the consummate
mother to have had that many children

and it's one of the things I miss about her was having her
when I became a mother to talk to me about mothering.

I got a call in the middle of the night
December 17, 1985 from my 17-year-old sister

telling me that my mother
had been murdered.

My mother had been babysitting two small
children, actually a friend of my sister's,

older sister's, and the father of the family
owned a garage and had an employee he had fired.

And this disgruntled employee showed up at
the house where my mother was babysitting,

high on drugs,
and got in somehow.

We don't know how, if my mother let him in,
knowing that he was a friend of the family,

supposedly an employee, or whether he forced
his way in, but he got her to the second floor

and he shot her and stabbed her to
death and then he robbed the home.

They found out who had done it pretty quickly and
he was brought to trial, which was excruciating.

We all attended and just sat nervously, waiting
to hear what was going to happen to him.

And he was sentenced to life in prison, and that is
where he is today, and he has no option of parole.

I think what I
initially felt was horror.

There was no other word for it. Lt was just
unbelievable that this could really be happening.

In discussing loss, we recognize that
no two people grieve in the same way

and that the level of grief experienced is usually
in proportion to the magnitude of the loss.

In situations such as Lewis's where a loss is anticipated,
such as when facing a life-limiting illness or divorce,

the grieving process begins
prior to the actual loss itself.

Jamie loved life. She was a
very enthusiastic young lady.

She enjoyed music, singing in the
choir, and she loved her animals.

She had three dogs and she just
truly enjoyed being with them.

Ln fall of 2008, our daughter Jamie
was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

When we first knew of Jamie's diagnosis,
the Internet was kind of a mixed blessing.

You could go to the Internet and find out a great deal
about stage four lung cancer and none of it was good.

There was some hope
during the process.

Certainly after the initial round of
chemotherapy there was some indication

that there was an improvement, at
least in stopping the spread of the cancer.

But that was rapidly crushed when
the MRis came back and showed that

although the chemo had stopped the
growth of the cancer in the soft tissues,

it had accelerated even in the bony structures, and
radiation could help the cancer in the bony structures

and chemo in the soft tissues, but you
couldn't do them both at the same time.

So I think we realized that all we were doing, to an
extent, was delaying the inevitable, if you will.

We were able to go on a
special trip to Scotland.

This was sponsored by the Make-A-Wish
Foundation and our whole family went.

This was a wish
that Jamie had.

Eight of us went and this was one that we
could cherish as a family together for many,

many years and I think it has made our time of grief that
much easier to cope with. She just enjoyed this trip.

It was shortly after returning from that trip that she
suddenly died with complications from her cancer.

When I first realized that the loss was real,
I think the most feeling was of sadness,

of emptiness, of regret that a life
had come to end before its time.

I don't believe that the grieving has
interfered with my memories of Jamie.

I’ll always remember her as a vibrant young lady who
brought much joy to my life and I was blessed to have her.

Her last words helped in that
because instead of thinking of herself,

she was telling us to tell
other people she loved them.

She told us to be strong and
she told us to keep our faith

and that's much stronger than any loss
of memory that I could have envisioned.

Grief is an individual
response to loss.

Some will only experience a few of the feelings associated with
grief, while others will work through a variety of emotions:

denial, anger, bargaining, guilt,
and at some point, acceptance.

The first emotion often felt is denial, in which we put aside
the reality of loss and exist in a state of disbelief.

A person in denial may ask, "Why is this happening
to me?" or feel numb to emotional or spiritual pain.

This is a natural reaction that protects
us from being overwhelmed by the full

impact and devastation
of a significant loss.

I remember those first days just sort
of moving through things like a robot.

Really, just things that would be
so overwhelming and disturbing

like going to the police station with my husband to
identify my mother's pocketbook and just feeling nothing.

And going with my older brother to the funeral home to pick
out a coffin and just feeling nothing. Lt was just numbness.

For Lewis, part of his questioning and denial dealt with
why God would allow a perfectly happy single person

such as himself to find love and to come " out of his
shell," only to have that love stripped away through death.

I met Tracey in the late 80's and I can still remember
the first time she came to church and she sang music.

That got my attention. She
had a great gospel voice,

a big voice for her, and it wasn't
long, about a year later, that we married.

Lt was about six months
before Christmas Eve of '94

that we found out we were expecting and it
was a girl and we had a name, Gabriella.

It was Christmas Eve, about one
in the morning, that I was awakened.

Tracey let out a like moan
and I just shot up out of bed.

I knew something was wrong and began
to find out from her what was wrong

and eventually with CPR because
I knew she couldn't breathe.

I knew she had asthma. I didn't
know what was going on exactly.

It was an asthmatic
attack that she was having.

They tried to save her. For two,
three hours they worked on her,

but they couldn't save her
or the baby. Lt was just too late.

That's when it all just gushed out. The tears,
the feelings, the emotions, it was over.

And the fear was tough. And the
feelings were so intense at that time.

Yeah, that was ten years ago, fifteen years ago
now but I still feel it when I talk about it.

In the early days of grief, we first encounter
the reactions of others to our loss.

We find there are those who avoid us as we grieve
because they don't know what to say or do.

Others attempt to bring us comfort, but their
misplaced words add pain to the grieving process.

" Kind people have said to me, 'She is with
God, '" Lewis wrote after his wife's death.

" Ln one sense that is most certain...
You tell me, 'she goes on.'

But my heart and body are crying
out, come back, come back...

Don't come talking to me about the consolations of
religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

You have to watch what
Lewis was talking about,

the consolations of religion, where you just use
pat answers, the cure-alls I would call it.

I was working in a university counseling center, and
when I shared with my colleagues that my mother

had been murdered, one of them said to me, "Think how
great a therapist you will be having gone through this."

And I was dumbfounded.
I didn't say anything to her.

I just remember sitting there and thinking to myself, " I’d
much rather be a worse therapist and have my mother back."

I think the best way and the
best consolation is simply to be there

and to help them with those little things
that they have to do while they're grieving.

You can't give consolation. You can't give that hope. You
can't tell it to a person. They have to discover it.

They have to discover those consolations
themselves and experience that hope personally.

Through the fog of grief we may realize that many
people are uncomfortable around a grieving person,

as it reminds them that loss
can touch their lives, too.

Lewis acknowledged this difficulty when he
mused that the bereaved should be set apart,

just as lepers are, to heal within
a more secluded community.

I certainly tried not to withdraw from the world,
but there was a little of that involved in it.

I was blessed to have very supportive
friends and family that helped me,

but there were always those awkward moments, especially
when other people would come up and not know what to say,

so to that extent, I think
there was some withdrawal.

I met the lead singer? songwriter of Brainiac, Tim
Taylor, at a nightclub with bass player Juan Monasterio

and it was arranged for me to try out as the
drummer for the band, and within a year,

we'd already put out a 7" single
and started touring extensively.

We would later tour the continental United
States several times and Europe a couple times.

We put out three full length albums and two EPs,
a couple little oddball singles here and there.

Tim was an
amazing person.

He was larger than life,
both on stage and off.

We became very close, more or less lived together
in a van or at practice for five solid years,

and it was actually on May 23, 1997 that
Tim's roommate and friend, Dave Doughman,

called me over to the house to tell me
that Tim had been killed in a car accident.

I got in my car, more or less emotionless,
blank, and started driving home.

When I happened to pass the scene of the accident,
and saw the telephone pole that he struck,

so I pulled into the gas station right there and I got on the pay
phone. I called my dad, first thing, and just started screaming.

Just crying, screaming, full of despair, full
of panic, disbelief, didn't know what to do.

After the initial shock of learning that
Tim was dead had really, really set in,

it then all of a sudden dawned on me
that five years of hard work and travel

and tour and Brainiac getting to the place
it was at the time was all of a sudden over.

And we were actually just a few days away from signing
a million dollar record contract with a major label.

I just thought that if I want to bed every night,
I’d wake up the next day and kind of get a redo.

He'd be back again, and in fact, it was weeks and weeks
after he died that I had the same recurring nightmare.

I would walk into this bar, very
identifiable although not recognizable

as an actual place that I’d ever been
before and he was sitting at a table.

And I’d walk over to him and throw
my arms around him and embrace

and the second I’d close around his back,
he would just fall limp, dead in my arms.

And this just repeated itself, every
night, over and over and over again.

For those attempting to help the grieving, a loving
and attending presence is often the best comfort.

When we first face loss, we are not ready
to hear about others' grief experiences

or to be told to move
on with our lives.

Instead, we often need the listening
ear of a compassionate friend

who will give us permission to openly
and honestly express the pain we feel.

I think every grieving person has to come to
grips with their own grief in their own way.

Any statement from anybody else
that implies how they should feel

or what they should be feeling
is not likely to be helpful.

It bothers me how unloving and really arrogant it can be when
Christians try to just easily explain away someone's grief

or give some sort of a Godly cliché or some kind word
that should just magically make them feel better,

when really what needs to happen is for them
to join in with the person in their grief

and just throw their arms in the air and
say, " I don't know. I don't know why.

I don't understand. I just know that you need
me right now to be with you in this place."

For many of us, denial is replaced by anger as
we search for someone to blame for our loss.

We question the fairness of life in allowing
ourselves, or someone we love, to suffer.

Anger is a natural response to the feelings of abandonment
and powerlessness that may accompany a significant loss.

I don't think I wrestled with some of the
temptations that others have in the face of loss,

and that is to see God as
the cause of their suffering.

It was clear to me that a human being was the
cause of my mother's death and I didn't,

I wasn't tempted to blaspheme
God by blaming Him for evil.

Instead, my question was, "Why didn't
You stop it? Why did You allow it?"

And so it wasn't, "Why did you cause hurt?" it was
"Were You powerless to intervene or did you not care?"

Through it all, Jamie was
exhibiting such strength

and such endurance herself that it was very
difficult for us to get too upset about it.

Her brother actually said that he had
wanted to be bitter and angry about it,

but he couldn't because
she wouldn't let him.

Throughout it all, it was just
a real joy to us to watch her,

not because of the disease, but
because of how she was responding to it.

Lewis acknowledged, even in his anger and brokenness, that
human beings are not promised a life free from suffering.

But while we may
acknowledge every life meets loss,

it is difficult to have grief move from
an abstract concept to a harsh reality.

Lewis said that a person never truly knows the extent of his or
her belief until the matter becomes an issue of life and death.

The reality of death
strips away all defenses.

My mother's murder forced me to confront what
I really believed and what was really true.

And one of the things that was true was that
evil existed, and not just that it existed,

but that I couldn't control it. And that forced
me to ask a question of God: where was He?

Why didn't he intervene? Lt forced me to reckon
with the fact that God allows evil to happen.

Lewis said you never really know how much you believe
something until it's tested, and I realize for me,

that test with her death and the time of feeling it, I got to
the point where I realized I really wasn't blaming God for it.

And that was just such a wonderful feeling that
I was tested and yet in the long run I said,

" No, God. I still believe in you. I know that
You're good and this is going to work out."

Our beliefs are always challenged
when they encounter the world

and matters of life and death are
most extreme examples of that.

I believe, as Lewis seemed to, that these matters
ultimately challenge our beliefs to their very core.

You no longer are able to hide behind your
illusions. You're no longer able to rationalize.

You have to deal with the issues that are there, and
dealing with them will either drive you to despair,

or it will drive you
to dependence on God.

At one point in Grief Observed, he
says that you don't really test your faith

until you're in a situation where
you really see what the stakes are.

And if you have a piece of rope
that you're using to wrap a box,

you're not too worried
about how strong it is.

But if you're hanging over a cliff from that rope,
you're very concerned about how strong it is.

That same image of how strong is the rope
when you actually need it to support you,

Lewis follows very quickly
talking about Jesus in Gethsemane.

And in both Grief Observed
and his letters,

he said he's so glad God didn't come to earth
as Superman, as a man with nerves of steel,

that you can see Christ's vulnerability before the tomb
of Lazarus, and you can especially see it in Gethsemane.

And he says he would feel
much more rage toward God

if he knew that God hadn't suffered
everything that we have suffered.

1992 was a pretty remarkable year. I graduated from
seminary and had been ordained a United Methodist minister

and had gone out to Denver where
I was going to do graduate studies.

And, during seminary, I hadn't
kept up with my training,

but I was committed to getting back in shape, to
get back to where I could run triathlons again.

So, it was a beautiful November evening.
I went out for a quick ride after classes,

and as I got out to the turn around, I noticed it was getting
dark and I told myself, " Be careful. Slow down. Take it easy."

And within a couple hundred yards
of there, I had hit another cyclist and

then I came to on the bike path and
realized that something was very wrong.

I could feel my legs, but my legs couldn't
feel my hands when I touched them.

So, as I’m laying there, I have
no idea what was in my future.

I had really... well, I had been a chaplain
at a children's hospital for three years.

I had some sense of what was happening with
me but I didn't know the full extent of it,

and I had this notion that I would go and they would put
me in a wheelchair and I would go home fairly soon.

I had no idea of all of the ramifications that paralysis
meant in terms of all the different body systems

and how my life would be
affected on many, many levels.

So, after the accident, I was in
University Hospital for acute care where

they had to put two rods in my back and stabilize
my condition. I had to recover from the surgery.

And then after a month's time, they
transferred me over to one of the best rehab

hospitals in the country that's
in Denver at Craig Hospital,

and there I was in for another three months, where
I learned how I was going to cope with life,

and learn how to use a wheelchair, how to
manage my bladder, my bowels and my skin care,

and learn how to move
and balance myself.

And so it was a remarkable period of time to
completely relearn how to function again.

For people of faith,
doubt mixes with anger.

Lewis recalled those times of hope
when Joy went into remission,

only to relapse into a state of torment and
frustration later as the cancer returned.

He described the sense of being
forsaken and unloved by God

at a time when His comfort and
presence was most needed.

" Meanwhile, where
is God," he asked.

"When you are happy, so happy
that you have no sense of needing Him...

you will be - or so it feels
- welcomed with open arms.

But go to Him when your need is desperate, when
all other help is vain, and what do you find?

A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and
double bolting on the inside. After that, silence."

I was walking with a friend and discussing
this very issue of God's silence.

I really felt like I wasn't
hearing God answer my prayers.

He had often answered my prayers,
my other prayers in my life at other times,

and now when I wanted Him to answer this
one, it seemed like He wasn't answering.

He wasn't there.
No one home.

In some ways I think I was prepared for this moment
in that I had experienced loss in my life previously.

My father died when I was sixteen and I had worked as
a chaplain at a children's hospital for three years,

and so I had wrestled with
some hard questions about God,

but still I could really resonate with what Lewis said
about the door being bolted shut and having access to God.

The way I thought about it was that God was
indifferent in some moments, it felt like,

and also I think more than anything was
a sense of being disconnected from God.

It is common as we grieve to search
for answers for why suffering happens.

The most famous example of this search for truth
is that undertaken by the Biblical prophet Job,

who experienced
multiple losses

including the death of his children, the destruction
of his possessions, and his own poor health.

As he mourns, he seeks answers
to the question of, "Why me?"

Job discusses his grief with three friends,
who each conclude that God punishes sin

and that Job must have done
something to deserve his fate.

Finally, God appears, and
in His discourse with Job,

reveals that a human's limited understanding does
not allow him to see the reasons for suffering.

It's inevitable when you read Grief
Observed to think of the book of Job and

someone who's crying out in
his misery to God for relief.

He doesn't mention Job in
A Grief Observed.

He does in his letters. Actually, he and Joy
were talking just a few nights before her death

and he was trying to take a rather stoical Christian
spiritual approach to her impending demise

and she kind of... she did this with him frequently.
She challenged him and said, "You're angry.

Go ahead and let that rage come out." She's the
one who brought up the book of Job and she said,

" Remember, people talk about the patience of Job, but
what we notice in the book is the impatience of Job.

But remember that God was more pleased with the
impatience of Job, who is asking honest questions,

than with Job's comforters, who were
offering rather glib rationalizations."

So Joy actually gave Lewis permission
to be angry with God about this situation,

and he felt that if she thought it was all right to
rage a little bit against God and express your anger,

that God would certainly accept
that and understand that.

Lewis described a similar encounter in his search for answers,
stating that he felt as though God waved his questions away,

not in a refusal to answer, but in a way that
indicated the answer could not be understood.

It is perhaps, what the Apostle Paul referred to when
he wrote, " For now we see through a glass, darkly..."

I think loss raises for us questions that our bigger than we
are, and we are meaning makers, and we try and figure it out...

I can remember after her death I began to really research
the subject of heaven. People gave me books, of course,

to read and read them all and spent, probably, a
good two to three years really studying the subject

until finally one day I realized I
am not going to figure all this out.

And it was good because I really believe there's a
mystery there because there's some surprises in store.

In our grief, we may begin to make promises or attempts
to bargain with others or God to change our situation.

Part of successful navigation through this
season of grief is the eventual recognition

that loss is inevitable and that no amount of
pleading or bargaining will change the situation.

I really didn't make bargains with God, but the
thought came into my head as I was dealing

with Jamie's illness that I would gladly have taken
her place, rather than her suffer these things.

Guilt is another emotion many of us feel
as we work through the grieving process.

We regret things we have done or things we have failed to do
and we may feel that our actions have caused the loss itself.

Sometimes we feel guilt at not being able to
remember the way things were before the loss:

at not being able to easily recall the face or the voice
of a loved one who died, or not being able to remember

the happy memories that existed before a separation
or divorce or the loss of a physical ability.

For Lewis, guilt accompanied the difficulty in
recalling the past as the snowflakes of his own being,

as he called them, settled down on top of the
images of Joy, changing his memories of her.

Lewis had said that he didn't want
people to talk about his wife,

but I felt that when people
shared their thoughts about Jamie,

that it helped me in my grieving
process and I felt it honored her life.

I remembered for several years very specific memories
of Tracey and I could go through A to Z in my mind

but after time they all kind of fell away and it's now pretty
much one really good memory of her that has stayed with me.

Sometimes we experience guilt for
feeling better with the passage of time.

As Lewis continued on
his path of self-recovery,

he began to experience guilt in allowing
himself to heal and return to his normal life.

He felt that there was "a sense of shame" in recovery and
that he was obligated to both continue and relish his grief.

One of the first times I felt like I was coming
out of grief was with a group of friends and

we were just talking and I was really enjoying
myself for the first time and all of a sudden,

it was just like, " Oh, I
wasn't thinking of Jamie."

And it just, you know, for a moment I realized
I had this happiness, but then immediately,

almost immediately, I felt guilt
because it was like, well, it was too soon.

I shouldn't be feeling this, but yet
this was exactly what Jamie wanted.

She wanted us to be strong and she wanted us to keep
the faith, and I felt then that, at this point,

that I was honoring her by moving on and having and being
able to enjoy my life again, even with her not present.

You can get over the hurt and the
baggage that comes with grief and loss,

but you never get over missing the
person. That'll stay and it should.

For some people, grief leads
into a dark valley of depression,

which encompasses a wide range of
physical and emotional reactions.

At this point, or any point in the grief process,
we may experience difficulty sleeping or eating.

We may feel tired and confused or
unable to concentrate on simple tasks.

We experience a tremendous flood of emotions
associated with the depression of loss

including sadness,
loneliness, fear, and despair.

Sometimes we express these feelings outwardly
through tears and visible laments.

I don't recall feeling self-pity as such.
There was agony involved, though.

Many times at the beginning I cried myself to sleep at
night until I finally was able to give her up to God,

and to trust Him, and to just pray that I would be
able to be strong, to help her not to be afraid,

and that was the prayer I
think that God answered.

This was a seismic shift in my family.
I knew we'd never be the same.

I knew I would never be the same, and that's
actually part of where the fear came in.

I became fearful that, of the
life of having nothing but sorrow.

I couldn't see how life could
ever be the same again.

I knew the past was irretrievable and all I
could see stretching before me was sorrow.

Some wage a more private battle,
as was the case with Lewis.

He acknowledged the " invisible blanket" that
came between himself and the world around him

and the smothering feeling that overtook him
as Lewis' initial anger gave way to apathy.

So Lewis talks about feeling like
there's a blanket between him and life

and that resonated with me in that I remember feeling numb
and feeling somewhat in a fog and trying to find distance,

so finding ways to distract myself from the pain or to
find some way to avoid it, wanting to be away from it.

You know, after the funeral, after all the sympathy
cards stopped, and I had written all the thank yous,

and my life returned to normal, I was back to work, going
to church, eating, sleeping, everything seemed meaningless.

Everything was put through the
lens of " my mother was murdered."

And nothing seemed to matter.
I couldn't even taste my food.

There is also, as Lewis describes, a
"lazyness" that accompanies grief,

in which we can no longer takes pleasure
in those things we enjoyed before the loss.

For me, the self pity, I
began to see the signs of it,

I just wasn't enjoying things anymore:
sunny days, family, TV, movies, hikes.

There just was a real sense of loss and that was leading
to depression, which isn't good. That's not the way to go.

After Tim had died, a couple months
later, Kim Deal of the Breeders

very kindly offered me the position of drummer in
the band to go to New York and record an album.

So I agreed and gave it my best shot, but the
timing just wasn't right. I wasn't right.

My heart wasn't in it. I was just becoming
lazier and lazier and more apathetic.

I eventually bowed out of the recording
process and came back home to Dayton

where I just kind of went into a slump, sleeping
for days and about twelve to eighteen months time

after Tim's death, I’d already
put on over one hundred pounds.

I wouldn't call any of my reaction lazyness,
but there was a numbness that was there.

It was very difficult to get things started. My priorities
changed. Lt took a lot of energy just to do ordinary things.

Lewis believed that God would not help a person
through grief until that person was ready.

He likened this to a drowning person that
cannot be given help until he or she tires

and is able to accept
help without resistance.

I was a youth pastor at that time and the biggest
struggle for me was because of the position,

I felt I had to act all in control and still be the leader,
which meant I couldn't feel anything and it wasn't real.

And it's kind of like holding everything in, the
pressure eventually is going to get you in trouble.

After a couple of years of mourning
and grieving and a lot of sleeping,

my father just put an ultimatum forth
and said, " Look, something has to change.

You have to do something. I’m
willing to put you through trade school.

I’ll buy you your first computer if
you'll just go and you'll do this."

So I reluctantly agreed, went, instantly picked
up on it, excelled, graduated with honors,

instantly got a job, and I’ve
hated computers ever since.

It is important to recognize when the symptoms of grief move
beyond the normal range of emotions associated with loss.

When a person feels that life
is no longer worth living

or cannot perform the daily functions
of life for an extended period of time,

it is time to seek professional
guidance in working through grief.

The counselor that I met with, and
I do highly recommend grief counseling,

he helped me so much one day when he
finally, he just looked at me and he said,

"Are you gonna fight?" And it hit
me and I knew what he said was true.

You can't just go into self-pity because
eventually it will destroy your life

and that's not the way to honor
the death of somebody you really cared for.

We must also remember that there is not a
chronological time-line for how we cope with loss.

Lewis acknowledged that, " Ln grief nothing 'stays put.'
One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs."

C.S. Lewis, he talked about the fear that's involved
with loss. And for me, it was the initial shock fear,

but then it was ongoing and it was more of a post
traumatic stress type fear. I called it being haunted.

It would just kind of stay around and then something
would trigger it and you would really feel it.

Certain events may trigger a recurrence of grief,
such as the anniversary of when the loss occurred,

the revisiting of familiar people or places, or the holiday
season. These triggers, whether anticipated or unexpected,

may rekindle unpleasant emotions
that must be worked through once again.

I always think of loss as cyclical. And so, things
will come along and it reminds you of the loss.

For example, becoming a dad. Now, all of a sudden,
I’m reminded of things I never anticipated but,

you know, the way I play with my daughter's different
than the way I would have played with my daughter

before the accident
and the paralysis.

And so, there's always occasions that come new that
reveal to you different dimensions of the loss.

The agonies for me were very much like what Lewis
experienced. They were like ticking time bombs.

The memories would occur at any time, but I learned to
see the beauty in those memories rather than the agony.

I don't think I’ve ever entirely
gotten over the loss of Tim.

Little things remind me of him, almost
on a daily basis, especially musically.

I hear a song, bands, some bands that actually come
out and list Brainiac as an influence on their music,

and that always gives me great satisfaction
that he lives on, in that sense,

but it also reminds me a little bit of my pain, kind of
like a little picking away at a scab from time to time.

And as far as Brainiac is concerned,
there's always that wonder, that what if,

what would have happened, so in that
sense, that loss remains to this day.

For many of us, the final leg in our journey
with grief and loss brings acceptance,

and with it, hope. Lt is here that we
come to terms with our loss and find peace.

So at the time of my accident, I know some of my
friends were really anxious I would withdraw from life

and be a little bit more reserved in who I was, and I was
a person who lived life pretty fully before the accident.

And I would say I’m still that person now. I
live life really fully. I have a great family.

I’m a new dad. I’m still
an athlete. I hand cycle.

I have a career and a ministry that's vital and
meaningful, making a difference in my community.

Before the accident, I never camped
on a mountain, but since the accident,

we camped up at 11,000 feet. So I’m
still living a full life as much as I can.

I know for me, the day my son
was born, holding him in my arms.

It was a real grace moment for me
and the light began to shine again.

That was the wake up for
me and life was good.

I don't have a moment
when my grief subsided.

It was really gradual for me, but I can
remember just over time becoming able to laugh,

able to notice beauty again, able to make
plans again. And it was very subtle,

and I really attribute it to the constancy of my
husband and my friends who walked with me over time.

It was a gradual process.

The point at which we reach acceptance of our loss is also a
time when we may begin to chart a new direction for our life,

sometimes making drastic changes due to the lessons or
realizations we've experienced in the grieving process.

For me, I really learned what it was to be a Christian, what
grace was all about because I’d come to the end of myself,

and I know as a fact I’d stopped trying to make anything
happen. And that's when I realized things started to happen.

He started to move and I met Reggie
and it wasn't long and we had a child.

We named him Ian,
which means gift, grace.

And things were... rebirth, fresh for
us in my life, and I wasn't working for it.

That was the whole thing, I was trying to
sabotage stuff as well, and yet He came through.

That's why I know there's a God: to be
able to go through something like that

and yet end up on the other side
saying no, you can go forward.

The restoration, I could have never done it
myself. If someone was to say, you know,

how could you still believe, how could
I not is my point? How could I not?

Because I had to just completely let go and abandon
myself and just say I cannot make it through this.

You're gonna have to step in here. And,
lo and behold, He did. He did. Absolutely.

I know when Reggie came into
my life it was very much a surprise,

but I can see the hand of God in it because
she put up with me during those times

of doubting and sadness and yet she was right
there and able to go through it with me.

I don't think I could have done it alone.
In fact, I know I couldn't have done it

and I really thank God for her
and what she means to me.

Jamie's illness and death certainly changed my life in some
ways. Beyond a doubt, my priorities in life have changed.

She taught me, and God taught me through this
experience, to start living life a day at a time,

looking at things as they are rather
than as I wanted them to be.

I think it also taught me that the real meaning
of these events in life is not in the event.

It's in the way that you respond to those events
and I think that's a lesson I’ll never forget.

Promises and hope are things that I cling to. I don't really
understand the reasons why things happen the way they do,

but because Jamie had a faith in God and the hopes
and the promises of God that she believed in,

I can do no less than to have the
same hope and faith that she did.

Even though I’ve never completely gotten over
that loss, my life has turned for the better.

I’ve graduated from trade school, married, have
a beautiful eight year old boy named Noah.

I’m back in relationship with my Creator and I’m
active in my church where I’m also playing drums now.

Ironically, the colleague's comment that was so
ridiculous at the time turned out to be true.

I do think I’m a better therapist.
Having been through this loss,

I do have an empathy for folks who are
grieving and can journey with them in that,

but I still say to this day that I’d rather be a worse
therapist and have had my mother these past 24 years.

As we slowly come to terms with our grief, we accept that
we may never find the answer for why loss has occurred.

"We cannot understand," Lewis wrote. "The
best is perhaps what we understand least."

When Lewis says the best is perhaps what we understand
the least, to me it is the hope of the eternal unknown.

Francis Schaeffer wrote in one of his books that, we can
have, with the Word of God true and unified knowledge,

but we can't have exhaustive knowledge,
the exhaustive knowledge that only God has.

And I think there's sort of a relief there.
I hope that there are answers,

that there is understanding, just nothing that our
finite, human minds can handle at this point in time.

Part of life is discovering what the richness and
meaning of life, and the places where it's the deepest

is the places that we discover new
and in ways we never anticipate.

And I imagine that that's the mystery of who God
is and the mystery of love and the mystery of how

we experience love with, you know, our loved ones
and our neighbors and our world and creation.

As for Lewis, he survived his wife Joy by three years before
succumbing to renal failure just shy of his sixty-fifth birthday.

There's a passage in Grief Observed
where it says, "As I rediscover my faith,

I hope it's not another house of cards that
will collapse when I face my own mortality."

And I’m happy to say that his faith did not at
all collapse as he faced his own mortality.

He said, " I feel like a seed that's been
planted and I’m just waiting for the gardener

to come along and allow me to sprout
and come into my true and new life."

His existence before Joy, that of an intellectual scholar and
writer, made Lewis a beloved person of the Christian faith,

but it was his unexpected encounter with love and loss that
made him a fully alive participant in the human experience.

His " grief observed" became a new window to the world by
which we can see the hope and promise of life after loss.

♪ I have nothin' left in me but, ♪

♪ I have nothin' left in me but, ♪

♪ a bleedin' heart that needs Your truth. ♪

♪ Yeah, I have nothin' left in me but, ♪

♪ a bleedin' heart that needs Your truth. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Search my heart, Oh God. ♪

♪ Oh God. ♪

♪ You call nothin' to be somethin'; ♪

♪ You make art of ugly things, ♪

♪ You take my life and ♪

♪ You make it sing, ♪

♪ Yeah, You make it sing, ♪

♪ You make it sing, ♪

♪ Praise. Praise God, ♪

♪ Praise God, ♪

♪ O Praise Him ♪

♪ Yeah, Praise, ♪

♪ Praise God, ♪

♪ Praise God, ♪

♪ Oh, praise Him,
(repeat background)♪

♪ You call nothin' ♪

♪ to be somethin'

♪ You make art of ♪

♪ ugly things ♪

♪ You take my life, and ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You take my life, and ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing ♪

♪ You make it sing. ♪