Sometimes It Hurts Always!

The following post may not be the most popular one ever written. It may even be distasteful to some readers. Some of you may not read it to the end. Please understand ScarredJoy is not all about things that are warm and fuzzy. There are other people’s Blogs to turn to for this. ScarredJoy’s whole purpose for being is to be honest about the experiences and emotions people may be touched by in their grief. Not everything in life can be tied up in a nice bow as a final touch of beauty. Grief is sad, heart crushing and often just plain nasty and ugly. At times, even God may seem silent. Add the dying of a person into the mix and you have a perfect storm of pain!

Are you still with me? Here we go!

“Sometimes it hurts always” may seem like an odd thing to say but I am still saying it. When I’m listening to people talking about their grief as the response to a  recent heartache the pain can be absolutely overwhelming. At this juncture in their lives the grief hurts always. The days may seem long and the evenings even longer. Evenings hurt more because the darkenss of the night creeps in with its own silent embrace. As some people have told me, it is here, in the embrace of silent darkness that they scream. Sometimes it hurts always.

This drives home the sadness of grief. It can be relentless. It can be seemingly never ending. Sometimes it hurts always. It hurts so much. In the prospect of one dying from a terminal illness grief may be one’s only constant companion. This blows apart the romanticized view some people have of the work I am involved in. Even some colleagues may shy away from this emotionally dark component of death and dying. Although the following may not be common, it does happen. I wish it didn’t.

I remember a number of years ago when I was involved in work as a pastor of the “evangelical” persuasion. Part of my work included coming alongside people who were hurting emotionally and spiritually. It was not uncommon for me to visit with people who were dying. Believe it or not, many of my pastor colleagues shy away from such rich opportunities. Yeah, go figure! Anyway, I digress.

I was asked to go to the local hospital and visit with an older woman from the congregation who was dying. I had sat with her a number of times when she was still living in her own home. She was lonely and received few visits even from her church. When I saw her in her hospital bed she was nearing the end.  I will never forget her fear and her crying. She kept saying how afraid she was to die. As she gripped my hand she told me she didn’t want to die. She was afraid God had forgotten her. I held her hand. I hoped by listening to her words and fear as well as sensing the stress in her body she might begin to calm herself. I assured her God does not forget or leave His children.

Something this lady said as she tried to hang on to life has stayed with me. I cannot shake it out of my head. She informed me that she was afraid God did not hear her prayers. It terrified her. It caused her to cry and her body to shake. Her experience caused me to reflect on when we might think God is silent giving the impression that heaven too is silent. This in turn had me reflect on a statement by the writer C.S. lewis.

“Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, 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.”*

Perhaps you have experienced what C.S. Lewis states above. It is a time when sometimes it hurts always. Some people might be eager to judge the thoughts and words of the woman I refer to. It is certainly not an experience pleasing to our minds. Some may not believe what I related to you. The fact is this lady died in fear. There is more to the story of the lady I mention in this post. Suffice it to say, for all intents and purposes, loneliness like she experienced makes one’s process of dying all the more miserable.

“Sometimes it hurts always” may not draw scores of people to the bedsides of those who are dying. Whether people agree with what I write here does not change the reality of sometimes it hurts always. Perhaps it speaks to the fact of how much we need each other. This is a reason I suggest to people to nurture relationships you may have with others. Nurture and cherish them to the end of your days.

 

*C.S. Lewis, The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (Harper One, 2008), p. 658.