Grief Is Unique

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was a renowned psychiatrist who spent her life working with the dying. In her book, On Death and Dying, she identified five stages of grief. These stages, collaboratively, are known as the Grieving Process. She passed away in August of 2004, leaving her last book, On Grief and Grieving, to be published post-mortem.The five stages of grief are as follows:

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

1. Denial is simply what we do to SURVIVE when we experience loss. This doesn't have to be a major loss--but then again, what is considered a major loss is speculative and changes from person to person. If you've found yourself in a state of shock; and if you're wondering how YOU'RE going to go on, you're in denial.

2. Anger IS a feeling. Most people think it's not. However, anger is completely normal and NECESSARY if one is to heal. Anger is essential to closure. This doesn't mean that you're angry all the time, but that you will experience anger among many other emotions. Sometimes you feel empty, deserted, emotionless. But slowly, anger can turn into a bridge to connect you to whomever, whatever, you have lost. Anger feels better than nothing at all.

3. Bargaining occurs when you find yourself pleading with anyone, anything, with God, for more time! If only you'd done this, or that, maybe this thing or that person would still be here. Maybe you're wishing that you were the one who was gone. Maybe you think you deserve to be gone. We'll do ANYTHING to stop feeling the pain of loss.

4. Bargaining occurs in the past. You're thinking about a loss and everything that connects you to it, even though it's already happened. Depression is the opposite. You have to be completely focused in the here-and-now. This is why the emptiness--the depression--sinks in. You're at a loss of where to go, what to do, how to spend your time. We withdraw. If you've lost a loved one or maybe a spouse, you're asking what the point is to going on alone. It's depressing to realize that something very important and precious is gone and is NOT COMING BACK. You can't do anything to change what has happened.

5. Acceptance is the last stage of grief, although it doesn't ALWAYS occur last. People grieve in different ways. Maybe acceptance is the first stage and then someone progresses to denial. People can go years without ever entering a certain stage or lingering in another. Acceptance doesn't mean that living without loss is okay and feels good. No. It means that you've accepted the physical loss of something in the world. You accept that you can't ever replace what was lost, but that the connecting bridge to the emotions, to the soul, to new people and new meanings still exists and will become stronger over time.

Today, my friends, I am going through the grieving process. However, I feel like I've experienced all the stages at once. My mind is jumbled. I experienced the denial before we even left Haiti. Maybe I experienced grief Monday, June 17, when we were leaving FOR Haiti. How could I have already been thinking about coming home on June 24? Well, it's simple. Every trip ends. I didn't realize how much I didn't WANT to come home until we were already back. I felt empty. Those seven hours in the Miami airport were almost too much to bear. I never bargained. I wasn't bargaining. I was only depressed, maybe a little angry. I experienced denial for two or so days, maybe I'm still experiencing it, but now it's overlapping with the depression. I haven't been sleeping well since I got home. I woke up today exhausted, sore, miserable. I don't know how to spend my time. I want to be alone to process but I need to be with people because the loneliness hurts more. I've experienced the deepest, darkest stages of depression over the past five years. Depression is nothing new to me and I've wished to NEVER, ever be in the same place and condition I was from 2009-2011. Life was a blur, a giant black hole and I was slowly having the life (literally) sucked out of me. I was hopeless. And for no reason. Unlike this time, nothing I could think of triggered the imbalance. This time, I've got Haiti fever and it has spiked so high that I'm beginning to shut down. Everywhere I look is the pain of loss--the loss of feeling connected to my team, the loss of being back where nothing makes sense, the loss of feeling guilty for what I have here. I don't have to people to hang out with and even if I did, I feel like I'd represent a lump of coal. I feel I've lost the ability to communicate with people. I showed my aunt and uncle from Texas photos from Haiti last night and I stumbled across the same loss of words and feeling. All it did was bring the trip right back into plain view. I don't want to forget, but I don't want to remember.

Day By Day

 I'm taking the transition day by day...I don't know if I've made any more progress than the day I got home. It doesn't feel like it. I don't want to feel like my life here in the States is worthless; but I've proven to myself and others that it IS still necessary to make a few changes. For myself. For God. For the people in Haiti. I still find it weird to drive...and I've also found myself "swerving" a little more? I really can't explain that! But opening the fridge or the freezer is weird, too. I think I've lost my appetite because I can't handle all the choices. My third day back at work was good. No one around me knows the turbulence occurring in my heart! When I work with my babies I keep thinking of my OTHER babies back in Haiti. When I'm frustrated with babies who won't stop crying and I know they've had a bottle, a diaper change, and a nap; I can't help but think "Don't you know there are thousands of dying babies in Haiti who are NOT crying even though they have nothing?! They've been sitting in the same diapers filled with waste for who knows how long; they are trying to sleep in 100 degree plus weather, etc., etc........."

I find myself trying to love more and more, more than I ever have before, despite any differences. In Haiti, I found that love is ALL that matters...The situation that keeps coming back to me is still the one with Edwens. I can't get the barrier of love and hate out of my mind. I hate myself some days for allowing this situation to take such a stronghold.

"I have found the paradox that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."-Mother Teresa

I don't think I've ever had such a lesson smack me in the face like this one did; only I'm really realizing the consequences now that I'm home. Usually I'm not a live-in-the-moment kind of person, but this ordeal caused me to focus on nothing but! LOVE. One word, so many connotations, implications, but action....action. Love is an action. You can try to look for love and lessons from God in the every day things....the common things. You can look at the children in Haiti and think "Hey, those are like the kids I saw on that TV where they ask you to donate money...." but you GET there and it's a reality. You have to try to find love where it hurts the most---where it's NOT happening. You have to try to learn the hardest lessons in places where you didn't think lessons could be learned. Only then will you have worked so hard, pushed hard enough, to find release.

Our last morning in Haiti, we traveled back to Grace Village and attended the church service. OH MI GOOOSH as the Haitians would say...INCREDIBLE. So passionate. So moving! So emotional. Despite the fact that I was cradling a girl who had fallen asleep in my arms and was sweating bucketfuls, it didn't matter. I don't remember the last time I went to a church service and felt at home...felt...connected. The gates flooded open that morning. I was chosen for that service. I was flooded with grace and mercy. I don't know why Betline chose me to hold her. I don't know why I was welcomed, just one of many. I don't know why. I may never know why. I don't know why God chose ME. But I do know that God is sovereign and that to every situation in life, we are called to say, "Yes, Lord." We have a choice each time we stumble across hardships. What seemed like hardships before NOW are pebbles. The gates have been opened and I can travel farther than I ever have allowed myself to, without FEAR.