Grief

He cried. He knew Lazarus was dead before he got the news, but still, he cried. He knew Lazarus would be alive again in moments, but still, he cried. He knew death here is not forever. He knew eternity and the Kingdom better than anyone else could, yet he wept. Because this world is full of pain and regret and loss and depression and devastation. He wept because knowing the end of the story doesn't mean you can't cry at the sad parts.

Now let me clear something off the trail, because somebody has probably already said it to you.

Let me tell you what I hear from people all the time. Spiritual stuff that sounds real good, but if you think about it, it just doesn't jive right. How about this one: "Just give it to God." Tell somebody that's just lost a child to just give it to God. That's the stupidest thing you can ever say. You don't tell somebody to give it to God. It sounds good and it sounds holy, but it's dumb. Even if it may be true, you don't tell somebody that.

So no, I'm not going to tell you to hurry up and hand it over. Here's what I am going to tell you.

Be quick to laugh. Shoot, be quick to cry. Laughing and crying are the only two healthy ways to deal with emotion, because that emotion is going to fester out one way or another. You get a splinter and you don't pull it out because you're scared of tweezers, and it'll fester out. That wreck that's going on inside of us works the same way. There's only two ways it can come out healthy, and that's to laugh and cry. Sometimes it sucks so bad you just got to laugh about it. Sometimes, man, you just got to bow your head and bawl your eyes out. And if you can't do that, you're not tough. You're weak. You think you're being strong by not laughing and not crying, but it's not strength. It's weakness, because that stuff is festering out in other ways. You're gripey. You complain. You jump on those that you love. You're short-tempered. Maybe it's coming out in addictions, or self-medicating in other ways. Laughing and crying are the pressure relief valves God gave us. Don't be ashamed of either one.

And don't tell me how tough you are, because I want to be standing there whenever you hit your thumb with a hammer. Tell me cowboys don't cry? You're full of crap. I'm telling you, we do.

Even Jesus in the Beatitudes says, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted." I'm not saying that we don't mourn when there's a loss. Of course we do. But mourning and suffering are different things. Mourning can lead to healing. Suffering does everlasting damage to us.

Yesterday I told you that you're allowed to hurt. Today I want to tell you where God is while you do. Because when it's this dark, it can feel like he rode off.

God said that he would always be flanking you. He would always be on your right or your left. He said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." And just because you can't see him because of some brush, or because you're down in a canyon, don't mean that he ain't got his eye on you and he's watching out for you. We need to learn to ride in faith, cinched up in confident hope, not worry.

In Isaiah 43, verse 2, God says, "When you go through deep waters, I will be with you." You notice he says when. It doesn't say if. God's telling you, "Whenever you feel like you're drowning in the deep end, I will be there with you." See, faith makes all things possible. It does not make all things easy. God never said it'd be easy, but he did say that he would always be there for us.

God cannot heal a heart that is not broken. He won't save the self-righteous, but he will save a broken sinner. He will show his power and he will show his might, and nothing can stand against it. Instead of waiting till last to cry out to God to heal us, why don't we do that from the very start? When we feel defeated, when we feel downcast, when we feel disgraced, broken, and disappointed in ourselves, God doesn't cause these things, but he answers the call of those that are broken. It's not money that will heal us. It's not a new job. It's not a new town, a better economy, a new house, a new horse, a new hobby. Only God can heal us.

One more thing, and I mean it. You were not meant to do this life alone. The final key in resiliency is the reliance on others that are living the same struggles as you are. You know who the wolves usually pick off? The one by itself. And we were meant to help each other.

Today is the turn. And I'm not going to teach it to you out of a book. I learned it the hard way.

Before my family and I moved up here to start this ministry, we were fostering a little four-year-old girl named Rebecca. Her parents' rights were being taken away, and the only way I agreed to do it is if we could adopt her, because I don't deal very well with getting attached to something and then giving it back. I said, "Yeah, I'll take her. But I get to keep her." Everything was set. Two weeks before the hearing, we were throwing stuff away, getting ready to move, and it was kind of a magical time. And then we got a phone call. "Sorry to have to tell you this, but they've awarded Rebecca back to her dad."

That poor little girl had been moved around so much. She told me one time, "Dad, when are they going to come get me?" I said, "They're not." She goes, "They always come and get me." I said, "You're ours now." I bawled like a baby when that little four-year-old girl drove off in that government-issued car. And the last time I ever saw Rebecca was her face as she turned around in the backseat, reaching for me. Horrible situation.

But you know what? Loss is inevitable. Suffering is not. A lot of things in life are inevitable, and loss, in whatever form it comes, is one of them. Suffering is not. The way we self-inflict suffering, no matter what the loss is: we suffer when we let the loss define us. And isn't it easy, whenever you deal with loss, to start in on yourself? "God took her away because I wouldn't have been a good parent." There's all these ways we can allow loss to define us. But we don't have to let it, because sometimes it's just out of our control. Sometimes it's stupid court systems. Sometimes it just hurts, and sometimes life just stinks, man.

We also suffer when we allow the loss to consume us. I read a deal one time by a very prominent author and psychologist who said that even in the event of the most tragic situations, the shock, the stuff that you can't control, anything after seven minutes is self-inflicted. Because it consumes us. It's all we can think about. And when it's all we can think about, we say we can't help it. But you know what? You can help it. You can be sad without letting it consume you.

And we suffer when we allow the loss to control us. Listen, there's two great gifts that God gave each and every one of us. Number one, the Son, who was sacrificed on a cross for the forgiveness of our sins. That's the first great gift. The second great gift is he gave us free will. And a lot of times we ask, how could a loving God let this happen? Well, I guess you can say he let it happen. But the same free will that somebody uses to do something heinous, that same free will does amazing things. Like when firefighters rushed the World Trade Center, giving up their own lives. Free will is just like anything. It can be used for greatness or for calamity. But God gave us free will, so therefore, nothing can control us. Now, unfortunately, we can let a loss define us. We can let it consume us. And I guess we can let it control us. But we don't have to.

There's a difference in being sad, bawling your eyes out over a little girl you thought was going to be in your life the rest of your life, and suffering. I could have let it define me. I could have let it consume me. And I could have let it control me. But I didn't. And I'm not saying that it was easy. By any means.

God didn't cause it. God didn't have anything to do with it. But just because he didn't, doesn't mean that he can't use it.

You made the turn yesterday. Today is about what getting back up actually looks like. It doesn't look pretty. It looks like this.

Heidi, a great friend of this ministry, got on her horse one morning and got lawn darted. I mean, she got bucked off hard. By the time we got there, she still had not even caught her breath. When you have dirt caked in your eye and you've got it all over your teeth, that's how hard she got bucked off. And that tough lady walked over there and she gathered up them reins, and she toed that stirrup, threw a leg over the cantle, got her rope down, and apologized for making us late. That's a cowgirl right there. I tried to get her to get off and have a glass of water and she refused. I asked her, "Are you that tough?" She goes, "No. I won't be able to get back on if I ever get off." I get that. I sure enough get that.

In Proverbs 24:16, it says, "For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again. But the wicked stumble and stay down when calamity strikes." Which one are you going to do? That's powerful.

Now hear me on this, because it's the part the grieving get wrong. When I say to go on living, living doesn't mean that you forget. The greatest thing you can do after the death is go on living. And living doesn't mean that you've forgotten what happened. It means you remember it. By living, you're not disrespecting the dead. You're honoring them.

Keep going. I know how tough it is. I don't know what you're going through, but keep going. Don't give up. Don't quit. Because everything is contagious. Quitting is contagious, but so is courage. The courage to keep going. And somebody's going to be watching whether or not you quit, and you're not going to have any idea that they are. You don't have to handle it perfectly. Just keep going. Everything is contagious, quitting and courage. You get to choose which one you will become a master at, or maybe which one will master you.

Isaiah 66:9 says, "I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born, says the Lord." That is beautiful. Whatever you're going through, God will do something with it. But you can't quit.

Everything I've walked you through this week came out of one message, preached after some of the hardest losses of my own life. I lost a foster daughter. I lost my dog. This is where it all landed for me, and it's where I want to leave you.

Death is inevitable. Unless Jesus comes back, every single one of us will experience the death of a loved one, and our loved ones will experience our death. Death is inevitable. But life, life is a choice. And I promise you, death is a lot easier than living, because you only die once. But you have to make a choice every single day. Living is harder than dying.

We cannot control death, and we cannot control change. Loss, death, and change are inevitable. But we can respond with moving forward, choosing life, and accepting the change.

Before you go, let me pray for you the same way I pray for my own church.

In Deuteronomy 30, verses 19 and 20, Moses says this in some of his last words ever spoken: