BURNED OUT BY DEATH: ONE PASTOR’S STRUGGLE

A pastor grapples with the harsh vocational realities of multiple deaths and funerals

“What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.” –Frederick Buechner (Godric)

When I became a pastor, no one warned me about all the dying. While my seminary courses and professors provided a rich and solid foundation for much of my pastoral calling, I was not prepared to watch so many people die. I had a vague awareness I would need to preside at funerals, but no one told me about the painful journey of coming alongside these men and women in their season of dying, and that they would become my friends. My initial contact may have been as a staff member fulfilling pastoral duties, but somewhere along the way we became friends.

I loved them. And they all died. The deaths came in waves, year after year, funeral after funeral. I barely had time to get my head above water and catch my breath before the next wave crested toward me. I spent weeks, months and even years walking with dear friends, helping them grieve.

In the process I did not grieve well. I encouraged my dying friends to acknowledge their losses – things like loss of control, loss of independence, loss of a future. I encouraged them to cry. I asked them hard questions like, How was their spouse coping? How were their children responding? What were their fears? And what was Jesus saying to them?

I tried as best I could to help them die well, and in the process I discovered I was living poorly because I was not acknowledging my losses. I did not cry. I did not allow anyone to ask me how I was coping. I wasn’t hearing anything from Jesus. The weight of sadness, and loss, and grief began to paralyze me emotionally and spiritually.

ABREAKING POINT

In my darkened state I attended the funeral of a young man killed in a tragic accident. I hardly knew him, but I knew his parents. I sat rigidly through the service, hiding the growing angst inside. I forced myself not to connect with the great pain in the room because I feared I would begin to cry and never stop.

I knew it was not the death of this one young man that threatened to undo me, tragic though it was. My undoing was from all the deaths, all the sadness that was about to spill out of me right then and there in this little church. I was about to fall apart.

Later I told my wife what I experienced. She was surprised. She thought my rigid posture and blank stare meant I was not emotionally connected with the events of the day. She thought I did not really care. In fact, I was overloaded with unresolved emotions of loss and grief. I knew I was done.

Chartwell Baptist Church, where I had served for nearly 20 years, provided a crucial life-giving sabbatical. I will be forever grateful.

A TIME FOR QUESTIONS

In the generous spaciousness of a six-month break from all my work and routine, knowing I could fall apart whenever I needed to, I began to work through my losses. I tried to make sense of all the specific and personal deaths, but also death in general. I needed healing for my own journey of grief and I longed for answers for all the horrible questions I was finally allowing myself to ask.

Why does a 43-year-old husband and father of two die after a threeand-a-half-year battle with ALS? Why does a three-year-old fall off a dock and drown? Why does a 43-year-old mother of three contract an exceedingly rare form of brain cancer that claims her life within two years of discovery?

The early weeks of my sabbatical were sombre and depressing as I reflected on each death. I gave myself permission to grieve. I journalled and cried. I spent hours alone asking God for something that might make sense of all this and bring a measure of hope. I knew there had to be more to seasons of dying than just profound sadness.

My most significant eventual discovery was that the journey toward death, and not just the death itself, brought with it surprising gifts of life. I am a bit embarrassed to share how this came about. In my pain I challenged God – called Him out – and asked Him to give an account of Himself. I dared to ask, “Where were you? Why didn’t you do anything?” Like Job I addressed God as one “without knowledge” (Job 38:1).

My questions were presumptuous and reckless. God was so very gracious in His response.

A TIME FOR ANSWERS

God began to speak, slowly and quietly. Not an audible voice, but in thoughts, and impressions, and a sense of knowing what I had forgotten, or perhaps never understood. God reminded me that every death

carries the possibility of new life. This is not a new thought, but it brought some new comfort.

Jesus predicted that out of His death much good would come. But we rarely focus on new life during a season of grief. Our pain, quite understandably, blinds us to all that is really happening. We do not look for signs of life and therefore we do not see them. That was certainly true of me.

As I painstakingly worked through the dying journeys of all those years, I began to see things differently. I remembered the times of peace, joy, gratitude and deep contentment experienced by the dying. I had marvelled at the grace with which some of the dying faced their end.

But there was more going on here than a courageous death. My friends had been more fully alive, more fully present, more keenly aware of what was important and what was needed than I had been.

This awareness came upon me gradually and I felt the stirring of gratitude for God’s mercy to the dying – for the many gifts of life I had not fully appreciated along the way, in the moment.

I remembered my dear friend’s gaunt face breaking into a fabulous grin as I asked him about his imminent death. ALS had done its worst at that point. “God is still on the throne and He ain’t nervous!” my friend answered.

Why had that comment, and so many more like it, not resonated more deeply with me? How had I missed it?

LOVING THEM IN THEIR DYING

The more I reflected, the more I remembered. One friend had been unrestrained in expressing gratitude for each day she was alive, and each opportunity to touch, and taste, and see the beauty of this world.

Another, with no family nearby, was wonderfully overwhelmed when a couple from our church offered her the opportunity to die in the peace and comfort of their home. A loving community of friends and caregivers embraced her in her final days. She told us she had never felt more loved.

Several dying friends declared they wouldn’t change their circumstances because they had never felt more alive and never more aware of God’s intimate presence. Memory by memory, God graciously showed me He had been actively present with people in their season of dying. God had not abandoned them and not forgotten them. He was not angry with them, but loved them in their dying and continued to give them life.

The many gifts my dying friends received and also regularly offered to me – only some of which I caught in the moment – humbled me. It seems a wide variety of life-giving mercies are bestowed upon the dying in ways that can’t be prescribed or predicted. Not everyone, not all the time, but far, far more than I ever realized.

Rethinking death is not easy. Fear of death dominates much of our interior landscape as well as our culture. Books, movies, TV shows, and news all explore death as a major theme and focus. We are fascinated and frightened by death, and find it virtually impossible to come to grips with our own mortality.

To have a healthy and true understanding of death is rare – except perhaps among the dying.

My journey into death and dying did not answer the impossible questions such as, What happens at the moment of death? What is heaven like? Or the most difficult question of all – Why? My journey was about discovering new life in our seasons of dying and about the possibility of life in the face of death’s certainty.

If we stop approaching the subject of death with fear and denial, perhaps we can more fully participate in that abundant life God says is ours to have here and now.

As I accompanied my dying friends, I held their hands, prayed for their healing, listened to their unanswerable questions, cried with them, counselled them a little and learned from them a lot. These

IT SEEMS A WIDE VARIETY OF LIFE-GIVING MERCIES ARE BESTOWED UPON THE DYING IN WAYS THAT CAN’T BE PRESCRIBED OR PREDICTED.

dead friends and surviving family members constitute a faithful cloud of witnesses that continue to reshape my understanding of dying and living.

They bear witness to the pain and unfairness of death, but also to incredible grace and beauty, hope and courage, peace and surrender. Their stories are a portal to the life God intends us to live both now and then.

I readily acknowledge there is much about death and dying, life and living I still do not understand. When dear friends lost their only son, I told them I did not know why their son had died. Forty-four days later, I helped these same parents bury their only daughter. And in the midst of incomprehensible sorrow and inconsolable grief, I confessed to knowing even less. I had no answers to offer – only presence.

Though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us – breathing new life into us – and giving us glimpses of the life to come. That I know for certain. /FT