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The second one is that a lot of folks think that Christianity has to be joy, victory, peace, and comfort. They don't accept the fact that you will have trouble in this world, as Jesus says. People traveling through grief should understand their negative feelings are legitimate feelings that have to be attended to.

Zonnebelt-Smeenge: People sometimes think a Christian should get over it quicker or easier. That simply is not so. As a society, we tend to have the wrong idea about grieving. We think that if someone gets back to singing in the choir or teaching Sunday school, to doing their old things, that will help them. Actually that does more harm than good. I think churches don't do a good job of coming alongside grieving people. Churches are much more available when people are dying then they are when people are grieving. A lot of people feel like the church doesn't acknowledge them any longer now that they're not a couple.

People sometimes ask, "How can you grieve, because your loved one now is in a better place?" While it is comforting for grieving people to recognize their loved one no longer has to deal with all the hardships in this earthly journey, it's not very helpful for others to initiate that [conversation].

It also short-circuits the grieving process to think that all that really matters is that my loved one is not suffering anymore. It's important to say, "I was attached to this person. I walked through life with this person, and I'm hurting in all the ways that this person was in my life."

Grieving people have a lot of hard work to do. The more things that distract from that, the longer it's going to take.

Sometimes we think or we're told that our job is to move on.

Zonnebelt-Smeenge: Our world is so busy with people going here and there and having all these responsibilities that I think grieving people have to know it's their primary job to get through this grief journey. The grief journey honors the person who died. I don't think it's very honorable when somebody is done grieving in three months. It does take time, and you can't just rush it. We've had a few people say they did everything we recommend to get to the other side of grief, and they don't feel better. And we ask how long has it been since your loved one died? Two or three months. It takes least a year and often a lot longer

DeVries: A lot of people who want you to get through it assume that you are going to want to go back to what you had before. But you don't go back to what it had been before. That spouse is never going to be there. We often encourage pastors and members of churches to imagine that that widowed person is now a new person coming into the church for the first time.

C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed writes about how people don't know how to be with someone who is grieving. How should a church come alongside someone who's grieving?

DeVries: They must be present. They also need to be able to ask questions rather than giving advice or making judgments. You need to give that person a chance to talk about it. Grieving people need to have the capacity to be able to tell people who say dumb things, I understand you're trying to be helpful but that really wasn't helpful. If someone asks, How are you doing? A grieving person should be honest. If I am grieving, and I'm feeling pretty lousy, then I'm going to say it's not a good day.

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May 2007, Vol. 51, No. 5