I listened to a great podcast with Crystal Paine and Michele Cushatt.
10 Practices For When Your World is Falling Apart
These lovely ladies discuss Michelle's new book scheduled to be released on March 28 titled, A Faith that will not Fail.
Loss looks different to all of us. Michelle shares her story of her journey through over thirty years of a succession of losses that left her riddled with suffering. She asks the question on so many minds today… how do you believe in a good God when your world is falling apart and so many things are going wrong?
As a widow, I’ve been struggling for over three years now with questions for my Father God I believe loves me and will see me through. I am at a point where I can acknowledge the majority of the pain I feel is not as much about missing my beloved husband… it is about not knowing how to navigate all the new circumstances I find myself in because I feel so lost and alone. It’s like starting from scratch in life with everything from relationships to what I think is real. Life has made such a paradigm shift I need God more than ever to help me just keep taking that next breath and to reveal to me what is truth and what is fake.
I like that Michelle brings up the very real need to lament. I read a book in my first year as a widow that taught me the Bible teaches a lot about lament and it is a God thing. The book is Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament, by Mark Vroegop. It was my key to discover God welcomes our laments. I could go to Lamentations, Psalms, Job, and other books in the Bible and see where kings, everyday believers and even Jesus Himself cried out to God in their times and seasons of experiencing great sorrow and despair. Most churches today don’t teach or recognize the importance of allowing hurting people to express their grief in the form of a lament.
Michelle acknowledges so many faith-based circles emphasize the goodness of God and focus so strongly on making people stay positive they fail to give people the space and freedom to lament and express their sadness. There is a very real danger of going too far in that expression and getting swallowed up in grief, but loving someone who is hurting needs to recognize the reality and significance of the pain we suffer when we experience loss… and the many facets of our existence that pain touches and influences.
The first step to finding new life in the wake of overwhelming loss is to go through the grieving process. A profound statement from Michelle is, “Grief is just as much a form of worship as praise.” Weeping and feeling the pain we experience in loss is a critical part of a faith that will not fail.
Worship is an act of religious devotion to the God we recognize as our creator, savior, and supreme ruler we believe loves us and created us to have a relationship with us. The most important people we choose to build a relationship with requires us to be open and honest with our feelings, and to open our hearts to hear and acknowledge the feelings and thoughts of that person we are sharing with.
My dear husband often told me God’s shoulders are big enough to handle whatever I say or feel. He said God loves to hear what makes us happy, but He is just as interested in what makes us sad, or angry or confused. God knows us better than anyone else because He created us and He knows our thoughts and feelings even before we bring them to Him.
Michelle goes on to explain how she learned to journal her grief through writing down the losses she experienced. This gave her a way to give voice to those losses so she could then have the words to express her feelings to Jesus and lay them at the cross. I love how she tied this to a pathway to follow that can help you finally progress enough to start healing and begin to find ways God can redeem the situation for good. It leads us to find new purpose because of the pain we experience.
She goes into the way fear comes in and tries to take up residence in the midst of the journey of grief. She quotes CS Lewis who said, “I didn’t realize grief would feel so like fear.” When we experience loss, we are forced to come to terms with the fact that the worse things will sometimes happen.
We have to learn not to anchor ourselves to an outcome, but to anchor ourselves to a person. Outcomes always change. We can choose to put our faith in our Father God who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. That is the anchor that will ground us. God is bigger than us and our circumstances and He is able to take care of it all. It changes your focus from the unknown to a person who is with you no matter what happens.
Finally, she discusses the importance of forgiveness. Forgiveness looks different for everyone and is often needed in multiple ways. The practice of forgiveness is ongoing. Refusing to forgive only creates a cancer in yourself and hurts you.
I believe this podcast will lift you up and bring hope. I strongly encourage you to take the time to listen and be blessed. Turn your eyes to heaven and let God wrap you in His love as He offers practical help in the midst of a world that feels like it is falling apart. I pre-ordered Michelle's book. It looks to me like a wonderful resource to have.
