The Way Forward Is Through

In our Free Store conversation on Friday morning we talked about the third step in the grief process known as DABDA: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.  Whenever we lose something of value we go through various stages of dealing with the loss.  Not everyone goes through the five stages in sequential order and not everyone goes through all the stages.  However, by understanding the process we can better understand ourselves as we struggle to deal with the pain in our lives.

Bargaining is a step along the way to accepting the loss and really letting ourselves grieve over it.  It is our way of trying to exercise some control of what is happening to us.  The question was asked about what bargaining would look like in a specific situation.  George said that he did it when he was in prison by promising God that he would do better when he got out.  He told us that his bail was set at $50,000 which seemed pretty high so we joked with him that he must have been a very bad boy.  George was a bit vague on the next point but his explanation included the words "breaking" and "after midnight" which made us laugh.

We talked about how in some ways our entire lives are a process of bargaining and negotiating to get what we want and avoid what we don't want.  This led us to talk about Jacob, one of the great characters in the bible.  We laughed when our friend Paul said that if he was a character that he would fit right in with this motley crue.  Someone brought up that Jacob's name means "heel-grabber" because he was born with a twin brother and came out of the womb holding onto Esau's heel.

We looked at the story where Jacob dreamed about a ladder extending from earth to heaven.  Upon waking he realized that God had been present and that he had not been aware of it.  At this point Rick said that God is omnipresent which means that there is no place that God is not.  Our friend Paul said that he was sure God had been with him as he looked back at some of the things he had been through in his life.  He also said that he was the last remaining member of his family as both his parents and his two sisters had died in the past five years.  Paul said that he was the only person in his family ever to be homeless and that he didn't know what that meant but he sensed that there was some purpose in his life.

As we talked about the importance of having a purpose in life Rick shared with us a little of his experience on the street.  He said that he would rise every morning and after getting cleaned up and having breakfast he would leave the shelter and go around picking up cigarette butts.  He would collect these during the day and would use the tobacco in them to roll his own cigarettes and then later in the afternoon he would return to the shelter for dinner around 4 pm.  George said he would often walk the streets just hoping that somehow he would be able to get a place of his own.  It made us sad to realize the daily hardships faced by many of our friends.

At this point our conversation circled back to Jacob and we talked about how he bargained with God after getting into serious trouble by defrauding his brother Esau.  Basically Jacob said that if God would provide food, clothing, shelter, and protection that then he would serve God.  These were not extravagant things that Jacob wanted but were just the basic necessities for life.  We talked about how we all pretty much spend our lives bargaining for the things we need in life and trying to ward off the inevitable losses.  But ultimately, reality is what it is and no bargaining can change it.  The way forward is never around the loss but rather goes right through it.