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Taking Care of Yourself in Grief

Posted in Grief Resources, tagged , , on January 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

Flight Attendant with an Oxygen Mask

This blog post is shared from a website called SoulSeeds. This website offers inspiration for all people in their growth and needs. In this article, I find it not only helpful but also necessary to take care of ourselves FIRST when grieving. Sometimes we may have to be selfish for a while and put the oxygen mask on ourselves first before we can give oxygen to our children or others.  You can also follow SoulSeeds on Twitter for great tweets!

Feed Your Soul by Geneen Roth

Geneen Roth wrote the outstanding book, Women, Food and God which was featured on Oprah. We’re pleased to include Geneen’s work on Soulseeds Seed Exchange. This article was first published in Good Housekeeping.

There are some things in life you take for granted: Your children will outlive you. No matter how tough it gets, you won’t poison your spouse with arsenic-laced toothpaste. And if you have a best friend, you will attend her wedding.

But life sometimes upsets our most basic assumptions. And although I haven’t resorted to the arsenic (yet), I did have this surprise: My best friend from college got married today and I wasn’t there. Never in a million years did I think I would miss her wedding. We’d been talking about it since we were 18. And yet, when it came down to deciding about making the trip from California to New York, I did something radical, something I rarely do: I took my own needs into account.

I stepped away from my notions of what a good person would do, what any loyal friend would do, and considered the facts: I’d just returned from teaching an exhilarating but exhausting weeklong retreat; I had a broken ankle and a sprained back and could barely walk; my friend decided to get married rather suddenly and told me she wasn’t expecting me to come. And I realized that although I would miss seeing her walk down the aisle if I didn’t go, I would be a hobbling, exhausted wreck if I did. So I stayed home, sent champagne, and wrote my friend and her new husband a wedding story. It was an agonizing decision but not nearly as painful as the tale I told myself about it: If I don’t go to my best friend’s wedding — the very friend who held my hair back the night I drank a bottle of Cold Duck and threw up on the sidewalk — people will finally discover how selfish I am and I will lose every friend I have. I will spend my dying days alone, dribbling Diet Coke on my chin with no friends or family around. As soon as I realized I’d made a leap from taking care of myself to visions of dying alone, dribbling and friendless, I understood that I considered looking out for my own needs a radical concept — so radical that it scared me to (a pathetic, lonely, and potentially sticky) death.

I should know better. In working with tens of thousands of women over the last two decades, I’ve found that there is a whole set of beliefs called “the bad things that will happen if I take care of myself.” I’ve heard things such as, “My son will choke on a fish bone the minute I leave him alone and take some time for myself.” “My husband won’t be able to make friends without me if I stay home from this party and rest.” “My friend will hate me if I don’t make brownies for her bake sale.”

Think about this: Do you feel it is right to put yourself at the center of your own life, or is your secret fear that if you consider your own needs, you’ll alienate the people you love and end up homeless, rifling through old chicken bones in a dark alley? Are you afraid that a “me first” attitude will get you drummed out of the “good people” club?

Most of us secretly believe that good people, especially women, take care of others first. They wait until everyone else has a plateful and then take what’s left. Unfortunately, most of us make decisions based on our ideas of who we think we should be, not on who we actually are. The problem is, when we make choices based on an ideal image of ourselves — what a good friend would do, what a good mother would do, what a good wife would do — we end up having to take care of ourselves in another way.

Enter food. When you don’t consider your real needs, you will likely fill the leftover emotional hunger with food. (Or another abused substance. Or shopping. But most of us opt for food.) You eat in secret. You eat treats whenever you can, because food is the one way, the only way, you nourish yourself. You eat on the run because you believe that you shouldn’t take time for lunch; there’s too much work to do. You eat the éclair, the doughnut, the cake, all the while knowing this isn’t really taking care of yourself. But to really take care of yourself, you have to think of yourself first.

“Is that possible?” you ask. “What about my children? I’d die for them.” Have you ever considered why, on an airplane, the flight attendant tells you to put on your own oxygen mask first, before you help your children? It’s because your kids’ well-being depends on it. If you aren’t grounded, present, calm, and able to breathe, there is no one to take care of them.

What would your life look like if you acknowledged the truth that working nonstop for 10 hours, taking care of other people, leaves you so spent and weary that there really isn’t much left of you for your kids, let alone yourself? What would your life look like if you realized that you need to set aside time every day to fill yourself up — even if it’s only by taking a few 15-minute breaks during which you stare at nothing or go outside or lie down? What would the pace of your life be if you went on “soul time” instead of clock time, even just a little?

It’s possible. A few days ago, I spoke with a first-time mother. Her baby son had colic, and she was completely exhausted. She was so afraid she wouldn’t be there when he needed her that she couldn’t sleep even when he was napping or with her husband. And she was turning to food to calm herself down. I asked her what it would be like to do something very simple for herself: to sit down and breathe. That’s all. No big deal. Nothing to achieve. Just let the body do what it was already doing and give herself a break. She said she could try that. She just breathed.

At the end of five minutes, I asked her how she felt. She said she was relieved, immediately calmer. She said that since she’d had her baby, she had forgotten all about herself and her needs, and while some of that was natural (“I’m so in love with him,” she said; “I’ve never known love like this before”), she was not serving him best by exhausting herself. She said that caring for herself was doable — maybe not in the same ways she did before she was a mother, but in new ways. Taking small rests. Eating well. Going outside for even five minutes while he naps. “I can do this,” she said. “I can treat myself with the same kind of care that I give him.”

“Now you’re talking,” I said. “And the better you take care of yourself, the more he will know as he grows up that it’s fine for him to take care of himself, too.”

If you operate on what you believe a good mother/partner/friend would do and you leave yourself — what you need, how you feel — out of the equation, your relationships will suffer.

I’m here to tell you that cherishing yourself by making yourself a priority in your own life is possible. You can take care of your needs and your relationships with family and friends can thrive. I know, because I am making this my daily practice, and I am confident I will not go out either alone or dribbling.

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The Godly Widow Confiding in the Widow’s God

Posted in Shared Stories, tagged , , on January 12, 2013| Leave a Comment »

This blog post was shared by Candy Feathers. She became a widow on November 10, 2009 at the age of 57. She and her husband were married for 36 years. Two months later, her mom passed away and 2 months after that, her dad followed them both to heaven. Candy is a mother of 4 grown daughters, 4 sons-in-law, 6 grandchildren here on earth and 1 in heaven. Please visit her blog for more inspiration!

The Godly Widow Confiding in the Widow’s God

The following excerpt was written by Octavius Winslow. Octavius descended from Edward Winslow, a Pilgrim leader who braved the Atlantic to come to the New World on the Mayflower in 1620. Octavius’s father, Thomas,  died when he was seven years old. Shortly after that, Octavius’s God-fearing mother took her family of ten children to New York. All of the children became Christians and three sons became evangelical ministers. Octavius later wrote a book about his family’s experiences from his mother’s perspective entitled LIFE IN JESUS.  He had an unique understanding of his mother’s widowed heart.

“Let thy widows trust in me.” —Jeremiah 49:11.

It is well!  All that He does, who speaks these touching words, is well.  It is well with you, for He who gave in love, in love has taken away the mercy that He gave.  The companion of your youth, the friend of your bosom, the treasure of your heart, the staff of your riper and the solace of your declining years, is removed, but since God has done it–it is, it must be well.

Look now above the circumstances of your deep and dark sorrow, the second causes of your bereavement, the probable consequences of your loss,–God has done it; and that very God who has smitten, who has bereaved, and who has removed your all of earthy good, now invites you to trust in Him.  Chance has not brought you into this state; accident has not bereft you of your treasure; God has made you a widow that you may confide in the widow’s God.

With your peculiar case the Word of God in a pre-eminent degree sympathizes.  It would seem, indeed, as if a widow’s sorrow and a widow’s desolateness took the precedence of all other bereavements in the Bible.  It is touched with a hand so gentle, it is referred to with a tenderness so exquisite, it is quoted with a solemnity so profound, it would seem as if God had taken the widow’s sorrow, if I may so express myself, into His heart of hearts.

“Ye shall not afflict any widow,” — “He doth execute the judgment of the widow,”–”The sheaf in the field shall be for the widow,”–”He relieveth the widow,”–”He will establish the border of the widow,”–”A judge of the widow is God”–”Plead for the widow,”–”If ye oppress not the widow,”–”Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the widows in their affliction,”–”Let your widows trust in me.” 

What a cluster of divine and precious consolations for the widow is here!  How do their extraordinary appropriateness to her case, their extreme delicacy in dealing with her position, their especial regard for her circumstances; above all, their perfect sympathy with her lonely sorrow, betray the heart from when they flow!

And who is the object of the widow’s trust?  “In ME,” says God.  None less than Himself can meet your case.  He well considers that there is an acuteness in your sorrow, a depth in your loss, a loneliness and a helplessness in your position, which no one can meet but Himself.

The first, the best, the fondest, the most protective of creatures has been torn from your heart, is smitten down at your side; what other creature can now be a substitute?  A universe of beings could not fill the void.  God in Christ only can.  O!  Wonderful thought that the Divine Being should come and embosom Himself in the bereft and bleeding heart of a human sufferer–that bereft and bleeding heart of yours.

He is especially the God of the widow.  And when He asks your confidence, and invites your trust, and bids you lift your weeping eye from the crumbled idol at your feet, and fix it upon Himself, He offers you an infinite substitute for a finite loss; thus, as He ever does, giving you infinitely more than He took; bestowing a richer and a greater blessing than He removed.

He recalled your husband, but He bestows Himself.  And O, the magnitude of this trust!  It is to have infinite power to protect you, infinite wisdom to guide you, infinite love to comfort you, infinite faithfulness at all times to stay by you, and boundless resources to supply your every need.  It is to have the God who made heaven and earth, the God to whom the spirits of all creatures are subject, the God who gave His dear Son to die for you, the God of the everlasting covenant to be your Shield, your Counselor, your Provider, your God forever and ever and your Guide even unto death.

And what are you invited thus to entrust to God?  First, your own self.  It is one of the greatest, as it is one of the most solemn peculiarities of the Gospel, that it deals with us as individuals.  It never, in all the commands it enjoins, and in all the blessings it promises, loses sight of our individuality.  This, then, is a personal confiding.  You are to trust yourself into God’s hands.

God seems not to stand to you in a new relation.  He has always been your Father and your Friend.  To these He now adds the relation of Husband.  Your present circumstances seem to invest you with a new claim, not upon His love–for He has always loved you as He loves you now–but upon His especial, His peculiar, His tender care; the affectionate solicitude of the Husband blending with the tender love of the Father.  You are to flee to Him in your helplessness, to resort to Him in your loneliness, to confide to Him your wants, and to weep your sorrows upon His bosom.

Secondly, your children. “Leave your fatherless children; I will preserve them alive.” A state of half-orphanage is one of peculiar interest to God. A fatherless child is an object of His especial regard and care.

“Thou art the helper of the fatherless,”—“A father of the fatherless is God,”—“Enter not into the field of the fatherless; for their Redeemer is mighty, he will plead their cause with thee.”

Encouraged by this invitation and this promise, take, then, your fatherless ones, and lay them on the heart of God. He has removed their earthly father, that He may adopt them as His own. His promise that He will “preserve them alive,” you are warranted to interpret in its best and widest sense. It must be regarded as including, not temporal life only, but also spiritual life. God never offers us an inferior blessing, when it is in His power to confer, and our circumstances demand, a greater. He will preserve your fatherless ones alive temporarily, providing all things necessary for their present existence; but, infinitely more than this, He will, in answer to the prayer of faith, preserve their souls unto eternal life. Thus it is a promise of the life that now is, and also of that which is to come.

Thirdly, your concerns are to be entrusted to God. These, doubtless, press at this moment with peculiar weight upon your mind. They are new and strange. They were once cared for by one in whose judgment you had implicit confidence, whose mind thought for you, whose heart beat for you, whose hands toiled for you, who in all things sought to anticipate every wish, to reciprocate every feeling; ‘who lessened his cares by your sympathy, and multiplied his pleasures by your participation;’ whose esteem, and affection, and confidence shed a warm and mellow light over the path of life.

These interests, once confided to his judgment and control, must now be entrusted to a wiser and more powerful friend,—to Him who is truly and emphatically the widow’s God. Transferred to His government, He will make them all his own. Your care will be His cares; your concerns will be His concern; your children will be His children; your need the occasion of His supply; and your fears, perils, and dejection, the period of His soothing, protection, and love.

And just at this period of your life, when every object and every scene appears to your view trembling with uncertainty and enshrouded with gloom, God—the widow’s God—speaks in language well calculated to awaken in your soul a song in the night,—“LET THY WIDOWS TRUST IN ME.”

O! have faith, then, in this word of the living God, and all will be well with you. It will be well with your person, it will be well with your children, it will be well with your estate. The God who cared for the widow of Zarephath, the Saviour who had compassion on the bereaved widow of Nain, is your God and Saviour; and the same regard for your interests, and the same sympathy for your sorrow, will lighten your cares and cheer the desolateness of your widowhood. Only trust in God.

Beware of murmuring at His dealings, of doubting His kindness, of distrusting His word, and of so nursing your grief as to refuse the consolation your God and Saviour proffers you. The sweetest joy may yet spring from your bitter, lonely sorrow; and the richest music may yet awake from your unstrung and silent harp.

If a human power and sympathy could “make the widow’s heart to sing for joy,” O! what joy cannot God’s power and love create in that desolate, bleeding, widowed heart of thine. Place it, then, all stricken and lonely as it is, in God’s hands; and, breathing over it His loving Spirit, He will turn its tears, its sighs, its moanings, into the sweetest midnight harmony.

http://www.reformedreader.org/rbb/winslow/godlywidow.htm

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