VALIUM TO PROZAC
Coping. Has twentieth century technology advanced as rapidly in this area as it has in medicine, industry, or other fields?
In Biblical times when a crushing blow would come upon a person, he could allow his hurts and sorrows to be made public by simply throwing ashes over himself.
A statement was made here without the suffering person needing to verbally express himself. His hurt was acknowledged and dealt with immediately. All who saw him were aware of his pain and able to minister comfort. Frequently the entire community would join together in weeping, wailing and other expressions of grief, thus acknowledging the validity of his emotions.
Not today. Too often a Christian is encouraged to paint a smile across his face and quote Romans 8:28 (all things work together for good), locking pain far beneath the surface. But it doesn’t go away; it simmers till done. Grief demands to be dealt with, if not in its season, then when it can no longer be contained.
A friend of mine, Ashley* experienced the death of her two-year old daughter. “Part of the pain came from the assuring faces advising me that she was better off. It didn’t make me feel better. I wanted them to hurt with me.”
Romans 12:15 says it this way: “Be happy with those who are happy; weep with those who weep.” Yet hurting spirits respond that we are “fine” through glossy smiles to those that ask.
The old-fashioned way, covering oneself with ashes, would certainly take up less time, trouble and expense than using drugs and psychiatrists as we are prone to do today. When I was a teen, some moms would overuse the drug Valium to cope with the everydayness of motherhood. Today the rage is Prozac. Larry King Live did a recent interview citing the merits and dangers of this up-and-coming remedy to depression. One of today’s campaigning political candidates, instead of apologizing for his takin of Prozac, made it sound like something we could all benefit by using.
Though the ash-covering method could certainly help us directly and immediately deal with our grief, I cannot help but imagining the commercializing of this product. Max Factor would likely introduce three intimate shades to convey your true mood: Greyish-blue for sad; greyish-red for angry; greyish-green for jealous. True bargain hunters would compare K-Mart prices to Wal-Mart: “A full pound, that’s right ONE POUND, of ash for your grief (lighter shades available for annoyance) for only $2.39. Hurry! Limited supply available.”
You could buy scented, bio-degradable, pH balanced, allergy-resistant, non-toxic, non-staining formulas. You could blend it into your make-up, sprinkle it into your tub. In other words, do everything…everything probably but grieve.
In ancient times, it seems people had a pretty good handle with coping. Get pain or grief out – acknowledge it, accept it, get it over with, get on with your life. Today it lingers, haunting our everyday life with its slow but insidious poison.
One frustration I cannot seem to get through concerns my desire to write. I long for my manuscripts to be artsy like Annie Dillard, profound like C. S. Lewis, mystical like Ann Morrow Lindberg, but the old adage of write what you know, what you live rares its ugly head reminding me that my documents contain the stuff of my everyday world as a mom: pediatricians and pinworms, hamsters and headlice. What I write is replete with sandbox philosophy and the only epithet I’ve been asked to write was for the cat I ran over.
So I fumble through my days, minus any Pulitzers , knowing that for the next many years writing that what I live is less than courtly stuff. Oh, that I could but push ashes over my head, show up at church and have everyone weep with me over this annoyance, get it over and done. But instead I must be contented with an occasional by-line and two terrific kids.
Let’s face it – today we can’t use the ash-covering method. For one thing, many of us live in apartments where burning materials for producing ashes is out of the question. Home-owners have fire-code restrictions. But there is another covering we can apply: when someone expresses a hurt, we can use our facial expressions, our body language, whatever physical means we have of expressing ourselves to weep with those who weep.
We need not use this technique to severe losses only, such as death. Taking time out to listen to someone pour out his troubles without solving his problems in three easy steps or reciting him a quick verse before we run should be considered. Job’s friends sat silently with him for seven days before they blew it be telling him (wrongly) what he must have done to deserve his trials.
The next time we are tempted to solve someone else’s problems, perhaps we should give ourselves seven silent days to joining him in a concerned manner, along with prayer, before we speak. My pastor has told of ministering to grieving parents. Later the parents told that just his being there, saying nothing, was the best thing that anyone did.
So let’s consider the old ways; what can we learn from them? What is possible and good to apply today? Is it always godly to rejoice? Was Christ not a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief?
Paul longed to know Christ and the fellowship of his sufferings (Phil. 3). Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time and a season for sorrow and one for joy. Let’s be sure our lives are in balance and we are experiencing all aspects of life as the Holy Spirit leads us – not covering our true emotions but being transparent with one another and vulnerable, opening up our hearts to receive ministering from one another and let us be available then, to minister to those who show us their wounded spirits.
*Name Changed.