Pastor Debbie's E-Spire - November 12, 2020

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When I was in high school and learning Spanish, a regular question in our classroom was “Como se dice ‘get’?” We wanted to know the Spanish word for “get” and much to our chagrin our teacher would say, “There isn’t one, what are you trying to say?” We really had to think hard on that since “get” is such a normal word in English. Did we mean get going? Or go get it? Or get upset?

As we worked our way through the words, we often found that we needed more action words—more verbs. To make, to do, to grab, to pick up, to leave. The pointed language forced the perspective—we needed actions.

I similarly think of grief—we often want the short answer—how do we get past/through it, but the answer is, with more action. We have to be active in doing the grieving work for us to find the deep healing we desire. Grief requires our active participation. It’s not passive. We can’t just sit and wait and get through grief. To get through our grief we have to move, we have to do. That moving and doing can take a lot of forms, but it absolutely requires action.

Last week I shared Pastor Molly’s summary of the types of loss. Each one elicits grief. And each form of grief requires our active work in order to find healing, closure, and progress.

Folks often say there is no timeline for grief, and that’s true. Nothing is promised or guaranteed for the duration of grief. And yet, it is also believed that “the length of time of intense grieving is diminished if the process of grieving can begin close to the moment of loss” (p. 63 All Our Losses, All Our Griefs). In other words, the sooner we get to the act of grieving (our doing) the shorter the span of our intense grief. Said another way—don’t avoid it! It’s ok (more than ok, it’s important and necessary) to lean into the emotions of grief and work toward healing, hope, and wholeness.

We’ve lost a lot this year. And we can’t expect that we’ll just get over it. The pain of our grief won’t just disappear. We must address it. Name our losses. Actively grieve what’s changed. And do the work so that we can experience wholeness and healing and move forward.

If you’re feeling lost in your sorrow, or want someone to help you do the work, please feel free to reach out. I’m here to help and support you so that you can heal and regroup.

In Christ,
Pastor Debbie

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Pastor Debbie's E-Devotion - October 4, 2020

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Dear friends,
This month we are doing a series called Grief and Loss: finding God in the Midst of Sorrow. Pastor Molly at Gig Harbor wrote a great summary from the book we are using and I wanted to share it with you here. It's a little long, but certainly worth understanding how we experience loss...and that our grief is not just tied to death.

Whatever losses you may have experienced this year, whatever losses you may experience even this week, please know you are not alone. The weight and difficulty are real. And it’s worth spending some time reflecting and understanding your life in light of these losses and exploring healthy ways to grieve.

In Christ,
Pastor Debbie

Definition
Grief is a normal emotional response to a significant loss.
Grief is something to live through, not to cure or mitigate. Grief is universal, inescapable, every life will be touched by grief. And grieving is the intentional work that grief-stricken people engage in, enabling them to eventually live full, satisfying lives promised by the God who journeys with us.

Here’s the thing: any loss that feels significant, is significant. When people discount loss, it simply gets packed away and will need to be unpacked again later. When we don’t acknowledge and name our grief, we struggle to be healed of the hole that is left in our hearts. And friends, that emptiness will get filled with something, but it might not be something healthy.

For our series, we’re using a book written by Kenneth Mitchell and Herbert Anderson titled All Our Losses, All Our Griefs- resources for pastoral care. I am hoping that naming these and giving you some examples will help us recognize places of significant loss that we may be dealing with right now and give you some insight into yourself and others around you.

Six Types of Loss-
Material Loss- We often downplay material loss because we are taught that being materialistic is bad. Material loss is the loss of a physical object or of familiar surroundings to which one has an important attachment. Maybe you lost a ring that belonged to your grandmother and it was the one thing you had that was hers.
Material loss is often the first kind of loss we experience as a young child- think of the child who screams when the ice cream falls off the cone. Adults often think it’s silly and annoying because we understand that most things can be replaced. But the replacement of objects often masks the grief. If we always mask those icky feelings, it is likely harder for us to understand that we are experiencing significant loss when our childhood home is bulldozed or you move from a neighborhood where everyone feels safe and familiar to one where everyone parks their cars in the garage and you never see them.

Relationship Loss is the ending of opportunities to relate with another person, to talk with them, share experiences, make love, touch, settle issues, fight, and otherwise be in the emotional or physical presence of a particular human being. Everyone experiences this loss at one point or another. Human loss of a relationship can be powerful and all-consuming regardless of whether it is a broken, ended relationship like divorce, a friend moving far away, or the death of a loved one.

Unfortunately, we often think that death is the only kind of loss worth grieving and this causes us to discount other relationship losses as less significant. But the loss of a loved shares many components that make it like many other losses. Dementia settling in. Cut-off friendship, Someone who died. All of these losses may require us to sort through pain, anger, guilt, and years of memories. And like all loss, the good memories bring about an intense longing for what was and can never be again. The intensity of grief can truly take over your day-to-day life for a long while.

Intra-psychic Loss is the experience of losing an emotionally important image of oneself, losing the possibility of what might have been, abandonment of plans for a particular future, the dying of a dream. It is related to outward experiences, but it is an inward experience. Puberty and adolescence bring on this loss for most human beings.

This also happens, however, when we lose our courage, or our faith, or sense of safety. These are ‘things’ we possess within ourselves and we can lose them. I knew a young woman who believed her father to be the best dad and the most compassionate man she had ever known. She trusted him with everything. When she was 24 years old, she learned that her father had long ago had a child out of wedlock and never helped the mother, or tried to get in touch with the child. Meeting that grown brother of hers triggered an intra-psychic loss for her.

Her sense of safety had been shattered because it was centered on her sense of having a perfectly compassionate dad who would never abandon a human being. After moving through the grief for a season, she has a more adult relationship with her father now, but the loss caused intense grief that looked much like grief you have seen in suffers the death of someone they love.

Functional Loss
You’ve seen it somewhere: Aging ain’t for sissies. With aging, comes functional loss. Functional loss is when we lose some of the muscular or neurological functions of the body. Just because it may be somewhat expected doesn’t make the loss easier. Because our society makes light of it, there is some health there, but embracing the loss and grieving it in a healthy way will bring you some actual redemption. One of our beloved members can play the piano for hours on end, almost any hymn or show-tune you can imagine, but if you ask for her son’s name, it might take her 10 minutes to remember. There is much grief involved.

Functional loss isn’t just about aging. It can happen at any time- a child goes blind, a soldier loses a leg. Part of the healing process of functional loss is learning to work around the loss, but it requires letting go of things that once were that you can never get back. I imagine you are seeing the pattern now.

There are two more.
Role Loss is losing a specific role or one’s accustomed place in a social network. The significance of role loss to the individual is directly linked to the extent of the person’s identity to the lost role. Retirement is the most recognized period of role loss, and because there are rituals around retirement, we have some ways to begin to process it. But role loss also happens for people who change careers, or who get ‘voted off the island.” Role loss happens for some when they go back to school and become a student once again. It happens when people become parents for the first time and when the last child leaves the house.

For some, good promotion is so disorienting that it triggers every other kind of loss we’ve already mentioned. And it doesn’t always happen with a title. This pandemic has thrown countless people into role loss and change that no one seems to put their finger on. Role loss is one that is often discounted because it is often associated with something good- a promotion, a new baby, but people mourn the loss of what was and they can not get back.

Systemic Loss is perhaps hardest to understand because it is wrapped up in other kinds of losses. Systemic loss is when functions change within a system like family, work, church, any organization. When a child leaves home for college, the family system changes. You might find a parent shaking their head saying: it’ll never be the same. There is relationship loss, but there is a major disruption in how the family functions as well. And they go hand in hand.

When there is a pastoral change or a new boss comes on board, many people experience a major systemic loss as the new person comes with a different set of values and operates differently. Right now, the loss of a Sunday morning worship and all the systems that surround that Sunday morning routine is a systemic change that is wreaking havoc with our sense of well-being- we know it is not gone forever, but we’re still experiencing grief. Any time a major figure-head is replaced, a systemic change occurs- and even if the change is welcome, many folks will experience it as a loss. Elections often cause a systemic loss that is experienced very differently by various individuals. Keep that in mind over the next week.

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Pastor Debbie's E-Devotion - October 16, 2020

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 Moscow First Family,

It is a busy time of year for the church, even in the middle of a pandemic. We are working on budgeting and planning for next year, hiring a coach for help with visioning as a congregation over the next 6 months, recruiting volunteers for our various committees and ministry work, planning for Advent and Christmas (I know, it’s early, but we’re trying to plan well for all the new variables we’re dealing with) and working on doing church in general. It may not always be visible but there are lots of irons in the fire!!

And, as part of that, we need you and your help! We are the church because of who we are together and we are doing that differently as we make our way through the pandemic. Running the business of the church looks and feels different, but we still need folks to serve on finance, SPRC (the HR committee), missions (helping with local outreach and broader mission work), and to help us continue our ongoing work of discipleship.

We know that we all set boundaries, practice precautions, and generally live differently now. We are constantly evaluating what is safe, what is reasonable, and what we have time and energy for. We want to honor those differences among us and find creative ways to be the church together.

Specifically, we need help in some of our leadership positions. Most things are happening remotely (including meetings) and often those things happen less often to allow for the rebalancing of priorities and stresses of work and home life. I am asking you to prayerfully consider if you might serve in one of the following ways. I’m happy to work with you around your safety protocols. If you do find yourself willing to step into one of these roles, please reach out to me by phone or email.

Peace and grace,
Pastor Debbie

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Pastor Debbie's E-Spire - September 16, 2020

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 I’ve been hearing a lot lately “I’m just tired.” “It’s just hard.” Both are true. Very true for a lot of us. We’re physically tired, emotionally tired, mentally tired, and spiritually tired. We’re worn out and tired of the changes and new things and adaptations. We’re tired of the isolation and the restrictions and things we can’t do. And, it’s hard….all of it is hard. Even the “easy” things in life seem hard. One friend shared the other day, “my decider is broken.” She meant she was tired of making decisions. It seems ironic since we all make 1000 decisions a day, but there is so much that we have to think about that used to come naturally or be a “no brainer” that we’re tired of making decisions—especially when we’re weighing variables and risks that were not part of our equation 7 months ago.

I’ve said more than a few times this week, “I’m running on fumes.” And I don’t think I’m alone in that. I know I’m not. So many of us pushed through summer to get back to the (late) start of school only to have that upended by the smoke. Some of us laughed. Some cried. Some ate cake. Some shook our fists at 2020 (as if it’s some entity with any kind of intent or power). And others of us shrugged…ruined plans are all too normal these days.

I’ll speak my own truth and you can speak yours. My truth is I’ve just kept swimming. I kept going and going. My coping mechanism is to over function. I kind of take pride in it. I’m good at doing things so I do things. And when things are out of control I find things I can control (like going for a run or baking some bread or making a quilt) and do some more things. And I’ve found that with the pandemic I keep pushing. I work hard to keep things up and running and that’s been do-able. But I’m finding, like so many others, I’m tired and it’s hard. I kept pushing in ways I’ve pushed before. But, the pandemic isn’t like anything before, and it keeps going and going and going.

I’ve thought back on some prophetic insight Dave McCarroll had shared along the way and he said (no direct quote here) that we are likely to be in this for 18 months (or more) and it’s likely to change the shape of things forever. Any notion we have of “going back” is naïve. I gave up that hope of going “back” a long time ago. But I think I thought I could push through. I heard Dave’s words and I had heard other things he saw about the pandemic that others simply didn’t (at the time) and I knew I had to take heed. But how were we going to prepare for 18 months (or more!) of this?! None of us knew and many of us were not at all inclined to think that might be true. Most of us would still rather it’s not.

But we’re not done with this pandemic yet. We’re in this for the long haul. And it feels like we’re entering a new wave…maybe the wave of exhaustion. Maybe the wave of Day 2 that Brene Brown talks about here. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-day-2/ Either way, it feels like we need to shift gears. From what many of you have told me, we need to slow down and reevaluate. We need to stop pushing for what was, or even the “new normal” and actually stop to take stock and ask, “If we’re going to be doing this for at least another year, what can we manage? How can we manage? And what do we need to be more than tired?”

I think it’s important that we slow down. I think in a lot of ways we need to lower the bar. These are not the norms we’re used to and we can’t expect ourselves to operate at “normal” levels. We need to reconnect with our community—with more than texts and emails and Facebook messages. (And yes, I say that knowing it’s so hard when we’re trying to keep each other safe!!) We need to refuel—spiritually, emotionally, physically, and mentally. (Which should feel like a gift not a burden of another thing to do). =).

I don’t have answers or magical maps of what to do. But I do feel the weight and see that many things need to change. So I’m slowing down to acknowledge that. And I’m turning to God for guidance. And if you need those things too, feel free to pray with me:

God of change and transformation, we love the way you make things new and give rise to radical changes….when they aren’t so darn hard. I don’t think you *gave* us the pandemic. It’s part of our broken world. But I do think you will help us through it. I think you have the creativity, imagination, and hope we need to get through this in fruitful and life-giving ways. Help me to stop relying on my resources and instead to plug into you, daily, hourly, by the minute! Shine your light on our path. Help us to look with hope for what is coming next. Help me be fully present in today, for it is all I can manage and all I can control. Help me to relish the good things—the smiles, the laughter, the friendships, the tasty treats, and the everyday grace. Help me to pause when I need to rest. Fill me with your living water so that I can stop feeling parched and start feeling satisfied. Remind me that I am enough—for you, in you, and because of you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

In Christ,
Pastor Debbie

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