Navigating Grief by Kirk H. Neely

Author:Kirk H. Neely
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Grief;REL012000;SEL010000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2021-10-20T00:00:00+00:00

Military Service

Military service involves difficult grief. I recently officiated at a large formal wedding for a wonderful young couple. At the beginning of the service I announced what many in the congregation did not know, that the couple had already been married for fifteen months. I explained that the ceremony was conducted by a justice of the peace in a small county seat town in southern Georgia the day before the groom was deployed to Iraq. While both wanted a wedding with their families and friends, they also wanted to be married before he left on an uncertain mission. I reminded the congregation that this kind of thing happened frequently during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. I interpreted the church wedding service as a continuation and completion of their civil ceremony; a time to celebrate what God had already done in their lives and to give them our support, our love, and our blessing.

When parents say good-bye to a son or daughter entering military service, they experience a sense of loss, but in wartime their emotions are heightened and are akin to anticipatory grief.

Clare and I live in the house built by my grandfather in 1937, at the end of the Great Depression. In our home is a small room that my grandmother called her prayer parlor. Each night Mammy and Pappy went to the parlor to read the Bible and pray before bedtime. During the Second World War, they had a son who was aboard a landing vessel in the Normandy invasion, another who was shot down while flying bombing raids over Berlin, a third son in the Pacific, and a son-in-law who was captured by the Germans and became a prisoner of war. At the same time, they had one son on the mission field in South America. Our family knows that the walls of the small room are saturated with prayer.

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