Seeing Is Believing: Experience Jesus through Imaginative Prayer by Gregory A. Boyd

Author:Gregory A. Boyd [Boyd, Gregory A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: REL087000, REL012000
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2004-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

Grieving over a Child’s Loss

The first stage in the process of being healed from damaging memories is what one might call the grieving stage. In events that wound us, whether they occurred during childhood or adulthood, a part of our personhood was lost. Perhaps our integrity was attacked, our creativity was shamed, our playfulness was squashed, or our worth was violated. And the first step to recovering from this loss is to grieve over it. We must be allowed to feel and express the pain that the loss caused in our life.

When the Lord first took me back to the wounding event I discussed above, the first thing he did was cry with me. A part of my little child, and his little child, was killed that afternoon, and this is very sad. Some of this toddler’s exuberance for life, some of his energetic playfulness, some of his self-celebrating worth, and some of his future potential to live life as God created him to live it, was destroyed through this event. The world for him became a darker place that day. Yes, since I’ve turned my life over to Jesus, God has brought good out of this evil and has more than compensated for this wrong in my life. But this doesn’t make the tragedy less tragic. It shouldn’t have happened. And seeing it makes me and Jesus cry.

By expressing grief over what happened, Jesus is already reversing the deceptive message of the event. For we grieve over the loss of something only to the extent it has value to us. In grieving with me as an adult for this loss, therefore, Jesus is communicating the value the little boy has to him. No one did this for the little boy at the time, certainly no one who in the mind of this toddler had the authority to tell him what he was worth. But now the God of the universe is showing that he cares, and cares a great deal!

So for several weeks, each time I’d rest with the Lord we’d go back to this event and weep. As we watched the event, Jesus would sometimes tell me how wrong it was for this to happen and how sad this event made him feel. He would sometimes hug me, the adult looking at the event, as he encouraged me to express how I felt about the event. Sometimes he reminded me that he loved me back then and grieved over this event. And in all of this the Lord was healing me from the hurt this event caused me and showing me more of his profound love for me.

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