A couple of weekends ago I attended the funerals of two wonderful ladies. The first on Saturday was the funeral of a wonderful woman that cancer stole away at the young age of 60. On Sunday it was the funeral of the mother of a friend whose husband passed on the same date one year ago. God blessed her with 84 years on this earth. The sad fact is that we will all die. The saying goes that there are two certainties–death and taxes. The Bible says in Hebrews 9:27 that it is appointed unto man once to die. We cannot escape death no matter how hard we may try.
While death is a normal part of life there is an expectation on our parts that it will not come until we have lived a long and full life. When that doesn’t happen, it seems very unfair. We feel robbed. We expect to bury our parents. We do not expect to bury our children. When someone dies young, it feels so wrong. It is easy to become angry and bitter when we feel someone was taken from us “before their time”. Anger is a normal part of the grieving process but it is not somewhere that those grieving can stay.
At the first funeral I attended one of the family members spoke about bitterness. He recognized that he could easily become bitter that his loved one died relatively young. There is a sense that this is not how it is supposed to be. A natural human reaction to something that isn’t as we expected is anger. If we allow that anger to fester and we harbor it, it will grow into bitterness. I’m sure most if not all of us know someone who is angry or bitter. An angry or bitter person is not a pleasant person to be around. The anger and bitterness do not make anything better. They actually make things worse.
Many a person over the years has shaken their fist at God and been angry with him because of the untimely death of a loved one. How could he allow disease or evil to take away a loved one? If he is such a powerful God, why didn’t he heal my loved one? Or why didn’t he prevent the accident? If God loves me then he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen. Bad things are supposed to happen to bad people. When bad things happen to good people it is difficult to process. The Psalms are full of pleas from the psalmists that God reward those that do good and punish those that do evil. Yet rain falls on the evil and the good. Death comes to all whether you are good or bad.
I have struggled some with anger. But my anger hasn’t been with God. Given that COVID stole Ben from us, my anger is directed at those responsible for COVID and the total mismanagement of it. From the people that made it possible for COVID to be developed, to the decision to focus on a vaccine rather than medications to treat the sick, to those in power that blocked potential life saving treatments all in the name of money. There is plenty of blame to go around and plenty of people for me to direct my anger at. But in the end, being angry and holding bitterness is poison to me and accomplishes nothing.
I don’t like what has happened and I would definitely go back in time and change things if I could. I miss Ben every single minute of every day. I am grateful for the 22 years of marriage that we had. I am grateful for two wonderful children and an equally wonderful son-in-law. I have been given many blessings. I hope I can echo what Paul wrote in Philippians 4:11b-12: I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. My version would be a little different. I would have it say “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in grief, and I know what it is to not be in grief. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether in grief or not, whether with a living spouse or not.” Being content in all things, no matter how difficult, makes anger and bitterness impossible to harbor. May we all be more content in good times and bad times.
For the Love of Ben 