Austin Ave Unplugged #023 Sharing Grief

Cast: Lance Havens, Doug Crum, Jyles Wootton, Jamie Havens


This is a relaxed, behind-the-scenes pass to real conversation with our ministers, staff, and volunteers. From faith and family to ministry moments and everyday life.

Let’s unplug… and tune in.

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Doug Crum, Pulpit
Lance Havens, Associate
Jyles Wootton, Youth
Shanna Klutts, Children


Austin Avenue Church of Christ
1020 Austin Avenue
Brownwood, TX 76801
austinavechurch@gmail.com

Transcript

0:03

Okay, so we're in the middle of a conversation. This is Unplug AACC, and the whole point of this podcast is that we just kind of get to share not like ministry like Capital M church program stuff, but we just kind of share lowercase M ministry stuff. But sometimes we have conversations like the one we were in the middle of. Okay, Giles. Can I set the scene? Sure. Exactly. We're getting ready to start this podcast and we got the lights. Some we've got to turn off, some we got to turn on. And a lot of times I think there's a slow fade into it. Why do you think that? I have no idea. Like, do you think that we have like a professional union card carrying? Slow fade isn't the right term. He has an amygdala. I wasn't bruised. For sure. Do you know what the amygdala is? I don't know. It's an almond-shaped part of the brain, anyway. I know medobla almond not a sabbuchet. Right. But in terms of the intensity, I was expecting like a flick, not a punch, if that makes sense. And so I'm looking down at these lights that are staring like wide-eyed at the lights like a deer. We're about to get started and ask, should we turn on these lights back here? And I'm looking down, looking for the little switch, find it, and then it found me pretty quick. I turn it on and I'm just blinded by it. And so I have like 16 little dots that I'm seeing. And I don't know the technical term for them, but I know they don't last forever. And so it's not a scar, but something that is, you know, that shows up, that's an effect that doesn't last forever, is a bruise. Am I off here? And so I've called those for years now retina bruises. I'm thinking my retina's getting a cut on because nobody at this table has ever heard of it. They're always there, they're called floaters, right? No, I think that's a thing. Listen, no, everything's always there. Like little black spots, little retina bruises that are always there. Retina bruises. No, there's a retina scar. That's a baby left a mark now. But hey, you might need to get that tipped out if they're always there. I get it. It's clever. It really is. But the best part was like, hey, no, no, no. Like if this catches on, it'll save me so many words to say retina bruises, then to say spots. Two words. Syllable counts three. I don't know. Four syllables. Two words. And I think it's actually retina. Retina. Yeah, retina. It could be three. I mean, yeah. Let's ask Dr. Kamali. But you're not considering how much smarter I sound when I say retinal bruises. Versus seeing spots. No, I think that no one is. Never been a thought. Nobody walked away from the conversation about spots and said, Yeah, I think retinant bruises is brilliant. People are going to come up later and go, oh, talk to that guy. He says things funny. And said that I get more words. More chances to win. Oh. Oh my God. Okay, so I don't even know what we're supposed to talk about, but like I'm not grief. And I'm just grief. Charlie Brown. I feel like retina bruises are more encapsulating of that than seeing spots. I think when you say seeing spots out of context, you need some more context to it versus just retina bruises. I feel like that kind of nails it. Okay, so uh make the transition then from retina bruises to grief. You ready for this? Yeah, we're ready. We go to commercial break and then we come back and then just talk about something completely different. We need a TV timeout. What's the commercial break? Somebody wants to like be an ad in our I don't I don't know who we would be. We've thrown this out several episodes. Like, I mean Chick-fil-A, please, please, Chick-fil-A. Dan Kathy, if you're listening. Or Taco Casa. I love Taco Casa. Okay. So you're willing to do it for coupons. Yeah. Like a burrito. But we never sponsor their things. Sponsorship. We never show off their products. Taco Casa has the best. So you're going to get burritos before the next one. I don't think our viewers won. While we're doing a podcast. Man, if I'm listening to a podcast and somebody's talking about eating a Taco Casa burrito and I can hear them, I'm like, I'm getting in the car. I'm going there. Even if I have to stare at the sun and get retina bruises on the way, I'm going for my burrito. You're going to smell it through the radio. And the transition is. Yeah. Well, during grief, it it feels like it's the only thing that you can see. It's always present. You still see other things, but it's always there. But the intensity is limited in the same way that like I bet your vision is relatively back to normal. Yeah. So there's my transition. I don't know if blinking faster makes it go away faster, but it you can see it for that split second when you blink. Yeah. I don't know what your what reach that would have in your analogy. Well well, now we're stretching out a four. I mean you see it, you notice it more with your eyes closed, right? When you're not trying to look beyond, like that's all you can see. That's good. So this is related to what we just did, but just kind of a funny story. So I preached in Hobbes a couple weeks ago, and uh my daughter goes, Dad, that lesson was fine, but the transitions were really clunky. And I'm like, You're such a church brat. You have grown up in a minister's family, it is obvious. Do you have slides? No. Okay. So you're for sure that she was talking about transitions from one point to the next and not between your slides. Oh, sir. No, sir. Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, so Did you ask how she would have done it? How should I have done it? No, I I I was done at that point. I was like, yeah, I don't want to hear that. Thanks for the feedback. Okay, so we've transitioned to grief then. Well, I've heard recently I like math. I like math terms that is it grief shared, it's kind of a famous one, y'all might know it. Grief shared with someone is cut in half. So if I'm bearing the grief of something and I share it with people, now I don't feel as much grief now that that version has been shared. Um but praise or something that you're joyous about that you're sharing is multiplied. I have a lot of joy and I share it with y'all. I don't have less of it now. Now we all have more because of something great that's happened. Yeah, that makes sense. Is that y'all's experience with it? Romans says rejoice with those who rejoice, so multiplying. Yeah. Galatians says to bear one another's burdens, so dividing. And there's a time for everything, right? Like I don't think we're saying we should only be multipliers, right? We should be willing to cut someone's grief in half. Cut someone's burdens in half. It's just hard because people don't like to talk about people don't like to burden others. Because if you if you think about it that way, if you think, well, I'm I'm gonna deal with this on my own, I'm gonna take care of it on my own, but but that dividing thing, like I don't need they don't need to worry about that. I don't want to put that on them to have to think about or worry about for me. Um but it but Christ calls us to carry one another's burdens. So I don't think it's as hard to share your joys as compared to your burdens, but I think some people do have a hard time also sharing their joys with people too. Um perhaps for looking like they're not seeming prideful or arrogant, yeah, boastful about whatever's going on. What do you think, Doug? I have lots of thoughts. I don't know if any of them are good or worth uh being heard over the air uh while you're thinking about your um Taco Casa burrito. Um one thing I think is interesting, and I um I'm not trying to to bag on this lady because she's amazing and what she did was really phenomenal. She came up with uh five stages of grief. Her name is uh Elizabeth Kubler uh Kubler Ross. It was back a long time ago, certainly before Giles was born. I don't know if it was before me or not, but she came up with the stages of grief. I think almost everybody's familiar with it. It's uh denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Um and I love it. I love it. I think that's I I think that's is important. However, I think some people have taken that and assume that rather than uh they they treat it as like a walkway, like you're gonna start in um denial, and then once you finish through that, you'll transition into anger and then to bargain. Okay, right. And so I I think where the the the problem is in that people assume that they are are going to go from one to the next to the next. That that grief is not something that you're like stage one complete, now let's go on to stage two. And I think that's why that's so detrimental to a lot of people as as they experience grief as it happens, um, you're you you might be in denial one day. You're just gonna be all over the place. They are concurrent and not a consecutive sequence. But a lot of well not maybe well-knowing, I don't know what the word well-meaning well-meaning people will hand somebody a book and then they think, okay, this is a checklist. Like I'm reading this book, okay, I'm in chapter one, I need to be feeling chapter one, chapter two, and if that's the stages. There's a band that actually based a album on those five stages, and the interstitials are actually titled those things. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating. It took them five albums. No. Okay. One album. One album through. Yeah. So that was some of the Backstreet Boys best album. So how I would like to describe it, and this is I I mean, this could be way off, but but for me, I would imagine like uh I actually use this as an illustration one time. I got some some carpet tiles and just started out with like a carpet tile, and like when grief happens, you're on that tile, and that tile is the tile of grief, um, the the tile of just you're you're always weeping, you're emotional, you're overwhelmed, you can't imagine life, you know, moving on. And then after a period of time, uh another carpet tile is introduced, and that's that's the carpet tile in which like it's not like you can imagine that you can live after the grief. And then you step on that tile, but then you get right back on the the the one, and then you start adding more tiles. And so my my point is is that that grief never goes away, but you can come to a point in your life where you can add more tiles back in to where you can start to experience a different kind of normal even while you find yourself going back to that that grief. And I I think you can find yourself in in that deep grief for a really long time, but sometimes you you might go a couple days without dealing with it, and and then sometimes you just like sit down on it. I don't know. That's just how I I see it. That's a good visual stuff. We played a lot of the floor's lava growing up. You're looking at the 2009 reigning Wooten living room champion right now. Yeah, that's and and we would you know do it with pillows or whatever we had around the house, and yeah, you would jump from one to the next. Yes. Right? You wouldn't straddle it, you wouldn't have two right beside each other. That's not challenging at all. You were only on the one that you were on. Yeah. And you're saying it it's not like that at all. You don't jump from what denial and then what's the second one? Uh anger. Anger anger bargaining. You don't jump from that one to anger, and now you're just in anger and not in denial anymore. Yeah. I'm just saying you could have your foot on both. I I'm just saying, and then you'll go back to it, and then you like I just think like you're always there's always this this movement. But I mean, honestly, you for the first I don't want to say it and you know a timeline, but but for the majority of uh as you're first going through it, you're just stuck on that one tile. And you can't even imagine you can't imagine laughing again, you can't imagine there being joy. You are frustrated that there are other people around you that laugh and have joy, and you're baffled that when you go to the grocery store and you can't even imagine having to buy food and eating. There are people around you just like living their life. And so it's just so overwhelming. But I just think it it's it's very fluid. And I'm I'm sure um uh Dr. Kubler Ross would would say, Oh yeah, I'm but we've taken those stages and I think we've turned those. Yes, we've taken we've turned them one, two, three, four, oh, five, we're done. And you're like, oh no. Tomorrow you may be back at you know, denial. Jerry Leslie probably could correct a lot of our lack of clinical understanding. But yeah, I think that that was written around like end of life stage patients, yeah, right? And we apply it to every other situation in life. And so yeah, the pop culture version of that can not be as helpful as actually living through it and getting help from somebody. So although it's not beneficial to use it as a roadmap or as a timeline, do you think it's a net positive that we all have that language now? I think so because what it does is it it helps us see that grief uh can manif manifest itself in a lot of different ways. Yeah. Um and everybody grieves differently. You know, the example I always like to give is, you know, Job, you know, his whole family um, you know, dies just about all his kids die. He loses almost everything, and like he's in the ash heap and he's he's mourning fully. And and his wife, like I always imagine she like opens up the screen door and yells at him, curse God and die, and then slams the the screen door shut. And I think we're very harsh with her, and like, how dare how dare she act like that? And you're like, wait, come out. Like she she lost her kids too. And so everybody grieves differently, and so there are some very there are some unhealthy ways to grieve, but she lost her kids, her husband ha was covered in sores, yeah. Um he was mourning, yes, yeah, all their livelihood was gone. Yeah, and so I I I think we should just recognize that everybody grieves a little differently. Yeah, and all the disciples grieved differently. Everybody at the cross was grieving differently. Yeah. Um as and and then that symbol, kind of like that carpet square, is the cross that we look back to. How does that make, you know, maybe we go through different times in our life where looking at the symbol of the cross makes us feel different things. Um if we're, you know, if we're of course probably not denial, but I mean sometimes it can bring us comfort and sometimes it, you know, if you're really examining yourself, you can feel a lot of guilt and shame when you think about the sirac the sacrifice that was given. And and so you can go through different things um when we look at the cross. What I like about what I see in the Bible about working through grief is kind of two things. How many times the body physically is used to work through grief and through emotional pain. It's just how many times the tearing of garments and um sackcloth and ash. Um, I think about David fasting when his infant is sick. Um, and then once the infant dies, he's like, Okay, I'm gonna get up and eat and shower and feel better. And he says some of those poignant words. I you know, he he can't come to me talking about his his deceased infant child, but I can go be with him, and how and and how he uses his body to work through that and how they had rituals in their cultures of grief, and we used to have them in the West and we no longer do. Like a period of mourning in which people would wear black and just how we've kind of like lost all that ritual. They would even hire people to cry, they would hire the whalers or sit shiva or whatever. But even since COVID, even the time period from from when somebody passes until the funeral is held. I mean, before just because of the biology of the body and the decay of the body, like you had to have the funeral within three, four, five days. Well, now it's sometimes six weeks. And so just a lot of the ritual um we've lost. And I I think we've lost a lot. Yeah. And we've lost touch with using our bodies to work through grief, um, and and fasting and mourning and just just a whole lot of things. Yeah. Well, I was is years ago, I was in a um a class ministering uh to grieving, and it was done by uh uh a chaplain. Uh he just did I thought he did a phenomenal job and just really eye-opening for me. But um one of the things that uh that I remember well there's so much that he said, but um one of the things that I I remember he was talking about is you know, you you you go through these different stages and and you don't know when they happen, but uh or or they you jump around a lot. But he said what was really interesting I thought was he said the way that that our our society grieves is vastly different from a lot of cultures in the world even today. He says, you know, you think about this, um like the the moment that somebody dies, um a phone call is made, a lot of times the people leave the room, uh you have somebody who come in, they will take the the body, and then you don't see that body again um maybe for several more days, um, and maybe not even really at all. Um it's you know, it's if it's a closed casket type of deal. Uh and then air it's all done very sterile. The the body's taken away, it's cleaned up, it's there's makeup, there's you know, everything is done, the the suit is, you know, and and they're like you just you're not allowing yourself to really grieve and and have closures kind of a um that's a a pop culture type of a word. But yeah, it's loaded. Um but he said there's cultures that like we think it's really weird, but like they'll have somebody who dies and they'll keep the body um there for several days. Uh and they they'll do some preparations there, but but you might have the body remain in the house for you know a week. Um and then Isn't that what a wake originally was? Is you sat up with the deceased to make sure that vermin and rats and stuff I mean like just the reality. Yeah. Um just the biology, the lack of sterility. And we don't live in that culture anymore. And just the the people coming and the wailing in the morning, and and you just you threw yourself into that. You know, whereas, you know, like you said, we'll be like, oh, you know, somebody died. Well, you know, we're gonna have a a memorial service for them in six weeks or whatever. And when it's convenient for people to get there and I think things changed in the Acts Church. Like they were excited when somebody died for Christ. You know, like I think funerals probably did change maybe. They did celebrate when like martyrs died. And that did catch the attention of the Roman world. For sure. Because they were they were not hiring the whalers, they were excited that they had died for the cause of Christ. And so that maybe that started the change. And this is where we are now. Yeah. So we we have more celebrations of life. I feel like there's more I mean there are some some funerals where there's a full-on sermon, like, okay, guys, this guy didn't get right, but you better come forward as we stand and sing. Um, but then there's also those for like, we're y'all are sad, but we're not, you know, we're not sad for this this person because we know they're with Jesus and they're not hurting anymore or sad anymore. Yeah. This is a victory, celebration of life. Yeah. So just weird question. Um, have any of you guys have y'all thought about what you want your funeral to be like? Have you thought of any songs or anything? Or am I the only weird one at the table? No, I haven't thought of maybe songs. I think we wrote down some songs, or I did, I think, and stuck them like with our social security cards and birth certificates. I don't know. I don't think I did that. You did it? No. Okay. Let's see. I'm gonna have to go back and we've got it. Oh, you have it in your phone. I think I knew I think you've showed me this before. Uh well, actually, I just here we go on May 25th, and so today's the 29th, right? So it's four days ago. We we were going somewhere, and I don't know what had sparked this conversation, but we were in the car and I'm like, oh yeah, I I I'm gonna hear some songs that I wanted, and so I actually have two, four I have my whole I have the whole order of you have the whole discography of Force Frank on there? Dude, I may have to add a a a forced Frank song. There's gonna be hopefully a lot more songs that you like between now and then. But I think that's updated. Yeah, I'm gonna have to add that. If you think about it, those songs do stick with you. Like I still know the songs. Like there's there's there are a couple songs that when I hear them, like that was at this person's funeral, that was at this person's funeral, and I'll never forget it because it meant a lot. That that encapsulated that person's life to me. And yeah, they become a part of that song. They become a part of that song. I remember hearing Josh Turner's Long Black Train at a funeral. Okay. Yeah, that stuck with me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I I made a list of all my songs, and I I went ahead and made an order. Jennifer was with me. We were in the car. She she told me three songs that she wanted. And then I just I emailed it to all my kids and said, Hey, just like I don't expect that you'll need this for a while, but just in case, like here's here's what I want. Like did they all take an email you back? No, I don't think anybody crickets like, okay, thanks. Thanks, Dad. So yeah, no, my my dad has emailed me the order for his service, um, that what he wants, the songs that he wants, and everything like that. And so I'm I've I'm I wish w that's another thing, and and well this might be for another day, but I really wish um both as a culture or at least as a church, we would embrace more the reality that we're all going to die uh and prepare for it. Mm spiritually most importantly. But um there are so many people out there, bless their hearts, that that they are not ready uh legally, they're not ready financially, they're not ready um anyway. Uh and so then they leave uh and then all their family is left with all these questions. Uh and again, we we give ourselves more time than we used to, but there is a time where like when when somebody died, you had three days to figure this out. And unfortunately, there have been more than a few fights that have um that have uh w waged have been waged because um you know the the dad didn't just sit down and say, Hey, here's something I want. Uh here's what I want this to look like. And um it's an emotional time and uh people things matter more than they should, and they say, Oh, well, you know, his his favorite color is red because of his car, and he wouldn't have wanted the red tie, and you know, the other sister says, No, he wanted blue because that's what he wore at my wedding. He said this was his favorite tie, and then you're just like all of a sudden everything has so much uh much greater importance. And if you just say, Hey, here's what I want, being clear is kind. Yes. Um anyway. Wasn't there a book that you read that's really good that kind of helped lay some of those things out? Being mortal is uh is a pretty excellent book on death and dying that has nothing to do with faith at all. Just kind of the realities and the medical side, and yeah, yeah, it's a really good book. Yeah. Um and and you have a love list that you offer a piece of. Yeah. Um I I hope I'm not saying it wrong. I think it's Steve Sandifer. Uh he's the one who No, no, no, no, he's not the one. He he uh he's I I'm getting a little confused, but uh his it's called My Love List was introduced to me while I was in that uh class for griefing. Uh and it's like a 40-page document and it has basically everything, uh all the questions that you'd want to ask from legal issues to medical power of attorney to um here's who I want to have my car, uh a place for the will, all that stuff. Uh I've seen uh a little bit uh advertised um recently, uh I can't remember, I think it's called the knockbox or something like that. It's something that you can buy online. Does that stand for something? I have no idea. Oh dear. I have no idea, but uh it probably does. That's what it is, and it's only because we've lived in a town with a packing plant do we have weird feelings about knockbox. There's something that's called a knock gun. Oh, okay. Yeah. It has a lot to do with quick death. Okay. Well no, I don't think it's got anything to do with that. But it's it's basically you you buy this um if it stands for next of kin. Next of kin. There we go. So it's not a 22 caliber. Yeah. I just have this terrible vision. Oh my goodness. Next of kin. Next of kin kill it a next of kin box for all the people that grew up near a beef slaughterhouse, Doug. Which would be Jamie and I. I was trying to think of a five-letter acronym. K-N-O-C-K. That is quite the name. So yeah, I think I could be wrong, but I think there's a responsive. Anyway, it burned down. So I'm not making any promises, but I hope someday soon that I I would love to get uh a group of folks together uh and and have a little, for lack of a better word, a seminar. Uh and bring in a doctor and say, hey, here's some things you you would want to think about. Um uh a medical doctor and say, here's some things to think about. Like w what do these terms mean? What does it mean? What's a DNR, those types of things. Uh bring in an attorney and talk about what's a will and what's medical power of attorney, and uh bring in somebody from the um a funeral home and say, here's some questions that are gonna be asked, and uh bring in a lot of those that aren't common. Yeah, and bring in a counselor to say, here's some of the issues you're gonna have, and a minister to say, here's some of the spiritual issues that you might encounter, and just uh and and say, okay. Um it is it's crazy. It's crazy. And unfortunately, sometimes because we we as a culture we're not really good at griefing, um, and it makes us really uncomfortable, we love to slap band-aids on all that stuff, and we can say some pretty awful things, uh well meaning, but but really awful things, and so um just kind of talk about hey, sometimes some some people who really love you are gonna unintentionally say something that is gonna feel like a dagger going in you, and you just have to say, Yeah, they you you have to think about what they meant, not what they said. So anyway, I'd like to do that sometime. Can I talk about our Lord for just a second? One uh Jesus mourns in the Bible. He the death of Lazarus, he weeps. When John the Baptist dies, Jesus goes off to be alone. Like understandable. I I like to do that when I need to be alone. I like to go find a mountain and go climb it and be alone. Well, because it's Jesus, the crowds follow him. And I think that Jesus chose to go do what John would have done, which was be out in the country and preach to the crowds and preach about the kingdom of God. And so during your time of grief, go and be alone. But when you're ready again, use that as an opportunity to do the good that person would have done. And that's a way to multiply the good and also to share the grief. Yeah. Yeah. So just just tap into what Jesus did. Yeah, it is it is healthy to go through um, you know, that that valley. Uh just just don't pitch a tent and and don't build a house. Yeah, certainly. Would you like to close us a prayer? Lord and God, I just thank you for being so good. Um we are so humble and grateful um as we talk about grief to know that we follow a a Savior who grieved, who's who shared every hurt that we've had, um, who's experienced death and loss, and uh we we just want to pray that we're faithful in those times, that um as we process through those things and as we go through them, we we want to do it as people who have hope and people who believe and who people believe in a God who's going to undo death and um and and and who's going to make dry every tear. And we just thank you. It's in the name of Christ that we all pray. Amen.