Online Archives

 Exuberance is an old-fashioned word. Few people today dash about being exuberant, but it's a concept made for church and the Discipleship Adventure. We are called to be a people of joy, of daring and audacious hope.

Exuberance contains this element of lush and abundant blessing. It is an emotion to reclaim.
 
But the church also needs to reclaim, I am discovering, another old-fashioned word ? sorrow.

People in our pews today are allowed to be sad. But the wailing that can accompany bone-deep woe can make many United Methodists uncomfortable.

At Mount Oak UMC in Mitchellville, the congregation recently put aside their discomfort and welcomed sorrow into their midst.

This fall, they held a memorial service for people who had lost children through miscarriage, abortion, stillbirth, SIDS and other circumstances. Twenty-four women who had experienced such loss were present, along with others, said the Rev. Ramon McDonald II.

A number of the women spoke of their pain and the church's lack of support in the past. They each thanked Mt. Oak for sponsoring such a service.  Most of the women were not from Mt. Oak, but the surrounding community.

Following the service, one of the worshipers wrote in her blog about the experience. Reading her words, McDonald was affirmed in his belief that he and his church would face almost anything to provide such ministries. Below is an excerpt:

'My dearest friend invited my husband and me to a memorial service at her church tonight. It touches me that others would think of me ? think of ways to help me move on through my bereavement and commemorate my lost babies.'

'My love and my anguish still sometimes spill out of me like lava. I miss the faces I'll never see. I miss the chubby cheeks I'll never get to kiss.'
 
'I go about my daily life and each day I grow closer to accepting their losses. I don't cry every day. But there will always be two pieces of my heart that are gone.'
 
'Right after we arrived at the service, they showed a video clip about miscarriage. They showed an ultrasound picture with a little baby in the womb; little baby clothes; making plans; and then finding out the heartbeat is gone. I just lost it. This was my situation with our second loss. I could not hold in my tears anymore. I just burst out sobbing, uncontrollably, snot running down my lips and chin.'

'I felt embarrassed to put on such a scene but at the same time, it is what I needed. I needed to let go of those memories. Thinking about it still brings tears to my eyes. It is just so hard to think that my babies are up in heaven and I can't touch them or see them. I want that control and yet I have to relinquish it.'

'There were so many women there. Some got up in front of the group and shared their stories of grief.'

'As the service concluded, I asked my husband to walk the letters we had written up to the altar to put into a little wooden box, to be buried in the churchyard under a rose bush. The rose bush will be our memorial marker.'

'I will visit this rosebush and pay my respects. I never held them in my arms and I never buried them except  in my heart. Now, I feel like I have another physical, tangible piece of evidence that they were here with me. That brings me great comfort.'

'On the way home, my husband and I talked about what the service meant to us. We both mentioned that we thought we had now found a church we could belong to ? a church that has recognized and repented for not being there for women who have experienced loss; a church that really spoke to us.'

McDonald and the Mt. Oak congregation confess to being overwhelmed by the woman's sorrow and the way she shared it to bring herself (and them) into the presence of God. They are anticipating opportunities when they might embrace this ministry in the future to allow God to work through them for healing.

Healing is such an essential companion to sorrow. Healing means to make whole ? and holy. Jesus heals. In fact, in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, 40 percent of the story concerns healing; and more than a third of Luke and John focus on healing.

As Christians, we're called to be messengers of grace who respect sorrow, understand exuberance and are willing to somehow live with them together ? in our hearts and in our churches.