Mourning: God's Call

Book excerpt:  

BLESSED 

 Eight Steps to Emotional, Relational, Spiritual Wholeness: 
The Healing Power of the Beatitudes

Chapter 2

Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Matthew 5:4

So “poor” is bad, but now we are to “mourn”. This sounds even more excruciatingly painful. Mourning involves the most devastating feelings of sadness, abandonment, irreparability. To the ancients it meant covering themselves with “dust and ashes”, ripping their clothes “asunder”, tearing out their hair. A complete collapse of the ability to function in the daily life.  And, yup, that’s it.

It means facing, embracing, and dealing with the pain, shame, and hollowness within. It means looking at one’s frustration, resentment, and anger. At all times and within all circumstances it is our natural tendency to fall apart or to flee these feelings. These are the big, bad guys of our emotional repertoire. For most of our life we have been involved with making these feelings go away, or probably just trying to ignore them. But It is the wounds of your past that release the monsters of the id from deep within.

Monsters of the Id

According to modern psychology our subconscious is divided into the id, ego, superego. The superego is the parent part of us with all of its “should’s”, “ought to’s”, responsibilities, accountabilities. It is our overriding conscience. The ego is the adult within, that which decides what part of the subconscious is going to have control. It is the most mature and it enables us to process our day/life accurately. The id on the other hand is the child in us. Yes, it is the fun part that uninhibitedly celebrates and dances. But it is also the harbor for our pains and fears and mistakes. If we at some level do not admit and face these aspects of our id, it becomes a monster, a boiling cauldron inside us, waiting to blow.

Dealing with emotional pain

Nobody wants to deal with physical pain. But emotional pain is usually harder to face than physical pain. Often this pain is an emotional-relational one. At times when this type of pain becomes too great, some part of the body responds in a dysfunctional way to help deal with the emotional pain. This is what is called a somatic or a somatoform illness. These also fall into the category of symptomatic illnesses.  There is an event in the Bible that can be used to illustrate this. It is found in Matthew 9:2-8, Mark 2:3-12, and Luke 5:17-26. I am not here debating whether this was a genuine physical healing or a somatoform healing. I am simply stating this event can be used to illustrate a somatoform illness and how to deal with it.

A paralytic is let down through the ceiling to be healed by Jesus. Instead of directly healing him, Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven. Then he told the man to take up his mat and walk to his home. If this event is a somatoform/ symptomatic illness, Jesus handled it correctly. The physical problem is just a symptom, something that kicked in to help resolve the emotional-relational problem/pain. In dealing with such a problem, one needs to deal with the real problem for the physical manifestation to be truly healed. If the real problem is not addressed, then some other somatoform/symptomatic problem will manifest itself. Jesus dealt with the man’s emotional problem: he forgave his sins. After the emotional need was ministered to, the physical problem took care of itself.

A major problem we all have is that in cases of deep emotional problems we are often willing to face any emotional-relational pain….. except for the real one. The alcoholic who was abused in his childhood will have great difficulties stopping his abuse of alcohol until he deals with the pain of this childhood. The female who grew up in a dysfunctional family may need to be married to an alcoholic so that through the abuses of an alcoholic husband she can continue to live out her childhood abuse and does not need to face up to the previous pain.

One needs to face their emotional, relational pain; admit it, embrace it, then while embracing the pain, release it. Releasing? More later.