CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on faith for the years of winter.
Last week I did the
program for the XYZ group at our church. XYZ stands for “Xtra Years of Zest,” a
duplicitous way of saying we are old.
I led the group back
through the stages of human development, from old age to birth, because that is
the way we get “final integrity” in old age, by looking honestly at what was,
and accepting it as our own. In the process, we sometimes find episodes that
have not been resolved, and cannot be accepted until they are resolved.
There was a significant
story I meant to tell about that, but I got distracted and forgot about it. So
I’ll tell it now.
Several years ago, I did a
program for a group similar to XYZ in another church. When we had worked back
to the “initiative vs. guilt” stage, roughly ages three to five, a woman in the
group remembered something.
“When I was three, I had a
baby brother. He got whooping cough and died. I remember now the story of how
he died, that a nurse gave him a cough drop and he choked to death on it. No
one said a thing to me about it. No one ever mentioned him again. All these
years, without knowing it, I have wondered what I did to cause my baby brother
to disappear. I need to let that little three-year-old girl grieve for her baby
brother.”
It’s never too late to
grieve a loss, never too late to get resolution for any old hurt.
JRMcF
I tweet as yooper 1721.
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