Mr.Gorbachev, tear down that wall!!

2 Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2

I think most of us can remember that defining moment in one of President Reagan's speeches where he emphatically requested the wall between East and West Berlin be torn down. It was one of those moments where I was proud of our President because he said what everyone else had been thinking, but never could say it the way our President did. So how does this relate to grief?

When we grieve there is this natural tendency to want to isolate our selves. We do so by silently carrying our pain of sorrow without the slightest notion to share with other people.  We become bearer's of our own pain believing that our pain would be too much for others to bear. So, we sit quietly shedding tears when no one else is looking and when someone asks us how we are doing we naturally perk up with the automatic response of "I'am doing great" while deep down inside our stomach is churning from the internal struggle of our emotions.

We have a beautiful back yard filled with lush trees, a heart shaped garden and openness on one side. Before our neighbors behind us decided to put up a fence along our back lot there were many opportunities to interact with them. I had memories of talking to their dad about life and how he liked being a dad. Before their fence went up  we could see his young children playing in  yard. Happy children, oblivious to the ills of the world ,would be swinging and sliding and having fun like children should, but when the fence went up it was as though all communication stopped with them. It had become our Berlin wall.

We still have one side that isn't fenced and for the moment we are happily watching our other neighbor's children playing in our yard. Happy children, oblivious to the ills of the world, playing in the tree fort my kids and I built when they were young.

Openness and honestly should be our model when we are grieving. We need to be honest with ourselves that we need other people in our lives to share our pain.  Isolation simply doesn't work. All it does is lead to problems with drinking and drugs because unless we talk about it we will resort to anything just to cope  with our pain.

Remember, Jesus Christ is our pain bearer we were never meant to carry. God gave his Holy Spirit to believers every where to help those who are in sorrow. The best thing  we can do while we are grieving is  to trust God  that he will guide us through our grief and allow others to come into our lives to share our pain.

The more  we share our pain with others the more likely we will wake up one day with a smile on our face, a spring in our step, and a zeal to get out and enjoy life again..