How to Cope With Tragedy (3 Minute Read)
Daniel Crosby • March 28, 2023
THE PROBLEM:
Whether it’s a natural disaster like the recent tornadoes in Mississippi or a community tragedy like the recent school shooting in Nashville, we’re left reeling and wrestling with what to do with the pain and hurt. Where do we turn for answers?
THE CONNECTION:
The most important thing we need right now is one another. We need connection. These are situations that no one can understand and to feel confusion in the midst of them is…human.
If you’re feeling angry, confused, sad, or hopeless then:
- You are just like the rest of us - There’s no script for these tragedies or how to respond perfectly. No one has this all figured out. It doesn’t make sense to any of us and we’re all sighing in frustration.
- You are probably functioning just like God designed you to function. Your confusion comes from the way God wired you to problem solve yet your brain and heart can’t line up and solve this.
- You feel compelled to do something but you don’t know what to do.
THE KIDS:
It becomes even more challenging to know how to help our kids manage it because they certainly feel out of control.
- Your kids want your permission to feel what they’re feeling. They don’t know what to feel or may wonder if what they’re feeling is right or not.
- Tell your kids WHAT you’re feeling whether it’s sadness, anger, or confusion. It’s good to show weakness and vulnerability to your kids. Putting on a strong and stoic front could send the message that having painful feelings is wrong.
- Tell them WHY you’re feeling that way. It sometimes helps others if we use language that can help them label something that may feel unidentifiable to them.
- It’s ok if you don’t know the answer to their question. Let them know that they’re not in it alone. We’re both feeling it together.
- Reassure them that they’re safe with you and they can come to you to talk about what they’re feeling anytime.
- Don’t make it a one-off conversation. Check back in with them regularly in the coming days and weeks.
THE SOLUTION:
It’s normal to feel outrage and want to begin pointing fingers to find out who is responsible. This will happen in the coming days and weeks. Just wait for the news media and politicians to begin to capitalize on this tragedy.
“It’s the Republicans’ fault for not passing more gun control legislation.”
“It’s the Democrats’ fault for propagating a culture of mental health brokenness and confusion.”
“It’s the school’s fault for not having a gated campus with a safety fence around the whole property to keep people out.” (Yep, I saw this one on social media already.)
I think back to 9/11 when tragedy struck and we briefly became a people more focused on God. For a moment, He became the solution. There’s something wired into us that makes us want to look to something or Someone bigger than ourselves when things feel out of control. Deep down we want to know we don’t have to be control. Humanity struggles when we try to be our own gods.
The solution is CONNECTION:
with our hurt,
with our loved ones,
with our God.
THE FINAL WORD:
I say it often: “The thing that is worse than hurting it hurting alone.”
Grab someone today and hug them. Put aside a petty squabble that you’ve been hanging onto, apologize, and move on. Call a friend or a family member and tell them you love them.
Most of all, look to God who is the One who is able to empathize with our weaknesses (Hebrews 4:15) and who is close to us when we are brokenhearted and saves us when we are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).
“Born Again This Way” by Rachel Gilson is a beautiful and deeply personal book about her struggle between her identity in the LGBT community and how that came into conflict when she became a person of faith. Talk about two very polarizing ideas in our world today! I would say it’s ½ memoir and ½ theology in its makeup. Gilson doesn’t hold back from getting into the nitty gritty of her own story as well as the Christian scriptures. The book is pointed but respectful. I can’t see any well-meaning person coming away from it offended. Sure, there are those who will read it and disagree with her ideas. It will sadden some and give hope to others. I’ve said before that we need to be reading things that challenge us. Read things to sharpen your beliefs. This means you should read a lot of things that are IN alignment with your beliefs so you can further clarify them. Also, read something that opposes your beliefs though. If we always live in our own echo chamber/ algorithm how will be learn how to interact with people who believe differently than we do. This is a great one for families lovingly trying to understand a child wrestling with LGBT ideas. This is a great one if you have friends in the LGBT community and wonder if or how to approach matters of faith. This is a good one for those in the LGBT community who want to read something from a Christian who bridges that divide that often exists. It’s a good one! “Born Again This Way” by Rachel Gilson.
“The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to get Smaller in a Growing America” by Tommy Tomlinson might be my must read book of the year. It’s a beautiful memoir by Tomlinson, a coastal Georgia native, and a journalist by trade. He tells his story through the lens of his lifelong struggle with his weight. If you live in the south, then food is at the center of everything. We grieve with food, celebrate with food, and medicate with food. Heck, sometimes we’re sitting at the table gorging ourselves for lunch as we’re discussing plans for dinner. The book is hilarious in parts and heart breaking in other parts. It reminded me that everyone has a story behind who they are. We all have junk. He reminded me that some people’s stuff is internal. They look amazing on the outside but they’re crumbling inside. Other people’s stuff is external on display for the whole world to see though. What if rather than prejudging those we meet, we come alongside them and share our stuff. There’s something about knowing someone’s story that levels the playing field. If you struggle with weight, then this book is going to hit home. If you have a friend or family member who struggles with weight, then you need to read this one so you can better connect. If none of the above is true, you need to read this one because it’s an amazing story of a man who has a similar story to the rest of us. You’ll laugh and cry but most of all you’re connect with another person who is on this same journey we’re all on. Go read “The Elephant in the Room” by Tommy Tomlinson.
Alright folks. I read this one, but my review is more of a warning than a recommendation. Read if you are interested but read with a strongly critical mindset. I read “The Great Sex Rescue” because I’ve heard several people either recommend it or recommend another book by these ladies. It was co-written by three women, Joanna Sawatsky, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Sheila Wray Gregoire. As an aside, another one of their books is called “She Deserves Better.” The title is self-explanatory. Granted I haven’t read this one, but I have a good friend whose marriage was nearly destroyed by this book. When we fill our minds with biased information that fuels ours and others’ confirmation biases, the impact can be extraordinarily powerful. Ok, so a lot of the couples I meet with in counseling are struggling with the sexual intimacy in their marriages and I’m always on the lookout for good resources to recommend. I’m going to just say from the start that this book scares me. From the start, the premise of this book sounds intriguing. It made me nod my head a little. Ok, maybe I’m on board! I think we can all agree that men and women have some differences when it comes to sexuality and that generations past and present have struggled in various ways to communicate about sex, to teach about sex, and to know how to view sex through a healthy lens. Sexuality is an oddity because it is taboo on the one hand but universal on the other. The book attempts to look at sexuality through the lens of Christian women who struggle with sexual intimacy in their marriages. Ok, cool, that’s an incredibly good thing. They conducted a huge survey of women asking them about their sex lives and base some of the book on those statistics. Great! Evidenced based info. I like it! They make some good points such as pointing out that struggles in marital sexuality often have less to do with the act of sex and more to do with arousal. For instance, sex seems freer flowing when dating becaue arousal is easier when dating. There’s that long anticipation before most sexual contact occurs or we’re abstaining entirely from sexual contact until we’re married which makes the arousal that much greater still. Later in married life though, arousal tanks because the goal becomes to sneak a quickie in before the kids barge in. Hmm, good point. What if we focus on improving arousal and anticipation rather than on the performance act of sex? Good insight! I hadn’t thought about it like that. But the positive teaching and insights I gained were few and far between. The majority of the book seems to be a smear platform for the authors to grind their axes. The ax in question is the evangelical male patriarchy who have taught and written about marriage and sexuality over the past 50 years. They don’t hide the fact that they are appalled at the grievous, outlandish, and even abusive teaching that they reviewed in a lot of the Christian sex and marriage literature throughout past decades. The book spends page after page trashing authors and their books by name and pointing out that the problem with sexual struggles in marriage is predominantly with the men. But there’s more. Some of these poor simple-minded husbands in our world who are harming their wives oftentimes don’t even know any better because they were raised by a culture of toxic evangelical male church leaders who pointed them to resources that were all but coaching them to abuse their wives. They quote passages from some of these books and even hint at rape in sections to describe what these books are teaching. A major pattern they suggest the Christian literature teaches is the following: 1. Husbands are sexual, and they can’t help that they need sex all the time. God made them this way. 2. Whether wives feel like it or not, they must give their husband’s sex. 3. If they don’t give their husband’s sex then it causes men to lust and cheat and it’s the wife’s fault if he strays from the marriage. Now I’ve read most of the books they bash. I would like to think I’m reasonably intelligent person. I would also like to believe that my alarms in my brain would go off if I was reading material that was directly or indirectly teaching me to abuse my wife sexually. Reading some of the passages they cite, some do sound a bit appalling, but I wonder if taken in context there is more to it than these snippets they charge the authors with. I’ve met with hundreds of couples, many of whom are struggling sexually in their marriages. I’ve yet to have a wife come to me and say that the main problem is her toxic husband sexually abusing her in the bedroom because he read one of the popular Christian marriage/sex books. It’s just way more complex than finding a singular thing to point our finger at. Most husbands and wives I meet are people who love one another dearly and want nothing more than to please one another. When my friend came to me about the book “She Deserves Better” he asked me scratching his head, “Daniel, am I really this monster that this book tells my wife that I am?” I have to admit, reading “The Great Sex Rescue” made me feel the same way. Have I been an abuser for my whole marriage and I just never realized it? I asked my wife and thankfully she reassured me that the answer is “no.” I can’t do these ladies’ book justice with just a simple brief review. Buy it and read it for yourself. I believe in reading things that we disagree with because it sparks conversation and makes us think critically. Maybe I am a bit defensive toward some of what I read. I’ve wondered why that may be. Nonetheless, there seems to be a pattern emerging within the progressive Christian community in pockets where the enemy isn’t spiritual at all. The true enemy, they might say, is the past generation who traumatized us and triggered us with their male evangelical patriarchal abuse sexually and theologically. If that’s true, then yes, throw it off, rebel, and go find freedom. Is it possible, though, that the truth lies somewhere in the middle? Maybe it’s not all the men’s fault OR responsibility AND maybe it’s also not all the women’s fault OR responsibility. Maybe we’re all more alike than we are different. Maybe we’re all sinner in need of rescue from a Savior. Maybe we’re all sexually and spiritually broken in our own ways and we’re doing our best to help one another heal and find meaning, purpose, joy, and fulfillment in our marriages and relationships. Maybe we can seek resources and find the good in them and discard what is not helpful; eat the meat and spit out the bones. The importance is that we’re communicating about it. We’re doing it together, in community, because that’s how God created us.
