Joy in the Sorrow
NOT ALL OF LIFE IS MARKED BY EASE, SUCCESS, OR JUBILANT CELEBRATION WITH THOSE WE LOVE. SOMETIMES A PROFOUND SENSE OF SORROW WASHES OVER THE SOUL AND LAYS IT BARE.
Sometimes a blaze of anger flares up as if to scorch God. Sometimes anxiety devours the days, or numbness dulls the senses, and life becomes a blur.
Every person reacts differently to grief and suffering, but rarely is the response to do as the psalmist instructed and “Lift up your voice, rejoice, and sing” (98:5) or “worship the Lord with gladness” (100).
When darkness obscures the light, when hearts break apart or families shatter, when disease looms or livelihoods vanish, it is psalms of lamentation that feel more authentic: “I have grown weary with my crying; my throat is inflamed; my eyes have failed from looking for my God” (69).
Or perhaps, when things get bad enough, the book of Job might feel closest to the truth: “And now my soul is poured out within me; days of affliction have taken hold of me. The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest.”
Gail Davis, like Job, felt helpless and alone, even when surrounded by friends, after her son, George, killed himself in 2017. “When you lose somebody to suicide, there’s a time frame when you’re not sure you want to live anymore yourself,” she said.
Mary Lu Gunn “would rail at God” sometimes, after her husband, the Rev. Reginald Gunn, a retired Episcopal priest, was diagnosed with melanoma at Christmas in 2015. He had survived a kidney transplant several years earlier. “Here was a man of God, who’d known what he wanted to do since childhood,” she said. “I was madder at God when he got sick than when he died. He was suffering.”
Steve Hadley “went into panic mode” when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2017. “Everything was going through my head,” he said. “My mortality was on the line.”
Gail, Mary Lu, and Steve all attended church services regularly throughout the worst of times. All found comfort in the familiarity of the liturgy and the fellowship of friends when life was in tumult.
“The steadfastness of weekly worship is a gift that God gives us in good times and in bad,” said the Rev. Katie Sundermeier, a Presbyterian pastor and executive director of the Samaritan Counseling Center of Atlanta, which provides spiritually integrated counseling, regardless of a client’s ability to pay.
“No matter how you feel when you go to church,” she said, “the Holy Spirit always meets you there.”
“Even at times when we feel dry spiritually, worship rituals remind us of other times we have experienced God, and of God’s faithfulness and love toward us,” said the Rev. Dr. Julia Gatta, Bishop Frank A. Juhan Professor of Pastoral Theology at the University of the South’s School of Theology.
“We come to God in our brokenness. This points us to the fact that we’re not self-sufficient. We need a savior. That’s what the gospel has been telling us all along.”
ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER || When Gail Davis and her husband, Orie, moved to be near their son, George, and his family, they transitioned from Christ Episcopal Church in Macon to Christ Episcopal Church in Norcross.
Life settled down in their new community—but not for long. Soon after they joined their new church, Orie was diagnosed with prostate cancer and began undergoing treatment. He died four years later.
In the meantime, Gail underwent major abdominal surgery for suspected cancer that turned out to be a false alarm, followed by rotator cuff surgery. “The church rallied around us, fed us, looked after us” during those crises, she said.
She was adjusting to widowhood, working her way through grief, and rebuilding her own health, when her daughter-in-law called late one evening.
George, Gail’s son, had disappeared. So had his gun. And he had left a note that suggested he might harm himself. Official word came from the police in the middle of the night. George was dead.
“That’s the worst thing I’ve ever been through,” Gail said. “You never know why somebody takes their own life. I think he was just taking care of everybody else and didn’t know how to ask for help.”
As word spread through the church, people came to bring food and offer comfort. Still, she said, “I felt lonesome, surrounded by a lovely congregation.”
She was angry with God and with George, whose daughter was about to graduate from high school and whose wife was weeks from completing her second year of seminary.
Christ Church Norcross’s rector, Cecilia “Ceci” Duke counseled her that “God gives us freedom, so it doesn’t make too much sense to be mad at God,” she said. But if you are, Rev. Duke added, “He’ll get over it.”
Through a support group for survivors of suicide at the Link Counseling Center, Gail said she came to understand that “when someone takes their life, they have gotten into such a bad place that they don’t think about what it will do to their family. They can’t see any other way out of the pain they’re in.”
She saw three possibilities for herself, she said: “Take my own life, pull the covers over my head, or put one foot in front of the other.” She chose the latter, and when people asked how she was doing, she answered simply, “I’m vertical.”
Through it all, she never missed a support group or a church service. “The ritual of our church is such stability for me,” she said. “It’s a reminder of what I believe every week. It’s like home base.”
Gail recently moved to Wichita, Kansas, to be near her stepchildren. One of her first tasks there was to find a church.
STRUCTURING GRIEF THROUGH RITUAL || Mary Lu Gunn held two memorial services for Reginald, her husband of 51 years. The first was at St. James Episcopal Church in Clayton, where they were attending just before he died. The second was in Americus, Georgia, where they lived before he retired.
Due to the blur that grief creates, Mary Lu can’t recall some details of the first service, except that “church people from all over showed up.” The wound was simply too fresh. “The second service was more celebratory, less funereal,” she said, thanks to some time and space that allowed her to process the loss. The services were a major transition from abject loss to gratitude for time together.
Indeed, a funeral or memorial service brings people together, said Dr. Gatta, because “they give us a window into what really matters.”
“What worship does—particularly in the eucharist, but not only in the eucharist—is bring us in touch with the paschal mystery of Christ,” she said. “It gives us a way of experiencing suffering and grief as related to Christ’s own suffering.”
Familiar words from scripture and hymns are a reminder to those grieving that “other people have grieved before us and have gotten through this,” she said. “The liturgy itself creates a safe place for people to grieve. The structure of the liturgy, the fact that the community is there, allows people to express their grief and yet know it will not overwhelm them.”
The most effective memorial services recognize the heartache felt by those left behind, but offer the hope of eternity through an emphasis on resurrection, said the Rev. Sundermeier.
Mary Lu today said she’s determined now to continue celebrating her husband’s life. “I still enjoy things,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when the waterworks come. The liturgy carries me through. The music carries me through. That’s my way of really being able to praise the Lord.”
She’s not angry with God anymore, she said, adding, “But there are times I tell the Lord I could still use Reg here.”
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS || Steve Hadley was prayed over formally and informally in 2017 while he was undergoing chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery for pancreatic cancer.
Friends visited him, laid hands on him, and prayed, and he attended some of the healing services held monthly at his church, St. Peter and St. Paul Episcopal Church in Marietta. Those services bore little resemblance to the stereotypical image left by televangelist programs where promises of unrealistic intervention abound. Instead, those were designed to give him the faith, comfort, and strength to face whatever awaited him.
“I didn’t ever get a bolt of lightning or anything like that,” Steve said. “But I did feel I was protected to have the love of the folks who were there.”
Steve and his wife, Susan, were eating breakfast with friends from church on a Sunday morning several months after his diagnosis when some good news arrived. His oncologist called to say that tests showed his tumor markers were down drastically. Another test revealed that they had dropped even more.
According to the American Cancer Society, the one-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is only 20 percent.
Now, three years since those positive test results, Steve said he’s still living life on life’s terms, embracing the uncertainty. “We’ve developed a faith and don’t question why things happen,” he said. “We know that God’s with us at all times. This is the path we’re on. We do what we do.”
Part of what he and Susan do is to go to church, sharing in the community that has walked beside them through good times and bad.
AND THERE WAS GOD || Author and priest Barbara Brown Taylor points out in her book An Altar in the World that the world’s great Abrahamic religions arose from pain and suffering: Judaism from slavery and the Exodus; Christianity from Jesus’s ministry to the poor and oppressed, followed by his crucifixion and resurrection; Islam from Muhammad’s prayer for a solution to tribal warfare.
“Pain is one of the fastest routes to a no-frills encounter with the Holy,” she wrote. Even in happy times, sorrow lurks in the shadows.
“I can feel my heart filled with gratitude and joy, and at the same time recognize brokenness,” said the Rev. Sundermeier. “Joy and sorrow are inextricable.”
But if there’s sorrow in the joy, there may also be joy in the sorrow.
Librarian and author Mary Potter Kenyon, whose first book was about collecting and using discount coupons, turned to more somber matters after the deaths of her mother, her husband, and a grandson within the span of three years.
In Refined by Fire, Kenyon wrote: “In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light... As I stumbled over the roots of hopelessness and despair, that light grew to illuminate my path… At some point in the journey I’d turned around, and there was God.”
The hope, the possibility, the firm conviction that God is there—that is reason enough to worship.
Alight With Love
When faced with a devastating and sudden loss, Shelby and Georgia White found solace in the simplicity of practicing worship and the comfort of community.SEPTEMBER 11 IN THE UNITED STATES IS A DAY OF NATIONAL GRIEF. But for Shelby and Georgia White, the anniversary of that horrific day is also deeply personal: It’s the day Adam died.
Adam, their son, was 26, working for the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald on the 101st floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when the planes hit.
While many people in Atlanta and across the country remember the stunned horror of watching the attack and its aftermath on television, Shelby and Georgia had just one thought: get ahold of Adam. They frantically tried to reach him, or to reach someone who might know his whereabouts.
Shelby had begun dating Georgia when his son Adam was four, and Adam was seven when they married. Georgia loved Adam immediately and raised him as her own son. The two of them were proud of Adam’s adventurous spirit and professional achievements as he grew into adulthood. He went on climbing expeditions to Kilimanjaro and Everest, bringing Buddhist prayer flags back from Nepal. And in his two and a half years on the job, he had developed computer innovations for his firm and had a patent pending in September 2001.
Then, everything shattered.
All efforts to reach Adam or find out whether he had escaped the tower were fruitless, but the Whites weren’t ready to surrender hope. They knew that cell phone service was overburdened with New Yorkers trying to call out and people around the world trying to get through to loved ones in the city, just as they were.
When they felt they had done all they could, Shelby and Georgia went to a prayer service at their church, the Cathedral of St. Philip. Both were active members there and hoped to find some comfort amid their panic and fear.
Dean Sam Candler stood near them in the crowded sanctuary and, after the service, embraced them. The dean was wearing white vestments, Georgia recalled, so when he reached out his arms, he looked like a big white dove.
Days later, Dean Candler would travel to New York on behalf of Shelby and Georgia and bring back some gravel-sized particles from the World Trade Center site. Recovery and identity of remains was painstaking, slow, and uncertain, so many families settled for bits of rubble as a tangible representation of their loved one.
On September 29, still with no news about Adam and their hopes of finding him alive all but vanished, Georgia and Shelby held a funeral service for their son, which filled the majestic cathedral. They chose a reading from Isaiah (“They shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities”) and sang “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee.”
“The service was uplifting,” Shelby said. “It was almost like a national day of patriotism.”
“It was meaningful to me how many people were there,” Georgia said. “Even the balcony was full.”
Later they scattered the gravel in some of Adam’s favorite places, one of which was Grayton Beach in northwest Florida. As she dispersed the rubble standing in for ashes of her son who wasn’t coming home ever again, Georgia, overcome with grief, couldn’t seem to stop screaming, “Why? Why? Why?”
Five years would elapse before they would get the official confirmation of what they already knew—that Adam had been killed. Some bone fragments were identified as Adam’s through DNA testing.
By then, their marriage of 22 years had ended. Georgia believed Adam’s death played a role. “When you are married and something tragic happens, you need comfort, security, loving arms around you,” she said at the time. “But when you both feel the same, the other person cannot give you that support.”
With the few ashes that were known to be part of Adam, they held another service, this time a private one.
Eighteen years later, in a seating area of the cathedral, they reflected on their faith, and on the friendship they have maintained, even after divorce. They said they never blamed God for Adam’s death, but they did—and do still—wonder why he had to die.
They attended services regularly throughout the doubt, the despair, and the sadness, and they still come here regularly for worship.
Georgia said she “melted into a puddle” every time she set foot in the cathedral. But nonetheless she returned again and again.
“I love the Episcopal Church,” she said. “I can go anywhere in the country and the services are going to be the same. That’s comforting.”
Shelby said that, while he doesn’t think he has personally changed much since the loss of Adam, he has ramped up his volunteering with the church, including serving on the funeral guild.
Both appreciated that fellow parishioners acknowledged their pain and expressed their sympathy, and even people they didn’t know went out of their way to offer condolences. A photography shop that copied a picture of Adam refused to take payment. So did the company that printed the hundreds of thank-you notes they ordered.
Shelby and Georgia say they appreciate that people call them and write them every September 11. “I don’t want people to forget,” Georgia said.
Every Sunday when she arrives to usher at the early service, she lights a candle for Adam—the one at the center of the back row. Adam was a leader and would like that one, she said.
“I get here early,” she said, “so I can pick the one I want.”
