The Blog That Speaks: Grief’s Face of Fear
It’s Wednesday. He said he’d be home before lunch. Lunch is now over, and he is still absent. Anxiety ensues.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
The doorbell rings. As I approach the door, I see two men clothed in police attire through the window. My heartrate increases. I slowly open the door. I faintly hear, “Hello ma’am. We are from the highway patrol. Are you Pam Engelbert . . . May we come in? Is there anyone else in the house . . . Ma’am, we regret to inform you . . .”
The above scenario is played out only in my mind. My anxiety had obviously swelled as my rational brain (pre-frontal cortex) was incapable of reasoning with my emotional brain to ameliorate my anxiety. With my fear burgeoning, tears had welled up in my eyes. I wondered, “Is this how I would learn of his death?” But then, my phone buzzed and lit up with a text—he had been delayed.
Irrational, you say? Not when it comes to grief.
While we may predominately associate grief with sadness, grief is a multi-faceted experience. If grief’s life story became a movie, it might be called Grief with a Thousand Faces, to borrow from a James Cagney film. One emotion simply cannot capture all that grief is. So, let’s talk about one of those faces: grief showing up as anxiety or fear.
If you have experienced grief manifesting as anxiety or fear, you are not alone.
- A new widower visits his community’s ED because he believes he is having a heart attack. He learns instead that it’s a panic attack.
- A recently widowed woman admits she now refuses to sleep with her back to the door.
- A man, whose father-in-law had just died, becomes unduly vigilant with his own father, sparking a mild rebuke from his dad.
- Another bereaved individual mentions about experiencing anxiety all day without knowing why.
- After a woman’s brother tragically dies, she fears that her husband of over twenty years will soon die, too.
As indicated above, we may find ourselves more cognizant of the threat of death amidst grief. No longer is the prospect of death painted as a dull color in the background of our comings and goings. Instead, it has become a bold hue in the foreground, demanding our attention. Take the incident of my falling while walking outside in the weeks after a family member’s death. It carried a new meaning beyond that of a mere fall. In that moment, I stared into the reality that C also fell, and he died; thus, I could, too. My spouse’s mundane outdoor tasks are now viewed differently. His blowing of leaves is a reminder that C died while completing this pedestrian chore. Death has moved the mundane from being mindless to vigilant.
Amidst grief, death’s superlative strength becomes juxtaposed to humanity’s impotence. I can feel death’s breathing on my neck as I am reluctantly forced to acknowledge my incapability to stop it. With such an awareness, I internally tremble.
Yet, I am not caught off guard by this increase in anxiety in the wake of an unexpected death. This is not my first rodeo of grief manifesting as fear. After my father died (which meant that both of my parents were gone), I unconsciously began to caution my spouse about being careful. We both knew that in the natural order of things that chronologically he was the next in line to die. The two of us had even joked about it: since my mom died eight days after I graduated from my master’s program and my dad died eight days after I graduated from my doctoral studies, my spouse quipped, “No more degrees for you since I’m next!” I cognitively understood, of course, that this was magical thinking. However, I kept on urging my husband to be careful. My verbal watchfulness continued for several months until one day he admonished me: Pam, you need to let me live.
That was a few years ago. And now, there has been another death. A healthy family member. Only two years older than my spouse. Death has made an inevitable reality more palpable: my spouse could die. To be honest, I fear the experience of this loss. I tell myself that many, who have walked this path, have survived; however, this acknowledgement does little to change my feelings. For me, this untraveled path is unwanted. Let’s be blunt: Grief may be an expression of love [see My Connection to Pat Sajak (and it’s not what you might think)], but I prefer to express my love in other ways.
It is disconcerting to come face to face with my limited control.
When death enters my world of influence, granting me a glimpse of my finitude, I reach for power. Sometimes I turn to excessive cleaning (akin to the television show Monk). Sometimes I become hypervigilant by being a helicopter-spouse (for others, it may be a helicopter-parent or helicopter-adult-son or -daughter). Sometimes I hide my fear and/or anxiety behind anger. In this case, anger is subtly deemed the safer emotion, appearing powerful and in control, while fear and/or anxiety is believed to exhibit weakness and vulnerability.
I recently read that many carry much shame around anxiety.[1] I know it is so in my case. As a follower of Jesus Christ, I have felt shame in regard to feeling anxiety. Maybe you identify with this scenario:
I feel anxiety. I admit it to another Christian. The Christian responds by quoting scripture, such as, “Be anxious for nothing.” And wham! I am neck deep in the feeling of shame.
It is as if it is being purported that my brain contains an anxiety-switch that I can turn off by an act of my will, and if I fail to do so, I am to blame. This only generates more anxiety for feeling anxiety! No wonder I feel shame around anxiety—it’s a never-ending spiral!
But perhaps there is another way. What if my anxiety points toward a need? More specifically, my need for safety or security. Of course I am feeling anxiety! In my grief, I have come face to face with the actuality that I am a limited being as are those who are close to me. As Megan Devine writes:
Anxiety is information. It lets you know when you feel unsafe. It lets you know when you’re worried about an outcome. It lets you know when things feel too big or too uncertain to handle. It lets you know you feel overwhelmed. What it doesn’t do is predict reality. Feeling scared about an outcome doesn’t make that outcome more likely. It just makes you feel awful while you wait for more information (italics in original).[2]
She suggests writing a thank you card to our anxiety. Why? If anxiety is a signal of a need rather than an omen of a catastrophe, “you can shift your relationship with it.” She writes that anxiety may be “helping you to know when life feels big and uncertain,” which presents an opportunity for you “to seek shelter and comfort.”[3]
Therefore, rather than trying to squelch it or hide it, I want to acknowledge it. Normalize it. Like apathy [see Dear Grief], it teaches me about my finitude. It is a reminder of realities that I am powerless to change. It conveys that I am not as strong as I think I am. When I try to cover up my weakness, I can damage others and myself. When I embrace my weakness, I become strong.
I am reminded of a similar teaching from the Apostle Paul:
But he [referring to Jesus] said to me, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” So then, I will boast most gladly about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may reside in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, with insults, with troubles, with persecutions and difficulties for the sake of Christ, for whenever I am weak, then I am strong. [2 Cor 12: 9-10]
Let’s consider the cultural context of these verses as they are countercultural both for Paul’s culture and ours. During Paul’s time, the gods were viewed as having the most power. Next in line were persons who had a portion of these superhuman powers.[4] Who were these persons? They were men (this was a patriarchal society) who ruled the empire. Of these men, the emperor was seen as close to divine (if not fully divine) as a human could be. Below him was a hierarchy of governmental officials, who each had been allocated a measure of power and honor according to his rank. The higher social and work status, “the greater the honor they were due and the closer to the divine realm they were believed to be.”[5] Michael Gorman notes that the greater affluence, prestige, accomplishments, education, proper lineage, outward beauty, and persuasive speech one had, the more power and honor one received; thus, the culture centered on competition within a system that was dictated by merit. If one did not have these attributes, or lost them, the result was “shame” and being perceived as “weak.”[6]
In other words, weaknesses are believed to be liabilities. They hinder individuals from being all they can be, whether for themselves or for God. Therefore, similar to today, the message is: these weaknesses need to be overcome. I need to become stronger if I want honor or to be an influencer or have more followers. If we believe we are disqualified because of our weaknesses, we will view our weaknesses as obstacles to be conquered or to be kept hidden.
However, Paul seems to be indicating the opposite. Instead of overcoming or hiding them, he suggests they are an opportunity to appreciate them. This is because God does not perceive our weaknesses in the same way as we do. For God, our weaknesses are an occasion for God’s grace to flow by giving us strength. If we are followers of Christ, weaknesses are an opportunity for us to become more dependent upon God. Weaknesses are an opportune time for God to be strong in us and for us. So, while we may believe that we very limited in our weakness, in reality, we are unlimited when we are dependent on God’s strength.
In other words, it is our weaknesses that highlight our dependence on God, which enables us to see God’s power at work in us.
It’s a paradox: When we think we are strong, we are weak. When we think we are weak, we are strong. Thus, amidst our anxiety inside of grief, we are able to see our limitations, our weakness. We catch a glimpse of our finitude. And of course this is frightening! But it is this recognition that can also strengthen us as we become more dependent on the Infinite One, God. After all, isn’t that the purpose as a disciple of Christ—to rely more on God?
I close with this familiar prayer:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
[1] Megan Devine, How to Carry What Can’t Be Fixed: A Journal for Grief (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2021), 57.
[2] Ibid., 58.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Michael Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), loc. 3153, Kindle.
[5] Ibid., loc. 3165.
[6] Ibid., loc. 3164–8.