Alan D Wolfelt - The Mourners Book of Faith: 30 Days of Enlightenment

ALSO BY ALAN WOLFELT

The Mourners Book of Hope: 30 Days of Inspiration

The Mourners Book of Courage: 30 Days of Encouragement

Healing A Friends Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas for Helping Someone You Love Through Loss

Healing Your Grieving Heart: 100 Practical Ideas

The Journey Through Grief: Reflections on Healing

Living in the Shadow of the Ghosts of Grief: Step Into the Light

Understanding Your Grief: Ten Essential Touchstones for Finding Hope and Healing Your Heart

Companion Press is dedicated to the education and support of both the bereaved and bereavement caregivers. We believe that those who companion the bereaved by walking with them as they journey in grief have a wondrous opportunity: to help others embrace and grow through griefand to lead fuller, more deeply-lived lives themselves because of this important ministry.

For a complete catalog and ordering information, write or call:

Companion Press

The Center for Life and Loss Transition

3735 Broken Bow Road

Fort Collins, Colorado 80526

(970) 226-6050

www.centerforloss.com

2013 by Alan D. Wolfelt, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Companion Press is an imprint of the Center for Loss and Life Transition, 3735 Broken Bow Road, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526. www.centerforloss.com

Artwork by Christoph Kadur, www.istockphoto.com
Cover design and book layout by Angela P. Hollingsworth

Printed in Canada.

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ISBN: 978-1-61722-162-0

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is.Touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are sacred moments and life itself is grace.

~ Frederick Buechner

When someone dies, faith often comes to the forefront. Big questions arise, like, Where did she go? Does her soul live on, and if so, can she hear me or feel me? Will she meet God? Will we meet again? Its natural to wonder about the afterlife. Death also has a way of quickly helping us put our priorities in order. You might be thinking about your own life on a grander scale, too, realizing what really matters to you and how you want to live out your life.

Theres a chance you could also be questioning your faith and finding that your old beliefs no longer apply now that you have experienced the death of someone loved. You may even feel angry with God, or betrayed, and question how God could take him from you. Wrestling with faith is common when someone close to you dies.

Youve heard the idea of blind faith. Actually, thats redundant because all faith is blind: Having faith means believing and trusting in something that has no logical proof or material evidence. Yet believing in only what we can see and experience with our five physical senses is extremely limiting and deadens our hopes and inspirations.

Faith is a bridge that gets you from your now to your future. Right now your bridge might feel like a wobbly wooden pathway swinging over a great chasm, or it might seem as sturdy and transcendent as the Golden Gate, or somewhere in between. Regardless, to walk your bridge you must put one foot in front of the other, trusting with each step that it will support you. I hope this book will supply you with a few useful tools to help you shore up your own bridge of faith.

About This Book

This book is the third in a series of daily meditation books Ive written to give people a quick, regular touchstone to inspire, encourage, and enlighten them as they walk their grief journeys. The first book is The Mourners Book of Hope, the second The Mourners Book of Courage. Ive found through my own experiences with death and loss, as well as through the experiences of hundreds of people Ive companioned through grief, that hope, courage, and faith are essential to doing the hard work that grief and mourning demand.

My wish is that this book will serve as one of many companions you have on your walk with grief. As you read, imagine these words coming from a supportive friend, someone who wants to help you strengthen your faithhowever you define itduring this difficult time. You will find 30 daily meditations along with inspirational quotes to help you explore your faith and define what it means to you as you grieve and mourn the loss of the person who died.

At the start, I gently encourage you to honor all the feelings that come with grief. It can be difficult to sit in your wound and let your emotions wash over you. It seems so much easier to stay busy and ignore them. After all, who wants to hurt? But you will find that as you honor your pain you will be able to move through it and learn to live and love fully once again.

Along the way I suggest that you allow yourself to question your faith and redefine what God means to you, both inside and outside the boundaries of religion. In my experience, those who do not search, do not find. So, if you need to question, allow yourself to question. And remember that mystery, which is the ancient name for God, is something to be pondered, not explained. Its my wish that you can create a working faithone that gives you strength to not only get through the day, but to eventually feel flashes of joy, experience grace, see silver linings, and commune in a way thats meaningful for you with your divine spark.

My Prayer For You

My prayer for you is that as you journey through grief you will tap into the power of your faith or spirituality. Having faith provides a solid base to launch from. You may not know exactly where you will land, but you have faith that you will be OK no matter what. Sometimes, that strength, that knowing, that faith, is the only thing that will keep you going on your darkest days.

I pray that you will be able to tap into the light of faithto allow its warmth to sustain you. Faith and light are intrinsically tied throughout history in religious drawings, scripture, and even in more recent stories of people who have died and returned to life and report seeing a tunnel of light with someone loved or God waiting on the other side. Fill your life with as much light as you can. Feeling light does not deny your grief or dishonor the person who died. Let joy, love, peace, gratitude, and self-care enter your days and keep your feet on your bridge.

My prayer for you, finally, is that you find a way to pray that feels real and meaningful to you. Maybe that will be meditating, communing with nature, talking to the person who died each night, getting down on your knees, attending a traditional service, or a combination of all of these things and more. It doesnt matter what it is, just so that it centers you, soothes your soul, and helps you connect with your faith in yourself and your world.

Blessings to you on your journey. I hope we meet one day.

A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And its the most painful thing youll ever have to do and that youve ever done. But whats yours is yours. Whether its up in the sky or here in your hands.