Key points:
- A pastor at Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, Hannah Buchanan writes about grief and serving in a community that has been “shaken to its core” by deadly flooding.
- Eight-year-old Hadley Hanna, who died in the flood, is part of the church’s family. Her parents were married 12 years ago in Highland Park’s sanctuary, the same space where Hadley’s memorial service will be held on July 11.
- “For me, to grieve as a Christian is to grieve with hope. I believe I am not alone in my outrage and sadness. God feels it, too,” Buchanan writes.
Photo courtesy of the author.
Commentaries
The Lakewood Parade in East Dallas had barely finished when murmurs of the missing girls from Camp Mystic passed between moms at our Fourth of July party. We had all just fetched our third graders from their “Wizard of Oz” parade float, with thoughts largely centered on what’s for lunch, and where we’d watch fireworks later.
Murmurs quickly became headlines, video footage and then names. These were names of girls and families we knew. The festivities continued, but the party was over.
I serve as a pastor in a community that has been shaken to its core by this crisis. Many of our grandmothers, mothers and daughters mark the onset of summer by driving through the green gates of Camp Mystic. The Hill Country is familiar territory for us, along with the river that swallowed more than 100 people last weekend, at least seven of whom were little girls from our neighborhoods.
Sunday morning, we came to church hungrier for God than usual. Or at least hungry for comfort, for guidance and for some reassurance that things will be OK. Could God give that to us, in a moment like this?
Huddled together in the dim lights, we sang songs about God’s faithfulness, how God is our solid rock and how it is well with our (very sad) souls. I prayed from the platform as honestly as I knew how. Then my friend and colleague, the Rev. Matt Tuggle, delivered a deeply moving message, borne from his own grief as a father and a pastor.
Matt and his wife, Amy, have a third-grade daughter, one of whose best friends did not survive the flood. Matt went home Sunday to deliver the news to his kids.
Eight-year-old Hadley Hanna, who also died in the flood, is part of our church family. Matt married her parents 12 years ago in our sanctuary, the same space where Hadley’s memorial service will be held on Friday. This is personal for Matt, as it is for so many in our city.
By 12:15 p.m., when church was over, I was oversaturated with emotion. My mascara had run down my cheeks, and my blouse was marked by the tears of others I’d held at the prayer railing. So, like the driver of a ’90s limousine, I raised the partition between me and the unwelcome passengers in my backseat: sadness, anger, fear. I had to put up the wall.
For those of us who are not at the epicenter of this trauma, how do we manage our feelings? Is it selfish to compartmentalize? To set aside our text threads and news feeds so we can function for the afternoon?
Michelle Gielan, happiness researcher and author of “Broadcasting Happiness,” once offered me a strategy for consuming bad news you can’t do anything about. “Read it, pray about it, then take one small step to heal something broken in your circle of influence. Remind your brain that your behavior matters. This will counteract the paralysis of sadness and overwhelm.”
I took her advice to a group of young moms grappling with this tragedy, many holding their fresh-faced newborns. “If there is nothing you can do to directly ease the suffering of those affected, fix your eyes on what you can do: turn off the news and be present to your babies.”
But some of us are so close to the epicenter of trauma that compartmentalization is not an option. What do we do then?
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I was 20 when my father died by suicide. I climbed under the covers of my parents’ bed. A family friend, a psychologist, stepped into the darkness of the room and sat beside me.
“How do I do this?” I asked him. “What’s the proper way to grieve?”
I wanted a manual for grief. He had none to give me.
“There’s no right way to do this. Other than to feel your sadness,” he said with compassion, because sad is an awfully heavy thing to feel.
For me, my sadness simmered, then boiled into rage I could only access in my dreams. It receded into lethargy, as I walked around unable to accomplish much or remember things that happened yesterday. Sadness rattled me, forcing me to ask God, “Where are you? How could you let this happen?” I wasn’t sure I could even stay engaged with God at all.
I’m not the first to ask these questions. John’s Gospel records the words of two women who asked Jesus the very same thing: Mary and Martha, whose brother Lazarus was in bad condition.
They sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick,” meaning, “Come on, do something!” He didn’t, and Lazarus died.
When Jesus made it to their small town, Martha, the sister known for her get-it-done spirit, rushed him on the road and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Moments later, Mary fell at his feet sobbing, and also said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Can’t you hear in their cries, the questions we too wish God would answer? “Why didn’t you do something? How could you let this happen?”
Jesus was “deeply moved in spirit,” a Greek word that translates to something like, “groaned.” Have you ever heard the sound out of someone’s mouth when they learn someone they love has died? Jesus made a sound like that, and then he wept.
He didn’t provide answers. What answer could be given to ease the ache of their suffering? Instead, he ached with them. Later, he would call Lazarus out of the grave. It was a glimpse of what Jesus himself would go on to do — rise from the dead. But in the meantime, he shed his own tears.
For me, to grieve as a Christian is to grieve with hope. I believe I am not alone in my outrage and sadness. God feels it, too. And on my good days, I believe Jesus rose from the dead and promised we will, too. Death isn’t the backstop; there’s life beyond it. And if that’s true, the girls who died at Camp Mystic have already had their tears wiped away. It’s the rest of us who are still crying.
Buchanan is a pastor at Highland Park United Methodist Church. This commentary was first published in The Dallas Morning News.
News media contact: Julie Dwyer at newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
