Peace in the Valley: Tools for Coping
Previously, in “The Three T’s of Grief Survival,” we examined three key elements about loss that are helpful to understand as we walk that valley: that grief takes time, tears, and truth. Today, let’s examine tools that can help us cope with grief—and with other difficult journeys.
Journaling
At our recent Mississippi Women for Agriculture Conference session on self-care, Kim Kavalsky asked us to share what we found helpful in maintaining balance and focus in our lives. Journaling was one response I can fully endorse. I discovered the power of writing down hopes, dreams, and struggles around age twelve. The act of verbally and physically ordering my thoughts—and seeing them spread out before my eyes—helped me process them so much better. Journaling has proven to be a tool I’ve used off and on for most of my life.
My journaling took on new life in October of 2005. Six months later, it became a lifeline. At that time, I had three ongoing journals.
Prayer Journal
My prayer journal included my petitions to God. Every problem, every struggle, every fear, every regret—I recorded them there. And time after time, I was able to jot “TYL” in the margins as God took care of each item on my list. TYL: Thank You, Lord. For caring about me. For providing for us. For answering my feeble prayers.
It’s good to review your prayer journal regularly to see how often, how quickly, and in what surprising ways God answers prayer.
One thing I like to include is quoting scripture back to the Lord—not to inform him, but to remind myself of his words. “Lord, you say : If I need wisdom, I can ask you, and you will give it liberally and without upbraiding… that if I train up my child in the way he should go, when he is old, he will not depart from it… that if I am poor in spirit, mournful, meek, I shall be blessed.”
When God—who does not change, who cannot lie— speaks, his words are better than money in the bank. They are sure and steadfast. I cling to those promises, and I love those “shalls” in his Word.
Let me explain why I believe using a prayer journal regularly can help us avoid two pitfalls:
First, we all too often use prayer as a last resort. We treat prayer like a spare tire. We drive happily down the Road of Life. All is well—no problems, not a care in the world. We’re not even considering the condition of that spare in the trunk. Then, without warning, we run over a sharp object and have a flat. All of a sudden, we desperately hope the spare tire is aired up. Our prayers instantly become urgent. If we’re in the habit of making daily entries in our Prayer Journal, we won’t be guilty of treating the gift of prayer like a spare.
Second, we fall into the habit of saying, “Well, all we can do is pray,” in a half-hearted, apologetic way. But prayer is NOT a small or weak or haphazard effort. When we pray, we are approaching the Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent Creator of the Universe. He sees everything, knows everything, and has the power to bring his will to pass. We are invited to “come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). We have an All-Access Pass to the One “who is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).
THAT’S the power we are tapping into when we pray.
Recording our concerns in a Prayer Journal helps us see how the Lord responds personally to us. When we consistently use our Prayer Journal, we are “gathering stones”—reminders that the Lord values us and keeps his promises.
Need another incentive? Consider Job 42:10:
“And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.” Do you want to increase the likelihood your captivity will be turned? Pray for your friends. What could it hurt?
The Book of Letters
Cliff often told me that one of the best things about being married was that you always had somebody to talk to. And we did talk—a lot. He was a legendary storyteller and a great listener, with the ability to reduce life’s problems to the least common denominator. I missed talking to him so much that I began a new journal. There I shared the things I would have been telling him daily—my hopes, fears, struggles, and the decisions I needed to make.
How 4:45 p.m. was the hardest time of the day. How I dreaded leaving home because it meant returning to a house where he was no longer
waiting. How I fought sleep, because when you wake up, you must face that reality all over again.
I promised myself that for every sad or painful memory I wrote, I would add two good ones. One particularly healing entry was “100 Things I Miss About You.” As I filled several volumes, I found this effort to be very therapeutic.
When I decided to include The Book of Letters in this post, I wondered if others had done something similar. And because I have a PhD in Googleology, I can report that Grief Journals are indeed powerful tools for emotional healing, self-awareness, reducing isolation, and enhancing coping mechanisms. One common suggestion is writing letters to your lost loved ones. While you’re not actually communicating with them, you are actively processing your grief and other emotions as you transition into a new and difficult season of life.
Gratitude and Grace
It is an excellent mental habit to cultivate an “attitude of gratitude,” which I guarantee will push negative thoughts out of your life. I encourage you to investigate neuroplasticity—how focusing on positive thoughts can literally reshape your brain by:
*Strengthening the neural pathways that build positive thoughts
*Weakening the ones that support negative thoughts
*Boosting resilience
*Boosting immune response
*Broadening perspective
*Enhancing creativity
*And reducing stress and anxiety.
Sounds like positive thinking is good for what ails you!
Beyond scientific evidence and case studies, check out what the Bible says. In Psalm 51:10, David prays:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
Furthermore, God gives us the ultimate neuroplasticity assignment in Philippians 4:8:
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true… just… pure… lovely… of good report… any virtue… any praise… think on these things.”
If you need more confirmation, look at 2 Corinthians 10:5: “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
In 1976, Clifford Allen went to Gunter, Texas, to take a job with N.B. Hunt Ranches. He was overjoyed to be an honest-to-goodness cowboy. The other cowboys wasted no time giving the new hand a little good-natured hazing, to find out what this Mississippi boy was made of. (In the cowboy world, hazing simply means approaching a cow from a specific angle to drive her in the desired direction. There’s an art to it. Once my teenagers learned how it worked one year at Beef Camp, they started “herding” people in WalMart for fun.)
The Texas cowboys soon discovered Cliff was good-natured and could take it—and give it back—in the same spirit. He told them as much, saying, “Boys, I don’t care if you snicker a little when I mess up, but do me one favor: when you see me doing something wrong, correct me. Show me how to do it the right way.”
One spoke up and volunteered. “I notice when you dally, your thumb is down. When that steer hits the end of the rope, it’s going to catch your thumb and cut it clean off. Hold your thumb up out of the way when you jerk your slack.”
Cliff took those words to heart. He spent hours of his free time roping the dummy, paying attention to his thumb. To break the habit, he’d deliberately stop, turn his thumb up, and then pull the slack. Over and over—until the right technique became his automatic response.
I have a confession to make. I was very subject to let thoughts that had no real basis in truth spiral downward into an abyss of negativity. But by pairing Cliff’s roping experience with the principle in 2 Corinthians and the list in Philippians 4:8, I learned to stop—and to “turn my thumb up,” —by refusing to let myself dwell on something I didn’t know to be true, thereby taking my thoughts captive. This may be harder to do ‘on the hoof’, but reviewing your journal can help you recognize and correct those patterns.
Many people list three to five items nightly in a Gratitude Journal. When you’re in the valley, list as many as you can—the more, the better. In the early days of grief, when I began to feel overwhelmed, I’d grab a notebook, envelope, or any available scrap of paper and start listing every reason I could think of to be thankful, to be hopeful, to be encouraged. A designated journal can keep those thoughts together.
Even in loss, we can be thankful:
· That our loved ones are not suffering anymore, and never will again
· That we will see them again—and they will be perfectly whole
· That God sends loving and supportive people into our lives, many of whom have walked this path, and are in the Valley with us
· That we hold God’s promises in black and white (and red) in our very hands
· That the Creator of the Universe cares so much about us he puts our tears in a bottle and hears our prayers
While experiencing other situations that bring us into the Valley —sickness, uncertainty, disappointment, rejection, setbacks—we can be thankful for:
· Hope that things can get better
· Faith that carries us
· The people who love us
· Little bits of encouragement
· Joy in simple things
· The opportunity and invitation to cast our cares on the Lord
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: We tend to find what we’re looking for.
If you seek things to complain about, you’ll find them—more and more. But if you search for truth, goodness, and grace, you’ll cultivate that attitude of gratitude that I promise will increase your peace—in the Valley and on the mountaintop.