Beginning this Grieving Journey

Beginning this Grieving Journey

SUMMARY

I have begun an intense season of grieving.

I am enrolling those who will pray for me during the coming weeks.

You are invited to pray over this message and those messages that are to come later.

Please pray often for me during the coming weeks. I will be going deep into the uncertain processes of grieving.

Already many painful memories have been stirred up. With those memories came a tangled mess of feelings. I believe it is essential that I process these matters. Otherwise, if I keep stuffing and denying them then they will keep blocking me at a subconscious level.

I expect that this healing will decrease the episodes of depression and despair that I have had for decades. This will minimize my patterns of perfectionism and procrastination that are linked to my workaholism and work avoidance. All of this is rooted in my unresolved issues related to my dad.

Monday night, September 17, I attended Griefshare https://www.griefshare.org/ for the first time. It is a Christian support group for those experiencing grief.

There are 13 units that include watching a video, discussing with others present and working in a workbook between meetings.

My dad died April 15 of this year. I wanted to attend back then but they were on break for the summer.

That Monday was session 2 and there were 3 others present plus the leader. The Christian grief workbook with continue for 11 more weeks.

Hearing others and sharing in what safe setting is very healing for me.

The workbook has short daily exercises. These have been used by many thousands of Christians for decades. There are key Bible verses that I had never noticed yet suit this phase of my internal healing. There are short recommended prayers in the workbook that I have marked up. I need to go back to pray slowly and repeatedly

During the coming weeks, I request your best prayers. I may make a few specific prayer requests. Otherwise, I ask that you pray earnestly as the Holy Spirit prompts you.

The person that gave me a ride last week has gone on vacation for a long while. I did not have a ride on Monday, September 24. Please pray for God to provide transportation for the coming weeks.

Pray for me to not only attend the meetings but also consistently do the exercises in the workbook. Those have already stirred up all sort of memories, feelings, and thoughts.

I understand that ultimately I need to let go and let God. I need to forgive my dad for his sins of commission and omission. I need to accept him for who he was. I know intellectually that he did the best he could. He was shaped by his dad that was stoic as well as his peers and his society. He was a mere mortal like me that could not love perfectly.

The more I observe parents the more I recognize that is an impossibly difficult job.

I know that most people want the summary. Yet a few want the details. So I have posted the details on a blog that I will update as needed.

For those that especially feel prompted to pray for me, I ask you to use the following link to understand the details. Then you will be able to better understand my internal struggles and can better target your prayers.


DETAILS

The following is raw in places.

I believe that I must be as transparent and vulnerable as possible.

As the darkness in my soul is exposed to the light of confession and the prayers of others then there will be lasting transformations.

God has begun a deep healing process. I do not know what the future holds. But I know it will be for the glory of God and for my good.

The bottom line is that I had a horrible relationship with my dad. I will share a simple summary of that later. Those internal wounds impacted my attitudes, outlooks, expectations, fears, and more. This has been expressed in how I relate to career, success, money, authority, pastors, masculinity, work, and more.

Over the decades I needed to attend secular 12 step programs like Adult Children of Alcoholics, Al-Anon, Codependents Anonymous, Debtors Anonymous, and Workaholics Anonymous. I attended the Christian version of recovery called Celebrate Recovery https://www.celebraterecovery.com/ Twice I worked the 4 workbooks over the course of a year.

Currently, I join a conference call at 10 AM of a few men that are working the steps of Workaholics Anonymous. It is very therapeutic to hear other men sharing openly and honestly about how they are gradually getting the victory over their work-related issues. It is a safe place for me to admit my struggles.

What has worked well for me over these decades has been journaling.

I have needed to use 12 step recovery programs to peel back the layers of the onion in my soul. I have done 7 fourth step moral inventories of myself. Those fourth step guidelines include digging into the resentments, fears, and hurts. Much of what I have journaled about both in secular 12 step programs as well as the Christian Celebrate Recovery program has related directly or indirectly to my relationship with my dad. I have easily written 200 to 300 pages about him.


SYMPTOMS

On September 25, 2018,  I woke up many times due to violent or bazaar incident in my dreams. That has never happened in my life. I think it is a sign that God is doing a super deep work in my soul. 

There have been moments when I needed to just stop while walking through my apartment and just put my hand on the wall and close my eyes for some seconds. This was due to a wave of odd feelings.

Generally, I have lost most of my motivation to work on projects related to preparing for online ministry. That is what I had been doing mostly for years. It is weird for me to not feel driven. 

In many ways, it feels like everything has slowed down. There are times that it seems like I am walking through molasses up to my waist.

I have become far more aware of the colors in nature. The trees are not just green. There are dozens of slight variations of green in the many trees I see during my morning and evening walk. Likewise during this slowed down mode I see the various greens in the lawn. I see the various shades of gray in the clouds. This is wonderful. It makes my exercise more enjoyable. I can find value in ordinary life instead of striving to maybe someday feel happy when I complete a huge project. 

I have become more alert to the ongoing thoughts that are generated in my mind.

I notice all kinds of sensations in my body that come and go quickly. Previously I had treated my body as a transportation vehicle for my head.

The Lord has led me to buy and use massage tools like a cordless vibrator, trigger point device, and other ways to relieve stress that I had been carrying in my neck and shoulders. 

When I have been exploring Youtube then God has been guiding me to timely messages.

The frequent sensations of depression that had come and gone for years have been absent.

During many afternoons I take a brief nap. Yet sometimes the nap becomes very long. As a retired man that does not have a job then I am free to sleep as I need to and I think uses those times of sleep to heal me emotionally.

Since my dad past 5 months ago, I have gained about 20 pounds. Only one pair of pants fit when I go out in public. Mostly I wear sweatpants and basketball shorts when at home. I went to buy more pants but I could not bring myself to try on the 36-inch waist. I had been 32 to 34 all my life. I have prayed many times to God asking Him to guide me in gracious weight loss when this grief process is over. 

Mostly when I journaled before my entries were filled with feelings about frustration and aggravation. I felt stuck and wanted to make much more progress in my online ministry. These days I feel resigned and detached. I just want to pay close attention to how the Lord Jesus Christ is leading me one moment at a time.


BACKGROUND

I was the first born. My brother, Jim, is 3 years younger.

Both of my parents were only children. I felt huge pressure to become a super success to make both my parents and all 4 grandparents proud of me.

It is normal for a parent to want their child to do better than them. Note that this was the 1950s and rapid material prosperity right after WWII was happening all around.

Yet the message I internalized that I must super succeded. I needed to achieve something like the Nobel Prize or another world class award. I felt that I was expected to meet the ultimate standard that had been put before me. It was like I needed to not just get the gold medal at the Olympics for pole vaulting but I need to also set the world record.

When I graduated from high school in 1971 my plan was to get an engineering degree and an MBA like my dad. But unlike my dad, I planned to go into business. I wanted to get rich quickly and retire early.

It seemed to me that my dad had sold his soul to the corporate bureaucracy. Yet it seemed that my grandfather that had been a business owner was far more content.

The company that my dad worked for grew rapidly during the time he was there. It went from a regional company to an international powerhouse. He traveled often both nationally and internationally.

My dad had worked very long hours and brought home a briefcase full of work that he worked on into the night. When he was home and spent some time with me he often seemed exhausted.

During my teen years, I recall that during vitally important conversations when I was attempting to sort things out about becoming an adult and he was looking straight at me during our dialogue. Suddenly he closed his eyes and fell asleep while sitting up and facing in my direction.

The way that his employer positioned itself against the competition was to offer the highest quality products in the industry. That meant there was a corporate culture of perfectionism. During college, I worked there one summer. No matter how well I or my coworkers did it was never good enough. 

He brought home that set of impossible standards. Yet the family was made of fallible humans and not flawless robots. So when I spilled the milk at the dinner table there were times he literally stood up and shouted at me in a rage.

There is a super deep hurt related to one or more incidents like that. I request your best prayers for the complete healing of this and related matters. 

As I reflect on my history with my dad then I notice that my tendencies to perfectionism and workaholism are traced back to my dad. 

Like any boy, I wanted to please my father. Yet it did not seem like that ever happened. I recall as a new Christian in my late 20s needing to transfer my desire to please my earthly father to a desire to please my heavenly father.

Due to the corporate culture and his ways to cope with the pressures of his career he drank heavily. As he rose through the ranks of the company he was expected to entertain more clients and associates. He invited various men over for drinks at our house before taking them out for dinner. And he would entertain once or twice a month on weekends. So the company subsidized his liquor cabinet that had half gallons of various kinds of booze. Plus on some weekends he would dring lots of beers.

I have painful memories of the many times that my parents started to argue at the dinner table. As the conversation got worse I went to the back room with my brother Jim to watch TV. They remained in the front rooms shouting at each other.

I do not think my father hit my mother.

When I went to Georgia Tech in 1971, I had much trouble with calculus. I had made good grades in high school. But I flunked calculus and then repeated it unto barely passing at several times. That destroyed my GPA.

Each time I came home I asked dad to let me change my major to Management or change schools. I wanted to go to Texas A & M because I heard they were more practical and less bookish. He was paying most of my bills and he refused. We had heated arguments. Then in my junior year, I returned to Atlanta but did not register for classes.

I felt that my dad never took the time and energy to gradually get to know who I was as a unique person. He did not know my strengths and weaknesses. He did not begin to understand my hopes and fears. He often said that what he wanted for me was to be happy. Yet the only path to happiness he could imagine or support was to become just like him and follow in his footsteps.

MARRIAGE
When I was in my 20s and 30s he was mildly pressuring me to get married. That is typical of any father who wants grandchildren.

My dad had a miserable marriage with my mother. They divorced when I was in college. He remarried shortly after that. He seems to be very happy in his second marriage.

I was engaged to be married 3 times yet never married. I recall that during the second engagement I managed to get my dad to go on a long walk with me in a park. That never happened before or since. I brought him there to get wisdom about marriage. He had a bad and good marriage. I asked him directly and indirectly but he had nothing to say to me at that critical moment in my life. I was super disappointed.

Each time that I was engaged I told my fiance that I never want to have children. I was terrified that I would wound a child for life.

PHONE
Most of the adults I know see their parents during the holidays and other times during the year if they have kids to go visit grandparents.

After I left college I went home for the holidays a few times. I rarely saw my dad otherwise even when I was in Houston and he was too. I moved to Dallas in 1985. I saw him about twice after that until he died 33 years later in 2018.

So most of our relationship was on the phone.

Both of the parents of my dad were born in Canada. So when my dad went into WWII he could not serve overseas. He got training as a meteorologist. He served on the military bases to prepare weather reprots for the pilots. That was significant because when I called my dad there was very little that we could talk about. Yet I often got a detailed report about the recent weather in his area and I could report about the weather in my area.

These phone calls were about 10 to 15 minutes in length and happened about every 6 to 8 weeks unless it was a holiday.

When I began into 12 step recovery work I had successfully stuffed all my feelings for many years. As I went back into these memories then there was a flood of emotions. During that time I journaled much and prayed earnestly. I met with pastors. Over the years they referred me to counselors and therapists.

On several occasions I attempted to bring up the matters I wrote about here with my dad either directly or indirectly. Over and over he said he did not remember anything like that. I wondered if I had made that up in my imagination. By contrast, I had been talking with my brother more often and longer. I asked him and he verified that it did happen. He told me how he learned to keep a low profile and use humor to avoid the rage of our dad.

There were seasons of many months when I could not stand to talk with him on the phone so I did not call and he did not call me.

I told God many times that if the Bible did not say honor your father then I would not have restarted and continued those calls.

NAME

It got to where I legally changed my name. I wanted to omit the junior at the end of my name. My birth certificate says John Phin Oliver junior. My legal name now is John Sower Oliver. I took Sower from the parable of the sower in Luke 8. I believe God has called me to be a writer and publisher for the kingdom of God. So the essence of my work is to bountifully sow good seeds into good soils. The name Phin was the maiden name of the mother of my dad. He was not happy when I told him what I had done.

The video and workbook of Greifsahre say how grief can impact the health and behaviors of a person. I said that I have suddenly gained weight. Note that I weighed the same from high school until the 3 years in the homeless shelter when I gained about 10 pounds. I have gained about 20 more pounds since my dad passed. It is all in my belly. I have never been this big. When I shower I see myself in the mirror. It seems odd to me. I then pray many times for God to gracefully guide me on how to lose this weight someday. I am not in a rush.

Generally, I put my stress in my neck and shoulders. During this season of grief, I have been experiencing waves of relief in those areas.

Another symptom of my grief is that I have been sleeping much more than before. Sometimes I wake up but do not want to get up so I go back to sleep. Unlike most people I know, I am retired and do not have a job. I do not have a spouse or children to care for. So except for a few commitments each week I can sleep many hours. When I first moved to Ennis I slept a moderate amount and took short naps as needed. Note that several others in this support group shared that they sleep far more than before the loss of a relative.

The 3 others in attendance were women and spoke of how much they cried. I said I wished I could cry. Rarely tears have almost spilled out of my eyes recently. I said this is normal for me. It takes a very sad movie to get me to cry just a little. I would appreciate prayers so that I might cry during the coming weeks as this grieving process continues.

What I was able to start to feel was an internal swell of all kinds of emotions. It was like a volcano about to erupt. It is a steaming hot mix of anger, resentments, rage, bitterness, and more. I have stuffed, ignored, denied, and hid from such feelings about my dad for many years. There was 1 time decades about this came out in a group setting and it was very healing. I do not want to frighten the other members or the leader that is a professional counselor. But I know that God can make a way for this to be discharged in the right ways and at the right times.

CONCLUSION

It is said that the way a person perceives their father strongly influences how they perceive God. So I have had to work through my perceptions that God mostly neglects me. He some sometimes see and hear me but does not

PRAYERS

Here are my ongoing prayer requests for the rest of my life that you might pray for others and yourself.

Think clearly

Choose wisely

Be grateful.

Now in terms of prayers for this season of grieving, here are my 3 prayer requests.

May God guide me to the ways of transportation for those Monday evening meetings from 630 to 800.

May God grant me courage and strength to dig in and do this grief work wholeheartedly one day at a time.

May I effectively manage my time and energy so that I will complete the workbook exercises in a timely way as well as go deep and wide into the journaling based on what the Lord Jesus Christ brings up for me to heal in the coming weeks. Plus may that intense work be also balanced along the ways with suitable intervals of rest, fun, and social life.