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This episode, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund sits down with Emily DeAngelo and Russ Brasher to have a conversation about navigating the loss of special events and missed time with family because of the coronavirus and how faith in Christ can help us in all situations.

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Podcast Transcript

Kurt Bjorklund: Hey, welcome to Ask a Pastor. It's great to get a chance to talk about some things that people have asked. This is actually today, not a question anyone has asked, but it's one that I wanted to have us talk about. So, we'll get to that in just a moment. But first, I'm joined by Russ Brasher, who leads our student ministry. He's over in Butler County. And over here we have Emily DeAngelo, who leads our women's ministry along with JoAnn Adams. She's in Washington County, and I'm here in Allegheny County. Actually, we're all in the same room, but we're getting some good distance here. So hey, just before we jump into the topic, tell us what you have been watching during quarantine. You get a little extra time for, you know, sitting around at night because you're home more, so what have you guys been checking out? 

Russ Brasher: Yeah. I'm a huge basketball fan. Huge NBA fan. So, I've been loving "The Bowls" documentary that's been airing on ESPN. Two episodes every Sunday, but it takes me about four days to watch them because I'll watch them for a bit, fall asleep, walk, get interrupted by the kids, or something. But that's been my go-to. I look forward to it. And it's been passing my time at night in a very, very exciting way. So, The Bowls, The Last Dance documentary. 

Kurt Bjorklund: Alright, Emily, what have you seen? 

Emily DeAngelo: So, our family watched the Netflix series, "The Outer Banks," and it's a treasure hunt adventure story recommended for teenagers and up, not for young children. But we watched it because one of the key players or characters in the show is a friend of ours from Kori's college days, Chip Esten.  

Kurt Bjorklund: Okay, that's fun.  

Emily DeAngelo: Very fun. 

Kurt Bjorklund: That's good. We watched the other night "Just Mercy" the movie with Jaime Foxx and Mike Jordan. And that was really good. And I guess it's based on a true story. I don't know how much fabrication is in it, but the account of a lawyer, kind of dealing with people on death row, and trying to help bring justice to people who don't have it. I would recommend that to anybody.  

Kurt Bjorklund: Well, good. Well, hopefully you are enjoying some time with people around you and are getting a chance to watch some things. But one of the sad things that is happening right now is that there have been so many cancellations of things that are significant life events, especially if you have students who are graduating from college, graduating from high school, prom, concerts, trips, things like that, that are really significant life events. And so, we just wanted to take a few minutes to address how do you help people in your life who are having to navigate life events that they can't have the way they envisioned them. I was talking to somebody the other day who had a wedding plan for the first weekend in June. And that wedding now is going to have a party in September they think, and they're going to have a private ceremony that some people can come to via zoom. And it's just so different than what they envisioned. And that's hard for any of us who have or know people who have had life events that have had to kind of go by the wayside. So, we just wanted to see how you would recommend that people really try to navigate that, especially if they have kids who are struggling with such big events. So, Emily, why don't we start with you and then we'll jump over to Russ. 

Emily DeAngelo: So, we felt the effect of this most with our son Joseph, who's a violinist and likes to perform for a live audience. His last concert was marked first in Chicago and we were able to get out to that. And you know, little did we know what all would unfold after that. We're grateful that we got to see that classical music concert. And the bonus of that was Yo-Yo Ma was the guest artist, world-renowned cellist. And so, Joseph has really struggled with the idea that he may not be able to perform for a live audience for quite some time. And at first, he embraced the time and used it to practice his instrument and to create original work. And he did that well in the beginning and that was keeping him encouraged and working every day. And then he got to a point, and I think we have all maybe experienced some peaks and valleys through the last, you know, eight weeks, but he got to a point of just not enjoying that at all, and really feeling down about this possibility of not being able to perform. One of our family events that we had to give up was coming up in June. And it was a performance of Joseph and Abby Jane and Seattle. And they were going to do a sibling collaborative of music and dance on the stage at McCall Hall. And of course, that was cancelled. And we grieved that, honestly as a family. We haven't been together as a family since last January.  

Kurt Bjorklund: You've been looking forward to a for months, and it was going to be a big moment for your family to be together, celebrate their gifts, and their careers really, and that got taken away. So yeah, so how have you helped Joseph deal with it? How have you guys dealt with it just in terms of navigating that emotional space?  

Emily DeAngelo: Part of it is being honest with the grieving process and being okay with being sad for a season. And, you know, dealing with that honestly not dismissing it, because it's a loss. We've experienced some loss in the last eight weeks, everyone has, but also because we're believers, we put our hope in Christ. And so, we want to remember what's most important and so we just keep coming back to the practices of our faith. And that's being grateful and being thankful. So, when we talk to Joe, we let him share the burdens of his heart, and what he's upset about. And we empathize with that, of course, and then we try to get back to what are we thankful for today? You know, we're thankful that we're all still healthy. That's a gift. Truly is a gift. A lot of families are suffering with bad health. And so, for us, as a family, just getting back to what we're grateful for has been grounding in this time, through the disappointments for sure. And also, maybe like setting a date way out on the calendar that you say is a hopeful date or something to strive for. 

Kurt Bjorklund: Let me just follow up on something. So how is saying let's be thankful for what we have now what we've lost, different from when you have little kids maybe saying, hey, be thankful you have green beans teeth, there's kids in the world who don't have anything? So, be thankful and eat your beans. How does that not become an empathy statement, like I'm going to enter into what you're grieving and you're losing, but now I'm saying be grateful that you don't have it as bad as somebody else? 

Russ Brasher: I'm very excited to hear this because we tried that exact same thing with Bennett last night, and he still didn't eat his green beans. So, I'm very excited to hear this. 

Emily DeAngelo: So, my answer to Bennett is just eat your age. He's four? Eat four green beans, and then we'll have dessert and we'll celebrate the dessert. so that would be my parenting advice. 

Russ Brasher: I will try that tomorrow and I'll let you all know. 

Emily DeAngelo: But I think that it's not really about saying that we have it better than somebody else. It's about really sitting with the grief of the loss and being empathetic and feeling that and relating to that. But also, at the same time, the way to get out of that turmoil of soul, I was just studying Psalm 43, is to put our hope in what we do have and what we can celebrate. 

Kurt Bjorklund: There's a turn there and the reason I asked that question is it's absolutely right to say I have to focus on what I can be thankful for. And sometimes to do that, you need a little bit of comparison to bring some reality to your situation. But at the same time comparison can very quickly become cheapening to the depth of grief that you share. Like, if I were to say, well, one of the things that I've grieved is "x", somebody else might say, well, what in the world? You know, somebody might say, well, Joseph is grieving that he doesn't get to play in front of a live audience, what are you talking about? But for him, that's absolutely real. And so, I think if we want to help people through this kind of a time, especially if we have kids or something, we have to enter in. My one son last chance to go on a band trip, another son lost a mission trip. And in the big scope of things, it's not that big of a deal, but to them, it is real to say, I'd been looking forward to that all year, and that's gone away now. And so how do I navigate that space? And so, there is something to saying let's be grateful. But you can't cheapen the loss in the throes of that. 

Emily DeAngelo: I agree. And I think Cory, my husband, is really good with just sitting in conversation and just listening. We were unpacking that word compassion. And you guys could weigh in on this, but it's with suffering, to show compassion to someone as you're sitting with them in the suffering. So just to listen and let him let him rant if he needs to. Right? And to a great, yeah, that stinks, and it's awful. And, you know, let's hope for a better way forward. But you're right, just sit with it and listen to it. And Cory has been better at that than I have been. I tend to be the Pollyanna in the group, and he tends to just be able to listen. 

Kurt Bjorklund: Well, and again, you need a little bit of both. You need a moment to sit but if you just sit without any future looking, then that also gets challenging. Russ, what have you found as you've talked to students, especially who have lost life events? And I'm sure even for you as a parent, even though your life events are different then where Emily's kids are, you still have Little League season, soccer, and things like that that are not happening the way you envision. 

Russ Brasher: Very, very expensive dance classes that the recital is a whole year of practice. And, you know, Monday nights, given that up to now have nothing to literally show for it in a sense, but you know, you guys are starting to hit on it. And you know, my prepared answer was going to be compassion and empathy goes a very, very long way, right now, and you have to enter into that with everyone because everybody is affected differently from this and everyone is putting stock and hope in different things. And so, you have to be prepared for that. And if they immediately sense that their response, and your body language, and your emotion and your oh, that's stupid, or that compared to "z" your "a" is get over it. Those are not words that you can really throw around right now. And I've experienced that the most with students, you know, talking to them. You know, you're talking to asking sixth graders how they're dealing with this, eighth graders, tenth graders, and seniors, obviously seniors, in my opinion, are the most affected, but that doesn't mean that the rest of them aren't. But even just in the seniors, asking them, hey, what has been the most devastating or heartbreaking thing for you? And I've been shocked at some of the answers because they were not at all what majority were saying or what I expected. You know, for some, they honestly could care less about prom and graduation. And, you know, their biggest devastation is that they couldn't play their senior year spring sport. They couldn't go on the mission trip. You know, in a funny kind of way, like for them, none of that mattered. They're still upset that March Madness was canceled, and they're genuinely grieving that. And you almost want to laugh at it, but you have to realize that is where they're at. And who am I to say that that doesn't matter. And you guys know this as parents and dealing with your kids or students now too. Students have a really hard time seeing past today and past tomorrow, and you can't throw the, oh, this won't matter five years from now or this isn't as big a deal as you think it is. Because to them, it is their whole world.  

Kurt Bjorklund: That's a perspective of age that lets you say in a few years, you'll be okay. But when you're 16, 17, 18, you can't see that far. A month when you're that age feels like an eternity, and a month when you're older just goes by like a snap, and there's some differences. How have you navigated your own emotional world, in terms of how you can help somebody else through empathy, and compassion pointing forward, how have you managed it yourself when you felt the loss of some things? 

Emily DeAngelo: I've been doing a lot of journaling, recently, prayer journaling. And I hope to be able to look back on this season of life and be able to see God's work in our lives in the season. By writing it down, we will be able to look back, because you know, you tend to only remember the highs, extreme highs, and extreme lows, but the mundane we forget. So, I'm journaling even the mundane, thanking God for the mundane. That's helpful. And when it's on my mind, then I'm more inclined to share that with others because I've spent some time thinking about what I'm grateful for, I'm more inclined to share. I think the new routines that this slowdown or disruption of our schedules have afforded for us are memorable, I think. Like this morning Cory and Mike after their morning devotions got into this conversation about the stock market. And it went on and on and on because there wasn't this pressure to end, to go to school, and go to work. There was this freedom, this margin. And that's been happening more and more, and I'm thankful for that change in our routine.   

Russ Brasher: Jenette, she does Middle School ministry here at Orchard Hill, she shared this with me and it just kind of helped give me a perspective. This season, this thing that we're going through, this is going to be something that for the rest of our lives will remember. So how do you want to remember it? And that has been kind of how we've tried to look at this. And just personally, I'm very much like, categorize everything, process everything, there's got to be answers, and so I've been trying to categorize what is genuinely lost, like, there's no getting it back. We need to mourn that, and we need to process that. What things are still postponed, what things will still eventually happen even if they can't happen right now, and what are things that I'm realizing that I've put a lot of hope in, and I know a lot of people are in this, that even if I didn't know it at the time, I'm realizing that those things did give me a sense of self-worth, value, and identity that I never fully gave to Christ to be my ultimate. And there were certain things that I justified myself on based on the outcome, or the numbers, and not having those things, and having to really sit down and ask those hard-personal questions. Because if you're not doing that with yourself, how in the world can you step into a conversation? Again, regardless of what person "a" says is their thing, if you're not doing that and asking, you don't have any grounds to stand on, and I think people will see through that. So that's been that time has been helpful for me. And it has been helpful to kind of say, okay, I don't have to fully give up on this. There's still hope for this. I really do need to process and mourn this because there's no getting that back. And that's been helpful again, going back to students and kind of helping them process that, and say, prom's done, that's gone, that's over. If that was a thing for you, sorry. Okay, but what are the things that you can still hope for? Is there still hope for graduation? And that's a scary thing, too, is then you just put all your hope in this future date and what happens if said thing is also now gone, and you're right back to it. So that's kind of scary, but it has been helpful to kind of categorize it, if that makes sense. 

Kurt Bjorklund: Well, what will be interesting, I think moving out of this time, and again, who knows if it's a, you come out and just kind of slowly things return, or if it's you come out and then you're back. And I mean, we just don't know how that's all going to play. But I think there will be a lot of healthy introspection of people saying, what patterns did we have before this that we don't want to go back to? And what rhythms or things did we establish here that were good that we want to keep? And one of my guesses is, especially for families, that they'll say having unhurried time at home, is really significant. And we get so busy running and they're good things, like your daughter's age leads to your daughter being able to dance for a living, and so it's not like you want to say oh, we don't want to do any of these things. But there's such a turn, and I know even just for me being home night after night, after night, saying, what do we want to do tonight? We're all here, and we're together. That's not our normal pace. And that is a good thing to say, how do you create more of those nights as a family? And I think those will be really healthy things coming out of this for a lot of people, if they can, can get to where they say, okay, I'm grieving what was lost enough that now I can evaluate the good and the bad because sometimes you just get sad. And then you stop any thinking or processing in the midst of it. And I think it's significant to say how do we process not just feel? In other words, you have to feel in order to process, but if you just stay with feeling, then you don't say how do I want things to be different moving forward. 

Emily DeAngelo: We had a conversation yesterday about starting over. My son said something about how he was included in two different zoom calls with his classmates that he hadn't seen in eight weeks. These teachers are taking initiative and trying to get class classes together. And he said, you know, I haven't seen these guys in eight weeks, and I don't really feel like I know them anymore. And if it's going to be until September, until I'm back with them, it's going to be kind of like starting all over, like moving here for the first time again. And I thought that was really insightful, and I think we have to help our kids navigate that. Friendship from afar and keeping those friendships going however, we can do that. But also realizing that there will be a lot of new beginnings.  

Kurt Bjorklund: Well, here's one last question. And this is one that I'm wrestling with. I think, in my family, at least my kids have kind of resigned themselves to what this is. Where they're struggling now is what if fall doesn't look like what fall should look like? What if there's no college? What if there's no school? What if there's no band? What if there's no sports? What if? What if? And all of a sudden, that's where I think they're finding themselves saying, I can manage this, but that, I don't want any part of. And so, it's almost the fear of what if we're in the same situation, any words of wisdom for that? 

Russ Brasher: I think transparency and honesty, and just being real. I'm only one step ahead of my kids, leading them through all this, and figuring this out. And they need to know that dad is struggling with this too. That Russ, the youth pastor is struggling with this. This is something that we have to go through together. I don't have all the answers yet, but to what you said, I do know that in Jesus is our hope, is our answers, and is what we fixed our eyes on. It's when we don't know, and no matter what this world throws at us, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. No matter what we've said, our joy is found here, and we have to know that true joy is found in Him, even if we don't have "a", "b", or "c". And so, I think just being real, but also still trying to be that rock of the family or of the group. It's hard because for me to say that I don't have those same questions, doubts, and worries, from something as stupid as if there is no NFL to what happens if we really can't do church until you know a set date, or what happens if we really can't get the family reunion that we've all been looking forward to that's been canceled three times now? So, I think transparency is going to be huge and just being vulnerable. 

Emily DeAngelo: And finding creative ways to celebrate life's moments. And we've all seen the drive-by birthday party parades. We've seen zoom calls to celebrate someone's anniversary or birthday. We've seen people make a special cake for an individual in a home that was not for a party but truly to celebrate. I think we are meant to celebrate. St. Augustine said that the Christian should be hallelujah from head to toe, right? We get to celebrate. We have something to celebrate. And I think we have to be mindful as the leaders of our homes in celebrating through this season to get us through the season. 

Kurt Bjorklund: That's well put. Well, thank you. Thank you for your insights and thank you for spending part of your day with us here at Ask a Pastor. If you have questions you can send them to askapastor@orchardhillchurch.com, and we'll be happy to address those in coming episodes. Have a great day.