Grief Counseling

Aging Affairs: Funeral Planning

By |December 22nd, 2023|Aging and Geriatric Issues, Grief Counseling, Individual Counseling|

One of the best gifts you can leave your loved one is a plan for your remains and your funeral. Even a younger adult can benefit from having this plan in place. When the family is grieving the death of a loved one it can be difficult to make decisions about necessary and important tasks. Funeral planning in advance takes a huge burden off of them. Funeral planning and taking care of your body. But your dead will live, Lord; their bodies will rise – let those who dwell in the dust wake up and shout for joy – your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead. – Isaiah 26:19, NIV Whatever your opinion on your soul after death, the body still needs to be cared for. Some choices include: Cremation. Coffins. Urns. Open casket or closed. Your opinion on those things will make a difference in what happens to your body after you die. Being an organ donor should be communicated to your family as well. Knowing what you want to happen to your remains is a big decision that your family will appreciate not needing to make. If you can also decide where your final resting place will be, that also helps. You can have a plot or place your ashes in a columbarium. These things can be purchased years in advance. Once you have the location chosen, that will inform your choices for markers and headstones. While you cannot have everything sorted (after all no one knows when they will die) you can have all the paperwork and funds available for when you do shuffle off your mortal coil. Funeral planning and the service. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is [...]

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How to Cope With Divorce: Finding Support

By |November 21st, 2023|Featured, Grief Counseling, Individual Counseling, Relationship Issues|

It’s never easy changing direction in life or giving up on a dream. When you get divorced, there’s a sense in which your life starts anew, with new possibilities. Divorce is often painful, but that pain can shape you in positive ways and toward a deeper appreciation of God’s love. The unexpected ways divorce affects you. When you enter a marriage, you do so with certain expectations. Some of these are legitimate and get fulfilled, for good or for ill, while others aren’t met at all. With a divorce, the same holds true. You may have expectations of what it’ll be like, and these are shaped by media, the experiences of friends and family, and your imagination. The following may be unexpected ways that divorce affects you: It leaves a void in your life. Whatever your marriage was like, losing your spouse is like losing a limb. You’ll feel their absence in your life, by missing them, feeling free, or a strange mixture of both. It can feel liberating. Not having a spouse can feel liberating because you don’t have to account for your time, money, or movements in the same way as you do when married. It is like death, and it brings grief. Your marriage may have been a hard one, and while you may be relieved to be divorced, it is still a loss. You’re foreclosing on a particular future and dream, and any divorce, even when justified, grieves God because that’s not His intention for us (Matthew 19: 1-12) It can make you feel like you’ve failed, or even that you are a failure. If you’re a disciple of Jesus, and even if you’re not, divorce feels like a failure in the relationship. It can affect you and make you feel like you’re a failure [...]

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Staying Healthy During the Grieving Process

By |August 8th, 2022|Featured, Grief Counseling, Individual Counseling|

God designed our bodies with beauty and intricacy. A delicate balance between flesh and spirit that is held together with His spirit and love. There are times when this balance becomes off kilter. One of them is during the grieving process after the loss of a loved one. Grief affects every part of our being. Our delicate bodies become ravaged with heartache. It is in this heartache that we lose touch with taking care of ourselves. Staying healthy during the grieving process requires us to focus on something other than the pain in our being. The onset of anxiety during the grieving process One of the first things we will experience during the loss of a loved one is anxiety. Even people who do not battle anxiety will face some form of it during this difficult time. The battle with anxiety comes from fear. During the emotional stress of losing a loved one, fear comes in the thoughts of “what will my life be like without this person?” Our flesh has a hard time understanding any reason for someone dying. Death is an event that most people fear. To overcome this fear we have to remember what God’s word tells us about fear, death, and His goodness. I sought the LORD, and He answered me And rescued me from all my fears. – Psalm 34:4, NASB When we turn our focus on Christ and His grace, we can overcome the engulfing manifestation that anxiety brings during heartache. Even though grief is hard we can choose to process it positively. It may not seem like it when we are in the middle of the devastation, but it is doable. It is a matter of renewing our minds just as Paul instructed in Romans 12:2. Unhealthy food choices It’s so easy [...]

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