M/V CHRISTIAN
SE Alaska
The Prevalence of Grief
by Sharon Geldaker
As a nurse on board the M/V CHRISTIAN, I am asked what health problems I run into the most, in our travels around the remote island communities of Southeast Alaska. Clinically, I can rattle off a list of maladies that pester most of American society. Many of the adults and elders have hypertension and cholesterol problems. Some have diabetes and other cardiac issues as they grow older. More concerning, however, is that these problems are also becoming the diagnoses of the children. The cheapest foods in the villages are highly processed with salt and sugar for longer shelf life. This has been the sorry gift Western society has bequeathed to its aboriginal people, an increasingly lethal diet.
Most of the Native villages we visit have only one grocery store, most often run by non-villagers. The most basic commodities are very expensive, and the produce even more
so, and not very fresh. There is no market competition or opportunity to get to alternative sources of food, without spending precious funds traveling by ferry or plane.
Stan and I try to provision the M/V CHRISTIAN with fresh vegetables, fruits and meats, so that we always have something to share when folks come aboard. We also bring fresh fruit, bread, fish or coffee along whenever we visit elders. We want to show respect, and to give them the best of whatever we have to offer.
We strive to support all efforts to return to traditional harvesting of the village’s native foods, which has sustained the tribes for several millennia, before our Western diet infiltrated their lives. We have offered the use of the M/V CHRISTIAN’s galley and salon to train the next generation how to put-up food that is gathered or caught in the summer. We have towed a friend’s skiff to hunting grounds, saving him fuel money for at least half of his deer-hunting trip, so he can shoot venison for his family and church.
Even so, these physical problems caused by diet are not the most injurious disease that we encounter. There are maladies of the Spirit which cause much more havoc and which are not so easy to address. I would have to say that by far the most pervasive illness I encounter, is grief. As I become friends with more and more incredible people, I can’t tell you the staggering amount of losses I learn of in their lives. These losses start at infancy, involving early deaths of family members, separation from parents, loss of innocence at what they have had to witness or endure, in families struggling with mental illnesses, substance abuse and addictions, as well as domestic violence and incest. I’m not saying that these issues do not occur elsewhere, in other parts of our country or society. I know they do. I have witnessed some of them in my own family. What does astound me is the sheer number of losses that compounds so many of my friends’ lives. It is no wonder that many self-medicate their pain in unfulfilling and sometimes disastrous, lethal ways.
What is the cure to these losses? What can the crew of the M/V CHRISTIAN offer? I can’t take away their experience anymore than I can bring a loved one back to life. I can’t restore anything to them. The only thing I can do is offer to walk with them down the grief road. I know this road. And I know from experience that God will walk with us, and hold our hands tightly all the way. I can promise them that.
A Native mentor once told me, “It’s all about relationship. Healing starts there. All you have to offer is a relationship that lets them know they are not alone. It’s the greatest thing God offers any of us.”
God is the only one who can piece our hearts back together. Once we can get past pride and the denial that we are wounded, He is more than willing to take the anger and rage of our pain, without retaliation or judgment. He will absorb it and once we reach the point where we can truly feel the deep sadness of our loss, He will cradle our heaving hearts until we can weep no more.
Stan and I try very hard to listen well, and honor the privilege of hearing the grief stories of the adults with whom we visit, or who come aboard. As hurts and stories are shared, the path toward healing becomes a little more clear and we can offer the process up to God in the release of prayer.
During VBS this past summer, our volunteers also spoke to the village kids about broken hearts. The smaller kids spoke openly about difficult things that were happening in their families, telling us who had died and candidly why. The older group later in the week was not so verbal. But we gave them a craft of piecing a heart back together with glue, until each became a work of art, a beautiful mosaic. Last year, volunteer Abby Thomas, gave teenage girls a book called ‘Broken into Beautiful,’ encouraging them that God uses the tragedy and the fractured parts of us to create even more beautiful hearts for service. This year, Bonny Kinnunen, Greg Garavet and Kevin Kaiser from Upper Peninsula of Michigan gave a Bible to each child. We all underlined our favorite verses; the ones which had helped us get through the tough times in our lives.
All we can offer is ourselves. Just as God offered Himself in the body of Jesus Christ. It’s all about relationship. Thank you for your partnership with us so that we can be God’s ears to listen to hurting hearts and hands to hold though the tough days of grief. That is how God can bring about healing for His people.