Continuing from a previous post by Joseph L. Bishop PhD: (Peace be Unto Thy Soul II) “. . . she probably would have lived a year or more before she died. To me, a year sounded like a lifetime. What we could have done in that year!
In their wisdom, Carolyn’s oncologists had reasoned that since she had cancer she was going to die anyway so they would give her that second round of strong chemicals and hope for the best. If the body didn’t tolerate that level of treatment, well . . . at least they had tried.
My view was different. I thought that at the very least they should have warned us of the real dangers of the more potent drug, and involved us in the life and death decision. Now it was too late, and at this moment I had to admit that deep down there was some level of anger that had not gone away. But I was still left with the question: how could my anger, which I did not consider to be all that detrimental, be the cause of my grief? Then, I suddenly realized something that had been staring me in the face that I had not been able to see before. My anger did not have to be extraordinarily strong to cause enormous grief. It only had to be strong enough to trigger other toxic thoughts to come forth. That’s all it would take to start an avalanche of negativity—of grief.
We all know that an avalanche can sweep heavy trains off their tracks, crush buildings, uproot trees, and bury and kill people . . . but only when something or someone triggers and unleashes that horrendous power—some small factor like a single, errant skier. That was exactly what I had.
Simply, an avalanche has three basic elements—a heavy mass of snow, a sloped surface, and a trigger. My grief also had three elements—a heavy mass of toxic thoughts (the result of my rehearsing over and over what had happened, causing those negative thoughts to multiply), a sloped surface (my unresolved crisis), and a trigger (my anger). To get the heavy layer of toxic ideas moving, all I needed to do is trigger them with my anger, and the whole slope of toxic thoughts would come sliding down on me. When I triggered that avalanche, I was quickly buried in my own self-imposed grief.
On the other hand, because Carolyn did not allow negative trigger points to enter her life during those trying days, despite the devastating news that came to us both, she had no thoughts to rehearse and no grief to contend with. That’s what protected her. Meanwhile, I was caught up in trying to lean on my own understanding (see Proverbs 3:5). I can now easily see that Carolyn found peace because she refused any damaging thoughts to steal away the precious time she had left. ~Joseph L. Bishop, “Peace be Unto Thy Soul III”, (Covenant Communications, American Fork, 2012) p.8-9
