Learning From Your Loved Ones

Introduction

When someone you love dies, you often hear a lot of stories about them from other grieving friends and/or family members whether at the funeral, on a special day, or on any day when they’re simply reminiscing aloud. Often, you’re also gathering up your own memories about the person too.

As children of God, remembering the people in our lives who have helped us grow into who we are now, shown us His love, or understood us in a deep way is important to our spiritual growth. 

Stories and memories other people tell you about them can help you learn some of the things that God wants you to learn from their lives: both mistakes and their excellent qualities, especially if you didn’t know your loved one for their whole life.

God can use those stories in your life today. I learned a lot about my dad, grandmothers, and other family members from stories. Learning about my dad helped me grow in perseverance and endeavor to grow in patience, listening to other people intentionally, and social skills.

This is true in scripture too. The four Gospels, especially Mark, are collections of disciples’ memories about Jesus passed down to us so that we can learn how God wants us to live, among other purposes. In the Old Testament, God had Joshua and the Israelites place stones in the Jordan River to commemorate the fact that they crossed it that day (Joshua 3-4).

Lessons

Stories teach us all sorts of things about our loved ones:

• their interests

• what made them unique

• how they interacted with their families

• things about their faith

• their mistakes

• their best qualities

  
  

Learning from someone also does not mean you have a responsibility to act exactly like them. God gave them specific gifts, values, and interests to help them fulfill their purpose and He gave you different ones to fulfill yours. I’m not talking about changing your interests to match theirs when I’m talking about learning from loved ones.

Over time, I’ve learned a lot of things from my friends. While I’ve learned to respect their interests (and maybe even delve into some of their interests myself), I’ve been influenced by their characters and overall personalities more than anything else. This kind of influence happens naturally and is why one of the central themes of Proverbs is choosing godly friends.

The two major areas I learn from any family member or friend God has given me the gift of knowing is from their mistakes and from their excellent qualities that shine day-to-day. For example, one of my close friends is a fabulous listener. Everything about the way she listens and responds to others demonstrates her desire to learn from the people around her, sympathize with their concerns and struggles, and be slow to speak. She and I often don’t realize that just by a short conversation, she’s taught me something new about how to listen well.

For someone who has died, you won’t have the opportunity to be present with them until you reunite in Heaven, but you and your families’ past experiences with them were likely so rich that memories and stories will help you continue to learn from them. Thinking about what you loved best about them is really important for learning what a gift they were in your life.

Excellent Qualities

I remember asking my dad toward the end of his life how he managed to learn to control his temper. I had been struggling with it for a long time and worried that he may not have time to teach me before he died.

When his single-sentence answer was so incomprehensible to me that I couldn’t figure out if it was helpful (My mom told me later that the painkillers he was on affected his ability to think clearly.), I felt hurt. I was sure that I’d missed my opportunity to ever grow in calmness. I was annoyed at myself for not learning to be calm while I had my dad to teach me and felt guilty for not spending more time with him, not only to learn from him, but also in general.

It could have been this way for you too, you feel like you started to learn from them but it was taken away, or you just didn’t have much time with them in the first place. God is not going to deprive you of the things He wanted you to learn from your loved one. Memories are His gift to you to understand who your loved one was. He also gave you other people in your life to tell you.

My mom was always very intentional about passing stories about my dad onto me. Her stories about the few times she ever saw my dad get angry and how he handled it helped me work to control mine.

Her stories were also not the only factor. Stories will help you grow in the best attributes your loved one had, but it’s also super important to remember that God will not leave you hanging in any area He wants you to work on. He’s helped you recognize your weakness in an area or He’s worked without you even being consciously aware of it, but either way, He’ll finish what He’s started in you.

In my life, He’s brought a lot of things together, like experiences, web resources, quotes from books, songs, words of advice, stories about people (including my dad) being calm, and (most of all) the power of His Holy Spirit working within me to help me learn to control my temper. Does this mean I don’t ever get angry about something I shouldn’t and take it out on someone in a way I shouldn’t? Absolutely not, but what I am saying is that you do not need to fear that you lost the opportunity to learn from your loved one forever. God will work His Will for you if you let Him, which is to be exactly the person He created you to be. Just like he never gave up on the Israelites in the Old Testament, by giving them chance after chance to repair the Covenant they repeatedly broke with Him, bringing them back to the land after seventy long years of exile, and sending them a Savior that would redeem the entire human race, He will never give up on you.

Mistakes

It’s really hard to learn about something awful your loved one did, whether it was a small mistake or a large one that you hadn’t known the repercussions of until after their death. Not a single one of us is perfect, so inevitably you will learn something disagreeable about your loved one at some point.

It’s important to remember, especially if they were a family member, that the mistake they made does not reflect anything about who you will grow up to be. God can redeem any broken family tree if you are willing to follow His lead and trust in His Will.

Looking at these mistakes and facing what you find will help you remember that they were human too and that like everyone else, they had amazing attributes and things they still needed to work on or sins in their past that God forgave. Like you, they needed grace from God. If you find yourself becoming angry at them, you also need to forgive them. Forgiveness is really really hard, but for someone who has died, it’s important to remember that they probably regretted what they did too. You’ll never know for sure until you get to Heaven why exactly they did it and how they feel about it. Until then, one of the best pieces of advice my mom has ever given me (that I wish I’d listened to a lot sooner) is that bitterness is not good for you to hold onto because holding onto the baggage hurts you more each day, whether you realize it or not.

So, if you find a serious mistake, I’d encourage you to start the process of forgiving them. If the mistake was small, then depending on how you feel about it, maybe it makes for a funny story.

Seeking Out People to Learn These Stories From

Like I’ve said a few times, my family has made it a priority over the years to talk about memories we have with loved ones who have died. We do this for two reasons. First, because we all grieve similar losses. Second, the adults in my life know that it’s vital for me to know more about these loved ones because I don’t want to lose my memories of their personalities along with their physical presence. What they would’ve told me and taught me themselves, either knowingly or unknowingly, my family wants to pass down to me.

Not everyone will recognize that in reopening a wound by talking about the person who died, they actually are letting memories live, allowing the loved one’s personality to continue living in their hearts, and letting God use those tender memories to make an impact on their own lives.

It’s sometimes hard for the other person to talk about the loved one that died. Seeking out someone who knew your loved one as much as or more than you did may be helpful if they do not approach you themselves.

Sometimes one of the biggest roadblocks are their own emotions and worries that you may be uncomfortable with the tears that will come from talking or unresolved anger they carry toward this loved one. Sometimes patience with these emotions is what they need. 

Sometimes, especially in the first few years after my dad died, my aunts would cry when they told stories about him - or we’d share laughs together - or both.

There’s something so healing about sharing memories together because it eliminates your fear of forgetting them with so many people to help you remember, so sharing is helpful for both of you. Usually God will provide someone who is ready to share these memories with you at some point in your life, even if not within the first few months of your loved one’s death.

Conclusion

Not every attribute of your loved one can be analyzed as something to learn to do or learn not to do. God will show you what aspects of your loved one’s personality are ones you should take after and which ones were uniquely their attributes. Remember that you are not meant to take after your loved one in every way.

Like I’ve mentioned several times, God will not leave you hanging. Your loved one definitely had a lot to teach you, but God is the ultimate teacher who will make sure to provide people to teach you each life skill you need to know, will provide His grace and Holy Spirit in each area of your spiritual life you are willing to let Him work in, and will make you into exactly the person He’s always wanted you to be.

Stories are only one way to learn to be more like Christ. I hope this article helps reassure you that God will help you keep all the gifts time with your loved one gave you. I also hope this article has helped you see the benefit of utilizing some of the ones you learn and discover over time to grow in who you are in Christ.