တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံက့ၤတၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအဂ့ၢ် ~ Reflections on Grief

၃ နွံတနွံ

တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံက့ၤတၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအဂ့ၢ်

ရိမ့ၤ ၁၂:၁၅ – ‘‘ပှၤလၢအသးခုတဖၣ်န့ၣ်, သးခုဃုာ်ဒီးအီၤတက့ၢ်, ဒီးပှၤလၢအဟီၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဟီၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီးအီၤတက့ၢ်.’’                                                            

ပဝဲအါဂၤပကကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်ဘၣ် တၢ်လီၤမၢ်ဒီးတၢ်ဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ထဲဒၣ်ယွၤသ့ၣ်ညါ ယဆိကမိၣ်ပှဲၤဘျီ ဘၣ်ဃးဒီး ယဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိလၢယအဲၣ်အီၤအတၢ်လီၤမၢ်တဖၣ် လၢအမၤသူၣ်အုးသးအုးယၤ, မၤသ့ၣ်ဖးမၤလီၤကလဲကွံာ်ယသးန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူအပူၤတၢ်လၢကဒုးကတဲာ်ကတီၤပှၤဒ်သိးပကကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်တၢ်သံတၢ်ပှၢ်လၢပှၤလၢပအဲၣ်အီၤန့ၣ်တအိၣ်ဘၣ်. လီၤဆီဒၣ်တၢ်, တၢ်ဘၣ်သံလၢတၢ်လၢပတမုၢ်လၢ်ပာ်အီၤအပူၤလီၤ. ဖဲယသးစၢ်အခါဟံၣ်ဖိဃီဖိတဖၣ် အိၣ်လၢတၢ်ဒုးတၢ်ယၤ အကဝီၤပူၤလီၤ. ဖဲချံဟဲအိၣ်ကတီၢ်လၢချၢၣ်ခီၣ်ထံးအခါ ယထံၣ်ဘၣ်ပှၤစိာ်လီၤပှၤသုးဖိတဖၣ်အစိၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤသုးဖိတနီၤလၢအလီၤ မၢ်တဖၣ် မိဒီးပါပာ်အီၤဒ်အကစၢ်အဖိလီၤ. တဘျီဘျီယပါဟဲက့ၤဆူဟံၣ်ပှဲၤဒီးတၢ်သးအုးတၢ်လီၤဘှံးလီၤတီၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. လၢတၢ်ကီ တၢ်ခဲဖးဒိၣ်အပူၤအဝဲဒုးသ့ၣ်ညါယမိ, တၢ်ကစီၣ်လၢအတမုာ်တဖၣ်လၢ တၢ်သးဘၣ်ဒိအပူၤလီၤ. ဖဲအဝဲတဲတၢ်ဝံၤအမဲာ်ထံတဖၣ် ယွၤလီၤဝဲလၢအဘိးပၤအလိၤလီၤ. ယမိဟီၣ်ဖးထီလၢတၢ်ကနိးကစုာ်အပူၤတုၤလၢအလီၤဘဲဝဲလီၤ. တယံာ်ဘၣ်ဒီးတၢ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ် လၢပပဒ့ၣ်တသ့တဖၣ်ဟဲတုၤအိၣ်ပှၤသပှၢ်ကတၢၢ်လီၤ. တၢ်သံတၢ်ပှၢ်အဆိကတၢၢ်လၢယဘၣ်ကွၢ်ဆၢၣ်မဲာ်လၢယဒူၣ်ဖိထၢဖိ အပူၤဖဲယအိၣ် ၁၂နံၣ်အခါလီၤ. ယတခွါစီၤဖိရီနံၣ် ပယီၤခးသံအီၤလီၤ. ခံဘျီတဘျီ, ယဖါတံၢ်ထဲတဂၤလၢအမ့ၢ်စီၤမဲလံး လီၤအုးလၢဃိၣ်လိၣ်ကျိအပူၤလီၤ. သၢဘျီတဘျီ, ယတခွါစီၤတိထူ လီၤဘျၢလၢ ဃိၣ်လိၣ်ကျိအပူၤကဒီးလီၤ. လွံၢ်ဘျီတဘျီ, ယတခွါစီၤယွၤခူၣ်တၢၢ် သံလၢကလ့ၢ်တၢ်ဆါအဃိလီၤ. ယဲၢ်ဘျီတဘျီ, ယဖိဒိၣ်မုၣ် နီၢ်လၢၢ်မူထူကပီၤဝါ ဘၣ်လီၤမၢ်လၢ ကသံၣ်ကသီကမၣ်အဃိလီၤ. ဃုဘျီတဘျီ, မ့ၢ်ယပုၢ်စီၤကီၢ်လါဟ့ လီၤဝဲလၢ တၢ်ဒုးအပူၤ ဖဲလါအ့ဖြ့ၣ် ၂၇သီ, ၂၀၂၁န့ၣ်လီၤ. အဝဲပာ်တ့ၢ်အမါလၢအအိၣ်ဒီးအဟုအသးဒီးအဖိသၢဂၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. 

တၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မး ထီဘိမၤဆါမၤသဘှံးယသးလီၤ. ယန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ကစီၣ်လၢယပုၢ်သံဘၣ်ဆၣ် တၢ်ပလၢၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်နီၢ်နီၢ် ဟဲတုၤအိၣ်ယၤဖဲလၢယဒိးန့ၢ်ဘၣ်အထၢၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယသးဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံးအံၤ တၢ်တဲလၢအဂ့ၢ်တသ့ဘၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်သူၣ်ဘၣ်ဒိ သးဘၣ်ဒိအံၤ တဆိကတီၢ်မုၢ်နၤမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤမုၢ်ဆါမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်. ယမံတန့ၢ်. ယအီၣ်တန့ၢ်. တၢ်အီၣ်လၢအဝံၣ်အဘဲကတၢၢ် တအိၣ် လၢယကိာ်ပူၤဘၣ်. မုၢ်နံၤတသီဘၣ်တသီဟဲစိာ်တၢ်သးဟးဂီၤလီၤ. တၢ်သံကွၢ်အိၣ်ထီၣ်ဝဲအါမးဘၣ်ဆၣ်တၢ်စံးဆၢတအိၣ်ဝဲ လၢ ယဂီၢ်ဘၣ်. အနးကတၢၢ်မ့ၢ်တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်လၢအမၤဆါတၢ်နးနးကလဲာ်ဒီးဒုးတီၤလီၤယၤန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်အံၤဘၣ်မနုၤအဃိကဲထီၣ် သးလဲၣ်. ဘၣ်မနုၤဖိသၣ်တဂၤဘၣ်သံဖဲဖိသၣ်အဂၤမူဘၣ်လဲၣ်. ဘၣ်မနုၤပှၤအဂ့ၤတဂၤဘၣ်သံ ဖဲအသးသမူအဂ့ၤကတၢၢ်အက တီၢ်အခါ ဒီးဘၣ်ပာ်တ့ၢ်ကွံာ်အဖိအမါ, ဖဲပှၤအၢပှၤနးအိၣ်မူဘၣ်တုၤအသးပှၢ်လဲၣ်. တၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်တကတၢၢ်နီတခီၣ်ဘၣ်. ယကျဲးစၢးဃုတၢ်နၢ်ပၢၢ်ဖဲလံာ်စီဆှံအပူၤ သပှၢ်ပှၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ယမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်အၢၣ်လီၤယဲတီတီအဃိ အါစုအါဘျီ ယတဒိးန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်စံး ဆၢဘၣ်. ဘၣ်ဆၣ်တၢ်လၢအလီၢ်တံၢ်လၢယဂီၢ်တခါန့ၣ်မ့ၢ်ဝဲ ‘‘ကစၢ်ယွၤတမ့ၢ်ပှၤလၢပကဘၣ်ပာ်ဒ့ၣ်ပာ်ကမၣ်အီၤဘၣ်.’’ ပှၤတ ဂၤဂၤလၢပအဲၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤမ့ၢ်သံအခါ ကစၢ်ယွၤမ့ၢ်ပှၤအဆိကတၢၢ်တဂၤလၢအသးသ့ၣ်ဖးန့ၣ်လီၤ. ယသ့ၣ်ညါလၢယတအိၣ်သယုၢ် သညိလၢတၢ်ဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအပူၤထဲတဂၤဘၣ်. တၢ်ဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးမ့ၢ်တၢ်လၢအလဲၤတၢ်ကယီကယီလီၤ. ယအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်သးဘၣ်ဒိ အဖၢမုၢ်ဒ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ပှၤသိၣ်လိပှၤလၢပှၤခရံာ်ဖိတဘၣ်အိၣ်ဒီး တၢ်သူၣ်အုးသးအုးဘၣ်. အတၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤအဖီခိၣ်န့ၣ်စံးဝဲ, ပှၤလၢပအဲၣ်အီၤတဖၣ်န့ၣ်လဲၤဝဲဒၣ်ဆူကစၢ်ယွၤအအိၣ်ဒီး အိၣ်ဝဲဖဲန့ၣ်အဃိ ပတဘၣ်သးအုးဒီးမဲာ်ထံမဲာ်နိယွၤလီၤဘၣ်. တဘၣ်က နၣ်အဝဲသ့ၣ်အတၢ်လီတၢ်ဝ့ၤတဂ့ၤ. စီၤပီလူးစံးဖဲ ရိမ့ၤ ၁၂:၁၅ န့ၣ်, ‘‘ပှၤလၢအသးခုတဖၣ်န့ၣ်, သးခုဃုာ်ဒီးအီၤတက့ၢ်, ဒီးပှၤလၢ အဟီၣ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်, ဟီၣ်ဃုာ်ဒီးအီၤတက့ၢ်.’’ မ်ပကအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်နာ်ဖဲပတနၢ်ပၢၢ်ဘၣ်ယွၤအတၢ်သုးတၢ်ကျဲၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်တက့ၢ်. ယွၤမ့ၢ်ပှၤကူၣ်သ့အထီကတၢၢ်လၢတမၤတၢ်ကမၣ် ဒီး ပှၤအဲၣ်တၢ်အဒိၣ်ကတၢၢ်လၢတဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ဆါအခီလီဘၣ် လီၤ. ဖဲပမဲာ်ထံလီၤအခါအဝဲအမဲာ်ထံလီၤဃုာ်ဒီးပှၤလီၤ. ခီဖျိပသ့ၣ်ညါလၢအဝဲသူၣ်အုးသးအုးသကိးဒီးပှၤအံၤကမၤမုာ်ထီၣ်ပသး, ဖဲတၢ်သးဘၣ်ဒိအံၤတဟါမၢ်ကွံာ်ဝဲလၢပပူၤသနာ်က့လီၤ. မ်ယွၤအတၢ်အၢၣ်လီၤအီလီၤလၢအမ့ၢ်အတီကအိၣ်ဒီးပှၤတဘိယူၢ်ဃီဒီး ကဟ့ၣ်ပှၤတၢ်မူအထူအယိာ်, ကဟ့ၣ်ဆူၣ်ထီၣ်ပဂံၢ်ပဘါဒ်သိးပကအိၣ်မူဒီးလဲၤဆူညါတက့ၢ်.  

သရၣ်မုၣ်ထံလါဟ့ကု
ကီၢ်ကၠီၣ်တဲၣ်

တၢ်ဆိကမိၣ်ထံမၤဘၣ်ထွဲက့ၤတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါလၢပတၢ်အိၣ်မူ

အါစုအါဘျီဖဲခရံာ်ဖိတဝၢအပူၤ ပမၤန့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ကစီၣ် လၢကျဲလၢလိၤလိၤမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ က့ၣ်က့ၣ်ကူကူမ့ၢ်ဂ့ၤ လၢ, ‘‘ပှၤလၢအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်စူၢ် တၢ်နာ်တဖၣ်န့ၣ်တသးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးဘၣ်.’’ တၢ်ဒုးဘၣ်ထွဲ လၢတၢ်နာ်ဒီးတၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မး လၢကျဲလၢအကမၣ် မၤအါထီၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်ဒိဘၣ်ထံးလၢပှၤလၢအတူၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးမ့ၢ်န့ဆၢၣ် အတၢ်ခီဆၢက့ၤတၢ်ဖဲ ပှၤလၢ/တၢ်လၢပပာ်လုၢ်ပာ်ပှ့ၤလီၤမၢ်ကွံာ်ဝဲအခါန့ၣ်လီၤ. တၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မး တမ့ၢ် တၢ်စူၢ်တၢ်နာ် တအိၣ်, တဂၢၢ်တကျၢၤဘၣ်. ကီခဲဝဲလၢ ပှၤလၢအသးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအဂီၢ်လၢကဃုထံၣ်န့ၢ် တၢ်မၤမုာ်အသး, တၢ်မုၢ်လၢ်, ဖဲခရံာ်ဖိတဝၢ ဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်မဲာ်ဆှး လၢညီနုၢ်သးအတၢ်တူၢ်ဘၣ်လၢဟဲအိၣ်ထီၣ်လၢတၢ်ဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအဖီခိၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤ. ကစၢ်ခရံာ်အနီၢ်ကစၢ်မၤဝဲ တၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးအတၢ်မၤဒီးပာ်ဖျါထီၣ်အဒိအတဲာ်အဂ့ၤလၢပဂီၢ်န့ၣ်လီၤ.

တၢ်မနုၤဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲလၢပကပာ်ဖျါဘၣ်ပတၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးလဲၣ်.
နတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အတဝၢ ဒီး တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်သရၣ် ကဲထီၣ်တၢ်မၢၤစၢၤလၢနဂီၢ် ဖဲနအိၣ်ဒီးတၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မး လၢကျဲမနုၤတဖၣ်လဲၣ်. ဘၣ်မနုၤကဲထီၣ်တၢ်မၤစၢၤလဲၣ်. ဘၣ်မနုၤတကဲထီၣ်တၢ်မၤစၢၤလဲၣ်.

တၢ်ထုကဖၣ်လၢပှၤဖးတၢ်ဖိအဂီၢ်

ယွၤဧၢ, ဝံသးစူၤဆိၣ်ဂ့ၤဘၣ်နဖိတဂၤအံၤလၢအဖးဝဲတၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဂံၢ်ဟ့ၣ်ဘါအံၤန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဖဲတၢ်သးအုးဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မး ပုာ်ထီၣ်ယွၤ လီၤ လၢအသးအပူၤအခါ, ဝံသးစူၤဟ့ၣ်ဘၣ်အီၤတၢ်မုာ်သူၣ်မုာ်သး ဒီး တၢ်ခုၣ်သူၣ်ခုၣ်သးန့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဖဲအဝဲဃုထံၣ်ဝဲ တၢ်စံးဆၢ တန့ၢ် လၢအတၢ်သံကွၢ်တဖၣ်လၢမၤဘၣ်ဒိအသးနးနးကလဲာ်အခါန့ၣ် မၤစၢၤအီၤဒ်သိး နနီၢ်ကစၢ်ကမ့ၢ်နဲတၢ်စံးဆၢ အလၢအလီၢ် လၢအဂီၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. မၤစၢၤဘၣ်ပတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်တဖၣ် ဒီး ခရံာ်ဖိတဝၢတဖၣ် လၢကမ့ၢ်တၢ်လီၢ်ဘံၣ်ဘၢလၢ ပှၤဘၣ်မိၣ်ဘၣ်မးတဖၣ် ကပာ်ဖျါ ထီၣ်ဘၣ်ဝဲ အမဲာ်ထံမဲာ်နိ ဒီး အတၢ်သူၣ်အုးသးအုးတဖၣ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. ဝံသးစူၤ  ဖိးဟုနဖိအံၤ လၢအအိၣ်လၢတၢ်သူၣ်ဘၣ်ဒိသးဘၣ်ဒိအပူၤ အဘူးကတၢၢ်ဒီး နသးနါပှၢ်န့ၣ်တက့ၢ်. လၢခရံာ်အမံၤယဃ့နၤလီၤ. အၤမ့ၣ်.

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Week 3

REFLECTIONS ON GRIEF

Romans 12:15 – “Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep.” (WEB)

Many of us have experienced loss and grief. God knows how often I think of the losses of my beloved family members and the anguished grief that breaks me into pieces. Nothing in life really prepares us for the death of a loved one, especially if that death is totally unexpected. 

When I was young our family lived on the front line. Whenever the boat stopped near the fig trees, dead soldiers were brought back to the camp. We lost some soldiers, whom my parents treated as their sons. I have seen my father having to break the painful news to my mother. Tears were running down my dad’s cheeks. My mother cried until she fainted. Sooner or later, all of us are confronted with the inevitable. It either came unexpectedly or it came at the end of a lengthy illness. My first experience with death in my family came when I was twelve years old. My oldest cousin, Saw Poe Raw Ni, was shot and killed by Burmese soldiers. My second experience came when my one and only uncle, Saw Meh Li, drowned in Salween river. My third experience came when my cousin, Saw Toh Htoo, drowned in Salween river. My fourth experience came when my nephew, Saw Ywa Ku Ter, died with kidney failure. My fifth experience came when my niece, Naw Ler Mu Htoo K’paw Wah, died due to a medical error. My sixth experience came when my brother, Saw Kaw Lah Hay, died defending freedom on 27th April, 2021. He left behind his wife and three children, and the fourth one on the way. 

It is always a very painful, crushing grief. I accepted my brother’s death that morning, but it wouldn’t come to a reality until I received his bag. My grief is unspeakable. The pain never goes away day or night. I can’t sleep. I have no appetite, no interest in food. The tastiest meal is tasteless in my mouth. Each day brings new disappointment. We long for a reason, an explanation, but often there is none. There are tormenting questions that drove me to my knees. Why did this happen? Why is one child taken in infancy and not the other? Why is a good man taken away in the prime of his life, leaving a wife and children, while other cruel men live to a ripe old age? Why? Why? Why? The questions are almost endless. Desperately I searched the Scriptures for understanding. I must admit that I am often without answers, but of this one thing I am sure — GOD IS NOT TO BLAME! In fact, when a loved one dies, God’s heart is the first of all hearts to break. I know I am not alone in my grief. Grief is a slow process. I am still grieving. Don’t let anyone make you feel guilty because you are still grieving. There are those who teach that Christians should not grieve. They falsely reason that since our loved ones have gone to be with the Lord, we should only rejoice and not weep. Don’t be misled by them. The apostle Paul tells us, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn” (Roman 12:15). Let us trust God when we cannot understand His plans. He is too wise to ever make a mistake and too loving to ever cause needless pain. When we weep, He is weeping with us. Knowing that He shares our griefs will give us comfort even if it doesn’t take away the pain. May the promise of His presence and the hope of eternal life give us the strength to go on!

Thramu Htee Lah Hay Ku
Thailand

REFLECT

Often in a Christian circle, we get direct or indirect messages conveying “Those who believe do not grieve.” The misconnection between faith and grief can add a lot of pain to those grieving. Grief is a natural response to losing who is/what is precious to us. Grieving is not an indication of a loss of faith. It is hard for those grieving to find comfort and hope in a faith community that unintentionally or intentionally shame natural feelings of grief. 

Jesus Himself grieved His losses and set a good example for us.

What makes it hard to grieve? Have your church/community and/or pastor been helpful for you in grief? Why or why not?

PRAYER FOR THE READER

Dear God, please bless Your children reading this devotional journal. When they feel grief overflowing in their hearts, please grant them comfort and peace. When they cannot find answers to the torturing questions, please let You be the answer enough for them. Please help our churches and faith communities to be a safe space for those grieving to express their sorrow and tears. Please hold them close to Your heart in their pain and sorrow. In Jesus’ Name, I pray. Amen.