Center helps train ‘companions’ to walk alongside people in grief

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DALLAS—Jennifer Hibdon’s life changed May 20, 2010, when her parents’ lives ended in double suicide.

Jim and Mina Hibdon had been pillars of Bethel Baptist Church in Norman, Okla., and been happily married 65 years. He had a long career as an economics professor, and she had served as a state representative.

Laurie Taylor (right), executive director of the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas, talks with Jennifer Hibdon. (PHOTO/Ken Camp)

Jennifer Hibdon knew her parents’ health was beginning to fail, but she had no idea they had decided to take their lives rather than suffer arduous physical decline.

Naturally, Hibdon grieved. She began to see a therapist, but she didn’t find the help she needed to put her life back in order.

Then she remembered Laurie Taylor, a minister to families at Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas, whom she had met while volunteering at Baylor Medical Center. She recalled Taylor’s passion for helping people who experienced bereavement. The two reconnected, and Hibdon discovered Taylor was starting a grief support group.

“It was divine intervention,” Hibdon said. “I needed ways to structure my thoughts and feelings. I needed to understand what I was going through. I needed to learn how to organize my thoughts and feelings after my world was turned upside-down.”

Leaders of Wilshire Baptist recognized Hibdon was not alone in that need, and they saw the opportunity for an expanded, ongoing ministry focused on grief and loss. In December, members with varied backgrounds in management of nonprofit organizations met with Taylor to explore the feasibility of launching such an entity.

On March 1, the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas began operation with Taylor as full-time executive director.


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“We focus not just on death but also on feelings of loss related to abandonment, divorce and infertility,” Taylor said. “We’re getting calls every day, mostly just due to word-of-mouth referrals.”

Wilshire Baptist Church provided seed money to help launch the Grief and Loss Center, and it makes its church facilities available to the center at no cost.

“Part of the impetus for spinning off Laurie’s work into a separate nonprofit entity was the realization that she had unique gifts to offer the larger community. It is rare for a local church to provide this level of specialized service just for its own congregation. And so, we determined we could give a gift to the community and plant the seed for something we hope will grow into a much larger ministry in the years ahead,” said Mark Wingfield, associate pastor at Wilshire Baptist Church.

Taylor offers one-on-one consultations with people who have experienced grief and loss. She makes it clear she is not a licensed professional counselor, although she is certified in thanatology—the study of death, dying and bereavement.

“We’re not here to push or pull people but to listen and walk alongside them,” Taylor said. “There’s no reward for speed in grief. Grief never ends. It just becomes part of who we are as it is woven into the fabric of our lives.”

Christians generally respond in appropriate and caring ways to people immediately after they experience loss, but they often have no idea how to help them in the weeks, months and years that follow, she noted.

“We have our grief box, and we keep the casseroles, sympathy cards, memorials services and visitation in it. And those are wonderful. Keep the casseroles and cards coming. But after the memorial service is over, we put the lid back on the grief box and put it on a shelf,” Taylor said. “Meanwhile, the family that has experience loss doesn’t even know where the grief box is anymore.

“Jesus companioned people—he walked alongside them. We don’t do that kind of follow-through well.”

Through the Grief and Loss Center, Taylor wanted to correct that deficiency. In addition to individual consultations, she leads grief support groups at Wilshire and wants to train “companions” and facilitators for groups at other churches and helping institutions such as hospitals, hospices and schools.

Among other things, Taylor hopes to teach the importance of letting people in grief tell their stories and remember people who meant so much to them.

“Say the name. They want to hear the name. … They don’t want them to disappear and not be remembered,” she said.

“Sometimes people are afraid to mention the name of a person who has died because the grieving person might cry. Well, of course they may. That’s why God gave us tears. … There’s a cleansing of the soul that comes with tears.”

Hibdon learned that lesson, and she has shared it. As part of her own healing process—and to help her parents’ friends in Norman keep their memory alive—she sponsored breakfast and brunch events in her parents’ honor prior to Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Hibdon serves on the board of directors for the Grief and Loss Center. She sees it as another way to honor her parents’ legacy.

“How they died did not define who they were,” she said. “They had given decades to philanthropic work and to living out their Christian values. I can celebrate their lives and not just remember their deaths.”

For more information about the Grief and Loss Center of North Texas, contact Laurie Taylor at (214) 452-3105 or e-mail [email protected].

 


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