When Grief Doesn't Change: A Story of Dolly Parton

When Grief Doesn't Change

A Story of Dolly Parton 

     This past week our nation has felt the loss of one of our stars, Dolly Parton.  For nearly six decades Dolly gave the world some of the most catchy tunes.  I vividly remember my grandfather playing her music in their house nestled along the mountain in Pennsylvania.  He also had an old station wagon and he would put in an eight track tape and 'jam' out to her music.  Pap knew every word.  He would belt out to Jolene, he especially loved 9-5 since he was a blue collar worker his whole life, but the one that seemed to get him the most excited was Jolene.  Dolly Parton was the queen of country music, or if you're from my area, the queen of Appalachia.  But she was more than a country music legend.  She was also a songwriter, actress, entrepreneur, philanthropist, storyteller, and one of the most recognizable personalities of the last century.  Her fame helped build areas like Pigeon Forge Tennessee and she recently opened up what was supposed to be a chain of gas stations meant to compete with Buc-Ee's.  It seemed like she never aged and she was always overflowing with joy and happiness.  She wrote nearly 3,000 songs and recorded music that crossed generations and genres. She had 25 country No. 1 singles, earned 11 Grammy Awards, sold more than 100 million records, starred in movies, built Dollywood, and became one of the most successful entertainers in American history.

      Those are the things that almost everyone knows about her life.  But something that grief has taught me is that you examine people differently.  You see things that most people wouldn't see.  I don't think of Dolly just because of the beautiful country twang that she belted out, but instead her legacy is deeper then any song or award she received.  As a grieving man I think about something she wanted but never received.  Dolly Parton desperately wanted children.  She and her husband Charles Dean (to whom she was married for nearly 60 years) tried, but no child was ever granted to them.  And it's in that moment of trial and disappointment that her story becomes particularly interesting to those of us who understand and have experienced grief.  It's a tragic truth that we don't like, but we eventually have to accept, some things in grief don't change.

      Dolly and her husband, Carl Dean, wanted children. Parton later spoke openly about trying to have children and being unable to.  She wasn't shy about her disappointment and heartache.  She even spoke of it as a deep grief and pain. She eventually underwent surgery after suffering from endometriosis, making pregnancy impossible.  That's not a problem that could be solved by working harder.  It wasn't something she could buy her way out of.  It wasn't something fame could fix.  It wasn't something that 100 million records could make disappear.  She couldn't write a song that would give her a child.  There is a hard lesson for those of us that are grieving in her experience; some things are simply not going to change.  Take a breath before reading this next part.  It's going to be hard.  Friends, the phone call isn't coming.  That person isn't walking back through the door.  Their diagnosis isn't going to be undone.  The marriage isn’t going to be restored.  The child isn't coming home.  The life that you dreamed and built won't be happening.  I'm writing this to you not in theory or from observation, but experience.  As much as I wanted Tiffanie to call or text or come back home, I knew that she wouldn't.  That reality hits hard and shatters our soul.  We are forced into an totally unchangeable situation that we didn't ask for.  I don't want the above words to sound harsh or cruel.  Far from it.  I'm writing those words from empathy because I've been there, longing, and to be honest, still longing for those times.

      This is a hard truth to swallow because we live in a culture that wants to fix everything. We want five steps, ten strategies, a solution, a program, or an inspirational quote.  People want the end without the journey, and to be honest, grief doesn't have a pretty bow tied to it where life just magically makes sense and we 'get over it.'  But grief doesn't always work that way and it doesn't play by our 'rules.'  Sometimes the loss remains a loss.  

      Dolly Parton never got to experience motherhood in the way she had once hoped.  But that doesn't mean God couldn't do something beautiful with the broken pieces.  God can use what we never would have chosen.  Do me a favor.  Read that again.  You might not believe that in the moment, but God has the ability to bring beauty from ashes and to restore what locusts have devastated.  Take for example the life of Dolly.  Years after she learned she couldn't have children, Dolly Parton began talking about her infertility differently.  She didn't pretend it hadn't hurt.  She might have had a few plastic surgeries in her life, but there is no surgery that can take away the pain of grief.  You can't fake grief.  She didn't pretend she had never wanted children.  Instead, she began to see her life through the lens of purpose.

      In a 1989 interview, Parton said, “I figure God had his purpose for that, too.” She explained that she might have given up many things in order to have children and might not have been able to be “as much to a lot of people that needed me.”  Later, she expressed a similar belief in explaining why she created the Imagination Library. She said she believed God didn't mean for her to have children so that “everybody's kids could be mine.”

      Think about that for a brief moment.  She didn't get the thing she wanted, the thing she begged God for.  But she found a way to love children anyway.  In 1995, Parton launched the Imagination Library, initially providing a free, age-appropriate book every month to children in her home county. What began as a local effort eventually became an international program.  Today, the program has distributed more than 300 million books to children.  She couldn't have the children she had once hoped for.  So she helped millions of children discover books.  She couldn't change that part of her story.  But she could change what she did with it.  I think that's an important distinction to grief.

      We sometimes think God's redemption means that He will eventually give us back what we lost, but that isn't often how redemption words.  Redemption doesn't mean reverse.  It can mean looking back, but it often doesn't mean going backward.  Sometimes God does give that which we lost, sometimes He doesn't.  In the realm of losing a person the reality is that the person we loved won't be coming back.  See we think that the miracle isn't that the person comes back or that the pain will go away.  Sometimes the miracle is that God takes something that broke our hearts and somehow uses it to bless someone else.  That's different.  And let me share this with you from experience, it a whole lot harder.  Because it means we have to stop asking only: “God, why did this happen?”  And eventually begin asking:  “God, what can You do through this?”  Those are not the same question.  The first question looks backward.  The second looks forward.  When we grieve we want the past.  We yearn for it.  It's hard enough for us to live in the present let alone to fathom the future.

      Dolly Parton's life doesn't give us an answer for why she couldn't have children.  The sad truth is that not every tragedy will have an explanation on this side of heaven.  We need to be incredibly cautious here.  We often view grief as if it's some sort of puzzle that needs solved.  But, grief isn't a puzzle where every painful piece eventually makes sense.  Sometimes we will never know why, though it's natural to ask why.  I've recently been working with a man who tragically lost his wife and son in a horrific accident.  I've loved this man and wept with him.  That's what I have the honor of doing.  But the goal isn't just to ask why, but to look to the who.

      See, the Bible doesn't tell us that every loss will be explained to us on this side of heaven.  Let me be the first to acknowledge that this can be very frustrating.  But Scripture does tell us that God is able to work through even the things we would never have chosen.  Paul wrote in Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."  Now, this verse can be weaponized by a lot of well meaning people to offer premature comfort or theology.  Hear me out.  Please.  Do.  Not.  Do.  That.  This verse isn't a  bandaid that you magically apply to a grieving person.  Yes, the grieving person probably knows this verse to be true, but the timing or tone of how you say it might not be right.  So, if you are reading this as a grieving person please first take another breath.  This isn't a sermon or a Sunday School lesson.  This is the heart of one grieving person to another.  I want you to notice a few things that passage does not say.  It doesn't say that all things are good.  Cancer isn't good.  I can attest to this after losing Tiffanie.  It doesn't say that death is good, loneliness is good, infertility is good, a child dying is good, losing a spouse, etc.  It does not say that those things are good.  Period.  It says God can work through all things for good.  There is a difference, one so slight or subtle that we might not notice it in the moment

      One of the most beautiful things about grief is that people who have suffered often become uniquely equipped to notice suffering in others.  A widow notices another widow.  A widower notices another widower.  A parent who has buried a child recognizes a particular kind of pain.  Someone who has battled addiction sees the person struggling in a way other people might miss.  Someone who has experienced loneliness knows what it looks like on someone else's face.  Our wounds can make us more compassionate.  Not because the wounds were good.  But because God can use even wounded people.  I have personally found that God can give such purpose from our pain.  My griefshare leader would often say "God doesn't waste a hurt."  I remember feeling bitter when he first said that.  I wasn't mad at him, but I was asking, God, how in the world can me losing my wife to cancer and leaving me with three precious littles ones have a purpose?  Little did I know what unforeseen pages God had in the story of my life.

      Dolly Parton's inability to have children didn't become the end of her story.  Yes, it became a part of her story, but it wasn’t 'the end' of what God was doing in her life.  In some ways, it became part of the story God allowed her to write or that God was opening up a door that she would have never been able to walk through outside of this sad experience.  Dolly became a kind of mother to nieces, nephews, and countless children who never knew her personally.  And through the Imagination Library, millions of children received something that may have seemed very small:  A book in the mailbox that reminded the child that they mattered.  A book the encouraged them to create.  Friend, that is a remarkable legacy.

      In a similar fashion grief hit my life like a nuclear bomb, leaving everything in it's wake in devastation.  But it was in that loss where God gave me a burden that no man would have to endure the dark night of his soul alone.  I found out that there was only one other ministry geared toward widowers.  One ministry for 4.5 million men.  Why didn't anyone seem to care for their soul?  It was there in the fire of grief that God forged Sons of the Shepherd.  God used and still does use my loss and pain for His glory.

      So, let me ask you a personal question, what about your grief?  You might have been reading this article and it didn't make your grief any easier or lighter.  I get that.  And to be honest, the article wasn't meant to minimize your grief.  The reason why is that your spouse is still gone, your child is still gone, your parent is still gone, your diagnosis remains, the dream remains broken, and the empty spot beside you at night still remains vacant.  Dolly Parton's story doesn't change that or diminish that, and I get it.  But, maybe that's the point.  The last thing you need is someone else telling you that your grief isn't real or to get over it.  You don't need a well meaning friend to tell you that everything happens for a reason.  

      Instead we need someone to remind us that God is still God in the middle of it.  He can meet us in the places we never wanted to be.  He can comfort us in the places we never thought we'd find ourselves.  And, in time, He can sometimes take the very thing that caused us to cry and use it to help us become a source of comfort for someone else.  Paul wrote about this in 2nd Corinthians, he said  that God "comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

      That's the mystery of Christian grief.  God doesn't promise that we won't hurt.  A matter of fact He openly acknowledges that it's going to hurt and be difficult.  I remember when Tiffanie was diagnosed with cancer that God told me that this was going to be the hardest thing we ever endured.  He didn't sugar coat it.  God also doesn't promise that every situation will change.  He doesn't promise that we will understand or that the 'why' will be answered.

      But He does promise that He will be with us.  And sometimes, somehow, He takes the broken pieces of our story and uses them to help write hope into someone else's.  Dolly Parton never got the children she once hoped for.  But she spent decades loving children.  She couldn't change that part of her story.  But she was left with a choice of what she would do with it.  When we are standing in the midst of grief, in the middle of situation of things that won't change, we are also left with a choice (to be fair, a lot of choices).  You might not be able to change what happened, BUT God can still do something with what happened.  Your loss will always be a part of your story and yes, you will bear scars from the wounds you've received through it all.  But the scar and grief doesn't have to be the end of your story.  God can still meet you in your grief and He can take that which left us broken and use it for His good.