Navigating Grief

Everyone, in some form or fashion, has suffered from grief, from loss, and from pain.

Others have had losses and suffering that has shook them to their core and made them question everything they’ve known. Some have had heartbreak so severe they never thought they would pick the pieces up again. Very few have not lost someone important to them.

It’s been both a blessing and a curse in my life to have experienced several great losses. If any of you have know me, you’ve heard of my dear friend Samuel. That was a loss that made me question everything I knew. But now, this year, the weight of two more losses has been added: my sweet, sweet Aunt went to the Lord February 1st. And that was a loss that made me feel sure I would never be able to pick up the pieces again.

And a sweet man I worked for for over 12 years passed away February 10th. This is a grief that just adds to the loss and confusion I had after my Aunt passed away.

There’s just something about grief. Something so surreal and devastating about the word and the feeling. And there’s something that no one ever really tells you when dealing with grief:

I truly believe that grief has a lot of misdirects. You want to blame yourself. You want to blame someone else at times. You want to put blame on the devil. And sometimes, you want to put the blame on God.

The overwhelming and tremendous weight gets embodied in the smallest question of “Why?”

But those misdirects will never give you an answer. They will never provide you a solution.

Grief has one universal truth: it doesn’t matter who you decide to put the blame on, be it yourself or God or someone else, it does not take away the new reality you find yourself living in. It doesn’t take away the loss, the pain, or the suffering.

Misdirected grief is just a self-defense mechanism we go through so we don’t have to focus on our new reality. We do everything we can to focus on something else instead because the truth is confusing, full of hurt, and leaves you with an ache that won't go away.

But all that misdirection does is cause us more pain than before. More unnecessary pain and anguish.

Grief makes us want to forget about grace, love, and mercy. Instead, it wants to focus on anger, mourning without hope, and unforgiveness. That is when Satan gets to work. He weaves his way into our poor, broken hearts and twists that grief into something unhealthy. That’s him. And it is cruel what he does to those who are suffering. But he wants us distracted and focusing on the wrong things.

But in grief, when we do remember love, grace, and mercy, we begin to see things differently. We mourn with hope.

Because with God, there is no death. With God, there is a chance that we have been given that one day, we can join those who have gone before us in paradise. With God, there is hope. With God, there is peace within the suffering because He is Sovereign. With God, there is eternal life.

There are so many questions that remain unanswered about grief, death, and the suffering we go through. To be completely honest, we may never fully understand grief or why we lose the ones we love. Much like we will never fully understand God. But we still put our hope, our faith, our trust, and our lives in His hands. He knows the answer. He knows the answer to that ever-so-burdensome “Why?” The hardest truth to accept with grief is that we may not ever get the answer. Not on this side of Heaven.

But there will come a day when we meet Him and all those whom we’ve lost. We will meet Him in paradise, and everything will make sense. We’ll understand it then. Everything will have been worth it.

And you know what?

I don’t think those questions that plague us now will even matter then. We won’t care about the answers when we get to Heaven. We’ll be too busy glorifying our Savior and celebrating with the other saints in Heaven before us. We keep fighting through this life, through this grief, pain, and suffering, because there is something greater waiting for us. And the ones we lost have already made it there. They’re already part of the greatness and perfection of Heaven.

My Aunt Jo is celebrating, smiling with Jesus, and she will never feel pain again. She will never suffer or be subject to the cruelty of this fallen world. The same goes with all the ones who I've lost over the years. The same goes for everyone you’ve lost.

They all await us in glory. Until the day comes when we join them naturally, we will fight for what is right, and put our trust in the only one who knows the answer: God. He is the

one who will help us remember our roots, our purpose, and help us pick back up the pieces and put them back together again. No one else but Him.

Grief has a lot of misguided thoughts and emotions. Through the misdirects, we have to fight and strive to see this one truth clearly: God can do everything we can’t. When we can’t see a way, He provides a way. When we can’t see a purpose, He understands the answer. When we can’t find a way to pull ourselves together, He wraps His loving arms around us to give us comfort and peace.

I can’t.

But God can. And that is what I depend on as I walk through grief.

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” Romans 5:3-5

The best is yet to come. We've only seen the beginning of it. The best is yet to come.