The Strength of Grief

Grief Affects everyone

Grief affects everyone.  It uproots your life and for when I went through it, I felt as if life would never be normal again.  Grief creates an intense feeling of loneliness.  Even though I knew that everyone deals with grief, at the time I felt completely alone.  Even if others around me offered their support, at the end of the day, I had to come home alone.  Grief is an uncomfortable feeling, and we all try to avoid it as much as we can.  As a society we consider grief to be a weakness. We spend a great deal of time teaching each other how to get over our grief quicker in order to get on with our lives.

When my first husband left me, I wanted to get through my grief as quickly as possible, so I started by finding out the five stages of grief.  I figured that if I could identify these stages and where I was in the process, then I could make the journey more quickly and start to feel better. According to the “experts” there are five official stages of grief:

     Shock and Denial

     Anger

     Depression and Detachment

     Dialogue and Bargaining

     Acceptance

The stages of grief did not move in sequential order

It did not take me long to realize that I would not go through these stages in a neat, sequential order.  For five years I bounced in between them.  Shock and denial did come first, but I never really said goodbye to that stage before I moved on to the next.  One minute I would hope and pray that my husband and I could be reconciled, the next I would accept that it was over. 

Anger was a constant companion, and I found myself bargaining with God and with his parents, desperately trying to still find a connection between us.  I knew that I did not want anger to take root in my heart, but it took a long time for that anger to be displaced.  I felt anger toward my husband, but I also felt anger toward God.  He could have stopped this.  I did not want this divorce, and I know that He hates divorce, so why did He allow this to happen?  An older friend of mine told me that she could tell that I was still angry, even though I thought that I had moved past it.  

I bargained with God, trying to convince Him to bring my husband back to me.  Once I realized that would not happen, I tried to find someone else to fill in the gap, bargaining with God that this other person was really the one that He wanted for me.  For several years I experienced extreme depression, culminating with a halfhearted attempt to kill myself.  Because my heart had been broken, I tried to withdraw from my friends, even as I desperately needed the love and acceptance of those around me.

I tried to shorten my journey through grief

In order to shorten my journey through grief, those five years found me with my nose in any Christian self help book that I could find.  I desperately tried to find my way to feeling better, and I convinced myself that if I just followed the directions given in the book then I would be cured of my grief.  Somebody out there had to know how to get through grief.  I just needed to find them.

In this process, I came to the book “Hinds Feet on High Places”.  This book, written by Hannah Hurnard, is an allegory about salvation and the Christian life.  The main character, Much Afraid, is a servant of the Shepherd.  Her lame feet prevent her from getting away from her Fearing relatives until the Shepherd invites her to journey to the high places.  Once there, He will transform her lame and twisted feet into a hinds feet so that she can be with Him there.

The Shepherd is always near, even when He feels far away

He promises to always be within reach of her call on her journey, and asks that she will trust Him.  She begs Him to take her to the high places, but He tells her that if she does not go on the journey that He asks her to go on, then she will not develop the hinds feet that she needs in order to be on the high places with Him.  He leaves her with two companions, Sorrow and Suffering, whose job it is to help her on the road.  Sorrow and Suffering help her to stand against pride, loneliness and doubt.  She resists holding their hands at first, but soon discovers that they keep her going when she has no strength left.   During her journey, Much Afraid experiences times of victory and failure.  She finds times where trusting the Shepherd is easy, and other times when it is beyond her ability.  

I was exactly like Much Afraid

When I read this story, I identified with Much Afraid.  I have feared so much in my life, but at this point I began to realize that God gives me grief in order to give me strength.  Accepting my sorrow and my suffering forces me to lean on Him.  And the more that I lean into Him and depend on Him the stronger I will grow in Him. 

Sorrow helps me to realize that I do not have any strength in myself.  I am weak and crippled, but when I experience sorrow and embrace it, He gives me His strength.  Instead of pushing my grief away, I needed to embrace it.  Grief can teach me things that nothing else can.  It can also form me into the jewel that He wants me to be.  I did not choose this road of grief, but since He has put me here, I needed to believe that He walks with me on this road.

At so many times during my grief, when I didn’t feel as if I could continue another day, God reminded me in small ways that He will never leave me.  He still watches me and holds my hand.  At times I felt that He was carrying me.  Sometimes a friend would stop by to see how I was doing.  A song would come on the radio that spoke to what I needed in that very minute.  He would bring a Bible verse to my mind, or answer one of my “small prayers.”  These small evidences of His presence and grace taught me the reality of this verse:

“Because of His great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail.  They are new every morning.  Great is your faithfulness.”  Lamentations 3: 22-23

Throughout my time of grief, He stayed close

His grace and His mercy ARE new every morning.  He always met me where I was, without demanding that I work on changing myself.  (I did try to change myself, but it wasn’t His mandate).  But in the process of losing my husband, He taught me that He did not make a mistake when He made me.  He also showed me what He truly thought about me.  I began to experience His love and His mercy in a way that I never have before.  Because of my grief, He brought me closer to Himself and closer to who He wants me to be.

Have there been times in your life when you struggled with grief?  Have you allowed Him to work through your grief to help you grow? I pray that you will grow in His love and His grace.  You are His masterpiece!