Trying to Understand Grief — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

One of the most difficult parts of living life is losing somebody we love, the pain, grief – that can be like a weight that pervades every moment. Learning to manage grief in a healthy way, that can be a struggle. With CS Lewis, the well-known author who lost his wife Joy to a terrible bone cancer, and he summed up his loss in the note he wrote. No one ever told me that grief felt like fear.

And that’s a very telling description of a personal issue, grief. What happens in your time of loss.

It’s often called grieving, and the experience is different for everyone. But grief is a natural response to loss, especially when a loved one dies. Everyone processes loss and grief in a different way.

Healing occurs at different rates. Some people feel that certain forms of grieving are disrespectful to those that we’ve lost, but despite this, the most important part of handling grief is realising there is no one correct way to do it.

Everyone grieves in their own way

And providing you’re not causing harm to yourself or those around you, there is no right or wrong way to grieve. In other words, there’s no simple way to describe the experience of grief. If you’ve lost your job, there’s grief over that, or your pet dog dies, there’s a genuine loss, or a husband and wife grieve together because they can’t have a child. There are many different situations where grief comes into our lives. Grief is extremely complex and more people than me have written on it, like Elizabeth Kubler Ross on the various stages of grief, it’s a good idea actually to look that up.

One thing makes sense, and that is that, don’t run away or ignore your feelings of loss, they really do need to be acknowledged and faced up to however painful.

We need to be honest and bottling up the emotions or rejecting the feelings is an unhealthy way to respond. That never works out. We’ve got to work through the pain one step at a time. So when you’re in a raw state of grief, how do I know what normal is? Most of us will experience grief on a physical, emotional or psychological level. You might feel distracted, agitated, even short-tempered, stomach aches, and frequent sighing is not uncommon, and one moment you’re crying and then the next moment you’re laughing over a happy memory.

In 1969, Joe Bailey wrote a small book called The View from the Hearse. He and his wife, Mary Lou, had seven children. They’d lost three of them in very tragic circumstances. I’m not fully aware of the circumstances, but as a committed Christian churchgoer, his faith in a loving God helped him cope with the grief. He had some advice. He said, one of the best contributions we can make to a person going through intense suffering and loss is our presence without words, not even verses of scripture dumped into the ears of the grieving.

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Joe meant that we shouldn’t give platitudes to someone with a broken heart. It’s not what they need. They need your love, understanding, and there are words of comfort, but say them at the right time. The first thing a grieving person needs is not something good will come out of that experience. But that someone cares.

The New Testament gives us the moving story of Lazarus, a friend of Jesus. Lazarus died. Everyone was upset and grieving. He was upset too. He felt the full emotion of the loss of a good friend. And that’s why I can say to you, Jesus understands and stands by you during your time of grief. He knew what it was like. Don’t let anyone tell you that to grieve over the death of a loved one is unspiritual or un-Christian. Jesus wept. It’s a natural part of the grieving process.

He already knows that God the Father will raise Lazarus from the dead, but Jesus still weeps. He goes to the tomb where Lazarus is buried and calls him back from the dead. Now I don’t know what you’re experiencing today, but God does. He not only sees your fears, but he weeps with you. Tell Him what’s on your heart and trust Him to walk with you through your grief. Jesus gives us sometimes the desires of our hearts. At other times there’s silence. Whatever it is, God is there. He’s not only there to listen, but to love and to comfort.

And the most important thing I want to say is that in grieving you don’t have to go it alone, for Jesus understands more than you can imagine. He wants to walk beside you in your grief, and it’s only knowing Jesus with you that you can handle it, knowing that he’s been through grief. You’re not alone.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we do know that grieving is such an awful thing. There’s pain, there’s confusion, but we know, Lord, that you walk with us and you understand us at our time of need. Amen.

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