Identifying With Grief
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“Lord, have mercy, because I am in misery. My eyes are weak from so much crying, and my whole being is tired from grief.” Psalm 31:9
This month I have grieved the loss of several friends. One I had just begun walking the journey of life with and another was the wife of my husband Dave’s dear friend. Another, was a part of a church I served and I had walked the journey of life and death with his family several years ago. One I watched for years decline and the others died of complications from COVID. I also heard of friends and church family who had lost a loved one. Each day in the newspaper, I read the obituaries and even though I do not know the person, I thank God for a life and pray for the families who grieve. We grieve the loss of thousands who have died from the complications of COVID. Grief is all around us.
We grieve not just the loss of a loved one, but we grieve all types of losses in our lives. The loss of innocence. The loss of trust. The loss of hope. The loss of love. The loss of a dream. The loss of a job. The loss of a home. The losses are all around us. We may not recognize these losses as a form of grief, but we need to name the grief and take the time to grieve and process the loss. Grief will always be a part of our journey of life. I believe when we have lost our favorite person, we begin to recognize other losses in our lives. Grief becomes familiar and we feel all the negative emotions toward grief – anger, hurt, pain, heartache.
The pain and hurt of our grief become so familiar that we stay in these feelings out of fear of losing our connection with our loved one. It seems disrespectful to move forward and create a new life without our loved one. We do not want to live without them even though we know our loved one would want us to develop a new chapter of life and find a new meaning and purpose.
I listened to a mother who had lost her son. She shared the journey with me, and I could identify with many of the feelings and emotions she shared. Staying in the grief and not developing new relationships has kept her close to her son. We know life continues to happen around us, but the grief, pain and heartache feels like we are being loyal to our loved one. It gets comfortable and familiar, and our identity gets wrapped up in the grief. We connect to their pain of death through our pain of grief.
Our identify gets caught up in grief. If we begin a new relationship, others assume we are no longer grieving and have moved on. Sometimes we avoid relationships because we do not want to leave the familiarity of grief though it is painful. We may see ourselves as a widow, widower, childless, parentless individual and will always identity with that description. We do not know who we are outside of this identity. It can become comfortable, but it can also be a place where we are stuck and afraid of walking into this different life.
When we accept grief is always going to be a part of our lives, we can begin to name our feelings and take the time to process these emotions in a healthy way. When we try to avoid feeling the grief, it will express itself in negative ways like making us physically sick or living in fear, anxiety and depression. Grief is not like a welcomed friend, but like someone who shows up at our door unexpectedly and we must figure out how we deal with them. Jesus felt the pain and heartache of grief. God holds us close in our loss and tears. We receive His mercy. Mercy is God’s way of saying to us, “Give to me your heart which is full of heartache, pain and loss. I will not take away the love that it represents, but I will release you to live this next chapter of life. I will be with you. The love for your dear one will always be in you. Give to me the pain and hurt.”
Allow your grief to identify the hurt and pain in others. Acknowledge the loss. It is part of who you are and who they are.
