The Fellowship of Grief

“All the believers were of one heart and mind…and there was warm fellowship among all believers.”                        Acts 4:32-33

As we prayed together in worship, the tears flowed as we remembered a dear believer who was now in Heaven.  The last time he was in worship, he prayed over the offering and now we were overcome with grief as another tried to pray.  We were a community of believers who had the identical feelings and emotions.  We were grieving the loss of someone who had always been there and greeted us with a smile, a warm handshake, and his Christ-like spirit.  It was a sacred and holy moment when our hearts were connected in grief and in celebration of a life well lived who was now in Heaven.

As I had dinner and conversation with a group of widows, I felt an emotional connection with these ladies.  We all had experienced the loss of our husbands and grief was the common factor in our fellowship.  We were all on the journey, each at different stages but on the same path in this different life.  As we shared, I knew that our desire to be a support to other widows beginning this journey was from God, and I was trusting God’s plan.

When I heard about a friend whose husband had died, I remembered my grief as I began the journey.  But I also grieved for her because she would not experience the fellowship of friends and family at visitation.  No service was scheduled and a plan for a celebration of life was set at a later date.  COVID has brought the lack of fellowship at funerals.  Grieving families no longer hear the stories and memories.  They do not receive the hugs, the lines of people waiting to express sympathy, and hear the impact their loved one made on people’s lives.

I walked into the church building.  A place where I have connected with the fellowship of believers, but whom I have not seen for almost a year.  Even if churches are meeting on Sundays, the restrictions of social distancing and masks prevent the warm hugs and handshakes that helped us feel connected to other believers.  Our hearts are one in Jesus, but we desire the touch and hugs of fellow believers.

What is fellowship?  The dictionary defines fellowship as “companionship, company, a community of feeling or experience.”  We are fellow travelers as the body of believers.  We have the common connection of our faith in Jesus.  Fellowship is more than what or who we have in common, it is also the feeling or emotion within our hearts.  It goes deeper.  The fellowship of grief is not that we have the same person in common, but we have the same experience and emotions in common.  We each have a loss that changes us and remains within us.  We are different and long to find others who understand and empathize with us.  We long for someone to “get it” and allow us to be who we are in our grief.  People with whom we can just be ourselves and allow us to feel however we feel without judgment or expectation of change. 

While none of us chose this fellowship of grief, we long for a place where grief is recognized and wherever we are on the journey is accepted.  The focus is not always the grief, but it is the underlying feeling.  It does not need to be stated in this fellowship.  We just know and can tell our story over and over again and feel loved and accepted.  This is fellowship.  We are companions on the journey.  In your grief, may you find this fellowship, this acceptance and connection.  It does not take away our grief, but it confirms that living in our hurt and loss is an acceptable place to be.