Inescapable Grief

“Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? Where can I run from you?”  Psalm 139:7

Last week in my blog, I shared many unspoken stages of grief and asked you to share some of your own stages.  Sarah gave me this stage – “Inescapable Grief.”  Sarah said – “I had a stage where I just felt grief was inescapable – everywhere I turned.  There was no break from it during the early stages.  It did lessen and there were increasing breaks from it over time.  I think sitting with the loss, letting myself cry, talking about it and having a physical place for my grief helped a lot.”

When grief crowds into your life unexpectedly, it seems like it permeates every corner of your life.  You may have predicted it or even began preparing for the death and loss, but nobody prepares for the grief.  It is everywhere.  In all your thoughts, actions and surrounds you in your environment.  It feels like it is choking the little life you still have out of you.  Grief consumes, control and changes every aspect of life.  You attempt to concentrate on paperwork, a task, a work project, and grief takes charge.  It clouds your vision and numbs your thoughts.  You try to distract yourself, but it seeps into your distraction.  You change your environment and grief packs its bag and goes with you.  Grief is inescapable.

We attempt to escape from grief.  We change locations, clothes, habits, and relationships, but grief weaves its way into every aspect of life.  It may not be evident to others around us because we tend to hide it well.  We feel everyone can see the grief, but then we realize others have escaped from the choke hold of grief.  They even seem to be living life without being consumed with the pain and loss.  It hurts that others are not hurting and feeling our pain but it seems impossible to even share with them the hurt we feel from them because of the intensity of our grief.

The intensity of grief changes, but I believe grief lives within us in some form for the rest of our lives.  The longing for the relationship lost never leaves us.  The love we have never leaves us.  So, as I have journeyed down this path of grief, I have turned this negative intense grief that is everywhere into an inescapable love for the one who has been my person.  When I close my eyes, he is there.  When I think of other loved ones who are now in heaven, I close my eyes and remember.  I can see them and recall an event in time when the person was beside me and we shared life together.

Kenny Chesney has a song “When I Close My Eyes” –

              “When I close my eyes, you’re all I see

              In the dark of night, you’re in my dreams.

              Throughout the day. you’re easy to find

              You’re always there, when I close my eyes.”

I have begun to close my eyes, whenever I think of someone I love.  I feel their presence and the closeness of their touch.  In those moments, they are with me, and I feel a sense of quiet peace come over me.  I grieve because they are not with me, but I give thanks for their lives and when I close my eyes, they are easy to find.  They are in my heart forever.  The presence of those I love never escapes from my heart.

In my grief, I have come to accept that God has been with me through it all.  Even when I felt alone, God’s Spirit was always with me.  I did not need to feel God, but trust.  We cannot escape God’s love even when our own pain and loss cloud our view and acceptance.  God is always with us on this journey of life.  I have changed my focus.  I focus on God’s inescapable love and presence.  I will never be outside of His love and care and neither will you.