Keeping a Grief Journal
It is a good idea to keep a grief journal. This helps you remember insights and reminisces that you don't want to forget. It will also give you a legitimate feeling that at least you are doing something to make progress (and you are). You will be surprised by the way that journaling lets your innermost thoughts come up to the surface. Celebrate discovering the good ones. Work with those that are unpleasant. Don't throw them away! Processed through faith and prayer, these will do you the most good in terms of self-understanding and growth in the Lord.
Let the following passages from my grief journal show you one way that it can be done and inspire you to get started on one of your own. Don't strive for eloquence, only for capturing your honest thoughts and feelings. Down the road there is a version of yourself (trust me) who will be so deeply grateful for this kind of record, cherishing the insights that you gleaned along the way towards becoming that new version of yourself.
Monday, March 12
There is something about this pain that makes me almost want to let go of the truth. I almost want to make myself feel not just devastated, but actually desolated and destroyed. This is very akin to self-pity, but at this point, it is just the reality of not wanting to have a life without her. Yet I dare not let go of the Truth or how will I ever be set free (and finding myself cut off from June, I cut myself off from Him who is my only Hope)? God says He is very near to the brokenhearted. He weeps with those who weep. How can we imagine He does not follow His own advice? That's the truth.
Monday through Thursday, March 12-15
It now seems that I have nothing left to live for except the Kingdom, Jesus, and the will of the Father. But that is an incredible amount to live for!
My feelings are very heavy and hard: I don't want to live without her, and I don't want to go on doing the ministry without her. This is simply the way that I have been feeling these four mornings. I am not being attacked with thoughts of killing myself. This is just an honest recognition of the pain I feel and the now-ruined desire that filled so much of my heart the whole of my adult life, which was to live with her at my side and to live for the days of fruitful service that we were only just now entering into.
March 23 or so
There is a conviction deep within, the cry of a desperate heart: It can't be real. It can't be true. This can't be happening to me! I know what to do with unbelief and lack of acceptance. I know how to receive grace to surrender and accept what God allows, but I don't want to exchange my grief for that kind of acceptance yet. I'm still holding out for the kind of reversal that isn't possible having June restored to me in physical life. This isn't unbelief (which is a sin) but disbelief. Refusal or inability to comprehend that what has happened has really happened.
Softness in grief is born of acceptance however contingent or conditional it may be. Hardness is facing the implacable wall of finality and wanting it to come down.
I know that He is with me. I don't feel Him or sense Him, but the signs of His Hand are everywhere coincidences, unexpected but welcomed calls or visits, uplifting words, penetrating looks, the stricken understanding of friends who see the sorrow in me, the awareness of bird song, the affection of cats, the steadying voice that will not allow me to go down the dark rabbit holes of blame and self-pity, the tender caress of sympathetic songs. I love tenderness when I hear it now in certain voices more than I can ever remember. It means so much that someone doesn't want to hurt the already broken heart.
Whenever I yield and accept, the grief goes soft. But I don't want that quite yet. All manner of grace is offered to me, but the one thing I can't have is the only thing that I want. And when that is on me hard, I actually want it to cut deep. I want to feel the ragged edge of the place where her life was torn from me. Is that part of what it means to have become one flesh this ripping and tearing? It's my strongest point of contact with her and I don't want to lose it. I am not ready yet to trade it in for fond memories and sweet remembrances.
Monday, April 2
I realized this morning that I have been looking at the impossibility of life without her and then trying to figure out for myself how God can possibly bring life to me out of this impasse. That is too far beyond my understanding! I have been trying so hard (without realizing it) to figure out or understand how my life can possibly ever be OK, or good, or desirable to me without her in it. But I must repent of trying to lean on my own understanding. I must trust and accept His promise as Truth a truth that applies to everyone in distress, even to me in my own unique circumstances (the promise of Romans 8:28). It is the Father's job (or joy) to figure out how to keep His promises to me but keep His promises He will. It is only for me to believe it and to take joy and peace in knowing and believing it to be now and forever true (Romans 15:13).
Monday, April 9
The way the grieving is going is showing me that my peace and joy and hope have not been founded as much on Him and my desire to live for Him, as in June and the quality of my relationship with her. I have lived and died a thousand times by the quality of my bond with her and still do. The place of God and Jesus seems not to matter nearly as much as it should, but perhaps it is because I am pretty secure in their love for me right now and their devotion to me in this time of grief, so that my focus is able to be on my feelings for June. And perhaps, in tender sympathy, they want it to be that way for now.
Sometime in early April
June: Every moment not loving you was wasted time.
Scripture
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28 ESV
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13 ESV
