A Collection of Reflections

Grieving has so many different sides to it that it defies being confined to a simple outline. So, if you don't mind, I'm just going to ramble now through thoughts that want inclusion, but don't need a chapter of their own.

Give It Time

Time alone heals no one, but everyone needs time to heal. Take time to mend. Give yourself time. Don't set limits or rigid goals for yourself. You will quickly discover that you can't get as much out of yourself as you used to. Some days you'll feel like you're swimming in peanut butter! You can't do anything about this but make it worse by berating yourself. Driving yourself like a mule through the day is the last thing you should do. You will move slower and get less done. That's just the way that it is.

The truth is your heart now has the heaviness of grief in it and that naturally interferes with the usual flow of your energy, slowing you up and even dragging you down. Because of this, your mind will also be encumbered as you go round and round trying to resolve points that are too painful to ignore. No one expects you to be a miracle worker during such a season. But you may expect it of yourself. Don't! Give yourself the same grace you would give to a grieving friend.

Above all give God time in which to work. Don't put God on the clock. Let Him work at His own pace and in His own way. He will anyway! Conversely, the Lord will always give you the time you need to get things right if He sees you working on it the right way. I was amazed at the ways my schedule kept opening to give me time to grieve properly. Give Him the same respect. He is working, too. Don't try to force His Hand or His timing. Instead, take time out just to sit quietly with Him.

Wasting time with Jesus is one of the best ways to occupy ourselves, and not just when we're grieving. If you hadn't learned how to do it before the grief hit, you may be slow to discover the value of sitting quietly, unless you take the bull by the horns (or the Lamb by His wool). This could be the ideal time to learn. I love sitting with a cup of tea at my side, a good book in my lap, and a beautiful garden beckoning my eyes and ears. Into such a setting, our hoped-for Guest often appears. Even if you don't sense His presence, be content to know He's there.

The Quietness of God

Many people report that the Lord seems distant when they want Him closer, or silent when they most need to hear from Him. Try not to be alarmed, if this frequent occurrence happens to you. God is being quiet and gentle with you for a good reason: The loss has been a terrible trauma. No matter how much you may want Him to show up with a powerful sense of His presence He may choose to stay hidden instead. There are good reasons for this which we can work out; others that only He knows.

For one, the Lord rarely desires to overwhelm our feelings. He is more concerned that you and I feel our feelings and learn to do the right thing with them than that we feel His. He would have us choose in freedom (without any pressure from His felt presence) whether we will want to give them to Him, or not. He is also always working to grow our faith. Well-grown faith doesn't grow out of feelings, but out of learning to trust ourselves to what He says about Himself in His Word. It is better to settle down, and know that He is God (good, present, and loving) than it is for us to feel it (Psalm 46:10). The great incentive for learning this is that we can take faith-knowing with us into every moment of the day, but feelings aren't under our control.

Simply give what you are feeling to Him in honest declarations of trust: Lord, I feel so crushed, so helpless. I give these feelings to You. Come and take them from me or help me with them Don't expect or insist that they will immediately be removed, but don't despair that they will never be gone either. Be expectant that your feelings could shift at any moment with His help; be confident that they will eventually be changed forever. Often, once we have unburdened our heart of its heavy load of pent-up feelings, His presence steals secretly upon us as His peace returns.

Tears and More Tears

Whenever the tears want to come, find a time and place where you can let them, the sooner the better. Then, when you're crying it may help to picture in your mind eye that the Lord Jesus is with you. You are not weeping in an empty room with no one to comfort you! Trust that He's receiving your tears as prayers and storing them in his bottle. He says that without a vision His people perish. Let the eye of your faith look towards Him, trusting that He's there. This isn't necessary, but it can be helpful. You don't really need to do anything but cry your tears in His direction and He'll gladly do the rest.

 King David wept all night for his son as he prayed for the child to live but when he learned that the baby had died, he rose and went about his day. It was certainly not the outcome he wanted, but it gives us a living picture of what it means to release the burden of our heart to God. So, it is with us. We cry out to God, wishing we had a different outcome than the loss of our loved one. Yet, when the tears have done their work, a new day will dawn when we, too, will rise and be about the life that still lies before us.

Suppose, however, that your tears seem bottled up on your side. If this is a serious problem, see A Testimony of Tears at the end of this section. For most of us, all that is needed is something to touch our hearts to get the tears flowing. The problem is that many people seem to view weeping as something they want to avoid. That's the wrong way to go! I made sure that if I had any tears in me that wanted to come out, the way was cleared for them to flow.

Accordingly, I printed large photos of June and placed them strategically around the house, so I would run into her at every turn. I also gathered all our favorite songs into playlists that easily triggered my tears, then added country songs to those lists. Certain movies, too, were especially helpful at searching out my heart's hidden trove of tears. In this way, I'm convinced that I moved through the grief more thoroughly and far less slowly than I would have otherwise. Why drag it out by making the Lord drag tears out of us?

The Pit of Self-Pity

Self-pity would sink us into a morass of the wrong kind of tears and a dismal form of grieving if we let it. Thank God that you are not to be pitied! You are among that happy company of loving hearts who had the great good fortune of knowing a great love. Now, you're feeling the pain of (what you know is) that love's temporary separation. Despite the anguish, it is a good and noble pain. You can bear it with honor! By grieving well, you can still honor them and cherish the memories you carry.

Self-pity would tarnish everything and make a mockery of any claim we may have had to selfless love. Self-pity in the end is always seen to have been only about oneself. Not even God can find a way into such a heart. From where our loved ones are in heaven, if they were allowed to observe us, they would be blessed and honored to see that we still grieve for them from time to time. But they would wince in dismay if they saw us falling apart as if we had no God still with us.

No, my friends, we are not to be pitied if by faith we know that there is a loving God in heaven to care for us and guide us safely home to where He and our loved ones are waiting. In the meantime, He will never leave us or forsake us but will cause all our present pains and problems to work towards a future filled with hope. Pity those who don't know these things!

Do the Next Right Thing

Stay anchored in doing the next right thing. As you allow yourself to go into the feelings of grief whenever it presents itself stay tethered to the necessary and wholesome practicalities of life. Otherwise, there is a risk of getting engulfed in the grief and find it hard to progress through it. There is a ditch on both sides of this unwanted and difficult path. We can fall into either side very easily if balance is not achieved with the Lord's help. Either we may get too busy doing the next right thing in a misguided effort to avoid the grief, or we may let go of faithfulness altogether (abandon doing the next right thing) and just wallow in the grief.

Admittedly, it is hard to walk in an upright way through times of deep grieving. However, many good things in life are hard (parenting is hard) but that is no excuse for not embracing the challenge to do it as well as we can. Not going through the grief in a faithful way, not only makes life harder on us, it can make life unspeakably more difficult for our friends and family. It wounds them with anxious concern if they see us damaging our lives by grieving badly or not at all. On the other hand, if we use the grief to grow our faith, others will be surprised and blessed as our growing faith even strengthens them.

What to Do for Those Who Grieve

Give the grieving your tears. What? It would seem that tears are the last thing that they need they already have so many of their own. Would it not be like taking water to the ocean? Or throwing matches into a fire? And yet tears (if you truly carry them for the one they have lost) are exactly what they need from you.

God is in your tears. He dwells with the broken in spirit (Psalm 34:18). So, in giving the grieving your tears you give them something graced by His presence. Such tears are the very Word made flesh a word of tender compassion from the Man of Sorrows, delivered in person through His Body on earth. In fact, He says to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15). He does already.

Will you join Him and share His Heart which is also touching yours with your friend? Let that touch go full circle! When Jobs friends huddled mournfully and silently around him in the time of his great sorrow, they did well. It was when they tried to speak, to explain, to vindicate God (by condemning Job!) that their words only succeeded in wounding him more. Many are those who give the grieving with their words but where, oh where, are those who give them their tears? How I yearned for more tears!

Prayer

Dear Jesus, thank you for every insight that You bring my way through friends and family or wherever I might find it. How true it is that we don't live by bread alone but are only brought to true life by every word that comes from Your mouth (Deuteronomy 8:3). This journey of grief is teaching me to listen for Your voice and helping me discover Your Word. May you also help me process my thoughts and recollections. Take me deeper into trust and understanding. One day, help me comfort others with the comfort I'm receiving from You.

Scripture

Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Psalm 46:10

When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. Psalm 34:17-19

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15

And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Deuteronomy 8:2-3

All scripture citations are from the English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted.