I didn’t realize how much I hate grieving until I discovered that I have been avoiding it all my life. God has blessed me with a naturally joyful perspective on life, but when I was quite young, I decided that I would be happy all of the time, partly because I was genuinely happy, but also because it was a means of control. By choosing to be happy, I could control the mood, I could influence other people, and I could be a reliable source of smiles for those around me. However, by doing this, I soon forgot how to be anything but happy. I forgot how to be sad, how to grieve. When hard things happened, I thought I was processing my emotions, but in reality, I was smothering them. This in turn was encouraged whenever family turned to me for strength and stability in difficult situations.
Then I came on the Race. God had been revealing to me that I needed to learn how to grieve so I was trying to open my heart to actually feel. I thought I was prepared to let myself feel and grieve, but as people say, when it rains it pours. As I kept hearing thing after thing that was going on back at home, I began to feel it breaking me down and making me realize that I wasn’t prepared at all. Learning to grieve was a lot harder than I had thought.
Within the past month my family has experienced (and really is still experiencing) three very painful situations. First off, my uncle, who has been very sick with cancer for quite some time, is now dying. My mom went up to their house for a while to be there with everybody, but it was really hard for her to offer hope in a rather hopeless situation. My uncle doesn’t know Jesus, and as Christian, that really breaks my heart to know that he is dying. Second, a pastor who God has used to bring a lot of freedom and healing to our family died unexpectedly during a routine heart surgery a few weeks ago. And finally, one of my younger siblings who has been mysteriously ill for a while now, has recently got much worse, recreating all over again my older sister’s battle with Lyme’s disease several years ago. God preformed a miracle and healed her completely seven years ago, but the wounds are still fresh in my heart. And now with my other sibling sick as well, it is leaving me asking, God, why?!
However, grief doesn’t have to bring despair. With God, there is always joy in the midst of grief. Not necessarily in the situation, but because God is good. In Ecclesiastes 3, it says that there is “a season and a time for every matter under heaven… a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” But it also says in 1 Thessalonians 5:16:16-18, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” And then in Nehemiah 8:10, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Grieving with the Lord is allowing your heart to hurt and grieve but not letting the circumstances change one bit who you know God is and his goodness toward you.
Knowing that God is good doesn’t illuminate the pain. My heart still hurts. During random times of the day, I will feel this overwhelming desire just to put my face in my hands and weep. God is good, but my heart still hurts. And the best and also most difficult part about it all is that I can’t do anything about the things at home that are bringing all this pain. I can’t fix anything, or even lighten anyone’s load, and that’s really hard. All I can do is pray and cry out to the one who “has borne all our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4).
This picture is an image of prayer and intercession that the Lord gave me the other day and then I drew. When we lift up the people we love to the Lord, He takes them. We do not bear the burden at all; we are just acting in obedience as the Holy Spirit leads us how to pray.
I know there is still much more that I have to learn on the topic of grief, but for me, this is a big revelation. And it is my hope and prayer that it will help you as well on this topic. Grief is not a bad thing, it’s not even a scary thing, at least, not with the Lord. Paraphrasing what it says in Nehemiah 8:10, the joy of the Lord is my strength. And in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “[God’s] power is made perfect (complete) in weakness.” The important thing to remember is that when grief comes, embrace it and everything God wants to teach you through it, rather than pushing it away with distractions.
Alright, that’s all for now. Love you guys.
