Let’s talk about grieving.
Look, before you click away from this, please know I don’t want to either. I’ve put off writing this blog for weeks just like I’ve put off thinking about leaving three weeks from today because listen:
Grieving isn’t fun. Grieving doesn’t feel nice.
And I don’t really know how to do it.
The past couple of weeks, the Lord has shown me not only do I not know how to grieve, I don’t allow myself to. Whenever something negative happens in my life, I’ve always gone straight for the Sunday school answers:
“God has a plan.” “This is happening so I will look more like Jesus.” “It’s going to be okay.”
While this isn’t intrinsically a bad thing, I completely skip over the emotional part of negative circumstances because I want to “be okay”.
Maybe it’s the small group leader in me, or maybe it’s just large amounts of pride, but I always want to focus on other people’s problems instead of mine. I won’t cry in front of people because I don’t want them to think I’m whining or selfish. I [pridefully] want everyone to think I have it all together and I’m spiritually mature enough to take this to Jesus on my own.
This is an incredibly twisted view of how to handle emotions, and it is absolutely contrary to how Jesus wants me to live my life.
God used John 11, where Jesus brings one of his best friends back from the dead, to illustrate this point to me.
On multiple occasions during this story, Jesus was overcome with emotion or deeply moved when he heard his friend Lazarus died. Most famously, John pens the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.” Although this is succinct and easy to memorize, I wish John had elaborated a little bit. Because sometimes my imagination likes to run away with things, I like to picture what John meant was this:
“Jesus cried. I don’t mean he teared up like he was watching ‘The Notebook’. I mean he ugly cried, y’all. There was snot rolling down his face into his beard. His face was blotchy. It pained my heart to hear the sounds and sobs he made. He sat with his head in his hands on the side of the dusty road and he mourned the death of one of his best friends.” (John 11:35, give or take)
Y’all, what gets me when I read this is because Jesus is fully God, He knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead the whole time. He even tells his disciples beforehand, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him” (verse 14-15).
So why did He weep? Why was he overcome with emotion? Why didn’t he just suck it up if He knew it was going to be okay?
The answer, I think, is because Jesus wanted to show us it’s okay to grieve.
Jesus loved Lazarus and grieved and wept when he died. I like to think he also wept because death was never meant to be a part of God’s original plan. He was grieving the loss of His friend, but He was also grieving the state of the broken world He had come to save.
Soaking in this story has made me realize I’m not really okay right now. In three weeks, I’m leaving behind my home and everyone I love for a year. And you know what?
It’s okay to grieve those things.
It’s okay to grieve the loss of relationships. It’s okay to grieve the loss of comfort and the loss of security. It’s okay to grieve when I drop my cat off at my parent’s house. It’s okay to not be okay.
God doesn’t look at our grieving with disgust. He gets down on His knees, looks in our tear-soaked eyes with tears in his own and whispers, “It’s okay. I understand. Don’t feel like you have to be okay, okay? I’m right here.”
Is there anything in your life you’re not letting yourself grieve? I would love it if you would feel the freedom today to not be okay.If Jesus took the time to weep about circumstances in His life, we certainly can!
He is gracious in our grieving, and He is absolutely a good, good, Father in the midst of our circumstances.
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The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18).
