Photo by Andrei Lazarev on Unsplash
The saddest, most profound truth about the suffering in grief is
that it has a compound nature about it. What I mean is that there are layers to
the suffering that prove overwhelming.
Within one single loss event there can be a myriad of separate
grief issues, because rarely is loss linear. If we lose a spouse or a parent or
a child or a marriage or a career, several relationships change, and there are numerous
losses within the loss event itself.
For myself, when I lost my first marriage in 2003, I lost not
only my wife (the major loss), but my home, constant access to my children, the
ability to stay in my job, and financially too. And this doesn’t cover
reputational losses, and the losses incurred to my mental health. The rest of
my family, on both sides, also experienced their own sense of loss. And yet I
understand why that marriage failed, and today I’m an advocate for women who
are dealing with husbands like I was. Even then, as that marriage went up in
smoke, I was aware of the consequences of my lack of action that led to its
demise. Suffering regret and remorse was essentially a further layer of grief
that took me some time to understand and accept.
And then there is the phenomenon where one loss is followed by
another and then another, and even multiple loss events that occur
simultaneously. If we can only imagine how so many people suffer from the loss
of a family member, and a marriage, and a career change they didn’t choose or
financial loss, or the loss of their mental health and their physical health, or the loss of two or three family
members in a relatively short space of time. So many people must grieve the
loss of a preferred life path which came because relationships were untenable —
two losses at the same time.
When we were losing Nathanael, there was another very real and tangible
loss we were experiencing, something that felt out of our control, something
that was very hard for me personally, something very stressful for both of us,
completely unconnected to the loss of our baby — two journeys of loss in
parallel. Add to this another issue that was to consume many hours of our time,
yet a process God had called us to. And yet remarkably we knew God was close
right throughout the entire season, every single day. Even as we felt
overwhelmed in many ways, we also knew we were being carried by prayer. Not
that it wasn’t the toughest kind of season that regularly pushed us beyond our
limits, because it was.
We are forgiven for feeling under attack, and for wondering
whether God has in fact turned His face from us, or for feeling numb or beyond
our means to cope. Many are also tempted to feel angry toward God, like, ‘How
could God allow this or these things to happen?’ These are all normal feelings
and responses.
It isn’t abnormal to find ourselves in a Job kind of experience,
but of course within our realm of relationships it is unlikely that we will
know another person afflicted like we are at the time. And it doesn’t always
help if we do know someone who is equivalently afflicted. They can drag us
down, or we can find that we drag them down. Empathy isn’t straightforward when
we’re grieving, nor is support from another person who is grieving or suffering
in any way, apart from the knowledge that we are not alone, although it is true
that two separate persons don’t always feel weak at the same time. Sometimes
facilitated counselling groups can be a Godsend.
As you traverse your grief, you may well notice the
multidimensional nature of the loss event you are in. It may help to list down
the losses in becoming aware of the magnitude of those sources of grief. This
as a source for being gentle with yourself.
It is good to know that grief is a journey, and there does not
need to always feel so sharp. But some are called to an extended season of
grief that does seem to last and last. One thing can be certain, grief always
last longer than we would prefer it to.
Just about every form of suffering has grief in it, and often
mental illness is caused by grief.
I would like to
conclude with some words on faith:
Faith is like deciding to cross a
bridge. The journey is worth the work and pain. Hope gets us across. Jesus is
with us every step of the way. Even as we rest when the journey is too much for
us. His Presence ministers to us as we rest, and it empowers each movement
forward. “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
And yet, there are times when the
journey, having commenced it, feels not only impossible, but not worth it. We
consider turning back. Indeed, there are times when
we cannot go on, just as there are times when we find ourselves walking the
other way, at war with ourselves for what we are doing.
We just feel incapable of
righting our thinking. Jesus understands.
Even as we turn and walk the
other way, Jesus is still with us, not berating us nor condemning us. He is
simply there, with us as our ally, encouraging us to draw close to Him.
As we draw close to Jesus, He
reminds us of His Word, of His truth, of His promises, and we may feel the
reassurance of His Presence. He renews our heart and mind gradually as we press
in.
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