Everyday and Entrenched Grieving

As a peacemaking mediator I come across everyday and entrenched conflict very often.  Daily, weekly, monthly in ministry, and certainly my own life is no exception, there are touch points of both more regularly than I find comfortable.  

Yet, within conflict there are always opportunities, if we’re looking up, committed to being kind and serving others, and looking to grow.  

Just like there is everyday conflict
and entrenched conflict
there is everyday and entrenched grief.  

And we all get a taste of both.  

Just like we endure entrenched grieving — where we’re held in an extended season of grief — or that there are circumstances we cannot transcend in this life — and where there are many layers to the pain — there is also the phenomenon of various forms of everyday grieving in the journey of emotional and spiritual health.  

Every day is different.  Our emotions and thoughts are different each day.  Some days we’re more honest with ourselves than we are on other days.  For inexplicable reasons we are anxious or joyful or accepting or depressed.  Life doesn’t always seem clear to us.  And yet some days we have perfect clarity.  

There are a variety of ways we enter everyday grieving, which is just a momentary taste and lighter dose of the denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance of entrenched grieving where we feel storm-tossed for indeterminate time periods.  

On different days we endure grieving for others, we feel their pain, and vicariously suffer for them and with them.  When it’s not our pain it’s hard to suffer like they suffer but perhaps it’s a child or grandchild, other relative or good friend.  Our anguish is we cannot alleviate their pain.  

In our own lives, there are daily disappointments, surprises and triggers, unexpected bumps along/within a profusion of transitions, struggles with inexplicable depressions and anxieties, the outworking of broken dreams.  

Transitions alone are the cause of much everyday grief that threatens to plunge us into entrenched grief, and this is because transitions take six months or two years (and longer) to complete.  

Grief itself is the adjustment to a life we
would not have chosen but are invited to accept.  

Surprises and triggers can be frustrating, and we may be fatigued simply by the frustration of, “Why do I let this circumstance/situation affect me so much/easily?”  

Broken dreams and regrets are inevitable in any long life, and the effect of regret rises and falls depending on the day and how ‘strong’ we feel — and how much life reminds of us.  

Everyday grief may not be anything like entrenched grief, but it is part of most days of life.  

Most days we find ourselves challenged
to accept something we cannot change.  

This is our reminder to go gently
in the course of one’s everyday grief.  

Grief is normal to life, and wisdom directs us to ride the waves of life with as much serenity as we can authentically experience, again through acceptance, and plain gratitude for the simplest things in life.