Back ‘n’ Forth Between Hope and Despair

The frustrating nature of grief is its variability through the journey of loss. We go from disconsolate despair one day, knowing no good thing at the level of our souls, to another day where we have renewed hope.

The nature of grieving is a vacancy of hope. Hope has flown away, because of the loss experienced; a loss that cannot be retrieved.

But because we are a people needing hope, we grapple for it, prepared to do anything to reclaim it. Grieving, most certainly, is the process where we fight to restore our hope. And back and forth we go between despair and hope, and, frustratingly in the pit of our loss, we never know when one or the other is on the horizon.

The Process of Growing in Patience

God has an agenda for our growth in the midst of our suffering. Through this darkness time, the Lord is working his love by manifesting within us more patience to endure the variations of mood and spiritual circumstance. We feel like emotional yo-yos.

The nature of grief is we find some hope, only to slip back a rung into sorrow once more, before hope again bears upon the soul. It’s a forwards-backwards land.

Sometimes we feel we have moved two steps back and we cannot see the next step forward. At other times we make grand advances on the goal of our recovery. Then, alas, we are again found in that backwards-backwards land for a day or so.

When we think we have made it, that we have ‘recovered’, we are cruelly reminded as we go from a hope-filled location within our souls to the most desolate of spiritual destinations.

God is teaching us wisdom; to not get too far ahead of ourselves. Pride may be more trouble than it’s worth in grief, as we hear hope’s promise and we want to go the full distance overnight.

Hope is not something that can be fabricated, but God sprinkles our grief-journey with enough hope to encourage us to believe. There must be some encouragement!

Our lesson, which is perhaps too coarse for us at the time, is to grow in patience. The duration of our grief is unknown to us and only known to God. We cannot hurry it.

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Grieving is a journey between hope and despair, and back and forth, until we recover. We cannot hurry the process of recovering in our grief. All we can do is grow in patience, appreciating hopeful times for what they are, and endure the despairing times.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.