Will grief ever go away?
Today I want to talk about grief. I have heard grief described as a void in a person, a hole in you that never goes away. Another description says that grief is like filling a water bucket. At first it fills very rapidly, but then as time goes by, it fills more slowly. It always fills, but over time this filling up takes more time.
All of this is true, but there are many who talk about getting over your grief. They talk about grief as something that should eventually subside. I think these people are likely those who have never experienced grief.
I don’t want to examine all of the types of grief nor the nuances of what grief is to different people. People experience grief in many ways and for many different things. People also experience grief very differently from one another.
I only want to talk about grief from my point of view. Our son Joshua died three years ago. I have begun to wonder if our grief, my grief, will ever subside or get any easier to bear. At times it seems that it might; at times it seems that it never will.
I find grief to be like a wound. I have a reconstructed knee that was repaired 40 years ago. There are days when it does not bother me much; there are other days when I struggle with the pain that returns me to the original injury, and there are some days when the pain is not too bad and I can manage. I can cope.
Some days I go back to that awful weekend and the grief seems too overwhelming. Some days I am functional without the grief being a heavy load, and some days I feel the pain but I can manage my daily routine and cope with the level of pain.
Will my grief ever go away? I doubt it. I feel like it is here to stay. Yet it has changed. The initial severity, the shock, the terrible feeling of emptiness and loss has changed, just as my wounded knee changed from the night that it was injured. The change was a tempering. My grief has been tempered by many things: God’s comfort, time, the compassion of others that has somehow surrounded me. It has been tempered yet has not faded. Some days it is in the background; some days it is in the foreground.
I also believe that grief changes the griever. It has certainly changed me. I believe that this change can be destructive or constructive change.
Destructive change can be seen in those who turn inward and internalize the pain. Their pain becomes something they are obsessed with, that begins to eat their very souls. The pain of grief is allowed to become dominant. It becomes almost completely an issue of self-focus. I am not attempting to minimize the initial pain of grief. What I am talking about is something that happens over time.
Constructive change is different. It points me externally. It points me past my own pain. This is how God works in us, in me. He allows my dependence on Him to let grief become part of me in a way that is not all terrible pain and my own calamity. If we will allow God to be at work within us, our own grief can turn us toward the pain and suffering of others who may need the comfort more than we do at that moment. This then begins to temper the effect of our own grief.
I am strongly convinced that only God can take bad things and somehow bring good from them. My loss will never be a good thing. My grief will never be a good thing. Yet God is finding ways for good to come from this terrible event in my life and the lives of my family. For this I am deeply grateful. What would I do without the work of God in my life and in my grief?
