I hate to talk about this through words on a screen... I would much rather be sunken into the corner of a big couch–while you're nestled in your favorite chair - sipping warm matcha and pouring our hearts out to each other with holy resolve.
I wish we could be face to face when I tell you:
“You will never solve your grief; healing doesn’t make the awful things go away. It doesn’t make what happened to you any less awful.”
I would speak to you in a kind, but courageous way–filled with both sorrow and compassion–as this statement sinks deeply into our souls. We would sit in the quiet for a while before I ask if you have a sense of something you need. We would both sip our teas, and talk about how awful and beautiful it is that the grief you’re feeling is forever a part of you.
Awful, because the losses you’ve endured have been significant.
Beautiful, because this lingering grief is evidence that something you loved is gone–an indication that desire and goodness were alive.
And whether the death is literal or figurative, the pain you're experiencing is valid.
Our deepest griefs will always be a part of us–transforming our lives in wonderfully tragic and mysterious ways. But I no longer seek to place hope in a narrative that the tragedies we face are intended to make us better or stronger. Your losses were not sent as an opportunity for you to improve yourself–that is just a different kind of prosperity gospel. What doesn’t kill us doesn’t always make us stronger. And even though it feels impossible to cope with terrible things that we might never understand, can we agree to not turn against ourselves with a hasty challenge to grow and be better because of our suffering?…
The truth is, our compulsion to make sense of–or learn from–unexplainable losses is what often spirals us deeper into despair, requiring us to lock our losses away from awareness, while still very much experiencing them in our bodies.
What if you actually do find strength in your weaknesses?
Not becoming better because of them, but through surrendering to a life that includes suffering. We’re invited to come close to a God whose objective is to seek and to save–to bind up our wounds, to comfort the brokenhearted… And it takes immense courage to name grief and how you are carrying it; it is daring to continue to allow God to comfort you for the things that have been out of your control.
When you loosen your grip from the expectation to be unaffected by the lows of your own humanity, you become more free to experience and live into the highs and the moments of joy–along with the grief and despair.
Healing is not linear, and it has nothing to do with being unaffected by your grief.
It’s learning to live into the highs and the lows–it’s naming, it’s feeling, it’s being connectedto self and God with the full spectrum of your humanity.
This is the freedom you’re invited into. It’s wild and good–it’s messy and it sometimes feels like a lifetime of despair and hope.
Your freedom comes through feeling all of it.
And it’s absolutely brutally beautiful.
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