When Grief Comes

You who are my comforter in sorrow, my heart is faint within me. 

Jeremiah 8:18

I sit by the water, watching a leaf trickle through the air on its journey to the rippling surface. The sky is blue and the clouds’ edges are so sharp they look frazzled and irritated. The perfection of their silhouette against brilliant azure seems to frustrate them. They want to frizz out a bit and break the blissful facade. Kind of like my naturally curly hair I work so hard to straighten. The wind kicks her heels, threatening to upend my coffee cup as if she agrees to help.

Two people sit nearby and make me mad. I want to be alone. I don’t want to hear another human voice. I want to own this wild space of separate-ness, this moment in time when I am alone. I want to think my own thoughts, ruminate on my own questions, examine my own heart on my own without interruption. To pour my sorrow out to God under the vast expanse of sky.

I can feel my feelings right now and I need to. It’s a relief after so much numbness. They so often elude me, inaccessible to me as I race to survive. 

I am experiencing grief, the game of hide-and-seek it plays with those who have experienced loss. One minute we want to feel, and we can’t. Another minute we most definitely do not want to feel, but the feelings rise like a tsunami surging toward us, threatening to destroy our carefully-constructed calm.

Grief is like that. Fickle. Unpredictable. But one thing grief is not. Grief is never unexpected. 

Grief can be expected after loss, if we will admit the truth. Loss causes grief.

We may not be able to put grief in our calendars and set an alarm to schedule a good cry, but we can plan for it to some extent. Because grief is inevitable.

Kind of like the advice a financial counselor gave me long ago when as a young college student I was learning how to make a budget.

You can predict most everything. Not much is unexpected, really.

A flat tire happens. Oil needs changed. Houses need painting eventually. Computers wear out. Save up for it, don’t be surprised.

So I have accepted that grief will come. I’ve been expecting it for some months now. 

This weekend I unpacked the last of a few boxes I’d been avoiding. Avoiding because they contained the stuff of my last day before Everything Changed. The daily calendar whose ribbon marked November 6, the morning’s to-do list scrawled in my favorite black ink. The letter I had just mailed to our parents and siblings telling them in lieu of Christmas gifts, give to our family service trip to the Middle East. That trip was canceled along with everything else after the fire.

The grief rose up ugly. Strong. Quaking, shaking. Unedited.

So today I retreated to face it, to let it have its way so I can make my way forward.

When grief comes like it did today by the river, I’m not surprised.

I don’t enjoy it, I don’t like to ugly cry, I don’t like to feel sad. But I’m relieved it has poked its head to the surface so I can let it out. Because there have been times I try to feel and cannot, times I desperately wish I could deal with the pent-up sorrow that has power to harden a heart and make its waters bitter. And no amount of prodding and therapy makes it magically appear for window-washing.

Feeling our #grief is a gift. A terrible, powerful, potentially healing and wonderful, gift. #mentalhealth #loss #hope Click To Tweet

If you have experienced loss, plan for grief. Know grief will come, even though you can’t determine exactly when. Expect it. When you hear the rumble of its tires in the driveway, rise to your feet and open the door. Let it in, and make time for it. Call a few close friends and let them in on the conversation. Have a good cry, and don’t feel ashamed. 

Then, after grief has had its say, wash your face, smooth your frizzy hair, and stand up to re-enter your life. Grief will likely visit again, but next time you’ll be stronger. Clearer. Calmer and more hopeful because you listened and made time for it last time.

I’m gathering my things now, my laptop, my unread book, and my empty coffee cup. I’m heading back to my sweet family who is waiting for dinner. I feel better for now. Hope is tenacious. It grows bigger in me when I allow myself to grieve awhile.

Lord, help me be brave enough to let grief come. Put hope in my heart in the broken places and restore my soul. Amen.

@audreycfrank

After I thought I was done with this post and rose to leave…

Now the sky is blue above me and my rocking chair. Wispy, feather-like seeds are floating through the air. If we sit long enough in quiet, the Lord has so much to say in our grief. 

The painful pause carries on its current seeds of hope. 

Hope for new beginnings. New life. The great After. 

After grief…. hope again. 

If I had rushed off while the wind was raging I might have missed these tiny seeds, visible emissaries of hope. 

Thank You, my Father. How good it is to grieve with the Creator of the river and the seeds, the wind and the clouds, the One who brings life from the cracked, decaying hull of the yielded seed beneath the earth. Thank You, Jesus. You gave me the courage to rise and hope for life on the other side of loss.