On Grief
*This originally appeared as a social media post, but it was so powerfully received, I felt like it needed to live here on the blog, and I plan on adding to it in regards to how to better minister to those in the midst of grief. xo-Em
Earlier this week, I was talking with a friend working through a terrible season of grief during an exciting time in her own life. A young man is dying. Someone she and her family dearly loves. He will leave a wife and young children behind when he goes home. It’s horrific. We were talking about how to hold your own grief, minister to those even closer to him, and how to love on him and his little family in the holy and horrible road to his homecoming, and how to even think about the after. We were talking about this because I’ve sadly been down this road a few times in my life. Sometimes with people who were shockingly young, sometimes people who had lived long lives, but not long enough. Other times rich lives had been lived, but the hole they left is still unable to be filled.
Here is the truth: we were not made to know death. When God created the first family in the Garden of Eden, they were made for life everlasting together and with Him. There was a constant unbroken fellowship. The introduction of sin into the garden does not appear to be what singularly moved God and the angels to drive them out of Eden. Genesis 3:22-24 it says “And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.”
They were driven out of Eden so that they would not eat the fruit that kept them living forever. The tree of life in the garden was what had to be protected. And so the world came to know not only the devastation of sin but also death. However, if God had not done this, Adam and Eve would be trapped in their sin skin eternally, then there would not have been an opportunity for Jesus to come and take death back. We are still on the journey to redemption, but death is not the end of the story anymore. But even with that hope in place, the foreign sensation of being broken from the people we love so dearly is still part of life on this side of Heaven. Jesus, Himself weeps at the reality of it. Outside of Lazarus’ tomb, knowing what was coming, He still wept because death is grievous. It grieves Him that we are acquainted with grief.
I am writing this on Grief Awareness Day. I love that it is called this because it is about acknowledging that grief exists. It is not something that can be shushed or extinguished. I fully and wholeheartedly believe in hope. The gift of hope, however, is that it can tolerate lament and joy. It is not right that we experience the loss of people we love. Or even just the people we appreciate. It is heartbreaking that hearts are broken in this way. It will not always be this way, but it is this way for now.
One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and to others, as they grieve is to just see it. Don’t try to fix it. Don’t say things that make YOU feel better like “everything happens for a reason” or commentary about Heaven. I LOVE the images the Lord gives me about the eternal life of my people who are no longer with me. That doesn’t mean I don’t ache inside. The Lord meets me in the unseen, I promise, and He can and will meet others too. But Jesus did not offer a sermon at the tomb of his friend, he offered His presence and His tears. THEN He did what He alone could do. He is our hope, but He is with us in our lament. This isn’t how the story ends, friends, but I’m sorry that this is the part we’re on. You are so loved.