Reflections on Suffering and Grieving - 3

Reflections on Suffering and Grieving - 3

Monday August 12, 2024

 

The most brutal pain often careens into the most ordinary days.

There are no scripts for these moments in life.

These kinds of moments aren’t supposed to be in the script…

There are no shortcuts through seasons of deep loss, and there is no bypassing the myriad hard emotions that come with them.

If we don’t deal with hard emotions on our terms, they will come back on their terms later…

The only way to deal with our hard emotions is to meet them head on and process through them.

And that’s where it gets tricky, because when was the last time you welcomed your negative emotions?…

Our culture is good at celebrating the wins but not so much at mourning the losses.

~Lisa Appelo

 

Yes. Exactly. 

You’re just living your everyday ordinary life. And then one day, brutal pain unexpectedly and uninvitedly careens in. And your world is turned upside-down in an instant. 

There are no scripts for these moments in life. These kinds of moments aren’t supposed to be in the script. Of course not. Who would voluntarily write the story of their lives with horrendous heartache crashing in? Agony and anguish are just not something that is thought out and written and rehearsed like lines in a play. They barge in unwanted, they stay unasked, they seemingly ruin and destroy all we had thought our lives would be and look like. 

And then, there are just no shortcuts through seasons of deep loss and hard emotions. We would want to walk around them, bypass them altogether - but we always have to go right through them, face them head-on, push past them to the other side. And who likes doing this? Who likes welcoming and dealing with their difficult negative emotions? Not many of us, if any of us. 

As Lisa Appelo writes: Our culture is good at celebrating the wins but not so much at mourning the losses. Because, of course, wins are victories and triumphs and achievements. And who doesn’t enjoy celebrating these in their own or in others’ lives? But mourning the losses, grieving the deaths, feeling all the gut-wrenching emotions that pain and suffering bring - who willingly wants to do this?

And yet… and yet, that is exactly what we must do if we want to keep moving forward in life, if we don’t want to get stuck in our pits of loss and despair - and if we truly want to heal and be restored into something new and beautiful. 

 

"I waited patiently for the Lord to help me, and He turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God." ~Psalm 40:1-3

 

Yes. Sometimes we find ourselves in deep and dark and narrow pits of despair. In our pain and losses, we cry out day and night. We have no choice but to wait, patiently, for the Lord to finally turn towards us, to hear our cries, and to help us - to lift us out of the mud and the mire - to set our feet on solid ground - and then to steady us as we begin to walk again. Black holes of suffering and grief are never places that we would willingly choose to fall into, or stay in for any length of time. But God is always there with us, longing for us to cry out to Him, waiting to help and lift out and steady us when He deems the time to be just right. And then, we can live in the light once again, in a wide-open and spacious place, on solid ground, with a new song of praise to Him in our hearts and in our mouths. The day may tarry for awhile, but it will surely come. 

 

+ REFLECTIONS