Grief My Friend or Foe

Grief My Friend or Foe

Its been less than a year sense my husband and I said goodbye to our son. We have learned many things in this valley of life. One of the truths we have learned is this. Without God grief will consume overwhelm and burie you, but with God you can trample with His power death and it will loose its sting. 

The last several years we have watched as many of our friends lose their spouses to cancer. We have watched how each of them pick up their lives and how they move on. It has been beautiful, yet we have also seen how that has impacted the people that have walked with them in their lives before loss and after. 

Not long like less than a day after our son Peter had died that my husband and I both said to each other, shouldn't we be sadder. Now don't get me wrong we were sad but it was different. We had hope. This hope that was being prayed over us daily by hundreds of people that held us up. It was this hope that has helped us move forward. So how is it that when a man or woman lose their spouse their able to move on when what feels like it should be more complicated or difficult for them. The thoughts that go through our minds is "How can they be honoring the memory" or How can they love so quickly again? How can they move forward while others still grieve? 

So here is the down low on grief dear brave hearts. Grief exposes. We ask God to help us heal, we ask God for hope when all seems lost and when we are in grief so big that the darkness is so thick it will choke you God swoops in and lifts you up and you began to heal and God is not a waster of time. Healing without God is impossible. So to those who have lost children or a loved one that was an interrogate part of your life, let me give you permission to say Death has lost it sting and has no grip over me. What grief exposes is where we find our life and if our all is wrapped up in God or those we love and our circumstances. 

God asked me for my son before he was born and I have always said that my children belong to the Lord but in that moment the reality of that, it hit like a heavenly weight. I knew that I could not give my children to him the way he had given His Son to me. Ouch. Yep I realized that given the choice I would have been selfish. Claiming what is His as mine. Another thing that grief exposes is that when the spouse that remains here on earth decides to move forward others that loved the passed spouse often feel indifferent and upset. Not understanding how come it can happen so fast. Healing requires other to address their grief and without permission demands that we face grief and surrender to the weightiness of God. 

Grief is it your friend or your foe? I would have to say my friend. It wilds such a dependance on God that allows God to be God in my life. It breaks us, and in a blink of an eye we are brought to our utter smallness, and His bigness and our heavenly perspective changes. Grief is a quick humbler and brings your heart into complete submission or you demand your answers. Grief my friend strips away human fronts and posers and allows God in your brokenness to bring a crazy light to a world being swallowed into darkness without hope. Without grief and a clear understanding not just through knowledge but experience of it you realize how alive and active Jesus is. Everything changes everything. 

Now grief hurts and sometimes it hurts for the entirety of our life. And, pain is not a symptom of a lack of healing it is like a book marker that God had moved the foundation of this life because he intends to use what is His for the advancement the Kingdom of Heaven. I hope that you let pain be your candle stick and hope as your flame. There is hope for the broken hearted and healing to be had, but none of it is possible without entering into grief. Grief the door to a life unleashed for the Kingdome of Heaven.