Hello and happy new year. I have been gone for a while and as timid as my re-entry on this platform is, I do home that the time that has passed since my last post on here and now has treated you well. If not, well just know that you are not alone. You are probably reading this and gone back to the title and wondered why is my first post of the year and my first post after being away for so long is one on grief. What an odd way to reenter the conversation. Well, maybe it is but maybe it isn't because grief is cuch an ever present thing in our life. An elephant in the room that people acknowledge (reluctantly) but dare not to speak about past the acknowledgement. I might not have lived long years on this earth but i know a thing or two about grief. Grief is what 2024 was made of for me. Not the entirety of 2024. But I dare say a big part of it.
Grief is such a weird thing… Like a fog that wraps its arms around you. A heaviness that sits on your chest and on your eyes… The bags under them, puffy and so noticeable, being the sign of something that can never be explained or understood unless you have been through it, unless you have lived through it. It’s the scream that you can never let out. The one that you choke on through silent tears at night and sometimes during the day, when you need to keep moving through life but you have to keep excusing yourself to the bathroom so you can ride the wave of tears that hit you out of nowhere. Ride the waves not because you want to, as if not riding it was an option… But because you need to in order to keep your sanity. But also because those moments where you get to break and let it all out are the reason why you are still standing. A little over a year ago, I watched a movie called Love again and and it is about life after grief. From the time the clock stops when we start mourning to the moment life picks up it’s normal pace and we stop feeling stuck or moving forward in slow motion.
I remember once having a chat with one of my former bosses about grief and a post she saw on LinkedIn. The post was a picture of a ball in a jar. At first the ball took the majority of the space in the jar, but then it seemed as if it was shrinking. But then there were a few words about how grief doesn’t shrink but how our lives (the jar) keep getting bigger in comparison to the grief (the ball). The jar gets bigger through the new connections we make, the memories, the new experiences as we live life on the other side of grief. They don’t make grief any less significant or any less painful and if you have once thought about someone that passed a long time ago and still got teary eyed, you know about this. They just give us something to hold onto. Something to give us traction in life. Something to anchor ourselves to so that when the waves hit out of nowhere, our ship can still remain on the sea of life and not drift away when the pain, sadness and sorrows of the present moment make us lose sight of tomorrow. There is something about loss and grief, whether it's people, dreams and/or missed opportunities in life, that remind us of how small and frail we are in the scheme or things. But in these moments of grief, heartbreak and deep loss, I was also reminded as a believer of how big and strong my God is. I was reminded that a God that can hold the hold universe in his hands, can and will carry me in his hands too. A God so strong can carry me but He can also carry a pain that threatens to crush me minute by minute effortlessly. And it is because He is that strong that Peter invites us to cast all of our cares on him because He cares for us (1 Pe 5:7)
Time waits for no one but there is no time limit on grief. You can’t outrun it, you cannot fake strength through it. All you can do is go through it, one day at a time, sometimes standing and sometimes kneeling, until the needles of your clock start moving again and you can start walking towards the rest of your life, on the other side. All you can do is give it to God, moment by moment and ride the wave knowing that you are never alone and never will be alone in the boat for God is an ever present help in times of trouble (Ps 46:1) and a God who has made a promise to never leave our side (Mat 28:20)
This might be a bit of a glooming and heavy way to open this year on here but I wanted to encourage someone today. You are not alone and thought grief never really completely goes away, life does get better. The boulder that grief represents doesn't get lighter, just easier to move as time goes by. If you have lost someone close to your heart, or even a dream or something that had so much weight in your life, so much so that the loss and the grief knocked the wind out of you, know that you are seen. Know that you are not alone. I hope and pray things turn up for your and that life gifts you with a jar that widens to make room not only for your grief but also for all the other beautiful things that await for you on the other side of it. Because the truth is grief never leaves us: we just learn to live with it.
Sending you hope, prayers and good thoughts for your journey to the other side of grief.
With love and comfort,
Be First to Post Comment !
Post a Comment