Why grieving matters: How our society embraces celebration but ignores grief.

When Grief Comes not if.

Twenty-eight years later I can still remember the day my dad died. Twenty-eight years later I grieved for my dad as though it happened the day before. Twenty-eight years later, grief is different, but it’s still there. I’ve avoided addressing this topic, because it’s heavy. It’s hard, it’s messy, it’s ugly and let’s face it no one wants to talk about it. We avoid it like the plague, but it is tearing us a part. Fortunately, I’m in a season of wellness. Writing about grief just seems counterintuitive, but here I sit sharing this with you.

After losing five members of my family by the age of 17. I’ve buried more than I count.  Burying my best friend, watching my friend bury her child, losing a co-worker to suicide, losing a childhood friend at 18.  By the age of twenty-five, I knew a lot about grief, or so I thought. If I’m honest, I knew a lot about funerals, and the brevity of life, but not grief. Grief is more than an emotion; grief is a process. I used to think that you would age out of grief and eventually it wouldn’t impact you the same way it did in the beginning. I have learned this is false. Grief can with no warning and like a bullet train. It speeds up, and then crashes into you and leaves you shattered into a million pieces. Just when you think you have healed or worse moved on, you get a punch to the gut.

Why grief is necessary and how can we grieve well.

Over the next several weeks I hope to help you understand the necessity of grief. We have become so busy that we don’t even slow down to grieve. We don’t know how to help those who are grieving because we haven’t fully accepted what grief is. We may have mourned in the beginning but stuffed down so deep we no longer realize it’s there. For those rare individuals who have experienced catastrophic grief, I hope you can better understand how life altering it truly is. I want to equip you with ways to help those around you who are suffering. Most importantly what the Bible says about grief and how Christ modeled it for us.

Jesus gets it.

At some point in our life we will all experience an unexpected grief, or an unexpected loss. I pray that when that time comes you will be surrounded by those who can grieve with you, and help you grieve well.

Therefore, it was necessary for him to be made in every respect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful High Priest before God. Hebrews 2:17 NLT

This verse describes so vividly what Jesus did and who He is. We must remember that Jesus gets it. We have come to believe the lie that God doesn’t understand. We are made in God’s image and Jesus was made in every respect to be like us. Of all people Jesus gets it.

Have you experienced a life altering grief?