Grief is Work

Grief is the price of love and grief work is the price of healing. The cost is worth it to be healed and love again.(Second Chance at Love, Shirley and Jim Mozena)

This quote was written for someone seeking to love again after losing a spouse in death or divorce, but it applies to anyone. There is grief work to be done for any loss. What is grief work? I’ll list several. First: Face the Loss.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Sometimes people in the classes my husband and I facilitate, talk about fearing grief. They are afraid of the grief and if fully faced, the grief might kill them. I can tell you from my own experience, it won’t kill you. It is painful. It is lonely–you usually do it alone. Just as in surgery or cancer, there is pain, but later it leads to healing.

My greatest help was journaling my grief. These aren’t words you would share with anyone but yourself. You don’t worry about spelling or content. Writing down your loss helps. Later, you can look back and see how far you’ve come. If you don’t do the work, there won’t be any results.

I discovered something when my second husband died. It was suggested in my GriefShare class to examine previous losses. It was when I started listing the losses, I realized I hadn’t worked through some of them. Yours likely will be different than mine. It might not be the great loss you are currently facing, festering below the surface. It could be the death of a friend, breakup in a long past relationship, miscarriage or abortion, or the loss of a pet. I suggest you write them down. You may be surprised. In some cases, you may need to ask God for forgiveness. He will forgive.

Facing the loss, journaling your grief, examining previous losses are good things to do, but more than doing these things, take action. If you’ve had a difficult time attending church, do it. If you cannot go back to the church you attended, find another one. If you return to the church you normally attend, sit in a different spot than where you sat before with your loved one. If you were married and now alone, take yourself out to dinner–by yourself. If you journaled, read what you’ve written. Read cards you received after your loved one’s death. Look at photos. Drive by places you enjoyed together. When I was grieving, I took hikes where my husband and I had hiked before. I drove past some of the homes we’d lived in together. I revisited favorite restaurants. These are only a few suggestions.

One last thing. You feel very much alone in your grief.  But did you know you aren’t alone? There are many passages in the Bible that tell us this, but I like this one:

In all their suffering he also suffered,
and he personally rescued them.
In his love and mercy he redeemed them.
He lifted them up and carried them
through all the years (Isaiah 63:9 NLT).