Grief is inevitable. No one escapes it. If you love anything or anyone, you will eventually grieve. Remember when your baby had separation anxiety? She was grieving what she perceived as loss. When her best friend moved away in second grade, she grieved. When her fur baby “had to go live on a farm” because he got old, she grieved. When her first boyfriend dumped her…well, you get the point. Humans are created for relationship and when a relationship is broken, we mourn the loss.
There is only one cure for grief, and that is to grieve. There is literally no other way around it. You must take every painstaking step through it. It’s rough terrain with extreme highs and lows, mountains and valleys, storms and severe weather. And it’s not linear. Often, you take two steps forward and one step back. Sometimes you have to sit with it. Sometimes, it takes you tumbling down the side of a rock face. At first, it feels like an endless midnight, but eventually, rays of hope will slip through the cracks, shining ever so slightly into the darkness.
At least that’s what healthy grief looks like. You can try to delay it, but that only leads to a more difficult journey later on, because you simply can’t avoid it forever. But what do you do when you can’t seem to move beyond the valley of the shadow? What if you get stuck there?
Over these last few years, I’ve done a good bit of research on Prolonged Grief Disorder, or complicated grief. Of course, all grief is complicated, but this term is referring to the grief you get stuck in. It’s like an ongoing, heightened state of distress that keeps you from living.
Some mental health professionals diagnose complicated grief when grieving continues to be intense, persistent and debilitating beyond 12 months. I’m not sure I’d want to put a time limit on it. Many people find the second year to be harder than the first. But even two steps forward, one step back is progress, right? That is not to say that there is an exact formula for healthy grieving! Every person is unique and every loss is different. The litmus test is whether or not you are seeing any progress, at all.
So what exactly impedes our progress? Acceptance. Or rather, the lack thereof. Until you accept the fact that you cannot—and will not—ever have what you had before, you will stay stuck in your grief. I know, I know; that’s super hard to hear. Especially if your loss was significant. I get it! I, also, loved the life I had with Jeremy. But that life is gone and I can’t ever go back. They teach grief coaches to speak bluntly to grievers in order to help them come to a place of acceptance; so I say this with all the love and compassion in my heart: you have to let go.
I don’t pretend to know all there is to know about grief and loss, but here’s what I know about God. He is not distant and disengaged. He loves you and He has a plan for you. You did not die; there is a reason for that. Your pain has a purpose. You have a purpose. As long as you have breath, you have hope and a future. Don’t let complicated grief steal that from you.
Somehow, some way, life can be good again! I honestly believe that, because God is good. But in order to receive the good He has in store for us, we first must step out of the past. Let go, and let Him fill those empty hands to overflowing once again.
Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
Is 43:18-19