Where is God in Grief?

Though I write this from the perspective of losing a loved one, I know there are many grieving now. A chronic condition. An unexpected firing. A loss of normalcy. A system, touted to protect the people, set against them. A society that responds to their cry of, "I do matter to you, don't I?" with a patronizing, "Doesn't everyone?"

Grief.

A topic I've shared ad nauseum. But you write what you know, and grief is a path I've walked and felt and been drastically altered by. Sometimes I feel like the person I was before, during, and throughout the many years since, is so incredibly different that if they all gathered in one room, they'd feel shy and uncomfortable and they'd grasp at small talk straws with little success at finding common ground.

Grief changes you. It hurts, and yet in some ways, it fills you. It guides you. It gives meaning to everything-- a song you sang together, a joke they made about a street sign, a food they loved. Suddenly everything leads back to them. Nothing is just itself anymore.

It's all accompanied by that gnawing feeling. The questions. The numbness. The echoing pain in the pit of your stomach.

It's hard to define. There are so many emotions tied together and plated as "grief".

Grief is fear. As a female raised in the Christian church, a lot of my time growing up was filled with dreams of marriage. There were approximately zero days in middle and high school in which I didn't have romantic feelings for someone. Then, grief. My sister's husband dies. The walls go up. I didn't know I was building them, and I didn't really even notice them until I met someone that started turning this hidden key, and I was terrified and pulling away, and I'm yelling at myself like don't you dare let someone in that could be ripped away from you. Please. Not that again.

Anything else.

Grief is recklessness. I rebel against my insides by antagonizing my outsides. I run until my chest feels like it's collapsing. I throw myself at adrenaline. I'd rather risk everything else. At least it'll just be physical pain and not this emotional/mental/spiritual barbed wire I find myself wrapped up in. Constant movement, constant noise, constant distraction. Get up from my desk one morning and quit my job. Anything. Look outward, focus on the surface. Compartmentalize the deep.

Grief is disappointment. A lot of the loss felt when grieving someone (or something) is this sense of disappointment. You've lost a part of your future that you were really looking forward to. Like you're left standing there, holding the remnants of your dreams in your hands thinking it'll never be enough, it'll never go back together. Everything's tainted. All your plans have a huge hole running through each of them. Now what?

Now what?

Grief is anxiety. It'll never be enough. How can I face this? Was this my fault? What if I did something different? What if I'd called them back? What if I spent one more day with them? How is this fair? Can I ever be normal again? What will that look like? Can I really be happy whatever that is? And what if this happens again? What do I do tomorrow? What do I do in ten years when they're still not here? How do I cancel their mail? Are all these other people okay? Did all these other people already forget? Should I bring it up? Am I the only one still hurting? What if...What if...What if? And all the answers take time.

Grief is loneliness. It's like being stuck down a well. No matter how many people surround you, you're trapped deep down inside yourself. There's darkness everywhere you look. You get little glimpses of friendly faces and their words echo down to you, but by the time it reaches you, it doesn't sound real anymore. All you see are the empty places left behind. It's isolating.

Grief is anger. We want to blame something and when we can't determine what that object should be, it can cause us to lose sight of reality. We hide in our anger, give ourselves over to it. It focuses the hurt elsewhere, keeps it outside. We make up stories in our head and push everyone away because maybe it was their fault, maybe it was mine. Hate can creep in. It can force the good from our lives in search of the root of the bad. Anger at who we lost, anger at those left behind, anger at our reaction to it, anger at other people's reactions to it. Anger is grief's mask, because anger is easier to look at than all these other things hiding behind it.

Much of the grieving process takes place in our subconscious. On the surface, I'd try to play strong and positive for my family and friends. I wanted to be a rock, an encouragement, a reminder of God when they were tempted to forget. I tried to reframe everything in my mind to be optimistic and happy, but my body still grieved.

Exhaustion.

Tears.

Bereavement brain.

Grief is physical. No matter how far you push grief from your mind, it will still show up in your body. Studies have shown that the brains of people experiencing grief have an increase in activity on nearly every neural network. Grief affects every system, from simple things like remembering something someone literally just said to you, to your digestion or posture or heart beat or speech.

There were times I couldn't speak without stopping to regroup and remember how to physically say a word. I'd make that face, like the person in the horror movie that abruptly stops talking, goes blank in the eyes, and falls over to reveal there's a knife in their back, and they just literally died mid-sentence. And that's really as confusing as it felt. Like abruptly my body would just forget how to do things.

And I never attributed it with grief. I spent a lot of time at the doctor's office the year following Jake's death trying to convince them I had some crazy brain tumor. I wanted it to be a crazy brain tumor. In a weird way it made me feel close to him, because I knew he'd find it fascinating and ironic because we always hyperbolically misdiagnosed everything as a brain tumor.

It wasn't a brain tumor. I was just really sad.

All of it adds up to this: grief is confusing. It's hard. It's a weight on your chest.

But it doesn't have to end there.

I like organization. I like timelines. I like knowing what to expect. And that is not grief. Grief changes. One day it's laughter, the next it's crying in the bathroom at a party almost a decade later over a memory mentioned in passing.

It changes, but in that change I saw so so clearly that God did not. His Word did not. His grace did not. His wisdom did not.

In grief, I saw the kindness and the goodness and provision of God. In that darkness, I saw His light. His steady, hopeful, peace-giving light. I felt His compassion. His friendship.

When I faltered, I felt His strength. I could see Him leading me, holding me up.

Grief is a blessing.
Grief is clarifying.
Grief is renewing.

He turned my eyes from my pain to His plans, His Gospel, His Son.

His suffering.

Imagine, the grief Jesus went through on the cross. The grief God went through when He gave up His Son. The grief we cause the Holy Spirit when we fill the hole in our hearts with the world instead of with His presence.

We do not serve a God unfamiliar with grief. Instead, He joined us in it. Willingly.

Where is God in grief? Right beside us.