Grief is like a room in a house. Everyone has this room, because everyone experiences loss. But its size and place differ. For some it is on the main floor, and every day they must walk through it. For others, it is upstairs, where they visit once in a while, but not for long. And a few have it in the basement, far in the back, with the door tightly shut.
Whatever experience of loss you have had thus far, one thing is true: you should not be surprised by it. Yet many are, simply because we live in a culture that does its best to tell us that life is safe and all is fine.
But then a storm unexpectedly appears, and our world abruptly crashes in around us. That is what happened in March 2020 when we found out my wife, Heather, had advanced stomach cancer with a six-month prognosis. All that was certain was suddenly not. Thoughts and plans for the future became meaningless. As a physician, I knew the facts. As a husband, I felt like I had been thrown into the sea.
In my book Holding on in the Storm, I have shared the details of our journey and the many ways God was faithful. On its cover is the famous Rembrandt painting, The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, because the pain of deep loss is like a storm. It comes without warning and changes everything. Like the disciples, we are afraid we are drowning. And like the disciples, we might feel that Jesus is sleeping, and wonder if he cares (Matt. 8:23-27, Mark 4:35-41, Luke 8:22-25).
We cannot avoid the stark reality of loss and grief. It is clear throughout Scripture that we live in a world of suffering. Job says “man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward (Job 5:7). The longer we live, the more we will lose. And the more we love, the deeper we will grieve. Because Jesus loves much, and therefore grieves much, we too as his followers should be ready to grieve. But we need “not grieve as others do who have no hope (1 Thess. 4:13). Let me suggest five ways we can grieve well.
1. Grieve Honestly
There are many responses to the pain of loss, not all of them helpful. One common response is to bury it or run from it, acting as if it didn’t happen. Jerry Sittser tells the story of a dream he had after the devastating loss of his wife, his mother, and his young daughter in a car accident. He was frantically running west toward the setting sun, but the harder he ran, the farther away the sun moved until it vanished on the horizon.
To the east he saw “a vast darkness closing in on me. I was terrified by the darkness.” Later he shared his dream with his sister, who told him in order to reach the light, he should turn and run into the darkness that lies to the east—that is the direction where a new day will dawn. We too must honestly face the darkness of grief. It will be hard. But it is the only way we will find the light.
2. Grieve Patiently
There is no timeline on grief, no set of stages that we move through progressively. In the beginning, it is completely disorienting. As Nicholas Wolterstorff describes his experience after the loss of his son, “I’ve become an alien in the world, shyly touching it as if it is not mine. I don’t belong any more. When someone loved leaves home, home becomes mere house.”
At first, the drab color of grief paints over every moment of every day. But as time goes on, we allow other colors in, see other roles we have to play besides the role of the grieving person. We find new things to do, new people to love, and new groups to join. Yet deep loss is never something we get over. Four years after loss, though I have learned to walk more steadily, I remain a man marked by sorrow.
3. Grieve in Community
We are often tempted to grieve in isolation. Alone in our deep grief, we wonder if we are going crazy. We don’t trust our thoughts or decisions, because much of what we assumed is no longer true.
In my grief, I needed others. I took a risk. I chose to reach out and be vulnerable. It is not a stance easily taken given how much our society and culture teach us to look good and be strong. But deep down, most people realize life is messy, loss is real, and sadness is all around us.
One of the ways I pursued community was to share and pray with someone daily. But only after I had shared with God because, as the Psalms show us, we can bring any emotion to God. Then when we talk with others, we have already worked through some of the emotional heaviness. What we certainly do not want is to use our pain to manipulate others. We don’t want pity. We seek shared vulnerability, where my sharing of grief opens the other to their own hurts and sorrows. Together we pray, asking God to hold us up and be our strength
4. Grieve with Gratitude
When a storm comes, it feels like the whole world is dark and dreary. But after we survive the first blow, we look around and see there is more than just the storm. Even in Rembrandt’s painting, there is a small patch of blue in the sky up above.
We must be diligent to look with gratitude for any signs that God is still at work in our lives. Eventually we come to see that what we lost was never ours to keep. It was always a gift given, but only for a time—for that we can be thankful.
5. Grieve with Hope
In deep loss and grief, we must tenaciously hold on to hope, for despair hovers close by. The greatest reason for hope is because we have a Savior who suffered and died, who knows our pain and suffers our sorrows, and who seeks a deep relationship with us in our suffering. When we wonder if God cares, we can turn to the Bible for great promises of presence and consolation. Psalm 34:10 reminds us of the wonderful truth that “the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”
There are many other passages that remind us of these same things. Not if, but when we feel that God is absent, our faith in these promises is the lifeline that will save us from drowning in our grief.
If we face our grief with honesty, patience, vulnerability, gratitude, and hope, there lies before us a great possibility—that we will become more like Jesus, “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). And our heart will be more like God’s, who feels the pain of the afflicted and deeply cares for the plight of the poor.
