Grief

It’s surprising to still find so much sorrow and grief inside..as though the grieving never fully reaches its end. 

Turns out the process of grieving my life, my losses, my pain, and my sin has taken longer than I ever thought imaginable. Years. A process that comes and goes, starts and stops, finds me suddenly and surprisingly in rare moments of quiet, or in the middle of the hurried crazy pace of life. 

Back a few years ago when this process started at the prompting of a God who loves me too much to let me sit stuck in my misery, I thought: I’ll do this hard thing. I will be brave.

And in 3-6 months I’ll be a BETTER version of myself, right? Let’s do this! 

Today I sit in such a different space. YEARS later, still grieving, still finding raw places of deep pain, still sifting through the rubble, and thinking, I don’t know how long this is going to take, or what I will find on the other side. 

It is slow, so slow. 

It is deep. It runs down into the roots of my being, covering and coloring my entire life.

Pain

Loss

Regret

Brokenness

Repentance

Sorrow

He leads me into these places deliberately, like a good daddy, leading the way in wisdom, patience, and compassion. 

The thing is, when you spend your entire life denying pain and hiding from it, once it starts coming, it’s just so much, it makes sense that it takes a long time to feel it all. 

But He knows and I know now too, that unless I do, the joy will never be AS full. And already the joy I’ve had in this long and painful season has been deeper than ever before. 

Deuteronomy 30:19 (NLT) says:

"Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life…”

I chose life. I choose it consistently….clawing my way back from the allure of denial and numbness. 

And in choosing life I discovered that LIFE comes with PAIN. 

Life, real life, LIVED with my heart and soul carries suffering. 

And in the pain I keep choosing life, because the love, oh THE LOVE HE has for me carries me through all of it. And the joy found in His arms is not like any I’ll ever be able to concoct on my own terms.

And THE FREEDOM. 

The freedom to be, to hurt, to sit in the reality of the story He is writing with my life. The freedom to be held by perfect arms of love is the safest place I’ve ever known.

The grief takes me step by step, tear by tear, closer to His heart, and closer to myself. 

In His heartbeat I find a WHOLE world that does not exist without letting go. 

What’s that thing people say when they really enjoy their work out? “Hurts so good!!”

It hurts to so good to LIVE a real, broken, painful, deliberate life. It hurts so good and it’s full of beauty. Full of Jesus. Full of hope.