"...they saw that his grief was very great."
Job 2:13When you bury someone that you love with all of your heart, grief dominates you. It is such a strong emotion that it darkens every aspect of your life and your emotions. When you have responsibilities and others that depend on you, a part of you tries to respond to their needs and get up and function. But the other part of you screams "I don't care!" and you just pull the covers over your head and lay there and cry. You then feel like the worse person, the weakest Christian, that ever was.
During one of my worse screaming and crying times, my husband came into the bedroom, laid down beside me and held me. After a while I stopped sobbing and he gently said, "You're not OK right now. But that's OK."
That simple statement helped me realize that what I was experiencing was natural, normal, and actually to be expected. Being told that it was OK to not be OK right then reminded me that I was human, and I was hurting – but most important, that it was OK to not be OK because of what I was going through.
We are only human, mere flesh and bone. Grief over loss isn't a lack of faith in God, it is the human response to the other side of the strongest emotion we have: love. When we love someone, their absence evokes grief. The stronger the love relationship, the deeper the grief.
The Bible says in Isaiah 53:3 that Jesus is a man of sorrows and is acquainted with our grief. And the shortest verse in the Bible (John 11:35) simply says, "Jesus wept" and that weeping was at a funeral.
The Lord knows the depths of our hurt because He has been there. And He isn't afraid to go there with us! Sometimes He speaks through someone close as my husband did to me saying that it's OK and sometimes He speaks into our spirit, "Peace, be still". Jesus loves us and wants us to know that we are not alone. He wants us to know that He knows!
And that it's OK to not be OK while we heal.
Cris
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