The Gift I Never Asked For

“What would I have done if I couldn’t have grieved?”

I asked my dad this question when we were sitting in a Chick-fil-A, watching my boys tear around the play area. I honestly don’t know what I would have done if God had not given me grief.

Let me ask you this question: Have you let yourself feel the pain?

Because grief is a door into something I know God wants for you: Himself.

He’s the reward.

Not heaven but Him.

God desires that we desire Him. Heaven is not the goal, it’s the place we get to experience God. And I have never longed for God and more of what He longs for like this. I’m longing for peace. Deep, unaffected, untainted peace and delight. I look forward to laughter. I love laughing. Everything in me wants to see Randy again. But I know that my deepest longing is for someone of whom Randy was an image bearer: Jesus.

I’ve never wanted this more in my entire life, and it’s because of my grief. It has drawn me to Him. I needed grief, and I think you do too. In his book Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser writes,

What we have dreamed for our lives can never be. Thus we have a choice: We can spend the rest of our lives angry, trying to protect ourselves against something that has already happened to us, death and unfairness, or we can grieve our losses, abuses, and deaths and, through that, eventually attain the joy and delights that are in fact possible for us.

Alice Miller states this all in psychological language, but the choice is really a paschal one. We face many deaths within our lives and the choice is ours as to whether those deaths will be terminal (snuffing out life and spirit) or whether they will be paschal (opening us to new life and spirit). Grieving is the key to the latter.

There have been dark, hollow times when I’ve leaned toward the terminal. How could anything good come from this? I have to say “my late husband,” and I’m in my thirties. I haven’t gotten used to that. Maybe I never will. But, because of God’s mercy, I have experienced new life through grief too. I’m longing for God like I’ve never longed for Him. My boys and I have been lifted up in prayer and materially provided for. We’ve seen miracles. Our grief has opened us up to new life and spirit.

But even though this is true, it’s difficult to want grief. I can see everything that God has brought into my life through grief and still not want it. It’s a gift I never asked for. Even now, I tend toward wanting relief over grief.

God Brings Purpose to Our Pain

I’ll admit something embarrassing. I tried to make a grieving friend laugh while I was working on these thoughts. I’m serious. I was writing about grief, she walked into my office while grieving, and instead of just being present, of bearing witness to her sadness, I tried to shoo it away with a joke.

Here’s some good news: God doesn’t ever shoo away our pain.

It’s not that He doesn’t want relief for us; He just has greater plans for our pain. He wants us to get to relief, but eventually. In grief, we become more like Him. In our sorrow, we comfort others. We “get it” in ways that nobody else can. As we comfort, we find ourselves comforted too. God draws those who grieve closer to Him. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus promised, “for they will be comforted” (Matthew. 5:4). Before the relief, He brings purpose to the pain.

Second Corinthians 1:3–5 says, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”

We want to be plucked out of the pain, but God wants to be present with us in it.

The Path to Healing Goes Through Grief

If we don’t grieve, we’ll look for relief somewhere else, and there’s a whole host of unhealthy options. Or we’ll get stuck at the stage we’re in and we’ll keep reacting to everyone based on being stuck in depression, denial, or anger. The truth is that we can’t heal what we are unwilling to feel. If we don’t acknowledge Him in our grief, we’ll live out of the stage we’re stuck in.

I like the idea that grief is the antidote to trauma. It’s the healthy response to loss. Trauma leaves us feeling stuck. Grief has the power to move us. Either downward into our hearts or upward to lament with God, and then ideally outward toward others as we allow them to carry our burden alongside us. Many shy away from grief, fearing it traps us, but avoiding grief is what keeps us truly stuck.

So talk about it. Even if it feels like you’re talking about the same thing over and over. God moves us as we talk about it. Research continually suggests that discussing trauma and grief is critical to healing and growing through it. James Pennebaker’s groundbreaking studies on the importance of talking about trauma reveal that expressive writing and verbal processing can lead to significant psychological and physical benefits, including improved emotional processing, reduced distress, enhanced immune system function, and greater overall well-being.

Submitting to God in grief meant opening up the grief and letting God use others. Eventually, I did start to give to others again. And it was different from how it had been before. I felt the words of Paul’s greeting in 2 Corinthians deeply: I could “comfort those in any trouble” with the comfort I myself receive from God. If you’re willing to go there with Him, if you’re willing to grieve, He will use the pain you’ve been carrying or maybe ignoring.

Adapted from Relaxed: Walking with the One Who Is Not Worried about a Thing by Megan Fate Marshman.