The thing about the grief we normally carry and feel is we are typically one of the few feeling and experiencing it. We grieve when someone or something is ripped from our lives unexpectedly; when someone we love with our entire heart and soul is taken away from us. All the while the rest of the world keeps going as we struggle to take our next breath. I vividly remember walking into Macy's to look for an outfit to bury Charlie in and I was screaming (silently in my mind) at everyone in the store that day because I couldn't understand how they could just go on with their normal day when my world had literally just been destroyed with little hope for rescue.
However, that day and every day after I kept walking. I kept moving forward and eventually I lost my "old self" and my life turned into "before" and "after" our trauma. I often find myself thinking, 'Was that before Charlie or after?'
As we move forward after loss we have the opportunity to work through all the hard things and come out of the darkness better than we were before. But we can only do that if we learn to recognize that joy and sadness can exist at the exact same time. I learned to embrace that truth while relying on other people and their (what I thought was) "unbrokenness" to help me cope and move forward.
The thing that is different this time as we wade through our current environment full of grief and darkness is that we are ALL feeling it. Grief has consumed our entire world. It isn't just a person or family this time who have been hit with a traumatic loss. We are all trying to figure out how to let our "old self" transform into something new while we grieve the things/experiences (and possibly people) we have lost because of a global pandemic. Literally, no one is exempt this time. We are all weary and it seems there are no "unbroken" people to help us muddle through all the feelings.
At first, I didn't think that would work. I was frustrated and disappointed because we were all experiencing something so tragic that I didn't believe we were strong enough to hold one another up. That's when I started praying. I started really reflecting on it all. I searched scripture and tried to uncover truth in the messy middle of the pandemic. Once I began to really reflect on what was happening I remembered Jesus' power is perfected in our weakness. Our "unbrokenness" doesn't exist. We are all broken and carrying ugly, hard, earthly things with us all the time. I was reminded once again my strength comes from Jesus (just like I was reminded when we lost Charlie six and a half years ago).
I have always disliked the saying, "God doesn't give us more than we can handle..." because I don't believe it and it doesn't make sense to me. First of all, God doesn't "give us" bad things. Bad things (in my humble opinion) come from sin. Also, on my own, I could not have lived through losing my son. It was Jesus (and the people he placed in my path) that helped me take each new step forward.
I guess what I am saying is we all need Jesus and we all need each other. Typical (or atypical grief circumstances) requires us to lean on one another. When I think about the one big lesson I learned from grief it would be without a single doubt you must share how you feel with others. God gave me people and friendships to help me seek him when I turned the other way. I needed to share the grief attacks, the sadness, the loneliness, the frustration, the anger, and all the other things I was feeling. I couldn't walk through it alone and I didn't have to. I needed to find a person (or two or three) and share the deepest (and often darkest) parts of my heart with them. The nature of our current grief situation makes this hard because human nature has us compare grief. But I think we need to go ahead and stop here. Grief is not "big or small" and it cannot be compared. Everyone's grief is important and should be validated with an empathetic ear not someone trying to fix it. We can pick up the phone and call someone when we need them or better yet, call someone else just to check on them. We can still help each other weather this storm regardless of our circumstances because our strength does not come from ourselves.
My strength comes from my Savior.
For those of us who have experienced the loss of a child we always say, "It's a club no one chooses to join..." It's true. No one wants to experience something that causes their heart to ache to the point of physical pain. No one wants to experience tragedy that brings nightmares and anxiety and sleepless nights (among a million other things). But I can tell you from personal experience from grief good things can come. I believe that is true of this trying time as well. It has been hard for a lot of people. It has been hard for my family and I as well. But everyday when the kids get weepy and I want to cry big tears I try and remind all of us "from grief good things can come."
As I mentioned earlier joy and pain can coexist. This always reminds me of a quote from Brene Brown where she said, "Twinkle lights are the perfect metaphor for joy. Joy is not a constant. It comes to us in moments - often ordinary moments. Sometimes we miss out on the bursts of joy because we're too busy chasing down extraordinary moments." In our current circumstances I think sometimes we miss bursts of joy because we have allowed ourselves to be consumed with hard and negative things. I am not naive enough to think that we should all just skip through life and ignore all the hard things because those hard things deserve space too (see above and find a friend). But what I am saying (and I need to take my own advice) is we need to look for those moments of joy; those twinkle light moments so that as we begin to learn who we are now and figure out how to deal what is to come we can keep going and grasp hope in our heart for what lies ahead.
God tells us in Lamentations 3:22 that the love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to and end; they are new every morning...
I am clinging to that promise as we all experience this grief together.
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