A Healing Place Called Grieving – November 09, 2003
Grieving is an essential part of living. It helps us move forward with our lives after we experience deep loss. Grieving means we feel sorrow, and because we do, we are able to free ourselves from bad feelings, like anger and regret. When a loved one dies, when a child wanders, when poor health debilitates, or when a dream dissolves before our eyes, we are faced with a choice. We can deny the loss and get stuck in a state of nonfeeling, protecting ourselves from pain. Or we can grieve. We can feel the loss and open our souls to new vistas of hope and possibility.
Grieving helps us to redefine our outlook, to pick up the pieces, so to speak, after heartache and start living again. If we don’t confront our losses or if we hold on to them for too long, we suffer; we deny the power of God to heal our broken hearts and give us new life.
In the Bible we read about Lot’s wife, who, in a sense, refused to grieve. She was warned to leave Sodom and Gomorrah but stopped to look back because she could not accept the losses she faced. The reality of leaving family members, friends, and possessions behind overwhelmed her. She tried to stop the pain instead of passing through it. Not trusting that God would lead her through the valley of sorrow, she gave in to her fears and perished.1
A physician who has counseled chronically and terminally ill patients and their families compares the fate of Lot’s wife with the failure to grieve. She believes that grieving is essential to joyful living. “Grieving is not about forgetting,” she writes. “Grieving allows us to heal, to remember with love rather than pain. It is a sorting process. One by one you let go of the things that are gone and you mourn for them. One by one you take hold of the things that have become a part of who you are and build again.”2
Remembering with love rather than pain lifts the burden of loss and helps us to feel joy again. Somewhere between shutting out memories and desperately holding on to them is a healing place called grieving. There we find the untapped strength we need to go on living—not just existing, but really living. The Lord, in His loving mercy, makes it all possible. He promises: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”3
Program#3873
1. See Genesis 19:12–26.
2. Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging (2000), 38.
3. John 10:10.