What's often said about parenting can also be said about grieving: the days are long but the years are short.
To parents, the statement is a warning against letting busyness and fatigue blind them to how quickly time is passing and how soon their children will leave the nest. To grievers, it’s a recognition of the slow-moving gears of rebuilding life after loss.
Slow moving, but moving nonetheless.
You wake up one day and realize an entire month has passed, then six months, and then a year. Or more. You’ve survived the pain that you thought would surely end you.
Look back now over the ground you’ve covered. Sure, you might have taken a few detours and made a questionable decision or two, but here you stand in a new place. Here, by God's grace you stand. And the big question has morphed from Why? into What’s next?
You've picked up some wisdom along the way, and some patience. Maybe even a new perspective. Maybe your heart has been pulled toward eternal matters. You’re back on speaking terms with God . . . if you ever stopped. You‘re learning things about Him and about yourself.
Dare I say it? … Grief is actually bringing about some good.
You have fuller vision and deeper understanding. You are wiser. You are stronger. You are less certain of some things and more certain of others. Even some of your desires have changed. And here you stand. Here by God's grace you stand.
What’s next?
Maybe you’re not there yet, not ready to tackle what’s next, or to even think about it. That's okay, but be encouraged to know that the question is coming. You do have a future.
Is life going to be different than you had hoped? Yes. Is God finished with you? No.
There is a next.
© 2022 by Tim Grissom. All rights reserved.
Updated: Mar 24, 2022
Bill was an usher at our church. Of course, he was much more than that: husband, father, grandfather, business owner, friend. But what I remember most about Bill is that he was an usher at our church.
If that seems too small of a way to characterize a man’s life, I’ll bring it down even more, to one encounter between Bill and me on a Sunday morning.
I was in the habit of arriving at church at the last possible moment and then leaving as fast as I could—usually during the closing prayer when everyone’s eyes were (supposed to be) closed. My grief was still new and I wasn't yet comfortable sitting alone in church. Plus, I desperately wanted to avoid the “How are you?” and “What can I do for you?” conversations that were sure to come in the lobby or the parking lot—mostly because I didn’t know how to answer.
The service was nearly over. The sermon had been preached, the announcements had been made, and now it was time to collect the offering. If the typical order of things was observed, this would be followed by the benediction, which was the optimal moment for me to make my aforementioned escape.
So, I’m sitting there waiting for Bill to make his way to my row and hand me the offering plate so I could then pass it along to the person sitting next to me. But Bill broke the usher's code. While handing me the plate, he stopped and put his hand on my shoulder. He left it there even after I passed the plate, so I looked up at him. When we locked eyes, he gave me a slight nod, then slipped his hand away and moved on.
That was it. A few seconds of silent comfort passed from friend to friend. A caring look. A gentle hand on the shoulder. One simple act of compassion on one typical Sunday morning . . . and I still feel it twenty-two years later.
Without saying a single word, Bill told me that he saw me, that he knew my heart was hurting, and that he cared.
Comfort doesn’t always need a grand or eloquent delivery. Sometimes a hand on the shoulder is all it takes.
© 2022 by Tim Grissom. All rights reserved.
To a friend on the first anniversary of his wife’s death . . .
Sadness is with you every day, but on days like this one it feels oppressive. You feel terminally incomplete.
As much as I want your pain to lift, we both know that’s not happening soon. I would even say that you don’t really want it to, because of what it says about the love you had for each other. You’re deeply mourning the death of the one you greatly loved. Your grief is posthumous love.
This is not to say you'll never laugh again, or that you'll never know love. Yet your life will never be the same. You are changing. Grief is shadowing you, but I hope you can think of it as an advisor rather than a tormentor, impressing you to hold on to this life a little less and to the next life a lot more. In this way, grief will make you wiser and stronger.
But you’re asking for help now, in these early months of adjustment when the pain is raw and you’re feeling disoriented. Your question takes me back to the time when I felt much the same as you do now and how God led me through it. Really, it came down to two thoughts: (1) Grief is a pit. (2) Gratitude is a rope.
I’d never felt so beat down as I did in January of 2000. After eleven months of disease and decline, my wife died. Three weeks after her funeral I had to rush my four-year-old son to the ER with severe respiratory distress. He nearly died.
I remember standing in the exam room thinking, Is this my life now? Am I going to live from catastrophe to catastrophe, from sadness to sadness? I wasn’t angry with God, but I was worried that I couldn’t survive the suffering He seemed intent on pouring out on us. The grief was too much, the load too heavy. Widower. Single dad. Worrier. Exhausted. Afraid. Barely hanging on.
I was in a pit.
I prayed. I read the Bible. I was sure God was present, but I didn’t understand what He was doing. This was new territory. Untamed and unsettled.
The Scriptures have long been important to me, so even in the pit I kept reading and listening for God to speak. I needed at least a glimmer of hope … and God began to give it through the words of Psalm 42:11—
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.
This message was personal. God was reassuring me that the heaviness would lift, that I wasn’t doomed to a life of tears and turmoil. He was giving me hope.
If God was lowering a rope into the pit, I was going to grab it. So, this is what I did: I started thanking Him for all sorts of things, big and small, everything that came to mind—that my wife died in her sleep, that my son didn’t die, that we had clothes to wear, food to eat, friends who cared, hot water, indoor plumbing, a good church, transportation, income, books, . . . If I thought of it, I thanked God for it. Right down to the pennies in the jar on my dresser.
For weeks, I would lay across the end of the bed at night—I couldn’t bring myself to get in it yet without her—and thank myself to sleep. They weren’t deep prayers of doctrine or high prayers of praise, they were more like sticky notes—simple expressions of gratitude for life’s basics. But they opened my heart to more and more hope. They kept me mindful that God is a giver and I am a receiver, and that His giving had not stopped.
I’d never expect you to be thankful for grief, but I hope you are able to start giving thanks in your grief. There is life outside of the pit. To be sure, it is a different life than you had before, but it is a life you cannot avoid and someday might actually enjoy.
But for now, just grab the rope.
© 2022 by Tim Grissom. All rights reserved.