"if intense loss is the only way to make a person more compassionate, only self-absorbed, disconnected, shallow people would experience grief... You didn't need this experience in order to grow. You didn't need the lessons that supposedly only grief can teach. Learning happens in a million different ways. Grief and loss are one path to depth and connection, but they are not the only path... On the contrary: life is call-and-response. Things happen, and we absorb and adapt... You didn't need this... Life-changing events do not just slip quietly away, nor are they atonements for past wrongs. they change us. They are a part of our foundation as we live forward. What you built atop this loss might be growth. It might be a gesture towards beauty, more love, more wholeness. But that is due to your choices, your own alignment with who you are and who you want to be."Her ultimate point is that grief is not a problem to be solved. "Some things cannot be fixed. They can only be carried."
"This is really as bad as you think. This sucks and you don't need solutions. There is nothing wrong with grief. It's a natural extension of love. It's a healthy and sane response to loss. That grief feels bad doesn't make it bad; that you feel crazy doesn't mean you are crazy. Grief is part of love. Love for life, love for self, love for others. What you are living, painful as it is, is love. And love is really hard. Excruciating at times... Because the truth is, in one way or another, loving each other means losing each other. Being alive in such a fleeting, tenuous world is hard. Our hearts get broken in ways that can't be fixed. There is pain that becomes an immovable part of our lives. We need to know how to endure that, how to care for ourselves inside that, how to care for one another. We need to know how to live here, where life as we know it can change, forever, at any time."I think there's part of me that believes(d) that God orchestrated this loss as some answer to prayer I've made desiring to be more dependent upon him or as some tool to help me look more like Jesus through suffering. In that sense this can feel like a punishment and if I really stop to identify the truth I don't actually think this is the way God works. Yet, when I just coast through my grief and questioning of God without considering his word, I can easily start to believe things that do not align with the bible. I don't think this is accidental; I think it is the reality of Satan's presence in this world and his desire to create distance and distrust of God.
I had been reading through the book of Job right after Jerrod died and haven't read any further in the past couple weeks, but I'm reminded of his story this morning. Job's friends try to suggest that his circumstances are a result of his sin. However, at the beginning of the book we get a glimpse into a conversation between God and Satan that let's us know that the awful loss and pain Job undergoes is about proving Job is righteous and faithful, not a result of his sin. I have to admit it still really pisses me off that God allowed Satan to torment Job to prove a point; it's a real WTF move. It's one of those things I will never fully understand about the way God works, but just as God is not dismayed by Job's questioning and anger, I know he isn't about mine either. I trust my relationship with God will only grow stronger because of my questioning, because of my honesty. And as best I can, I will trust his wisdom and sovereignty.
Below is a really good summation of the book of Job.
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