Grief as Spiritual Formation: Even Mended Hearts Have Scars
by Peggy Haymes, Pinnacle Associate
Editor’s Note: This is the fifth and final installment in Peggy Haymes’ series on grief.
When my father died three years after my mom, it was jarring, but not because of his death. His disease meant we inched our way towards its inevitability for years. What shocked me was discovering I was suddenly an orphan. In our immediate family, I was one of three now occupying the top rung of the generational ladder. There were no adults above us. Grief is, by its nature, transformation. We yearn to go back to how things were, but no matter the loss, the loss itself means things will never be exactly as they were. We go from being adult children to orphans, from married to widowed, from having a sister to having had a sister. Let’s be honest. There are times when loss is liberation.
Not every marriage is a healthy partnership. Not every parent is equipped to love a child. Instead of unconditional love, some people receive unrelenting abuse. For those of you who suffered so, you don’t hasten their death, but neither do you mourn it. In such cases, the grief is for what you wanted in your marriage or from your parent but never got to have. For you, a completely new life is both a gift and relief. For others who face grief with mixed feelings or completely shattered hearts, it’s not so simple. Creating a new chapter means turning the final page on the last chapter.
But closing the chapter doesn’t mean erasing it. What we have loved remains a part of our lives forever. For the biblical Israelites, God’s deliverance from Egypt was an event from an increasingly distant past that was also a consistent part of every future to which God called them. “When we were slaves, God freed us with a strong arm and mighty hand.”
Because of what God did in the past, they trusted God with their future. In grief, however, trust can be a hard ask because the loss itself feels like such a betrayal. I thought we were going to have so many more years. Why did such a wonderful person have to suffer so deeply? This wasn’t what I was promised.
In your grief, faith may be a great and necessary comfort. In your grief, you may find the faith you’ve neatly carried for all these years is now too small for the messy questions of your life. Both things can be true. We’re faced with a choice—which, admittedly, often feels like no choice at all. We can try to return to a more manageable faith buttressed by easy answers and happy face emojis.
Frankly, sometimes that’s the place where we need to catch our breath. But in the long run, it doesn’t work. The price we pay for such spiritual gymnastics is too great. We may decide to be done with the whole kit and caboodle. We essentially say, “If such terrible loss is possible in the world that God created, then I have no use for such a God.” I know I’m biased here, but this kind of loss seems incalculable to me. Or, we may choose a third way, having the courage to let go of what no longer rings true in our lives and to embrace a halting, hesitant trust that the God who promised to make all things new may do the same, even with us and with our faith. God doesn’t provide tidy answers but offers a Presence in the midst of our questions. It isn’t everything we’ve asked for, but in the great loneliness of our grief, that Presence is everything we need.
In the face of escalating losses, Job finally had enough. Shaking his fist at the heavens, he demanded that God come down and explain himself. He’d been faithful, but life was not going the way he’d been promised. God thundered a response, but Job’s questions were never answered. In the end, he realizes there is mystery beyond his understanding. He chooses a new, more nuanced faith that allows for such. In the end, it’s Job’s friends with their easy answers who receive God’s wrath. Of fist shaking and mystery embracing Job, God says, “Only my servant Job has spoken rightly by me.” When Jesus was raised from the dead, he brought his scars with him. Even mended hearts bear the marks of the losses we’ve suffered. The mending means those scars are no longer the only story we have to tell.
Even in this life, we may be made new.
Peggy Haymes is the creator of Navigating GriefLand, a small group grief curriculum available through Pinnacle.
