Good Grief
19 months.
It’s been 19 of the best months of my life. Not to say that I didn’t also have good months before, but these ones…whew. What a beautifully chaotic ride.
Over the past few weeks, what has become somewhat clear to me is how many goodbyes are associated with this way of living. I’m not just talking about living overseas, but also about doing that thing that you know you should be doing. Somehow, doing the right thing is always associated with saying goodbye to something.
And I did a lot of that 19 months ago.
I said goodbye to my family. Thank God for video calls, amirite? But the other day it dawned on me that I can probably count on one hand the times that I will physically see my parents again. Ooof. A stab of pain. I said goodbye to my friends. This one was a twisty sort of difficult because I wanted to leave a gap in their life; it means I was valuable right? But I also wanted them to continue to have a good life and fill that gap, which means I’m truly gone. Another stab. I said goodbye to that version of a career that I was building up. Stab. So did my husband, in a more painful way, double stab. We said goodbye to New Zealand life, blissfully unaware of how short the drive to the beach was. Stab stab stab. But through all that, it was ok because we were launching out into a new and exciting adventure, and goodbyes are a natural part of that.
Except that goodbyes do not end at the beginning of an adventure. The tears start coming and they don’t stop coming.
I’ve said goodbye to so many things since being here, and it is not an overstatement to say that I was not prepared for any of them. Goodbye to my old sense of self. Goodbye to the ease of natural intuition. Goodbye to natural communication and the easy understanding that comes with residing in your motherland. Goodbye to ideas and practices that I had once used to keep me sane. Goodbye to new friends who had become like brothers in arms. Goodbye to perfect health in our tiny little family.
There have been so. many. goodbyes.
Grief, on the other hand, now that’s not quite so automatic.
The Merriam-Webster defines grief as “a deep and poignant distress,” and the Collins dictionary defines it as “keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss.” Grief is not something our culture naturally leans into. We all move at breakneck speed, and grief doesn’t have a quick pace. It’s deep, it’s keen, and it moves at its own rhythm. Grief makes it hard to stick to a schedule and we all know how important schedules are these days. You can’t wake up one morning and decide that grief is done. It’s done when it’s done. And the only way to hurry that along is to let it be.
“I’ve said goodbye to so many things since being here, and it is not an overstatement to say that I was not prepared for any of them.”
On top of that, grief gets a bad rap. Think crazed women, chunky Thor, or oddly specifically, a middle-aged female who won’t shave her legs, brush her teeth, and stops eating greens because nothing can fix life but somehow the ‘carbs and crying combo’ fix everything, *side eye. Grief is never portrayed as something we would choose to walk through. But I’m learning the hard way that it is necessary to experience grief in order to keep moving purposefully in the right direction without eventually breaking down.
Pastor Rich Villodas expanded my understanding with this quote,
“After Job experienced tragic loss, he tears his robe and shaves his head (an act of lament). Many of us often do the opposite. We buy a new outfit and go to the hair salon/barbershop, in an attempt to conceal our pain. But Job powerfully holds grief and worship of God together.”
Grief is no small trifle, but it is also the facilitator of that healing that comes when we look a hard thing in the eye. When our deep and poignant sadness is held up with open hands and maybe even shared with a loving God, it allows an outpouring of feelings to occur that makes room for deep and meaningful healing.
On the other hand, when grief isn’t allowed to truly express itself, the sadness doesn’t go away but instead morphs into something else in order to find some sort of expression, usually causing far more damage on its way out.
So how does one step out from this crazy, fast pace of life and purposefully sit in the slow but deep waters of grief?
I’m still not 100% sure how everyone would do it, but here’s what I’m learning to do. I’m allowing there to be spaces and places where I’m allowed to bring up the grief, hold it in my hands, and sometimes even look it in the eye. At times that’ll be when I’m at church and the teacher says something that hits a note. Sometimes it’ll be when I’m sitting with a group of friends and I remember that special people are missing. Maybe even while riding the tram listening to a particularly poignant piece of music.
I’ve decided that it’s ok in those moments to let a tear trickle down, to close my eyes and feel the pain for a minute. To allow the deep feeling to remind me that it meant I had lovely and meaningful things in my life. I face the thing, I try to acknowledge it, and I sit with it.
It takes time.
When grief’s process is complete, it doesn’t yell goodbye on its way out. There’s no hard launch back into normal life. Instead, after a few months, I have been able to think about some of those earlier losses with a feeling that is closer to peace than sadness.
I am left only with gratitude for being able to live a life enriched with treasures; treasures so valuable that their loss is worthy of grief.
Let me conclude with these words from the Apostle Paul that a new friend shared this week:
“I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!”
