grief.

I was catching someone up on my life the other day and they exclaimed “Wow, not one thing is staying the same for you right now, huh?”

Change change change.

Transition transition transition.

New struggles and old struggles going head to head. It’s like a whirlwind.

I’m observant enough to know I love change when I can control it. Moving brings excitement mixed with the pain of packing, but knowing where I’m moving can kindaaaaa help me see the good. Redecorating takes work, but I’m deciding what goes up on the wall. I can see why that’s change I might enjoy.

But then we run into the old, familiar beast of things outside my control. Unfortunately, the list in that category is soooo very long, stressful, and exhausting.

I have to keep reminding myself of the things I can’t control, and when there’s a long list like the one I have now, I find myself running into grief. Grief is ugly. Grief feels unbearable. And if you’re me, grief has been hanging around for a long time now.

I’m familiar with grief. It’s tenacious. It likes to show up when it decides to, even if that happens to be inconvenient for me. It pulls at the heart and soul in ways I find hard to describe, but almost like something is being ripped out from the very fabric of your being. You’re disconnecting from a part of you that you’d rather not disconnect from. Something that’s superglued to your heart is being surgically removed without any kind of pain relief.

Proverbs says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick…”

From personal experience, I think there’s a lot of hope deferred out there and, consequently, a lot of sick hearts. I don’t want my heart to be sick. That’s the last thing I want. But I don’t want to stop hoping, either. There lies the tension.

I wish I could say I have it all figured out, and here’s what I’ve learned from years of heartache. Maybe one day I’ll figure out that formula and give a Tedtalk.

But not today.

Today, it’s you and me, and our sick hearts surrendered at the feet of Jesus in a process of grief that feels like torture. And here’s all the advice I have to give despite not always taking it myself:

For grief to run its course, you have to let yourself feel it.

You can outrun it for a while. You can build up some seriously high brick walls to keep it out. You can dig millions of pits for it to fall into. Eventually, however, it catches up. It seeps through the walls. It drags you into the pits with it. It’s inevitable.

You have to feel it.

I have a mixed relationship with emotions. Coming off five-plus years of feeling numb and reemerging into a world of emotion, I feel like a kid with training wheels on learning to navigate the basics again. While distracting yourself as a solution has a very real time and place, sitting still and allowing grief to wash over you is necessary.

Along with grief, there is grace. Along with grace, there is hope that things will get better, maybe not in the way you expect, want, or demand, but in the way they are meant to happen. Hope and grace are there to catch the consequences of grief.

As difficult as it can be, drop the shoulds, coulds, and woulds (my favorites!) and live in the reality of what’s happening. When you do that, you can meet yourself where you are, not where you wish to be. It can bring a little relief into your heart and body, being seen like that.

That’s how God sees you, anyway.

There’s much less pressure in the reality of grief and processing here. You can be a mess. You can be where you’re at without pretending. You can feel as crappy as you feel and be understood, not shunned or dismissed. There’s validation waiting. It’s still ugly, don’t get me wrong. It’s still painful and gross, and it doesn’t feel great. But you get to be you and He gets to be Him and letting it hit you here is the best case scenario.

Make sure you feel it, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Even if you distract yourself afterward because it was too much or you feel tightness in your chest.

There’s grace in the process of being where you are and who you are, even in grief.