Good Grief

I’m thankful I was raised by “processors” and am now married to one. Life is so much easier when you don’t have to hide your emotions.

When I want to avoid something (you know, when “nothing” is wrong, except everything is wrong), Keith always says, “The truth is not the problem” and then he encourages me to write and talk. On occasion, he lovingly says (with only a hint of sarcasm), “I can tell you’re a head-case – let’s talk about it.”

My Dad was an “external processor” (which drove my Mom crazy at times) and my Mom was an “internal processor” who didn’t tip her hand very often. But she encouraged us to process our emotions and bought me a little diary when I was really young. I still have my old diaries – I think the oldest one, with Ziggy on the front cover (how’s that for an old-school reference?) is from 1980, so I was 7 years old. Writing is among the most powerful things that she taught me to do – if I didn’t have a place to process my emotions, I’d be a much bigger mess than I am now.

All to say, I am grateful for the people in my life who teach me not to run from fear or failure or grief.

I always attributed the emotion of “grief” with death. I knew someone was grieving if they lost a loved one or if someone was really sick and suffering. But I can look back now and see the ways that grief has been so important in my life, in big and small ways.

I never imagined that there could be anything good about grief.

The first time I was able to use the word grief and recognize it in an honest way was with our daughter, Casey. I had definitely grieved many times before this (through divorce, infertility, crisis of faith seasons, etc.), but had never identified it.

I hate recounting the sad times with Casey because we also had really good times (we did so many fun and crazy things together, and there is nothing better than hearing her contagious laugh), and I’m so thankful we are in a great place now. But as Barbara Brown Taylor says (I’m reading her book right now, Learning to Walk in the Dark – it is brilliant!), “I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”

 So I don’t want to ignore the dark times – they are sacred ground – the place where I was humble enough to let God teach me the hardest lessons.

Casey was 20-years-old when she left home abruptly and under bad circumstances. Our relationship was strained, to say the least. Eventually, I told her to come and sort through her things and take what she wanted. She ended up taking her bed and a number of other things, but she also left a lot of stuff. There were a few big trash bags and curiosity got the best of me, so I decided to see what she threw away. Little did I know the grief that would wash over me as I looked inside.

To be fair, Casey was not herself at the time and wasn’t thinking clearly, and she was angry with us, but I was unprepared for what I found. In the trash I found dozens of pictures (of family, friends, happy times), the silver box we had engraved with her new last name and adoption date to mark her formal adoption at age 18, letters and cards, jewelry, things that she had made in high school in a sewing class and art class. . . I could go on. And she left behind the Bible we had given her with her name on the outside and a letter we had written on the inside cover.

I sat in the floor in front of those garbage bags and wept. I was reeling. I couldn’t even process what I was feeling, so I went to the computer and grabbed my little flash drive (the flash drive that I purged every emotion into and then kept hidden – that little thing was my life raft many days) and began to write.

It was in those dark moments that I realized I was grieving. I was letting go, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I had to let go of my expectations, of control, of dreams, of everything.

It was through that process that I was able to fully give my daughter to the Lord. It was through that process that I was able to watch from a distance as He loved her and pursued her and brought people and circumstances into her life that gave her one chance after another to choose life. It was through that process that I saw His faithfulness. It was through my grief that I learned God loved my daughter even more than I did and He would be with her – He would never give up on her.

Up to that point, I thought God placed Casey with Keith and me so she could heal. I was naïve about childhood trauma and thought that with enough love, encouragement, boundaries, security, resources, etc., that Casey would thrive. I shook my fist at God and asked, “Why did you make me her Mom if I can’t help her?” It was through my grief that I realized I was never meant to help her – I was only meant to love her and let God help her. Now, with the benefit of eight years of perspective (and a few trips to a family counselor), I think the time we had with Casey at home was just to “till the soil” of her heart in some way so that maybe she could let someone else love her.  But my expectations set me up for a huge crashing fall.

Those dark moments taught me how to name my grief. And it taught me the power of expectations. When life and relationships don’t turn out the way we plan, we have to grieve our own expectations or we set ourselves up for resentment.

“If you do not transform your pain, you will always transmit it.” (Richard Rohr, Yes, And)

I just finished reading an amazing book called Rising Strong by Brene Brown that outlined the importance of processing our emotions (she calls it the “rumble”) and not off-loading them in unhealthy ways. It brought clarity to so many things for me. Among other things, she writes about the importance of grief and how it’s part of many emotional processes, including forgiveness.

Brown says, “. . .our silence about grief serves no one. We can’t heal if we can’t grieve; we can’t forgive if we can’t grieve. We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend. C.S. Lewis wrote, “No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.” We can’t rise strong when we’re on the run.”

Grief is an important part of life and it comes up in small and big ways more often that we realize.

Sometimes I feel stupid for the things I grieve, but denying my emotions doesn’t help. Grieving over a lost daughter seems appropriate, but I also grieved when we left our church this year; I grieved when some unforeseen circumstances ruined a highly anticipated date with my husband; I grieve sometimes when I watch our kids and realize I’ll never be able to recapture these moments, etc. Heck, I went off sugar recently and grieved over (on a whole different level, of course) giving up ice cream (I wish I was kidding – this is a serious loss for me. Denying myself sugar makes me want to throw myself in the floor and have a full-on tantrum, like a three-year-old).

And here’s the weird thing . . . I’m a really happy person! I enjoy every day of my life. Sometimes I’m so grateful, I feel like my heart will burst. And yet, I grieve. Sometimes I think my capacity for joy is proportionate to my capacity to acknowledge and integrate all my emotions, especially the ones that scare me the most.

I’m not trying to make light of grief (especially since there are types of grief that I can’t understand – loss of a spouse or child, loss of health, etc.). There’s nothing light about it – it sucks. Sometimes we are forced into grief, over circumstances that would absolutely sink us if we didn’t lie face down in our pain and feel it.

But just because there is heavy and profound grief doesn’t mean we should deny other, less heavy but still significant, types of grief. It’s necessary, and we shouldn’t try to avoid it or cure it or rush through it. Sometimes I think the “smaller” sorrows are much more dangerous. We can mask them, avoid them, deny them, and remain silent and isolated — at least for a season, until the pain catches up to us and surfaces in some unhealthy way.

Over time, I have come to realize that we are not meant to experience life in emotional isolation. I can’t relate with a parent who has lost a child – it would be arrogant of me to even try. But I can relate to a mom of multiples who hasn’t slept through the night in months; I can relate to someone dealing with infertility, or who is waiting (endlessly, unbearably) to adopt; I can relate to the parents making tough decisions because their child has a learning disability; I can relate to the person experiencing a crisis of faith . . . “God is the perfect Recycler; and in the economy of grace, nothing is wasted . . .” (Richard Rohr, Yes, And)

Good grief. (It appears that Charlie Brown had it right all along)

I’ll be learning “good grief” for the rest of my life because I am a holder-on’er – I like control; I don’t like letting go. But I’m slowly, and begrudgingly learning “the art of letting go is really the secret of happiness and freedom.” (Richard Rohr, Yes, And)

And you can’t let go without “good grief.”

 (A picture of Keith and our beautiful daughter at her wedding in August. So grateful for how far God has brought us.)