Redemption in Grief

Good news! I'm learning things in seminary! Yipee! I don't know if I'm learning what I'm "supposed" to be learning...but I'm learning things nonetheless...

One of these boldest lessons came from my Intro to Counseling class last Thursday. The class was on grief, and it was pretty raw. As the professor spoke and classmates shared, I could sense all of my past griefs wanting to come out and say hello. My parent's divorce, the death of friends, friendships torn, family relationships changing, romantic hopes broken, health scares, bands breaking up...all things I have had to seriously grieve in their turn over the years. Each of these things took months to years of emotional energy, counseling and processing to work through and accept. But I realized through this lecture that there is a great gift in grief. Granted, this can only be claimed in retrospect--so don't any one dare tell someone who's grieving that it's a gift--that would be really stupid. But as I look back on these parts of my story, I can see how much I was changed, edified and made alive through each of these painful processes.

One author puts it this way. "I am convinced that most of us, most of the time, live in an anesthetized state. Our bodies may be functioning, but we feel nothing and are aware of nothing of great importance. We suffer from what someone has called 'the anesthesia of the familiar.' To grieve deeply and openly brings us into the recovery of life, where the anesthesia wears off and we see and feel and taste and touch life for the first time. It is the greatest paradox of life that we can truly come alive only after the arrows of death have pierced our hearts. The things I once took for granted, or passed without notice, are now the most immeasurable of treasures...If we have ears to hear, we discover that the cries of grief are at the same time the birth pangs of faith"

Through my limited experience, I find this to be true. My life has not been as hard as many, but I have grieved many things over the years, and I know it changed me. For better and worse grief makes you alive to things you had never before experienced, and it transforms you. There is a seasoning to a person that has been through a great loss that can not be mimicked. Character comes out of loss, pain and grief. It is absurdly painful, but it is these moments that make us the people we are.

Somehow I walked away from this lecture thankful for the grief I've experienced. This is not to say I am thankful my parents got divorced or that I had experienced broken relationships, but I am thankful for how those experiences have crucially changed me. Through these events I have been matured and given a perspective that can only be learned by experience. I am thankful that there is this much redemption in tragic loss. With time, joy replaces grief, and I think I will only fully understand that when I see Jesus face to face. But I do know I love now more deeply than I did before. I am more focused and balanced. I know myself better. I have a better capacity to care for others. I am more joyful. I can empathize with those who are experiencing great loss. Somehow grieving brought these changes in me, and I am thankful.

More than anything, I am ridiculously thankful for the perspective to be able to say that.