Every loss in life deserves an appropriate season of grieving, whether you’ve lost your favorite person or you’ve lost your favorite pen. Grieving is a way in which we take the emotional upheaval and bring it up to the Lord…If we don’t let emotions up and out before God, those emotions internalize. They give us physical, psychological, and spiritual problems.
-Terry Wardle
Wardle calls these problems ungrieved losses. I heard him say this today in a podcast episode with ChurchPulse Weekly Conversations. It took me a long time to learn this, but I can definitely tell you he’s right.
Sure, we all grieve differently. But grieve we must.
Sure, we all attach in different degrees which determines our level of loss. But lose we do.
I didn’t grow up grieving well. And the biggest opportunity to improve came at age twelve (still growing up) when my father died. And for at least the next twelve years, I needed to let it up and out. The only avenue I took was the piano. I see it now, but I didn’t know it then that the hours I spent at the piano were hours of grieving.
What I know now that I didn’t know then was the sooner you grieve the better, the sooner you allow the emotional upheaval the better. Healing begins. The weight lightens as you name the loss, acknowledge the emotions attached, then invite God into your grief (read this blog post by Joshua Reich).
In the last year, we’ve all lost. Have you considered naming your losses? I encourage you to name them. They may feel obvious and unnecessary to name, but you may be surprised the longer you sit in them the more you have to name. And those internalized emotions will start rising, inching up and out.
Fear. Loneliness. Sadness. Disappointment. Confusion.
Meanwhile God doesn’t move. He stays with you. He begins to touch and heal your wound-that loss ungrieved.
Photo by Yanna Zissiadou on Unsplash
John Gregory 