The Power of Community in our Grief

On Christmas Day of 2018, I penned this post.

It was a time of great sadness for our family. One of my relatives had made a horrific decision and had left -- left a husband. Left children. It was gut-wrenching and incredibly painful. 

Unexpectedly, I decided to host family here for Christmas. I was worn down and burned out, but it was needed, and it was a beautiful time of tears and moments of respite and the beginning of coping and healing. 

It was grief. 

Huge. Horrific. Big letter G-R-I-E-F. 

I wish I could say that Christmas was the end of that grief. 

But grief doesn't work like that. I have said often that grief does not move in a straight line. You think you have moved past something and then you get hit by a wave that you didn't see coming. It lulls and then crashes again. 

Throughout the months that have followed, our family, and especially those most intimately involved in our family's lives have continued to work toward healing. They have focused on healing their grief. They have purposefully dealt with their sadness and confusion. We, as a family, decided that we would not let this pain move forward without facing it head on. That these children would heal and be even better than they were before. 

In April, the church I grew up in Fort Lauderdale that helped raise me, lost a magnificent soul as I wrote about here. Christopher's family is integrally woven into my own and his loss reverberated amongst our tribe in incredibly powerful ways. 

While grief has not hit me directly this year, oh the people I love and the grief that has been swirling around me. From the loss of a dear pet to the depths of depression and the pain of betrayal beyond our widest dreams. I have sat next to people in grief so deep it feels impossible to comprehend how they are still breathing air and not drowning. 

I have been there. Through the five years of infertility and intense depression that accompanied my pregnancies, I have felt that intense sadness. That deep pit that circles you and feels too much for any one person to possibly stand. 

Because my own mental health has been a little wobbly over the last six months, I've been incredibly cautious about how deep I wade into the grief of others. I know that I can only go in about ankle deep right now. I can't handle much more. 

How do they handle more?

I'm not really sure sometimes. 

Sometimes the burden seems so incredibly heavy that I fear their hearts -- their souls -- their very beings may break under the strain. 

We must make sure we are, ourselves, healthy. But we also are called to be there for our brothers and sisters. I John 3:17-18 says: "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth." 

Can I get an AMEN!?

There are always people grieving. Look around you. Love them. And consider editing your plans if God so calls you to help them wade through the sadness that life is throwing at us. 

This life is hard.

But the promise of eternity -- thanks to the birth of our savior -- is such a precious gift.