Grief and Loss

For a little while, I’m going to blog all the bits and pieces I have collected during my research on grief and loss. These have been really helpful to us. Understanding the process of grief and recognising the different emotions and stages in ourselves has been encouraging. I hope they will help others who read them.

Everyone suffers with some form of loss. No one is exempt. Everyone is dealing in loss in some form or another. Sooner or later, the things or people we love are taken from us. It hurts to say good-bye. The painful process of dealing with any loss is called grief. Grief is a normal and unavoidable part of life.

Loss brings us face to face with ourselves, with our enemy, and with our God. We like to think that we are really in control of our lives, but a loss exposes our vulnerability. The way we deal with loss can make us better or bitter.

We grieve because we were never designed to handle loss. When God first made Adam and Eve in his image, he made them with an innate capacity for enjoying a relationship with God and with other human beings. They never knew loss in any form. The bitter consequence of Adam’s sin was death - separation and loss of the cherished relationship with his Creator, and then the deterioration of relationships with others which followed.

Painful loss reminds us that this earth should never be the focus of our hopes. We are sojourners in a foreign land and we are not yet home. Grief over any loss can have a healthy effect if it brings us to God among the multitude of people who came to Jesus out of a need for comfort, rescue and blessing.

“Looking for that blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Christ Jesus.” Titus 2:13