Bearing the Length of Grief
There are so many terrible, new realities that come from the grief of child loss. We know them, don’t we? The emptiness. The longing. The raw cavern ripped through our very middle. Even though my son died in my arms, for months I was desperate to search for him. It was as if my mind knew that he was gone, but my body and instincts hadn’t quite caught up. I felt desperate, certain there was someplace I could go or something I could still do to find him alive. I pictured myself years in the future like a dark-hooded Dickens character lurking and combing through back alleys convinced there was some place I could reach my baby.
This was one of the hardest parts of grief for me to comprehend --- it still is – the length of it. We have all had that experience when we have picked up something that is heavier than we should be carrying but we tell ourselves, I just have to carry it to the car or I can put it down in a minute, I can do it. Not so for grief.
Grief is the heaviest thing we will ever carry and there is no end in sight.
There is really only one end – our reunion with our beloved child at the end of our own lives one day, God-willing. So, what do we do? How do we survive the crushing weight of grief, day after day after day? Year after year? The answer will be different for everyone, but these three approaches have helped me.
Radical Acceptance.
Get up each day (after day after day after day) and try to give grief what it needs that day, without judgement or criticism. This is more obvious in early grief when no one expects anything from you except to be flattened by sorrow. But what about as time goes on? Don’t let judgement creep in. You can’t stop it in other people, but you can in yourself. There is no timeline to your grief. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. There is no limit. Give yourself permission to need what you need and not need what you don’t need for as long as you need.
I needed to watch sad movies and read books about child loss. Entering deeply into my grief along with the grief of a character on screen or in a book helped me process my feelings and begin to integrate them into my life and body. That might be too much for you. Maybe you need distractions or tasks to do. Maybe you need more space for quiet and taking long walks or pouring your grief out in a journal. Maybe you need to talk about your loss with a friend or counselor or maybe you are tired of talking about it. Be curious and kind about what your grief is asking of you and let it have its say. It needs to speak.
Your heartache needs to come into the light of day and be held with gentleness, love, and acceptance.
2. Take it to Jesus.
Isaiah 53:3 says the Messiah will be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but he also knows all about the depths of pain in your heart. He knows grief. He enters into our sorrow and weeps with us (John 11:35). He longs for us to fall at his feet and tell him everything that is in our heart. (Mark 5:33). Did you know that the bible does not say God won’t give us more than we can handle? In fact, when God allows suffering in our lives, He longs for us to share it with Him and allow Him to carry our cross with and for us. We are never meant to carry it alone. We are meant to yoke ourselves to Jesus so He bears the weight of our load (Matthew 11:30). Jesus may not take away the pain, but uniting our suffering to Jesus will always bear fruit. It is the promise of the resurrection in your life and in your grief.
3. Small moments of Beauty.
When I feel crushed not just by the heaviness of my grief but by the endless nature of carrying it day after day, I try to change my perspective. There are many times when keeping our head up and looking forward is helpful but not always in grief.
Grief isn’t something you move through but something you learn to live in. To live with.
I find relief when I can shift my gaze off the endless days and years ahead of me into the present. Not just thinking about today or this morning or this hour, but thinking about this very moment. If I allow myself to be present to this precise moment and not think at all about the past or the future, I can find relief. Most of the time, in fact, there is no suffering in the present moment – the suffering comes from what we long for from the past or fear in the future. And that is understandable, especially in grief. But when it is too much to bear, we can find relief in the beauty of the present moment.
Allow yourself to look deeply at the place you find yourself. Use all your senses. Biologically, grief is connected to our limbic system. The practice of mindfulness and deep breathing is proven to soothe our limbic system by reducing activity in the amygdala, the brain region associated with stress, trauma, and grief responses. I used to roll my eyes at mindfulness, especially in grief. Come on, everyone, some deep breaths are REALLY not going to help me endure a lifetime without my son. But the science is sound. The simple practice of closing your eyes and taking slow, deep breaths re-grounds us in the present moment. From a place of greater calm, notice the details of the world around you. There is so much beauty if we take time to capture it: the flicker of a candle flame, the warmth of the blanket on my lap, the dried grasses blowing slowly in my yard, the gentle ring of wind chimes on my front porch.
Taking time to seek small moments of beauty reminds me that even though my heart is broken, the world is still beautiful.
Learning to carry the heaviness of grief means integrating it into my life – and through integration, I learn to bear the complexity of holding joy and grief, beauty and tragedy, love and loss all at the same time.
Carrying grief is hard, holy work. It has been almost 5 years and I don’t miss my son any less today than I did the day he died. But I have learned to make space for my grief. I have grown and stretched around it, learned so much from it, and become more the woman I am meant to be because of it. I am praying for all of us in our grief. May you let yourself be loved in the place you find yourself today, take your grief to Jesus, and find small moments of beauty.
