Grief is beautiful
I subscribe to the belief that grief is beautiful.
I'll tell you why in this piece that I wrote on 11/22/17
It's been 10 days since the 3 year anniversary of my father’s suicide. This year, unlike the previous two, I didn’t feel the need to publicly recognize the anniversary. I even received a few encouraging texts from some family members, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t realize that the anniversary was why I received those messages. I just received them gratefully and moved on with my day.
I think there was a time in my grieving process that I would have looked at how I spent this anniversary with some measure of disdain. I would have asked myself why I wasn’t more respectful. Why didn't I break down and spend all day thinking about my dad? Why wasn't I weepy and mopey?
But hey! Good news, I’ve recently (and when I say recently, I mean recently) come to a place of real acceptance and peace about my own grieving process. Phew! What a good and peaceful place to be mentally. And a huge relief. Its hard to carry grief by itself. Let alone, grief and shame about grief. That's a heavy burden. So I dropped that baggage and it has helped tremendously. Now I can look at how I spent the 3rd anniversary with a sense of triumph, and honestly, tranquility. It doesn't bother me because the day was exactly what it needed to be. Nothing more, nothing less.
Grief is a kaleidoscope: always changing. I think there are people out there who might find what I’m going to say next strange and a little unsettling. However, since this is my journey (and my blog) I’m going to say it. "Hold onto ya butts". Grief is also beautiful.
I say this with absolute conviction and authenticity. Truly, in the very fabric of my being, I believe that grief is a beautiful part of life. Let me explain. Grief is beautiful in the same way that the labor at the end of a pregnancy is beautiful. Labor is bloody and raw and excruciating. Objectively labor is also ugly for all of those reasons. However I would argue that grief, like labor, is beautiful for all of the same reasons as well. Grief can be bloody and raw and excruciating; but the toil and the struggle is not in vain.
You know that saying "rose colored glasses"? Like, oh that person is wearing "rose colored glasses" translated: that person is looking at the world or a situation as if everything is rosy - ignoring the ugly parts. This saying has a bit of a negative connotation, but I'm gonna use it positively. I think there’s a similar "glasses" phenomenon when it comes to grief. It was like this for me: the moment my father’s suicide became a reality for me it was as if glasses were shoved onto my face. I wouldn’t be able to take them off, they were like a permanent fixture in my world. I had spent the first 20 years of my life without them. However, unlike their "rose colored" sisters, these glasses brought everything into sharper focus, to a nearly intolerable degree. It was like looking at the world through a microscope. It made living life, which often times requires participants to have a broader perspective, pretty hard for a while. A lot of the time I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. I was confused and afraid. For a while I hated this new kind of view, these glasses, this perspective. I thought it was ugly and harsh. It was painful in ways that I would never have anticipated.
Thankfully, over time, I began to adapt; like all humans eventually do. [Side bar: I love this about humanity. Thank you Jesus for building this into the frame work of your creation. Adaptation is a miracle.] I began to accept the new way I was seeing the world. Where the sharper focus would hurt and terrify before, I now began to appreciate it. Colors were crisper, relationships more precious, acts of kindness more appreciated and even ugliness became more relatable. I once heard this said about grief "It doesn't get easier over time, you just get stronger". This became my normal. I’ve given life after my father’s suicide a name, I call it my "new normal".
I think there was a time in my grieving process that I would have looked at how I spent this anniversary with some measure of disdain. I would have asked myself why I wasn’t more respectful. Why didn't I break down and spend all day thinking about my dad? Why wasn't I weepy and mopey?
But hey! Good news, I’ve recently (and when I say recently, I mean recently) come to a place of real acceptance and peace about my own grieving process. Phew! What a good and peaceful place to be mentally. And a huge relief. Its hard to carry grief by itself. Let alone, grief and shame about grief. That's a heavy burden. So I dropped that baggage and it has helped tremendously. Now I can look at how I spent the 3rd anniversary with a sense of triumph, and honestly, tranquility. It doesn't bother me because the day was exactly what it needed to be. Nothing more, nothing less.
Grief is a kaleidoscope: always changing. I think there are people out there who might find what I’m going to say next strange and a little unsettling. However, since this is my journey (and my blog) I’m going to say it. "Hold onto ya butts". Grief is also beautiful.
I say this with absolute conviction and authenticity. Truly, in the very fabric of my being, I believe that grief is a beautiful part of life. Let me explain. Grief is beautiful in the same way that the labor at the end of a pregnancy is beautiful. Labor is bloody and raw and excruciating. Objectively labor is also ugly for all of those reasons. However I would argue that grief, like labor, is beautiful for all of the same reasons as well. Grief can be bloody and raw and excruciating; but the toil and the struggle is not in vain.
You know that saying "rose colored glasses"? Like, oh that person is wearing "rose colored glasses" translated: that person is looking at the world or a situation as if everything is rosy - ignoring the ugly parts. This saying has a bit of a negative connotation, but I'm gonna use it positively. I think there’s a similar "glasses" phenomenon when it comes to grief. It was like this for me: the moment my father’s suicide became a reality for me it was as if glasses were shoved onto my face. I wouldn’t be able to take them off, they were like a permanent fixture in my world. I had spent the first 20 years of my life without them. However, unlike their "rose colored" sisters, these glasses brought everything into sharper focus, to a nearly intolerable degree. It was like looking at the world through a microscope. It made living life, which often times requires participants to have a broader perspective, pretty hard for a while. A lot of the time I couldn’t understand what I was looking at. I was confused and afraid. For a while I hated this new kind of view, these glasses, this perspective. I thought it was ugly and harsh. It was painful in ways that I would never have anticipated.
Honesty time. I had the "glasses" epiphany long before I came to this ‘warmth towards grief’ and "grief is beautiful" place. I came to realize how my father’s death had changed me. And for a while I didn’t like it at all. It felt like a burden to look at the world with these ‘grief colored glasses’ on. I felt exhausted from always seeing everything more intensely. But I accepted my reality. I accepted it, but not with joy. Acceptance + defeat is not a tasty recipe. The end result? Depression. It felt like a burden to be my father’s daughter. I wanted the version of myself minus my dad. I wanted him, his death, and this new perspective out of the picture.
Thankfully, over time, I began to adapt; like all humans eventually do. [Side bar: I love this about humanity. Thank you Jesus for building this into the frame work of your creation. Adaptation is a miracle.] I began to accept the new way I was seeing the world. Where the sharper focus would hurt and terrify before, I now began to appreciate it. Colors were crisper, relationships more precious, acts of kindness more appreciated and even ugliness became more relatable. I once heard this said about grief "It doesn't get easier over time, you just get stronger". This became my normal. I’ve given life after my father’s suicide a name, I call it my "new normal".
It didn’t happen all at once, the new normal, but it did. It happened over years of questioning, struggling with reality and fighting off hopelessness. It came through some tough conversations with some incredible people who wanted to speak life into my situation. It arrived during moments of bone deep, terrifyingly painful heartbreak - moments when I would relive losing my dad over and over. It happened even when I wasn't paying full attention. Sometimes it happened all at once and unexpectedly in something like a ‘gut check’.
One of those 'gut check' moments got me thinking. If I could hash this whole thing out with the source of the pain- my dad- what would that look like? I thought for a long time that I’d want to talk about it. I thought I’d want to tell him how he hurt me and how angry I was and how wrong he was. I really did. I thought - If I could see my dad, if he was standing in front of me, I’d want to hash this crap out! We’re going to talk about this! I’d tell him everything that I’d been holding in these last 3 years. I really thought that if I was faced with the source of my grief that I’d want to hold him accountable. I would want an explanation. I’d want to make him somehow pay for what he did. There would have to be justice. The score would need to be settled. I believed, whole heartedly, that it would make me feel better. That I would be able to move on. Because why wouldn’t I? The score was settled. There shouldn’t be anything left up in the air. I’d be at peace. That’s how the world works.
But then I asked myself a dangerous question: what would it take to settle the score? What do I need to receive to feel like I’ve been compensated for the damage that’s been done to me? Would I really feel better if I had the chance to scream at my dad for a while over this? Probably not. So what? What would it take to have justice for something like this? And all at once the answer hit me like a ton of bricks: Nothing. Will. Ever. Be. Enough. I could never measure the damage.
And there it was. The epiphany.The parallel between my situation and what God did for us. God created the world, loved us, developed a relationship with us and then we did something and so many things that called for justice. We began to go into massive relationship debt. Astronomical debt. Immeasurable. There could never have been enough justice for our sin. But then God, the damaged party, named His terms. He was willing to take a settlement. He said "I need one final sacrifice". But here’s the ludicrous part of it. He also supplied the sacrifice. Jesus. This beautiful, perfect, innocent, man. God’s own son, was the one who would bear the burden. He would take on all of it. Every injustice. All the ugliness of the world. Then he would die as recompense. Then it would be over. The case would be closed. Our debt would be paid. With VERY little discomfort or inconvenience to ourselves. We got to walk away totally free. And Jesus DID die. And the debt WAS paid. And justice WAS served. It was preposterous. Radical.
And it changed everything for me in my grief journey too. How could I call for justice for an offense against me when my own offenses, past, present and future, where pardoned wholly and totally? I was radically forgiven. And actually. So was my dad. Even for this. Jesus, the only one who had any right to call for blood, chose FORGIVENESS. What right had I to withhold my forgiveness when I'd been given so much and when my dad had already been forgiven anyways? So I revisited that thought of what I would do if I could see my dad again. In light of the portion of forgiveness that was served to me, I realized that in reality - I wouldn’t waste a single precious second trying to get justice for what had been done. It simply wasn’t possible. Then what was left? What would I do if I could see my dad? When you take the offense out of the equation what is left but love? If I could see my dad face to face I would only want him to know how much I love him and I’d want him to know that he has my unconditional forgiveness. And he always will. We would both know he could never make up for what he did. I’ve decided that he doesn’t need to. I’m letting him off the hook. The score is settled. It is finished.
I still wear my ‘grief colored glasses’. I think that in some ways I always will. I see the world differently now. I just do. However once I forgave my dad, it became kind of easy to appreciate the grief. To see it as beautiful. I needed grief. I think grief is the solution to loss. Grief isn’t a consequence of loss. I think that’s how I saw grief before - like it was a natural by product of trauma. I saw grief as something like a reflex; something that you just had to get through. I saw grief as something that happened to you - not a choice. I believe now that I was wrong. Grief isn’t those things; It’s the answer.
And there it was. The epiphany.The parallel between my situation and what God did for us. God created the world, loved us, developed a relationship with us and then we did something and so many things that called for justice. We began to go into massive relationship debt. Astronomical debt. Immeasurable. There could never have been enough justice for our sin. But then God, the damaged party, named His terms. He was willing to take a settlement. He said "I need one final sacrifice". But here’s the ludicrous part of it. He also supplied the sacrifice. Jesus. This beautiful, perfect, innocent, man. God’s own son, was the one who would bear the burden. He would take on all of it. Every injustice. All the ugliness of the world. Then he would die as recompense. Then it would be over. The case would be closed. Our debt would be paid. With VERY little discomfort or inconvenience to ourselves. We got to walk away totally free. And Jesus DID die. And the debt WAS paid. And justice WAS served. It was preposterous. Radical.
And it changed everything for me in my grief journey too. How could I call for justice for an offense against me when my own offenses, past, present and future, where pardoned wholly and totally? I was radically forgiven. And actually. So was my dad. Even for this. Jesus, the only one who had any right to call for blood, chose FORGIVENESS. What right had I to withhold my forgiveness when I'd been given so much and when my dad had already been forgiven anyways? So I revisited that thought of what I would do if I could see my dad again. In light of the portion of forgiveness that was served to me, I realized that in reality - I wouldn’t waste a single precious second trying to get justice for what had been done. It simply wasn’t possible. Then what was left? What would I do if I could see my dad? When you take the offense out of the equation what is left but love? If I could see my dad face to face I would only want him to know how much I love him and I’d want him to know that he has my unconditional forgiveness. And he always will. We would both know he could never make up for what he did. I’ve decided that he doesn’t need to. I’m letting him off the hook. The score is settled. It is finished.
I still wear my ‘grief colored glasses’. I think that in some ways I always will. I see the world differently now. I just do. However once I forgave my dad, it became kind of easy to appreciate the grief. To see it as beautiful. I needed grief. I think grief is the solution to loss. Grief isn’t a consequence of loss. I think that’s how I saw grief before - like it was a natural by product of trauma. I saw grief as something like a reflex; something that you just had to get through. I saw grief as something that happened to you - not a choice. I believe now that I was wrong. Grief isn’t those things; It’s the answer.
"I’ve had a loss, what do I do now?" Grieve.
"I feel lost after this trauma." Grieve.
"I don’t know how to fix what just happened to me." Grieve.
Fortunately, grief is as unique as the people who experience it. So logic follows; there isn't one particular way to grieve. My views and opinions on grief are just that - opinions. But for what it's worth, coming from one broken person to another, I'm gonna let you off the hook. Based on what I've learned over the last 3 years, you have permission to grieve in whatever way you need to. Take good care of yourself by letting yourself grieve and let the grief look however it needs to. Do your best to be healthy and open and let God do the rest. Grief is His tool. Let Him use it.
"I feel lost after this trauma." Grieve.
"I don’t know how to fix what just happened to me." Grieve.
Fortunately, grief is as unique as the people who experience it. So logic follows; there isn't one particular way to grieve. My views and opinions on grief are just that - opinions. But for what it's worth, coming from one broken person to another, I'm gonna let you off the hook. Based on what I've learned over the last 3 years, you have permission to grieve in whatever way you need to. Take good care of yourself by letting yourself grieve and let the grief look however it needs to. Do your best to be healthy and open and let God do the rest. Grief is His tool. Let Him use it.
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