Welcome Grief

For months I have been plagued by what I thought was anxiety, which one would expect I suppose, when one’s spouse has died and one is left with three children and a stove which is just as happy to cook fingers as well as frozen entrées.

But I have worked hard at ordering life and God has been good, so I have no real reason to be afraid. So this week, when another wave of what I thought was fear came over me, I stopped what I was doing and furiously typed what I was feeling.

As the words appeared on the screen, It became apparent that what I was feeling was grief: profoundly, painfully missing every detail of a relationship that the river of life has taken downstream.

C.S. Lewis was right, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."
(A Grief Observed)

Ah Grief! It's you! You are so much more welcome in my life than fear. Fear can kill you. Fear can spiral into depression and anxious lethargy and make you wonder if you will ever get up, ever get out again. I am afraid of fear, but not grief. Grief leads to happiness.

Matthew 5:4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

God blesses the griever, but He commands us not to fear.

Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

There is no blessing for those who fear only a slow drain of emotional energy that leaves us empty and faithless, but not grief. Grief brings us to God.

So, come Grief. Do your work. Break me and then make me. Wound me and then heal me. Lead me to blessedness that will last forever when God himself, no mediator, no emissary, no indirect means will comfort me, but God himself, the source of all comfort.

2 Corinthians 1:3 NLT
God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort.

Ah Grief, come. Lead me there.