"Pain demands to be felt." – John Green, Fault in our Stars
Do you know how to grieve?
I would dare to say that our culture is terrible at grieving. And I think that sometimes it is because we don’t have to.
Distraction is readily available. Americans are busy. Work, school, and socializing leave few gaps where we are alone with our thoughts, and even those gaps can be filled with media. An episode of Netflix and scrolling Instagram before bed, and you’re asleep before you’ve had a chance to spend a quiet moment. We don’t have to think if we don’t want to. We can distract and forget…for a while.
But, eventually, pain demands to be felt.
‘Grief’ is often associated with death, but I want to include anything that brings heartache. Breakups. Family issues. Labels. Failure. That deep, old hurt that we shoved under the surface so that we could pull ourselves together enough to keep breathing – and now keep stuffing deeper so that we don’t have to look at it.
We need to learn how to grieve.
Step 1) Acknowledge pain.
No matter how big or small your circumstances, your feelings are equally valid. They may not be logical. They may not be reasonable. But they are there.
Denial never works. You feel how you feel. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can start taking steps to freedom.
Cry. Sit and let your heart ache. Yell. Write. Whatever you need to do, as long as you are feeling. No matter how well you think you are repressing your feelings, I promise you that they will come out eventually in one way or another, whether you recognize them or not – and they probably already are. It’s nice to deal with them on your own terms instead of letting them begin to change the way you treat others or how you score on your college tests or how you take care of yourself.
It’s interesting how much power something loses when it is brought out into the light and named. Identify what you are feeling. Give it a name. If it is appropriate, share it with someone you trust. Challenge yourself to be vulnerable enough to allow someone else into your place of hurt. Grieving is not a sign of weakness; rather, it requires extreme strength. Facing your feelings may bring up layers of pain and confusion. But you have to open up the pile of broken pieces if you want to begin allowing them to be pieced back together.
Step 2) Get out of the mud puddle
It’s really important to spend some time wallowing, but it’s equally important not to stay there.
So many people get trapped in the first step and spiral into self-pity and hopelessness and frustration.
Pain demands to be felt, but your hurt can’t make you stay in that place. It doesn’t have that power over you. In order to stop being the victim and take steps toward healing, you have to step out of that mud puddle.
The problem? Mud is sticky. It can seem fruitless to claw ourselves out of the mire.
This is where God comes in.
Honestly, He has been there the whole time. Through the cause of the pain and the feeling of the pain and the healing of the pain. But it is when we are in the dark, sad place of opening past scars that we truly realize how exhausting and futile it is to try to pull ourselves out of the hurt.
The reason we can’t lift ourselves out of the mud of our pain is because we aren’t supposed to. We don’t have to. The Lord is stretching down a hand and all we have to do is let Him lift us.
Bask in His love. Read His word. Even if the feeling isn’t there, rely on His promises and who He says He is. Saturate your life with truth, even if the truth doesn’t penetrate to your emotions. Take an act of faith and choose to believe what He has said about who you are and how He loves you and wants to heal your broken pieces.
We can’t change ourselves. Pray and allow God to touch those soft spots. He wants to heal them.
And then, get up. Keep walking. Working through pain isn’t instantaneous; it won’t go away right away. Actually, it may never go away completely. But it doesn’t have to control you. Once you are out of the mud puddle and walking again, it is time to work on the next step.
Step 3) Forgive.
Forgiving those who have hurt you deeply is extremely hard. Forgiving yourself is even harder.
Once again, this is not something we can do on our own. Forgiveness requires a supernatural moving of God in our lives, but if we never reach forgiveness we will never truly be free.
Without forgiveness, it is impossible to move forward. Bitterness, guilt, and anger block us from healthy relationships both with others and God. If we don’t kill it, harboring unforgiveness will begin to eat us from the inside.
If you’re trying to forgive by convincing yourself that what was done to you or the things you’ve told yourself weren’t actually wrong, stop. They were wrong. You were hurt, and your feelings are valid. We already dealt with that in Step 1, don’t go backwards.
If you’re trying to forgive by forgetting, stop. It doesn’t work. You can stuff memories and feelings for a short time, but they always come back. Tying pieces of a broken pot up in a cloth sack may hold them together and hide them, but underneath the pot is still broken.
If you’re trying to forgive through sheer willpower, stop. It is impossible to forgive a deep wound through your own strength. Stop exhausting yourself. The Lord is willing to help you; accept it.
People like to build us up and encourage us by saying, “you can do this!” My encouragement to you today is “you can’t do this.” Stop trying to forgive in your own power. Allow the Lord to come in begin to change your heart. It is a process, and it may be a slow process, but through the healing God even the deepest cut can be mended.
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