Grieving Your Loss - Day 28
Grieving Your Loss
Day 28
Grieving Your Loss… This is Day 28 of our journey out of exile.
On Day 27 I said that you will start your return from exile by naming it for what it is: loss. What do you do with loss? You grieve it.
As straight forward as this may seem, we don't always see our losses. We get too caught up in other aspects of our exile. We might spend time blaming others, regretting mistakes, fixing problems, or wandering around disillusioned.
We overlook the obvious: our expectations for life weren't met. That's a loss. Losses hurt. We need to give ourselves permission to feel the pain of that loss.
The Grief Cycle
Let me walk you through what grieving your loss means. The grief cycle was first created to describe what happens when you lose someone to death. But these stages are true for any loss:
Denial
Your first reaction to loss is to minimize or ignore it so you don't feel the full pain of it. You hope you'll wake up some day and find it didn't happen or what happened doesn't affect you. If you are unable to ignore the loss on your own, you might look for help by immersing yourself in things like: travel, a new person, a hobby, exercise, drugs and alcohol, religion, blaming others, excusing your responsibility, etc.
Anger
When you finally come out of denial, you realize the loss still exists. It hasn't gone anywhere and that leads to anger. You thought you could outfox the loss with denial. But there it is, staring you in the face and you don’t like it and so anger is the result. You don’t think your loss is fair and so you direct your anger toward whatever or whomever you think deserves it.
Spiritual people often don't like to admit their anger. They will act like the loss is not a big deal. They'll spiritualize the loss and say things like, "I gave it to the Lord. It doesn't bother me." Maybe. Or maybe that's a cover up. It's worth considering.
Bargaining
Bargaining is when you try to take the short-cut to overcome your loss. You might plead with God to let someone live by saying you'll be more spiritual. You might promise your spouse you'll do better if they don't divorce you. You might try a network marketing scheme or a lottery ticket to get out of a financial jam. Bargaining is an act of desperation to keep you from experiencing the full effect of your loss.
Depression
When denial, anger, and bargaining don’t resolve your anger, depression is often the result. Depression happens when you believe the lie: Life will never be good again. The power of this lie is that it's close to the truth. It makes sense. If you lost something significant to your joy, then how can life ever be good again?
The truth is...and what you need to come to realize is...life may never be the same...but life can be good again, even if it's different. It's a faith issue because you need to believe in God to be convinced of this. You need to believe that God is good and he wants to bring fullness back to your life. If you can't believe in God or his goodness, it's easy to slip into terminal despair.
Acceptance
Acceptance is when you fully accept the new you and believe that God is with you and for you. You believe that life can be good again. You are not the same person you were before the loss. But even though you are not the same, you are not less of a person. You are just different. Life is different.
Many people refuse to come to this place. They fight it. They dig in their heels. They don't want to be different. They think denial, anger, and bargaining will help. They won't. Accepting the new you is the only way to bring true peace back to your life.
Do You See Your Loss?
Grieving your loss is a process. It takes time. But it won't happen if you don't first see the loss.
Here are a few questions for you:
What are the losses that you've been unable or unwilling to see?
Where are you at in the grief cycle? Where have you gotten stuck? Why is that?
Do you believe that life will ever be good again? Why or why not?
I hope you'll take time to sit with these questions and honestly answer them. Ask God to show you the truth.
These forty days of devotionals are adapted from my book, Return from Exile … available on Amazon.com.
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