Good Grief: Can Anything Good Come of Grief?
by Tizita Seifu MA, LPCS, LPC
Hi I am Tizita, a Board licensed Therapist in private practice providing adult and child therapy specializing in mental wellness, anxiety, depression, career and workplace, Christian faith and spiritual health, culture and race, and parent-child relationships.
While grief is not easy, it is a necessary process in order for the grieving to eventually experience acceptance of their loss and begin openly reinvesting in life and relationships. Grief is often associated with death but actually includes any significant sadness over a loss. Grief is experienced differently for each individual and tends to include a number of experiences.
Kubler-Ross discusses the different aspects of grief. Grief often includes a sense of denial, as the initial shock of ones’ loss makes it very difficult to believe or accept the loss. Anger often accompanies grief as the reality of the disappointment becomes more apparent along with the awareness of being helpless to change the circumstance. Grief may include an attempt at bargaining with God in an effort to change the circumstance. Sadness or depression tends to become more apparent when bargaining stops. Acceptance begins to occur when more of a sense of peace accompanies the experience of loss freeing the individual to begin to live more with their loss. It is common to find that new memories, anniversaries, and other special events trigger new experiences of grief over the same loss.
Jesus knew His own grief and is deeply concerned and connected to the pain of our grief. In John 11, we see Jesus deeply moved, troubled and weeping simply out of His concern for the grief of Mary. Mary was experiencing grief due to the death of her brother Lazarus. Mary didn’t realize that Jesus’ plan all along was to bring Lazarus back to life after a few days. Even though Jesus knew Mary’s grief would soon be over, Jesus was still deeply concerned crying when He saw Mary crying tears of grief.
Throughout the Bible, we see that grief is a normal though difficult process and that grieving helps bring familiarity to an otherwise disorienting experience.
The Book of Psalms for example, demonstrates many normal and healthy processes of grief such as:
expressing and understanding pain;
a vocabulary and language for expressing pain;
forms of pain such as affliction, misery, and need;
effects of pain such as inability to speak, eat, sleep, loss of strength, feelings of being on the verge of death and persistent pain;
metaphors of pain such as a heart melting, feeling imprisoned, and drowning;
forms of pain such as searching for meaning, concerns with loss of faith, and searching for reasons;
and the value of intimately communing with God through practices such as honest prayer and drawing on the confidence of the loyalty of God.
[“My soul weeps because of grief, strengthen me according to Your Word”-Psalm 119:28]
Grieving through the expression of feelings and thoughts is critical to the healing process. Feelings such as sadness, emptiness and loss can be expressed by talking with a friend, praying and journaling. Anger, guilt, and blame may also become apparent due to your loss. Find a non-judgmental place where you can acknowledge and process your feelings.
While Scripture informs us that grief is temporary (Psalm 30:5), some find that they are experiencing a grief that persists or impairs their ability to function. You may find that your grief makes it feel difficult or impossible to meet the necessary demands of life. You may notice numerous effects of your grief one year or more after your loss. Any such experience indicates that it is time for you to invite a Counselor to give you additional support with your grief.