(My walk-in grief with the death of my dearly beloved granddaughter. Avery my heart walks with you. ) Grief, brings deep sorrow, a place of confusion and loneliness. It becomes overwhelming to the mind, body, and spirit in an instant, and each one of them will process separately for a while in your grief. This creates a great divide, a great disconnect of the soul. This kind of grief can take a while to process, it is very difficult and different for each individual. It is sometimes impossible for your mind to feel or see your way out of the dark that surrounds you, the undeniable heartbreak that feels heavy, all-consuming of extreme sadness, anger, rage, hollowness, and emptiness of heart and soul. It can also feel like you can’t breathe. Yet, there seems to be a mist, a fog that keeps your mind safe from reality. Your body feels like your moving in slow motion and your eyes want to stay shut from mental and physical exhaustion. You can sleep for days and have reoccurring thoughts like an actor on a stage rehearsing in your mind how this tragedy must have played out. Every horror-able detail of your own personal thoughts of how this happened, can bring on nightmares. Your mind also helps you through your grief, it will allow the body to be still for a while because your energy is exhausted and depleted physically, mentally, and spiritually. Healing from grief takes time, there is a process. “Hope” of surviving grief seems far away. Some can not even recognize hope even though it has been there the whole time. Somewhere deep inside you, there is something, like a life raft drifting in the unknown. You seem to be able to sense this raft in the distance, it is in the dark, in the deepest despair, it is “Hope”. The Hope of healing, the hope of rescue, the gift of light. When you finally find the strength to tug on the lifeline of Hope you can begin to see it clearly and can identify it and acknowledge that it is tangible, it is there, it is the light of Christ, the hope of surviving that allows you to focus to see through the fog of grief, the experiences that are more than we can do alone. When you are ready to find your Hope, hope for a better tomorrow, and hope of understanding the reality you are in. Then and only then can you find your strength mentality, physically, and spiritually. This will pull it closer to your broken heart which in turn will start to heal your weakness and turn it into your strength, which in turn allows you to regain your “Faith” in Jesus Christ, God, and your physical body, mind, and spirit which is your soul. This is about re-finding your balance in life. Restoring the light within you. The gift of light and knowledge Christ gave you through his atonement. He has already borne your sadness and your grief. This moment of allowing your thoughts to refresh and re-direct your movement forward, up, and out of the darkness into the light is when you are able to reconnect with your path of light, your destiny, and your God-given right as a child of Heavenly Father. Together, you can meet in the middle and make the next step possible for you to truly heal from your very personal loss. When you are on your way to healing from a tragic loss of a loved one there is something that happens inside you. Compassion for yourself. You are not broken. Grief is real and it can be healed. In time you will find a space within you, that beacon of light, that lives inside you through Christ. You will find Joy again. Grief is not meant to bear alone. Christ is walking beside you, and sometimes we need a friend, for support. Someone to reach out to, someone you trust. When you have someone to help lift the load you are carrying it will become lighter in time, in your time. Through compassion for yourself, you will see the beauty in the spaces around you again. You will have an understanding of what grief feels like, and you will be able to reach out to others who are where you have been.
You can then, in return, help lift their burdens to find their own Joy and the Love of Jesus Christ again.
Debra Rudd
