The Beauty of the Darkness of Grief

These days I'm finding that I can't breathe.
I feel like there is a giant pressure on my chest making each inhale painful and incomplete.
I feel heavy.
I feel slow and confused.
Everything seems to take too much effort.
I feel anxious, fidgety, nervous, racing internally.

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. . . And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hanging about waiting for something to happen. ”  - C.S.Lewis, A Grief Observed

It took me by surprise, this grief. But I guess grief is like that. It can surprise you. Sometimes it shoots out of me in hot, ugly sobs. But most of the time it is just a suffocating blanket wrapped about me.

It feels dark.

But in this season of Advent, I find peace in the fact that darkness and light are the same to Him. The night is as bright as day (Psalm 139:12). He sees just as clearly in the dark as He does in the light.

It is never pleasant to be in the place of grief, to be buried under the weight of loss.

But somehow, to sit in that place with Him, the darkness loses its coldness. It becomes warm and alive, though no less painful.



In the end, it is not about escaping this place. It is about inviting Him into it.

Nothing buried, skirted, or circumvented can heal.

Grief is a cup that must be drunk to the dregs.

So, I drink. Fully. The sweetness and the bitterness. I drink with gratitude for what I had, for the light that will come.



But, for now, it is dark.



"For the darkness of waiting
of not knowing what is to come
of staying ready and quite and attentive,
we praise you, O God:
For the darkness and the light
are both alike to you." -- Ruth Haley Barton

Amen.



I wait for you, here, Lord.



"The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them."
Isaiah 9:2