Shivering in the cold, my family and I stood gathered under a gazebo just yards away from our friends’ home. We were armed with hot cocoa, coats, hats, and mittens, and we were joined by two other families bundled up and blanket-clad. The gazebo was softly lit with twinkle lights that blew gently in the early December evening breeze, and we all absentmindedly stationed ourselves around a Christmas tree placed purposefully in the center of the gazebo. We opened up the gathering with prayer, reminding our hearts that we have a God who hears us when we cry out to him (Psalm 40:1). One friend had brought a guitar, and the rest of us pulled out our phones - we came prepared to sing songs of hope into the darkness.
As we began to sing, our little three-family collection of souls turned toward our friends’ house and lifted our voices into the night. Our friends were grieving, wading into the deep waters of heavy loss.
Christians have both the unique privilege and burden to enter into the sacred space of grief with our brothers and sisters: “Carry one another’s burdens; in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2) When a member of the body of Christ is hurting, we often see others running toward them, assuring the wounded they aren’t alone, leaning in to carry the load. This beautiful picture looks like meal trains, babysitters, thoughtful gifts, cards, or grocery runs. It looks like sitting beside the grieving: listening, weeping, trusting. We also see prayer in its most deeply desperate position: bodies prostrate, impassioned pleas for endurance for, or even deliverance from, suffering. These urges to move toward our grieving brethren do not stem from the flesh, but are rooted instead in the Spirit. And we watch our brothers and sisters in Christ endure, lifting their hearts in worshipful trust to the God who comforts them in the midst of their darkest hour. We can boldly enter into not only the sufferings of our brothers and sisters in Christ, but into our own sufferings as well because we can trust that, “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too,” and we can say, “on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Corinthians 1).
I’ve been a follower of Jesus Christ for just over fourteen years, and grief has been something with which I’ve had the holy privilege of becoming well acquainted. In fact, a tremendous grief was the means the Lord used to open my eyes to his existence. I became an Army widow at the age of twenty-five, and my five-month-old daughter lost her daddy. My beautiful husband was killed in Iraq, only weeks after I had half-jokingly mentioned to my Army wife friends that if anything should happen to him I would absolutely cease to exist. I quickly came to realize that God had plans to fulfill exactly that flippant prophecy: the life I had known would be crucified to Christ and I would find new life in him alone (Galatians 2, 2 Cor 5). The details of how God came to me as a loving Father are simplified from one of my favorite Psalms: “He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God” (Psalm 40:2-3a), and my hope for the story: “Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord” (Psalm 40:3b). Following the greatest sorrow of my life, I received the greatest joy in the gift of salvation.
But at the moment of tragedy, I didn’t know anything about this. The grief was profound and the loss of my love was so palpable that I could feel it in my chest; a heavy, compressing pain that made it difficult to breathe. His death (and the reality that I had an infant daughter now to care for on my own) was completely agonizing; I could find no comfort. For me, the very worst of it was a visual I would see when I would close my eyes: a dark tunnel -- where did my love go? I had never paused to consider death before, I had never been taught to resolve, as Jonathan Edwards had, “to think much, on all occasions, of my dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.” I simply had no context with which to comprehend what happens when a soul departs the earth.
After he died, I received no small number of comments; many of them helpful, some not so helpful (bringing to mind Job’s complaint: “...miserable comforters are you all”). One comment in particular has always stuck with me: “I don’t know how you can get through any of that without the Lord.” The reality was, though, that I didn’t know how to get through any of it with the Lord. Privately, I would hear these words and feel a torrent of guilt. I didn’t respond to the news of the death of my husband with hope. And at times, I let that guilt fester into what I can only describe as an uncomfortable jealousy when I would navigate loss with Christian friends. I would watch them remain upheld by the promises of God (Romans 8:38-39; Isaiah 41:10, 13; Isaiah 43:1-4; Revelation 21:4; etc.etc.etc.). I would see them gratefully receive help, resolutely trust in the future grace of God, and persistently worship through the storm. In my heart I would cry out, “why didn’t I know this hope when he died?”
Having not grown up in Christian community I was unaware of any notion that suffering could have any kind of spiritual purpose, or even that suffering could be used for good. No, I was taught that any degree of suffering was either only given to the strong enough to handle it, or that it would serve to make one stronger than they already are. Essentially, suffering was a reward for proven self-sufficiency. Strength seemed to be both the means for, and the end of grief. In my case, however, I found myself in my husband’s closet only hours after I learned of his death. I had gone in there, leaving the gathering crowd of Army wives and neighbors in my living room, and I pulled all of his clothes on top of me. I needed to smell him. I held a framed photograph of him in my arms and wept. After some time I got up to vomit, then returned to my place on the floor buried underneath his clothes. I didn’t feel strong. Weeks later, I was sitting on my kitchen floor, completely paralyzed in thought - I needed groceries and paper towels but couldn’t seem to get my brain to do the organizing of a list or even force my body to get it together enough to get into the car and go to the store. I didn’t feel strong. Many, many times in the months that followed his death I would be weeping so painfully hard while driving that I would have to pull over to allow it to pass. I certainly did not feel strong. In fact, the unhelpful comments about strength served instead to create a sense of guilt within me: I was told both that I was considered strong enough to handle death and that death would serve to make me stronger, yet I was struggling just to wake up in the morning. I concluded that I was failing a trial that I didn’t even know I was supposed to be strong enough to endure. I felt weary and weak. In the most desperate time of my life, I grieved without hope.
In the nearly fifteen years since I lost my first husband, God has given me a massive view of his love through faith, by grace. He’s set me in a faith family, a church committed to biblical community and deep, authentic fellowship. This is where I have learned what it means to surround and uphold others walking through grief with the hope of Christ according to his word. God has also taught me to reach back to those dark days of grief where I felt so weary and weak that I was sure I wouldn’t survive - I was sure I didn’t want to survive - and has given me his word as a consistent balm for my soul as I read Jesus’s words, “Come all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28) and that though my weary heart may fail, God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Ps 73:26). We aren’t meant to endure suffering by mustering a strength from our flesh, as if yanking on our bootstraps hard enough will catapult us to comfort and healing. Instead, we must turn our weak and weary hearts toward God and trust in him, knowing that he draws near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Ps 34:18).
Because I’ve known a season where I grieved in the darkness, I can walk with those enduring deep suffering and point them toward the illuminating light of Christ, weeping with them in hope (Rom 12:15). Even as we sang through our tears on that frigid December night, there was a piercing note of joy in the midst of the sorrow. We know there will be an end to death one day and we wait for Jesus, trusting that “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things, have passed away” (Rev 21:4).