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Grief

C.S. Lewis wrote in A Grief Observed, "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear."  That is so unbelievably true.  Both grip your heart.  Both have an effect on your perception.  Both can be debilitating mentally, emotionally, spiritually, even physically.  The sister emotions can become intertwined, as well.

In death, you have the heartbreak of losing someone you care about coupled with the fear of life never being "normal" again.  Both leave you saying, Where do I go from here?  Same goes for a bad breakup which to me feels also like a death--death of the person you thought you knew, death of a love you thought would last forever, death of a bond you thought to be unbreakable, a soul tie severed.  Then comes the fear, Will you ever be able to let someone that close, again?  Will you ever trust, again? Will you ever bounce back from this? 

From a spiritual standpoint, we can grieve over sin be it intentional or unintentional --bad choices, decisions, disobedience, rebellion.  The fear in that, for me at least, is separation from God.  I could not wake up everyday if I thought He was not upholding me, sustaining me.  My favorite scripture in times like these can be found in Romans 8:39, "neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

I love this quote by Denis Waitley:  "Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a collection of mistakes is what is called experience." We have to move forward through the muck of grief and fear so that if we see a friend who cannot trudge through it, we are, then, equipped to pull them out with no man left behind.  For truly what is the point of all we go through if we cannot use it for His glory?  In all things, be Thou glorified!


Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works together with those who love Him to bring about what is good—with those who have been called according to his purpose. "

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