Learning to Grieve

Who would think that a person would need to learn how to grieve? I mean, people have been sad, and hurting, and dying, and grieving as long as there have been people. Don't you think we'd know how to do this by now? Well, I did not. The whole idea of deep grief was something that I had never been exposed to. I was scared of it. I was confused by it. I was isolated in it. So, when I had to do it for the first time it was hard, to say the least. Here is what I have learned from my experience and what I hope to pass on to my children, so that when they are in the inevitable situation that I found myself in someday, maybe they won't feel that it is such a foreign land...

Before I lost my babies I had never endured deep loss or grief. Oh, I had been sad. Very sad. I had lost great-grandparents that I loved very much. I had even had friends that had had major losses that I walked through with them. But none of that is the same as being shaken to your core with heartache and sadness. I know that some people's experiences with miscarriage don't include such a deep sense of loss, but mine did. When I experienced that type of grief for the first time a few years ago I felt like my world had been turned upside down. It came out of the blue and hit me like a ton of bricks. Nothing was the same as it had been just days and weeks before. My faith was shaken. My hopes and dreams were shattered. My sense of security and certainty were gone. I felt like I was under the water trying to find which way was up so that I could go there and get a breath. Sometimes I would make my way to the surface, and I would gasp for breath... for a sense of normalcy. I would frantically look around to find something familiar, and all I could see was water... for miles. Nothing. I didn't recognize anything, and I didn't know which direction to swim to find my normal life. I wanted to. I really did. Nothing sounded better than having my feet on dry, stable ground again, but no amount of prayer or trying would get me to that place. I was IN it. Grief. I had to stay there... at least for a while... and learn a few things. In her Bible study, Beth Moore calls that place "a deeper still". The place where no one on this earth can meet your needs. The place that you are all alone. Just you and God. The place that questions are asked and many go unanswered. The place that lessons are learned and clarity is found. I hated that place. But because of it, I have found perspective in my life that I might have never found otherwise. For that, I am thankful.

During this time of my life I had a friend that imparted some great wisdom to me. She said something like this... Grief is a process. You HAVE to make it all the way through that process. It would be better to work your way through it now than block it out and have it come back to haunt you in a few years. I took that warning to heart, and I did my best to muddle through all of it. Hopefully, I won't have to learn those lessons again.

One thing that I learned is that everyone's experience is different. There is not a right way to grieve.
~ Everyone feels weird and out of place and like they might be the only ones on earth with the kind of thoughts that they are thinking when they are grieving. If I had realized that, maybe I would not have felt so alone.
~ There is no time line for grief, and no one is ever as far down the path as they seem, and no one is ever "over it".
~ Just when you think you are okay, you realize you are not. I don't know how many times I thought, "I can do this now." only to find myself crying in some public restroom somewhere.
~ Talking it out really does help. I have a couple of friends that would sit and listen for as long as I needed to talk. They knew that they had to ask the questions... that I was not going to just blab. They knew that I needed someone to say, "Yeah, this really sucks." Not just "Everything is going to be okay."
~ Finding common ground is invaluable! After my losses I scoured books, the Internet, and friends that would talk to me about their losses. I needed to know that someone was ahead of me on this journey and that they had made it farther down that road. I needed to know that they had felt the feelings that I was feeling and that they were now "okay".
~ Questioning your faith is okay. I had such a sense of loss and guilt about this. Then I realized that God made all of me... including all of my emotions. He is big enough to handle my questions. He is loving enough to help me find solace in the answers - or the lack of answers. He is patient enough for me to go through that process over and over again.