No one likes pain. No one enjoys struggles. But the one weapon we all seem to familiar with in fighting it is denial. We deny we have a problem, a pain, a struggle. And that’s tearing us apart.
We live in a culture of denial. We don’t want to feel pain, so we numb ourselves to it. And that results in not being able to authentically express what is happening to us.
In the church world, it is called “Spiritual Bypass.” We use our own spiritual beliefs – faith statements, theology, biblical phrases – to avoid dealing with difficult matters in our lives. That includes the struggle with pain from unresolved wounds. We say, “Well, I experienced a major loss…but it’s okay because God is in control!” Or we blind ourselves to the reality of our hurts in order to stir up enough joy in the middle of our struggles. But we’re only bypassing the real issues and short-circuiting true growth.
God does not waste pain. He can refine it without redefining it. We can go through struggles without calling them something else. God calls pain by its name – pain! And we can too. When we embrace the reality of our wounds, we’ve made the first step towards growing through them and past them.
But that requires us walking honestly through that pain. In her book It’s Ok That You’re Not Ok, Megan Devine writes, “Grief is not a problem to be solved, it is an experience to be carried.” We don’t turn our eyes from it. We don’t push fast forward to the end. And we don’t make up a false reality where it doesn’t exist. We experience it. We sit in it. We carry it.
Take a look at these words from the Psalmist:
Psalm 31:9,10 –9 Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief.10 My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.
That doesn’t sound like any sugar coating I’ve ever heard. That doesn’t sound like someone trying to redefine their grief. It sounds like someone expressing the deep anguish of their soul to a God who wants to refine their grief.
Grief is not bad. We need to cancel that thought. When we see other sin grief, it’s not a time to step up and rescue. It’s time to just be with them. It would be a dishonor to them and to their grief to try and fix it for them. It’s honorable to be present with them through their grief.
Grief is not bad. In fact, it’s an extension of love. When we take the time to be with someone in their grief, a bond is formed. That bond is a form of love. Refining our grief doesn’t mean we get over it or solve it. It means that our relationships are deepened in it.
Some in the medical community call grief a disorder if it lasts more than 6 months. Some in the Christian community call grief a sin if it lasts more than a week. I’ve heard people say that if you can’t move past your pain in a prescribed amount of time, then you just don’t have enough faith.
I wonder if it’s not faith we should be focusing on in our struggles, but love. If we aren’t willing to sit with others in their grief, journey with them in their pain, and bear with them in their struggles, then it’s not a lack of faith that’s the problem. It’s a lack of love.
The culture of denial is run by the narrative that “If you’re not happy, then something’s wrong.” Let’s break that narrative and rewrite a script for our grief. It’s okay if you’re not happy. It’s okay that your tears last through the night…and into the next day, week, month… It’s okay that you’re struggling. It’s normal. And God doesn’t want to fix you as much as he wants to be with you.
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