People often say “time heals all wounds” but someone who has believed that saying must not have experienced grief. Grief is something that time cannot ever fully heal. While the pain may become more familiar, the pain never loses it’s intensity. Grief can cut just as deep ten years later as much as it did the first day it occurred.
This coming Thanksgiving marks 25 years since my father passed away. While it feels like I can vaguely remember any memory of my dad, I can recall the morning he passed away as if it was yesterday. Being six at the time I didn’t realize then the impact his death would have on my life. I remember trying to make it through the memorial service without crying and feeling pleased that I made it through without shedding a tear, so nobody knew the pain I felt inside.
As a married woman, I thought the deep-rooted pain from my past would diminish as I began my own marriage with my husband. I had no idea that marriage would uncover all the pain I experienced in a new way. Growing up I never really knew the relationship I was missing with my father until I experienced various holidays and was unable to make memories and share my dad with my husband. Father’s day was spent celebrating everyone but my dad. Everyone I knew now as an adult was unfamiliar even with the idea of my dad, let alone who he was and what he was like. It was like his life never existed, leaving me feel like the pain I experienced didn’t matter.
Maybe you’ve experienced death of a loved one or are grieving a loss from something taken from you. In the happy season of the holidays, people illuminate joy moving forward in their lives, while you feel stuck reflecting on the past. A gaping dark hole has replaced and strangled those happy memories you once cherished in your heart. Loss doesn’t just mend like a scraped knee. It’s a scar that cuts deep and never will mend completely without leaving a lasting wound.
While many may not understand how grief truly breaks your heart, God certainly understands. He’s experienced grief in a way we’ll never fully comprehend. We chose to forsake Him, when He offered us everything. He witnessed the heartbreak of seeing His flawless Son publicly humiliated, tortured and beaten on account of our sin. He longs for us to spend time with Him daily, when we fixate to other things to satisfy our souls.
God has seen how each season of your life has influenced who you are today. Whether it be the loss of a loved one, a friend that chose to leave without giving an explanation, a loss of career, an opportunity that fell through or a dream that will never occur. God has seen how each terrible circumstance has tainted your heart and nothing has gone unnoticed by Him. The pain that strangles your heart, is also felt by God too. He knows the pain and has seen how it has broken your heart.
Psalm 34:18
The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.
I truly think that God desires to use the most broken of people to show His greatest power. It’s when we feel most broken, flawed and shattered, that God can reveal Himself most to us, causing us to see His handiwork manifested. We can use the grief we experience to help us bond, grow and relate with others more deeply than we could if we never experienced pain.
Our grief may devastate us, but it can also shape us into a more masterfully-created tool that can be used by God in a greater and more intricate way because of what we’ve gone through. We’ve grown to understand a deeper, more intimate God because we could turn to Him when nobody else understood. We’ve deepened our understanding of who God is, because we’ve seen firsthand Who has helped us through our darkest moments. We’ve found a Friend that will never leave or abandon us, because He’s the One who has been with us all along. We’ve been reminded that God is in control of all things, because He has taken the things we thought belonged to us, but were never truly ours to keep. We’ve been taught that things can change in an instant, causing us to value all that God has blessed us with. We’ve realized that the darkest days can reap the most eternal blessing, even when we can’t understand why.
Romans 8:18
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
I hope that whatever loss, grief or pain you have experienced in your lifetime has not caused you to develop a hardened heart, but one that is delicate and moldable into the instrument that God is masterfully constructing you into. We will not know the incredible benefit of our pain until we see God one day, but I long for the moment when I can meet my Best Friend and know that each heartbreaking moment, every awful circumstance, all the tears and moments I suffered deeply, were not wasted. While each moment was breaking God’s heart, like it was mine, it was equally growing me to become more like Him. He desired me to understand Him more through my pain. He loved me enough to break my heart so I could love Him more intimately than ever before.