Coping with Grief

So many around me are coping with grief.

Yesterday, I met with a friend whose cancer has relapsed after several years of chemotherapy and a grueling stem cell transplant. Several friends, including my hubby, have lost a parent in the last few months. One good friend lost both her mother and father. I have another friend whose middle school granddaughter was put on suicide watch. Another is learning to love and care for a husband with Alzheimer’s. Another is anticipating surgery to remove a cyst on an ovary and waiting to find out if it is benign or not. While visiting the dentist last week, I encountered two strangers in the waiting room, both of whom had lost their spouse in the previous month. This reminded me of my father-in-law. After being married for 70 years, he lost his wife. He sometimes talks to my mother-in-law’s beautiful high school photo in his grief.

So many are grieving.

Pain, suffering, and grief abound.

Jesus, as always, spoke rightly when He said:

In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33

We have tribulation, indeed. Our enemies—brokenness, sin, and death—surround us on every side.

I remember being in high school when a ten-year-old neighbor girl, Leslie, died. She was sick at home for a week and ended up being sent to a children’s hospital where she died six weeks later. I had been her babysitter and piano teacher. To say the least, Leslie was very dear to me. Wherever she went, she lit up a room. She knew no strangers. She had all of life ahead of her. How was I to make sense of the death of one so young, so dear? Up to that point in my life, my dad—the ultimate optimist—had drilled his mantra into my head: life is good. But suddenly, life was terrible and made no sense. I was reeling.

Why, God?

I was devastated. Angry. Confused. No explanation made sense.

Pithy words, though perhaps somewhat true, rang hollow:

God has a plan.

God knows the number of our days.

She is in a better place.

You should be happy she is with God.

Everything happens for a reason.

God needed another angel.

Ugh.

Sometimes suffering has no explanation other than it is the reality of living in a broken world. Life is not always good. It hurts.

With a mixture of great pain and faith, a dear friend of mine exclaimed:

Grief is ugly. Grief hurts. Grief cuts to our very core. It tests us in unspeakable ways. My heart hurts!! 

So, is it okay to grieve?

YES!!! Grieve. Grieve knowing that no two people grieve the same.

Brokenness and death are not how things are supposed to be. Cry to Jesus. He understands. The most tender verse in all of the Bible is:

Jesus wept.

John 11:35

When I asked my friend how she copes with her grief, she said she uses journaling to turn to Jesus. Here, she cries out to God. This is called lament. Seventy percent of the Psalms are laments, and this is evidence of God’s heart of mercy. He has given us prayers and guidance for grief. Lament is a way to honestly and openly work through grief with Jesus until we have reached the other side and can trust Him. (I highly recommend our SIMPLY BIBLE Psalms study to learn more about practicing lament. I learned a lot through that study.)

In coping with grief, we need to learn to lament.

Dr. Larry Crabb wrote his book, The Papa Prayer, after his cancer diagnosis. His grief led him to become “relentlessly real” in his prayers.[1] Grief changed how he pray.

How do we cope with grief? How do we help a loved one cope with grief?

This blog by no means provides an exhaustive rendering of grief. It’s just that grief has been on my heart after these recent encounters, and I merely want to strike up a conversation about it. Moreover, I want to turn to Jesus. In the words of Peter:

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” John 6:68

I need Jesus. I need the reminder that Jesus, with his gentle and lowly heart, invites me to draw near to him. He reminds me that He is who He says He is: the One who has overcome the world.

When grieving, consider Christ’s power.

In the world, you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world. John 16:33

“To overcome” points to victory, and victory implies a battle. The battle Jesus fought has raged from the beginning. Not long after Creation, sin shattered the goodness of the world. Thorns, pain, sweat, blood, and tears infiltrated the goodness of life and God’s creation.

So yes, there is trouble, but trouble will end. Grief will end. Why? Jesus has overcome the world. The Bible presents the full story of how Jesus came. He took on flesh and blood. He saw and entered our suffering. Like us, He experienced thorns, pain, sweat, blood, and tears. Yet, He conquered. Not only did he experience suffering and death on the cross, but He also revealed His resurrecting power by rising again on the third day.

What other god would or could do such a thing? Only one who is powerful. When Jesus says He has overcome, He reminds us of his mighty victory over our enemies of brokenness, sin, and death. Of course, we are in this “already-not-yet” period. We still suffer and grieve. Yet we remember that Jesus has overcome and we wait eagerly for his return, for the redemption of all things, for the time when there will be no more tears.

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.” Revelation 21:24

When coping with grief, we remember that Jesus is powerful (enough to rise from the dead!), and death is not the end. He has overcome.

When grieving, remember our Living Hope.

Peter tells us that Jesus has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the mighty resurrection of Jesus Christ. He goes on to tell us to rejoice in this living hope, even amid the tribulation that surrounds us:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I Peter 1:6-7

This verse means a lot to me. I appreciate that Peter makes abundantly clear that we don’t simply endure a single trial and then our faith is solidified or golden. No, we endure various trials, a portfolio of trials. The bottom line is that life on Earth is hard, and we endure various faith tests.

Hence, it often feels like we are surrounded by tribulation, sin, and death. Yet, these temporary trials are where the rubber meets the road of faith.

We do not grieve without a Living Hope.

When grieving, rely on Jesus’s compassion.

Jesus has entered and continues to enter into our suffering with us. He became our Alongsider, our Advocate, the One Who is always with us. Whether we are on the mountaintop or in the pit, He is there. His heart of compassion propelled Him to take on flesh and blood and experience our pain and sorrow. He beckons us to come and know His heart of compassion:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavily laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Matthew 11:28-29

One of my favorite books on this verse and suffering in general is Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortlund. Ortlund highlights Jesus’s compassionate, gentle, and humble heart. He writes:

“Contrary to what we expect to be the case, the deeper into weakness and suffering and testing we go, the deeper Christ’s solidarity with us. As we go down into pain and anguish, we descend ever deeper into Christ’s very heart, not away from it. Look to Christ. He deals gently with us.”[2]

Ortlund concludes his ponderings on the gentle and lowly heart of Jesus by saying:

“Go to him. All that means is to open yourself up to him. Let him love you. The Christian life boils down to two steps:

1. Go to Jesus.

2. See #1.

Whatever is crumbling all around you in your life, wherever you feel stuck, this remains, un-deflectable: his heart for you, the real you, is gentle and lowly. So go to him. That place in your life where you feel most defeated, he is there; he lives there, right there, and his heart for you, not on the other side of it but in that darkness, is gentle and lowly. Your anguish is his home. Go to him. ‘If you knew his heart, you would.'”

When grieving, remember that Jesus grieves with us.

C.S. Lewis beautifully portrays Jesus’s compassionate heart in the Chronicles of Narnia. In the first book, The Magician’s Nephew, Digory is a young boy whose mother is dying. Due to his wicked uncle’s magic, he ends up in the land of Narnia, where he meets Aslan, a powerful, beautiful, and mesmerizing lion (a portrayal of Jesus). Digory longs to ask Aslan if there is fruit in this land of Narnia that can rescue his mother. Before he can ask, Aslan gently cares for the sin that is in the way of their fellowship. This is quickly handled, and then Digory pours out his lament. See Aslan’s response:

“But please, please– won’t you– can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?” Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; no, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own, and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were big, bright compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.

“My son, my son,” said Aslan. “I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.”[3]

When grieving, go to Jesus.

Reach for Him—even the hem of His cloak. He cries bigger, brighter tears than we see.

To cope with grief, we turn to Jesus. Gentle and lowly, He understands. He enters in that we might know Living Hope.

Finally, what do we do when helping others cope with grief?

Let us model ourselves after Jesus and His heart of compassion. Acknowledge that pain and suffering are real, enter with genuine sorrow and living hope, and weep bigger and brighter tears with Jesus.

Weep with Jesus.

Lord Jesus, thank You for Your heart of compassion and love. Thank You for taking on flesh and blood to accompany us through our grief and pain. We acknowledge Your power over sin and death, and we are grateful for Your Living Hope. We are humbled that You, O Son of God, weep with us. Thank You. Help us to be relentlessly real and keep coming to You.

At Simply Bible we are on a mission to know and enjoy God through the Bible and help others do the same. We are here to help you dig into His Word and be assured that He loves and values you and cares about your sorrows. You can reach us at erin@simplybiblestudy.org.

[1] Larry Crabb, The Papa Prayer: The Prayer You’ve Never Prayed (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee, 2006), p.11.

[2] Dane Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, (Crossway, Wheaton, IL, 2020), p.57.

[3] C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, (Harper Collins Publishers, New York, NY, 1955), p.154.

Featured photo: Jesus Wept (Jésus pleura) by James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum