Graceful Grieving

I have not been a very graceful griever but God’s grace is sufficient and I hope to grow in this. I realized how much I need to write down what I am going through.  For one, to help me heal.  Secondly to help me process things. Thirdly, to help me look back and see what God has done.  And last but not least, to help me point others to the cross.  If you are going through a season of grief I encourage you to document it.  It is helpful in healing.  I don’t do it as often as I should but it is a good exercise. 

I want to build onto my last post- Graceful Loving.  Grace has been a word that has seemed to be front and center in my life recently.  I am realizing more and more the role of God’s grace in my life.  When I was beginning the adoption process of the twins in the middle of last year I knew that I would need God’s help for the adoption to succeed.  What I did not realize at the time was how much I would need God’s grace to help me through the grief if the adoption did not happen.  As I said in my earlier post, when we learn to truly love (God’s love in us) we open our heart to great joy and also great pain.  And in that pain we must remember that God is still with us and that He still loves us.  We need His grace just as much in the grief as we do in teaching us to love.  I am speaking this to myself as much as to anyone else as I am still learning this.

While I never had the twins in my home as my daughters and I didn’t even finish the adoption process, I had said yes to pursue their adoption and therefore I had allowed them into my heart as my daughters.  I knew them and cared for them (I worked in the group home where they lived).  We were a part of each other's lives.  I had dreamed, I had planned, I had hoped for them becoming my daughters.  So when the news came that they would not become my daughters all those dreams, plans and hopes died.  Some may say that I should have guarded my heart and not have gotten my hopes up just in case it didn’t work out.  And I had that thought at one point early on in the process; but I was encouraged in a conversation I had with a friend over coffee one day.  She said “Don’t hold back just in case; fully love.”  I followed her counsel which I believe was godly counsel and in doing so I got to experience real love which I do not regret.    

  

With loss there is grief.  Grief isn’t a one day thing, it is a process.  Grief doesn’t ask you what your schedule is and affect you when it is convenient.  Sometimes grief creeps up on you when you think you have moved on, when you think you are doing pretty well.  Grief is not easy and not something we want to go through but it is a reality of living in a sinful world.  However, because of the redemption Jesus brought us on the cross we can grieve with grace.  There can be hope in the midst of grief.

"Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life." Romans 6:4

What I have found to be the most necessary thing in walking through grief gracefully is to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. 

Hebrews 12:2 “fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” 

He is the only One who can help us through our grief and satan would love to try to get our eyes off of Him and onto our struggles and pain and on ourselves.  I am not saying it is an easy thing to keep our eyes always on Jesus… honestly at times it is nearly impossible.  But His GRACE is greater.  And He can carry us.  A verse I love is Psalm 37:23-24 which says

“The steps of a man are established by the LORD, And He delights in his way.  When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, Because the LORD is the One who holds his hand.”

May we fix our eyes on Jesus as we walk through grief letting Him carry us through it by His grace! If you are reading this and are going through or have gone through the pain of an adoption that has not happened or if you are in the waiting process of an adoption I would love to hear from you.  Maybe we can be a bit of an encouragement to one another. 

-Kristin