"God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted." Matthew 5:4 NLT
One of the realities of being in recovery and in a relationship with Christ is that grief and loss are realities. Each one of us with every loss will experience a different grieving process. It's very important that we don't allow ourselves or anyone else stifle that process. We need to feel what we need to feel. There is a popular saying among recovering addicts called "feel, deal and heal" It simple means feel what you need to feel so that you can deal with it and heal from it." Unlike some Christians, those of us who struggle with this demonic force known as addiction, have come to understand that we used because of we never could deal with our emotions. Grief is one of the most powerful emotions and if we don't process it thoroughly it will send us sliding backward.
The text says we will be comforted. God loves His children completely, and like any good Father, He feels our pain. If we lean on Him, He will comfort us. If we talk to Him about it in prayer, He will help us process it. He is even patient with us when we are angry with Him because the person He called home was one we loved passionately. He will even lead us to people who have been through our grief so that they can help us as well. He does all of this because He loves us. Every parent has had to make a decision sometimes that our children didn't like, mainly because they didn't understand it, and rather than respond in anger we are lovingly patient because we know that eventually they will understand why we did what we did. God does the same thing with us when we don't understand our circumstances particularly when it comes to the death of a loved one.
Unfortunately, some of the people around us because they don't have the ability to deal with their own emotions, let alone ours, will attempt to tell us to get over it and move on. Its vitally important that we ignore that. We may be tempted to cut our process short and stuff our feelings down into a box, lock it and throw away the key. God does not want us to to do that because He knows that we will turn those unprocessed feelings into resentments that will poison our spirit. The bottom line is... it's ok to feel and its ok to grieve. Don't let anyone else or even your own dissatisfaction with the length of the process cause you to stifle it. God wants to comfort you and He wants to heal your pain, but healing doesn't begin until we confront that very pain in an open and honest manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment