Grief is the other side of love. This is what I heard in my heart when I awoke this morning. Hmmm… how does that work? Grief is described as deep sorrow. And love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. How could they be opposite ends of a coin?
My mother went to be with Jesus four weeks ago. My Dad has been with Jesus for 7 years and the grief that I am now experiencing seems to be a double portion. As long as Mother was with us, my sisters and I could focus on her, and did not have time to grieve Dad. But now the full weight of both parents gone has hit home.
Jesus commands us to love Him with all our being and to love others, and yet love can also hurt. When the one you love is hurting, you hurt, and when the one you love betrays or leaves you, that hurts. When the one that you love dies, that hurts.
Simply put, if you love someone, the price paid is that you will also have times of grieving because without loving others, you never grieve others. Love and grief go hand in hand. But love is worth it, and grieving is too, because it shows that your love was genuine.
Years ago, a good friend of mine was grieving the loss of her husband. I did not know her well, and one night I felt a heavy burden for her and prayed throughout the night. I called her the next morning, and she said that her husband drowned 10 years prior, but she had never grieved. Her friends did everything they could to keep her busy and keep her mind off of it. She was pregnant at the time, so she just kept moving forward. But 10 years later, grief caught up with her, and she was in a dark place. The Lord in His mercy put her on my heart to pray. Grief is real and is the other side of truly loving someone. When we do not process our grief and instead stuff it down, we are in essence denying the great love we had for that person. You may not be grieving someone who has died; you may be grieving another loss, such as a broken friendship or a poor sense of self-worth. There are countless reasons we grieve, but Jesus’ words give us hope:
I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you….. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you, not as the world gives… let not your heart be troubled. (John 14)
To the degree that we love, that is the degree that we grieve; two sides of the same coin. And to the degree that we love and grieve loss, that is the degree in which we grow our capacity to love even more. Love is like an accordion in our hearts. It expands with every love-breath we take, and it is that same accordion that feels loss and retreats as we process the loss.
Jesus, however, made it clear that those who mourn will be comforted. It’s His promise, and when we hit a wall of grief, take time to mourn because when you do, you will not only be comforted, you will grow in your capacity to love.
Joanne
