What do you do when facing grief?

Do you weep uncontrollably and inconsolably?

Do you grow angry and jealous of those who don’t seem to be affected?

Do you dive into the bottle, the drugs, the prescriptions, anything that will bring relief and simultaneously self destruction?

Do you recede into yourself daring anyone to knock on the wall you’ve built to shield?

Do you quietly reflect, never sharing an inner thought, always brooding, always bracing for the next?

Do you remove yourself from your present day and time and settle into memories of the past, sealing the vault to enter into more?

Maybe you do none of these.

Maybe you do all but at different times.

Recently, it seems I have walked beside so many experiencing this event that one day will, someway, somehow, affect all of us, and it caused me to stop and ponder for a moment.

What do you do when facing grief?

Truthfully, those of us with understanding, knowledge, and even experience with the “Five Stages of Grief,” we can give cliche answers and sound like the most brilliant human beings in the room. We can pontificate on the granduers of psychological pain, suffering, and sorrow. We can present thesis upon thesis on how one should react compared to the case studies of those who were deemed “grieving all wrong.”

But there is no formula to grief.

Oh, how I wish there were!

How I long for a formulaic answer to the mother, who asks, “Why did my son die?” How my heart aches for a well spoken response to the wife who says, “How will I ever live without him?” How my mind races for a piece of comfort to give when the father says, “I would’ve rather have taken her place.”

A studied and proven method would be so much easier to present in these moments of horror and torment. An eloquent quote, a ritualistic prayer, a methodical chant that could wash away the brokenness that remains, these would be like a healing balm both to their soul and mine. How soothing it would be to offer a word that could create the chasm as if there were no remnant of the devastation.

Yet, that is not how grief shows up nor how it makes its exit … if it actually has an exit.

No.

Grief is unexpected, unpredictable, and unwanted…and even truly, unexplainable.

The only thing that has been found a constant in the pain is that He is there. The only name that has stayed stable throughout is Jesus. The only One who has sustained all the shattered dreams and wrecked lives is the One who created our very soul.

And I can’t even tell you how He does it. But He does.

He is faithful and true. And He promises to abide. He promises to stay beside you in the midnight hours. He cannot lie. He is bound by His words of truth. And He will come and dwell. If you’ll but open the door of your heart.

And let Him in.

He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.

Isaiah 53:3-4

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

Psalm 91:1