Encountering God in our Grief. Reflections by Fellow Eryn Meyer '21
We lost a lot in 2020. Every morning we woke up to headlines about new cases and deaths. Some of us lost loved ones. Some of us lost jobs. Some of us lost the opportunity to grieve a lost family member with our community. All of us have lost the life we once lived pre-COVID-19 and had expectations of 2020 that were far from reality.
As difficult as it is, I am learning that it is okay to take the time to grieve what is lost. In fact, it is essential for us to grieve. When we release our sorrow to God, God hears it and grieves with us. Grief reminds us of our humanness. It reminds us of the limitations of this world. When we take the time to grieve, personally and corporately, we release our feelings vulnerably before the Lord.
By owning our grief, we are brought into a deeper relationship with God, enabling us to see new aspects of God’s character and what God desires for us. Walter Sharon, another Horizons Fellow, made an observation about grief in our most recent Fellows meeting. He said, “There is an inherent optimism in grief.” He went on to explain that when people mourn what they have lost, they are mourning what should have been being replaced with what is. Mourning implies that there is a higher standard, a high reality, for which the world is capable, yet we are stuck in the broken version of that world.
As we enter a new year, there are many things that should be which are not. We should be travelling to visit loved ones. We should be able to greet each other with handshakes and hugs. We should be able to expect safety and health for our families. These, and many more losses, are examples of how our desires for goodness are met with loss and brokenness. To grieve is to name these losses before the Lord, recognizing God’s will to restore the brokenness of our world.
Though I am a beginner in expressing grief as a spiritual life practice, going to the Psalms has been helpful. When I feel I don’t have the language on my own, the Scriptures help me express my feelings before God.
Psalm 63:1 is an expression of deep grief and yearning before the Lord:
1 You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
Perhaps while reflecting on what was lost in 2020 and preparing for what’s to come in 2021, you can take some time to cry out to the Lord, recognizing how your soul thirsts for God’s goodness.
Though there is no cure for grief, St. Thomas Aquinas offers us some tips on how to encounter our sorrow. He gives us the “five remedies of sorrow”:
à Pleasure
à Weeping
à Sharing our sorrows with friends
à Contemplating the truth
à A warm bath and a nap
Monsignor Charles Pope explains the five remedies of sorrow in this helpful article for the Catholic Standard.
Though Psalm 63 begins with an outpouring of loss and sorrow, it transitions into gratitude for God’s glory and abounding love:
2 I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
3 Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
4 I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
When thinking about 2020, I hope you find time to name the loss you have experienced and express it before the Lord. I also hope, in that grief, you encounter God’s goodness and unshakable promise for the future.
* Sculpture image is “A Voice in Ramah” by Sarah Hempel Irani.