Grief. He is an uninvited guest. He doesn’t announce when he is coming or when he is leaving. We cannot plan our lives around his arrival or his departure. He could stay a moment or for what feels like forever. We can’t pencil grief into our schedules from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. on Monday. Grief has in his possession a key to our homes, full access with complete disregard for the rules of the house. He disrupts peace and requires more focus than we can afford to give. He brings attention to a level of love for something lost. He causes pain. He highlights the pain of the present. Grief brings a level of awareness to our inability to truly have control. But grief is not our enemy, he is part of life and death and sometimes he simply accompanies change. He is neither good or bad. He just is. No one is exempt from grief and his powerful reach. He will touch everyone at some point. Outside of grief, we do have a very real enemy that wants to manipulate the effects of grief to make temporary pain seem eternal. But have hope. In your most broken and vulnerable moments, God remains. When all feels lost and seems as if normal will never again be, God truly becomes our only hope. He navigates our hearts through what seems impossible. God is peace. God is love. God is enough. While many would say that time heals, I would say that time reveals that we will survive. When grief sets in, time simply shows that as day turns to night and night turns back to day, we will go on. God reveals in all of his glory that joy comes in the morning. In John 16:16, Jesus is explaining to the disciples that he understands that they will have sorrow when he goes away, but that they will have joy. My favorite part of the verse is at the end of verse 22. Jesus tells the disciples that after their grief, he will see them again and they will have a joy that no one can take away. Grief will not have the final word, God will!
John 16:16-22
16 Jesus went on to say, “In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.”
17 At this, some of his disciples said to one another, “What does he mean by saying, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me,’ and ‘Because I am going to the Father’?”18 They kept asking, “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand what he is saying.”
19 Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, “Are you asking one another what I meant when I said, ‘In a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me’?20 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. 21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.
Anyone who has ever driven a car knows the side mirrors on a vehicle have a disclaimer: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” God often teaches me through the simplest things, and He is faithful to stick to this method. I suppose it just shows that I’m a simple girl. So it didn’t surprise me when He spoke to me through my side mirror recently. He showed me that social media often works just like our side mirrors. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram should come with a similar disclaimer that says: “Lives displayed on social media may appear better than they actually are!”