What is grief supposed to look or feel like?
jolting
raw
haunting
surreal
perplexing
These dark emotions give us different lenses to see the world, even though we're looking at the things that have always been there. How can the world look the same when its so changed in one's heart?
Grief can purify our minds from temporal, meaningless distractions and force us out of complacency. When we do become bogged down, the jolt is usually there to snap us out of it and remind us of what really matters. Reality, eternity, and an assortment of other existential thoughts invade and suddenly the long check-out line or that squabble with someone doesn't matter as much anymore.
But instead of feeling despair forever, there is a silver lining. The pain of grief can invoke hope in the eternal, in a God who is outside of time and to whom a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like a day.
The heart is free to surrender the things that are too hard to understand and too hard to bear on human strength alone. It becomes easier to cherish people, and memories being made, and the end of an ordinary day.
And somehow one can cherish life all the more, yet hang on a little more loosely.
