Grief Can’t Last

It’ll drive you insane

Photo by niu niu on Unsplash

Look. Life is hard. No — wait. Hard isn’t exactly the right word, is it? Math is hard. Parenting is hard. Getting along with people can sometimes be hard (or always depending on who is reading this). Life is more than hard, because life includes all of those struggles and more.

I went through a divorce last year that was at least two years in the making. The fact that it wasn’t even my first one made it seem all the more devastating. I came to a place right after the first of the year where I felt there was no reason to ever try to love again, and a certain calm fell over me that allowed me to focus on the painful task of handing my youngest son over to his mother after spending nearly every day of his life taking care of him. It was the kind of numb feeling that resulted from working my way through Frank’s Seven Stages of Grief:

1. Wait. What?!
2. Dude. Not AGAIN.
3. Surely we can fix this, right?
4. Fine. Go, then.
5. Please come back!!!
6. I never want to see you again.
7. We need to figure out how to co-exist for the sake of our child.

Needless to say, dealing with that situation was a roller coaster of emotion — dipping and twisting, climbing and falling, slamming my heart and mind into every different direction at high rates of speed, all culminating in a sudden, disorienting stop that makes you feel like you’re still in motion when the ride is over. When I leave a roller coaster, I have to find something to hold onto until my body catches up with my brain. It was the same with this emotional ride.

Are you going through an emotionally traumatic situation? Here are a few ideas to help regain your legs in the wake of a violent emotional ride:

1. Grab onto something solid. For me it was my faith, which actually seems odd. I always blame God when bad things happen to me, and I must admit that at times I have used those circumstances to feed the idea that maybe God wasn’t real. This time was different, though. I realized that what happened to me was human error and blaming anything else for it was excusing my own culpability. When deciding to marry her, I failed to live up to Proverbs 3:5–6: Trust the Lord with ALL your heart and lean not on your OWN understanding; in ALL your ways, acknowledge HIM and HE will direct your path.
2. Forgive. If you have been hurt by someone, you still have to take this step. I learned a long time ago that forgiveness is not for the benefit of the offending party; it is for your own peace. You must forgive so as to release yourself from the pain of your circumstances. You will not be able to move forward with your life and find any sort of happiness until you do this. However, please realize that the person who hurt you may not be the only one who needs forgiveness. We all need forgiveness, no matter the circumstance. Once I was able to get past my wounded heart, I realized that I was also responsible for what happened and I decided that, for the first time in my life, I really needed to forgive myself also.
3. Move forward. This does not necessarily mean to find someone else to fill that void. The void needs to be filled, certainly, but it must be done deliberately and patiently. I realized that the void in my life wasn’t the absence of another person, but an absence of love and respect for MYSELF. It was hard to take that first step away from my grief and into healing — it felt as though I was trapped inside of a rubber balloon that wouldn’t let me out. I realized, though, that I was stronger than the emotional bondage I was in, which gave me the will to take those first halting, heavy steps forward.
4. Live for others. Quite simply, I had to think of other people in order to move away from my own grief. By thinking of only myself, I was marinating in pain, grief, shame, anger, and thoughts of vengeance. I was making myself more miserable, which is not unlike being a prisoner who does stupid things and adds to his sentence. I needed to get mentally and emotionally outside the 12-inch radius around my own body and reengage the world around me.
5. Understand the difference between happiness and joy. I cover this subject in detail here.

Find an internal, solid focal point. Learn from your mistakes; release others from theirs. Process your pain, then let it go. Live a life that is bigger than just you. Allow your soul to feed on a self-sustaining supply of inner joy — inner peace.

Love yourself, love others. Grief can’t last forever, but love will.