(Tw for some as it mentions God/Jesus)
Grief is an elusive monster, it makes itself a chameleon, changing as the seasons. Everyone has an opinion on it. We are told by some that it passes with time. Others refer to it as a process, like a sort of twelve step program. Some want us to mourn quickly, others want us to stay in the destruction at ground zero for as long as possible. Scoffing if we do much as crack a smile.
Grief is not a process. It does not pass, not in this lifetime anyways. At times It is full of depths and shadows. Others times it pretends to sleep, watching silently through the slit in its eyes. Pretending to startle awake when you least expect it. Emotions coming down like torrential rain fall, astonishingly brutal and unexpected. However sometimes, its arrival is expected, planned for even. The leading up to it is strong, so much so that at times its performance disappoints.
It lingers like some sort of hangover, making every day life as unpleasant as possible. It holds shape like water, for water, even in stages of evaporation, will not disappear entirely. Waiting in the clouds until a storm is ready to spew it down in stinging drops. Coming in waves that continuously crash down. Unrelenting as if it wants to see us crumbling to the ground from its weight in a symphony of our own tears. Nodding in approval as we do so yet still not satisfied, refusing to exit the stage.
The only time it seems pleased with itself is when we have nothing left but melancholy’s hollow stare. Or when nostalgic thoughts run through our mind resulting in dry cracked smiles, shadows of a past reality. It makes it’s home in the wells of broken, empty hearts. It dwells with us… in us… but it is not the master ove us. It i a leash. Tethered by and to the One who owns it. The One who created it.
It’s Master, the One who limits the sea which He created and “set its doors and bars in place,” Job 38:10). It’s Master who speaks to the waters He formed, so it is the same with grief: “This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt” Job 38:11). It has been subdued by its Master and defeated, for “death has been swallowed up by victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). A day is coming when it will be deemed unnecessary, for its Master spoke saying there shall be “no more death, or mourning, or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:4). For on that day, "When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
