Bless are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Matthew 5:4
Grief is always hard. But it doesn’t always involve death. Families dealing with mental illness have an ongoing grief that needs God’s comfort. This type of grief is hard for others to understand. The person you love is alive, but your hopes for their future are not.
This is a situation that only God can truly comfort. It is often too hard for other people to understand.
Let’s take a look at the differences between grief due to death and ongoing grief.
Classic Stages of Grief Due to Death
You may have experienced the classic stages of grief due to death:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
Each person goes through these phases in their own way. You may go back and forth between stages, or skip one or more stages altogether. Reminders of your loss, like the anniversary of a death or a familiar song, can trigger the return of grief.
Experiences With Ongoing Grief
Again, the grieving process you may experience when your loved one is diagnosed is different from the grief you feel when someone close to you dies. For example, you may experience:
Shock and fear
- Loss of our beloved person’s true personality
- Loss of our own anticipated future
- Loss of our loved one’s future
- Stigma
- Fear of the unknown
Guilt and struggle
- Did I do something to cause this?
- Why him or her? Why me?
Denial, often merged with anger
Isolation and sadness
Can you relate to any of this?
Common Ways to Run from Grief
One way of dealing with ongoing grief is to hide from it. Yet, if we do not fully grieve, we can get stuck. This may create emotional havoc. Some common ways to run from grief include:
Postponement: Delaying and setting aside feelings and expressions of grief, while hoping feelings associated with grief will go away over time.
Displacement: Transferring unwanted or difficult feelings onto other people or things, deeming them the cause of the feelings. This could include being self-critical, fixating on minor issues and blaming others unrelated to the loss.
Replacement: Investing in an activity, such as overworking, intense and obsessive pursuits, or a new relationship.
Minimization: Not allowing ourselves to feel the full weight of the grief, even using faith to avoid it.
Physical illness: Experiencing bodily symptoms, illness or pain that may or may not be connected to real illness.
Three-Step Process for Dealing With Ongoing Grief
No. 1: List the losses that you have not fully grieved. Yes, write out your loss history, starting at the beginning of your life.
No. 2: Lament those losses. Lament is a passionate outpouring of our grief to God. A good example is Psalm 88. The entire psalm is a lament to God. Here is the Message version.
God, you’re my last chance of the day.
I spend the night on my knees before you.
Put me on your salvation agenda;
take notes on the trouble I’m in.
I’ve had my fill of trouble;
I’m camped on the edge of hell.
I’m written off as a lost cause,
one more statistic, a hopeless case.
Abandoned as already dead,
one more body in a stack of corpses,
And not so much as a gravestone—
I’m a black hole in oblivion.
You’ve dropped me into a bottomless pit,
sunk me in a pitch-black abyss.
I’m battered senseless by your rage,
relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger.
You turned my friends against me,
made me horrible to them.
I’m caught in a maze and can’t find my way out,
blinded by tears of pain and frustration.
I call to you, God; all day I call.
I wring my hands, I plead for help.
Are the dead a live audience for your miracles?
Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you?
Does your love make any difference in a graveyard?
Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell?
Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark,
your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory?
I’m standing my ground, God, shouting for help,
at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak.
Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear?
Why do you make yourself scarce?
For as long as I remember I’ve been hurting;
I’ve taken the worst you can hand out, and I’ve had it.
Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life;
I’m bleeding, black-and-blue.
You’ve attacked me fiercely from every side,
raining down blows till I’m nearly dead.
You made lover and neighbor alike dump me;
the only friend I have left is Darkness.
You also can write your own lament. This process can take hours or days. Speak directly to God. Do not be afraid to express anger or disappointment. God already knows how you feel and loves you anyway.
Finally, ask Jesus to heal your broken heart. This is the sort of heartbreak that only God can heal. I find that sitting before the Lord in silence for 20 minutes or so on a daily basis can open a source of comfort only God can deliver.
