Seeking Home In God Amidst Grief

I was eleven years old when I first felt the smoldering anger of an adult who demanded I silence my grief. We were headed to a destination that made me feel anxious and as my tears overflowed into audible cries, I felt rage radiate out of my relative's being.

"STOP CRYING RIGHT NOW!"

That moment embedded shame into my experience of grief. It would take a lifetime to undo the way her dismissal marked me. In contrast, I sought refuge in my relationship with God. In a world full of threats and unsafe people, He became my permanent home. But for many of us, this type of emotional abandonment is stored in our bodies, minds, and hearts and translates to our relationships with God and others.

At times, the voice in our head that tells us to withhold grief from God may reverberate off the walls of our hearts in Mom’s, Dad’s, Grandpa's, or Grandma’s voice. Someone handed us the first brick to build a fortress around our hearts. We then learned how to build the wall, inch by inch, year by year, and relationship by relationship. The rest, they say, is history… but it doesn’t have to be.

Human relationships are complex. A "walls down" approach to grief isn’t safe in every room. There’s wisdom in being as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. The issue arises when we bring our deep-seated traumas to a relationship with a God who prioritizes connection. This is a God who lovingly crafted us in our mothers' wombs and who has intimate knowledge of us, down to the count of hairs on our heads.

Trust is at the very center of our willingness to have a heart-open, walls-down posture of inviting God into all the ways we need Him to hold our grief here in a post-Eden world. 

Prayer is that relational space where we can return to the safety of His Presence amid the disruption of life's heartbreak. 

J.R.R. Tolkien reminds us of the invitation we are all given in the wake of the most grievous chapters of our stories: “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Maybe it's time to return to the permanent home of God's presence, to hear Him say: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you." Isaiah 43:1-3

Tanya Godsey
FREEDOM MOVEMENT
Director of Spiritual Formation