Womanly Wednesday: A Guest Post On Wrestling With Grief

Thanks for stopping by for this week’s Womanly Wednesday!  This week’s post is by an amazing friend of mine from Davidson named Louise.  When I met her during her freshmen year and my senior year, I was so in awe of her sweet spirit, her heart to love people, and the deep way she was starting to process her grief about all that she describes in this post.  It has been a blessing to know her and see her start to explore God’s grace in the midst of her grief, and I hope you learn as much from her story as I have! 

It was spring of my 4^th grade year. He was only in the hospital for 24 hours. No one saw it coming. But at age nine my world was wrecked from the inside out as my sweet daddy and favorite person in the world went to go see Jesus. I was blown away, heartbroken and terrified. I had no idea how to respond or what I should think or feel. But I knew that Jesus was holding our sweet, broken family- it was evident by the great and strange sense of peace we felt. But how to respond to such a thing? I had no earthly idea. So when someone told me to “be strong for your mom” in the weeks that followed, I did just that.

Little did I know that those 5 words would root deep down into my soul and begin the foundation of a wall around my heart that (at one point) stood approximately 964 feet high and 87 feet thick, give or take….

For the next ten years of my life, I functioned…sort of. I was never sure what exactly to do with the achy hole in my heart that still held the shape of my dad, how to process that my dad was never coming back, or even who to trust with these deep deep hurts. So I dealt with it in the only way I knew how: I stuffed it. And I stuffed it good. I never really dug inside my heart long enough to figure out how I felt about it all that happened. I became closed off and lonely inside the fortress I made. But in some way it was safe and comfortable.

In high school I perfected the I-have-it-all-together-and-look-how-strong-I-am façade. Essentially it’s a way to say I was a complete control freak. And it was eating me alive from the inside out. I tried to control how I felt, what I looked like, how well I did in school, how people viewed me, etc… But I had a nagging and a tugging deep in my heart that there was so much more. But did I ever hint at that to anyone? Heck no. But I knew that there was more to life than this. That there had to be some sort of freedom and joy.

Fast forward to college. Davidson College that is. (Steph Curry is our current/only claim to fame.) To be honest I didn’t really know what I was hoping for. But I do remember sitting down in the fall of my freshman year to memorized Ephesians 3:14-21. The last part says this….

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, according to the power that is at work within us, to him be the glory in the church and throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)

“Immeasurably more” I couldn’t fathom what that meant when I memorized it, nor can I now…but the Lord did something immeasurable in the next four years of my life. He centered my heart and my story on Him and around people full of joy and vulnerability and truth.

Looking back on my past four years at Davidson (I just graduated in May), its hard to accurately express what happened in my heart and in my relationships as Jesus softened and grew my heart. It started off as a group of seniors taking me under their wing and inviting me into their playfulness and joy. Then they started asking me questions about real stuff (cue the terror). I had no idea how to be vulnerable. But with much grace and patience, they waited as they kept asking to hang out and kept asking questions. And then Jesus nudged me into a ministry where I did the same sort of thing for high school girls. I tried to love then and show them Jesus and invited them to depth and vulnerability (in the best way I could).

And eventually, after two years of growing in depth and trust of one another, a community of joy-filled, truth-speaking, Jesus-loving, question-asking girls took shape. Some friends were better at sharing emotions that others, some struggled with depression, or with families where they didn’t feel loved, or with boys who broke their hearts, or boys they wanted to marry, or the great question of “who am I?”. The questions and the listening were a part of almost all out time together (which usually happened on a futon…#college). This community took shape because it was based on the unconditional love and grace of Jesus, on joy and laughter, and on the premise that “its okay to not be okay.” There was freedom to feel and to be wounded in these conversations. And little by little, the walls around my heart started to crumble…a little at first, and then a whole lot. For the first time in my life, there was a safe place to feel and to grieve the man I missed so dearly.

Grieving is weird. It is hard. It’s a messy sort of thing that isn’t readily accepted in our productivity-driven world. But I know now what a crucial part of living and growing it is. My senior year, after a summer of missing my dad more than ever before and my home life falling apart, I wound up in counseling. I was really skeptical because finding a good counselor is kind of like dating- you have to “click”. Well my sweet counselor and I clicked- she listened, asked questions, helped me clean out wounds that were years old, and gave me lots space to not be okay.

After a full year of counseling, I would still say I’m grieving. I don’t think it’s a process where you can just slap a Band-aid on it and be good as new. Grieving takes time and a lot of grace from the people around you as you work through hard hard things. It’s a process where Jesus takes the broken pieces, and maybe doesn’t put them back like they were before, (I’ve given up guessing how He works) but He begins to shine light and hope into the dark places in your heart. I am not “cured” from my sadness, my heart is not “fixed” after grieving, but I am more whole. I am a work in progress, being molded by Jesus first and foremost, but also by the people around me. I am confident that the Lord is still at work in my heart, and in yours too. We serve a faithful God who keeps his promises. One who promises to be with us always.

“I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised.” Genesis 38:15

Thanks for stopping by for this week’s Womanly Wednesday!  This is one of my favorite parts of the week where different women bravely and vulnerably share their stories.  If you would be interested in writing a Womanly Wednesday guest post of your own, please send me an email with your information and a summary of what you might like to share.