Good Grief: When Overwhelming Tragedy Strikes.

Lots of pain and suffering and angst and turmoil residual from the long Labor Day weekend. I’m not talking global. I’m talking personal.

Lots of TRAGEDY. Lives rocked. Worlds exploded. Cataclysmic scale life-changing events.

I tend to try not to inject myself in other people’s grief. Because grief is personal. I really don’t have any words of comfort, because I know I didn’t want to be comforted: I wanted to GRIEVE!!!

Here are some thoughts. Or rather… questions….

I’m lifting them from a conversation I had with a friend.

What do you do when you need a hug, but the effort required to break out of your shell is just too painful?

How do you react when your World is turned upside down and gravity no longer holds meaning for you? The only thing that seems to tie you to the Earth is that the World SUCKS!!!

If you in that situation, or you have been in that situation… or down the road when you are in that situation… just in the back of your mind try to remember that you are loved. If you happen to be reading this, then I know for a fact that you are loved.

God loves you. Your friends love you. Even you feel completely unacceptable and unlikeable… still… you are loved! You have Hope!

Now… you need to realize that these words are going to mean NOTHING to you. Because mere words cannot conquer extreme levels of grief. Just put them away in the back of your mind and they will come to the front when they are needed.

And know… that not now… but eventually… you will get over the extreme emotional trauma of loss and your mind will stop shutting down to protect itself.

Not now. Eventually.

Be patient with yourself. Be understanding with yourself. Don’t try to force yourself to be “strong” for everybody else all that time. Trying hard is counterproductive. You are setting yourself up to feel like a failure by setting your expectations for yourself way too high!

In time… at the right time… you will begin to recover from the trauma and be capable of feeling again without too much pain. But… in the meantime… you need to understand that you are in a VERY negative time. And your guilt and shame and feelings of failure are going to push down and oppress you… because your brain chemistry is severely disturbed by the emotional and psychological trauma. You are stressed beyond comprehension.

That means that it’s really not a good time to be making decisions. ANY decisions. Especially meaningful life decision. But… you have no choice.

So… do the best you can. But… realize that you are NOT at your best and you WILL make mistakes. Some may even be serious. You need to know ahead of time… and understand… and embrace… that you are not at your best and you will make mistakes so that you are not surprised. So that you do not feel that you have to judge yourself harshly for your perceived while you are in such a tremendously negative emotional time. A time when every feeling is amplified. You are human. All TOO human. You WILL fail. That is inevitable.

But… you are loved. And the most important thing- probably the ONLY important thing- is that God is in control.

Temper your expectations regarding your performance during this time of altered… distorted… reality.

And… also realize that others are human. They are also disturbed. Confused. Vexed. And… even angry. They are also stressed and overwhelmed by guilt and shame and all of THEIR perceived failures. And by extremely negative neurochemicals. Lack of sleep….

So… they may react very negatively. Anticipate that. Expect that. Be ready to forgive. But… also be ready to remove yourself and/or others from that negativity.

Realize that you don’t need to feel guilty for grieving in your own very personal way in your own very personal space. You cant screw it up. God is in control.

And… paradoxically… tragedy… emotional trauma… often open up opportunities for connection. With friends. With enemies. With frienemies. With people you barely know… or don’t know at all. With God. And… with yourself. Grief can be season of introspection and profound spiritual self-assessment. And that… leads not only to healing… but to spiritual and emotional growth.

God is good. All the time.

Grief is a gift. Tragedy is necessary to shape each of us into who God created to be. I don’t believe any other way to understand and accept our ephemerality and transient nature exists for the mortal mind. And if we never understand our transient nature… the essence of our mere mortality… we can never grasp the transcendent nature of God. We can never begin to experience all of the Joy God has planned for us. Because we are so focused… so fixated on grasping our own desires.

But remember…. Your grief is your own. It’s personal. Don’t feel that you have to fit into the skinny jeans of grief that your family and friends are wearing to show off their super-Christianity or emotional athleticism to others. Skinny jeans are not only unsightly on most people, but they are so last Summer….

Forgive others. Forgive yourself. And realize… whether you feel it now or not… you are loved.