Читать книгу Grieving the Loss of a Loved One - Lorene Hanley Duquin - Страница 14

8. Time

Grief makes one hour ten.…

— William Shakespeare

Time passes slowly when we’re struggling with the pain of grief. We tell ourselves that we will be okay if we can just get through the next hour, the next half hour, the next fifteen minutes. There are moments, especially during the dark hours of the night, when time seems to stand still.

We may feel as if we have been locked in a prison of grief. We wonder how long it will last. We wonder if our life will ever go back to being normal again.

If we turn to Scripture, we recall Jesus announcing that he had come to “proclaim liberty to captives / and recovery of sight to the blind, / to let the oppressed go free, / and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Lk 4:18-19).

What could those words possibly mean for us as we struggle through our grief? Can Jesus liberate us from the prison of grief that we find ourselves in? Can Jesus help us to see things differently? Can Jesus free us from the oppressive feelings of loss that we experience?

The answer is yes, but it won’t happen instantaneously. Most bereavement experts agree it takes a full year to work through the pain of losing a loved one. Throughout the year, the raw feelings of grief eventually give way to a more aching kind of grief. The whole purpose of grieving is to move us to a place where memories are no longer painful and we can continue with our lives.

Do we have enough faith to believe that Jesus can help us through this painful process? Can we believe that throughout our time of bereavement we will begin to see things in a new way? Can we trust that the Lord will give us the strength we need?

Maybe we need to look at our time of grieving as “a year acceptable to the Lord.”

Prayer: Lord, strengthen my faith as I move through this time of grief. Help me to see that feelings of grief will rise and fall at different levels of intensity for months. Allow me to rely on you for the comfort and courage I need to move through the prison of grief. Amen.

It wasn’t until years after the death of her mother that St. Thérèse of Lisieux described in her spiritual autobiography, The Story of a Soul, how the Lord consoled her in her grief:

God’s little flower would never have survived if He had not poured his warmth and light on her. She was still too frail to stand up to rain and storm. She needed warmth, the gently dropping dew and the soft airs of spring. She was never without them, for Jesus gave them to her, even amidst the bleak winter of her suffering.