The Goodness of Grieving

From Chapter 11 of Mourning Into Dancing, by Walter Wangerin, Jr. To the people who have been reading this blog for a long time, you have probably noticed a recurring theme on grief and suffering. And this is not without reason, for I have known much. But it is not the grief of despair, but grief leading to life and joy. So this post does not come from nowhere, but is applicable to every Christian and for those who know, have known, and will know intense sorrow. Let this truth sink into your soul, as you learn to distinguish happiness from joy and grief from despair.

"But we still dwell in the second act of this Cosmic Drama. That is, we still live our days on the earth, both in joy and in sorrow.

Sorrow and joy are not separate.

Happiness and sadness may be opposites of one another, but not joy and sorrow. In fact, it is through sorrow that one discovers a calm abiding, indestructible joy.

This is a paradox of our faith: joy is forged in sorrow.

And death leads to life.

And grief is the road between them.

It is grieving that drives us from dying to living, from death to life again - from any single Secondary Death that we might suffer, back to the bosom of God, which relationship is the fullness of life for us.

Unless, says the Lord, you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Unless like children we turn to the Father, the third death will be the fourth death for us; we would rightly be terrified of our physical decease, then, because it would be our soul's decease as well, and death eternally.

But the sinner does not turn easily. Neither does he turn willingly. He must, in mercy, be turned. Nor does plain preaching often accomplish so total a conversion. He who truly believes he's strong is not prepared to confess an abject weakness, not for verbal persuasions, or reasonable proofs, or even the leadings of those who love him. Rather, something has to happen. The sinner must run headlong into Truth as one runs into a stone wall, must experience it, suffer it after all. If the wall doesn't move, the sinner will.

This is what grief does. This is the effect of the earnest and painful, extended, and personal experience of grieving.

The hit that I take in a serious Secondary Death both undeceives me and defines me. Defines me. It awakens me to an essential truth that I had rejected long ago, a truth that my sinful nature hates, hates - and utterly repudiates.

Therefore, I (that is, my Old Adam, the sinful self, the major Me of this world) I defy this truth. I fight it. It's a compulsive decision, a gut reaction: I think I've no choice but to fight, because this truth would destroy me!

Battle after battle I struggle to the extreme of my ability; and battle after battle, I lose. Truth triumphs. It is, then, a painful fight, marked by a series of my failures. Truth is Truth, changeless, indifferent to my most mighty effort. against Truth I spend all my resources, I exhaust myself. I grow hurt and weary and defeated.

This personal, earnest fight - stage by stage descending into the Truth - is a part of the process of grieving. Grief may begin as "passive," "reactive," the pure pain of a sundered relationship; but then there follow these spasms of an "active" grief.

And what is the Truth my sinful self denies? Why, that I am limited. That there's only so much Walt - and the little there is, is helpless, pitiful, and soon to die. I am finite. And when I experience evidence of my finitude, I hate it.

And ironically, my struggle to prove myself strong - to which I commit the whole of my resources - proves me weak, in fact, when my resources are exhausted. If I fight to the end of my ability, then my ability is revealed to have an end. O Walt! Thou art so tine! Thou are born to a few days, full of trouble, the flower that must wither, the shadow that fleeth away; thou are dust.

My defeat, then, is altogether in myself and of myself and to myself. Truth need do nothing but be.... God waits - waits upon us, waits to show mercy unto us. I, all on my own account, strive against the wall of truth. I sweat and exert my little dust as though it were a deity - and in that very exertion discover . . . dust.

I can't win.

And the pain of my active grieving will be exactly equal to the intensity with which I believed I could win. As strongly as I cling to that Old Lie (Ye shall not surely die) even so strong is the pain of losing it, the pain of having it torn from my fingers, my mind, and the core of my heart. To the degree that I gripped the lie, grief will seem a violence; to the degree that I loved it, grief will be a deep sorrow. I is my self destroyed in this process.

I simply can't win.

Ah, but I do win.

Because what am I now if not a god? Oh, dear Jesus! - I am a child. Helpless, needy, weak, returning to thee, and by thee to the kingdom of heaven! I am the prodigal, come to myself and coming home again. Home again.

This is the purpose of grieving, then:

Within the pale of earthly experience, always to turn the bereaved back to life. The widow cannot remain forever by the grave, nor the divorcé forever before the wreckage of his marriage. They cannot in health continue to exist with the raw, unhealed wound of a vital separation. The goodness of their grieving is that it brings them by stages into the stream of the living again, however slowly, however painfully. It reveals bit by bit the fullness of this death - as each is able to receive it - and when reality is accepted and assimilated, when the wound heals, it urges them into relationships again, which is our earthly life.

And this too is the purpose of grieving:

In the same manner (it is the same experience, but now on a cosmic scale) to turn all those bereaved of the primal, divine relationship back to God, to his love and to that Life that cannot be taken away from them, forever.

This is joy most serene. And lo: it cometh out of sorrow."