There’s a reason people in our culture avoid grief. Many reasons, I believe. If I had to sum it up like I would to my four-year-old, it’s because we don’t want to hurt. We want to be comfortable. Now, I know it’s not that simple. It’s a many-faceted, cultural, societal, belief-oriented question: why do we as a culture seem not to know how to grieve well?

Examples of this: 3 days of bereavement leave from most employers. Lots of bows put on hard or horribly painful situations. Not knowing what to do when someone is hurt (because we haven’t been taught. It hasn’t been modeled. It’s not part of our culture). Being told to grieve in private. Don’t show it. Strength being seen as pushing the tears back and staying composed.

I strongly disagree. The more I walk out through this grief, the more clearly I am seeing. Strength is not pushing down the pain but facing it. Feeling it. All of it. Without numbing or shifting or distracting from it. It takes an incredibly strong person to feel the brokenness of this world. Many people don’t have any good reason to do this. Other than, perhaps, being told it’s good for us. Like spinach or exercise or being selfless: things we know we should do because they’re good but sometimes we don’t feel like doing it. If we don’t let the pain out, it only hurts us and others more, right?

At the end of the day, we all believe something about life and its meaning, and it shapes how we live, deal with pain, make our choices. You’ve probably gathered by now I hold a Christian perspective, but since there are so many people who use that label who are nothing like Jesus, I need to define what I mean. That’s what I will do about grief from my belief system as a Christian.

The more I walk this horribly broken road with Jesus, the more I can tell you he doesn’t push us away from pain. He doesn’t tell us to stuff it. He has continually been inviting me INTO it. He isn’t giving me religious platitudes. He isn’t telling me to stop crying because Mom is ok and out of pain. He’s drawing me into feeling just a touch of the brokenness of the world in this grief. And he’s in it with me. It’s beyond my understanding how he can grieve with me for my mom’s death while hanging out with her in paradise. Yet he does. It boggles me that he counts my tears, keeps track of them. If they’re in jars, I must be filling up a lot. Yet he is.

Why? Why invite me/us into pain? What’s the point? What is the freakin’ point? I have still spent most of my life trying to avoid pain. Someday, I hope, that statistic will turn around where I will have spent more leaning into pain than running from it. I’m not there yet. Anyway, back to why?

I don’t know. I’m not God. I don’t understand it all. One thing I do understand is that since my Savior walked this broken road of suffering, since he became intimately acquainted with our grief, since he feels and knows our sorrows, and by doing so, brought about the rescue of all rescues, then I can trust him. I can trust he will bring beauty from ashes; life from death; strength from weakness. It’s what he does. Everything upside down, the weak things to shame the strong.

So yes, it may look weak to our culture to fall apart when your loved one dies. It may look “un-Christian” to grieve. But it is not. It takes immense strength, and follows in the path of Jesus himself.

One song I’ve heard at Christian funerals now bothers me to no end, because it encourages this “stuff the tears”, harmful mentality. One line goes, “When I go, don’t cry for me. In my Savior’s arms I’ll be.” Couldn’t be further from what Jesus would say. Though it’s true, if this person loved and followed Jesus, that they are with him, you think he also doesn’t grieve over the death, the horror, the evil that has leeched onto his perfect creation and twisted it? You don’t think that doesn’t break his heart? To see the people he loves more than we’ll ever understand suffer? It’s hard for our human brains to comprehend both sides of his greatness and his emotions, but we need to understand that he will both bring life from death AND weep because of the darkness. Like I’ve written about before, Lazarus’ death and resurrection is a great example of this to us. There are so many examples of God’s strong emotions in the OT. And guess who brought out many of his emotions.

As I close for now, I’m realizing one area of growth for me in this whole valley. It seems to be growing in Christlike-ness in both my ability to trust he is working to turn the horrible into beautiful when I don’t see it, AND to weep, mourn and feel the pain of the brokenness more fully. To lament like Jesus. Because in order to share in his glory, we must also share in his suffering.

God help me. I’m so weak. I need your strength to fall apart. To feel instead of to numb. To be broken so that you may heal. To mourn so that I may be comforted. I know my tears and pain are not the end. But if I don’t enter the pain, I’ll miss the reward. I want your comfort. I want your presence. I want to walk the road you walked. The one strewn with grief and sorrow. It’s worth it. You’re worth it.