The Gift of Grace

My dad died twelve years ago today. This shit hurts. It’s distracting, stressful, frustrating, paralyzing, maddening, depressing, and a whole bunch of other things that I don’t have words for. I don’t say this as an attempt to garner sympathy, but rather a statement of facts. To put it simply, grief is a bitch.

When I look back on my encounters with loss and grief, my biggest regrets are the moments when I chose to not acknowledge the pain. I am an emotional stuffer. Pushing through hard moments and emotions is a default setting for me. I have boasted about my natural ability to respond to crisis now and cry later. After much life experience and self-examination, I see that this “gift” can also be my Achilles’ heel. I hold back emotions in an unhealthy way. I turn inward with reactions instead of working through them in the moment. I move so quickly to action, to try and fix things and solve the problem, that oftentimes I fail to tend to the wounds on my own heart.

One of the hardest wounds I’ve struggled with (and tried to ignore) is the unexpected emptiness I feel every now and again that just appears out of nowhere. It usually takes its sweet time just lingering around, and that’s frustrating as shit. It would be so much easier if it was something I could control or rush through in an effort to feel whole again. But that’s not how it works. We have to feel, no matter how much we may not want to. After getting this wrong a countless number of times, here’s what I know— grieving something or someone is not weakness. When you are able to say, “Hey, I am actually not okay right now,” you are giving yourself the greatest gift— grace. Grace for a wounded heart. Grace for a failed relationship. Grace for the loss of a loved one. Grace for a failed dream.

Grace answers your pain directly. Grace is like a Ted Talk saying things like, “I know this shit is hard. It’s okay that you are hurting right now. You don’t need to be strong today. Allow yourself to feel every emotion under the sun, don’t wish any of them away. Your family and closest friends need the whole version of you. If you try to rush through pain, you will end up carrying heavy bricks of grief everywhere and drop them on everything you do. Working through grief and emotions is hard work but the rewards you reap are well worth the effort. Your tears of grief will lead you to become stronger, wiser, and healthier. In the end, pretending to be okay will do more harm than good." 

The gift of grace is actually really cool because once you give it to yourself, grace actually turns around and hands you another gift— healing. But first, you must stop running and sit with grief.