Grief is a funny thing, in the fact that it’s not really funny at all. 

No matter who you are, there’s at least one thing I know about you. You’ve experienced pain. You’ve been hurt. I know this because we live in a broken, fallen world.  

Because of this, it’s so important to focus on the light. To keep holding on, seeking to remember and hold fast to the truth. 

But what do we do when the grief is completely and utterly overwhelming? 

Grief is something I’ve experienced my fair share of. Way back in December of 2021, my grandpa passed away. Then, within a span of three months after that, I lost all three of the part-time jobs I was working, had to move out of my childhood home to live on my own, I started allergicly reacting to the prescribed medication I was on, and then, to wrap it all up, my dog died on my birthday. 

It sucked. Big time. 

I tried my best to shove the pain away and focus on God—but it was so hard. Fast forward to May of 2022, and God totally pulled me out of that situation. I was accepted into my literal dream school, The Company. Bit by bit, year by year, God redeemed every single one of those things that were taken from me, through the relationships in my church, to the dream career of being a full-time writer. 

Yet, I still struggled with the grief. I’d find myself lying awake at night, thinking about that period of my life over and over again. I was so thankful for the healing that God gave me, but I was fearful that in a single moment, it’d all be taken away again. 

I thought I was focusing on the light, but in reality, I was just waiting for the other boot to drop. 

No matter how much healing I received, or how great my career got. I just kept shoving that pain down, refusing to focus on it. What I failed to realize was that I wasn’t actually doing a good job of shoving it down. It kept coming back up, like bile in my throat. I’d be having a great time with friends, or just about ot drift off to sleep, when those memories would smack me upside the head. 

Sometimes you have to tell God about the pain to move on. 

Psalm 56:8 says, “You keep track of all my sorrows.

    You have collected all my tears in your bottle.

    You have recorded each one in your book.” 

I didn’t stop waiting for the other boot to drop until I started talking to God about my fears, about my pain, and about my grief…and guess what? Talking to him about it actually gave me hope. Despite what we might feel, we’re not alone in our grief. Even if we can’t see it or feel it, he keeps track of all my sorrows, as the Psalms say. 

Hope isn’t something that you scrounge up. It’s not something you force yourself to have by pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making yourself do it.

Hope is a natural consequence of having an active relationship with God.

1 Peter 5:7 says, “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” 

Sometimes, I can take this verse to mean giving up my own control, and literally giving my worry to God—he’s the one in charge, so he gets to worry about it. But I think it also means talking to him about it. Processing your grief, allowing the great comforter to do just that and comfort you…and then letting it go and moving on. Because, guess what? The biggest secret to focusing on God through grief? 

By looking and talking to God.

There’s one scene that I always think of when it comes to having hope during grief. It’s that scene in Inside Out, when Riley finally talks to her parents about her grief of moving. They wrap her in a hug, she cries, and then…she lets out a breath and smiles. Because she now knows she’s not alone.

I can’t help but picture God as the father, and us as Riley when I see a scene like that. 

So don’t keep your tears to yourself anymore. Bring it to God and gain hope! 

 

---

You can see this played out in my recent book, Call It Consequences!

What would you do if your 12-year-old self showed up and told you that you had to travel back in time to save your dead mother’s life?

Lorraine’s mother died almost a decade ago, and her life has been spiraling out of control ever since. If it’s not the grief or her aloof father who won’t give up his pointless time travel experiments, then it’s the mysterious man in black who always seems to be watching her.

Does that mean it’s up to Lorraine to fix everything? Lorraine’s an artist, not a mathematician. With only her unwitting boyfriend for help, how will she ever accomplish what her genius parents never could? More importantly, will she be able to keep it a secret from the strange government forces following her?

*Affiliate link.