Simple is Better: Life is More than Difficult Experiences
Before the fire.
After the addiction.
Before the divorce.
After the miscarriage.
Before being let go from a job.
After a financial crash.
Life is full of “before” and “after” events in our lives. Events by which we measure time and our lives. A situation that becomes a line in the sand where we identify life as before and after this particular event.
You’ve had them. I’ve had them. We’ve all had them. Most of us have experienced multiple “before” and “after” events in our lives.
Sometimes, a particular situation feels so life-defining that everything in life is viewed only through the lens of this event. It might even feel almost impossible to experience or contemplate life apart from this life-changing event. We don’t know if we can ever move on.
Unless.
Unless we allow for something other than this awful event to define our lives.
Early after a life-altering event, it feels impossible to contemplate life without everything being filtered through this loss. It may feel like we’re not properly honoring this loss unless everything is held in context of this loss. It becomes the only way in which we interpret life.
Recently, a man shared that Unraveling Together: Sharing the Threads of Grief changed his life. When he first told me this, I thought it was a nice comment. Did this book really change his life? I wasn’t sure.
Until he handed me his copy of the book. The book opened naturally and easily to page 44; like the book is often opened to this page. One particular paragraph was highlighted and marked up. He asked me to read this paragraph:
When in extreme pain, it may feel impossible to deeply love again. Surprisingly, grief can shift our understanding of love and allows us to love more than expected. Pain helps define our awareness of love. Our greatest suffering point can become our greatest expression of love. When we grab onto love’s hope, our souls find new life and thrive. Loving again opens up the possibility for additional loss. It’s a risky, vulnerable decision.
-Unraveling Together: Sharing the Threads of Grief, p. 44
“This is the paragraph that changed my life,” he said. “I read this paragraph every single day.”
By now, I realized he was dead serious.
Why was this paragraph so important to him? About five years ago, his wife died. For five years, he remained stuck. He couldn’t imagine life without his wife.
This man’s situation is not unique. Deep grief is rooted in what we love. We grieve what we love. If we do not love something, we may be bummed or disappointed, but this is different from grieving the loss of something deeply meaningful.
For this man, his wife’s death had been devastating. He had been stuck in grief. Not sure he knew how to go on with his life. Until he discovered that life cannot focus only on difficult experiences.
We need permission to celebrate wonderful moments of our lives; especially these moments that happen after our significant loss. So often, we convince ourselves that life can never as good as it once was. We deny ourselves the opportunity for joy and happiness and hang onto our pain, sadness and hurt for all we are worth.
Until.
Until we give ourselves permission for life to not only focus on the difficult experiences. That we can and should and must still have a deeply meaningful life even after the awful after events of our lives.
It’s this simple. And this hard.
After a life-changing loss, let’s give ourselves permission to embrace love with renewed energy and commitment. Let’s allow our self-imposed love boundaries to spill outside of our expectations. Let’s discover that we can still know love that is real and authentic. In fact, may we discover an urgency of life that is so profound we want to squeeze every single bit of life we can out of every day we are allowed.
Let’s give ourselves permission to not be eternally broken. Resilient hearts heal with proper care and attention. Our hearts can mourn and miss while at the same time discover new ways to love.
When this happens, our “before” and “after” events are neither better nor worse. They are simply different. This is enough.
Life is more than difficult experiences. When we let this be the only expression for how we live our lives, we miss discovering new ways to love and be loved. I pray we discover these new ways. Learn something new about ourselves, other people and faith. It’s a choice that we make, just like the man who shared with me how one paragraph changed his life. I pray you find something beautiful that you can hang onto and change your life as well.
Loving God – You define love for us in such profound and meaningful ways. Help me to continue to discover and explore what love means to me regularly. Expand my heart to new and deeper experiences of love. Thank you for teaching me more about love than I could ever experience on my own. Amen.
Blessings –
Dianne
Join us for Grief with Grace: When Grief is Hidden, a free virtual workshop where we’ll explore hidden grief and make space for healing, understanding, and hope.
Tuesday, October 6 • 6:30 PM CT • Online via Zoom • Free
Come as you are. 💙
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