Emmanuel: God With Us In Our Grief - Natalie Hackmann, MA, PLPC

When the moment passes without the one you miss…

The ache of grief can show up in any loss. Maybe you are grieving a recent transition that makes sense in so many ways, but still requires goodbyes. Maybe you’ve experienced job loss or transferring, a new diagnosis, or a violation of your safety. Perhaps you are grieving unfulfilled expectations, unmet longings, or a failure big or small. Or maybe you aren’t even quite sure why it is that your heart feels so burdened with grief.

That grief can hit us like a train, causing a full-body response. It can also creep up in a small and subtle way—more like smoke slowly expanding into an enclosed space or vessel. The smoke, or the low-grade grief, will soon cloud your vision, impact your breath, and make you want to get out. One of the most difficult parts about loss, though, is we cannot escape it. If you find yourself in the space of grief, you know this all too well.

Where do you feel the pain? Is it an ache in your chest, a longing in your heart, a restriction in your throat, tension in your hips, or a gut feeling that something isn’t quite right—something, or someone, is missing.

Our bodies are the place in which all of the emotions that companion with grief show up—loneliness, powerlessness, anger, fear, and so many more. I often empower my clients to trust that their emotions have a beginning, middle, and end. This is not to say we solely base our lives on our feelings, but it is an invitation to turn inward and accept whatever wave of emotion you find yourself on. When we non-judgmentally accept our emotions, they not only more easily pass through the beginning, middle, and end, but we get a deeper sense of connection within ourselves.

As we connect to our grief, we can find hope through lament. Lament invites us to consider what we can do while we suffer. I want to invite you to consider what your suffering elicits in you. What do you want to do? Collapse in the fetal position, scream/wail, punch as hard as you can, run away, go back and make things different? We can listen to our bodies and hold space for these things. Not to remove the loss, as this is so painfully impossible, but to move through the loss, holding our grief with wholeness and honesty. When we can honestly and authentically express our grief, we have the gift of becoming more fully known by our trusted loved ones and by the God who holds it all.

It is the hope that we are held through it all that can sustain us through even the heaviest of sorrows. Held by others, and held by God. Yes, the God of the universe cares about your sorrow. He is well-acquainted with pain and suffering—he can handle your honest expression of grief. He is also the great Comforter, Redeemer, and Love itself.

The celebration of the birth of Christ ushers us into considering His presence in our suffering. Emmanuel, God with us, embodies the reality that God is in it all. There is no human experience that He does not understand. When we find ourselves grieving, we can trust that He gets it. We do not need to climb out of the muck to get to Him. We do not need to try really hard to feel good, peaceful, or pleasant. We get to unravel as we are held tight by Love, because Love is right there with us.

As Psalm 22:24 proclaims, even at our most hopeless and desperate, the Lord does not look away but “listens to our cries”. He listens. He doesn’t shame or abandon us. In what ways are you prone to hide, avoid, or disconnect from your emotional, physiological, or spiritual experiences of grief because of the fear of being shamed or abandoned? 

Psalm 145:8-9 helps us understand that the Lord is compassionate towards our struggle. We can take heart that Love is with us in this way and hope offers us the chance to still live, move forward, and walk in love.

The Lord is gracious and merciful,

    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all,

    and his mercy is over all that he has made.