Soul lowliness and loneliness in the pit of grief

It isn’t inappropriate to drown in consternation and self-pity when you’re deep in the pit of grief. How on earth else are you supposed to respond in your humanity? Of course your ‘identity in Christ’ is shattered. It is being deconstructed, only to be reconstructed again, but how are you to know better?

As I wrote a post titled, God’s Presence and Love Only Available in Grief, I felt I’d missed the mark. It wasn’t so much triumphalist, yet there was hardly the hope in it that I want to communicate.

This article attempts to draw closer to the overwhelming reality the sufferer bears in their humanity.

When I cast my mind back toward the heart I experienced in my first raging grief, the time I learned much of what is death amid life, I recognise the frailty in our common and unique humanity that is pushed beyond what it can bear.

How are we supposed to respond when life pushes us into the reaches of a despair that breaks us over and over again? There will be anger. Their will be fear. There will be bargaining. There will be the opposite poles of denial and depression. And the confusion amid a random combination of these does our head in. How are we supposed to respond but in a way that is totally immature from a cold outsider’s viewpoint? This s . . t is real!

How are we supposed to develop empathy for others who are pushed beyond their despair? Well, we’re pushed beyond our own! Until we’ve faced a leviathan that crushed our head under its foot, we’ll not have an idea what life is capable of.

What we experience amid grief is the continual and ever-threatening reality of soul lowliness and loneliness — that feeling of feeling estranged to even ourselves in a crowded room, especially where there’s much merriment.

People will observe something amiss in our countenance. They will wonder what is wrong. And we will hate feeling so exposed as to justify how we feel. As if it isn’t already bad enough! They may attempt to ‘care’ by taking it upon themselves to ‘lift us’ out of our doldrums. They have no idea how foreign, confusing and inappropriate their ‘love’ is. We may feel like saying, “What on earth do you think you’re doing?!” but we’re forgiven for being totally thrown by their assertiveness, or even for feeling ashamed that we’re ‘ungrateful’. Of course it’s not a lack of gratitude; it’s a lack of grace on their behalf.

There are four broad kinds of people in this situation: 1) the person, as above, who takes responsibility for us (a heinously undignifying reality); 2) the person who is awkward and who avoids us for fear of what they’ll say or not say; 3) the person who is completely clueless, either because they have no idea or because they don’t care; 4) the person who doesn’t know what to say or do, but because they care, and because they ooze humility, the just sit with us, and may actually say or do something encouraging.

In this situation, we’re incredibly vulnerable. We don’t even want to be there. Our soul is lowly and for good reason. Our soul is harrowingly lonely and there is usually only one reparation — but that also is the source of our loss!

And when we’re alone… well, what can I say? We can be positively dangerous. At these times, whether we recognise it or not, we need care. We need support. We need people who are prepared to travel with us.

Be kind and gentle and forgiving of yourself.

You who have no idea
how to reconcile your grief
just need the kindness, gentleness
and the forgiveness of love right now.

We must leave all else to God.

Everything else in futility is futility.

Photo by Fabrizio Verrecchia on Unsplash