Taking the Journey of Grief - Step 7

Goals and grief can be hard concepts to mesh. We wish they got along better. We want to be able to say, “I have Saturday open so I plan to get half my grief out by journaling, looking at pictures, having an extended time of candid prayer, crying several times, and then updating my good-bye letter to capture the progress I’ve made during the day.” But thinking of goal setting as a time table or schedule, will become extremely frustrating and ineffective.

Also, if we think of goal setting as “overcoming” grief, then we will have a sense of failure whenever grief returns around special occasions, triggered by a song or quote, or randomly interrupts our day. This is why we say we are identifying goals to “combat the impact of my suffering.” Grief is something we experience rather than conquer. Therefore, we will grow from it rather than eliminate it.

We did not cause grief, so we cannot “uncause” it. Grief is not a character defect or sin, so we cannot “put off” grief. Grief is part of our story and because of that there will be times when its significance continues to impact our life. Our goal in this chapter is to further understand what healthy grief is, what healthy grief looks like, and what we can do to “grieve well” during some of the difficult times ahead.

The material for this chapter will be divided into three sections: (1) What does it mean to “progress”? (2) How to prepare for predictably hard times? (3) How to respond to unpredictably hard moments?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.