Making Friends with Grief and Joy

Grief is a consistent and turbulent companion. I am learning that grief is a companion that I can choose to make peace with; or I can forever be fighting against the reality that grief will always be there, in my widow-heart.

Grief is the partner of death, I am a firsthand witness of death; therefore, grief is my partner.

At least, that is the case, for now, in this lifetime, until Jesus comes back.

I do not live my life in despair, or full of doom and gloom. In fact, because of my experience with death, I often feel the tingling excitement of life more fully. I feel I am able to live with greater purpose. I can love more intensely, and I even believe more faithfully. Life is beautiful, and I am beyond grateful for the life that I have been blessed to live, even with the trials I have had to endure.

But, I do still feel the weight of grief in my heart, as it surfaces from time-to-time. Grief has a permanent place in my heart, as a widow. Death creates a new chamber in the heart which is devoted to the memory of the one who was lost, and that heart-chamber marks their place, like a gravestone in a cemetery. Those whom we have loved never, ever, leave our heart. And so, their loss is marked in our lives with the emotional companion of grief. I believe this is true for those who have experienced death, and even the loss of love from divorce; which is the death of a marriage.

Any love lost, is love lost, causing grief.

Grief is not just the price of love.

Grief is love.

Sometimes, love hurts.

Grief is not bad, it is not weakness; it is tenderness and softness of heart.

Grief brings us closer to Jesus.

I think calling grief a "weight" is very accurate, because it does feel like a burden of fatty-feelings that have to be hauled around through life. Sometimes the burden is made light, and sometimes it is solidly heavy. I used to think that grief would come in "waves," but perhaps it comes more like a giant rock, being carried by the force of a powerful wave.

You can be standing innocently on the shores of joy when, "BAM!"

In slams the grief-rock -- a reminder of lost love and dreams -- straight to the heart.

The pain! The agony! The weight! 

There are always new waves bringing in new grief-rocks.

One of those "rocks" has been knocking me around lately, as I learn how to manage grief in a new relationship.

I carry the weight of grief and lost love from death, and my husband carries the weight of grief and lost love from divorce. Sometimes our two grief-rocks can emotionally grind right into each other, causing sparks of tears and pain, for both of us. We bring to our marriage-table two heavy trials to learn to manage and heft together. As we go through these hard emotions together -- and they will continuously come and go throughout life -- I find that I am so grateful that we both rely on The Rock, our Savior, to calm the waves and storms, and bring us back to love and peace in our hearts.

I am so grateful to have David, and I am so grateful for his devotion to the Lord, and that we both turn to our Heavenly Father, when challenges arise.

One of the things both David and I have been grieving lately, is the loss of the "ideal" family.

We do our very best to do right by our two families, and we try to be good parents to the nine children we have between us. But it can be hard to balance the two different worlds. Emotions run strong when it comes to the family balancing act, and sometimes; we run weak.

There are moments when things get crazy, and my heart starts to long for the "normal" family life I enjoyed before -- with father, mother, children -- united in one purpose, all under one roof. David also mourns the loss of the ideal family he longed for. It is a struggle to maintain some sort of "normalcy" with our family circumstances, and it can be overwhelming at times, when our family circumstances are far from ideal.

We both knew it would be a challenge as we decided to combine forces in marriage, but until experiencing the emotions that accompany the challenge; there was no way to comprehend the difficulty that exists while trying to combine two completely different worlds into one.

There is no way we could do it, without help from our Heavenly Father.

I am grateful that both of our families have at least one thing in common, and that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is foundational in our families, and the Savior is the Light that guides our path through these rocky, uncharted, waters. One thing I try to remember is that we are all children of our Heavenly Father, and He loves all of us. And our "one purpose" is to help bring the children all back to Him.

Ultimately, we can lead and guide all of our children, but they each have their agency, and it is God who will direct their individual paths back to Him.

This is not the life David and I were planning on, when we first started our separate family journeys many years ago, but here we are. Together. And we love each other so much, sometimes it hurts! We are learning, together, how to carry our sorrows, together.

It is a beautiful thing.

It is true, grief is real, and it can be intense. I know because my heart carries it daily. But joy is also real and intense, and my heart currently carries joy daily in greater quantity than my grief. (I am so grateful for that!) Sometimes the joy that I feel is so extreme that I feel I could burst. Sometimes the grief I feel is so extreme that I feel I could crumble. The contrast between feeling grief and joy makes those opposing feelings so much more vibrant and intense, like a battle between two lovers.

One thing I have learned, is to just allow myself to feel what I need to feel, and accept grief as a friend that will travel with me through life. I don't have to fight it, I don't have to overcome it, or move forward from it; I need to embrace it as it is. Grief is the weight of love. And unless I cut out the memorial chamber in my heart, my grief will stand as a beacon of my capacity to love, and be loved.

It is true that we must know grief and sorrow to know true joy.

Does that mean grief is joy?

One day, when Jesus comes again, we will exchange all the "weight" of our grief in this life for the "wings" of eternal joy.

The more grief-rocks we are pummeled with in this life, the more joy-rocks we will get to skip blissfully on the celestial lakes of Heaven.