Grieving--Positive reasons for it

"The Refining Power of Grief" by Ashley Isaacson Woolley, Ensign, February 2013.

I was heartbroken. I grieved over my son’s condition and had to come to terms with the fact that he might never enjoy full health. I felt like I was drowning in sorrow—sorrow that felt inescapable because it went hand in hand with my love for my precious child.

 

At first, I felt that my grief meant I lacked faith. But with time, I understood that grief was a normal, healthy response to my son’s illness. In God’s plan for me, grief was a refining fire that transformed my love for others, my perspective on life’s challenges, and my faith in Heavenly Father....

 

Letting myself grieve taught me how to show Christlike compassion for and sensitivity to others.... 

Grief softens our hearts not only toward strangers but also toward the one for whom we are grieving. The depth of my sorrow over my son’s condition showed me the depth of my love for him. And grieving over my old expectations for my son’s life allowed me to let go of them, freeing me to see my son as a beautiful child of God with an eternal destiny, regardless of the imperfections in his physical body....

 

Just as physical injury causes physical pain, emotional injury causes emotional pain. Because I was in pain, I sought a remedy for the situation and relief for my emotional wounds.... During my son’s illness and surgery, grief prompted me to seek emotional relief through earnest prayer and fasting....

 

In the darkest moments of my son’s illness, I sometimes felt forsaken by God, wondering how He could let my son suffer and leave me to endure such heartache. I came to understand that my feelings were natural because I did not share God’s perspective. I reflected on the difference between God’s perspective and my own one night after my husband and I had put our son to bed. We sat in another room, listening to him and watching him on a video monitor. As our son fussed, my husband commented, “You know, he probably feels completely abandoned. It’s dark in there, and he probably thinks we have forgotten him. He doesn’t know that we can see and hear him, because he can’t see or hear us. He doesn’t know that we are always nearby.” As our son was to us, so we are to our Heavenly Father.

 

God is there, and He did not leave me feeling alone forever. Once when I was feeling particularly upset about my son’s health and especially forsaken by God, I prayed. Soon afterward, a phrase came to my mind: “God makes a way where there is no way.” I looked up the phrase and discovered a quotation by Martin Luther King Jr.: “When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that … [God] is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.”

 

This thought reminded me that I could hope for a bright tomorrow without denying the darkness of today. I could keep my faith in God and hope for a happier future while allowing myself to grieve in the present. In God’s own time, He spoke comfort and reassurance to me.