A year ago, I was interviewed and became a licensed official in my denomination. I was excited to pass the interview and serve in my church. However, my husband, who serves as a transitional pastor in this nomination, was seeking another church opportunity because his contract was expiring. With no church opportunities within the denomination in sight, I faced the reality that I might lose my license.
Because I didn't really pursue this on my own but felt a calling from God, I didn't mind at first. God gave and took away, and I was OK with that. That was, until one night, when my emotions got the best of me. As I sat and spoke with God, all these emotions poured out. I quickly realized I was mad at God for calling me to do something he would only take away from me in a few months. It felt cruel, as if I didn't care about myself or my abilities. I lived in fear that he would forget me and that I wouldn't be able to serve my church in alignment with my abilities.
I sobbed and prayed and cried out to God. I told him everything that was in my heart. I got down deep to the real, yet untrue, statements about God. I felt he was powerless, and that I was alone. I felt as if he had forgotten me, and then he played favorites. It felt like he didn't care about what I was going through. I also felt he didn't care about the sacrifices my family and I had been making.
The realization that I might lose my license triggered many feelings of deep grief and loss. Although I had grieved other things within my life before that time, I realized that I lived with a deep feeling of loss. Every time I lost something in life, it triggered those feelings of grief.
Compelled by the spirit, I made a list of all the things I had felt had been taken from me in my lifetime. Surprisingly, the list was longer than I anticipated. Then, I felt compelled to pray over each one. I asked God to forgive me for blaming him for the loss in my life. If I felt lingering anger or sadness over what was lost, I asked God to remove them. I asked him to help me lift this feeling of grief, and that it would not hinder me from having an intimate relationship with him.
After I was done, it felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I didn't realize I'd been living with so much grief until I took the time to bring it to the Lord. Here are some ways to know if you are done grieving:
You Don’t Talk About It Anymore
In my conversations with my husband, I often shared what had been lost. This happened in conversations more than I cared to admit. It helped me to see that I really wasn't over all the loss that I had experienced. God was asking me to give that burden to him. But I had to ask. God is willing to lift the burden of grief from you as well. But you must ask him.
You don't have to live with the deep feelings that sadness and sorrow bring. Instead, you can name each thing of which you are grieving. You can give it over to God and ask him to take away your feelings of entitlement or selfishness for wanting that thing in the first place. When we place our lives in proper perspective and realize that God can give and take away anything at any time, it comforts us to know that God truly cares about us. But in the broken world we live in, we may lose things simply because life is unfair.
You No Longer Harbor Unforgiveness or Bitterness
As I searched my soul, I quickly realized they were harboring more unforgiveness and resentment than I had realized. Although I had done a lot of soul work regarding letting go of the things that I had lost in the past, I realized that the prospect of losing my license really triggered some untrue statements about God. When I believed that God played favorites and didn't care about me, it caused me to harbor unforgiveness and resentment toward him.
It may seem odd to think we need to forgive God for things in life, but it's truer than we care to admit. Although we try to move on as if life hasn't dealt us a heavy blow, we realize that if we believe in God, we will see him as a good, kind God who gives us everything we want because he loves us. But when things don't go our way, or we lose things that are important to us, it's easy to turn our backs on God and harbor unforgiveness or resentment for what we have lost.
In the same way I gave up each thing I had lost and brought it to God, I needed to name all the offenses I felt God had done to me. I named each one out loud and asked God to take it from me. I then asked him to help me forgive him for putting my desire for the thing ahead of him. I also asked him to shift my perspective from entitlement to gratitude.
You Can Talk to God Freely
When our relationships with God are not right, something will feel off in our souls. We may feel inhibited or encounter barriers to having intimate conversations with God. This is because we want to hide our true feelings from him. After all, we're embarrassed or afraid to tell him how we really feel. This traces back to the fall. When God asks Adam, “Where are you?” He wasn't asking him where he was. Instead, he was asking him where he was in his soul. Adam must have felt distant from God after disobeying him. When Adam took it a step further and blamed Eve for all that had happened to him, the divide between them grew wider.
In the same way, when we choose not to look deeply and vulnerably at our feelings and talk to God about how we're truly feeling, the divide between God and us widens. The chasm that separates us because of sin becomes a division too great to unite. Soon, we may find ourselves not talking to God at all, further distancing ourselves from him.
God wants us to be open and vulnerable with him. No matter what our feelings, no matter how angry we are at him, God wants to hear it all. He has big shoulders and can handle our big emotions. If Adam and Eve had gone to God and repented, they would have been able to remain in paradise. But because they chose not to be real with their feelings and confess their sin openly to him, the divide between them became too wide to bear.
Grief can be a complex emotion to deal with on your own. Ask others who can help you grieve appropriately. Join a GriefShare program or another program that helps you deal with grief. Start a grief journal and talk about all the things that make you sad or that you've lost. Bring those things to God and watch your spiritual growth turn over like never before.
Photo credit: ©GettyImages/jjneff
