"Weeping
may endure for a night, but JOY cometh in the morning" Psalm 30V5
A little
girl and her father were walking down a country road one day when they saw an
old wagon wheel. The father said to the child “You know life is like a wheel,
it never stays the same. Sometimes you are on top and sometimes you’re on the
bottom and the wheel will just keep moving round and round.” The girl would go
on and grow into an adult and many times during the course of her life she
would have disappointments. A couple of times she suffered through things that
threatened to destroy her very being, like the time she lost a child and the
time her best friend died prematurely of cancer in the prime of her life. During those times when she thought she
couldn’t go on any longer her fathers’ voice would drift into her mind “The
wheel just keeps turning and turning and nothing will stay the same forever”
Sometimes
we go through what seems at the time insurmountable circumstances. We search
the very core of our being to understand the situation we are faced with.
Nothing makes sense to us at the time. We, as humans, always want to make sense
of bad situations. All of us, if we live long enough, will find ourselves
losing a relationship or losing a loved one through death. We will be hurt to
the core and tempted often to shake our fists to the heavens and ask “Why, God,
why?” It seems at times like these that God is often quiet. We call friends or
we reach out to family to help talk us through it but in the end we have to
find the strength within ourselves to keep going.
How do we
do it? At times like this we must see our lives as that wagon wheel. Right now
we are on the bottom but sooner or later the wheel turns and we move our way to
the top again. It may not happen overnight but it does happen. We must not be
hard on ourselves because grieving takes time. For each person the timing is
different. We need not listen to people who say “You should be over this by
now.” When the time is right we will go on.
One of
the most effective ways to grieve a loss is to give yourself permission to
grieve. Tell yourself that you are allowed to grieve for one day a week. Take
all your pictures of the person, all the little memento’s of the relationship
and put them in a shoebox. One day a week you can get the box down and go
through the memories and grieve as much as you want. Play all the music that
reminds you of the relationship. Soak in your grief and know that for that one
day a week it’s okay to grieve. The deal is that at the end of that day you
must put the box back in the closet and leave it alone until the next week.
Before you know it you won’t want to get that box of memories down once a week.
Now you only will want to get it down once a month. Then maybe you will only
get it down from the closet every six months. Then perhaps once a year on the
anniversary of the death of the person, or the death of the relationship you
will get it down. It seems simple but this little exercise is one of the best
solutions for grief that you have.
When we
are in the midst of grieving it seems as if the world will never be the same.
It will be though. Good times and happiness will come again for those who are
willing to give themselves to others. The great thing about this is that every
single time you go through something like this you become stronger. You find
strength inside of you that you never knew you had. This situation will be
turned around for good when one day you can help someone else overcome the same
pain that you are going through. People in bad situations gain strength from
others who have been through the same things and successfully overcame them.
When we lose someone it’s hard to remember what it was like before the pain and
the grief. If we can be truthful
we can look at the lives of others and realize that people overcome bad
situations all the time in life and go on to lead happy and prosperous lives.
It comes
down to making a choice to be happy or we can choose to stay in grief. Grieving
takes a lot of energy. That same energy can be used to volunteer or to visit
someone else that is hurting. Life is all about choices that we make. Dwelling on how bad the situation is
never helps. We can make a conscious effort to think of good things. We can
stop our unhappy thoughts by simply saying to ourselves “STOP” then remembering
some happy time and thinking about that.
Try and
think about the last time something wonderful happened to you. Were you
expecting it? More than likely you were not. Out of the blue something
wonderful happened to you. Out of the blue you met someone wonderful. Life is
like that. In one moment your whole life changed for the better and it will
happen again! Like the wheel something or someone wonderful will come to the
top for you!
I like to
remember the bible verse that states “Weeping may endure for a night, but JOY
cometh in the morning” Psalm 30:5
Moving
from grief to joy is not easy, but it is possible to do. Take care of you and remind yourself as
you do that “this too shall pass”