How does grief affect you? Have you experienced the deep grief from the loss of a loved one? Have you cried many tears on many different days? Has your soul been shaken by the loss? Have you experienced a loss of energy or physical pains in your grief?
Grief is experienced in many ways be each of us. It affects some of us in one way and others in another. Some of us will weep for days or weeks or months. Others will experience depression, lack of energy, and lack of appetite. Still others will have their faith shaken and their soul rent asunder.
Grief can do strange things to us and cause many different maladies. How do we handle it? Each of us will handle it differently. Some will turn to their jobs as an escape. Others will curl up in the corner and simply want to be alone. Still others will turn to drugs or alcohol as a means to forget…for a little while. What each of us should do in all of these ways of dealing with grief is to pray.
The Psalmist cries out to God. He knows it is only God who can bring solace, peace, comfort, and ultimately joy again. He asks God to shed his grace on him. There is nothing the Psalmist is saying that God does not already know. Yet, God desires us to cry out to him in our grief. He wants us to bare our souls and our grief to him. God wants to help. Yet, he can only help if we are open to him helping. So, we all need to go to God in prayer in the midst of our grief.
I pray we all know we will grieve differently than others. I pray we choose to turn to God in our grief. I pray each one of us trusts that God knows how we feel and will provide the peace, comfort, and joy we seek. Turn to God. Trust God to provide. Trust God understands. He has grieved over us, too.
Psalm 31:9
Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress;
my eye wastes away from grief,
my soul and body also.
Marty Pressey 