The Landscape of Loss: Navigating Grief and Transition
The experience of loss forever shifts the landscape of our lives. Without question, grief changes things. Sometimes, it changes everything, including us. It is important to embrace the reality that the life we once knew before death or loss simply won’t be the same. But what we identify as a single major change in life impacts many areas that have compound effects, in the seen and unseen, in what is felt as well as the imperceptible.Death as disruptionThe rhythms we became accustomed to, even those that may have irritated us from time to time, were predictable, familiar, and known to us. When disrupted, the change and transitions associated with adjustment can make us feel unsafe, as if our entire world is crumbling. Death is part of the life cycle, and we simply want to buffer ourselves from the sting and sharp edges of loss.Even in this, we must allow ourselves to feel what we’re feeling to process what we’d rather escape. Though it may be excruciatingly painful, beauty can emerge from death’s ashes.The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners...and provide for those who grieve in Zion – to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor. – Isaiah 61:1,3, NIVThe evidence of Jesus’ resurrection provides the best evidence. What seems negative and forever lost in death can produce newness and life. Although Christ makes all [...]
