A Letter to the Grieving

Dear one,

There is nothing I can say that will make this smaller. Loss is loss-sized, and grief is proportional to love — which means if the grief is large, it is because the love was. And that, while it does not ease the pain, is something.

You do not have to be brave right now. You do not have to make meaning of it yet. You do not have to be further along than you are. Grief does not keep a schedule, and the people who tell you it should have never grieved something this large.

What I can tell you is this: you are not alone in it. The God who wept at Lazarus's grave — not because He lacked the power to raise him but because He loved him, because death was wrong, because the sorrow of those around Him moved Him — He is present in yours. He does not watch grief from a distance. He enters it.

And the God of resurrection is not finished. That is not a promise that what you have lost will be restored in the exact form you lost it. But it is a promise that loss is not the final word. That death does not win. That Sunday, in one form or another, is always coming.

Until then: let yourself grieve. Let people hold you. Let God be present in the weeping.

With love and solidarity, A fellow griever