What’s So Good About Grief: A Different Way to Think About Loss
This title might sound strange, even offensive to some. How could grief possibly be “good”? But stay with me - this isn’t about minimizing pain or rushing through sorrow. This is about discovering something unexpected in the midst of our deepest losses.
My Education in Grief
By age 48, I had received what you might call a master’s degree in grief, though it wasn’t a curriculum I would have chosen. The losses came in waves: my friend Steve at 27, killed in a car accident when he was just 32. My girlfriend Jodi, taken by leukemia at 30. The end of my career as founding pastor of Rock Harbor due to what the church called my “moral failure.” The death of close friend Doug Root and co-founder of our church from a heart attack. My dad’s six-month battle with lung cancer, dying at 66. The end of my marriage as my wife and I grew in different directions. And finally, my mom’s swift departure after just six days on hospice with colon cancer at 69.
Each loss was its own unique devastation. Each one taught me something different about the landscape of human sorrow.
But if I had to pick which grief taught me the most, it would be my dad’s death. It was then that I realized something crucial: I’m not supposed to “get over” my grief. Instead, I learned to “get through it” and let it “become a part of me.” This shift in understanding changed everything.
The Beautiful Mess of Grief
Here’s what I wish someone had told me earlier: grief is messier than we’ve been led to believe. It doesn’t follow the neat “five stages” we were taught about. It’s not linear. It doesn’t have a timeline. And it certainly doesn’t respond well to clichés or Bible verses offered as quick fixes.
Grief shows up unexpectedly. A song on the radio. A familiar scent. An anniversary you didn’t even realize you were carrying in your heart. It comes in waves - sometimes gentle lapping at the shore of your consciousness, sometimes tsunami-force walls of sorrow that knock you flat.
We need to be more compassionate with ourselves and others who are living with grief. We need to stop perpetuating myths like “mom wouldn’t want us to be sad now that she’s gone” or thinking we can simply replace what was lost. A new puppy doesn’t replace the old one. A new job doesn’t erase the grief of career loss. Another relationship doesn’t heal the wound of divorce.
Grief demands that we sit with it, not rush past it. It asks us to hold space for the full range of human emotion, not just the comfortable ones.
The Unexpected Gifts
So what’s “good” about grief? What makes it a gift worth receiving, even when we’d rather return it?
Grief makes us more human.
It has made me exponentially more compassionate and tender toward others who are experiencing loss of any kind. When you’ve walked through the valley of sorrow, you recognize the terrain when others find themselves there.
Grief teaches us about the vastness of loss.
Losses and deaths and endings come in countless shapes and sizes. The death of a dream, the end of a friendship, the loss of health, the closing of a chapter - grief has shown me that all endings deserve acknowledgment and honor.
Grief becomes a wise teacher.
It has taught me to hold things loosely, to recognize how precious and finite life truly is. Every conversation becomes more intentional. Every moment carries more weight. Every relationship becomes more treasured.
Grief offers a new lens for living.
It provides a different way of seeing life and relationships - as precious, finite gifts rather than guaranteed permanents. This perspective has become a strength in how I show up with people, allowing me to be deeper, braver, and more present regardless of what they’re experiencing.
Grief creates companions for others.
Once you’ve walked through grief, you become one of the safest and most gentle people to accompany others in their own journeys. You learn the ministry of presence over the inadequacy of advice.
The Community of Sorrow
Here’s something vital: grief is better experienced in community. As I like to say, “A grief shared is a grief diminished.” While each person’s journey through loss is unique, we were never meant to walk it alone.
This is a team sport. There are grief groups available. Professional support exists, especially for complicated grief. And importantly, you don’t need religious faith to grieve well - secular people can navigate grief as effectively as religious people, sometimes even more so because they’re not burdened by expectations about how grief “should” look in light of beliefs about eternal life.
The most healing thing we can offer someone in grief isn’t advice or solutions or spiritual platitudes. It’s our presence. Our willingness to sit in the discomfort with them. Our permission for them to feel exactly what they’re feeling for as long as they need to feel it.
Living Forward with Grief
Grief has taught me that life is short and precious, and that I ought to live with deep and thoughtful intention. It hasn’t made me morbid or overly serious - quite the opposite. It’s made me more alive, more present, more grateful for the ordinary moments that make up our days.
I don’t “get over” my losses. Steve, Jodi, Doug, my dad, my mom - they’re all still part of my story. The grief I carry for them has become integrated into who I am, like a scar that tells the story of both wounding and healing.
Maybe that’s the real gift of grief: it doesn’t take us backward to who we were before loss. Instead, it moves us forward into who we’re becoming - more tender, more aware, more fully human.
And perhaps that transformation, born from our deepest sorrows, is something worth calling good after all.
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