Good Grief

“There is such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown.” - Michael Scott, The Office. I wrote most of this on Jan 28 of this year so this is a bit of a rerun but I think it still holds up. When you love someone, your soul actually expands to make room for them. That’s why parents say when they have their first kid, they can’t possibly have more love than they have for that child, and then they say the same thing when they have their second child, because their soul is now larger than it was when they had the first child. When we lose someone, we do not lose that piece of our soul where we kept our love for them. That place in our soul is filled with grief because grief is another form of love. It is a form of love with a longer shelf life. It is a form of love that does not require the constant input from both the one who loves and the one who is loved. Our soul fills up with grief because if there were no grief to fill that place in our soul, that part of our soul would collapse and wither and shrivel. It is a painful process to transform the light and energetic and bubbly living form of love into the deeper, richer, more tranquil form of love known as grief, but it is necessary for our survival. Without the grief our soul would collapse. We need those memories, even tinged with sadness, because that place in our soul could only ever fit that loved one. And though we may love again, and we will, our soul will grow and expand and create a new room for that new love, one that does not replace the old love because the old love is still with us. I’ve been speaking mostly of loving and losing people, but the same applies to dreams and goals and passions. And loss doesn’t have to mean death. We could lose contact with a friend, or lose the ability to do certain activities that we were passionate about. We could lose a home or a job, a relationship or a calling. Grief may not always seem as pleasant as happiness, but grief reminds us of how big our souls really are, and that although sadness may change us, it does not diminish us. It is true that Christ was able to take upon Himself the sins and the sorrows of the world because he is God. But I think it is just as accurate to say that Christ is God because He took upon Himself all of our sins and sorrows. He loved each of us more than we could possibly imagine, and thus He grew and expanded His soul to make a place for each of us, for all of our triumphs and tragedies, our pain and our pleasure, our loves and our griefs. Loss is not the end. Loss may change and deepen our love, but it cannot take it away.