The Grieving Process: Working Through Loss from a Faith-Based Perspective

After losing his wife to cancer, C.S. Lewis wrote an extended reflection on grief called A Grief Observed. In it, he wrote, “For in grief nothing ‘stays put.’ One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?” The grieving process is often bewildering and disorienting for those who experience it.

Grief can leave a person feeling like they’ve been turned around while in a fog, and they keep passing the same landmarks again and again. The feelings they first felt ebb and flow; sometimes it feels like progress has been made, only to feel overwhelmed again. All this may be true, but grief is a necessary process you must go through to come to terms with loss. Things can and do change, but you must trust the process.

The Necessity of Grief

The world we live in is marked by loss and suffering. God’s good world has been marred by sin and death, and we feel the sting of death in its many manifestations (Genesis 3; 1 Corinthians 15). Relationships break down, as loved ones are estranged, married couples separate and divorce, and conflict ends years-long investments in one another’s well-being. Dreams get shattered, leaving one feeling forlorn and without hope.

Not only that, but loss also happens when meaningful connections and relationships, whether with people, a place, or a community, come to an end. Moving away from the home and community you’ve known and loved can be a gut-wrenching experience. It seems like loss comes to us in many forms, and our lives are a constant journey that’s punctuated with things and people that we leave behind, or that leave us behind.

Into all of this, grief comes as a necessary process to help us deal with loss. If we experienced every loss as keenly and with as much force years down the road as when the loss first occurred, it would be entirely overwhelming. Grief helps us to gain distance, perspective, and healing from loss. Grief never erases the loss, and you will always feel the absence of a loved one, but it allows you to live and see the light again.

The Grieving Process

Grieving doesn’t erase the pain of loss, but it does help you to cope with it. When you form a connection with someone or something, your heart, your life, and your being are entwined. Losing them is like losing a piece of yourself, as painful as any physical trauma or injury can be. Like a physical injury, it’s a shock to the system, and it takes time to come to terms with the fact that you’ve been marked for life by what has happened to you.

The process of grieving is the slow, circuitous journey of making sense of your loss and learning to live in the new reality you’ve been thrust into. As C.S. Lewis noted, it can feel like you’re emerging from a phase, but it keeps recurring. It can feel like you keep thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same feelings, over and over again. However, though it may seem interminable, you are making progress.

The Swiss American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross pioneered near-death studies, and she was the one who came up with the theory of the five stages of grief as she observed how her terminally ill patients faced the prospect of death. These five stages don’t delineate a straightforward, step-by-step process that every grieving person goes through. It simply plots out the different emotions and experiences people typically have with grief.

The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. At first, one might refuse to accept that the worst has happened or is happening. Instead of accepting it, it is preferable to cling to an alternative reality in which the loss hasn’t happened. When denial is no longer tenable, one can easily feel frustrated with the situation, themselves, God, or the person they’ve lost.

In the third stage, bargaining, one holds onto some hope that the loss can somehow be avoided, that perhaps something can shift and change things. This could mean trying to make a deal with God that if you change, or if He just gives you more time with your loved one, you’ll change or do things differently.

In the fourth stage, depression, one might begin giving in to despair. Despair that things will get better, despair that joy will ever be a lived reality again, and feeling a sense of futility about life. This can yield to the fifth stage, where one embraces their situation and recognizes that they’ll be okay. Life won’t be the same, but it will go on.

These stages aren’t as clear-cut as this, and they don’t flow easily from one to the next. In fact, you might find that in your experience, you went straight into stage two, then into stage four. For many others, they move back and forth between the stages, triggered by various daily experiences, and with varying intensity.

Christian Grief Counseling in Huntington Beach, CA

Grieving isn’t a straightforward process, and you can find yourself stuck and unable to function in daily life. You can find help in the form of grief support groups or by talking with a grief counselor in Huntington Beach, California.

Talking with someone about what you’re going through can help you to process it, understand it, and yourself better, and help you identify where you’re struggling. Your counselor can help you to find healthy ways to cope with loss. To schedule an appointment with a therapist in Huntington Beach, contact us today at Huntington Beach Christian Counseling in California.