Good Grief
I remain confident of this:
I will see the goodness of the Lord
in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord;
be strong and take heart
and wait for the Lord. - Psalm 27:13-14
One of the reasons that the Psalms tell us often to hold on is because they know our tendency to give up. Essentially, every invitation to wait for God is also an invitation to experience grief. Things are not as they should be - so that is why we have to wait.
Dr. Joanne Cacciatore is a specialist in traumatic bereavement. She writes this about the need to sit in our grief and not rush through it:
We can’t rush to meaning. We need to stay in the middle of the fire, the center of our pain, long enough for it to transform. This is where fierce compassion is born.
What are the areas of your life right now where you need to just plain wait - seeking God, pausing for insight, ‘staying in the middle of the fire’ as Cacciatore says?