We have been looking at the need to intentionally face our grief head on and process our emotions. In this blog we are going to look at the benefits of taking a break from grief. Allowing yourself to rest and take some time to breathe will greatly help you in your grieving process.
It can be difficult and exhausting to intentionally face
your grief and process your pain after a traumatic loss. Just surviving the grief is a lot to deal
with. As we find ourselves in the midst
of it, it is easy to forget about personal health. It can be all you have to just get through
the day. The idea of self-care can be a
completely foreign concept.
Allowing yourself to take a break and care for your mental,
emotional, physical, and spiritual needs is an essential part of establishing a
new normal. Self-care is an important
aspect of the grieving process. Grieving
is work, hard work. Continually working
hard without a break can bring on even more hardship. Even God demonstrates a time of rest in
Genesis 2, when He rested from all the work He had done. Then in Exodus He introduces the idea of Sabbath
rest.
Remember
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work,
but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do
any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female
servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in
six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and
rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made
it holy.
– Exodus
20:8-11
The Lord wants us to rest.
He created that time for us. Rest
is a blessed and holy time. A traumatic
loss can take over our entire thought life.
We can get lost in thoughts and enter into a very painful and stressful internal
world. Taking a break helps your mind
temporarily disengage from all those thoughts in a healthy way. This will help you to get reacquainted with
the world around you.
Taking a break is not the same as denial. Taking a break and allowing yourself time to
relax, have some fun, or experience something adventurous is not denial. This
time will help you to see that you do not have to do this alone. You are not alone in this. The Lord is acquainted with your grief, and
He is able to help you. Here is a
reminder from The Loneliness of Loss
blog.
The Lord is acquainted with, knows, has experiential
knowledge of, and comprehends our grief.
He has received, accepted, lifted, and carried away our grief and
sorrow. He knows your grief, understands
your situation, and can help you with your sorrow.
These times of rest in-between the times of intentionally
facing our grief, and processing our pain, will help us let God be the one who
carries our sorrows. It will help us
reset our perspective and begin to see God’s hand in the process more clearly. Our world will get bigger than our loss, and
we will slowly be able to see it. We
will begin to see beauty again in places we did not think possible.
Reengaging with society after a loss can be
overwhelming. I am not recommending that
you push yourself past what you feel safe doing. There were many times when I could not even
go in public after experiencing loss. After
our home burned, I had a weird sense of social anxiety in my body that I could
not even explain. Even though my loss
had nothing to do with crowds or public spaces, there were times when it was
difficult to go in crowded spaces. I would
sometimes not engage with things that I did not feel safe engaging with. Little by little, I would engage as I could.
I recommend doing something you feel safe doing, something that will help you
disengage from your grieving, so that you can rest and rejuvenate.
While grieving a loss we may be tempted to comfort ourselves
in unhealthy ways. Self-care is not the
same as self-medication. When I mention self-medication,
I am referring to the unhealthy ways we try to numb, deny, or distract
ourselves from the emotional pain and grief.
Taking care of our needs is not an unhealthy distraction. If we take the time to care for ourselves, we
will be able to face the grief.
It can be tough to get motivated to do “regular life” while
grieving. You may not have any interest
in it. Trying to do something fun, in
the middle of all the pain, might not even be a concept that you can grasp. However, I think it is very helpful to remind
yourself that there still is fun in the world.
Even small moments of experiencing fun, joy, or excitement can help us and
strengthen us. The joy of the Lord is
our strength. Be strong and courageous,
you can do this.
Take some time, let yourself breathe, enjoy the moment, and commend
yourself for the work you have done. You
are so much stronger than you know.
Blessings,
Ray