How Can God’s Love Heal My Grief?

What Does It Mean to Experience Deep Loss?

I know so many who are suffering in grief for lost loved ones. I’ve experienced loss as well, learning at the age of 10 what it meant to lose someone when my baby half-brother passed away from a heart defect he’d had since birth. Even though I was young, I had often babysat him. I knew how to comfort him, how to protect the back of his head, how to warm up his milk, and how to give him his medicine at the right times. I sang songs to him and played with him and loved him deeply.

When my step-mom called our house that day, I answered the phone. She could not think to ask for an adult, and said in all her brokenness, “Misty, Steven is dead.” I’ll never forget those words or the sound of her voice. That was my first introduction to painful loss through death, but it was not the last.

What Is the Relationship Between Love and Grief?

Where love had once filled my heart, grief overtook that space. This is why I believe that the opposite of love is not hate—it is grief. Where love fills, grief leaves empty. Where love consoles, grief torments. Where love heals, grief leaves brokenness. The opposite of love is grief, and no amount of time seems to remove that hurt. I can still think back on those moments of loss, and it will hit me with the same force as if it just happened yesterday.

Why? If time is meant to heal all things, why does grief feel like the exception?

Because love… is the opposite… of grief.

How Does God’s Eternal Love Provide Healing?

Love is the most divine manifestation of God himself, and God is eternal. In that way, love is also timeless. Love is the only force that defies every known law of physics. It is able to expand and endure across all time and distance without being lost or diminished.

When we love, we see the reflection of God in this world. We get a blessed but diluted, earthly glimpse of the awesome, infinite power of God’s love. We hold it for a time, but when it is taken away, we are left with the memory of that power, and we feel to the depths of our soul the gaping hole that remains. There is a never-ending longing in our hearts, crying out to God for the connection we had with Him that has been removed through the loss of that person. The depth of our sorrow is the exact depth of our love—and so it is beautiful. That we feel the loss so deeply means that we loved that intensely.

How Can I Invite God’s Healing Light Into My Heart?

There is no earthly consolation for such a loss. Many stay trapped in this place for the rest of their lives, wishing they could have that love back again. Truly friends, the only power strong enough to heal that hurt is God himself. In moments of grief, we should pray that God comes to place His own light into that empty space. We should recognize that the reflection we saw in others was a beautiful insight into what will be, and God has the ability to fulfill our hearts beyond our wildest understanding if we will only let Him.

Many will rebel at this idea because it feels like a betrayal to the person they loved. They may think that somehow they will forget their loved one if they let God move into that space in their heart. I believe that there is no better way to honor the ones we’ve lost. We were blessed for a time to hold God’s hand, look into His eyes, laugh with Him, travel the Earth with Him, confide in Him, and learn from Him—through the lives of those we’ve loved. You cannot forget those things. The person you loved is not lost in this process of transformation—they are glorified. They are lifted up to the powerful and proper role in your life that they were meant to fulfill… to show you the face of God!

How Can I Find Hope and Peace Amid Grief?

Someday, we will know and experience God’s eternal realm of love without loss, where grief is no longer the price for having loved.

I pray for everyone who struggles with grief. I pray that you will recognize the power of God that was present in that relationship. I pray that you can find peace in knowing that God was there, revealed to you through their lives, and that God is still there, alive in yours.

“And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope.”
1 Thessalonians 4:13 New Living Translation

M Surine