Shortly after I began walking through the worst heartbreak I have yet to experience, my grandfather also passed away. It took two years to come to a place of peace in regard to both losses, but the absence still hurts somewhere inside.
“We don’t move on. We hold that place in our heart, we close it off, we lock the door, we visit from time to time, but we don’t move on. Even after we say goodbye.”
-Jemma Simmons, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Learning to live without a loved one (however they were lost) is similar to getting a limb amputated: you heal, but you will never be the same.
“While Jemma might grieve for the people she’s lost,” Screen Rant’s Amanda Bruce commented on the quote above, “she’s not the kind of person who simply puts things behind her. Instead, she uses her grief to motivate herself.”
The process of hanging on to God during that season is what grounded my faith, and reflecting on the lessons I learned sets me ablaze to testify of His goodness.
The loss of a loved one should encourage us in the right direction.
“But what is grief if not love persevering?”
-Vision, WandaVision
Whether you are in a season of heartbreak or some stage afterward, take note of what God is teaching you and praise Him for what He is doing.
There is goodness and direction to suffering, like how drowning requires you to sink lower to bounce higher, or an arrow must be pulled back to be shot forward.
Although we may want to move on and forget the hurt, we shouldn’t.
When you lose someone you love, you learn not to live without them but to live with the love they left behind. “Either I die as well,” Coco Chanel said after losing the love of her life, “Or I finish what we started together.”
Regardless of how it ended, the loved one you’re missing made you stronger in one way or another. They started a fire in you that shouldn’t be doused just because their absence hurts.
One of the three things the psalmist does is remember his experiences of deep darkness (Psalm 42:6-7), but his remembering is not mere nostalgia. He refuses to wallow in his sorrows and defiantly praises God for all the silver linings.
“I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.”
-Psalm 77:11-12
Why do you think we have plaques of remembrance, headstones, walls of honor, or dedicated roads, rooms, and buildings? It is good to remember those no longer with us and the pain of losing them to push us onward. There is a reason you’re still here.
You will have down moments. There will be days when you wonder how you’re still feeling repercussions, but don’t get wrapped up in them. It will be a process of continual surrender, dying to yourself each and every day and choosing to lean on Christ.
You might not “move on,” and you most definitely will never be the same, but you will heal, you will get better, and the testimony of how God brought you through that season will minister to yourself and others again and again and again if you are faithful to proclaim it.