MOVING FORWARD WITHOUT YOUR LOVED ONE
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
—THOMAS CAMPBELL, “HALLOWED GROUND”
LIFE WILL NEVER be the same. That doesn’t automatically mean your life will be worse; it only means it will be different. In the midst of your journey through the valley of grief, it may seem impossible to imagine how there could be anything positive in your future. As one who is still walking this journey, let me offer you some hope. As challenging as it may be to do so, you can come to embrace a new normal. In that new normal your loved one will be with you in memory though not physically present. Embracing that new normal doesn’t happen quickly, but you can get there.
You’ve experienced this at other times in your life. As a child you moved from one grade to another, then from elementary or middle school to high school, perhaps from singleness to marriage to parenthood. Each new normal may sometimes be challenging. It may feel very uncomfortable for a while. But not everything about the new normal will be bad. Coming to embrace a life without your loved one’s physical presence will happen in a similar way. Moving forward after the loss of a loved one can be a difficult transition, but it is possible.
I have met people who lost a spouse or child years ago, but they still live as if the loss occurred just a week ago. If that’s the case for you, know that you are not alone. Growing into a new normal is not easy. But if a year, two years, three years have passed and you are not sensing some new normal gradually developing in your life, get some help. Being stuck in grief does not mean there’s something irreparably wrong with you; it just means you need some wise and caring assistance to get unstuck.
It’s been said that friends, money, and a sense of purpose determine much about how a person develops a new normal. If the loved one who died provided your primary source of income, a sudden lack of money can add a lot to your stress and make your grief journey more complicated. If you have no close friends currently, it can take more-than-usual energy to grow forward. And without a sense of purpose it will be difficult to feel any motivation to grow into a new normal. It’s possible to overcome any or all these challenges. If these are factors for you, I encourage you to be even more intentional about doing your grief work and getting some help if you are not making progress.
Your ability to move forward without your loved one’s physical presence will develop slowly. In this chapter we’ll explore some of the elements that can be important in this part of your journey.
Carrying Your Loved One With You
Some who are going through the grief journey feel as though moving forward in any way would mean they are dishonoring or disrespecting their loved one who died. You may, perhaps unconsciously, feel that experiencing any happiness or taking any positive action without your loved one’s physical presence would somehow mean you didn’t love the person enough. Remaining miserable and stuck in your grief somehow seems proof of what your loved one means to you.
Intellectually you may realize that such thoughts are not wise or reasonable. They’re common human thoughts, but let me urge you to challenge those thoughts if you have them. If you could imagine your loved one now, he or she would want you to be happy. The person would want you to move forward with your life in some way. Perhaps your loved one even said something to you to that effect if he was aware the end of his time on earth was near.
Moving forward does not dishonor our loved ones. Doing so may actually be one of the most important ways we can value, honor, and respect who they were and the impact they had on us. It may be helpful to evaluate some specific ways in which you can intentionally carry your loved one with you as you move forward. Your relationship with your loved one is not over; it’s just that now your relationship is one of memory and legacy instead of physical presence.
Moving forward does not dishonor our loved ones. Doing so may actually be one of the most important ways we can honor them and the impact they had on us.
It can be helpful to intentionally develop that new relationship of memory. I mentioned previously that during the time I spent alone with God at the beach early in my grief journey, I came to feel immense gratitude for who my husband had been to me, how our marriage had changed me, and what that would make possible now. That has become a significant part of my own journey to move forward. I have come to appreciate that our marriage, though much shorter than either of us would have wanted, allowed me to develop an understanding and appreciation of relationship and intimacy that I would not have had any other way. That very understanding has since become one of the primary ways in which I am able to minister to others. People struggling with intimacy or marriage issues often seek me out, ask me questions, read things I’ve written, or request help in these areas. Each and every time I help someone in the area of relationships or marriage, I am carrying my husband with me. Who he was to me comes out in almost everything I say and write. Without him in my life for those years, I would have no ability to do what I’m doing now.
As you move forward, you can carry your loved one with you in some way as well. Who you became as a result of your loved one’s investment in your life impacts your skills, understanding, resilience, courage, ability to love, and a hundred other characteristics. Embracing those things is part of honoring your loved one. Some people honor their loved one by investing themselves in a cause that was or would have been meaningful to their loved one. Others, after an appropriate time of healing, pour themselves into helping others as a way of expressing the love they are not able to physically show their loved one now.
You have many choices about how to use your stored memories of your relationship with your loved one. When you face a situation in which you previously would have relied on your loved one’s input or support, or when you are feeling emotional again over your loss, intentionally remembering your loved one can help you access that same sense of input and support. When I face a challenge in ministry, I sometimes do that by thinking about all my husband taught me about media. There are likely to be many times when you will want to bring out the physical reminders you have created of your loved one, such as a scrapbook or video. Bringing your loved one to mind and reviewing the personal items you’ve chosen to save can help you choose the best memories to hold on to and continue to experience the positive aspects of your loved one’s impact on your life.
Doing your grief work will help you discover things about yourself you didn’t know before, including ways in which your loved one impacted you and others. Taking the time to examine your loved one’s legacy in your own heart can help you understand how you wish to carry the person’s memory forward as you move with God into this next season of your life. It’s worth intentionally thinking about that. Doing so may be the greatest way to honor your loved one and the role that person played in your life.
At times in this book I have alluded to scenarios in which a person’s relationship with a loved one who died was traumatic. Conflict, abuse, addiction, or other serious issues can complicate a person’s life and the lives of those around that individual. What then? It is still possible to do your grief work, explore your feelings, take Jesus with you into the places of your pain, and invite God’s comfort and presence to bring healing to your heart. You are still different because of your relationship with your loved one. Perhaps you need even more healing now than someone else facing loss. Even if your loved one’s life brought you enormous pain, your grief work can bring you to the place where the memory of the trauma loses its sting and you become able to move forward into the next season of what God has for you.
God’s Purpose for You
God cares about you in your grief. He sees you, weeps with you, understands you, and is patient with you. As much as He cares about you right now, He also sees the future that you probably struggle to see right now. He sees who you are becoming as a result of your journey through this dark valley of grief. He knows the ways you are growing. He appreciates that, as was the case with Jacob in the Old Testament, you will have a limp as you move forward. (See Genesis 32:25, 31.) He knows the scar forming in your soul as a result of your grief and the ways in which this journey is changing you.
Remaining stuck in grief is like saying you know better than God that your future without your loved one is meaningless. If you’re still breathing, God has something yet for you to do.
More than anything else, God knows what your future will be. He knows what this next season of your life can become and the ways in which even your grief journey is preparing you for what is yet to be. Please hear me: God did not take your loved one home in order to teach you something so you could fulfill some purpose of His. But God does have a miraculous way of turning what would otherwise be harmful, including your loved one’s death, into something valuable for His kingdom and meaningful for you.
Remaining stuck in grief is, in one sense, saying you know better than God that your future without your loved one is meaningless. If you’re still breathing (and you are or you wouldn’t be reading this), God has something yet for you to do. It may or may not be something you suspect right now. It may be something seemingly small in human eyes but that will make a significant difference for God’s kingdom. It may be something that directly relates to the relationship you shared with your loved one, or it may be something different. But you can be certain that you are not still alive by accident. When the darkness feels like more than you can see beyond and you think you want to leave this world and be with your loved one, remember that God still has something for you to do.
Very near the end of Paul’s life he wrote his letter to the Philippians, where we find this:
For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.
—PHILIPPIANS 1:21–26
Can you see Paul’s point? Although a big part of him wanted to die and be present with the Lord, he determined to remain here on earth as long as God had a purpose for him to fulfill. I have come to the same conviction. Although going through each day as a widow is difficult, I’m both satisfied and convinced that I’ll be here as long as God needs me here and not a moment longer. Some days it’s not easy to see that purpose. But like Paul, you and I can choose to believe that God still has a purpose for us and continue to walk forward.
In the early period after your loved one’s death all you can see is right now, this moment of pain. Embracing the reality that God still has a purpose for you involves being able to look a little further into the future. That ability increases as you keep walking through the valley of your grief. You come to see God as someone who comforts you, yes, but who also supports you as you fulfill a purpose greater than yourself.
You may be at the point in your grief journey where you’re beginning to believe God still has something for you to do, but you don’t have a clue what that could be. You feel as though you would find your grief somewhat less painful if you could only understand a little more of what God’s purpose for you might be. Just appreciating that reality means you are looking further into the future than you could at first. That’s a healthy point in your grief journey.
Embracing and fulfilling God’s purpose for this next season of your life is not something to stress about or become frantic or desperate over. It’s something that you usually come to understand slowly, over time. It’s something you grow into. God’s purpose for you always involves someone or something beyond yourself.
Embracing your purpose first means investing in your personal relationship with Him. As we have discussed, your very grief journey can be a vehicle to deepen the intimacy you have with God. Invest regularly in entering His presence, learning to listen, and allowing Him to do what He wants to do in your heart. That’s the only way fulfilling your purpose becomes possible.
As you keep walking this journey, at some point you will sense God directing your focus upward, outward, and beyond yourself. You will start to see others who need something you have. Someone else’s hurt will burden you, and you will wonder how God might want you to come alongside that person. You will feel the Holy Spirit impressing you to reach out to help someone and give something of yourself. As you take those steps that seem both difficult and small at first, you will find even more healing for your own grief journey and begin to embrace God’s purpose for the next season of your life.
Risking Loving Again
You are grieving because you loved. No love, no grief. And one of the most challenging parts of the grief journey for many is considering loving again.
For some who lost a spouse, loving romantically again can become a rebound, a way to try to short-circuit the pain and fill the place their spouse occupied in their life. Some who lost a child may think of having another child, hoping to fill the place of the one who died. Intellectually you may realize that doing something like this is not wise. Imagining that such decisions mean you are loving again does not make them real love. It’s not fair for either you or the person you’re trying to love. You’re able to consider loving again when you’ve progressed enough in your grief journey that any new relationship or child can be about this relationship and not about the one you lost. For most people that process takes a year or two at least.
You may also shrink from loving again because love is a risk. You may feel like keeping your heart protected, closed, insulated. Loving in any way seems as though it would require more of you than you could possibly give. C. S. Lewis wrote about that.
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.1
Nobody can or should be allowed to tell you if or when it’s time to risk loving again. But it’s important to know that doing so is not dishonoring to your loved one. God loves each human being individually, yet He loves us all overwhelmingly. His love for you is not diminished by His love for me or anyone else. That’s the nature of love. Love is not a finite commodity where loving one person means you have less with which to love another. (Don’t misunderstand this to imply that love in marriage need not be exclusive.) Rightly understood, love multiplies itself. Opening your heart to love again provides meaning and helps you move forward in the purpose God has for you.
Those principles about love don’t apply only to romantic love. But when it comes to romantic love, there are some special considerations. Let me offer a few suggestions. You will know you are perhaps ready to think about loving romantically again when:
• Your grief journey is something in your past rather than something in your present.
• You have learned to live as a single person and have come to find your life’s meaning in connection with God and others outside of a romantic relationship.
• You have come to terms with living alone, even if you don’t like it.
• You are able to consider a relationship not in terms of what a person can give to you but what you have to give someone else.
• You can experience times of joy even though your previous spouse is not there.
• You are giving of yourself to others in meaningful ways that have nothing to do with romantic love.
• Though ambushes of grief occur at times, they do not define your life.
These are some of the indicators that you may be ready to consider a relationship that is about this person and not about your former spouse.
In a larger sense loving again has to do with God’s purpose for the next season in your life. Here I’m not talking about romantic love at all. Loving again in this sense means life is not all about you. It means you are beginning to seek ways to give to others the substance with which God has filled you. That may be through nurturing people in your family, expanding your vocational/work abilities, or volunteering at church or some other setting. It means that, like Paul, you’re paying attention to what “is more necessary for you” (Phil. 1:24)—which is how others can be blessed by what you have to offer—and you are finding healthy ways to offer it.
Loving again in some way is a measure of the healing God has brought you in your journey through grief. Move forward slowly. If your spouse was the loved one you lost, that may or may not mean you will seek romantic love again. But as God brings your heart to the place where it’s ready, loving again in the sense of looking beyond yourself will be one of the things that makes this next season of your life meaningful. And it may become one of the ways in which you honor the love you shared with your loved one and carry the person’s memory forward.
Moving forward without your loved one physically present is not easy. Even thinking about doing so is usually difficult. Most people cannot do this during the early stages of their grief journey, but growing into a new normal is possible. That new normal is not necessarily a negative experience, but it will be different. Intentionally thinking about how you will choose to carry your loved one’s memory forward with you can help make this transition meaningful.
As your grief journey continues, you will become increasingly able to look beyond today. Embracing the reality that God still has a purpose for you will become more and more important. That purpose may even be made fuller by the memory of your loved one and the relationship you shared with that individual. And growing into that new normal will mean risking loving again in some way—not to replace the love you had for your loved one, but to express the multiplication of the love God has blessed you with. Learning to again look beyond yourself and give to others is perhaps the best expression of pursuing God’s purpose for you in this next season.
TWO STEPS FORWARD
1. What positive aspect of your loved one’s legacy will you carry forward? In what way will you do so?
2. What are you coming to understand about the purpose God still has for you?