To Honor Grief

What do I make of this heaviness in my heart?

Prayer

8-24-23

“As I am rebuilding my relationship with God, I am also realizing how many times I have felt betrayed and abandoned by Him. My heart has been angry towards him and I have, many times, secretly vowed to place my trust in my own understanding. Because I never understood why many things took place in my life - for what reason? Was I not enough? Not lovable? Not worthy? Why should a child ever feel like dying? Why and how could love be so absent? As I’ve grown in age and wisdom, I’ve realized that my pain is my healing, my wounds my divine gifts, given to me, imprinted in me by God. If He designed me and I am willed to touch hearts, then my battlefield is meant to lead me to victory. But while I am warring, that doesn’t mean I won’t question God’s nature, or his love for me. I only know what I feel. I am not God.”

Grief is grueling.

It takes your body, adds water, and twists it like clay, molding your features, your heart and your eyes especially.

It’s bent into life, you acting as the bridge.

I know that there are so many places you would rather be. In love. In joy. In fulfillment. In success. But grief is special. It moves you into unprecedented transformation. You can’t quantify what grief gives to you, and that’s why it’s important to be IN it. When grief decides to knock on your door, answer it.

Or your heart may become buried in filth. In pity, despair, fear. Instead of the courage and the might that you possess.

Grief requires honor. At all times.

Though the suffering of this life weighs heavily, we must never turn our backs to the work it requires to truly be free.

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On Grief:

Grief = change, death, loss, transition

It’s hard to adjust the posture of your heart while grieving. It’s hard to see the innocence in life and the purity in you. It’s hard to believe that you and everything that constitutes life around you is inherently good. It takes strength to ask for restoration when the brokenness you feel is shattering to your heart.

\ It is only through honoring my grief that I make peace with God. I make peace with the purpose I’ve been called into. And I make peace with the pain that leads me to that purpose. \

And this process has to happen many times. And this process has to happen many times.

@blackarchives.co

“And grief is in fact owed to the dead as the only ingredient that can help complete the death process. Grief delivers to the dead that which they need to travel to the realm of the dead — a release of emotional energy that also provides a sense of completion, or endedness, closure. This sense of closure is also needed by the griever who has to let go of the person who has died. We have to grieve. It is a duty like any other duty in this life.” - Ritual: Power, Healing, and Community by Malidoma Somé

What is the purpose of grief?

Our wombs are tied to the past. They contain memories, secrets, black water. The womb's job is to invoke/remember death. Our spirit will always hunger for this; therefore, we attract/are initiated into experiences that cause parts of us to die, so that we may willingly transform, becoming reborn.

Like motherhood.

Losing a relationship.

Moving.

Separation.

Death.

It is how we grow towards and embody everything we're meant to.

It doesn’t always feel good, but the point is not pleasure. The point is ____________ (HONOR)!

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@blackarchives.co

On Honor:

To honor something means:

- regard with great respect

- fulfill an obligation or keep an agreement

Honor does not mean to like, to agree, to find favorable/fair, to enjoy, to derive pleasure from.  Honor is synonymous with duty. We must honor motherhood, marriage, friendships, commitments. Honor isn't based on how you feel that day. It’s based in respect, discipline, fear, submission.

Why fear?

“If our choices can bring us to miserable ends, then fear is the healthiest deterrent we have. It is the beginning of wisdom."

When there is ambivalence to the consequences that follow NOT honoring the thing, respect will be absent.

When we do not honor our grief, it externalizes itself as chaos, disease, death, violence, self-inflicted pain, unfortunate circumstances, disharmonious relationships, etc.

We must learn to honor ourselves and others within very trying transitional states.

Transition: the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another (ex: ashes to dust, water to steam, caterpillar to a butterfly)

Imagine experiencing these drastic changes without grieving. Without crying. Without anger, or fear, or disbelief!

We step onto this bridge in one condition and evolve as we cross, into another.

Grief is what propels our evolution.

Grief carries our spirit over, peacefully, into the new world.

Grief requires us:

- to break/bend - become malleable

- to let go of who we think we are/attached to

- empty ourselves

Showing honor to our grief is how we give the dead in us a place to go. We shed and we ache and we heal. We walk into the new world, eyes bright and of God.