Expressing Grief

Our young grandson has just experienced his first loss of a pet – his nearly three-year old hamster died over the weekend and he was heartbroken. His parents handled it well. His dad asked him if he wanted to hold it, which he didn’t, but together they went and buried it in the garden. He spent a tearful evening with both of them and the next morning said to his mum, “I don’t know how I am supposed to feel”, possibly thinking that it was “only” a hamster and should he be feeling so upset. Her reply was that it was quite all right for him to feel sad and that it was natural to miss the little creature for a time.

I have prayed with many people who experienced the loss of a close relative, sometimes a parent, when they were very young and were never able to grieve. Now, as adults, they have discovered a well of untapped grief which they have never expressed. Probably the adults around them at the time wanted to spare them the pain of loss and so from the best of motives they didn’t encourage the expression of grief. But now the buried feelings have either come to the surface – or else all emotions have become trapped under a layer of ‘concrete’.

Jesus freely expressed His emotions. On two occasions we read that He wept, once when He knew that He was going to raise Lazarus back to life and once over Jerusalem. He was not ashamed of His tears, nor of people seeing Him crying. Children should be encouraged to grieve, to know that people, and creatures, that they love are going to die sometime, and that they should not bury their feelings.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, Thank You that You have given me emotions through which I can experience the fullness of life. Please help me to express them all in a right way and not bury the uncomfortable ones. Amen.