This week’s Permission to Grieve post comes from my For the Love launch team sister Robin Lee, who explains that learning how to grieve well is the key to finding joy and peace.

Permission to Grieve

The key to finding peace

The computer beeped; a new message arrived.

“I need help dealing with my mother,” my friend agonized.

We had many prior conversations about this very topic. The holiday season can exacerbate pain.

“You must begin by grieving the mom you want, but do not have.”

In Rising Strong, Brene Brown writes:

There is clear pattern among women and men who demonstrate the ability to rise strong from hurt or adversity–they reckon with emotion.

Learning to grieve

Over the last few years, I have come to believe that a key to living the life I want is to learn to grieve well.

I did not learn this lesson graveside, weeping over coffins of loved ones. It was a shift born from losing friendships, dreams, ministry opportunities and hope.

I have a history of lashing out in discomfort; gifted at finding the jugular, I put to death (by my own words) many things I wanted to survive. Surprises of disagreement left me raw. Vulnerability made me fierce.

Exhausted by my own imperfections, I had to face that people don’t always think like I think. Or believe what I believe. Or want what I want. That, in and of itself, was something to grieve.

The final stage of grief, acceptance, was something I pretended for years. Cloaked in the fabric of resignation, the real emotion when dealing with losses was still one of wounds and scars. I would pretend to “move on,” but just under the surface, the beast of victim-hood dwelt in the refusal to deal with the feelings I didn’t want.

I hate rejection.

It really didn’t matter what the loss was. I was ineffective at dealing with it.

Once I tired of this pattern, and searched for a new way, I realized that losses have to be felt in order to be healed. The final destination in this journey, a ministry position I loved that fell apart, forced me to give myself permission to grieve its death.

I wrote the 5 stages of grief on the chalkboard in my dining room:

• Denial

• Anger

• Negotiation

• Depression

• Acceptance

It was incredibly freeing.

It helped me stay on the road of healthy decisions. I said, out loud, “I have given myself permission to grieve that loss, and now my focus is forward.”

For years I wrestled with Psalm 51:10:

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit in me.

I whole-heartedly craved living that out, but my skills to do so were non-existent.

Learning how to grieve changed all of that.

The courage to face and deal with emotions of loss, especially losses that I played a huge part in, helped me see my life differently. Armed with greater clarity, I am reducing the number of mistakes I repeat.

I now look at grief as the opposite side of the gratitude coin.

I only grieve the loss of things I have been grateful for. Consciously choosing to live gratefully makes feelings of grief easier to recognize and faster to process.

And while life is still incredibly messy and relationships are sticky and hard, the grief process has made room for greater joy and peace in my heart.

Robin Lee at Robin’s Corner

Robin Lee is wife to an airplane-part-inventing, manufactured-home-selling man who keeps her in stitches and mom to three beautifully unique kids who keep her on her knees. She loves to teach Bible study, laugh, drink coffee with ridiculous amounts of flavored creamer and nap.

You can learn more about Robin over at robins-corner.com.