Oh the not so wonderful 5 stages of grief- denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many of us have been through them. Some of us have been through them more times than we can count. Some have never even experienced them at all. Most people think that grief only happens when someone dies. Grief is defined as keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss. Grief does not just happen when you someone you loves dies. No, grief happens when you lose someone or something or an ideal. I have experienced grief and it’s five steps in so many ways- through the loss of my dad, the loss of grandparents, aunts, an uncle and a cousin. I’ve experienced grief through the loss of an ideal marriage and through the loss of a the life I had planned for a child. I experience it at each age and stage of Gillian’s life while I watch others move forward as we stay idle. I’ve experienced it for my other two children when it finally hit me how they have lost so much normal in their childhoods because of parents being separated and losing loved ones and having a special needs sister.
One thing that I have learned about the five stages of grief in my many journeys through them is that each time it has looked different. Each journey has looked different, each stage has taken a different amount of time and has required different ways to get through them. Grief has never looked the same way twice for me. And I realize that grief doesn’t look the same way for any two people. We all have our own way of dealing with grief and walking thorough its stages. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. For one it takes a lot longer. For some they are able to move through some stages quite quickly but get stuck on just one or two of the stages. We cannot judge someone for the way that they walk through the grieving process. We can only love them as they walk though.
Let’s do a quick overview of each of the five stages today and then over the next week I’d love to tell you what it looked like for me to walk through three areas I have grieved over, marriage, a child’s perfect childhood and death of loved ones. Personally, I don’t think everyone walks through the stages of grief in a particular order. Now, please realize that I am not a licensed psychologist, I am only a biblical counselor, so I am not diagnosing anything here. I am simply talking through what I have personally experienced in my own life or what I have studied through biblical counseling courses. Also, you will notice that I am only stated 5 stages of grief instead of 7. I am putting shock/disbelief in the same category as denial. I realize that many times these two can be completely separate but for the sake of keeping this shorter I will combine them. I have also combined bargaining and guilt together for the same reasons.
Denial (shock/disbelief)- Most people think denial means that the person doesn’t get that the loss actually happened. Not true, you know the loss has happened, your mind is just protecting you from the overwhelming amount of emotions that want to flood through all at once. Denial actually protects you from being completely consumed by what you have experienced. Denial allows you to go numb for awhile while you get the stuff done that needs to get done. You know in the back of your mind what just happened but denial puts up a little wall so that it can’t come to the forefront of your thoughts just yet. As denial fades all the emotions can start to come out.
Anger- Once the emotions start coming out anger is the first one to take over. It is hard for any one human to process all the emotions that come with grief. You cannot process through them all at one time and this can make you very angry because you just want to be through it all. Anger also comes out as questioning why this happened to you. You can be angry at God or at your spouse, or at any number of things or people. Being angry is Okay, it is part of the process. It is okay to allow yourself to be angry as you move forward.
Bargaining/Guilt- Most often people want to bargain with God. “God, if you do this. I’ll do that”. It’s our desperate attempt at trying to get our old normal back. When we don’t get our bargaining ways answered we turn to guilt and the lonely phrase of “if only”. “If only I would have done this then this loss wouldn’t have happened”. It’s like we are trying to bargain with ourselves thinking we can go back and change the past.
Depression- This is the point that you realize nothing you say or do can change what has happened. Reality starts to set in. You realize there is a new normal that you don’t want. All the emotions have now flooded over you and seem to be shocking you from the inside out. The depression stage of grief sucks. All the stages sucks, but I think this one is the worst. It is all consuming. It usually starts to occur at the point that everyone has stopped asking you how you are and they’ve all gone back to their normal lives and you feel completely alone.
Acceptance- This doesn’t mean that your time of grieving is over just because you have accepted what has happened. Grieving is a lifelong process. No one ever fully gets over the loss of someone or something. When we accept our loss we are saying that what happened is not okay, but I am going to be okay. We fully realize the new normal even though we don’t like it. We start to get back to our lives even though there is now a big empty space inside us. We start moving forward.
Grief truly is a lifelong process which is why I believe that God tell us that in Heaven there will be no more tears. He knows the grief we face here in this world and He grieves when we grieve. If you are in the midst of these stages of grief today, please know that I am praying for you and my heart is heavy for you. Do not walk through this process alone. Reach out to someone you know who has walked through them ahead of you so they can be praying for you and so they can make sure that you don’t get stuck or completely consumed by your grief. If you are blessed to be able to walk with someone on this road, please remember that their journey will look different then yours and that’s okay. Don’t judge them or tell them that they are doing it wrong because it takes them longer than it took you or because they aren’t doing it how you did it. Just be a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on and a great prayer warrior.
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