Grief and PTSD as a Friend

Hey Warriors,

Melissa here!!

Over the last few weeks in counseling Lawrence and I keep coming back to the topic of grief. Him and I both experience grief in different ways. As we were talking about it the counselor said that someone told him to embrace grief as a friend, not the enemy.

Now this baffled me. I could not imagine or fathom why anyone would want to look at grief as a friend. Grief is something I have always fought against. I fight against the reactions like exhaustion and anger what grief does to me. I fight against the thoughts and pain grief brings up. If it involves grief then I want to stay as far away from it as possible.

How many of you do that with the feelings and emotions you experience? You just bury it and do not deal with it and you dang sure don’t befriend it. You believe all those feelings and emotions are from Satan and none of it could ever be from God.

I think we feel like only the good emotions and feelings are from God. That he only brings joy and happiness. What if that were not the case? What if God gave us things like grief? That is a hard thing to imagine isn’t it. Why would God give us the things that are hard and do not feel good?

Well for one, so that we totally and completely rely on him. (I struggle with this, not because I do not trust God but because I forget to ask for help. Asking for help is something else I suck at) God wants us to bring him all our emotions and feelings. He wants us to tell him the good and the bad. He wants to walk through the happiness and celebrate with us but He also wants to comfort us and help us through the hard times.

The second reason he gives us these emotions and feelings is to help us grow. It is hard to grow when everything is great. When things get hard, is when we see what we can do. Do we live in it or do we move forward one step at a time? (Notice I did not say “See what we are made of”. We all handle things differently and ones strength is not measured by how they handle a situation}

This is where we can began to think about grief being a friend. What does that look like? I did not understand it until today. I saw grief as something that comes and goes just to torment me, but it is not like that at all. Grief comes in when I can handle it. Small waves or even big ones that I can work through and process a little at a time. This week that looked like lots of sleep from being completely exhausted because for the past few weeks I have just ignored my feelings instead of processing them. Pushing them down got me nowhere except for my body coming to a crashing halt, and total frustration about why my body was failing me. I did not walk with Grief as a friend, instead I fought it at every turn till it crushed me.

What are some things that grief can do for you? Hands down it is the one thing that shows you how much you loved the thing that is gone. It does not just have to be the loss of a person. You can grieve an animal, a relationship, a home, it can be anything. There are so many things you can grieve. Those sad or happy feelings grief brings on shows you that you miss what is lost and that is an amazing thing. The other thing grief can do is care for you enough to not give you all the feelings and emotions at once. It lets you process things slowly. Grief also leads you to healing. It gives you all the things to process and move forward. Grief wants you to thrive and not live in the hole of it. Grief walks with you, it does not fight against you.

If you hand a friend that you love so much and that friend showed you that love. That friend is gentle in telling you things. They want the very best for you and would walk though the situation with you. You would say that is a great friend to have around. It is a friendship you would welcome. Grief is that friend.

This can be for any emotion you have. Each has their purpose and that includes PTSD. Instead of fighting against it though, try walking with it one step at a time. The more you fight against it the worse you feel and the more Satan can attack your mind with all the evil things. Ask God for help and ask those around you. Don’t fear things like grief. God did not give us these feelings and emotions to fear but to grow and show his glory.

I hope this helps you today. If you are living with grief, depression, PTSD or all of the above, try walking with it and not fighting against it. It might just be the thing that gives you a whole new outlook on what you are going through and why you are going through it.

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Have a wonderful Day!!

Psalm 34:18 ESV The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

Melissa McGuire (Relentless)