Grief is Like Glitter
Have you ever worked with glitter? I love glitter. I like that it goes everywhere and makes me happy. I have a good friend who teaches kindergarten and first grade, and she hates glitter. It goes everywhere. It is hard to clean up. You will continue to find it minutes, hours, days, months, and maybe even years later in all kinds of places.
Grief is a lot like glitter.
In the beginning, grief is impossibly hard. You don't know how you will get through the day, let alone the weeks and months ahead. But somehow, you find a way. You pray, rely on family and friends, and hope that tomorrow will be a little easier. Eventually, you find a new normal.
You think you are doing okay. You have found a new routine, learned how to get through the hard days, and started to feel a little more like yourself. Then a song comes on the radio, a familiar smell brings back a memory, a holiday rolls around, or someone says something that reminds you of someone or something you have lost. Suddenly, grief is right there again.
Sometimes it catches you completely off guard. Other times, you see it coming, but that doesn't necessarily make it easier.
For me, whenever Peyton or Trinity celebrates a big birthday or reaches an important milestone, I always think about Mackenzie and Hayley. I don't always show my sadness, but I haven't forgotten that my children died. I am so grateful for their lives because, without them, I wouldn't have Peyton and Trinity. I can celebrate the joy of the children I have while still feeling the sadness of the children I lost. Both feelings can exist at the same time. And it still hurts.
I think we sometimes put expectations on grief, both for ourselves and for other people. We assume that enough time should make the sadness disappear. We wonder why something still hurts when we thought we had moved past it. We might even feel guilty for having a hard day after so many good ones.
I don't know that grief ever really gets easier. I think we just learn to adapt. We learn how to live with the loss, how to get through the days that feel heavier than others, and how to find joy again even when a piece of our heart is missing.
The grief doesn't disappear. We just learn how to carry it differently. And sometimes, just when we think we have figured it out, a little piece of glitter shows up and reminds us that healing doesn't mean we stop hurting.
Sometimes, seeing another family experience a loss can take us right back to our own. We remember the pain, the questions, and the moments we wish had turned out differently. Even when we have learned to live with our grief, we can still feel it deeply when something brings it back to the surface because we hate to see others going through that loss.
Maybe that's okay. Maybe learning to live with grief is less about moving on and more about learning to move forward while still carrying the love, the memories, and the pieces of our lives that we wish we could get back.
As people of faith, we know that God never promised us a life without pain. What He promises is that we will never have to face that pain alone. Psalm 34:19 reminds us, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted, saves those whose spirit is crushed.”
I love that reminder because it doesn't say God is close to us only after we have pulled ourselves together. It doesn't say we have to stop crying, find the lesson, or figure out how to move forward before He shows up. He is close to us right in the middle of our brokenness and stays with us.
Even Jesus grieved. When His friend Lazarus died, Jesus wept (John 11:35). He knew what was coming, yet He still felt the pain of loss. To me, that is a powerful reminder that grief and faith can exist together. Being a person of faith doesn't mean we won't hurt. It means we have somewhere to turn when we do.
Maybe the goal isn't to get rid of every last bit of glitter. Maybe it is to learn that when those little reminders show up, we don't have to be afraid of them. We can let ourselves feel the sadness, remember the love, and trust that God is right there with us.
So if grief has caught you off guard lately, give yourself some grace. You haven't failed at healing, and you haven't lost your faith. You are human, and you are still learning how to carry something that matters deeply to you.
God doesn't ask us to have our grief figured out. He simply reminds us that we don't have to carry it alone.