Surprised by Grief
October 25, 2020 — Laura House
When Nathan left us, I decided to use his iPhone 6 Plus as my own. I found comfort imagining him talking to Siri, following directions from the GPS, and taking pictures both here and when he traveled abroad. Recently, the phone stopped holding a charge and I was advised that it needed a new battery, so I traveled to an Apple store in a nearby city to replace it.
However, after the associate took the phone back to the repair center, he quickly returned bearing bad news. Apparently the battery couldn’t be replaced and they would just issue me a brand new phone for the price of the battery, and keep my old one to figure out what had gone wrong.
A normal person would’ve rejoiced at this news, but I was devastated. Relinquish the phone? There was no way. This was the handset that Nathan used. Experiencing that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that had been so familiar in the early days of my grief, I was truly surprised at my reaction.
Fortunately, the store didn’t have a new one in stock so the associate called another store in Indiana where I’d be the following week. Relief swept over me when I realized that I didn’t have to give it up quite yet. I left the store and headed out to the parking lot, tears just beneath the surface trying to escape. But where was my car? I had no idea. It was somewhere outside this enormous, unfamiliar mall. I walked through the parking lots clicking the fob on my keys hoping to hear a honk. Wilting in the 100-degree heat, I was soon mentally and physically exhausted, my car still nowhere in sight. Grief brain had taken over. With no options left, I reentered the mall and found a security guard who drove me through each lot until I located my car.
If you are grieving the loss of someone dear to you, then you can relate to this story. Grief takes us by surprise in the most unusual ways. Whether it’s a possession, picture, video, or the recorded sound of their voice—there will be times when we are “ambushed” even years down the road. I have friends who are ten or twenty years out from saying goodbye who have shared that they are still sometimes surprised by grief. The depth of love we have for our family never wanes and the separation that death causes leaves a void that will only be filled when we are with them again.
Grief is part of earthly life. If you haven’t yet experienced it, hold on, because you will. But as sure as I am of that truth, I’m also as sure of the promise that the Lord will carry you through even the darkest night—because He loves you and nothing can separate you from His love.
I have experienced His love for me throughout my life, but it was only through the greatest sorrow I have ever known that an understanding of the depth of His love became evident to me. Sometimes I wonder how I didn’t see it before.
Romans 8:38-39— “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
