Austin's Blog

Grief testifies to the love we have for others. As Jamie Anderson writes, “Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.” We grieve because we love deeply.

Grief also testifies to the significance of people. We don’t grieve what is empty or valueless; we grieve because we recognize the worth, value, and dignity of a person. Each of us is made in God’s image. The death of any of us is a loss to all of us.

Grief testifies to the fact that death is not as it should be. Tim Keller writes, “In order to help people face death and grief we often tell people that death is a perfectly natural part of life. But that asks them to repress a very right and profound human intuition—that we were not meant to simply go to dust, and that love was meant to last.” Those who think death is just a natural part of life likely haven’t buried their loved ones. We know in our hearts that this world isn’t right. We know that love is meant to last. We know death is an enemy.

You grieve with hope by continuing to live. Life will never be the same—how could it be? Someone you love, who meant so much to you, has gone on ahead. There’s a need to forge a new normal. In this process, you honor them by continuing to live. You don’t prove your love for someone by being miserable without them. Enjoying life and the world around you actually honors them. You show your love by living in a way that honors their memory, life, and legacy. In fact, you are a steward of their legacy. How will you remember and honor them? How will you make them proud? You do this by living well, living worthily, and pointing to all the good they gave you. We don’t move on from the people we love; we move forward toward them. There’s no such thing as closure—you close bank accounts, not love accounts.

You grieve with hope by doing the hard work of grief. About a month after Gabe died, someone asked if I was able to compartmentalize my grief and ignore it. I said I hadn’t even tried—I had leaned into my grief. Grief work is hard work, and most people don’t want to face it because it’s so difficult. Death and grief are already hard, but they become even harder if we don’t put in the effort to process the pain, sorrow, and loss. It’s like trying to push a ball underwater; you can hold it down only so long before it pops up. You must work through your grief, or it will come out in some way. You deal with it not by giving in to anger, bitterness, or despair; not by turning to alcohol or other substances; not by ignoring it or pretending it doesn’t matter. It does matter. Your loved one matters. Lean into your grief to grow from it. Lean into your grief to become a better person, not a bitter one. How do you do that?

You grieve with hope by looking to God. The only way to endure grief is to turn away from yourself and toward Someone with greater resources. Jesus Christ knows exactly what it means to grieve. God came to earth and became man. He felt what we feel. He is called the “man of sorrows” and wept at the tomb of His friend, Lazarus. This qualifies Him to empathize with us—He is a griever too. But the Gospel is not just that Jesus empathizes with our pain; it’s that He came to end it fully and finally. Why did Jesus come? He came to deal with our greatest enemies: sin, sickness, suffering, and even death. God sent Jesus, who lived a perfect life and obeyed God in every way. He went to the cross and bore the sins of His people, allowing God to say, “Your debt has been paid.” Our sins were nailed to the cross when Jesus was nailed there. This is the good news: Jesus took our sins, and He gives us His righteousness. But Jesus didn’t stay dead—He was raised on the third day, reversing death itself. He offers us eternal life and even future resurrection. In John 11:25-26, He says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” If we trust in Christ, we will pass through physical death into life beyond this life. He makes us new now, and our spiritual resurrection is the guarantee of our physical resurrection in the future.