Finding Hope in Grief
A framework of hope to help you navigate grief
After five years, my brother’s brave fight against a terminal illness came to an end.
He passed away at the age of forty-one.
Being only eighteen months apart in age meant he was often the one present to witness so many formative moments in my life. Shooting hoops in the backyard. Learning to drive. My grief felt like I lost part of me.
On the day I found out about my brother’s death, I was in Boston, Massachusetts. I walked down to the waterfront overlooking the Charles River to try to begin to process my grief and comprehend what had happened. As I looked out across the water, my eyes were drawn to scores of little sailboats on the river. They darted and danced with the wind. And yet, as all these little sailboats turned and bobbed on the river, they collectively created a sense of serenity, not chaos.
It caused me to reflect on life.
Ultimately, our lives are like those sailboats. We don’t traverse a predetermined path. Our lives don’t unfold in clean lines. Within all the adventures, joy, grief and surprises of life—and as we hold on for dear life and do our best to orient our sails to the wind—there is a bigger picture.
There is a big story that holds all of our little stories—a story of ultimate hope.
Download the free pdf devotional series
Unlock the ‘The Tide-Turning Power of Hope’ during grief.
The Nature of Hope in Grief
The idea of hope looks nice on Hallmark cards and inspiring quotes on social media, but when we experience grief, we need more than cliché slogans and platitudes. We need a type of hope that’s robust enough to deal with the long, deep shadows of illness, death, and loss.
One of the most fascinating examples of this gritty, authentic hope is a person I’ve been reading and thinking about for many years: Job. The story of this man’s life is remarkable because of the interwoven themes of grief, pain and hope. This atypical version of hope presented by Job is engineered for adversity. While hope doesn’t wave away our difficulties with a magic wand, it does something infinitely greater: it changes us.
At the time of my brother’s death, I was already many years into writing a book on hope. My thesis was this: hope and hardship together can do something in us that a problem-free life never could. It’s this idea that propelled me to look more deeply into the relationship between our destiny and our difficulties.
I set about finding evidence of this symbiotic relationship between hope and hardship, purpose and pain, grief and joy in scripture, in history, in nature, in literature, and drawing from my own personal story.
What I found was a type of hope framework that I have found helpful to share with others navigating grief and the pain of loss. It goes like this:
Sit in the pain of grief.
Mine the good from catastrophe.
See past grief and into eternity.
Sit in the Pain of Grief
Don’t sanitize the mess.
I read a story about how the Louvre decided to restore Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne masterpiece. According to many, Leonardo’s masterpiece was overcleaned. Its minor flaws were unnecessarily touched up. The skilled nuance of the brush and the depth of shadow were removed and a bright and sunny version remained. How often are we guilty of presenting a fake, brightened image of ourselves to others? There is a tendency to mistake hope for the notion that we must ignore the shadows or the reality of our circumstances.
The original on the left, the restored work on the right. https://www.discoveringdavinci.com/st-anne-painting
But true hope is not hype. It’s not pretending that everything is fine. During his crises, Job didn’t retouch the painting. He didn’t remove the shadows. Instead, he sat on the ground for seven days without uttering a word. Job wasn’t a fake optimist we can’t relate to. He was devastated and grieving deeply. Don’t sanitize your mess. Be real, be authentic, and allow yourself to be human.
Wishing to remove the blemishes from the canvas of our lives is a trap. It’s a trap not because it is impossible, but because the lessons we learned from those situations have likely become the pillars we have built our lives on. Some of my worst moments as I was grieving were what pushed me toward empathy, kindness, humility, and a reliance on the grace of God.
Someone decided that Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece needed to be enhanced and brightened, and we can make the same mistake with the challenges in our lives. But before Job started to think about restoration and future possibility, he sat grieving amid the ashes of his life, and absorbed them into his soul.
Hope starts with honesty
Download the free pdf devotional series
Unlock the ‘The Tide-Turning Power of Hope’ during grief.
Grief and Hope is bridged by Human Connection
I’ve been thinking a lot about the following question: “Is there a link between friendship and hope?” I’ve often seen hope as more of an internal, private experience—something that happens in me as an individual. But I’m starting to see that hope is a communal experience. For me to truly experience the tide-turning power of hope, I need others. Sometimes I have feelings rise within me like, “Does anybody really know what I am feeling?” And, more importantly, “Does anyone truly care?” Hopelessness and loneliness are co-conspirators to our undoing through the grieving process.
This brings me to Job’s three friends. The dramatic moment they walk into his grief is perhaps the most special moment in this entire story. These three individuals have come together and made an intentional plan to travel to Job and provide comfort in his grief. Everyone else seemingly forsakes Job, but not these friends. Sometimes, you don’t need three hundred. You don’t need a crowd. You don’t need a following. You need three friends to walk in when the whole world walks out. The great act of friendship? Job’s suffering becomes their suffering, and shared suffering is the opening of the window to hope.
Grief needs to be diffused through our friendships to come out the other side as hope.
I have discovered that when God wants to bring hope into my life, it’s not necessarily through heavenly experiences where the sky parts or my problems are magically erased. The most common way I’ve seen God show up in my life has been through the blessing of people. Community and friendship are not just something we receive. When we go through grief, we often put walls up emotionally and retreat. To experience hope, we must push through that. Take the risk of being vulnerable and proactively invite people into your dust-and-ashes moments. Send a text: “I could really use a friend right now.” Make a call: “Could we grab a coffee this week?”
Hope is more than a feeling. Hope is a human exchange and flows through friendship.
Mine the Good from Catastrophe
I searched for a word that best described something good coming from something bad. I found the word eucatastrophe—literally a ‘good catastrophe.’ We often view hope and pain at opposite ends of the human spectrum. But it is the existence of pain and grief that allows hope to express itself. Hope lives in the presence, not the absence, of suffering and crises. Pain is the antagonist in the script of our life. It provokes an accelerated growth response in our lives like nothing else can. Some of the greatest challenges we experience in life will also turn out to be the best sources of opportunity, renewal, and creativity. Our greatest challenges in life are linked to our greatest growth.
Life is an alloy, and the mixture of hardship and hope makes us stronger.
Download the free pdf devotional series
Unlock the ‘The Tide-Turning Power of Hope’ during grief.
Forge Purpose from Your Grief
People are one of life’s true recovery agents from pain. What gives us hope is the learned habit of taking our eyes off our problems and looking up to a world full of needs. Serve. Contribute. Give yourself to those who have greater needs than you. There is no such thing as giving too much hope to others. Our world is in desperate need of light-bearers, of burden lifters. We need more people to be fluent in the language of hope.
Before Job had his dramatic comeback, he said,
“For I assisted the poor in their need and the orphans who required help. I helped those without hope, and they blessed me. And I caused the widows’ hearts to sing for jo”
At some point, Job looked up from his own grief and focused on others. In fact, Job found those who had less hope and helped them. In doing so, he said it was he who was blessed.
There are people in the world who still need you.
Purpose is not discovered; it is developed. You won’t just stumble upon a purposeful life one day. You need to take the ingredients in your hands—the good and the bad—and develop purpose. Timothy Keller says it this way: “Nothing is more important than to learn how to maintain a life of purpose in the midst of painful adversity.”
It’s easy to focus on the darker shades of the palette of life. But do we have a full appreciation of the true beauty and majesty that life can bring? The wonder of a star-filled spring night, the feeling that comes from laughing so hard you cry, old friends, making a difference in someone’s life. Forging purpose while you are grieving is a way of exploring the brighter end of the spectrum—the side of wonder, of laughter, of joy. Hope is about improvising in the middle of a real-life drama.
Anchor yourself while grieving
Those of us who have lost loved ones need an anchor to hold on to. Think about an anchor: it’s a heavy object that’s lowered from a ship deep into the water. This iron hook grapples rocks on the floor of the ocean and holds the ship upright and steady. The anchor prevents shipwrecks by stopping the ship from moving. For a sailor caught in a storm, the most essential, life-saving instrument is an anchor. One of the interesting things about an anchor is that you don’t see it when it is working. It lies hidden beneath the surface Above the ocean, the wind can be howling, the timbers creaking, the mast shaking—but all the while, there is a powerful anchor keeping the ship stable. That’s one of the things I love about the metaphor of the anchor. Sometimes, life is not about making progress; it is simply about standing our ground in a storm. Holding fast amid crises is a remarkable achievement. Not every season is one of progress.
Sometimes, the biggest win is merely to stay firmly in place.
See Past Grief and Into Eternity
When I think about the storm Job endured, it makes me appreciate that one of his greatest lessons to us was not what he did, but rather what he didn’t do. Job didn’t quit. He didn’t give up on his future. Instead, he stood his ground. The flood swept through his life and brought with it emotional devastation. But Job had an inner anchor: he had faith in God. Job’s expression of hope was to keep standing.
I want to take you deeper into the conversation of faith, because I’m not convinced that we can have a true conversation about hope without exploring the role faith plays. Hope needs faith. Part of the human experience has always been to ask, “Does God see? Does God care?”
That’s why the psalmist writes,
““Feel my pain and see my trouble. Forgive all my sins” ”
The idea that God feels, sees, and forgives is amazing to me. My grief and pain is not invisible to my Maker. Unfortunately, I have this tendency to want to have all the answers . . . and then have faith in God. I know what it is to worry and stress about something only for God to come through and then think to myself, “I really should have more faith.” But the order of the sequence matters.
We need to choose faith before we see the answers. Faith this side of our problems. Faith in our pain. How large does your faith need to be in order to be effective? Jesus said it could be as small as a tiny mustard seed. Faith can be microscopic; it can start in deeply broken and painful situations or in a haze of doubt. But large doors swing on small hinges, and the smallest measure of faith can open huge opportunities for God to move in your life.
I’ve come to understand my story within the larger narrative of humanity. Sickness doesn’t win. Even death doesn’t win. Knowing that the end of this life on earth is a comma, not a period, and that we have an eternal home gives me peace as I grieve. Jesus made the ultimate invitation to all of us:
““Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest””
We all come to a place where we are weary and carrying burdens. Jesus offers an invitation to live life, to experience joy, to dream again. It is an invitation to eternity. An invitation for a dead stump to flourish and come back to life.
Conclusion
Our person of interest, Job, has some inspired moments. But let’s be candid: Job also went on to accuse God of destroying him and grinding his life into a powder. God doesn’t seem to answer the questions Job asks. He never really gives Job a direct answer as to why he suffered. No clear, quotable phrase is available to neatly wrap up the story. Yet, God does speak. He responds to the grief and pain Job is experiencing.
God seems to point to himself as some form of ultimate answer. God doesn’t offer further information about why Job experienced such bitter devastation—rather, God talked about His own character and virtue. One way of seeing it is that God was presenting himself as the answer to life’s pain. A promise that we are loved, valued, seen, and heard, and that we are not alone on this planet. It reminds us that, amid the dramas of all of our lives, the grand arc of history is bending toward a master plan: God’s ultimate redemption of humanity. When we can’t understand what is happening in life, there is a who we can put our trust in: God.
You are not alone. You are loved. You are seen.
Download the free pdf devotional series
Unlock the ‘The Tide-Turning Power of Hope’ during grief.
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Start by acknowledging and sitting in the pain of your grief. It's important to be real and authentic about your feelings rather than trying to sanitize or suppress them. Allow yourself the time and space to grieve deeply, understanding that this honest confrontation with your pain is the first step towards healing. Taking time to process grief helps us to confront and understand our emotional burdens.
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Hope provides a framework that helps navigate through grief. It allows us to see past our immediate pain and into a bigger picture, offering a sense of ultimate hope and purpose. Think of hope as the knowledge of a victorious ending in a movie—while the current scenes might be filled with tension and pain, knowing that the story ends in ultimate triumph gives us peace and strength to endure the present hardships.
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Grief and hardship can lead to personal growth and the development of empathy, kindness, and resilience. Just as the onyx stone in biblical times symbolized the promise of paradise, seeing the potential for good to emerge from our suffering can provide a powerful source of hope. Reflect on how past difficulties have shaped you into a stronger and more compassionate person.
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Yes, human connection is crucial. Friends and community can provide support and hope, transforming your pain into shared experiences that foster healing and hope. Just as Job’s friends traveled to comfort him in his suffering, having a few close friends who understand and share your burden can be incredibly healing. Don't hesitate to reach out and let people into your moments of grief.
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Faith can be a significant anchor in times of grief. Believing in an eternal home can offer peace and a sense of purpose beyond the immediate pain. I encourage you to lean on your faith, finding solace in the promise of God's presence, love, and the hope of an eternal reunion with lost loved ones. Knowing that our lives are part of a larger, eternal plan can change how we experience our current suffering, much like adjusting our clocks to heaven's time zone helps us see our lives in a different light.
