All grief comes with the pain of loss. But this is a cost we’re more prepared to pay when it fits our current understanding of how life should work. What’s harder is moving forward when the very stories we live by collapse. This is not only harder; it can quickly become a crisis in faith when we no longer know what to believe.
When a job ends, a season closes, or a loved one dies after a long and full life, we can readily understand these things as the natural rhythms of loss in this life. While the loss is still painful, the basic logic of how life works remains intact. On the other hand, our worlds are turned upside down when loss causes this logic to collapse. The issue is less about the loss itself and more about our attempts to make sense of it.
Of course, we need stories to orientate us to the ups and downs of life. But we risk rushing into premature interpretations when we’re faced with existential losses we don’t know what to do with yet.
The temptation is to quickly find a story that protects us from the pain of uncertainty. But this is a self-protective move rather than one grounded in the pursuit of truth. Perhaps we now make a moral crusade against what was just a closed door for us. Or we justify our guilty pleasures when our years of sacrifices haven’t brought the good life we expected. Whatever it looks like, we’re now trying to reshape reality to make sense of our loss.
The harder path is to remain open and faithful even when we don’t understand – to courageously sit in seasons of confusion without demanding immediate clarity. Existential losses will either exercise our faith and deepen our formation after loss, or cause us to lean on our own understanding and tell a story of our own making.
We’re kept comfortable in our small stories when we’re too quick to find new meaning rather than allowing God to initiate us deeper into his larger story through times of disorientation.
Will you allow God to continue forming you when the story you’ve been telling yourself collapses?
